Hero of the Soviet Union in the context of "Order of Lenin"

Hero City is a Soviet honorary title awarded for outstanding heroism during World War II (the Eastern Front is known in most countries of the former Soviet Union as the Great Patriotic War). It was awarded to twelve cities of the Soviet Union, today located in Belarus (1 city), Russia (7 cities), and Ukraine (4 cities). Brest Fortress in Belarus was awarded the equivalent title of Hero Fortress. This symbolic distinction for a city corresponds to the individual distinction "Hero of the Soviet Union".

According to the statute, the hero city was issued the Order of Lenin, the Gold Star medal, and the certificate of the heroic deed (gramota or hramota) from the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR. Also, the corresponding obelisk was installed in the city.

Yuri Alekseyevich Gagarin (9 March 1934 – 27 March 1968) was a Soviet pilot and cosmonaut who, aboard the first successful crewed spaceflight, became the first person to journey into outer space. Travelling on Vostok 1, Gagarin completed one orbit of Earth on 12 April 1961, with his flight taking 108 minutes. By achieving this major milestone for the Soviet Union amidst the Space Race, he became an international celebrity and was awarded many medals and titles, including his country's highest distinction: Hero of the Soviet Union.

Hailing from the village of Klushino in the Russian SFSR, Gagarin was a foundryman at a steel plant in Lyubertsy in his youth. He later joined the Soviet Air Forces as a pilot and was stationed at the Luostari Air Base, near the Norway–Soviet Union border, before his selection for the Soviet space programme alongside five other cosmonauts. Following his spaceflight, Gagarin became the deputy training director of the Cosmonaut Training Centre, which was later named after him. He was also elected as a deputy of the Soviet of the Union in 1962 and then to the Soviet of Nationalities, the lower and upper chambers of the Supreme Soviet respectively.

The Kalinin Front (Russian: Калининский фронт, romanized: Kalininskiy front) was a major formation of the Red Army active in the Eastern Front of World War II, named for the city of Kalinin. It was formally established by Stavka directive on 17 October 1941 and allocated three armies: 22nd, 29th Army and 30th. In May 1942, the Air Forces of the Kalinin Front were reorganised as the 3rd Air Army, comprising three fighter, two ground attack, and one bomber division.

In November 1942 the Kalinin Front, along with the Western Front, launched Operation Mars against the German defenses in the Rzhev/Vyaz'ma salient. The 3rd Shock Army, now allocated to Kalinin Front, started the operation on 24 November by attacking Third Panzer Army at Velikiye Luki, and the next day the Kalinin and Western Fronts assaulted the entire perimeter of the Rzhev salient. The offensive involved the 41st, 22nd, 39th, 31st, 20th, and 29th Armies from both Fronts. The Front was then involved in the Battle of Velikiye Luki in January–March 1943. The 3rd Air Army supported both the Rzhev/Sychevka and the Velikiye Luki operations, but then appears to have been shifted to Northwestern Front briefly to cover the Demyansk bridgehead.

Ivan Mikhailovich Chistyakov (Russian: Иван Михайлович Чистяков; 27 September [O.S. 14 September] 1900 – 7 March 1979) was a Soviet Army colonel general and a Hero of the Soviet Union.

Chistyakov joined the Red Army during the Russian Civil War and rose from ordinary soldier to junior commander. He served in Dagestan during the 1920s and early 1930s before being transferred to the Soviet Far East, where he commanded a corps by the outbreak of Operation Barbarossa. Chistyakov was transferred to the Eastern Front in late 1941 and attained division and corps command during the Battle of Moscow. He commanded the 21st Army during the Battle of Stalingrad and continued to command it for the rest of the war as the 6th Guards Army. Chistyakov led the army in the Battle of Kursk and was made a Hero of the Soviet Union for his leadership of the army during Operation Bagration. After the end of the war in Europe, he was transferred to the Far East again to serve as the commander of the 25th Army, which occupied North Korea during the Soviet invasion of Manchuria in August 1945. Postwar, Chistyakov held several army commands before finishing his career with the Ground Forces inspectorate in the 1960s.

Valery Pavlovich Chkalov (Russian: Вале́рий Па́влович Чка́лов; IPA: [vɐˈlʲerʲɪj ˈpavləvʲɪtɕ ˈtɕkaləf]; 2 February [O.S. 20 January] 1904 – 15 December 1938) was a Russian/Soviet test pilot awarded the title Hero of the Soviet Union (1936).

Amet-khan Sultan (Crimean Tatar: Amet-Han Sultan, Амет-Хан Султан, احمدخان سلطان; Ukrainian/Russian: Амет-Хан Султан; 20 October 1920 – 1 February 1971) was a highly decorated Crimean Tatar flying ace in the Soviet Air Force with 30 personal and 19 shared kills who was twice awarded the title Hero of the Soviet Union. Despite having been able to avoid deportation to Uzbekistan when the entire Crimean Tatar nation was repressed in 1944 due to his father's Lak background, he refused to change his passport nationality listing to Lak or identify as one throughout his entire life despite pressure from government organs. After the end of the war, he worked as a test pilot at the Flight Research Institute in Zhukovsky and mastered piloting 96 different aircraft types before he was killed in a crash while testing a new engine on a modified Tupolev Tu-16 bomber. He remains memorialized throughout Ukraine and Russia, with streets, schools, and airports named after him as well as a museum dedicated to his memory.

Makhachkala Uytash Airport (Russian: Аэропорт Махачкала Уйташ) (IATA: MCX, ICAO: URML) is a civil airport located near Makhachkala and just south of the city of Kaspiysk which is on the west side of the Caspian Sea. It is named after Amet-khan Sultan, World War II fighter pilot, twice Hero of the Soviet Union. The naming was found controversial by the Crimean Tatars, with whom Amet-khan openly affiliated, as an attempt to detatarize his origins.

South East Airlines (formerly Dagestan Airlines) had its head office on the property of the airport.

The Hero of Socialist Labour (Russian: Герой Социалистического Труда, romanized: Geroy Sotsialisticheskogo Truda) was an honorific title in the Soviet Union and other Warsaw Pact countries from 1938 to 1991. It represented the highest degree of distinction in the USSR and was awarded for exceptional achievements in Soviet industry and culture. It provided a similar status to the title of Hero of the Soviet Union, which was awarded for heroic deeds, but differed in that it was not awarded to foreign citizens.