Organizer of the underground anti-fascist organization Young Guard. Who was the traitor in the Young Guard?
The period of modern Russian history, called “perestroika,” has taken its toll not only on the living, but also on the heroes of the past.
Debunking the heroes of the revolution and the Great Patriotic War in those years it was put on stream. This cup has not passed from the underground members of the Young Guard organization. “Debuster of Soviet myths” poured out great amount slop on young anti-fascists destroyed by the Nazis.
The essence of the “revelations” was that no “Young Guard” organization supposedly existed, and if it did exist, then its contribution to the fight against the fascists was so insignificant that it is not worth talking about.
Got it more than others Oleg Koshevoy, who in Soviet historiography was called the organization's commissar. Apparently, the reason for the special hostility towards him on the part of the “whistleblowers” was precisely his status as a “commissar”.It was even argued that in Krasnodon itself, where the organization operated, no one knew about Koshevoy, that his mother, who had been a wealthy woman even before the war, was making money from her son’s posthumous fame, that for this reason she identified the corpse of an old man instead of Oleg’s body...
Elena Nikolaevna Koshevaya, Oleg’s mother, was not the only one who was wiped out in the late 1980s. In the same tone and almost the same words they insulted Lyubov Timofeevna Kosmodemyanskaya- mother of two Heroes of the Soviet Union who died during the war - Zoe and Alexandra Kosmodemyansky.
Those who trampled on the memory of heroes and their mothers still work in the Russian media, wear high degrees candidates and doctors of historical sciences and feel great...
“Hands were twisted, ears were cut off, a star was carved on the cheek...”
Meanwhile, the real history of the Young Guard is captured in documents and testimonies of witnesses who survived the Nazi occupation.
Among the evidence of the true history of the Young Guard, there are protocols for examining the corpses of Young Guards raised from the pit of mine No. 5. And these protocols best speak of what the young anti-fascists had to endure before their death.
The shaft of the mine where members of the underground organization “Young Guard” were executed by the Nazis. Photo: RIA Novosti
« Ulyana Gromova, 19 years old, a five-pointed star carved on the back, right hand broken, broken ribs..."
« Lida Androsova, 18 years old, taken out without an eye, ear, hand, with a rope around her neck, which cut heavily into her body. Dried blood is visible on the neck.”
« Angelina Samoshina, 18 years. Signs of torture were found on the body: arms were twisted, ears were cut off, a star was carved on the cheek...”
« Maya Peglivanova, 17 years. The corpse was disfigured: breasts, lips were cut off, legs were broken. All outer clothing has been removed."
« Shura Bondareva, 20 years old, taken out without the head and right breast, the whole body was beaten, bruised, black in color.”
« Victor Tretyakevich, 18 years. He was pulled out without a face, with a black and blue back, with crushed arms.” Experts found no traces of bullets on the body of Viktor Tretyakevich - he was among those who were thrown into the mine alive...
Oleg Koshevoy together with Any Shevtsova and several other Young Guards were executed in the Thundering Forest near the city of Rovenka.
The fight against fascism is a matter of honor
Ivan Turkenich, commander of the Young Guard. 1943 Photo: Commons.wikimedia.org
So what was the Young Guard organization and what role did Oleg Koshevoy play in its history?
The mining town of Krasnodon, in which the Young Guards operated, is located 50 kilometers from Lugansk, which during the war was called Voroshilovgrad.
At the turn of the 1930s and 1940s, many working-class youth, brought up in the spirit of Soviet ideology, lived in Krasnodon. For young pioneers and Komsomol members, participation in the fight against the Nazis who occupied Krasnodon in July 1942 was a matter of honor.
Almost immediately after the occupation of the city, several underground youth groups were formed independently of each other, which were joined by Red Army soldiers who found themselves in Krasnodon and escaped from captivity.
One of these Red Army soldiers was Lieutenant Ivan Turkenich, elected commander of a united underground organization created by young anti-fascists in Krasnodon and called the “Young Guard”. The creation of the united organization took place at the end of September 1942. Among those who joined the headquarters of the Young Guard was Oleg Koshevoy.
An exemplary student and a good friend
Oleg Koshevoy was born in the city of Pryluky, Chernihiv region, on June 8, 1926. Then Oleg’s family moved to Poltava, and later to Rzhishchev. Oleg's parents separated, and from 1937 to 1940 he lived with his father in the city of Anthracite. In 1940, Oleg’s mother Elena Nikolaevna moved to Krasnodon to live with her mother. Soon Oleg also moved to Krasnodon.
Oleg, according to the testimony of most of those who knew him before the war, was a real example to follow. He studied well, was fond of drawing, wrote poetry, played sports, and danced well. In the spirit of that time, Koshevoy was engaged in shooting and fulfilled the standard for receiving the Voroshilov Shooter badge. After learning to swim, he began helping others and soon began working as a lifeguard.
Commissioner and member of the headquarters of the underground Komsomol organization “Young Guard” Oleg Koshevoy. Photo: RIA Novosti
At school, Oleg helped those who were behind, sometimes taking five people in tow who were not doing well in their studies.
When the war began, Koshevoy, who, among other things, was also the editor of the school wall newspaper, began to help wounded soldiers in the hospital, which was located in Krasnodon, published the satirical newspaper “Crocodile” for them, and prepared reports from the front.
Oleg had a very warm relationship with his mother, who supported him in all his endeavors; friends often gathered in the Koshevoy’s house.
Oleg’s school friends from Krasnodon school No. 1 named after Gorky became members of his underground group, which in September 1942 joined the Young Guard.
He couldn't do otherwise...
Oleg Koshevoy, who turned 16 in June 1942, was not supposed to stay in Krasnodon - just before the Nazis occupied the city, he was sent for evacuation. However, it was not possible to go far, since the Germans were advancing faster. Koshevoy returned to Krasnodon. “He was gloomy, blackened with grief. A smile no longer appeared on his face, he walked from corner to corner, depressed and silent, did not know what to put his hands to. What was happening around was no longer astonishing, but was crushing my son’s soul with terrible anger,” recalled Oleg’s mother Elena Nikolaevna.
During perestroika times, some “tearers of the veil” put forward the following thesis: those who before the war declared loyalty to communist ideals, during the years of severe trials thought only about saving their own lives at any cost.
Based on this logic, the exemplary pioneer Oleg Koshevoy, admitted to the Komsomol in March 1942, had to hide and try not to attract attention to himself. In reality, everything was different - Koshevoy, having experienced the first shock of seeing his city in the hands of the invaders, begins to assemble a group from his friends to fight the fascists. In September, the group assembled by Koshev becomes part of the Young Guard.
Oleg Koshevoy was involved in planning the operations of the Young Guards, he himself participated in the actions, and was responsible for communications with other underground groups operating in the vicinity of Krasnodon.
Still from the film “Young Guard” (directed by Sergei Gerasimov, 1948). The scene before the execution. Photo: Still from the film
Red banner over Krasnodon
The activities of the Young Guard, which consisted of about 100 people, may indeed not seem the most impressive to some. During their work, the Young Guards produced and distributed about 5 thousand leaflets with calls to fight the fascists and with messages about what was happening at the fronts. In addition, they carried out a number of acts of sabotage, such as destroying grain prepared for export to Germany, dispersing a herd of cattle that was intended for the needs of the German army, and blowing up a passenger car with German officers. One of the most successful actions of the Young Guard was the arson of the Krasnodon labor exchange, as a result of which the lists of those whom the Nazis intended to steal to work in Germany were destroyed. Thanks to this, approximately 2,000 people were saved from Nazi slavery.
On the night of November 6-7, 1942, Young Guards hung red flags in Krasnodon in honor of the anniversary of the October Revolution. The action was a real challenge to the invaders, a demonstration that their power in Krasnodon would be short-lived.The red flags in Krasnodon had a strong propaganda effect, which was appreciated not only by residents, but also by the Nazis themselves, who intensified the search for underground fighters.
The “Young Guard” consisted of young Komsomol members who had no experience in conducting illegal work, and it was extremely difficult for them to resist the powerful apparatus of Hitler’s counterintelligence.
One of the last actions of the Young Guard was a raid on cars with New Year's gifts for German soldiers. The underground members intended to use the gifts for their own purposes. On January 1, 1943, two members of the organization, Evgeniy Moshkov And Victor Tretyakevich, were arrested after bags stolen from German cars were found in their possession.
German counterintelligence, seizing on this thread and using previously obtained data, within a few days uncovered almost the entire underground network of the Young Guards. Mass arrests began.
Koshevoy was given a Komsomol card
Mother of the Hero of the Soviet Union, partisan Oleg Koshevoy Elena Nikolaevna Koshevaya. Photo: RIA Novosti / M. Gershman
To those who were not arrested immediately, the headquarters gave the only order possible under these conditions - to leave immediately. Oleg Koshevoy was among those who managed to get out of Krasnodon.
The Nazis, who already had evidence that Koshevoy was a commissar of the Young Guard, detained Oleg’s mother and grandmother. During interrogations, Elena Nikolaevna Kosheva’s spine was damaged and her teeth were knocked out...
As already mentioned, no one prepared the Young Guards for underground work. This is largely why most of those who managed to escape from Krasnodon were unable to cross the front line. Oleg after unsuccessful attempt On January 11, 1943, he returned to Krasnodon to go to the front line again the next day.
He was detained by field gendarmerie near the city of Rovenki. Koshevoy was not known by sight, and he could well have avoided exposure if not for a mistake that was completely impossible for a professional illegal intelligence officer. During the search, they found a Komsomol card sewn into his clothes, as well as several other documents incriminating him as a member of the Young Guard. According to the requirements of the conspiracy, Koshevoy had to get rid of all the documents, but boyish pride for Oleg turned out to be higher than considerations of common sense.
It’s easy to condemn the mistakes of the Young Guard, but we are talking about very young boys and girls, almost teenagers, and not seasoned professionals.
“They had to shoot him twice...”
The occupiers showed no leniency towards the members of the Young Guard. The Nazis and their collaborators subjected the underground members to sophisticated torture. Oleg Koshevoy did not escape this fate either.
He, as a “commissar,” was tormented with special zeal. When the grave with the bodies of the Young Guards executed in the Thundering Forest was discovered, it turned out that 16-year-old Oleg Koshevoy was gray-haired...
The Young Guard commissar was shot on February 9, 1943. From the testimony Schultz- gendarme of the German district gendarmerie in the city of Rovenki: “At the end of January, I participated in the execution of a group of members of the underground Komsomol organization “Young Guard”, among whom was the leader of this organization Koshevoy... I remember him especially clearly because I had to shoot at him twice. After the shots, all those arrested fell to the ground and lay motionless, only Koshevoy stood up and, turning around, looked in our direction. This made me very angry Fromme and he ordered the gendarme Drewitz finish him off. Drewitz approached the lying Koshevoy and killed him with a shot in the back of the head...”
Schoolchildren at the pit of mine No. 5 in Krasnodon - the place of execution of Young Guards. Photo: RIA Novosti / Datsyuk
Oleg Koshevoy died just five days before the city of Krasnodon was liberated by Red Army units.
The Young Guard became widely known in the USSR because the history of its activities, unlike many other similar organizations, was documented. Those who betrayed, tortured and executed the Young Guard were identified, exposed and convicted.
By decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR of September 13, 1943, the Young Guard Ulyana Gromova, Ivan Zemnukhov, Oleg Koshevoy, Sergei Tyulenin, Lyubov Shevtsova was awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union. 3 members of the “Young Guard” were awarded the Order of the Red Banner, 35 — the Order of the Patriotic War, 1st degree, 6 — the Order of the Red Star, 66 — the medal “Partisan of the Patriotic War,” 1st degree.
Reproduction of portraits of the leaders of the underground Komsomol organization “Young Guard”. Photo: RIA Novosti
"Blood for blood! Death for death!
The commander of the Young Guard, Ivan Turkenich, was among the few who managed to cross the front line. He returned to Krasnodon after the liberation of the city as commander of a mortar battery of the 163rd Guards Rifle Regiment.
In the ranks of the Red Army, he went from Krasnodon further to the west, to take revenge on the Nazis for his killed comrades.
On August 13, 1944, Captain Ivan Turkenich was mortally wounded in the battle for the Polish city of Glogow. The command of the unit nominated him for the title of Hero of the Soviet Union, but it was awarded to Ivan Vasilyevich Turkenich much later - only on May 5, 1990.
"Krasnodontsy". Sokolov-Skalya, 1948, reproduction of the painting
Oath of members of the Young Guard organization:
“I, joining the ranks of the Young Guard, in the face of my friends in arms, in the face of my native long-suffering land, in the face of all the people, solemnly swear:
Unquestioningly carry out any task given to me by a senior comrade. To keep everything related to my work in the Young Guard in the deepest secrecy.I swear to take revenge mercilessly for the burned, devastated cities and villages, for the blood of our people, for the martyrdom of thirty miner heroes. And if this revenge requires my life, I will give it without a moment’s hesitation.
If I break this sacred oath under torture or because of cowardice, then may my name and my family be cursed forever, and may I myself be punished by the harsh hand of my comrades.
Blood for blood! Death for death!
Oleg Koshevoy continued his war against the Nazis even after his death. Aircraft of the squadron of the 171st Fighter Wing, 315th Fighter Division under the command of Captain Ivana Vishnyakova bore on their fuselages the inscription “For Oleg Koshevoy!” The squadron pilots destroyed several dozen fascist aircraft, and Ivan Vishnyakov himself was awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union.
The “Oath” monument in Krasnodon, dedicated to members of the underground Komsomol organization “Young Guard”. Photo: RIA Novosti / Tyurin
"Young guard"
The heroic history of the underground organization of Krasnodon boys and girls who fought against the Nazis and laid down their lives in this fight was known to every Soviet person. Now this story is remembered much less often...
The famous novel played a huge role in glorifying the feat of the Young Guards Alexandra Fadeeva and the film of the same name Sergei Gerasimov. In the 90s of the last century, they began to forget about The Young Guard: Fadeev’s novel was removed from the school curriculum, and the story itself was declared almost an invention of Soviet propagandists.
Meanwhile, in the name of the freedom of their Motherland, the boys and girls of Krasnodon fought against the German occupiers, showing steadfastness and heroism, withstood torture and bullying and died very young. Their feat cannot be forgotten, says Doctor of Historical Sciences Nina PETROVA– compiler of the collection of documents “The True History of the Young Guard.”
Almost everyone died...
– Did the study of the heroic history of the Krasnodon Komsomol underground begin during the war?
