Karitskii, Konstantin Dionisievich

Karitskii, Konstantin Dionisievich

 

Born Sept. 13 (26), 1913, in the settlement of Zheltaia Reka, the present-day city of Zheltye Vody, Dnepropetrovsk Oblast. One of the organizers of the partisan movement in Leningrad Oblast during the Great Patriotic War of 1941–45; a colonel. Hero of the Soviet Union (Apr. 2, 1944). Member of the CPSU since 1932.

Karitskii served with the border troops between 1932 and 1940. When the Great Patriotic War began he became commander of the 55th Fighter Battalion. From December 1941 through March 1944, he led a partisan detachment and the Fifth Partisan Brigade at the enemy’s rear in Leningrad Oblast. In the course of combat operations his brigade killed more than 2, 000 German soldiers and officers, disabled 15 tanks and armored vehicles, 18 locomotives, and 160 boxcars and flatcars, and blew up 29 bridges. During the Leningrad-Novgorod offensive of 1944, his brigade captured important sections of the Nikolaevo-Gorodets and Utorgosh-Nikolaevo highways and held them until Soviet troops arrived. Since the war, Karitskii has worked in state security agencies and, subsequently, as deputy director of the Museum of the Defense of Leningrad. He has been awarded the Order of Lenin, the Order of the Red Banner, two Orders of the Patriotic War First Class, and various medals.