page_title: Nikolai Yegipko
section_title: Later war years and postwar service
hierarchical_section_title: Nikolai Yegipko / Later war years and postwar service
caption_attribution_description: English: S-56 Submarine Monument (Vladivostok)
context_page_description: Nikolai Pavlovich Yegipko was an officer of the Soviet Navy and a Hero of the Soviet Union. He saw action during the Russian Civil War, the Spanish Civil War, and the Second World War, and rose to the rank of vice-admiral.
  Born into the family of a shipyard worker, Yegipko and several of his brothers joined up to fight for the Soviets in the Russian Civil War. He served initially as a field telephonist, though he was wounded, twice captured by White forces, and twice escaped. He spent the rest of the war working with the Komsomol in Nikolaev, though he was not permitted to join their ranks after a report circulated that he washed with "perfumed" soap. With the Soviet victory in the civil war, Yegipko was demobilised and returned to shipyard work. He reenlisted in the armed forces in 1925, serving on ships of the Black Sea Fleet, and then on submarines in the Baltic and Pacific Fleets. In 1936 he commanded the submarine Shch-117 on a record-breaking voyage of endurance, for which he and his entire crew received honours. He then went to Spain to support the Republican faction in the Spanish Civil War.
context_section_description: From February 1943 to May 1946 he was head of the department for the External Relations of the USSR's Naval Staff, and from May 1946 to January 1948 he was Acting Deputy Chief of the External Relations Department of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of the USSR. From January 1948 to February 1953, Yegipko was a head of department at the Naval Academy, and from February to August 1953 he was head of the 2nd Baltic Higher Naval School. In August 1953, he became head of the Odessa Higher Naval School, holding this position until March 1955. He had been promoted to rear-admiral on 31 May 1954.  Yegipko's next posting was as head of the Higher Naval School of Submarine Navigation from March 1955, holding this position until stepping down in December 1966, having been promoted to vice-admiral on 22 February 1963. He retired from the navy the following month. During his retirement he lived in Leningrad, and died there on 6 July 1985 at the age of 81. He was buried in the city's Serafimovskoe Cemetery, with his obituary appearing in the journal Sovetskii moryak on 13 July 1985. He had completed his memoirs before his death, they were submitted to Voenizdat, but were not published until parts appeared in 2000, and the full manuscript in 2012 under the title My Meridians (Russian: Мои меридианы).
  He had married and had two sons and a daughter. His eldest son, Vladimir, followed his father into the navy and rose to captain 1st rank, and taught at the Naval Academy. His younger son, Viktor, had a naval education at the Nakhimov Naval School, but became interested in cybernetics and went into teaching as a Candidate of Sciences. Nikolai Yegipko's daughter Lyudmila married Vladimir Bondarev, a graduate of the Submarine Navigation school, who rose to the rank of rear-admiral. 
  Over his long career he had received numerous honours and awards; he was awarded the Order of Lenin three times, on 23 December 1935, 22 February 1939 (as part of his award of Hero of the Soviet Union), and in 1950. He held three Orders of the Red Banner, awarded on 22 December 1937, 11 March 1944 and in 1954; three Orders of the Patriotic War First Class, awarded on 22 July 1944, 8 July 1945 and 11 March 1985; one Order of the Patriotic War Second Class, awarded in 1944, and the Order of the Red Star, awarded on 4 March 1946. He also held several foreign awards, including the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia's Order of the Partisan Star Second Class, and the Polish Virtuti Militari Fifth Class, both from 1946. On 6 May 1975, with the assistance of several teachers and engineer-captain 1st rank Aleksandra Donchenko, School Number 269, now School Number 585, in Kirovsky District, Leningrad, opened the "N. P. Yegipko Museum of military glory of the submariners of the Baltic." (Russian: Музей боевой славы подводников Балтики им. Н. П. Египко). The museum contains over 2,000 artefacts, and in 2018 a permanent exhibition "The man of legend, Nikolai Pavlovich Yegipko" opened to commemorate the 115th anniversary of his birth.
caption: Yegipko's dirk and vice-admiral's epaulettes on display at the S-56 submarine memorial in Vladivostok
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