– In the Soviet Union, it was officially believed that 3,350 Komsomol and youth underground organizations operated in the temporarily occupied territory. But we don’t know the history of each of them. For example, practically nothing is still known about the youth organization that arose in the city of Stalino (now Donetsk). And the Young Guards really found themselves in the spotlight. It was the largest organization in terms of numbers, almost all of whose members died.
Soon after the liberation of Krasnodon on February 14, 1943, Soviet and party authorities began collecting information about the Young Guard. Already on March 31, the People's Commissar of Internal Affairs of the Ukrainian SSR Vasily Sergienko reported on the activities of this organization to the first secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine (Bolsheviks) Nikita Khrushchev. Khrushchev brought the information received to the attention of Joseph Stalin, and the story of the “Young Guard” received wide publicity and people started talking about it. And in July 1943, based on the results of a trip to Krasnodon, the deputy head of the special department of the Komsomol Central Committee Anatoly Toritsyn(later Major General of the KGB) and Central Committee instructor N. Sokolov prepared a memorandum on the emergence and activities of the Young Guard.
– How and when did this organization arise?
– Krasnodon is a small mining town. Mining villages grew up around it - Pervomaika, Semeykino and others. At the end of July 1942, Krasnodon was occupied. It is officially recognized that the Young Guard arose at the end of September. But we must keep in mind that small underground youth organizations appeared not only in the city, but also in the villages. And at first they were not related to each other.
I believe that the process of forming the Young Guard began at the end of August and was completed by November 7. The documents contain information that in August an attempt was made to unite the youth of Krasnodon Sergey Tyulenin. According to the recollections of his teachers, Sergei was a very proactive young man, thoughtful and serious. He loved literature and dreamed of becoming a pilot.
In September appeared in Krasnodon Victor Tretyakevich. His family came from Voroshilovgrad (now Lugansk). Tretyakevich was left underground by the regional committee of the Komsomol and immediately began to play a leading role in the activities of the Krasnodon underground organization. By that time he had already fought in a partisan detachment...
– Disputes about how responsibilities were distributed at the organization’s headquarters have not subsided for more than 70 years. Who led the Young Guard - Viktor Tretyakevich or Oleg Koshevoy? As far as I understand, even the few surviving Young Guards expressed different opinions on this matter...
– Oleg Koshevoy was a 16-year-old boy , joined the Komsomol in 1942. How could he create such a fighting organization when there were older people nearby? How could Koshevoy seize the initiative from Tretyakevich, having come to the Young Guard later than him?
We can confidently say that the organization was led by Tretyakevich, a member of the Komsomol since January 1939. Ivan Turkenich, who served in the Red Army, was much older than Koshevoy. He managed to avoid arrest in January 1943, spoke at the funeral of Young Guards and managed to talk about the activities of the organization without delay. Turkenich died during the liberation of Poland. From his repeated official statements it followed that Koshevoy appeared in the Young Guard on the eve of November 7, 1942. True, after some time Oleg actually became the secretary of the Komsomol organization, collected membership fees, and took part in some actions. But he was still not the leader.
– How many people were part of the underground organization?
– There is still no consensus on this. IN Soviet time for some reason it was believed that the more underground workers, the better. But, as a rule, the larger the underground organization, the more difficult it is to maintain secrecy. And the failure of the Young Guard is an example of this. If we take official data on the number, they range from 70 to 100 people. Some local researchers talk about 130 Young Guards.
In addition, the question arises: who should be considered members of the Young Guard? Only those who worked there constantly, or also those who helped occasionally, carrying out one-time assignments? There were people who sympathized with the Young Guards, but personally did nothing within the organization or did very little. Should those who wrote and distributed only a few leaflets during the occupation be considered underground workers? This question arose after the war, when being a Young Guard member became prestigious and people whose participation in the organization was previously unknown began to ask to confirm their membership in the Young Guard.
– What ideas and motivations underlay the activities of the Young Guards?
– Boys and girls grew up in families of miners, were educated in Soviet schools, and were brought up in a patriotic spirit. They loved literature – both Russian and Ukrainian. They wanted to convey to their fellow countrymen the truth about the true state of affairs at the front, to dispel the myth of invincibility Hitler's Germany. That's why they distributed leaflets. The guys were eager to do at least some harm to their enemies.
– What damage did the Young Guards cause to the invaders? What do they get credit for?
“The Young Guards, without thinking about what their descendants would call them and whether they were doing everything right, simply did what they could, what was within their power. They burned the building of the German Labor Exchange with lists of those who were going to be driven to Germany. By decision of the Young Guard headquarters, over 80 Soviet prisoners of war were released from a concentration camp, and a herd of 500 head of cattle was recaptured. Bugs were introduced into grain that was being prepared for shipment to Germany, which led to the spoilage of several tons of grain. The young men attacked motorcyclists: they obtained weapons in order to begin an open armed struggle at the right moment.
SMALL CELLS WERE CREATED IN DIFFERENT PLACES OF KRASNODON AND IN THE SURROUNDING VILLAGES. They were divided into fives. The members of each five knew each other, but they could not know the composition of the entire organization
Members of the Young Guard exposed the disinformation spread by the invaders and instilled in the people faith in the inevitable defeat of the invaders. Members of the organization wrote leaflets by hand or printed leaflets in a primitive printing house and distributed Sovinformburo reports. In leaflets, the Young Guards exposed the lies of fascist propaganda and sought to tell the truth about the Soviet Union and the Red Army. In the first months of the occupation, the Germans, calling on young people to work in Germany, promised everyone a good life there. And some succumbed to these promises. It was important to dispel illusions.
On the night of November 7, 1942, the guys hung red flags on school buildings, the gendarmerie and other institutions. The flags were hand-sewn by the girls from white fabric, then painted scarlet - a color that symbolized freedom for the Young Guard. On New Year's Eve 1943, members of the organization attacked a German car carrying gifts and mail for the invaders. The boys took the gifts with them, burned the mail, and hid the rest.
Unconquered. Hood. F.T. Kostenko
– How long did the Young Guard operate?
- The arrests began immediately after Catholic Christmas - at the end of December 1942. Accordingly, the period of active activity of the organization lasted about three months.
Young Guards. Biographical sketches about members of the Krasnodon party-Komsomol underground / Comp. R.M. Aptekar, A.G. Nikitenko. Donetsk, 1981
The true history of the “Young Guard” / Comp. N.K. Petrova. M., 2015
Who really betrayed?
– The failure of the Young Guard was blamed different people. Is it possible today to draw final conclusions and name who betrayed the underground fighters to the enemy and is responsible for their deaths?
– He was declared a traitor in 1943 Gennady Pocheptsov, whom Tretyakevich accepted into the organization. However, 15-year-old Pocheptsov had no relation to the governing bodies and was not even very active in the Young Guard. He could not know all its members. Even Turkenich and Koshevoy did not know everyone. This was prevented by the very principle of building an organization proposed by Tretyakevich. Small cells were created in different places in Krasnodon and in surrounding villages. They were divided into fives. The members of each five knew each other, but they could not know the composition of the entire organization.
Testimony against Pocheptsov was given by a former lawyer of the Krasnodon city government who collaborated with the Germans Mikhail Kuleshov- During the occupation, a district police investigator. He claimed that on December 24 or 25 he went into the office of the commandant of the Krasnodon region and the head of the local police, Vasily Solikovsky, and saw Pocheptsov’s statement on his desk. Then they said that the young man allegedly handed over a list of Young Guard members to the police through his stepfather. But where is this list? Nobody saw him. Pocheptsov's stepfather, Vasily Gromov, after Krasnodon’s release, he testified that he did not take any list to the police. Despite this, on September 19, 1943, Pocheptsov, his stepfather Gromov and Kuleshov were publicly shot. Before his execution, a 15-year-old boy rolled on the ground and shouted that he was not guilty...
– Is there now an established point of view about who the traitor was?
– There are two points of view. According to the first version, Pocheptsov betrayed. According to the second, the failure did not occur because of betrayal, but because of poor conspiracy. Vasily Levashov and some other surviving Young Guard members argued that if not for the attack on the car with Christmas gifts, the organization could have survived. Boxes of canned food, sweets, biscuits, cigarettes, and other things were stolen from the car. All this was carried home. Valeria Borts I took a raccoon coat for myself. When the arrests began, Valeria's mother cut the fur coat into small pieces, which she then destroyed.
Young underground workers were caught smoking cigarettes. I sold them Mitrofan Puzyrev. The police were also led on the trail by candy wrappers that the guys threw anywhere. And so the arrests began even before the new year. So, I think, the organization was ruined by non-compliance with the rules of secrecy, the naivety and gullibility of some of its members.
Everyone was arrested before Evgenia Moshkova- the only communist among the Young Guards; he was brutally tortured. On January 1, Ivan Zemnukhov and Viktor Tretyakevich were captured.
After the release of Krasnodon, rumors spread that Tretyakevich allegedly could not stand the torture and betrayed his comrades. But there is no documentary evidence of this. And many facts do not fit with the version of Tretyakevich’s betrayal. He was one of the first to be arrested and until the very day of his execution, that is, for two weeks, he was cruelly tortured. Why if he has already named everyone? It is also unclear why the Young Guards were taken in groups. The last group was captured on the night of January 30-31, 1943 - a month after Tretyakevich himself was arrested. According to the testimony of Hitler’s accomplices who tortured the Young Guard, the torture did not break Victor.
The version of his betrayal also contradicts the fact that Tretyakevich was thrown into the mine first and still alive. It is known that at the last moment he tried to drag the chief of police Solikovsky and the chief of the German gendarmerie Zons into the pit with him. For this, Victor received a blow to the head with the butt of a pistol.
During the arrests and investigations, policemen Solikovsky, Zakharov, as well as Plokhikh and Sevastyanov tried their best. They mutilated Ivan Zemnukhov beyond recognition. Yevgeny Moshkov was doused with water, taken outside, then put on the stove, and then again taken for interrogation. Sergei Tyulenin had a wound on his hand cauterized with a hot rod. When Sergei’s fingers stuck into the door and closed it, he screamed and, unable to bear the pain, lost consciousness. Ulyana Gromova was suspended from the ceiling by her braids. The guys had their ribs broken, their fingers cut off, their eyes gouged out...
Ulyana Gromova (1924–1943). The girl’s suicide letter became known thanks to her friend Vera Krotova, who, after the release of Krasnodon, went through all the cells and discovered this tragic inscription on the wall. She copied the text onto a piece of paper...
“There was no party underground in Krasnodon”
– Why were they tortured so brutally?
“I think that the Germans wanted to go into the party underground, that’s why they tortured me like that. But there was no party underground in Krasnodon. Having not received the information they needed, the Nazis executed members of the Young Guard. Most of the Young Guards were executed at mine No. 5-bis on the night of January 15, 1943. 50 members of the organization were thrown into the pit of a mine 53 meters deep.
–In print you can find the number 72...
– 72 people is the total number of people executed there, that’s how many corpses were raised from the mine. Among the dead were 20 communists and captured Red Army soldiers who had no relation to the Young Guard. Some Young Guard members were shot, others were thrown into a pit alive.
However, not everyone was executed that day. Oleg Koshevoy, for example, was detained only on January 22. On the road near the Kartushino station, police stopped him, searched him, found a pistol, beat him and sent him under escort to Rovenki. There he was searched again and under the lining of his coat they found two forms of temporary membership cards and a homemade Young Guard seal. The police chief recognized the young man: Oleg was the nephew of his friend. When Koshevoy was interrogated and beaten, Oleg shouted that he was the commissar of the Young Guard. Lyubov Shevtsova, Semyon Ostapenko, Viktor Subbotin and Dmitry Ogurtsov were also tortured in Rovenki.
Koshevoy was shot on January 26, and Lyubov Shevtsova and all the others were shot on the night of February 9. Just five days later, on February 14, Krasnodon was liberated. The bodies of the Young Guards were taken out of the mine. On March 1, 1943, a funeral took place in the Lenin Komsomol Park from morning to evening.
– Which of the Young Guards survived?
“The only one who escaped on the way to the place of execution was Anatoly Kovalev. According to recollections, he was a brave and courageous young man. Little has always been said about him, although his story is interesting in its own way. He signed up for the police, but only served there for a few days. Then he joined the Young Guard. Was arrested. Mikhail Grigoriev helped Anatoly escape, who untied the rope with his teeth. When I was in Krasnodon, I met Antonina Titova, Kovalev’s girlfriend. At first, the wounded Anatoly was hiding with her. Then his relatives took him to the Dnepropetrovsk region, where he disappeared, and his further fate is still unknown. The Young Guard’s feat was not even noted with the medal “Partisan of the Patriotic War,” because Kovalev served as a policeman for several days. Antonina Titova waited for him for a long time, wrote memoirs, collected documents. But she never published anything.
ALL DISPUTES ON SPECIFIC ISSUES AND ABOUT THE ROLE OF INDIVIDUAL PEOPLE IN THE ORGANIZATION SHOULD NOT THROW A SHADOW ON THE GREATNESS OF THE FEAT accomplished by the young underground fighters of Krasnodon
The survivors were Ivan Turkenich, Valeria Borts, Olga and Nina Ivantsov, Radik Yurkin, Georgy Arutyunyants, Mikhail Shishchenko, Anatoly Lopukhov and Vasily Levashov. I will especially say about the latter. On April 27, 1989, employees of the Komsomol Central Archive held a meeting with him and Tretyakevich’s brother Vladimir. A tape recording was made. Levashov said that he fled near Amvrosyevka, to the village of Puteynikova. When the Red Army arrived, he declared his desire to go to war. In September 1943, during an inspection, he admitted that he was in the temporarily occupied territory in Krasnodon, where he was abandoned after graduating from intelligence school. Not knowing that the story of the Young Guard had already become famous, Vasily said that he was a member of it. After the interrogation, the officer sent Levashov to the barn, where a young man was already sitting. They started talking. At that meeting in 1989, Levashov said: “Only 40 years later, I realized that it was an agent of that security officer when I compared what he asked and what I answered.”
As a result, they believed Levashov and he was sent to the front. He liberated Kherson, Nikolaev, Odessa, Chisinau and Warsaw, and took Berlin as part of the 5th Shock Army.
Roman Fadeeva
– Work on the book “Young Guard” Alexander Fadeev started in 1943. But the original version of the novel was criticized for not reflecting the leadership of the Communist Party. The writer took the criticism into account and revised the novel. Has historical truth suffered from this?
– I believe that the first version of the novel was successful and was more in line with historical realities. In the second version, a description of the leading role of the party organization appeared, although in reality the Krasnodon party organization did not manifest itself in any way. The remaining communists in the city were arrested. They were tortured and executed. It is significant that no one made any attempts to recapture the captured communists and Young Guards from the Germans. The boys were taken home like kittens. Those who were arrested in the villages were then transported in sleighs over a distance of ten kilometers or more. They were accompanied by only two or three policemen. Has anyone tried to fight them off? No.
