Partisan Spark

(Partyzans’ka Iskra), an underground Komsomol organization in the village of Krymka, Pervomaisk Raion, Odessa (now Nikolaev) Oblast, which operated in the rear of the fascist German troops from late 1941 to February 1943. The organization’s leaders included the Communist V. S. Morgunenko, principal of a secondary school; P. K. Grechanyi, secretary of the school’s Komsomol organization; and the Komsomol members D. G. D’iachenko and D. N. Popik.

Partisan Spark had 30 members in its organization and enlisted 40 people for underground work. It disseminated antifascist leaflets, carried out diversionary actions on railroads and communication lines, and helped 200 Soviet prisoners of war escape from a concentration camp. Members of Partisan Spark had links with the partisan underground of the city of Pervomaisk and the settlement of Domanevka and with partisan detachments operating in the Savran’ forests. The fascists discovered the organization, arrested 25 members, and, after brutal torture, shot them. The title of Hero of the Soviet Union was posthumously conferred on Grechanyi, D’iachenko, and Morgunenko (July 1, 1958). Orders were awarded to 44 persons. A kolkhoz and a secondary school in the village of Krymka were named Partisan Spark.