Pavel Lesh

Pavel Lesh came from the hereditary nobility of the Smolensk region. He was the eldest son of an infantry general in the Turkish city of Ardahan, which belonged to Georgia as part of Imperial Russia. Pavel graduated in 1905 from the 2nd Orenburg Cadet Corps and in 1908 from the Mikhailovsky Artillery School. He then was stationed as a second lieutenant in the Sveaborg Fortress Artillery an island off the Finnish coast. In 1910, he was transferred to the Life Guards 2nd Tsarskoye Selo Rifle Battalion and promoted to lieutenant one year later. He fought with his battalion in World War I and was killed in action in 1915. Posthumously, he was awarded the St. George Arms. He was buried at the Tsarskoye Selo fraternal cemetery but later that year reburied in the crypt of the regimental church of St. Sergius of Radonezh in Tsarskoye Selo. His brother Nikolay was killed one year later, while his second brother died in exile in Paraguay.

At the 1912 Olympic Games in Stockholm, Pavel Lesh competed in military and free rifle events. In 1913, he won gold at the First Russian Olympics in military rifle shooting at 300 and 600 metres.