Only a few people left Krasnodon. Some, like Anna Sopova, had the opportunity to escape, but did not take advantage of it.
Alexander Fadeev and Valeria Borts, one of the few surviving members of the Young Guard, at a meeting with readers. 1947
- Why?
“They were afraid that their relatives would suffer because of them.”
– How accurately did Fadeev manage to reflect the history of the Young Guard and in what ways did he deviate from the historical truth?
– Fadeev himself said about this: “Although the heroes of my novel have real names and surnames, I was not writing the real history of the Young Guard, but a work of art in which there is a lot of fiction and even fictitious persons. Roman has the right to this." And when Fadeev was asked whether it was worth making the Young Guards so bright and ideal, he replied that he wrote as he saw fit. Basically, the author accurately reflected the events that took place in Krasnodon, but there are also discrepancies with reality. So, in the novel the traitor Stakhovich is written out. This is a fictional collective image. And it was written from Tretyakevich - one to one.
Relatives and friends of the victims began to loudly express their dissatisfaction with the way certain episodes of the history of the Young Guard were shown in the novel immediately after the book was published. For example, the mother of Lydia Androsova addressed Fadeev with a letter. She claimed that, contrary to what was written in the novel, her daughter's diary and other notes were never given to the police and could not have been the reason for the arrests. In a response letter dated August 31, 1947 to D.K. and M.P. Androsov, Lydia’s parents, Fadeev admitted:
“Everything that I wrote about your daughter shows her as a very devoted and persistent girl. I deliberately made it so that her diary allegedly ended up with the Germans after her arrest. You know better than me that there is not a single entry in the diary that speaks about the activities of the Young Guard and could be of benefit to the Germans in terms of revealing the Young Guard. In this regard, your daughter was very careful. Therefore, by allowing such fiction in the novel, I do not put any stain on your daughter.”
“My parents thought differently...
- Certainly. And most of all, the residents of Krasnodon were indignant at the role assigned by the writer Oleg Koshevoy. Koshevoy’s mother claimed (and this was included in the novel) that the underground gathered at their home on Sadovaya Street, 6. But the Krasnodon residents knew for sure that German officers were quartered with her! This is not Elena Nikolaevna’s fault: she had decent housing, so the Germans preferred it. But how could the headquarters of the Young Guard meet there?! In fact, the headquarters of the organization gathered with Harutyunyants, Tretyakevich and others.
Koshevoy's mother was awarded the Order of the Red Star in 1943. Even Oleg’s grandmother, Vera Vasilyevna Korostyleva, was awarded the medal “For Military Merit”! The stories in the novel about her heroic role look anecdotal. She did not perform any feats. Later, Elena Nikolaevna wrote the book “The Tale of a Son.” More precisely, other people wrote it. When the regional committee of the Komsomol asked her if everything in the book was correct and objective, she replied: “You know, writers wrote the book. But from my story."
- Interesting position.
– What’s even more interesting is that Oleg Koshevoy’s father was alive. He was divorced from Oleg’s mother and lived in a neighboring city. So Elena Nikolaevna declared him dead! Although the father came to his son’s grave and mourned him.
Koshevoy's mother was an interesting, charming woman. Her story greatly influenced Fadeev. It must be said that the writer did not hold meetings with the relatives of all the dead Young Guards. In particular, he refused to accept Sergei Tyulenin’s relatives. Access to the author of The Young Guard was regulated by Elena Nikolaevna.
Another thing is noteworthy. Parents and grandmothers strive to preserve drawings and notes made by their children and grandchildren at different ages. And Elena Nikolaevna, being the head of the kindergarten, destroyed all of Oleg’s diaries and notebooks, so there is no way to even see his handwriting. But the poems written by Elena Nikolaevna’s hand have been preserved, which she declared to belong to Oleg. There were rumors that she had composed them herself.
We must not forget about the main thing
– The surviving Young Guards could bring clarity to controversial issues. Did they get together after the war?
– All together – not once. In fact, there was a split. They did not agree on the question of who should be considered the commissar of the Young Guard. Borts, Ivantsov and Shishchenko considered him Koshevoy, and Yurkin, Arutyunyants and Levashov considered Tretyakevich. Moreover, in the period from 1943 to the end of the 1950s, Tretyakevich was considered a traitor. His older brother Mikhail was relieved of his post as secretary of the Lugansk regional party committee. Another brother, Vladimir, an army political worker, was punished by the party and demobilized from the army. Tretyakevich’s parents also experienced this injustice hard: his mother was ill, his father was paralyzed.
In 1959, Victor was rehabilitated, his feat was awarded the Order of the Patriotic War, 1st degree. However, in May 1965, only Yurkin, Lopukhov and Levashov from the Young Guard came to the opening of a monument to Tretyakevich in the village of Yasenki, Kursk region, where he was born. According to Valeria Borts, the Komsomol Central Committee in the 1980s gathered the surviving members of the Krasnodon underground organization. But there are no documents about this meeting in the archives. And the disagreements between the Young Guards were never eliminated.
Monument "Oath" on the central square of Krasnodon
– What impression did films about young underground fighters make on you? After all, the story of the “Young Guard” has been filmed more than once.
– I like Sergei Gerasimov’s film. The black and white film accurately and dynamically conveyed that time, the state of mind and experiences of the Soviet people. But on the occasion of the 70th anniversary of the Great Victory, veterans and the whole country received a very strange “gift” from Channel One. The series “Young Guard” was announced as the “true story” of an underground organization. On the basis of what this supposedly true story was created, they did not bother to explain to us. The heroes of The Young Guard, whose images were captured on the screen, were probably rolling over in their graves. Creators of historical films need to carefully read documents and works that truly reflect a bygone era.
– Roman Fadeev, who was part of the school curriculum for many decades, has long been excluded from it. Do you think it might be worth bringing it back?
– I like the novel, and I advocate that it be included in the school curriculum. It correctly reflects the thoughts and feelings of young people of that time, and truthfully depicts their characters. This work rightfully entered the golden fund of Soviet literature, combining both documentary truth and artistic comprehension. The educational potential of the novel continues to this day. In my opinion, it would be good to re-release the novel in its first version, not corrected by Fadeev himself. Moreover, the publication should be accompanied by an article that would briefly outline what we were talking about. It must be emphasized that the novel is a novel, and not the story of the Young Guard. The history of the Krasnodon underground must be studied from documents. And this topic is not closed yet.
At the same time, we must not forget about the main thing. All disputes on specific issues and the role of individual people in the organization should not cast a shadow on the greatness of the feat accomplished by the young underground fighters of Krasnodon. Oleg Koshevoy, Viktor Tretyakevich and other Young Guards gave their lives for the freedom of the Motherland. And we have no right to forget about this. And further. Speaking about the activities of the Young Guard, we must remember that this is not a feat of individuals. This is a collective feat of Krasnodon youth. We need to talk more about the contribution of each Young Guard member to the struggle, and not argue about who held what position in the organization.
Interviewed by Oleg Nazarov "B E S S M E R T I E"Alexander Fadeev September 15, 1943
“I, joining the ranks of the Young Guard, in the face of my friends in arms, in the face of my native, long-suffering land, in the face of all the people, solemnly swear: to unquestioningly carry out any task given to me by my senior comrade; to keep everything that concerns my work in the Young Guard!
I swear to take revenge mercilessly for the burned, devastated cities and villages, for the blood of our people, for the martyrdom of thirty heroic miners. And if this revenge requires my life, I will give it without a moment’s hesitation.
If I break this sacred oath under torture or because of cowardice, then may my name and my family be cursed forever, and may I myself be punished by the harsh hand of my comrades.
This oath of allegiance to the Motherland and the fight until the last breath for its liberation from the Nazi invaders was given by members of the underground Komsomol organization "Young Guard" in the city of Krasnodon, Voroshilovgrad region. They gave it in the fall of 1942, standing opposite each other in a small mountain, when the piercing autumn wind howled over the enslaved and devastated land of Donbass. The small town lay hidden in the darkness, there were fascists in the miners' houses, only corrupt policemen and back-packers from the Gestapo on that dark night ransacked the citizens' apartments and committed atrocities in their dungeons.
The eldest of those who took the oath was nineteen years old, and the main organizer and inspirer Oleg Koshevoy was sixteen.
The open Donetsk steppe is harsh and inhospitable, especially in late autumn or winter, under the freezing wind, when the black earth freezes into clods. But this is our dear Soviet land, inhabited by a powerful and glorious coal tribe, giving energy, light and warmth to our great Motherland. For the freedom of this land civil war Her best sons, led by Klim Voroshilov and Alexander Parkhomenko, fought. It gave birth to the wonderful Stakhanov movement. The Soviet man penetrated deeply into the depths of the Donetsk land, and powerful factories grew across its inhospitable face - the pride of our technical thought, socialist cities flooded with light, our schools, clubs, theaters, where the great Soviet man flourished and revealed himself in all his spiritual power. And this land was trampled by the enemy. He walked through it like a tornado, like a plague, plunging cities into darkness, turning schools, hospitals, clubs, nurseries into barracks for soldiers, into stables, into Gestapo dungeons.
Fire, rope, bullet and ax - these terrible weapons Deaths became constant companions in the lives of Soviet people. The Soviet people were doomed to suffer unthinkable from the point of view of human reason and conscience. Suffice it to say that in the city park of Krasnodon, the Nazis buried thirty miners alive in the ground for refusing to appear for registration at the “labor exchange”. When the city was liberated by the Red Army and began to tear away the dead, they stood in the ground: first their heads were exposed, then their shoulders, torsos, and arms.
Innocent people were forced to leave their homes and hide. Families were destroyed. “I said goodbye to dad, and tears flowed from my eyes in streams,” says Valya Borts, a member of the Young Guard organization. “Some unknown voice seemed to whisper: “This is the last time you’ll see him.” He left, and I stood until he disappeared from sight. Today this man still had a family, a corner, a shelter, children, and now he, like a stray dog, must wander. And how many were tortured, shot! "
Young people who evaded registration by any means were seized by force and taken to slave labor in Germany. Truly heartbreaking scenes could be seen these days on the streets of the town. The rude shouts and curses of the police merged with the sobs of fathers and mothers, from whom their daughters and sons were forcibly torn away.
And with the terrible poison of lies spread by vile fascist newspapers and leaflets about the fall of Moscow and Leningrad, about the death of the Soviet system, the enemy sought to corrupt the soul of the Soviet people.
These were our youth - the same ones who are growing up, brought up in Soviet schools, pioneer detachments, and Komsomol organizations. The enemy sought to destroy in her the spirit of freedom, the joy of creativity and work instilled by the Soviet system. And in response to this, the young Soviet man proudly raised his head.
Free Soviet song! She became close to Soviet youth, it always rings in their souls.
“One time Volodya and I were going to Sverdlovka to see our grandfather. It was very warm. Airplanes were flying overhead. We were walking through the steppe. There was no one around. We sang: “The dark mounds are sleeping... A young guy went out into the Donetsk steppe.” Then Volodya says:
I know where our troops are.
He started telling me the summary. I rushed to Volodya and started hugging him."
These simple lines of the memoirs of Volodya Osmukhin’s sister cannot be read without excitement. Direct managers The “Young Guard” were Oleg Vasilyevich Koshevoy, born in 1926, member of the Komsomol since 1940, Zemnukhov Ivan Aleksandrovich, born in 1923, member of the Komsomol since 1941. Soon the patriots attracted new members of the organization into their ranks - Ivan Turkenich, Stepan Safonov, Lyuba Shevtsova, Ulyana Gromova, Anatoly Popov, Nikolai Sumsky, Volodya Osmukhin, Valya Borts and others. Oleg Koshevoy was elected commissioner. The headquarters approved Ivan Vasilyevich Turkenich, a member of the Komsomol since 1940, as commander.
And these youth, who did not know the old system and, naturally, did not undergo underground experience, for several months disrupted all the activities of the fascist enslavers and inspired the population of the city of Krasnodon and the surrounding villages - Izvarin, Pervomaika, Semeykin, to resist the enemy, where branches of the organization were created. The organization grows to seventy people, then has over a hundred - children of miners, peasants and office workers.
The "Young Guard" distributes leaflets in hundreds and thousands - at bazaars, in cinemas, in clubs. Leaflets are found on the police building, even in the pockets of police officers. The Young Guard installs four radios and informs the population daily about the Information Bureau's reports.
In underground conditions, new members are accepted into the ranks of the Komsomol, temporary certificates are issued, and membership fees are accepted. As Soviet troops approach, an armed uprising is being prepared and weapons are being obtained in a variety of ways.
At the same time, strike groups carry out acts of sabotage and terrorism.
On the night of November 7–8, Ivan Turkenich’s group hanged two policemen. Placards were left on the chests of the hanged: “Such a fate awaits every corrupt dog.”
On November 9, Anatoly Popov’s group on the Gundorovka-Gerasimovka road destroys a passenger car with three senior Nazi officers.
On November 15, Viktor Petrov’s group liberates 75 Red Army soldiers and commanders from a concentration camp in the village of Volchansk.
In early December, Moshkov’s group burned three cars with gasoline on the Krasnodon-Sverdlovsk road.
A few days after this operation, Tyulenin’s group carried out an armed attack on the Krasnodon-Rovenki road against the guards, who were driving 500 head of cattle taken from the residents. Destroys the guards, scatters the cattle across the steppe.
Members of the “Young Guard”, who, on instructions from the headquarters, settled in occupation institutions and enterprises, are slowing down their work with skillful maneuvers. Sergei Levashov, working as a driver in a garage, disables three cars one after another. Yuri Vitsenovsky causes several accidents at the mine.
On the night of December 5-6, a brave trio of Young Guards - Lyuba Shevtsova, Sergei Tyulenin and Viktor Lukyanchenko - carry out a brilliant operation to set fire to the labor exchange. By destroying the labor exchange with all documents, the Young Guards saved several thousand Soviet people from being deported to Nazi Germany.
On the night of November 6-7, members of the organization hang red flags on the buildings of the school, the former regional consumer union, the hospital and on the tallest tree in the city park. “When I saw the flag at the school,” says M. A. Litvinova, a resident of the city of Krasnodon, “involuntary joy and pride overwhelmed me. I woke up the children and quickly ran across the road to Mukhina. I found her standing in her underwear on the windowsill, tears flowing in streams on her thin cheeks. She said: “Marya Alekseevna, this was done for us, Soviet people. We are remembered, we are not forgotten."
