The 4th Guards Rifle Division was reformed as an elite infantry division on September 18, 1941, from the 1st formation of the 161st Rifle Division as one of the original Guards formations of the Red Army, in recognition of that division's participation in the successful counter-offensive that drove German forces out of their positions at Yelnya. The division then moved northwards to serve in the defense of Leningrad, as well as the early attempts to break that city's siege, but later was redeployed to the southern sector of the front as the crisis around Stalingrad developed. The 4th Guards took part in Operation Uranus which surrounded the German 6th Army in and around that city and then in the pursuit operations that drove the remaining German forces from the Caucasus steppes and the cit