Nikitin, Mikhail Nikitich

Born Sept. 15 (28), 1902, in St. Petersburg; died Oct. 28, 1950. An organizer of the partisan movement in the Great Patriotic War (1941–45). Member of the Communist Party from 1925. Son of a worker.

Nikitin was a worker from 1914. He joined the Komsomol in 1918. He graduated from a school of the trade union movement in 1928 and from the Institute of the Red Professoriat in 1935. In 1928 he began trade union and party work. He became third secretary of the Leningrad oblast committee of the ACP (Bolshevik) in 1941. From September 1941 to October 1944, Nikitin was a leader and then chief of the Leningrad staff headquarters of the partisan movement, one of the first oblast staff headquarters. He made a great contribution to the training of partisan cadres and creating of detachments and interdistrict underground party centers for directing them. In 1945 he became a party official in Novosibirsk and Leningrad. Nikitin was awarded two Orders of Lenin, the Order of the Red Banner, and various medals.