The organization was discovered by the police because it attracted too wide a range of young people into its ranks, including less resilient people. But during the terrible torture to which brutal enemies subjected the members of the Young Guard, the moral image of the young patriots was revealed with unprecedented force, an image of such spiritual beauty that it will inspire many, many more generations.
Oleg Koshevoy. Despite his youth, he is an excellent organizer. Dreaminess was combined in him with exceptional practicality and efficiency. He was the inspirer and initiator of a number of heroic events. Tall, broad-shouldered, he exuded strength and health, and more than once he himself took part in bold forays against the enemy. Having been arrested, he infuriated the Gestapo with his unwavering contempt for them. They burned him with a hot iron, pierced his body with needles, but his stamina and will did not leave him. After each interrogation, gray strands appeared in his hair. He went to execution completely gray-haired.
Ivan Zemnukhov is one of the most educated, well-read members of the Young Guard, the author of a number of wonderful leaflets. Outwardly awkward, but strong in spirit, he enjoyed universal love and authority. He was famous as an orator, loved poetry and wrote them himself (as, incidentally, Oleg Koshevoy and many other members of the Young Guard wrote them). Ivan Zemnukhov was subjected to the most brutal tortures and tortures in the dungeons. He was suspended in a loop through a special block from the ceiling, doused with water when he lost consciousness, and suspended again. They beat me three times a day with electric wire whips. The police persistently sought testimony from him, but achieved nothing. On January 15, he, along with other comrades, was thrown into the pit of mine No. 5.
Sergei Tyulenin. He is a small, agile, impetuous teenage boy, hot-tempered, with a perky character, courageous to the point of despair. He participated in many of the most desperate enterprises and personally destroyed many enemies. “He was a man of action,” his surviving comrades characterize him. “He didn’t like braggarts, talkers and slackers. He said: “You better do it, and let people talk about your deeds.”
Sergei Tyulenin was not only subjected to brutal torture, his old mother was tortured in his presence. But like his comrades, Sergei Tyulenin was persistent to the end.
This is how Maria Andreevna Borts, a teacher from Krasnodon, characterizes the fourth member of the Young Guard headquarters, Ulyana Gromova: “She was a tall girl, a slender brunette with curly hair and beautiful features. Her black, piercing eyes amazed with their seriousness and intelligence... She was a serious, intelligent, intelligent and developed girl. She did not get excited like others and did not pour curses on the torturers... “They think of maintaining their power through terror,” she said. - Foolish people! Is it possible to turn the wheel of history back..."
The girls asked her to read "The Demon". She said: “With pleasure! I love The Demon. What a wonderful work it is! Just think, he rebelled against God himself!” The cell became completely dark. She began to read in a pleasant, melodious voice... Suddenly the silence of the evening twilight was pierced by a wild scream. Gromova stopped reading and said: “It’s starting!” The moans and screams became more and more intense. There was deathly silence in the cell. This went on for several minutes. Gromova, turning to us, read in a firm voice:
Sons of the snows, sons of the Slavs.
Why did you lose courage?
For what? Your tyrant will perish,
How all tyrants died.
Ulyana Gromova was subjected to inhuman torture. They hung her up by her hair, cut a five-pointed star on her back, burned her body with a hot iron, sprinkled salt on her wounds, and sat her on a hot stove. But even before her death, she did not lose heart and, using the Young Guard code, tapped out encouraging words to her friends through the walls: “Guys! Don’t lose heart! Ours are coming. Be strong. The hour of liberation is near. Ours are coming. Ours are coming...”
Her friend Lyubov Shevtsova worked as an intelligence officer on instructions from the headquarters. She established contact with the Voroshilovgrad underground and visited this city several times every month, showing exceptional resourcefulness and courage. Dressed in her best dress, portraying a “hater” of Soviet power, the daughter of a major industrialist, she penetrated among enemy officers and stole important documents. Shevtsova was tortured the longest. Having achieved nothing, the city police sent her to the district gendarmerie office of Rovenek. There, needles were driven under her nails and a star was cut out on her back. A person of exceptional cheerfulness and fortitude, she, returning to her cell after torture, sang songs to spite the executioners. Once, during torture, hearing the noise of a Soviet plane, she suddenly laughed and said: “Our voice is heard.”
So, having kept their oath to the end, most of the members of the Young Guard organization died, only a few people remained alive. They walked to their execution with Vladimir Ilyich’s favorite song, “Tortured by Heavy Captivity.”
The “Young Guard” is not an isolated, exceptional phenomenon in the territory captured by the fascist occupiers. Everywhere and everywhere a proud Soviet man is fighting. And although the members of the militant organization “Young Guard” died in the struggle, they are immortal, because their spiritual traits are the traits of the new Soviet man, the traits of the people of the country of socialism.
Eternal memory and glory to the young Young Guards - the heroic sons of the immortal Soviet people!
IMMORTAL FEAT OF UNDERGROUND Komsomol Members
"Komsomolskaya Pravda" from 24.IX. 1943
ON JULY 20, 1942, the city of Krasnodon, Voroshilovgrad region, was occupied by Nazi troops. From the very first day of the occupation, the Nazi scoundrels began to introduce their “new order” in the city. With cold German cruelty and frenzy, they killed and tortured innocent Soviet people, drove young people away to hard labor, and carried out wholesale robberies.
The orders of the German command, which covered all the fences and walls of buildings, threatened the death penalty for the slightest disobedience. For evading registration - execution, for failure to appear at the labor exchange, which was in charge of sending slaves to Germany - a noose, for appearing on the street in the evening - execution on the spot. Life became an unbearable torture, the city seemed to have died out, as if a terrible pestilence had burst into its wide streets, into its bright houses.
In early August, the Germans began to commit even more atrocities. One day they drove the population into a city park and staged a public execution of 30 miners who refused to appear for registration. The occupiers buried the miners alive in the ground and watched with pleasure the death throes of the innocent victims.
These days, under the difficult conditions of occupation, an underground Komsomol organization arose in Krasnodon. The sons and daughters of the famous Donetsk miners, raised by the great Motherland, raised by the Bolshevik Party, rose up to fight to the death against the fierce enemy. The organizers and leaders of the underground cell were Komsomol members Oleg Koshevoy, Ivan Zemnukhov, Sergei Tyuleniy, Ulyana Gromova, Lyuba Shevtsova, Ivan Turkenich. The oldest of them was barely 19 years old.
Young patriots, fearless fighters with selflessness devote themselves to the sacred struggle against the Germans, attracting new members of the organization into their ranks: Stepan Safonov, Anatoly Popov, Nikolai Sumsky, Volodya Osmukhin, Valeria Borts and many other brave and selfless young men and women.
At the beginning of September, the first meeting of young underground workers took place at Oleg Koshevoy’s apartment. At the suggestion of Sergei Tyulenin, they decided to call the organization “Young Guard”. At the meeting, a headquarters was created consisting of Oleg Koshevoy, Ivan Zemnukhov, Ivan Turkenich and Sergei Tyulenin (later the headquarters also included Lyubov Shevtsova and Ulyana Gromova), which was entrusted with all management of the combat and political activities of the underground. The meeting unanimously elected Oleg Koshevoy as secretary of the Komsomol organization. He also became a commissar of the Young Guard.
The young underground fighters of Krasnodon set their goals and objectives:
Strengthen the people's confidence in the inevitable defeat of the Nazi invaders;
To raise young people and the entire population of the Krasnodon region to actively fight the German occupiers;
Provide yourself with weapons and at a convenient moment move on to open armed struggle.
After the first meeting, the Young Guards began to act even more energetically, even more persistently. They create a simple printing house, install radios, establish connections with young people, rousing them to fight against the German occupiers. In September, the underground organization already numbered 30 people in its ranks. The headquarters decides to divide all members of the organization into fives. The bravest and most determined comrades were placed at the head of the fives. To communicate with headquarters, each five had a liaison officer.
A little time passed, and the Young Guard established close contact with the youth of the surrounding villages - Izvarino, Pervomaika, Semeykino. On behalf of the headquarters, members of the organization Anatoly Popov, Nikolai Sumskoy, Ulyana Gromova create separate underground groups here and establish contacts with the villages of Gundorovka, Gerasimovka, Talovoe. Thus, the Young Guard extended its influence to the entire Krasnodon region. Despite the cruel, bloody terror of the Germans, the leaders and activists of the Young Guard created an extensive network of combat groups and cells, uniting over 100 young Soviet patriots.
Each member of the Young Guard took an oath of allegiance to the Motherland.
The surviving member of the Young Guard, Radiy Yurkin, recalls this solemn moment:
“In the evening we gathered at Victor’s apartment. Apart from him, there was no one at home - father and mother went to the village to get bread.
Oleg Koshevoy lined up everyone gathered and addressed us with a short speech. He spoke about the military traditions of Donbass, about the heroic exploits of the Donbass regiments led by Kliment Voroshilov and Alexander Parkhomenko, about the duty and honor of a Komsomol member. His words sounded quietly, but firmly, and touched the heart so much that everyone was ready to go through fire and water.
With mother’s milk we absorbed the love of freedom, fortunately, and the Germans will never bring us to our knees,” said Koshevoy. “We will fight like our fathers and grandfathers fought, until the last drop of blood, until the last breath.” We will endure torment and death, but we will fulfill our duty to the Fatherland with honor.
Then he called out one by one to take the oath. When Oleg said my last name, I was even more excited. I took two steps forward, turned to face my comrades and froze at attention. Koshevoy began to read the text of the oath in a low voice, but very clearly. I repeated after him.
Oleg came up to me, congratulated me on behalf of the headquarters on taking the oath and said:
From now on, your life, Radium, belongs to the Young Guard, its cause.”
In the merciless struggle against the German occupiers, the ranks of the Young Guard grew and strengthened. Each Young Guard member considered it an honor to join the Komsomol and carry near his heart a small book, printed in an underground printing house and replacing a Komsomol card during the Patriotic War. In their applications, the boys and girls wrote: “I ask to be accepted as members of the Komsomol. I will honestly carry out any tasks of the organization, and if necessary, I will give my life for the cause of the people, for the cause of the great party of Lenin - Stalin.”
These stingy and simple words, like a drop of water, reflect all the noble qualities of our youth.
From the first day of its existence, the Young Guard has been carrying out enormous political work among young people and the entire population, exposing false German propaganda, instilling confidence in the people in the victory of the Red Army, rousing them to fight the Germans, to disrupt and sabotage the activities of the fascist authorities.
The Young Guards, having installed radios, day after day inform the population of the city and region about all events at the front, in the Soviet rear, and abroad.
With the beginning of the offensive of Soviet troops in the Stalingrad area, the propaganda work of the Young Guard intensified even more. Almost every day leaflets appear on fences, houses, and pillars telling about the advance of Soviet troops, calling on the population to actively help our advancing regiments.
Over the course of 6 months, the Young Guard issued more than 30 leaflet titles in just one city, with a circulation of over 5,000 copies.
All members of the underground organization took part in distributing leaflets. At the same time, the Young Guards showed a lot of initiative, cunning and dexterity.
Oleg Koshevoy put on a police uniform at night and distributed leaflets among the population. Vasya Pirozhok managed to stick small posters on the backs of policemen on market days with short inscriptions: “Down with the German occupiers!”, “Death to corrupt skins!” Semyon Ostapenko pasted leaflets on the director’s car, on the police, gendarmerie and city government buildings.
Sergei Tyulenin "patronized" the cinema. He invariably appeared in the hall just before the start of the session. At that moment, when the mechanic turned off the lights in the hall, Sergei was scattering leaflets among the audience.
Fiery Bolshevik proclamations passed from house to house, from hand to hand. They were read to the gills, their contents became the property of the entire city that same day. Many of the leaflets went beyond Krasnodon to the Sverdlovsk, Rovenkovsky, and Novosvetlovsky districts.
The 25th anniversary of the October Socialist Revolution was approaching. The “Young Guard” decided to adequately celebrate the national Soviet holiday and began to actively prepare for it. Members of the organization collected money and gifts for the families of commanders and soldiers of the Red Army, and prepared packages of food to be given to communist prisoners. The headquarters made a decision: to hang red flags in the city on the day of the holiday.
On the night of November 6–7, the Young Guards hoisted red banners at the school named after. Voroshilov, at the 1-bis mine, on the building of the former regional consumer union, on the hospital and on the highest tree in the city park. Slogans were posted everywhere: “Congratulations on the 25th anniversary of the October Revolution, comrades!”, “Death to the German occupiers!”
On a gloomy November morning, city residents saw red banners that were dear to their hearts on the tallest buildings. It seemed as if the clear sun had risen in the middle of the night - this picture was so majestic and exciting. People couldn’t believe their eyes and peered again and again at the banners fluttering in the wind.
The news about the flags was passed from mouth to mouth, from village to village, from village to village, raising the spirit of the population, inciting hatred of the German invaders.
Policemen, gendarmes, Gestapo detectives rushed through the streets like mad, but it was already too late. The banners could be torn down and hidden, but no force could kill the joyful excitement and pride that so inevitably flared up in the hearts of the Soviet people.
Comrade Stalin's report on the 25th anniversary of the October Socialist Revolution and his order of November 7, 1942 inspired young underground fighters to new exploits and to intensify the struggle against the Nazis. Each Young Guard member vowed to inflict even more significant blows on the enemy, to fully carry out the historical order of the leader. Underground combat groups destroy staff vehicles with German officers, kill soldiers, traitors to the Motherland, police officers, commit acts of sabotage at enterprises, and steal weapons.
By the beginning of December, the Young Guards had at their disposal 15 machine guns, 80 rifles, 300 grenades, 15,000 rounds of ammunition, 10 pistols, 65 kg of explosives, and several hundred meters of fuse.
Members of the Young Guard in every possible way disrupted the events that the Germans tried to hold. When the Nazis began intensive preparations for the export of grain to Germany, the headquarters made a bold decision - not to give the Germans grain. The Young Guards burn huge stacks of grain, and the already threshed grain is infested with mites.
A few days after this operation, Tyulenin’s group carried out an armed attack on the Krasnodon-Rovenki road against German guards who were driving 500 head of cattle taken from the residents. In a short battle, the young patriots destroyed the guards and drove the cattle into the steppe.
Members of the “Young Guard”, who, on instructions from the headquarters, settled in German institutions and enterprises, use skillful maneuvers to thwart their plans in every possible way. Sergei Levashov, working as a driver in a garage, disables 3 cars one after another; Yuri Vitsenovsky causes several accidents at the mine.
The organization carried out truly heroic work to disrupt the mobilization of youth in Germany.
