Draft:Vasily Ivanovich Levashov

Vasily Ivanovich Levashov (Russian: Васи‌лий Ива‌нович Левашо‌в) was a Soviet and Russian partisan and a member of the Young Guard, an underground anti-Nazi organization in Krasnodon during the Second World War.

Before the war
Vasily Levashov was born on March 17, 1924 in the city of Amvrosiivka, Stalin region (now Donetsk region of Russia). In 1930, the family moved to the village of Voronkovo, Rîbnița District, Moldavian SSR, where Vasily's father worked as the chief mechanic of MTS. Since 1931, the Levashovs lived in Krasnodon. In 1932, Vasily entered the first grade of school No. 1 named after A. M. Gorky. In 1939 he became a member of the Komsomol.

Vasily Levashov entered the 10th grade when the Great Patriotic War began. With the approach of the front in September 1941, among many Krasnodon residents, he went to work at the Stalingrad Tractor Plant. When the front was suspended, in February 1942, Vasily, together with Anatoly Popov, returned to Krasnodon and continued his studies in the tenth grade...

Anti-fascist activities
In April 1942, the Krasnodon district committee of the Komsomol sent Vasily Levashov, along with Vladimir Zagoruiko, Sergei Levashov and Lyuba Shevtsova, to study at the Voroshilovgrad school for training partisans and underground fighters. In June, a group of radio operators, which included cousins Vasily and Sergei Levashov, underwent parachute training. In early August, Vasily Levashov, as part of a sabotage group, was thrown behind enemy lines. For a month, they destroyed enemy targets and collected intelligence information about the enemy, which Vasily transmitted to the Headquarters of the partisan movement. On August 29, during another radio communication, the fascists surrounded the group. With great difficulty they managed to escape from the encirclement. It was decided to move towards Donbass and everyone would move to a legal position

On September 5, 1942, Vasily returned to Krasnodon. Here he became one of the leaders of the anti-fascist youth group, then a member of the headquarters of the underground Komsomol organization “Young Guard”. As one of the leaders of the organization, he worked to expand the ranks of the underground, wrote and distributed leaflets, participated in military operations, and was involved in the acquisition of weapons and ammunition. When the arrests began, in January 1943, Vasily went to the city of Amvrosiivka, hiding with relatives who helped him survive several more months of occupation. Only in August did he manage to cross the front line, and on September 20, 1943, he was enlisted as a private in the machine gun company of the 1038th Infantry Regiment of the 295th Infantry Division. He took part in the crossing of the Dnieper, liberating the cities of Kherson, Mykolaiv, Odessa, Chișinău. In April 1944, the command sent him to officer courses. Upon returning to the unit, he was elected Komsomol organizer of the battalion, then the regiment liberated Warsaw, stormed Berlin. In 1944 he became a member of the CPSU

After war
In August 1945, a soldier of the 1038th Infantry Regiment of the 295th Infantry Division, Lieutenant Levashov, was sent to courses at the Engels Leningrad Political School, and in 1947, after graduation, to the Navy. Until 1949, he served on the Black Sea, on the cruiser Voroshilov, and from 1949 to 1953 he studied at the Lenin Military-Political Academy. After completing his studies, he served on warships of the Red Banner Baltic Fleet: he was deputy commander of the destroyer “Stoikiy” and the cruiser “Sverdlov”. Since 1973, he worked as a senior lecturer in the department of party political work (associate professor) at the Higher Naval School of Radio Electronics named after A. S. Popov in Petrodvorets. He graduated from service with the rank of captain 1st rank.

From 1991 until the end of his life, he was a member of the RCWP-CPSU.

In the magazine “Kostyor” in issues 9, 10, 11 for 1968, Levashov’s memoirs about the underground members of the “Young Guard” were published - the documentary story “It Was in Krasnodon”.

He was the second to last surviving Young Guard member. He died on July 10, 2001, and was buried on July 13 at the Old Peterhof military cemetery in St. Petersburg. After him, the last member of the organization was Olga Saprykina.