In 2015, all mankind will celebrate the end of one of the most terrible wars in its history. Especially a lot of suffering in the early 1940s fell to the lot of the Soviet people, and it was the inhabitants of the USSR who showed the world examples of unprecedented heroism, stamina and love for the Motherland. For example, to this day, the feat of Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya has not been forgotten, a brief summary of the history of which is presented below.
background
On November 17, 1941, when the Nazis were on the outskirts of Moscow, it was decided to use the Scythian tactics against the invaders. In this regard, an order was issued ordering the destruction of all settlements behind enemy lines in order to deprive him of the opportunity to spend the winter in comfortable conditions. To fulfill the order, several sabotage groups were formed from among the fighters of the special partisan unit 9903 as soon as possible. This military unit, specially created at the end of October 1941, consisted mainly of Komsomol volunteers who underwent a rigorous selection. In particular, each of the young people was interviewed and warned that they would be required to perform tasks involving mortal risk.
Family
Before telling who Kosmodemyanskaya Zoya Anatolyevna was, whose feat made her a symbol of the heroism of the Soviet people, it is worth knowing some interesting facts about her parents and other ancestors. So, the first woman who received the title during the Second World War was born in a family of teachers. However, for a long time the fact was hidden that the paternal ancestors of the girl were clergymen. Interestingly, in 1918, her grandfather, who was a priest in the church of the village of Osino-Gai, where Zoya was later born, was brutally tortured and drowned in a pond by the Bolsheviks. The Kosmodemyansky family spent some time in Siberia, as the girl's parents feared arrest, but soon returned and settled in the capital. Three years later, Zoya's father died, and he and his brother were in the care of their mother.
Biography
Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya, all the truth and lies about whose feat became known to the public relatively recently, was born in 1923. After returning from Siberia, she studied at school N 201 in Moscow and was especially fond of humanitarian subjects. The girl's dream was to enter the university, but she was destined for a completely different fate. In 1940, Zoya suffered a severe form of meningitis and underwent a rehabilitation course at a specialized sanatorium in Sokolniki, where she met Arkady Gaidar.
When in 1941 a recruitment of volunteers was announced to complete the partisan unit 9903, Kosmodemyanskaya was one of the first to go for an interview and successfully passed it. After that, she and about 2,000 other Komsomol members were sent to special courses, and then transferred to the Volokolamsk region.
The feat of Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya: a summary
On November 18, the commanders of two sabotage groups of HF No. 9903, P. Provorov and B. Krainov, received an order to destroy 10 settlements located behind enemy lines within a week. As part of the first of them, the Red Army soldier Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya also went on a mission. The groups were fired upon by the Germans near the village of Golovkovo, and due to heavy losses, they had to unite under the command of Krainov. Thus, the feat of Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya was accomplished at the end of the autumn of 1941. More precisely, on her last assignment to the village of Petrishchevo, the girl went on the night of November 27, along with the group commander and fighter Vasily Klubkov. They set fire to three residential buildings along with stables, destroying 20 invaders' horses. In addition, subsequently, witnesses spoke about another feat of Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya. It turns out that the girl managed to incapacitate, which made it impossible for some German units occupying positions near Moscow to interact.
captivity
An investigation into the events that took place in Petrishchev at the end of November 1941 showed that Krainov did not wait for Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya and Vasily Klubkov and returned to his own. The girl herself, not finding her comrades in the agreed place, decided to continue fulfilling the order on her own and again went to the village on the evening of November 28. This time she failed to carry out the arson, as she was captured by the peasant S. Sviridov and handed over to the Germans by him. The Nazis, enraged by constant sabotage, began torturing the girl, trying to find out from her how many more partisans were operating in the Petrishchevo area. Investigators and historians, whose subject of study was the immortal feat of Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya, also found that two local residents took part in her beating, whose houses she set on fire the day before she was captured.
execution
On the morning of November 29, 1941, Kosmodemyanskaya was brought to the place where the gallows was built. A sign hung around her neck with an inscription in German and Russian, which said that the girl was a house arsonist. On the way, Zoya was attacked by one of the peasant women who were left homeless through her fault, and hit her on the legs with a stick. Then several German soldiers began to photograph the girl. Subsequently, the peasants, who were driven to see the execution of the saboteur, told the investigators about another feat of Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya. The summary of their testimony is as follows: before they put a noose around her neck, the fearless patriot made a short speech in which she called for fighting the Nazis, and ended it with words about the invincibility of the Soviet Union. The body of the girl was on the gallows for about a month and was buried by local residents only on the eve of the New Year.