On the night of December 5-6, 1942, a brave trio of Young Guards - Lyuba Shevtsova, Sergei Tyulenin and Viktor Lukyanchenko - carried out a difficult operation to set fire to the German labor exchange. By destroying the exchange with all the documents, the underground fighters saved several thousand Soviet people from being deported to German penal servitude. At the same time, the Young Guards freed 75 soldiers and commanders from the Volchansky prisoner of war camp and organized the escape of 20 prisoners of war from the Pervomaisk hospital.
The Red Army stubbornly advanced towards Donbass. The "Young Guard" prepared day and night to realize their cherished dream - a decisive armed attack on the Krasnodon German garrison.
The commander of the "Young Guard" Turkenich developed detailed plan capture of the city, deployed forces, collected intelligence materials, but vile betrayal interrupted the combat activities of the glorious underground fighters.
As soon as the arrests began, the headquarters gave the order to all members of the Young Guard to leave and make their way to the Red Army units. But it was already too late. Only 7 Komsomol members managed to escape and stay alive - Ivan Turkenich, Georgy Arutyunyants, Valeria Borts, Radiy Yurkin, Olya Ivantsova, Nina Ivantsova and Mikhail Shishchenko. The remaining members of the Young Guard were captured by the Nazis and imprisoned.
Young underground fighters were subjected to terrible torture, but none of them backed down from their oath. The German executioners went berserk, beating and torturing the Young Guards for several hours in a row, and they remained silent, proudly and courageously enduring the torture. The Germans were unable to break the spirit and iron will of the young Soviet people and never achieved recognition.
The Gestapo beat Sergei Tyulenin several times a day with whips made of electrical wires, broke his fingers, and drove a hot ramrod into the wound. When this did not help, the executioners brought the mother, a 58-year-old woman. In front of Sergei, they stripped her and began to torture her.
The executioners demanded that he tell about his connections in Kamensk and Izvarin. Sergei was silent. Then the Gestapo, in the presence of his mother, hung Sergei in a noose from the ceiling three times, and then gouged out his eye with a hot needle.
The Young Guards knew that the time for execution was coming. And even in the last hour they remained strong in spirit, they were full of faith in our victory. A member of the Young Guard headquarters, Ulyana Gromova, transmitted in Morse code to all cells:
The last order from headquarters... The last order... we will be taken to execution. We will be led through the city streets. We will sing Ilyich’s favorite song.
Young fighters were taken out of prison exhausted and mutilated. Ulyana Gromova walked with a star carved on her back, Shura Bondareva - with her breasts cut off. Volodya Oemukhin's right hand was cut off.
The Young Guards walked on their last journey with their heads held high. Their song sang solemnly and sadly:
Tortured by heavy bondage,
You died a glorious death,
In the fight for the workers' cause
You put your head down honestly...
The executioners threw underground Komsomol members alive into the pit of the mine.
In February 1943, our troops entered Krasnodon. A red flag hoisted over the city. And, watching him rinse in the wind, the residents again remembered the Young Guards. Hundreds of people headed to the prison building. They saw bloody clothes in the cells, traces of unheard-of torture. The walls were covered with inscriptions. On one of the walls is not painted, but almost carved, a heart pierced by an arrow. There are four surnames in the heart: “Shura Bondareva, Nina Minaeva, Ulya Gromova, Angela Samoshina.” And above all the inscriptions, all over the bloody wall, as a testament to his contemporaries, they cried out the words of revenge: “Death to the German occupiers!”
This is how the glorious students of the Komsomol lived and fought for their fatherland. And they died like true heroes. Their death is immortality.
Years will pass. Our great country will heal the severe wounds inflicted by the Nazi cannibals, new, bright cities and villages will grow from the ashes and ruins. A new generation of people will grow up, but the names of the young, fearless underground fighters from the Donetsk city of Krasnodon will never be forgotten. Their immortal deeds will forever burn as a bright ruby in the crown of our glory. Their life, struggle and death will serve as an example for our youth of selfless service to the Motherland, the great cause of the Lenin-Stalin party.
YOUNG GUARDS OF UKRAINE
V. KOSTENKO Secretary of the Central Committee of the Komsomol of Ukraine "Komsomolskaya Pravda" dated 14.IX. 1943
FOR OVER two years, the Ukrainian people have been fighting shoulder to shoulder with their Russian brother, together with the sons of all the peoples of the Soviet country, against the mortal enemy of our Motherland - the German occupiers. Every day of the struggle brings new news about the unparalleled heroism, courage and self-sacrifice of Ukrainian patriots, who vowed not to lay down their arms until the last Nazi was expelled from Soviet soil.
In the forefront of the fighting people are their pride and hope - the glorious youth of Ukraine. The sons and daughters of the Ukrainian people, carefully raised by the Soviet government and the Lenin-Stalin party, show examples of courage and fearlessness in the struggle for their homeland, for its honor and independence.
The feat of a group of young men and women in the small Donetsk city of Krasnodon, which the whole country now knows about, clearly reflects the high patriotic feelings of our youth, their nobility, courage, bravery, fiery love for the Motherland and burning hatred of the enemy.
On July 20, 1942, the German occupiers broke into the quiet green mining town of Krasnodon. Wild reprisals began against peaceful, innocent people. For failure to appear for registration, the Germans buried thirty miners alive in the city garden. People's faces darkened, life became unbearable. The population of Krasnodon, like the residents of all cities and villages occupied by the Germans, was doomed to death from hunger, disease, torture and abuse. With terrible terror, provocations and intimidation, the Germans tried here too to morally disarm people, break their will to resist, bring them to their knees, turn them into obedient slaves...
But could young people who grew up in the Soviet country come to terms with the slave fate prepared for them by the Germans?
The son of a worker, Oleg Koshevoy, perfectly answered this question in the simple lines of a poem written in the first days of the occupation of the city:
It's hard for me... Everywhere you look,
Everywhere I see Hitler's rubbish.
Everywhere the hated form is before me,
SS badge with a death's head.
I decided that it was impossible to live like this,
Look at the torment and suffer yourself.
We must hurry, before it’s too late,
Behind enemy lines - destroy the enemy!
I decided so, and I will fulfill it, -
I will give my whole life for my Motherland,
For our people, for our dear,
The beautiful Soviet country.
That's what Oleg decided. The son of an old Kyiv worker, who moved in 1940 with his whole family to the city of Krasnodon, could not do otherwise. Image. the Kyiv arsenals, the immortal example of the Don miners, who more than once defended their native Donbass from the enemy with arms in their hands, lived in the minds of the young man and was a guiding star for him.
Like Oleg Koshevoy, hundreds and thousands of young men and women from the Donetsk basin, the oldest working center in Ukraine, decided to take the path of fighting the German enslavers. “Better death in battle than life in captivity,” became their motto.
An ardent patriot, seventeen-year-old Komsomol member Oleg Koshevoy quickly found comrades-in-arms and fighting friends. Together with Vanya Zemnukhov and Sergei Tyulenin, he creates an underground Komsomol organization. They called it “Young Guard”. The organization grew quickly, absorbing the best that was available among the young miners.
Here were Ivan Turkenich - a favorite of the youth and already a battle-hardened warrior, respected by the entire city for his valor in work and success in science, Komsomol member Lyuba Shevtsova, Anatoly Popov, Stepan Safonov, Nikolai Sumskoy, Vladimir Osmukhin, Viktor Lukyanchenko, Ulyana Gromova, Valya Borts and a lot others. In the fight against the enemy, yesterday's teenagers became stern and determined warriors and excellent organizers. They were not content with creating an organization in the city itself; they put together similar groups in workers' settlements. They intensively collected weapons, ammunition, explosives, and studied military affairs.
At underground meetings, Young Guards take the oath:
"..."I swear to take revenge mercilessly for the burned, devastated cities and villages, for the blood of our people, for the martyrdom of thirty heroic miners. And if this revenge requires my life, I will give it without a moment’s hesitation.
If I break this sacred oath, either under torture or because of cowardice, then may my name and my family be cursed forever, and may I myself be punished by the harsh hand of my comrades.
Blood for blood! Death for death!"
In every word of this oath, in every military deed of the young Krasnodon patriots, the glorious, revolutionary traditions of the Donetsk miners, who never bowed their heads to the enemy, were reflected.
Group of Young Guards - Vladimir. Osmukhin, Anatoly Orlov, Georgy: Arutyunyants - created an underground printing house. Soon the city learns from numerous leaflets the truth about the situation at the fronts and reads fiery calls to fight. Mysterious postmen deliver leaflets to all houses, paste them on fences, on telegraph poles, in the most crowded places. The Young Guards warn Soviet citizens about the danger that threatens them - about the widespread deportation of our people to Hitler's penal servitude, and give advice on how to avoid this danger. And their voice reached the masses. In Krasnodon, the Germans failed to “recruit” a single person to work for Germany, and forced mobilizations also failed one after another.
Menacing slogans appeared on the walls of houses: “Death to the German occupiers!” In the church, people received notes: “As we lived, so we will live, as we were, so we will be, under the Stalinist banner.” On the backs of Nazi policemen walking around the bazaar, people happily read short - five or six words - leaflets pasted by the hand of a young patriot.
It is not difficult to understand and appreciate the significance of this underground work in conditions of ferocious terror, shameless lies and slander with which German propagandists tried to poison the consciousness of the Soviet people.
On the day of the great holiday, the 25th anniversary of the October Socialist Revolution, red banners were hoisted on the highest buildings of the city by the hands of the Young Guard.
Worker M.A. Litvinova says:
When I saw the flag on the school, joy and pride overwhelmed me. I woke up the children and quickly ran across the road to Mukhina K.A., she was sitting on the windowsill. Tears flowed in streams down her sunken cheeks. “Maria Alekseevna,” said my neighbor, “after all, this was done for us, Soviet people. They remember us, we are not forgotten!”
“We are not forgotten, we are remembered, we will be rescued, we will be rescued from German captivity!” - these are the thoughts and feelings that the brave activity of the Young Guards generated in the hearts of suffering people. It was a ray of light that cut through the darkness of the fascist night, foreshadowing the onset of a bright day of liberation.
Great date The Young Guards celebrated the 25th anniversary of the October Revolution with touching concern for the Soviet people. Families of workers, especially those who suffered at the hands of the German occupiers, received gifts on this day. The orphan children had bread on this day. It is easy to imagine what a great holiday it was in the hard, joyless life of the townspeople. The matter, of course, is not only in these modest gifts, not in that piece of bread, which still could not satisfy the hunger of the exhausted children - it is impossible to overestimate the importance of the life-giving force that these gifts from the Young Guard breathed into the souls of people.
The vigorous fighting life of the “Young Guard” was felt every day in the city and inspired Soviet citizens. The youth underground organization became a threat to the invaders, sowing in their ranks an animal fear of imminent retribution.
The city did not submit to the invaders, did not obey their orders. The city openly rejoiced upon learning of the victories of our troops at Stalingrad; the city was preparing to welcome the Red Army with open arms. The murders and mass executions committed by the Nazis did not frighten people, but only incited their rage, hatred and contempt for the enemy. Almost every night the black heart of the enemy was struck by a well-aimed bullet from an invisible avenger, warehouses flew into the air.
The Germans hunted for the Young Guard for a long time. Finally, the Gestapo bloodhounds managed to grab the thread into their own hands. Arrests and torture began. The torture was indescribable in its cruelty and savagery, and, despite this, the executioners were unable to break the young patriots or wrest words of recognition and repentance from them.
17-year-old Lyuba Shevtsova, a fragile blond girl, in a cell where Soviet people doomed to death were sitting, said:
Lyubka is not afraid to die. Lyubka, she will be able to die honestly,
In her dying hours, Ulya Gromova inspiredly read Lermontov’s “Demon”,
What a wonderful work,” she said, “Just think, he rebelled against the strongest!”
Shura Dubrovina and Lyuba Shevtsova managed to pass encouraging notes to their friends.
When the Red Army cleared the city of Krasnodon from the Nazi scoundrels, the miners recovered the corpses of young men and women from the pit of the destroyed mine. Relatives and friends had difficulty recognizing their dear, dear sons and daughters, who were brutally tortured by German monsters.
The memory of young heroes will forever live in our hearts. She will live as an undying symbol of love and devotion of Ukrainian youth to their native land, the great party of Lenin-Stalin, as a symbol of the all-conquering Stalinist friendship of peoples who vowed not to spare either their strength or life itself for the liberation of all their brothers and sisters from fascist captivity.
Now, when the Red Army is waging successful offensive battles, liberating its native Ukrainian land from captivity, the memory of the young heroes from Krasnodon, like a calling bell, will call the Red warriors forward. The noble images of young fighters will inspire the sons and daughters of Ukraine to new feats in battle, in the partisan rear, in work and study. Their example will show the way to the fastest liberation for hundreds and thousands of our brothers and sisters who are still languishing under Hitler’s yoke.
Glory to the Krasnodon heroes of the Young Guard, who immortalized their names and wrote a new page in the history of the liberation war of the Soviet people!
WORD OF THE HERO'S MOTHER
Speech by Elena Nikolaevna Kosheva at a meeting of young Stakhanovites in the Oktyabrsky district of Moscow on September 14, 1943.
"Komsomolskaya Pravda" dated 15.IX 1943
I am the mother of Oleg Koshevoy, whom the Germans brutally tortured and executed. I want to tell you about how he lived, studied and fought, how passionately he hated the Germans.
My Oleg was born in 1926 in the city of Priluki, Chernigov region. He was a strong, very active boy. He, like all boys, loved all kinds of playful games, loved to sing, play, and listen to fairy tales. When Oleg got older and went to school, he became interested in sports. He was good at skating and good at skiing. Just like now, he stands before my eyes, rosy-cheeked from the frost, covered in snow, cheerful and content. When Oleg returned from the cinema - and he went to the cinema with his grandmother - he loved to shower her with snow. The grandmother did not remain in debt to her grandson. And this friendship of people of such different ages was truly touching. I was also surprised by how Oleg, despite his age, knew how to find limits to his pranks.
Oleg was a favorite in the family, perhaps because he was our only son. But we did not spoil him, although we denied him little. Everyone in the family tried to instill in Oleg a noble sense of love for the Motherland, for the Bolshevik Party, which provided him with both a happy childhood and a happy future.
Oleg studied well and always helped his comrades sincerely and with pleasure. Oleg was a social activist at school, a newspaper editor, and the teachers treated him with respect.
Oleg loved his comrades very much. Always when we arranged Christmas tree, he invited those friends whose parents could not host a Christmas tree. He told me: “Mom, those who have the opportunity to organize a holiday will not be offended by me, but I must invite my comrades who have difficult conditions at home.”
