Editing Pyotr Masherov (section)

== Second World War ==
[[Image:Машеров 1944.jpg|thumb|Masherov in his military uniform in 1944.|321x321px]]
In 1941, with the beginning of [[Operation Barbarossa]], Masherov volunteered to join the [[Red Army]]. Shortly afterwards, in August 1941, he was captured during fighting near [[Nevel (town)|Nevel]] and taken aboard a prisoner train. Masherov escaped captivity after jumping out of the train while it was moving through Rasony district, suffering bruises and scratches, and walked to Rasony, where he remained.<ref name=":1" />

Following his escape, Masherov began forming the [[Komsomol]] underground in Rasony, an early part of what would later grow into the [[Belarusian resistance during World War II]]. From December 1941 to March 1942, he continued his work on the kolkhoz, as well as his teaching activities, while at the same time organising the partisans in Rasony. In this time period, the partisans recruited supporters and gathered equipment. One of their caches was at the dentist's office in Rasony; the dentist was Polina Galanova, who would later become Masherov's wife.<ref name=":1" /> Using the nickname of Dubnyak, Masherov was one of the leaders of the Belarusian partisan movement. Starting in April 1942, Masherov was commander of the N. A. Shchors partisan detachment. He was elected as leader by the partisans, a move later agreed to by the [[Central Headquarters of the Partisan Movement]]. As commander, he declared one of his former students the detachment's chief of staff. In the first battle involving the detachment, Masherov was wounded and chose to recover in the apartment of one of his former students, despite the objections of his fellow soldiers.<ref name=":1" />

He would be wounded another time and became a member of the [[Communist Party of the Soviet Union]] in the summer of 1943, while at the front. Around the same time, he was promoted to commissar of the Konstantin Rokossovsky Partisan Brigade, leading the brigade as it relocated to [[Vileyka]]. In September 1943, Masherov was promoted yet again, this time to the position of First Secretary of the Vileyka Underground Regional Committee of the Komsomol.<ref name=":4" /> In 1944, Masherov was awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union for his services as the "first organiser of the partisan movement in the Rasony district of the Vitebsk Region, which later grew into a popular uprising and created a huge partisan land of 10 thousand square kilometres".<ref>{{Cite web|date=12 February 2008|title=P. M. Masherov - An Outstanding Public, State, and Political Figure|url=http://www.novopolotsk.by/content/view/466/83/|access-date=21 July 2021|website=City of Novopolotsk|archive-date=4 October 2013|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20131004235245/http://www.novopolotsk.by/content/view/466/83/|url-status=dead}}</ref>