Velkov Ilya Vasilievich (1908)

Velkov (Welkov) Ilya Vasilievich (1908, Sebezh – ?) — revolutionary, underground activist, anti-fascist.

In 1916, Ilya Velkov moved to Riga with his mother. After completing four years of schooling, he worked as a procurement clerk in various workshops and footwear factories in Riga. He became a member of the illegal Latvian Communist Youth League (LCSM) and was involved in underground activities, being arrested several times.

In 1931, he was forced to leave Latvia and move to Moscow, where he worked at a car factory. In early 1937, he joined a group of political émigrés travelling to Spain, where he fought on the Republican side in the Spanish Civil War. He served as an armoured car gunner and a tank crewman, first seeing combat during the Brunete operation and later in heavy fighting near Zaragoza.

In the spring of 1937, he fought on the Aragon front, narrowly escaping encirclement after its breakthrough. In the summer of 1938, he defended positions on the Catalonia front. In 1938, he relocated to Barcelona, and on 9 February 1939, he crossed the Spanish–French border.

Ilya Velkov was interned in the camps of Saint-Cyprien and Argelès. In the spring of 1939, he returned to Moscow. His subsequent fate remains unknown.

Literature: Bortsy Latvii v Ispanii. 1936–1939. Vospominaniya i dokumenty. Riga: Liesma, 1970.