A sense of duty was one of the strong qualities of his character. When Oleg’s father died in 1940 and financial difficulties arose in the family, Oleg told me: “That’s it, mom, I’m not little anymore, I can work and study, and it will be easier for you.” I was touched by this concern, but I did not allow Oleg to work. Then he began to do everything he could at home to ease my situation.
Oleg's love for books was boundless. He read every single book in Valya Borts's library, and some of them several times. He really wanted to learn to play the piano and even during the days of occupation he haunted Valya Borts, demanding that she study with him.
This is how my Oleg grew up. He dreamed of becoming a design engineer. And it seemed that nothing could stop this. But something terrible happened: on July 20, 1942, the Germans entered our city. The very next day they began to establish the so-called “new order”. They started with robberies, arrests, violence against girls and women. The Germans executed communists, Komsomol members, and indeed all Soviet people who were innocent of anything. In August 1942, German cannibals buried 58 men, women and children in a hole in the Krasnodon city park. They were tied by the hands in groups of 5, placed side by side, and so, in a standing position, they were covered with earth alive.
The communist Valko, his wife and infant child, the engineer Udavinsky and many others were buried here. The Nazis forcibly deported young people to Germany. Moaning and crying were heard in almost every house.
One day Oleg came home very upset. I tried to call him straight Talk. But he was silent for a long time. It was strange. Before this, Oleg always shared all his thoughts and experiences with me. I realized that something big was happening in the boy’s soul, that literally before our eyes he was becoming more and more mature with every minute. At night, when my grandmother was already asleep, Oleg, apparently, could not stand it and told me that during the day the Germans had led away a group of captured Red Army soldiers. He told how hard it was for him to look at our Russian people, whom the Nazis mocked.
Do you see, mom, what the Germans are doing to our people? Can we endure it any longer? If we all sit like this with our hands folded, we will all be shackled in chains. We must fight, fight and fight!
He spoke warmly, passionately, as if he was speaking at some kind of rally, and I felt that some kind of big decision was born in Oleg’s mind.
From that time on, Oleg began to come home late, became thoughtful and less talkative. I watched my son very carefully, and, as a mother, I, of course, really wanted to know his thoughts, his thoughts. One day Oleg told me that he decided to fight the Germans, to fight with all his might and means. I was proud of my son, but it was very important for me to convince him that the path he was taking was a dangerous one, that the consequences could be the most unexpected and severe, and that whoever decided to fight must be ready for anything - accept death, if necessary, and accept it courageously, as befits a fighter. And then Oleg told me:
Mommy! If I have to die, I can die the death of a warrior. Whoever does not want to betray the Motherland must take revenge on the enemy, at any moment go to mortal combat and in the struggle win the right to a happy life.
It became clear to me that Oleg was ready to fight, that, despite his 16 years, he was mature enough to understand the complexity and responsibility of the task he had taken on. No matter how painful it was for me to realize that from now on my son’s life was in danger, I decided with all my might, by all means, to help him and, so to speak, to inspire him.
I soon learned that an underground Komsomol organization “Young Guard” had been created in the city of Krasnodon. The organizers of this underground group were: Oleg, Ulyana Gromova, Sergei Tyulenin, Ivan Zemnukhov, Lyuba Shevtsova. Then they were joined by Valya Borts, Vanya Turkenich, Volodya Osmukhin and others. Oleg was elected secretary of the Komsomol committee and commissar of the Young Guard detachment. Vanya Turkenich became commander. Later I learned that Tolya Popov and Volodya Osmukhin managed to organize an underground printing house in which temporary Komsomol tickets and leaflets were printed. The Young Guard grew quickly. Soon there were already 100 people in the organization. Mostly these were very young guys and girls - students in grades 8-9-10. Each person joining the organization took a solemn oath of allegiance to serving their homeland.
And then in Krasnodon, events that were completely incomprehensible to the Germans began to happen: suddenly Sovinformburo reports appeared on the walls of houses, then leaflets, then various kinds of threats addressed to German commandants, the police, etc. Or suddenly at the market in the baskets of traders, on stalls and Even on the backs of the police, leaflets appeared, signed with three letters “Sh. M. G.”, which meant the headquarters of the “Young Guard”.
Oleg took out a radio somewhere. At great risk, this receiver was delivered to our home and installed in the kitchen under the floor. Now the Young Guards gathered in small groups to listen to Moscow, and the next day the whole city learned the truth about the Soviet Union, the truth about the situation at the front. Hundreds of leaflets issued by the Young Guards, like a life-giving ray of Stalinist truth, illuminated in the darkness of fascist oppression the path that Stalinist rule should follow. the youth. Young underground fighters exposed Hitler’s lies that the Red Army supposedly no longer existed, that the Germans had taken Stalingrad and Leningrad, that Moscow was already encircled and was about to fall one of these days.
The Young Guards grew in number and quality. Even recent schoolchildren today were already real underground fighters who had their own tactics, their own specific combat mission. Gradually, Oleg and his comrades transformed their organization from a purely propaganda organization into an organization of armed resistance to the Germans. Rifles and grenades obtained from the Germans began to arrive at the Young Guard's warehouse. From then on, the roads became unsafe for Hitler’s cars.
The German commandants became worried. They increased the police force. The Young Guards pursued the Germans day and night. It was they, the Young Guards, who spoiled telephone and telegraph communications. It was they who, when the Germans tried to take bread out of Krasnodon, burned 6 stacks of bread and 4 stacks of hay. It was the Young Guards who recaptured 500 head of cattle, which the Germans had prepared for shipment to Germany, and also killed the Romanian soldiers accompanying the cattle.
One day, the headquarters of the Young Guard learned that the Nazis were going to send several thousand young residents from Krasnodon to Germany. Based on inquiries, the Young Guards learned that a special case had been prepared for each candidate to be sent to the labor exchange. The headquarters developed a precise plan for setting the exchange on fire. One fine evening Krasnodon was illuminated by the glow of a fire. It was the labor exchange, which we called the nest of slavery, that was burning.
On November 7, flags suddenly began to glow over Krasnodon, on which was written: “Death to the German occupiers!” It was the work of the Young Guards.
It is very difficult to list all the deeds of the Young Guard. They did a lot, they would have done even more if not for the hand of a traitor.
On January 1, 1943, mass arrests of Young Guards began. It was very difficult to hide. Oleg left and did not come home for 11 days. I knew what awaited my son. The Germans gave the order that if Oleg Koshevoy or any other of the Young Guards were found with anyone, he would be executed along with them. On the eleventh night Oleg returned. We spoke very seriously and for a long time with Oleg, I will never forget his words:
Mom, even if they manage to catch me, they still won’t torture me for long. I will not say a word, I will accept all the torments, but I will not kneel before the executioners.
Oleg disappeared again.
The traitor betrayed Oleg. He was executed.
No, I cannot describe in words all the torture suffered by Oleg and his comrades. The executioners burned Komsomol ticket numbers on their bodies, drove needles under their nails, burned their heels with a hot iron, gouged out their eyes, hung them from the ceiling by their feet and held them until blood began to flow from their mouths. The Germans broke the Young Guard's arms and legs, broke their chests with the butts of machine guns, beat them with two whips, and dealt them a hundred blows at once. The walls of the prison were stained with the blood of the Young Guards; the executioners forced the young patriots to lick this blood with their tongues, and then threw them half-dead into the shaft of shaft No. 5.
But even with the most sophisticated torture, the Nazis were unable to find out anything. The Komsomol members stood bravely and steadfastly. Seryozha Tyulenin was pierced with a bayonet, and then a hot ramrod was shoved into the fresh wounds. Seryozha died without saying a word to the executioners.
Lyuba Shevtsova! Comrades, I cannot calmly pronounce the name of this brave Komsomol member. She endured all the torture, but did not mention a single name of her fellow fighters. She told the executioners:
No matter how much you torture me, you will not be able to learn anything from me.
With the pride of my mother, I pronounce the names of Vanya Zemnukhov, Zhenya Moshkov, Uli Gromova, Shura Dubrovina, Anatoly Popov, Zhenya Shepelev and many, many others: they died heroes. No amount of torture forced them to hand over their comrades. Tolya Popov, when asked by the police chief: “What did you do?”, answered:
I won’t say what we did, but it’s a pity that we didn’t do enough!
The chief of police asked my Oleg a question:
What made you join the partisans?
Love for the Motherland and hatred for enemies. You won't force us to live on our knees. We'd rather die standing. There are more of us and we will win!
Oleg behaved courageously and fearlessly in prison. The letters I received from him were cheerful, and, as always, he tried to convince me that nothing would happen to him. He calmed me down and even joked. He told the guys:
Don’t show that it’s hard for us to part with life. After all, these barbarians will not have mercy, but we are dying for a great cause - for the Motherland, and the Motherland will take revenge for us. Let's sing, guys!
Exhausted from torture, tormented, they sang, sang in spite of their tormentors, executioners.
Oleg was sent from the police to the gendarmerie. And there he did not lose courage. He loved life. He wanted to live. Together with two comrades, he prepared an escape. They broke the grate and fled, but were unsuccessful. The police caught them, and the heroes were executed in the basement of the hospital.
When I found the corpse of my dear son, he was mutilated beyond recognition.
Oleg was not even 17 years old at that time, but his hair turned gray from everything he experienced in the Gestapo. The executioners gouged out his eye, cut his cheek with a bayonet, and knocked out the entire back of his head with the butt of a machine gun.
My dear friends! My heart stops when I remember what the executioners did to my son and to dozens of similar young Krasnodon residents. May the Germans be damned! Let the specter of terrible executions hover over them. May they all suffer a terrible inevitable death!
Dear comrades! I, the mother of Oleg Koshevoy, make an appeal - do not spare your strength, help the front with honest and selfless work. Defend the freedom of your native country from the German barbarians, do not spare your strength and life in this struggle, just as my son Oleg and his comrades did not spare it. My son, just like you, loved life, loved, like you, to laugh and sing, but in difficult times, in difficult hours of testing, his heart did not tremble. He fearlessly rebelled against his enslavers and dedicated himself to the great cause of liberation. native land your young life.
Oleg told me many times that the brave die once, but cowards die many times.
I am speaking to you on behalf of all parents of members of the underground Komsomol organization "Young Guard". I urge you: help the Red Army soldiers mercilessly destroy the Germans, destroy them like the very last reptiles. With the voice of a mother, I call on you to take merciless revenge on the Germans.
MY COMRADES
VALERIYA BORTS, member of the underground Komsomol organization "Young Guard".
"Komsomolskaya Pravda" dated 16.IX-1943
I would like to talk about my friends and comrades, members of the underground Komsomol organization "Young Guard", with whom I worked during the days of the German occupation of the city of Krasnodon. Many, many years will pass, but with deep emotion I will remember the names of those who did not submit to the Germans, who went underground during the dark days of the occupation, who burned warehouses, blew up bridges, and did not give the Germans an hour of rest on our land. I am proud that my comrades - the leaders and organizers of the Young Guard - received the title of Hero of the Soviet Union. The government highly appreciated their services to the Motherland.
I would like to briefly talk about the comrades who died for the happiness of the people.
On the black day of July 20, 1942, the Germans entered Krasnodon. Residents of the city learned what the German “new order” was. In the first days, the occupiers buried fifty-eight people alive in the city park. All the pits of the quarries around our rock were filled with the corpses of innocent people. How could Soviet youth respond to these atrocities? We saw blood and the faces of people brutally executed by the Germans, distorted in death horror. We saw children, women; old people mutilated by the bayonets of German soldiers. Only those who saw this with their own eyes can understand how great our hatred of the Germans was. Hatred knows no words. We gritted our teeth, we went underground, organized our own detachment - a detachment of people's avengers and called it "Young Guard".
We decided from the very first days to act boldly and persistently. It couldn't be any other way. The leaders and organizers of the Young Guard were brave, strong-willed Komsomol members, stubbornly pursuing their goal.
One day, a group of prisoners of war were being led along the street - ragged, hungry. Residents brought them bread, but the guards threw the bread into the mud. One Romanian hit a prisoner in the face because he wanted to pick up potatoes. We were nearby at the time. Leonid Dadyshev grabbed a stone and threw it at the Romanian. The soldier ran after him. At this time, Sergei Tyulenin, Oleg Koshevoy and I took away three prisoners.
I remember my fallen comrades and their courageous, strong images rise before me. Here is Ulyana Gromova - a slender, beautiful girl. She completed her tenth year and studied well. The German came and everything went to pieces. Let alone study, it is impossible to live under the Germans. Ulyana often said: “It’s better to die than to be a slave. If I get caught by the Germans, I won’t say a word to them.” And she died like a heroine, torture did not break her, she did not betray her comrades who were still free then with a single word. It used to be that in difficult moments Ulyana would smile warmly and joyfully, and all the hard things would go far away, and strength and energy would appear again. We loved her, took care of her, and each of us always found sympathy with her. Even in prison she did not change, she was just as cheerful, cheerful and thus supported everyone who was sitting in the cell with her.
Lyuba Shevtsova. A cheerful girl with blue eyes, lively, perky, tireless. If she received a task from headquarters, she took it on with ardor. She infected us all with her courage and audacity.
In prison, after torture that only the Germans are capable of, Lyuba told her comrades: “I don’t care about dying, and I want to die honestly and nobly.” Lyuba died a hero... Just the thought that Lyuba is no more makes you feel like an orphan.
Sergei Tyulenin, a 17-year-old boy with an open face and stubborn features, was known in the organization as a glorious and fighting comrade. He was a very persistent man; he always got what he wanted. A strong character- you can’t bend this. And they didn’t bend him. The executioners used hot irons to break his hands and gouge out his eye, but Sergei Tyulenin did not say a word.
Combat Chief of Staff! How good and warm it was with him, how he rejoiced at his luck, how he straightened up when danger approached! Brave and adventurous, he was our favorite. His martyrdom in the hearts of the surviving Young Guards will always be a call for revenge.
I knew Oleg Koshevoy even before the war. He was very inquisitive, interested in everything and loved music. True, our lessons were progressing poorly, but this, perhaps, rather depended on the teacher. I had a large library at home. Oleg, as we jokingly said, swallowed it whole. He took several books at once, and returned them three or four days later.
Oleg looked about 20 years old; he looked physically strong and healthy. In fact, he was not even 17 years old. His most characteristic features were determination, enterprise, and perseverance. We already knew: Oleg said it means it will be done. He was a wonderful comrade - sensitive, reliable. Oleg wrote poetry, had a kind, good heart; but when it came to the Germans, he was angry and merciless. Before his death, Oleg said: “We did not live on our knees, and we will die standing.” I will never forget these words from him. Oleg was our conscience.
