On February 6, 2026, artistic director M. R. Gazdieva gave a talk and presentation entitled “S. S. Oskanov — Hero of Russia.”
The first Hero of Russia was the brave pilot Sulambek Oskanov from Chechnya-Ingushetia. Let's talk about him in more detail.
Sulambek Oskanov was born in 1943 in the village of Plievo, Chechen-Ingush Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic, into an ordinary Ingush peasant family. At the age of just one year, he experienced the terrible deportation of the Vainakh people to Kazakhstan.
Together with his parents and other Chechens and Ingush, Sulambek returned home in the mid-1950s, during the Khrushchev Thaw. He graduated from school, then from a vocational school in Grozny. But his cherished dream had always been the sky. So he joined the Grozny flying club, which gave him his ticket to a life of flying.