Recognition of a feat
As already mentioned, immediately after Petrishchevo was liberated, a special commission arrived there. The purpose of her visit was to identify the corpse and interrogate those who personally saw the feat of Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya. Briefly, all the testimony was recorded on paper and sent to Moscow for further investigation. After studying these and other materials, the girl was posthumously awarded the high title of Hero of the Soviet Union by Stalin personally. The order was published by all the newspapers published in the USSR, and the whole country learned about it.
"Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya", M. M. Gorinov. New details about the feat
After the collapse of the USSR, a lot of “sensational” articles appeared in the press, in which everyone and everything was blackened. This cup did not pass and Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya. As the well-known researcher of Russian and Soviet history M. M. Gorinov notes, one of the reasons for this was the suppression and falsification of some facts of the biography of a brave girl in the Soviet period for ideological reasons. In particular, since it was considered a shame for a Red Army soldier, including Zoya, to be captured, a version was launched that her partner, Vasily Klubkov, had betrayed her. During the first interrogations, this young man did not report anything of the kind. But then he suddenly decided to confess and said that he had indicated her whereabouts to the Germans in exchange for her life. And this is just one example of the juggling of facts in order not to tarnish the image of the heroine-martyr, although Zoya's feat did not need such an adjustment at all.
Thus, when cases of falsification and suppression of the truth became known to the general public, some unfortunate journalists, in pursuit of cheap sensations, began to present them in a distorted form. In particular, in order to belittle the feat of Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya, a summary of whose history is presented above, emphasis was placed on the fact that she was undergoing therapy in a sanatorium specializing in the treatment of nervous diseases. Moreover, as in the children's game “broken phone”, the diagnosis changed from publication to publication. So, if in the first “revealing” articles it was written that the girl was unbalanced, then in subsequent ones they began to call her almost a schizophrenic, who, even before the war, repeatedly set fire to
Now you know what the feat of Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya consisted of, which is rather difficult to describe briefly and without emotion. After all, no one can remain indifferent to the fate of an 18-year-old girl who was martyred for the sake of the liberation of her homeland.
Author: Oleksii Natalenko // Union of Citizens of Ukraine
On November 29, 1941, Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya died heroically. Her feat has become legendary. She was the first woman to be awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union during the Great Patriotic War. Her name has become a household name and is inscribed in capital letters in a heroic story. Russian people - the victorious people.
The Nazis beat and tortured
They kicked out barefoot in the cold,
Were hands twisted with ropes,
The interrogation went on for five hours.
There are scars and abrasions on your face,
But silence is the answer to the enemy.
Wooden platform with crossbar,
You are standing barefoot in the snow.
A young voice sounds over the conflagration,
Over the silence of a frosty day:
“I’m not afraid to die, comrades,
My people will avenge me!
AGNIYA BARTO
For the first time, the fate of Zoya became widely known from the essay Peter Alexandrovich Lidov“Tanya”, published in the Pravda newspaper on January 27, 1942, and tells about the execution by the Nazis in the village of Petrishchevo near Moscow, a partisan girl who called herself Tanya during interrogation. A photograph was published nearby: a mutilated female body with a rope around its neck. At that time, the real name of the deceased was not yet known. Simultaneously with the publication in Pravda in "Komsomolskaya Pravda" material has been published Sergei Lyubimov"We will not forget you, Tanya."
We had a cult of the feat of "Tanya" (Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya) and he firmly entered the ancestral memory of the people. Comrade Stalin introduced this cult personally . February 16 In 1942, she was awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union posthumously. And Lidov's continuation article - "Who was Tanya", came out only two days later - 18th of Febuary 1942. Then the whole country learned the real name of the girl killed by the Nazis: Zoya Anatolyevna Kosmodemyanskaya, a student of the tenth grade of school N 201 of the Oktyabrsky district of Moscow. She was recognized by school friends from the photograph that accompanied Lidov's first essay.
“In the early days of December 1941, in Petrishchevo, near the town of Vereya,” Lidov wrote, “the Germans executed an eighteen-year-old Muscovite Komsomol member who called herself Tatyana ... She died in enemy captivity on a fascist rack, without a single sound betraying her suffering, without betraying her comrades. She was martyred as a heroine, as the daughter of a great nation that no one can ever break! May her memory live forever!”