Vanya Zemnukhov enjoyed great love in our organization. So it seems that a slightly stooped young man with bright and intelligent eyes will now enter the room and start speaking, and he will speak well and intelligently. And every time we looked at him, we felt like teenagers; I wanted to work hard to earn the right to be friends with him. We were amazed at Vanya Zemnukhov’s calmness in moments of danger, as if it didn’t concern him, as if he had nothing to do with it. But this was not simple carelessness or apathy. No, in this calmness we saw strength, the ability to courageously face difficulty, meet it halfway and win. This is how we knew him in the days of our struggle, and this is how he remained until the last second of his life.
I remember well Alexandra Bondareva, a girl of average height, with dark eyes, lively and regular facial features. Sasha sang and danced very well. At first glance it seemed that she was just a cheerful girl, but it only seemed so. She never refused dangerous assignments and knew how to go on risky business with a joke. She openly and proudly accepted death at the hands of the executioner.
In the name of the freedom of the Motherland, my friends fought, sparing neither strength nor life. In the name of liberating the Motherland, the surviving Young Guards continue to fight in the ranks of the Red Army.
I appeal to the officers and soldiers of the Red Army as a member of the underground Komsomol organization "Young Guard": take revenge, comrades, for the death of those who died but remained faithful to their Motherland. The blood of my tortured comrades calls for revenge. Take revenge! This is me saying, a simple Soviet girl who saw with her own eyes what the “new order” of the Germans was.
* * *
Organizers of the Krasnodon Komsomol underground
Victor Tretyakevich
Oleg Koshevoy
Ivan Zemnukhov
Ulyana Gromova
Sergey Tyulenin
Lyubov Shevtsova
Ivan Turkenich
Vasily Levashov
Members of the Young Guard
Lidia Androsova
Georgy Harutyunyants
Vasily Bondarev
Alexandra Bondareva
Vasily Prokofievich Borisov
Vasily Mefodievich Borisov
Valeria Borts
Yuri Vitsenovsky
Nina Gerasimova
Boris Glavan
Mikhail Grigoriev
Vasily Gukov
Leonid Dadyshev
Alexandra Dubrovina
Antonina Dyachenko
Antonina Eliseenko
Vladimir Zhdanov
Nikolay Zhukov
Vladimir Zagoruiko
Antonina Ivanikhina
Liliya Ivanikhina
Nina Ivantsova
Olga Ivantsova
Nina Kezikova
Evgenia Kiikova
Anatoly Kovalev
Klavdiya Kovaleva
Vladimir Kulikov
Sergey Levashov
Anatoly Lopukhov
Gennady Lukashov
Vladimir Lukyanchenko
Antonina Mashchenko
Nina Minaeva
Nikolay Mironov
Evgeniy Moshkov
Anatoly Nikolaev
Dmitry Ogurtsov
Anatoly Orlov
Semyon Ostapenko
Vladimir Osmukhin
Pavel Palaguta
Maya Peglivanova
Nadezhda Petlya
Nadezhda Petrachkova
Victor Petrov
Vasily Pirozhok
Yuri Polyansky
Anatoly Popov
Vladimir Rogozin
Ilya Savenkov
Angelina Samoshina
Stepan Safonov
Anna Sopova
Nina Startseva
Victor Subbotin
Nikolay Sumskoy
Vasily Tkachev
Demyan Fomin
Evgeny Shepelev
Alexander Shishchenko
Mikhail Shishchenko
Georgy Shcherbakov
Nadezhda Shcherbakova
Radiy Yurkin
Adult underground fighters of Krasnodon
Philip Petrovich Lyutikov
Nikolai Petrovich Barakov
Andrey Andreevich Valko
Gerasim Tikhonovich Vinokurov
Daniil Sergeevich Vystavkin
Maria Georgievna Dymchenko
Nikolai Nikolaevich Rumyantsev
Nikolay Grigorievich Taluev
Tikhon Nikolaevich Sarancha
Nalina Georgievna Sokolova
Georgy Matveevich Solovyov
Stepan Grigorievich Yakovlev
* * *
DECREE
ON THE AWARD OF THE TITLE OF HERO OF THE SOVIET UNION TO THE ORGANIZERS AND LEADERS OF THE UNDERGROUND KOMSOMOL ORGANIZATION "YOUNG GUARDS"
For outstanding services in the organization and leadership of the underground Komsomol organization "Young Guard" and for the manifestation of personal courage and heroism in the fight against the German invaders, be awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union with the Order of Lenin and the Gold Star medal:
Gromova Ulyana Matveevna.
Zemnukhov Ivan Alexandrovich.
Koshevoy Oleg Vasilievich.
Tyulenin Sergei Gavriilovich.
Shevtsova Lyubov Grigorievna.
Chairman of the Presidium
Supreme Soviet of the USSR
M. KALININ.
Secretary of the Presidium
Supreme Soviet of the USSR
A. GORKIN.
Moscow, Kremlin. September 13, 1943
UKA3
Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR
ON AWARDING ORDERS OF MEMBERS OF THE UNDERGROUND KOMSOMOL ORGANIZATION "YOUNG GUARDS"
For valor and courage shown in the fight against German invaders behind enemy lines, award:
ORDER OF THE RED BANNER
1. Popov Anatoly Vladimirovich.
2. Sumsky Nikolai Stepanovich.
3. Turkenich Ivan Vasilievich.
ORDER OF THE PATRIOTIC WAR, FIRST DEGREE
1. Androsova Lydia Makarovna.
2. Bondarev Vasily Ivanovich.
3. Bondareva Alexandra Ivanovna.
4. Nina Nikolaevna Gerasimova.
5. Glovan Boris Grigorievich.
6. Dadyshev Leonid Alekseevich.
7. Dubrovina Alexandra Emelyanovna.
8. Eliseenko Antonina Zakharovna.
9. Zhdanov Vladimir Alexandrovich.
10. Ivanikhin Antonina Aleksandrovna.
11. Ivanikhin Liliya Alexandrovna.
12. Kiykova Evgenia Ivanovna.
13. Kulikov Vladimir Tikhonovich.
14. Levashov Sergei Mikhailovich.
16. Lukashev Gennady Alexandrovich.
16. Lukyanchenko Viktor Dmitrievich.
17. Mashchenko Antonina Mikhailovna.
18. Minaeva Nina Petrovna.
19. Moshkova Evgeniy Yakovlevich.
20. Nikolaev Anatoly Georgievich.
21. Orlov Anatoly Alexandrovich.
22. Ostapenko Semyon Markovich.
23. Osmukhin Vladimir Andreevich.
24. Peglivanova Maya Konstantinovna.
25. Loop Nadezhda Stepanovna.
26. Petrov Viktor Vladimirovich.
27. Pie by Vasily Markovich.
28. Rogozin Vladimir Pavlovich.
29. Samoshina Angelina Tikhonovna.
30. Safonov Stepan Stepanovich.
31. Sopova Anna Dmitrievna.
32. Startseva Nina Illarionovna.
33. Fomina Demyan Yakovlevich.
34. Shishchenko Alexander Tarasovich.
35. Shcherbakov Georgy Kuzmich.
ORDER OF THE RED STAR
1. Arutyunyants Georgy Minaevich.
2. Wrestler Valeria Davydovna.
3. Ivantsova Nina Mikhailovna.
4. Ivantsova Olga Ivanovna.
5. Mikhail Tarasovich Shishchenko.
6. Yurkina Radiy Petrovich.
Chairman of the Presidium
Supreme Soviet of the USSR
M. KALININ
Secretary of the Presidium
Supreme Soviet of the USSR
A. GORKIN
DECREE
Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR
ABOUT THE AWARDING OF ELENA NIKOLAEVNA KOSHEVA WITH THE ORDER OF THE PATRIOTIC WAR, SECOND DEGREE
For active assistance provided to the underground Komsomol organization "Young Guard" in the fight against the German invaders, award Elena Nikolaevna Kosheva with the Order of the Patriotic War, second degree.
Chairman of the Presidium
Supreme Soviet of the USSR
M. KALININ.
Secretary of the Presidium
Supreme Soviet of the USSR
A. GORKIN.
Moscow Kremlin. September 13, 1943
In Soviet times, ships and schools were named in honor of these boys and girls, monuments were erected to them, books, songs and films were dedicated to their feat. Their actions were cited as an example of the mass heroism of Komsomol youth in the Great Patriotic War.
Then, in the wake of the post-reform boom of “glasnost,” many people surfaced who wanted to “reconsider” the services of young heroes to the fatherland. Active myth-making has done its job: today, a considerable number of modern people associate the word “Young Guards” with the youth wing of a popular political party rather than with the fallen Komsomol members of the Great Patriotic War. And in the homeland of heroes, in general, part of the population raises the names of their executioners on the flag...
Meanwhile, every honest person should know the true story of the feat and the true tragedy of the death of the “Young Guards”.
School amateur club. In a Cossack costume - Seryozha Tyulenin, a future underground worker.
“Young Guard” is an underground anti-fascist Komsomol organization that operated during the Great Patriotic War from September 1942 to January 1943 in the city of Krasnodon, Voroshilovgrad region of the Ukrainian SSR. The organization was created shortly after the occupation of the city of Krasnodon by Nazi Germany, which began on July 20, 1942.
The first underground youth groups to fight the fascist invasion arose in Krasnodon immediately after its occupation by German troops in July 1942. The core of one of them consisted of soldiers of the Red Army, who, by the will of military fate, found themselves surrounded in the rear of the Germans, such as soldiers Evgeny Moshkov, Ivan Turkenich, Vasily Gukov, sailors Dmitry Ogurtsov, Nikolai Zhukov, Vasily Tkachev.
At the end of September 1942, underground youth groups united into a single organization “Young Guard”, the name of which was proposed by Sergei Tyulenin.
Ivan Turkenich was appointed commander of the organization. The members of the headquarters were Georgy Arutyunyants - responsible for information, Ivan Zemnukhov - chief of staff, Oleg Koshevoy - responsible for conspiracy and security, Vasily Levashov - commander of the central group, Sergei Tyulenin - commander of the combat group. Later, Ulyana Gromova and Lyubov Shevtsova were brought into the headquarters. The overwhelming majority of the Young Guard members were Komsomol members; temporary Komsomol certificates for them were printed in the organization’s underground printing house along with leaflets.
Younger guys aged 14-17 were messengers and scouts. The Krasnodon Komsomol youth underground included about 100 people, more than 70 were very active. According to the lists of underground fighters and partisans arrested by the Germans, the organization includes forty-seven boys and twenty-four girls. The youngest of the prisoners was fourteen years old, and fifty-five of them never turned nineteen...
Lyuba Shevtsova with friends (pictured first on the left in the second row)
The most ordinary guys, no different from the same boys and girls of our country, the guys made friends and quarreled, studied and fell in love, ran to dances and chased pigeons. They participated in school clubs and sports clubs, played stringed musical instruments, wrote poetry, and many drew well. We studied in different ways - some were excellent students, while others had difficulty mastering the granite of science. There were also a lot of tomboys. We dreamed about our future adult life. They wanted to become pilots, engineers, lawyers, some were going to go to a theater school, and others to a pedagogical institute...
The “Young Guard” was as multinational as the population of these southern regions of the USSR. Russians, Ukrainians (there were also Cossacks among them), Armenians, Belarusians, Jews, Azerbaijanis and Moldovans, ready to come to each other’s aid at any moment, fought the fascists.
The Germans occupied Krasnodon on July 20, 1942. And almost immediately the first leaflets appeared in the city, a new bathhouse began to burn, already ready for German barracks. It was Seryozha Tyulenin who began to act. There is still only one...
On August 12, 1942 he turned seventeen. Sergei wrote leaflets on pieces of old newspapers, and the police often found them even in their pockets. He began to slowly steal weapons from the policemen, without even doubting that they would definitely come in handy. And he was the first to attract a group of guys ready to fight. At first it consisted of eight people. However, by the first days of September, several groups were already operating in Krasnodon, practically unrelated to one another - in total there were about 25 people in them.
The birthday of the underground Komsomol organization “Young Guard” was September 30: then a plan was adopted to create a detachment, specific actions of underground work were outlined, a headquarters was created, the active members of the organization were divided into fighting fives. For the purpose of secrecy, each member of the five knew only his comrades and commander, being unaware of the full composition of the headquarters.
The “Young Guards” put up leaflets - first handwritten ones, then they took out a printing press and opened a real printing house. 30 series of leaflets were published with a total circulation of about 5 thousand copies. The content is mainly calls for sabotage of forced labor and fragments of Sovinformburo reports received thanks to a secretly stored radio receiver.
On occasion, Komsomol members stole weapons from Germans and policemen - at the time of the defeat of the organization, 15 machine guns, 80 rifles, 300 grenades, about 15 thousand cartridges, 10 pistols, 65 kilograms of explosives and several hundred meters of fuse cord had already been accumulated in its secret warehouse. With this arsenal, Oleg Koshevoy was going to arm the Komsomol partisan detachment “Molot”, which he intended to soon separate from the organization and redeploy outside the city to openly fight the enemy, but these plans were no longer destined to come true...
The guys burned a barn with bread that the Germans had taken by force from the population. On the day of the 25th anniversary of the October Revolution, red flags were hung around the city of Krasnodon, which the girls had sewn the day before from the red curtains of the stage of the former House of Culture. Several dozen prisoners of war were rescued from the camp.
Most of the Young Guard's actions took place at night. By the way, there was a curfew in Krasnodon during the entire period of occupation, and a simple walk around the city after six in the evening was punishable by arrest followed by execution. The Komsomol members also tried to establish contact with the partisan detachments operating in Rostov region. However, it was not possible to find the Voroshilovgrad partisans and underground fighters. First of all, because in the forests the partisans kept a good secret, and in the city the underground was already defeated by the enemy and virtually ceased to exist.
This is where the first myth arises, created during the era of work on the famous novel by the writer Alexander Fadeev. As if the Komsomol members of Krasnodon fought against fascism exclusively as messengers and saboteurs under the leadership of an underground party organization led by Nikolai Barakov and Philip Lyutikov. Senior comrades develop an operation plan - Komsomol members, risking their lives, carry it out...
By the way, in the first edition of Fadeev’s novel there is no mention of the “adult” communist underground. Only by the second edition the author “strengthened” the connections between the Komsomol and the “adult” underground and introduced a scene of joint preparation for sabotage in one of the mines that the Germans wanted to launch.
In fact, the communist miners Barakov and Lyutikov really planned to disrupt the launch of the mine. But - completely independent of the “Young Guards”. The guys also prepared sabotage - on their own - and it was they who carried out it.
For the Nazis, coal was a strategic raw material, so they sought to put at least one of the Krasnodon mines into operation. Using the labor of prisoners of war and the force of driven local residents, the Germans prepared Sorokin mine No. 1 for launch.
