Mariia Martsun

Born Mar. 25 (Apr. 6), 1894, in the village of Buldychevo, in present-day Dzerzhinsk Raion, Zhitomir Oblast; died July 20, 1970. Kolkhoz production innovator, twice Hero of Socialist Labor (1953, 1958). Became a member of the CPSU in 1949.

Martsun was a work-team leader at the Ukraina Kolkhoz in Dzerzhinsk Raion from 1934 to 1959. She became famous for high sugar beet harvests. Before 1941 the harvests of her team averaged up to 500 quintals per hectare of sugar beets, 48 quintals of millet, 33 quintals of barley, and 300 quintals of potatoes. In 1944 her team obtained a maximum of 380 quintals of sugar beets from a 5 hectare area; the yield rose to 606 quintals in 1952, 725 quintals in 1957, and 720 quintals in 1958.

Martsun was a delegate to the Seventeenth through Nineteenth Congresses of the Communist Party of the Ukraine. She retired in 1960. She was an Honored Team Leader at the Ukraina Kolkhoz and was awarded three Orders of Lenin, several medals, and four great gold and four bronze medals of the All-Union Agricultural Exhibition.