During the interrogation, the German officer, according to Lidov, asked the eighteen-year-old girl the main question: “Tell me, where is Stalin?” “Stalin is at his post,” Tatiana replied.
in the newspaper "Publicity". September 24, 1997 in the material of professor-historian Ivan Osadchy under the heading "Her name and feat are immortal" An act was published, drawn up in the village of Petrishchevo on January 25, 1942:
“We, the undersigned, - a commission consisting of: Mikhail Ivanovich Berezin, Chairman of the Gribtsovsky Village Council, Claudia Prokofievna Strukova, Secretary, Claudia Prokofievna Strukova, Collective Farm Eyewitnesses of the 8th March Collective Farm - Vasily Alexandrovich Kulik and Evdokia Petrovna Voronina - drew up this act as follows: During the period of occupation Vereisky district, a girl who called herself Tanya was hanged by German soldiers in the village of Petrishchevo. Later it turned out that it was a partisan girl from Moscow - Zoya Anatolyevna Kosmodemyanskaya, born in 1923. German soldiers caught her while she was on a combat mission, setting fire to a stable with more than 300 horses. The German sentry grabbed her from behind, and she did not have time to shoot.
She was taken to the house of Sedova Maria Ivanovna, undressed and interrogated. But there was no need to get any information from her. After interrogation at Sedova, barefoot and undressed, she was taken to Voronina's house, where the headquarters was located. There they continued to interrogate, but she answered all the questions: “No! Don't know!". Having achieved nothing, the officer ordered that they start beating her with belts. The hostess, who was driven onto the stove, counted about 200 blows. She didn't scream or even utter a single moan. And after this torture she answered again: “No! I will not say! Don't know!"
She was taken out of Voronina's house; she walked, stepping with her bare feet in the snow, they brought Kulik to the house. Exhausted and tormented, she was in the circle of enemies. The German soldiers mocked her in every possible way. She asked for a drink - the German brought her a lighted lamp. And someone ran a saw across her back. Then all the soldiers left, only one sentry remained. Her hands were tied back. The legs are frostbitten. The sentry ordered her to get up and led her out into the street under a rifle. And again she walked, stepping barefoot in the snow, and drove until she herself froze. The sentries changed every 15 minutes. And so they continued to drive her down the street all night.
Says P.Ya. Kulik (maiden name Petrushina, 33 years old): “They brought her and put her on a bench, and she groaned. Her lips were black, black, parched, and a swollen face on her forehead. She asked for a drink from my husband. We asked: "Can I?" They said: “No,” and one of them, instead of water, raised a burning kerosene lamp without glass to his chin.
When I spoke to her, she told me: “Victory is still ours. Let them shoot me, let these monsters mock me, but still they won't shoot us all. There are still 170 million of us, the Russian people have always won, and now the victory will be ours.”
In the morning she was led to the gallows and began to take pictures ... She shouted: “Citizens! You don’t stand, don’t look, but you need to help fight! After that, one officer swung, while others shouted at her.
Then she said: “Comrades, victory will be ours. German soldiers, before it's too late, surrender." The officer yelled angrily: "Rus!" - “The Soviet Union is invincible and will not be defeated,” she said all this at the moment when she was photographed ...
Then they put up a box. She, without any command, stood on the box herself. A German approached and began to put on a noose. At that time, she shouted: “No matter how much you hang us, you don’t hang everyone, we are 170 million. But our comrades will avenge you for me.” She said this already with a noose around her neck.A few seconds before death and a moment before Eternity, she announced, with a noose around her neck, the verdict of the Soviet people: “ Stalin is with us! Stalin will come!
In the morning they built a gallows, gathered the population and hanged them publicly. But they continued to mock the hanged woman. Her left breast was cut off, her legs were cut with knives.
When our troops drove the Germans away from Moscow, they hurried to remove Zoya's body and bury it outside the village, burned the gallows at night, as if wanting to hide the traces of their crime. They hanged her in early December 1941. That is what the present act is drawn up for."
And a little later, photographs found in the pocket of a murdered German were brought to the editorial office of Pravda. 5 pictures captured the moments of the execution of Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya. At the same time, another essay by Peter Lidov appeared, dedicated to the feat of Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya, under the heading “5 photographs”.
Why did the young intelligence officer call herself this name (or the name "Taon"), and why did Comrade Stalin single out her feat? Indeed, at the same time, many Soviet people committed no less heroic deeds. For example, on the same day, November 29, 1942, in the same Moscow region, partisan Vera Voloshina was executed, for her feat she was awarded the Order of the Patriotic War of the 1st degree (1966) and the title of Hero of Russia (1994).
