In the eerie calm between battles
on World War 2’s Eastern Front, two Soviet soldiers stealthily creep across
no-man’s land and slip silently into a shell crater where they will wait for endless hours
in silent darkness.. One man is clearly the leader - the other man’s eyes never stray from
him, and he follows his teacher’s every move. Finally, the teacher signals to his student that
it’s time, and the young man sights his target, slips the safety off of his rifle, and takes a
steadying breath as his teacher whispers a last bit of advice into his ear - “Remember”, he says
“One shot, one kill”. The trainee pauses, full of nervous energy - he desperately wants to live
up to the expectations of his legendary teacher, the self-taught Soviet Sniper with 500
confirmed kills - does he have what it takes? The man who would go on to become one of
the Soviet Union’s most prolific killing machines came from a very unlikely background.
Ivan Mikhaylovich Sidorenko was born in 1919 in Smolensk Oblast in Russia, near Belarus, where
his parents were peasant farmers. Sidorenko was not a good student, and he dropped out of school
in the 10th grade. Young Ivan did have a gift, though - he was a talented artist, and he
eventually went on to enroll in Penza Art College. Little did he know then that his
greatest talent lay in the art of killing. Before his artistic dreams could be realized,
forces beyond his control cut Sidorenko’s art school education short. World War 2 was
raging across Europe and the ill-prepared Soviet Union was fiercely battling to force
the formidable Nazis back from their borders. 21 year-old Sidorenko once again dropped out
of school and enlisted in the Soviet Army, determined to do his part to protect his homeland. By 1941, Sidorenko found himself at Simferopol
Military Infantry School in Crimea, where he learned the ins and outs of life in the Red
Army and was trained to serve in a Mortar Unit. As part of a gunner crew, Sidorenko helped
to operate the Red Army’s heavy mortar guns, working side-by-side with his comrades
to quickly assemble, disassemble and move the large guns, and to load, unload
and reload the heavy long-range artillery. Sidorenko got his first taste of combat in
the infamous Battle of Moscow. Before the war, the Soviets had signed a non-aggression pact
with the Nazis, but in the summer of 1941, the Germans reneged on their shaky alliance
when they launched Operation Barbarossa, the first step in their plan
to invade the Soviet Union. The Germans quickly smashed through the
Soviet’s hastily assembled border defenses, and the road to Moscow looked clear for conquest.
But the Soviets wouldn’t give up without a fight. They prepared formidable defenses around the
city and brought in reinforcements from all over the country to defend Moscow. The Germans
attacked with vigour, and soon the Soviets were overwhelmed and encircled. Still, the Soviets
refused to surrender, and their sheer will soon began to wear on the Germans - with a little
help from the brutal Russian winter, of course. By December, the Germans had been
repelled sufficiently to justify launching a counteroffensive attack. This was
Sidorenko’s time to shine. Working as part of a 4-gun battery, he and his mortar unit
rained hellfire on the invading Germans. Each unit would launch their deadly payload,
before the team would quickly break down the mortar gun and carry the pieces on
foot to the next firing location, where they would then reassemble them for the
next round of shots. This hit-and-run tactic protected them from counter artillery fire and
allowed them to hit the Germans from many angles, which also created the illusion that the Soviets
had much more firepower than they really did. The Battle of Moscow was an important victory
for the Soviets and the Allied Forces. The Germans had expected to easily overrun the
Soviets, and by valiantly repelling the invaders, the Soviets forced the Germans into the impossible
position of having to fight a war on two fronts, which turned the tide of the entire
war - though there would be many more months and years of bloodshed before
total Allied victory could be claimed. As important as his work on the mortar unit was,
Sidorenko couldn’t help but become a bit bored by the monotony of assembling, disassembling,
loading and reloading the heavy guns, and by the relative safety of his position behind
the lines providing cover for infantrymen. So, the intrepid soldier took matters into his
own hands. It started with a late-night stroll to clear his head during lulls in the
action, but it quickly morphed into something else entirely. As he prowled around in the dark
behind the Soviet lines looking out at the enemy across the battlefield, Sidorenko decided
that he wasn’t content with hurling heavy artillery at the Germans by day - he wanted
to spend his nights killing Germans, too. That fateful night during the Battle of Moscow,
Sidorenko grabbed his rifle and slipped away from camp. He moved stealthily through the dark until
he found a spot with good cover and a clear view of the enemy, and he lay down to hide and wait.
