Starinov, Ilia Grigorevich

Born July 20 (Aug. 2), 1900, in Voinovo, now in Bolkhov Raion, Orel Oblast. A leader of the partisan movement during the Great Patriotic War of 1941–45; colonel. Member of the CPSU since 1924.

Starinov served in the Red Army from June 1919 and fought in the Civil War of 1918–20. He graduated from the Military Transport Academy in 1935. He was an adviser attached to a special partisan unit in the Spanish Civil War in 1936 and 1937. He fought in the Soviet-Finnish War of 1939–40.

At the outset of the Great Patriotic War, Starinov commanded an engineer-operational group on the Western and Southern fronts and headed a partisan school. In November 1941, on orders from the General Staff, he carried out an operation to strike at important military targets in occupied Kharkov through the use of radio-detonated mines. In 1942 he was commander of a special brigade on the Kalinin Front and assistant chief of the Central Headquarters of the Partisan Movement. In 1942 and 1943 he was director of the Central Partisan School and chief of the Headquarters of the Partisan Movement on the Southern Front. From April 1943 he was deputy chief of the Ukrainian Headquarters of the Partisan Movement, and from June 1944, deputy chief of the Polish Headquarters of the Partisan Movement. From September 1944 he was chief of staff of the Soviet military mission to Yugoslavia.

From 1945 to 1958, Starinov taught at various institutions of higher military education.