Semyon Sakhnov

Semyon Pavlovich Sakhnov (Russian: Семён Павлович Сахнов; 15 February 1900 – 8 March 1950) was a Red Army major general who commanded the 56th Rifle Division in the early stages of the Axis invasion of the Soviet Union (Operation Barbarossa).

After fighting as an ordinary soldier in the Russian Civil War, Sakhnov graduated from an officer training school and served there during the 1920s before rising to division command in the late 1930s. He was commanding the 56th Rifle Division in Belarus when Operation Barbarossa was launched. Stationed close to the border, his unit was destroyed in the first days of the war. After more than two months behind German lines, Sakhnov reached the Soviet lines with a small group of other officers, but was expelled from the Communist Party for burying his documents when he was encircled by German units. As a result of this censure, he never held a combat command again and spent the rest of the war in command of a training unit.