Rudnev, Semen Vasilevich

Born Feb. 15 (27), 1899, in the village of Moiseevka, now in Putivl’ Raion, Sumy Oblast; died Aug. 4, 1943, in combat near the settlement of Deliatin, Nadvornaia Raion, Ivano-Frankovsk Oblast. An organizer and leader of the partisan movement in the occupied Ukraine during the Great Patriotic War; major general. Hero of the Soviet Union (posthumously, Jan. 4, 1944). Member of the Communist Party from 1917.

Rudnev was a worker at the Russo-Baltic Aeronautics Plant in Petrograd from 1914. In 1916 he was arrested for revolutionary activity. He fought in the storming of the Winter Palace and in the Civil War of 1918–20. After graduating from the Military Political Academy in 1929, he served as commissar of a regiment and a brigade. In the fall of 1941 he became commander of a partisan detachment in Sumy Oblast, which in October merged with the Putivl’ Detachment under the command of S. A. Kovpak. Rudnev became commissar of the combined detachment and then of a large raid unit.

Rudnev was a member of the underground Central Committee of the CP(B) of the Ukraine from September 1942. He was awarded the Order of Lenin, the Order of the Red Banner, the Order of the Red Star, and the Order of the Badge of Honor.