Matvey Kuzmin , which everyone called «Biriuk "(Lone Wolf), was an 83-year-old man who lived in a wooden cabin in the woods surrounding his hometown, Kurakino (Russia). In 1942, away from the madding crowd and in the midst of the Nazi offensive on Russia, his only concerns were hunting, fishing, collecting firewood... Until one day he ran into a battalion of the 1st Mountain Division of the German army.
Matvey Kuzmin
The German commander offered him food, kerosene, and a new hunting rifle in exchange for leading them through the woods and being able to surprise the Red Army from the rear. Kuzmin accepted the deal...or so he led the Nazis to believe. Although Kuzmin was not sympathetic to the Stalinist regime, he was not a traitor either. As the Germans planned their attack strategy, Kuzmin managed to tip off Vasilij (there are versions that say it was his son and others that it was his grandson) of his plan:they would cross the forest, by the most difficult route to exhaust them, to the outskirts of Malkino where there was an ideal place for the red army, warned by Vasilij, to ambush them.
After several hours of walking, knee-deep in snow, exhausted and shivering with cold, they reached the point chosen for the ambush. If Vasilij hadn't arrived in time or hadn't been able to warn the Russians… he was lost. Suddenly, the Russians came out of hiding and started firing their machine guns… the Germans had fallen into the trap. In the middle of the fray, and before falling down, the German officer killed Kuzmin. Only a few Germans were able to escape from that trap.
Kuzmin's story went unnoticed until the Pravda journalist , Boris Polevoy , wrote the article «The last day of Matvey Kuzmin » which would later become a children's story.
In 1965 he was posthumously named Hero of the Soviet Union , becoming the oldest person to receive this award.