Konstantin Zaslonov

(partisan pseudonym Diadia Kostia). Born Dec. 25, 1909 (Jan. 7, 1910), in Ostashkov, in present-day Kalinin Oblast; died Nov. 14, 1942, in the village of Kupovat’, Vitebsk Oblast, Byelorus-sian SSR. One of the leaders of the partisan movement in Byelorussia during the Great Patriotic War (1941-45). Hero of the Soviet Union (Mar. 7, 1943, posthumously). Became a member of the CPSU in 1942. The son of a worker.

Zaslonov graduated from the Velikie Luki railroad technical-trade school in 1930. He became chief of the locomotive depot of Roslavl’ station in 1937 and of the Orsha station in 1939. In October 1941, at his personal request, he was sent to join a group of railroad workers operating behind enemy lines. He came out into the open and assumed a legal identity in Orsha, where he created an underground group that in the course of three months blew up 93 German locomotives and carried out a number of other acts of sabotage, using mines camouflaged by coal. In the beginning of March 1942, threatened with arrest, the underground workers left Orsha and created a partisan detachment, which was reorganized into a brigade in July 1942. In the summer and autumn of 1942, Zaslonov’s brigade carried out several partisan actions, including raids in the Vitebsk-Orsha-Smolensk region, which resulted in heavy enemy casualties and the destruction of much materiel. Zaslonov was killed in a battle with a punitive expedition. He was awarded two Orders of Lenin and a medal. A monument to Zaslonov, by the sculptor S. I. Selikhanov, has been erected in Orsha.