Popudrenko, Nikolai

Born Dec. 28, 1906, in the village of Nikolaevtsy, now in Sakhnovshchina Raion, Kharkov Oblast; died July 6, 1943; buried in Chernigov. An organizer of the partisan movement in the Ukraine in the Great Patriotic War (1941–45). Hero of the Soviet Union (Aug. 15, 1943, posthumously). Member of the Communist Party from 1929. Son of a peasant.

Popudrenko was a worker in Dnepropetrovsk from 1925. A Komsomol and party official in the Ukraine from 1930 to 1939, he served as secretary of the Chernigov oblast committee of the Communist Party (Bolshevik) of the Ukraine from 1940. From August 1941 to March 1943, Popudrenko was second and then first secretary of the Chernigov underground oblast committee of the Communist Party (Bolshevik) of the Ukraine and concurrently deputy commander and commander of a big partisan unit in Chernigov Oblast and chief of the oblast staff of the partisan movement. He died in combat in the Zlynka forests (now in Novozybkov Raion, Briansk Oblast).