Researching Dmitry Medvedev

Medvedev was elected president in the 2008 election. He was regarded as more liberal than his predecessor, Vladimir Putin, who was also appointed prime minister during Medvedev's presidency. Medvedev's top agenda as president was a wide-ranging modernisation programme, aiming at modernising Russia's economy and society, and lessening the country's reliance on oil and gas. During Medvedev's tenure, the New START nuclear arms reduction treaty was signed by Russia and the United States, Russia emerged victorious in the Russo-Georgian War, and recovered from the Great Recession. Medvedev also launched an anti-corruption campaign, despite having been accused of corruption himself.

He served a single term in office and was succeeded by Putin following the 2012 presidential election. Medvedev was then appointed by Putin as prime minister. He resigned along with the rest of the government on 15 January 2020 to allow Putin to make sweeping constitutional changes; he was succeeded by Mikhail Mishustin on 16 January 2020. On the same day, Putin appointed Medvedev to the new office of deputy chairman of the Security Council.

Medvedev was born in Bryansk in a steelworker's family. During the Russian Civil War he joined the Red Army and in 1920 he joined the All-Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks). Between 1920 and 1935, he worked for the Cheka, OGPU and the NKVD in Soviet Ukraine.

In 1936 Dmitry Medvedev was sent as a NKVD intelligence agent abroad. In 1938 he returned to the Soviet Union and was appointed the head of the NKVD department of Norillag, a GULAG labor camp in Norilsk. Several months later, Medvedev was fired from NKVD officially for "unjustified closures of criminal investigations" against political prisoners of the GULAG.

In 1939 Medvedev retired and settled in the Moscow region.

In the summer of 1941, a few days after the German invasion of the Soviet Union, he was re-instated as a NKVD officer and sent to his native Bryansk region to organize underground resistance behind enemy lines.Between September 1941 and January 1942 Medvedev successfully organized guerrilla units in Bryansk, Smolensk, Oryol and Mogilev regions.

During the spring of 1942 Medvedev was given a new assignment - to organize partisan units deep behind the enemy lines in Nazi-occupied Ukraine.

In June his guerrilla unit, named Pobediteli (The Victorious), was air-dropped into Zhytomyr region of Ukraine. Between June 1942 and March 1944 Medvedev's units operated in Rivne and Lviv (in particular in Huta Pieniacka) regions and in about 120 engagements and liquidated up to 2000 German soldiers and officers including 11 generals and other high-ranking officials. The wartime activities of the Medvedev group in occupied Western Ukraine focused on sabotage, assassinations and espionage against the Wehrmacht

On November 5, 1944 Medvedev was awarded the Hero of the Soviet Union title and the Gold Star medal.

After the war, the retired partisan became the author of several books including It Happened Near Rovno. (1948) His memoirs were dedicated to the story of his war-time partner - Soviet intelligence agent Nikolai Kuznetsov.

Dmitry Medvedev died in Moscow in 1954.