Vaupshasov, Stanislav Alekseevich

(1899–1976)

   One of the most strikingly successful partisan leaders, Vaupshasov joined the Red Army at age 19 and began working as a partisan behind White lines during the civil war. He entered the NKVD’s foreign intelligence directorate in the late 1930s and served as an illegal in Western Europe. With the beginning of World War II, he commanded a battalion of partisans deep in the enemy’s rear during the Battle of Moscow. Vaupshasov specialized in deep raids, taking his units on forced marches hundreds of kilometers behind enemy lines. These raids had both political and military purposes: they disrupted Germans logistics and lines of communication, and they allowed the establishment of liberated areas deep in the enemies’ rear. In 1944, after the liberation of Byelorussia, where he had operated for months, Vaupshasov was made a Hero of the Soviet Union. Following the war, he resigned from the service as a colonel and wrote several accounts of the partisan war.