World War II Database

Contributor: C. Peter Chen

ww2dbaseSydir Artemovych Kovpak was born into a poor peasant family in a village near Poltava, Russia (present day Ukraine). During WW1, he served in the Russian Army and received two Cross of St. George medals, presented personally by Tsar Nicholas II. During the Russian civil war, he joined the communist forces, and then became the local government official at the town of Putyvl in the Sumy Oblast. During Joseph Stalin's great purge, Kovpak was tipped off by the local head of the NKVD and survived the ordeal by hiding in a nearby forest for a month. When Germany invaded the Soviet Union in 1941, he became a leader of Ukrainian partisan group that waged guerrilla war against the occupation forces. His operations first began in the Sumy and Bryansk regions, but later expanded to Kiev, Zhytomyr, Rivne, Homyel, and Volyn. On 18 May 1942, he was given the title of Hero of the Soviet Union. In 1943, for his efforts fighting against German and other Axis forces, he was granted the rank of lieutenant general in the Russian Army. On 4 Jan 1944, he was again named Hero of the Soviet Union. Later that same year, Kovpak's partisan forces raided German forces as far as the Romanian border regions. After the war, he held high ranking positions in the communist government in Ukrainian.

Sydir Kovpak Timeline