For the successful mobilization of the entire Soviet people, Russian civilization, Stalin used the language of symbols and those trigger points that can extract a layer of heroic victories from the ancestral memory of Russians. We remember the famous speech at the parade on November 7, 1941, in which both the great Russian commanders and the national liberation wars are mentioned, in which we invariably emerged victorious. Thus, parallels were drawn between the victories of the ancestors and the current inevitable Victory. The surname Kosmodemyanskaya comes from the consecrated names of two Russian heroes - Kozma and Demyan. In the city of Murom there is a church named after them, erected by order of Ivan the Terrible.
The tent of Ivan the Terrible once stood at that place, and Kuznetsky Posad was located nearby. The king was thinking about how to cross the Oka, on the other side of which the enemy camp was located. Then two blacksmith brothers, whose names were Kozma and Demyan, appeared in the tent, who offered their help to the king. At night, in the darkness, the brothers quietly crept into the enemy camp and set fire to the khan's tent. While the camp was extinguishing the fire and looking for scouts, the troops of Ivan the Terrible, taking advantage of the commotion in the enemy camp, crossed the river. Demyan and Kozma died, and a church was built in their honor and named after the heroes.
As a result - in one family, both children perform feats and are awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union! The name of the Heroes in the USSR was called the streets. Normally there would be two streets named after each of the Heroes. But in Moscow one the street, and not by chance, received a "double" name - Zoe and Alexander Kosmodemyansky
In 1944, the film "Zoya" was filmed, which received in Cannes in 1946 at the 1st International Film Festival the award for best screenplay. Also, the film "Zoya" was awarded Stalin Prize I degree, received it Leo Arnstam(director), Galina Vodyanitskaya(performer of the role of Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya) and Alexander Shelenkov(cameraman).
“She died in enemy captivity on a fascist rack, not betraying her suffering with a single sound, without betraying her comrades.
She was martyred as a heroine, as the daughter of a great nation that no one can ever break!
May her memory live forever!”
Materials used.
Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya was the first woman to be awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union during World War II. And not just appropriated, but created the biggest legend in the history of the war. Who does not know Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya. Everyone knows ... and, oddly enough, no one knows. What does everyone know:
“Kosmodemyanskaya Zoya Anatolyevna, born on September 13, 1923 in the village of Osinovye Gai, Tambov Region, died on November 29, 1941 in the village of Petrishchevo, Vereisky District, Moscow Region. The title of Hero of the Soviet Union was awarded on February 16, 1942, posthumously. In 1938 she joined the Komsomol. Student of the 201st Moscow secondary school. In October 1941, she voluntarily joined a partisan fighter detachment. Near the village of Obukhovo, Naro-Fominsk district, she crossed the front line with a group of Komsomol partisans. At the end of November 1941, Kosmodemyanskaya was caught while performing a combat mission and, after torture, was executed by the Germans. She became the first woman - Hero of the Soviet Union and the heroine of a massive propaganda campaign. It was alleged that before her death, Kosmodemyanskaya delivered a speech that ended with the words: "Long live Comrade Stalin." Many streets, collective farms, pioneer organizations are named after her.
Many people know this data, but they cannot answer the questions that some people have more than once:
- As it was proved that the girl captured in Petrishchevo is Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya
- Where did the sabotage group, which included Tanya-Zoya, go?
- How exactly Tanya-Zoya was caught
- Were the Germans in Petrishchevo at the time of the unsuccessful arson?
- Where Tanya-Zoya was hanged.
November 1941. The Germans are 30 kilometers from Moscow. The hastily assembled divisions of the people's volunteer corps rose to the defense of Moscow and blocked the path of the enemy's bloodless divisions. Everyone who could hold a weapon was sent to the trenches, and those who could not, used the scorched earth tactics behind the front line. Everything that could somehow delay the German offensive was burned. That is why the Komsomol saboteurs had no weapons, no grenades and mines, but only bottles of gasoline. If the command does not feel sorry for its saboteurs, will it feel sorry for civilians, whose houses should burn down and not get to the Germans, even theoretically. Civilians ended up in a temporarily occupied territory, which means they are accomplices of the invaders, so there is nothing to deal with them. Civilians, mostly old people, women and children were not to blame for anything, these are the vicissitudes of war. When the front line passed through the same Petrishchevo, most of the village was destroyed and all the surviving residents huddled in several huts. Everyone remembers the winter of 1941 with its fierce cold. In such a cold to be left without a home is certain death.
