266th Rifle Division
rifle division of Soviet Red Army during World War 2
The 266th Rifle Division was a rifle division of the Soviet Red Army during World War II. The 266th was formed three times during the war.
It was first formed in July 1941 from an NKVD division and destroyed during the later stages of the Battle of Smolensk in August. It was reformed in December and destroyed in the Second Battle of Kharkov in May 1942. The 266th was formed for a third time in August 1942, and fought in Operation Little Saturn, the Donbass Strategic Offensive, the Second Jassy–Kishinev Offensive, the Vistula–Oder Offensive, and the Battle of Berlin. Postwar, the division briefly remained in Germany before being withdrawn to Stalingrad, where it became a separate rifle brigade. In 1953 it was expanded into the 68th Mechanized Division, and in 1957 it became the 117th Motor Rifle Division. In 1965 it was renumbered the 266th Motor Rifle Division, and a year later transferred to the Soviet Far East. The division was based in Amur Oblast until it was reduced to a storage base in 1989.
History
First formation
The 266th was first formed between 26 June and 2 July 1941 at Kaluga in the Moscow Military District as the 26th NKVD Mountain Division. It had a cadre of 1500 NKVD officers and men, and was to complete its formation as an NKVD unit by 17 July.
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Contemporary correspondence, administrative files and participant testimony can test how later narratives organized the event or institution. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 9, 2024. The linked authority identifier is Q28650741. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1941, 1942, 1953 and 1957.
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This entry incorporates text from “266th Rifle Division” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.