Dmitry Nikolaevich Medvedev

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Dmitry Medvedev

Dmitry Nikolaevich Medvedev (Russian: Медведев Дмитрий Николаевич)(August 22, 1898 - December 14, 1954), colonel, one of the leaders of Soviet partisan movement in western Russia and Ukraine.

Dmitry Medvedev was born in Bryansk in a steelworker's family. During the Russian Civil War joined the Red Army and in 1920 he joined the All-Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks). Between 1920 and 1935 worked in Cheka, OGPU and NKVD in Soviet Ukraine.

In 1936 Dmitry Medvedev was sent as NKVD intelligence agent abroad. In 1938 returned to the Soviet Union and was appointed the head of NKVD department of Norillag a GULAG labor camp in Norilsk. Few months later Dmitry Medvedev was fired from NKVD officially for "unjustified closures of criminal investigations" against political prisoners of the GULAG. In 1939 Medvedev retired and settled in Moscow region. In the summer of 1941 few days after the German invasion of the Soviet Union he was re-instated as NKVD officer and sent to his native Bryansk region to organise underground resistance behind the enemy lines. Between September 1941 and January 1942 Dmitry Medvedev successfully organized guerrilla units in Bryansk, Smolensk, Oryol and Mogilev regions.

During the spring of 1942 Medvedev was given a new assignment - to organize partisan units deep behind the enemy lines in the Nazi-occupied Ukraine. In June his guerrilla unit named Pobediteli "The Winners" was air-dropped into Zhytomyr region of Ukraine. Between June 1942 and March 1944 Medvedev's units operated in Rivne and Lviv regions and in about 120 engagements and "liquidated" up to 2000 German soldiers and officers including 11 generals and other high-ranking officials. The wartime activities of Medvedev group in occupied Western Ukraine focused on sabotage, assassinations and espionage against the Wehrmacht.

Dmitry Medvedev personal initiative was to organize a secret hiding place for 160 rescued Jewish women, children and elderly saved from Jewish ghettos. After the Soviet army entered Western Ukraine in the spring of 1944 Medvedev underground units became part of the regular army.

On November 5, 1944 Dmitry Medvedev was awarded Hero of the Soviet Union title and the Gold Star medal.

After the war retired legendary partisan became author of several books including It happened by Rovno (1948) his memoirs about the war dedicated to the story of his war time partner - Soviet intelligence agent Nikolai Kuznetsov.

Dmitry Medvedev died in Moscow in 1954.