After a while, his patience paid off and he found his first target - a foolish German soldier
taking a smoke break on the front lines. Sidorenko carefully aimed his rifle, took a deep breath, and
fired his shot with deadly accuracy - he saw the light from the German’s cigarette disappear
and knew he had made his first solo kill. Before long, these late-night walks would
become a nightly ritual, and after spending his days firing mortar alongside his comrades,
he would spend his nights alone in the dark, perfecting his aim at great distances, learning
to be invisible to the enemy, and killing Germans one by one. As his kill count climbed, his
Commanders took notice. Impressed with his skills, they pulled him off of the mortar crew and set
him to sniping full-time. He had received no formal training for this dangerous role, and was
using the same Russian-made Mosin-Nagant rifle with a 5-round magazine holding the same .62
x 54R rounds used by infantrymen on the front lines - the only improvement was the addition
of a telescopic sight that improved the rifle’s accuracy from 550 yards to 875 yards.
Still, his numbers rose steadily higher, and the self-taught sniper was eventually tasked
with training others to follow in his footsteps. Sniper trainees were hand-selected by
commanders for their proficiency with and knowledge of their firearms,
and for their excellent eyesight. Sidorenko felt that the best way for
new snipers to learn was the same way he did - through experience - and so new
trainees were thrown right into the fray, joining Sidorenko on his night-time prowls
through the war zone to learn the art of sniping. A typical trainee’s first night out with Sidorenko
would be a harrowing experience, to say the least. They would learn to identify good positions and
move stealthily by following their mentor through the battlefield, scrambling from crater
to crater, taking cover where they could, knowing all the while that one wrong move could
get them both killed. They would gain experience sighting targets and shooting from great distances
by following their teacher’s silent lead. And, they would learn to kill only by taking great
risk under the imminent threat of death. They knew they would have only one
chance to prove themselves to Sidorenko, who expected his trainees to live up
to his “One shot, one kill” motto, or else risk being sent back to the
infantry - if they survived long enough. During one training mission, Sidorenko
demonstrated his marksmanship and bravery with a daring stunt. As he and
a trainee crouched in their hiding spot, Sidorenko loaded his rifle with special
explosive rounds. When his target was in sight, he calmly took aim and fired 4 times in rapid
succession, blowing up a German tanker truck and three military tractors, stalling their
advance and cutting off their supply lines. It was a major blow to the Germans, and
it all came at the hands of a single man. Sidorenko’s actions did not go unnoticed,
and he rose steadily through the ranks, eventually becoming the Executive Officer of
the 1122nd Infantry Regiment. Throughout the war he trained more than 250 deadly snipers in
his covert, hands-on style. His snipers were so deadly that the Germans flooded the area with
snipers of their own to counter the Soviets, but to little effect - Sidorenko’s
snipers were just too good - calm, patient, stealthy and deadly accurate,
they continued to plague the German lines. Sidorenko himself continued to rack up kills on
the Baltic front until 1944, though not without risk. He sustained countless injuries during the
war until finally, after a particularly close call that landed him in the hospital for months,
he was deemed too valuable to the Soviet war effort to lose and was pulled from the
front lines. He would spend the rest of the war at Red Army headquarters, training
a new generation of feared Soviet snipers. After the war ended, Sidorenko retired from the
Army with the rank of Major and was awarded the prestigious title of Hero of the Soviet Union
in 1944. The revered sniper and war hero lived out the rest of his days in relative obscurity,
working as a foreman in a coal mine and living a quiet, modest life until his death in 1994. He
was credited with 500 solo kills during the war, making him the best Soviet sniper on record, and
second in the world only to the famed White Death, Finnish sniper Simo Haya, who had 542
confirmed kills. Historians continue to debate the accuracy of Sidorenko’s kill
count - not only did the Soviet military rely on snipers working alone to self-report their
kills, but a culture of reverence for snipers, dubbed the “Soviet cult of the sniper”, created
a tendency to inflate numbers. Nevertheless, he was an effective sniper and a gifted trainer,
making him a valuable asset to the Red Army. Ivan Sidorenko lived by the “One shot,
one kill” ethos, making him a deadly killing machine and an invaluable part of
the Soviet war effort during World War 2. Though his first love was art, his
true talent was in the art of killing, and he more than earned his reputation as
the Soviet sniper with 500 confirmed kills. If you thought this video was fascinating, be
sure and check out our other videos, like this one called “Why Soviet Russia Invented Clear
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