Ilya Starinov – The godfather of modern insurgent IED warfare

As a railway expert to the military committee developing the defensive plan, Starinov examined the railway lines that led through the Ukraine from the Western borders, but also as a sapper he advised on a much wider range of defensive minefields and demolitions. By 1933 Starinov had a played a key role in training over 9000 people as partisans for the defensive plan for the Western Soviet Union. As a result Starinov could not “teach” his classrooms full of future partisans in the use of standard manufactured Soviet sabotage munitons (which would have fitted political doctrine), so he had of necessity to teach them how to make improvised devices.

Source: www.standingwellback.com