Members of the sabotage group were given the task of burning down the village. If someone thinks that the partisan girl was calmly lying on the edge of the forest edge and watching all the movements in the village through binoculars, then she is deeply mistaken. In such a cold, you won’t lie down especially. The main task is to run to the first house that comes across, set it on fire, and is there anyone there, is it not, it’s either lucky or ... unlucky. Nobody cares if there are Germans in the village or not at all. The main thing is to complete the task. For the fulfillment of this task, a Komsomol saboteur was caught, who later called herself Tanya. It was not possible to establish by whom she was caught. But if so far no documents have been found in the German archives that they were Wehrmacht soldiers, then they were not them. Civilians can be understood - they fought for their lives.
Why is the real name of the girl still not known for certain? The answer is simple in its tragedy. All sabotage groups abandoned in this area perished and it is not possible to document who this Tanya was. But such trifles did not bother anyone, the country needed Heroes. When the news of the hanged partisan reached the political administration, they sent to Petrishchevo, after his release, correspondents of not even front-line newspapers, but central ones - Pravda and Komsomolskaya Pravda. Correspondents also liked everything that happened in Petrishchevo. On January 27, 1942, the material "Tanya" was published by Pyotr Lidov in Pravda. On the same day, S. Lyubimov's material was published in Komsomolskaya Pravda "We will not forget you, Tanya." On February 18, 1942, Pyotr Lidov published the material "Who was Tanya" in Pravda. The top leadership of the country approved the material, and she was immediately awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union, her cult was created, the events in Petrishchev were embellished, reinterpreted and distorted, over the years a memorial was created, schools were named after her, everyone knew her.
True, sometimes it came to an incident: "The director and teachers of school No. 201 in Moscow named after Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya reported that in organizing and conducting excursions to the place of execution and the grave of Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya, the existing shortcomings should be eliminated. To the village of Petrishchevo, where Zoya was brutally tortured by the Nazis ", there are many excursions, most of the participants of which are children, teenagers. But no one directs these excursions. The excursions are accompanied by Voronina E.P., 72 years old, in whose house the headquarters was located, where Zoya was interrogated and tortured, and citizen Kulik P. Ya ., who had Zoya before the execution. In their explanations about Zoya's actions on the instructions of the partisan detachment, they note her courage, courage and steadfastness. At the same time, they say: "If she continued to go to us, she would bring a lot of loss village, would burn many houses and livestock." In their opinion, this, perhaps, Zoya should not have done. In explaining how Zoya was captured and captured, they say: "We really expected that Zoya would definitely partisans will liberate, and were very surprised when this did not happen. Such an explanation does not contribute to the correct education of young people. Only in perestroika times began to reach deaf data that not everything is fine in the "Kingdom of Denmark". According to the recollections of the few remaining local residents, Tanya-Zoya was not arrested by the Germans, but captured by the peasants, who were outraged that she set fire to their houses and outbuildings. The peasants took her to the commandant's office, located in another village (there were no Germans at all where she was captured). After the liberation, most of the residents of Petrishchev and the surrounding villages, who had at least some relation to this incident, were taken out in an unknown direction. The first question about the reliability of the feat was raised by the writer Alexander Zhovtis, who placed the story of the writer Nikolai Ivanov in Arguments and Facts. Residents of Petrishchev allegedly caught Zoya setting fire to a peaceful peasant hut and, after beating him pretty badly, turned to the Germans for justice. And it was as if there were no Germans camping in Petrishchev, but, having heeded the request of the village population, they came from a nearby village and protected the people from the partisans, which involuntarily won their sympathy. Elena Senyavskaya from the Institute of Russian History believes that Tanya was not Zoya: "I personally know people who still believed that the partisan Tanya, who was executed by the Germans in the village of Petrishchevo, was not Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya." There is a rather convincing version that the Komsomol member Lily Azolina called herself Tanya. On that day, Vera Voloshina was also hanged in Petrishchevo, whom for some reason everyone forgot about.
But where did Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya come from? Gradually, everything turned into a tragedy. V. Leonidov writes: “The Germans left. After some time, a commission arrived in the village, with 10 women with it. They dug up Tanya. No one identified their daughter in the corpse, they buried her again. Union. Shortly after this decree, a commission arrived with other women. They pulled Tanya out of the grave for the second time. The performance began. Each woman in Tanya identified her daughter. Tears, lamentations for the deceased. And then, to the surprise of all the villagers, a fight broke out for the right to recognize the deceased her daughter. Everyone was dispersed by a long and thin woman, who later turned out to be Kosmodemyanskaya. So Tanya became Zoya. "
There are several iconic moments in this story that add up to a very ambiguous version.
