Ruben Ruiz Ibarruri

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Rubén Ruiz Ibárruri (Russian: Рубен Руис Ибаррури; Musques, Vizcaya Province, Spain; January 9, 1920 - Stalingrad, Union Soviet; September 3, 1942) was a Spanish and Soviet Union soldier. He participated in the Spanish civil war, and in World War II. He was awarded some of the highest Soviet military decorations, including the honorary title of Hero of the Soviet Union and twice the Order of the Red Banner. He was the son of Dolores Ibárruri, better known as "La Pasionaria", one of the top leaders of the Communist Party of Spain (PCE).

Biography

He was born in the Somorrostro valley, in Musques (in Basque Muskiz), in the province of Vizcaya, on January 9, 1920, the son of Dolores Ibárruri and Julián Ruiz Gabiña. Of the six children of «La Pasionaria», Rubén was the only boy. Together with his sister Amaya Ruiz Ibárruri, they were the only ones who reached adulthood, since the other four sisters died when they were little in an environment of poverty and revolutionary. Their family home was sometimes searched for weapons or propaganda for the police or the civil guard. His father was a miner and socialist. His mother, from a traditional Catholic family, understood Marxism as a tool for liberation. In 1917 she was very impressed by the triumph of the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia and soon after, Dolores and Julián would abandon socialism to militate in communism, founding the Spanish Communist Workers' Party.

Second Spanish Republic

In 1931 the Second Republic was proclaimed and the family moved to Madrid, where Dolores would direct the publication of Mundo Obrero. During these years, Dolores was taken to prison several times, due to her critical speeches and her active political militancy, she would also travel to the Soviet Union in 1933. Rubén and Amaya in Madrid, through the working-class areas of Cuatro Caminos or through Calle de Bravo Murillo, they dedicated themselves to selling the communist newspaper Mundo Obrero.

In 1935, after his mother was imprisoned again along with thousands of others after the failed 1934 Revolution of Asturias, both he and his sister Amaya were sent to the Soviet Union, crossing Berlin and Nazi Germany by train. They arrived in Moscow under a false identity. At first, they were sent to rest at the Artek international youth camp, in Crimea. Shortly after, Amaya was sent to the "International Children's House" in Ivanovo, 300 kilometers from Moscow. hundreds of children from different countries, children of dead or imprisoned communists. Rubén, at the age of fourteen, entered that shelter. He began working at the Likhachev Automobile Factory and learned a profession at Moscow College No. 19. According to his sister, a plaque was installed on the lathe where he worked, in his honor, with the text: "Here, in 1930 and five, Rubén Ruiz Ibárruri worked". Rubén was welcomed for two years by the family of the historian Panteleimón Lepeshinski and his wife, the biologist Olga Lepeshínskaya, members of the dissolved Bolshevik party. Rubén, at the age of fifteen, asked to enlist in the Soviet army to be able to fight in the incipient Spanish civil war. He was admitted to go to an aviation school in Stalingrad where, however, he was unable to apply as a pilot due to his color blindness.

Civil war and exile

He returned to the country and enlisted as a private in the People's Army of the Republic, specifically in the International Brigades. When Major Aleksandr Rodimtsev met him in August 1937, by then Ruben had been promoted to corporal. A year later He participated in the Battle of the Ebro, the most important of the war, after which he was promoted to the rank of sergeant.

In February 1939, after the defeat of the Republican government, he was forced to cross the border into France along with other remnants of the Republican army and thousands of other people. The French authorities transferred him to the Argelès-sur-Mer concentration camp, along with thousands of other republicans. Rubén managed to escape and reach the Soviet embassy in Paris, from which he managed to return to the Soviet Union by boat, joining his mother and his sister Amaya in Pushkino, thirty kilometers from Moscow.

Once in Moscow again, in the fall of 1939, he entered the Red Army, at the Btzika Military Academy in Moscow, from which he would emerge with the rank of lieutenant. After graduating, he was assigned to a unit military stationed in the Soviet capital.

The Great Patriotic War

Plate in memory of Ruben Ibárruri on the street named in his honor, in the Russian city of Lípetsk.

After the outbreak of World War II, and the German invasion with Operation Barbarossa, Rubén was mobilized for what would be called the "Great Patriotic War". In July 1941 he was in command of the "175th Machine Gun Company" of the "1st Moscow Proletarian Division" in the 1st Belorussian Front, covering the Soviet retreat near Borisov, Belorussia. of the German offensive was concentrated in this area. Soviet troops for six hours stopped the Nazi advance and protected the bridge along the Berezina River to protect the withdrawal of troops before the Nazi advance. He was one of the survivors, the machine guns ran out of ammunition and attacked the enemy with grenades and a melee where he was seriously injured, with shrapnel in one of his arms.

A few months later, in September, he was awarded for his actions with the highest military valor award, the Order of the Red Banner, on July 22, 1941 by the Chairman of the USSR Supreme Soviet Presidium, Mikhail Kalinin, in person and transferred to a hospital in the city of Oryol. From there he was able to send a letter to his mother and his sister to let them know that he was still alive.With the rapid German advance, he was taken to a Moscow hospital where he was reunited with his mother and sister. On October 16, an order came to evacuate the capital and they were transferred by train to the interior for ten days with hardly any food, arriving in Ufa, near the Ural mountains.

Battle of Stalingrad

In 1942 he would return to the front, at his own request as a first lieutenant. He did so as part of a unit that was sent to the battle of Stalingrad. By then he was in command of a machine gun company of the 35th. Guards Rifle Division (commanded by Major General Vasili Glazkov). When he arrived in Stalingrad in August 1942, his unit was located in the Samojválovka-Kotlubán sector, with the mission of resisting the Germans in this area. sector. The city of Stalingrad was suffering a severe siege, it was in ruins and burning. His machine gun company was tasked with defending the Kotluban railway station (Железнодорожная станция Котлубань), some thirty kilometers north of the city. On the night of August 23, his unit was attacked by enemy tanks and motorized infantry, causing many casualties among the Soviet defenders. After his battalion commander was killed, Ibárruri assumed command of the Soviet defense, until the next day he was seriously wounded, hit by a bullet. He was sent to a field hospital in Srednaia Akhtuba about twenty kilometers from the city, on the other side of the Volga, where he died at the age of 22 from his injuries. He was buried on 3 September 1942. On 22 September He was posthumously awarded a second Order of the Red Banner for the defense of Stalingrad and promoted to captain.

The machine-gun company, commanded by Rubén Ibárruri, destroyed the first lines of the enemy... In this battle, the first lieutenant of the guard Ruben Ibárruri was fatally wounded and was taken by his companions to the hospital... Despite the efforts of the doctors to save the life of the young Spaniard, at the dawn of September 3, 1942 Rubén ceased to exist.
Message from Nikita Jruschov

On August 23, 1956, the USSR awarded him the highest Soviet decoration, Hero of the Soviet Union.

Monuments and commemorations

Monument to Ruben Ibárruri in Volgograd (former Stalingrad).

Awards