Ivan Afanasevich Diadkin

(partisan name, Ian Bos). Born July 1, 1920, in the village of Krasnosel’e, Volgograd Oblast. Soviet partisan; participant in the resistance movement. Lieutenant. Member of the CPSU since 1957.

Diad’kin graduated from the First Moscow Artillery School in 1940. He served in the Great Patriotic War of 1941–1945 as a commander of a reconnaissance platoon of the 311th Artillery Regiment. He was wounded and captured on the Berezina River in July 1941, kept in camps in Belgium, and forced to work in mines. On June 2, 1943, he escaped and by the end of 1943 had organized a partisan detachment in the forests of Limburg Province consisting of over 80 Soviet citizens who had escaped from captivity. In June 1944 the detachment merged with Lieutenant Colonel K. D. Shukshin’s detachment into the Russian partisan brigade, Za Rodinu (For the Motherland), in which Diad’kin was at first deputy commander and then commander. The brigade was active in the enemy’s rear until October 1944, inflicting significant losses. Diad’kin returned to the motherland in 1945.