First, for the first time, a commission arrived with 10 candidates for the position of mother-heroine. Lidov's and Lyubimov's articles created a loud legend, and there were oh so many missing partisan girls. The press often published a trophy photograph of an unknown Komsomol member with a noose around her neck. Why did no one identify their daughter, and the correspondents did not take a posthumous photograph. There is only one answer - the body was in such a state that they considered it best to bury it. But the question could not hang in the air for long. They were awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union, and these are pensions, benefits, fame, awards. Therefore, the future mother-heroines went for the second time not to restore historical justice and identify their own child, but to declare themselves as a mother-heroine. That's why the show came about. So the country found Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya.
Elena Senyavskaya from the Institute of Russian History believes that Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya really existed and was even sent to the German rear, but did not die, although her fate is bitter. When our advancing troops released Zoya from the German concentration camp and she returned home, her mother did not accept her and kicked her out. In the photo of the hanged "Tanya" published in the newspapers, it was many women who recognized their daughter - and there would apparently be a thousand times more if Pravda and Komsomolskaya Pravda were read in every house, if the potential "heroine's mothers" had documents there were precisely daughters, and precisely of the appropriate age, and if they had gone as volunteers to fight. The "heroine's mother" is recognizable - not so much because she kicked her daughter out of the house in need of help, and then gave interviews for decades on the topic of how to raise the young to become Heroes, but because she was able to achieve recognition of her place in the system. Then a campaign began to glorify the feat of Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya, her mother Lyubov Timofeevna actively joined the campaign, continuously speaking and being elected to various committees and councils of different levels.
The second is why she was hanged, and not just hanged, but tortured with particular cruelty. Tanya-Zoya did not inflict any damage on the German army and was too young to be trusted with secret information. Was she captured along with Vera Voloshina, or was there a third girl, the real Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya, who was sent to a concentration camp? The fact of execution and torture can be explained by only one assumption: the girls pretty much burned houses in Petrishchevo and neighboring villages. Reliably, we will never know the whole truth, there are too many questions.
Name: Zoya Anatolyevna Kosmodemyanskaya
State: USSR
Field of activity: partisan
Greatest Achievement: When performing a partisan mission, she was captured and brutally executed by the Nazis. During the interrogation, no one was extradited. The first woman is a hero of the USSR.
Each period of history has its own hero. And Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya undoubtedly became a symbol of wartime in. Parks, squares, streets were named in her honor, pioneer squads received her name, monuments were erected to her. The personality of Zoya, an eighteen-year-old girl who died heroically on the scaffold, was monumentalized. And behind her, the features of a lively, young girl were less and less visible.
After the collapse of the Soviet Union, this heroine suffered the fate of many - her image began to be debunked. New evidence appeared - sometimes false, sometimes genuine, that the girl was not a heroine, and did not have time to accomplish feats. Some researchers put forward versions that the girl was mentally unstable, because her heroic behavior at the execution was only because of her misunderstanding of the danger. Is it so? Let's try to figure it out.
Family of Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya
Kosmodemyanskaya Zoya Anatolyevna was born on September 13, 1923 in the Tambov region, in the village of Osino-Gai. Two years after the birth of Zoya, she had a younger brother, Alexander, who also later became posthumous. What kind of family was it that gave the Motherland two heroes at once?
The grandfather of the future heroine was a hereditary priest of the Orthodox Church, who was shot for his beliefs in 1918. His son, Zoya's father, did not follow in his footsteps - although he entered the theological seminary, he did not finish his studies and later began working as a librarian, his mother was a teacher.
Fear for their origin forced the family to leave the Tambov region, first to Siberia, and then to Moscow. It is difficult now to understand what was behind these mean lines of the official biography describing this movement. Maybe in this way the family managed to avoid Stalin's purges?
Komsomol member Zoya
1938 was a significant year for Zoya - she joins the Komsomol. The girl is ideologically savvy, devoted to the ideas of communism, while contemporaries noted her outstanding education and great love for literature. Shakespeare, Turgenev, Tolstoy. School curriculum books and beyond. Her classmates considered her categorical, strict and principled, and this contributed little to her friendship with them. But she did not need this - the girl's best friends were books.
In 1941, Zoya, still a high school student, decides to go to war with the Nazis. Her mother's exhortations have no effect on her - brought up on books, convinced and romantic, she answers like this: "The enemy is close." And she believes that she must personally help the Motherland win. But they don’t take her to the front - and Zoya is stubborn - again and again she comes to the draft board with a demand to send her to fight. She had excellent physical data - the girl was fond of sports - swimming, running, shot perfectly. She is enrolled in intelligence school.
In October 1941, after a short training, she ended up in partisan detachment 9903 on the Western Front. In fact, a suicide squad - out of a thousand who arrived there, only half survived. Yes, and partisan, strictly speaking, it can not be called - it was a sabotage and reconnaissance group.
death mission
Zoya and her comrades were sent on a mission. The transition through the front line took place in the Naro-Fominsk area. The group carried out sabotage behind enemy lines - mining roads, depriving the enemy of communications.
At the same time, Stalin's Order 0428 of November 17, 1941 was issued. It spoke of the need to evict German soldiers and officers who did not tolerate the harsh Russian winters from all the premises in which they were located, by destroying both these premises and settlements in general. The fact that these huts, sheds and houses belonged to the Soviet people was to be forgotten. How effective this measure was in the fight against the invaders is a big question. But Stalin's order had to be carried out at any cost.
Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya and her comrade Boris Krainov were given the task to burn down the settlement - the village of Petrishchevo - the 332nd regiment of the 197th German division was located there. In the same point, the radio center was supposedly located, which intercepted the messages of the Soviet group of troops. And since the Soviet command planned large-scale operations, the center had to be destroyed.
On the night of November 25-26, Boris and Zoya set fire to four huts, then Krainov went to the appointed place to cover Zoya's retreat. But the group parted ways. Finding no comrades, Zoya continued to carry out the task.
The next night, Kosmodemyanskaya went to the stable, where there were two hundred horses. But she didn’t have time to set it on fire - they twisted it.
Execution of the partisan "Tanya"
After a hasty first interrogation, during which the girl was silent, she, barefoot and undressed, was taken to the headquarters, where Colonel Rüderer personally began to beat testimony out of her. But, despite the beatings and bullying, Zoya was silent, hiding even her name - she called herself Tanya. The Germans were interested in who sent her on a mission, the number of people in the reconnaissance detachment, its structure, leaders. They received no information. The torture continued throughout the night. They were also attended by local residents - representatives of those families whose houses were burned down.
In the morning, plywood with the inscription "Pyro" was hung around Zoya's neck and escorted to a hastily built gallows. As the locals said, Zoya walked straight, proudly. Near the gallows, the Germans began to photograph her. These pictures were later found in one of the dead German soldiers. The courage of the girl made a strong impression on both the Germans and the locals. Before her death, she shouted: “Hey, comrades! What are you looking at sadly? Be bolder, fight, beat the Germans, burn, poison!
On the box, under the rope, she stood up on her own. She wanted to say something else, but a German soldier knocked the support out from under her feet. The body hung on the gallows for another month to mock the passing German units. Then the command ordered to bury him.
They say, having learned about this story, Stalin instructed not to take prisoners of the soldiers and officers of the 332nd regiment. And the Soviet people learned about Zoya's heroism in 1942 - after Peter Lidov's essay "Tanya", which was published by the Pravda newspaper.
A brief summary of the feat of Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya, which was given in history books to Soviet schoolchildren, for several decades was for them the best lesson of patriotism and love for the motherland, courage, and an example to follow. And for modern boys and girls, this woman, or rather, a girl, is a model of heroism. Until now, Zoe's feat is being discussed, new facts and evidence appear, disputes and even conjectures arise around him. Who was Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya?
Biography of Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya
Zoya was a simple girl from the Tambov village Osiny Gay. She was born in a family of school teachers on September 13, 1923. The family lived near Tambov until 1929, and then was forced to flee to Siberia, fearing denunciations and arrest. The fact is that Zoya's grandfather was accused of anti-Soviet activities and executed for it. But the Kosmodemyanskys lived in Siberia for only a year, then moved to the outskirts of Moscow.
Zoya lived a short life, and her significant milestones were a meager number of events, not all of which can be called happy:
- excellent study at school, but lack of mutual understanding with classmates,
- meningitis, acquaintance with Arkady Gaidar in a sanatorium during treatment,
- studying at a sabotage school and throwing Zoya's group to the rear of the Nazis,
- successful completion of several tasks, captivity and execution.
The difficult life of Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya, hardships and difficulties did not take away her patriotism and love for the Fatherland. The girl firmly believed in socialism and victory in the War, steadfastly endured all the hardships of captivity and accepted death with dignity - this is a fact that skeptics and pro-Soviet figures cannot dispute.
The background of the feat of Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya
In November 1941, when the Nazis were rapidly advancing, and their troops were already on the outskirts of the capital of the USSR, Stalin and the military commanders decided to use the so-called "Scythian" tactics in the fight against the enemy. Its essence was the complete destruction of settlements and strategic objects in the path of the offensive of enemy forces. This task was to be carried out by sabotage groups, which were specially trained for this in specialized schools, on accelerated courses. One of these groups included Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya.
In accordance with the order of Stalin under No. 0428, the group was supposed to commit sabotage and destroy more than 10 villages in the Moscow region using Molotov cocktails:
- Anashkino and Petrishchevo,
- Gribtsovo and Usadkovo,
- Ilyatino and Pushkino,
- Grachevo and Mikhailovskoye,
- Korovino, Bugailovo and others.
The saboteurs went on a mission on November 21, 1941 as part of two groups. Near the village of Golovkovo, they were ambushed, as a result of which only one group remained, which continued to carry out such a cruel, but necessary task in those realities.
Summary of the feat of Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya
After the losses incurred as a result of the shelling of groups near the village of Golovkovo, the task became more complicated, and the saboteurs, including Zoya, had to gather all their strength to complete the task of Stalin himself. Kosmodemyanskaya was supposed to burn the village of Petrishchevo near Moscow, which is a transport interchange for fascist movements. The girl and her colleague, fighter Klubkov Vasily, partially coped with the task, destroying 20 horses of the German army along the way. In addition, Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya managed to disable the communications of the Germans, which helped to exclude contact between several German units in the Moscow region and reduce their offensive activity, albeit for a short time.
The head of the group of saboteurs who survived the ambush, Krainov, did not wait for Kosmodemyanskaya and Klubkov, and returned to the rear. Realizing this, Zoya decided to continue working behind enemy lines on her own, returned to Petrishchevo to start setting fires again. One of the villagers, who at that time was already serving the Germans, by the name of Sviridov, grabbed the girl and handed her over to the Nazis.
Captivity and execution of Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya
Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya was captured by the Nazis on November 28, 1941. The following facts about her stay in captivity and the torment that the young Komsomol member had to endure are known for certain:
- regular beatings, including by two local women,
- spanking with straps on the naked body during interrogations,
- running through the streets of Petrishchevo without clothes, through the bitter cold.
Despite all the horrors of torment, Zoya Anatolyevna Kosmodemyanskaya not only did not disclose any data about her groups, assignments, but did not even give her real name. She called herself Tanya, did not provide any other information about herself and her accomplices, even under torture. Such resilience struck not only local residents who became unwitting witnesses to her torment, but also the tormentors themselves, fascist punishers and investigators.
Many years after the feat of Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya, her capture and execution, it became known that the villagers who then served for the Germans, whose houses she burned down - the wives of the headman Smirnov and the punisher Solin, took part in the torture. They were tried and sentenced to death by the Soviet authorities.
The Nazis turned the execution of Zoya herself into a whole demonstration performance for local residents who did not show them due respect. The girl was led through the streets with a sign “arsonist” on her chest, and a photo was taken against the background of Zoya, who was standing on the scaffold with a noose around her neck. But even in the face of death, she called for the fight against fascism and not to be afraid of the invaders. The body of the girl was not allowed to be removed from the gallows for a whole month, and only on the eve of the New Year did the locals manage to bury Zoya.
Posthumous recognition of the feat of Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya and new facts
After the liberation of the village of Petrishchevo from the Nazis, a special commission arrived there, which identified the body and interviewed witnesses to the events. The data was provided to Stalin himself, and after studying them, he decided to award Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya the title of Hero of the Soviet Union posthumously. In addition, they were given a directive to publish material about the feat in the media so that the whole country would know about the heroism of a simple Komsomol member.
Already modern historians have provided allegedly true facts that the girl was betrayed to the Nazis either by her partner, or by the group commander, and her heroism and stamina are just fiction. These data are not confirmed in any way, as, however, they are not refuted. Despite attempts to denigrate both socialism and everything connected with it, the feat of Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya to this day serves as an example of patriotism and heroism for Russians.