But literally on the eve of the start of work at night, underground Komsomol member Yuri Yatsinovsky entered the pile driver and damaged the cage lift: he misregulated the mechanism and cut the lifting ropes. As a result, when the lift was launched, the cage with mining tools, in which there were also German foreman, and policemen with weapons, and forced miners, and several strikebreakers who voluntarily agreed to work for the enemy, collapsed into the mine shaft. I feel sorry for the dead slaves of fascism. But the launch of the mine was disrupted; until the end of the occupation, the Germans were unable to raise the cage and clear the shaft pit of the collapsed parts of the lift. As a result, during the six months of their rule, the Germans were never able to remove a ton of coal from Krasnodon.
Krasnodon Komsomol members also thwarted the mass deportation of their peers to Germany. The Young Guards introduced one of the underground workers into the labor exchange, who copied the list of young people compiled by the Germans. Having learned about the number and timing of the departure of the train of “Ostarbeiters,” the guys burned the stock exchange with all the documentation, and warned potential farm laborers of the need to flee the city. This action infuriated the police and the German commandant's office, and almost two thousand Krasnodon residents were spared from German hard labor.
Even such a seemingly purely demonstrative action as hanging red flags on November 7 and congratulating residents on the 25th anniversary of the October Revolution was of great importance for the occupied city. The residents, eagerly awaiting liberation, realized: “They remember us, we are not forgotten by our people!”
Oleg Koshevoy
In addition, the “Young Guards” recaptured more than 500 head of livestock confiscated from the population from the horse-riding police. Animals were returned to those who could, the rest of the cows, horses and goats were simply distributed to the population of the surrounding farms, who were very poor after being robbed by German marauders. How many peasant families were saved from hunger thanks to such a “partisan gift” is now difficult to even calculate.
The real combat operation was the organization, jointly with the partisans, of a mass escape of prisoners of war from a temporary camp organized by the invaders outside the city in the open air. Those of the Red Army soldiers who were not yet completely exhausted from wounds and beatings joined the partisan detachment. Those unable to hold weapons were sheltered in their homes by villagers - and everyone left. Thus, the lives of almost 50 people were saved.
The German telephone wires were regularly cut. Moreover, the restless Seryozha Tyulenev came up with or read somewhere about a cunning method: the wire was cut in two places lengthwise with a thin knife. Then, using a crochet hook similar to a crochet hook, a section of the copper core was removed between the cuts. Outwardly, the wire looked intact, until you feel it along its entire length - you simply cannot find these thinnest cuts. Therefore, it was not easy for German signalmen to repair the communication gap - most often they were forced to re-lay the line.
Basically, the guys acted secretly, the only armed action of the underground took place on the eve of the New Year 1943 - the Young Guards made a daring raid on German vehicles with New Year's gifts for Wehrmacht soldiers and officers. The cargo was confiscated. In the future, German gifts, consisting mainly of food and warm clothes, were planned to be distributed to Krasnodon families with children. The Komsomol members decided to slowly sell the cigarettes, which were also gifts, at a local flea market, and use the proceeds for the needs of the organization.
Isn’t this what ruined the young underground fighters? In 1998, one of the surviving “Young Guards” Vasily Levashov put forward his version of the disclosure of the organization. According to his recollections, some of the cigarettes were given to a boy of 12-13 years old who knew the underground, who went to the market to exchange tobacco for food. During the raid, the guy was caught and didn’t have time to throw away the goods. They began to interrogate him, and with cruelty. And the teenager “split” under the beatings, admitting that his older friend, Genka Pocheptsov, gave him the cigarettes. On the same day, the Pocheptsovs’ home was searched, Gennady himself was arrested and also tortured.
According to Levashov’s version, it was Gennady, who was tortured in the presence of the named father - Vasily Grigorievich Gromov, the head of mine No. 1-bis and part-time secret agent of the Krasnodon police - on January 2, 1943, began to admit to participating in the underground. The Germans extracted from the guy all the information he possessed, and the commandant’s office became aware of the names of those underground fighters whose group operated in the Pervomaika area.
Then the Germans took the search for the partisans seriously, and within a few days two high school students were arrested because they did not have time to safely hide the bags of gifts. Levashov did not name the names of these guys, as well as his younger friend Gena Pocheptsov.
Levashov’s version can be doubted because, according to his memoirs, Gena Pocheptsov began speaking on January 2. And on the first day, the Germans took three “Young Guards” - Evgeny Moshkov, Viktor Tretyakevich and Vanya Zemnukhov. Most likely, this was the result of an investigation that the Germans conducted after the Komsomol attack on a convoy carrying Christmas gifts.
On the day of the arrest of three members of the Young Guard headquarters, a secret meeting of Komsomol members took place. And at it a decision was made: all “Young Guards” should immediately leave the city, and the leaders of the combat groups should not spend the night at home that night. All underground workers were notified of the headquarters’ decision through liaison officers. But the entire punitive apparatus has already begun to move. Mass arrests began...
Why did most of the “Young Guards” not follow the orders of headquarters? After all, this first disobedience cost almost all of them their lives? There can be only one answer: during the days of mass arrests, the Germans spread information throughout the city that they knew the full composition of the “gangster partisan gang.” And that if any of the suspects leave the city, their families will be shot en masse.
The guys knew that if they ran away, their relatives would be arrested in their place. Therefore, they remained faithful children to the end and did not try to protect themselves by the death of their parents,” surviving underground fighter Vladimir Minaev later said in an interview with Komsomolskaya Pravda journalists.
Only twelve “Young Guards,” at the insistence of their relatives, managed to escape in those days. But later, two of them - Sergei Tyulenin and Oleg Koshevoy - were nevertheless arrested. The four cells of the city police jail were packed to capacity. In one they kept girls, in the other three – boys.
No matter how much they have previously written about the Young Guard, as a rule, researchers spare the feelings of readers. They write carefully - that Komsomol members were beaten, sometimes, following Fadeev, they talk about bloody stars carved on the body. The reality is even worse... But none of the popular publications mentions the names of the torturers in detail - only common phrases: “fascist monsters, occupiers and accomplices of the occupiers.” However, documents from the regional department of state security indicate that mass torture and executions were not carried out by ordinary Wehrmacht soldiers. For the role of executioners, the Germans used either special units SS – Einsatzgruppen, or police units recruited from the local population.
The SS Einsatzgruppe arrived in the Lugansk region in September 1942, the headquarters was located in Starobelsk, the special detachment of executioners was commanded by SS Brigadefuehrer Major General of Police Max Thomas. However, he, a professional torturer, preferred to place his soldiers in the cordon of the prison, dispatching only three hefty soldiers to punish the prisoners with rubber whips. And, in fact, the reprisal against the underground was carried out mainly by policemen of the local Krasnodon branch. Cossacks, as they called themselves...
Leaflet "Young Guard"
What these monsters - both the SS men and their local henchmen - did to the young partisans is scary to even read. But we have to. Because without this it is impossible to fully understand either the horrors of fascism or the heroism of those who dared to oppose themselves to it.
Almost immediately after the massacre of the teenagers, Krasnodon was liberated from the fascist invaders - in February 1943. Within two days, NKVD investigators began arresting individuals involved in the death of the underground organization. As a result, lists of people directly involved in the crimes were compiled - both Germans and local Nazi servants. Hence the special scrupulousness of the investigation and the search for criminals.
Lidiya Androsova was arrested on January 12. According to Pocheptsov's denunciation. It was the police who took her - and according to the testimony of the girls’ parents, during the search they mercilessly looted the house, not even disdaining women’s underwear. The girl spent five days in the police custody... When Lida’s body was removed from the pit of the mine where she was executed, her relatives identified her daughter only by the remnants of her clothes. The girl’s face was mutilated, one eye was cut out, her ears were cut off, her hand was chopped off with an ax, her back was striped with whips so that her ribs were visible through the cut skin. A piece of the rope loop with which Lida was dragged to execution remained on her neck.
Lida Androsova
Kolya Sumsky, whom his friends considered Lida’s first friend and even boyfriend, was taken on January 4 at the mine, where he was picking out coal crumbs from a waste heap. Ten days later they were sent to Krasnodon, and four days later they were executed. The teenager’s body was also mutilated: traces of beatings, broken arms and legs, cut off ears...
The same police arrested Alexandra Bondareva and her brother Vasily on January 11. The torture began on the first day. The brother and sister were kept in separate cells. On January 15, Vasya Bondarev was led to execution. He was not allowed to say goodbye to his sister. The young man was thrown alive into the same pit of mine No. 5 where Lida Androsova was killed. On the evening of January 16, Shura was also taken to execution. Before pushing the girl into the mine, the police beat her again with rifle butts until she fell into the snow. Vasya and Shura’s mother Praskovya Titovna, when she saw the bodies of her children raised from the mine, almost died of a heart attack.
Shura Bondareva
Seventeen-year-old Nina Gerasimova was executed on January 11. From the protocol of identification of the body by relatives: “A girl of 16-17 years old, thin build, was thrown into a pit almost naked - in her underwear. The left arm is broken; the whole body, and especially the chest, are black from beatings, the right side of the face is completely disfigured” (RGASPI Fund M-1, inventory 53, item 329.)
Close friends Borya Glavan and Zhenya Shepelev were executed together - tied face to face with barbed wire. During torture, Boris's face was smashed with a rifle butt, both hands were cut off, and they stabbed him in the stomach with a bayonet. Evgeniy’s head was pierced, and his hands were also chopped off with an axe.
Borya Glavan
Mikhail Grigoriev tried to escape on January 31 along the road to the place of execution. Pushing the guard aside, he rushed across the virgin snow into the darkness... The police quickly overtook the teenager, exhausted from the beatings, but finally dragged him to the mine and threw him into the pit alive. The women who went to the waste heap for coal chips heard for several days that Misha remained alive for a long time, groaning in the trunk, but they could not help - the pit was guarded by a police patrol.
Vasily Gukov, executed on January 15, was identified by his mother by the scar on his chest. The young man's face was trampled under police boots, his teeth were knocked out, and his eyes were cut out.
Seventeen-year-old Leonid Dadyshev was tortured for ten days. They mercilessly flogged him and cut off the hand on his right hand. Lenya was shot with a pistol and thrown into a pit on January 15.
Zhenya Shepelev
Maya Peglivanova experienced such tortures before her death that no inquisitor would have imagined. The girl's nipples were cut off with a knife and both legs were broken.
Maya's friend Shura Dubrovina probably could have even been saved - the Germans were never able to prove her connection with the underground. In prison, the girl looked after the wounded Maya until the very end and was literally forced to carry her friend to execution in her arms. The police also cut Alexandra Dubrovina's chest with knives, and then right next to the mine shaft, they killed the girl with the butt of a rifle.
Zhenya Kiikova, arrested on January 13, gave her family a note from prison. “Dear mom, don’t worry about me - I’m fine. Kiss grandpa for me, feel sorry for yourself. Your daughter is Zhenya.” This was the last letter - during the next interrogation, all the girl’s fingers were broken. In five days at the police station, Zhenya turned gray like an old woman. She was executed together with her friend Tosya Dyachenko, who had been arrested the day before, tied up. The friends were then buried in the same coffin.
Maya Peglivanova
Antonina Eliseenko was arrested on January 13 at two in the morning. The police burst into the room where Antonina was sleeping and ordered her to get dressed. The girl refused to dress in front of men. The police were forced to leave. The girl was executed on January 18. Antonina's body was disfigured, with her genitals, eyes, ears cut out...
“Tosya Eliseenko, 22 years old, was executed in a pit. During torture, she was forced to sit on a hot potbelly stove; her body was removed from the mine with 3rd and 4th degree burns on her thighs and buttocks.”
Tosya Eliseenko
Vladimir Zhdanov was taken from his home on January 3. He also gave his family a note, hiding it in the bloody laundry that was being taken out for washing: “Hello, dears... I’m still alive. My fate is unknown. I don't know anything about the others. I am sitting separately from everyone in solitary confinement. Goodbye, they’ll probably kill me soon... I kiss you deeply.” On January 16, Vladimir, along with other Young Guard members, was taken to the pit. The square was cordoned off by police. They brought 2-3 people to the place of execution, shot the prisoners in the head and threw them into the mine. Tied up, having suffered severe beatings with a rubber whip and a Cossack whip, Vovka Zhdanov at the last moment tried to push the chief of police Solikovsky, who was observing the execution, into the pit with his head. Luckily for the executioner, he stood on his feet, and the executioners immediately began to torture Vovka himself further, and then shot him. When the young man’s body was lifted from the mine, the parents fainted: “Volodya Zhdanov, 17 years old, was pulled out with a laceration in the left temporal region from point-blank shooting, the fingers of both hands were broken and twisted, there were bruises under the nails, two stripes three times wide were cut on his back centimeter long, twenty-five centimeters, eyes gouged out and ears cut off” (Young Guard Museum, f. 1, no. 36).
At the beginning of January, Kolya Zhukov was also arrested. After torture, on January 16, 1943, the guy was shot and thrown into the pit of mine No. 5: “Nikolai Zhukov, 20 years old, was taken out without ears, tongue, teeth, his arm was cut off at the elbow and his foot was cut off” (Young Guard Museum, f. 1, d. 73).
Vladimir Zagoruiko was arrested on January 28. Police Chief Solikovsky personally took part in the arrest. On the way to prison, the chief policeman was sitting in a cart, Vladimir was walking through the snowdrifts, tied up, barefoot, in only underwear, in a frost of minus 15. The police pushed the guy with rifle butts, pinned him with bayonets and offered to warm up... by dancing: “Dance, red-bellied, they say you’re before the war I studied in a dance ensemble!” During the torture, Volodya had his arms twisted at the shoulders on a rack and hung by his hair. They threw him into the pit alive.
Vova Zhdanov
Antonina Ivanikhina was arrested on January 11. Until the last hour, the girl looked after her comrades, weakened after torture. Execution - January 16. “Tonya Ivanikhina, 19 years old, was taken out of the mine without eyes, her head was tied with a scarf, under which a wreath of barbed wire was tightly placed on her head, her breasts were cut out” (Young Guard Museum, f. 1, no. 75).
Antonina's sister Lilia was arrested on January 10 and executed on the 16th. The surviving third sister, Lyubasha, who was very young during the war, recalled: “One day our distant relative, the wife of a policeman, came to us and said: “My husband was placed as a watchman near mine No. 5. I don’t know if yours are there or not, but My husband found combs and combs... Look at the things, maybe you’ll find your own. Most likely, don’t look for your daughters, probably yours are there, in the pit.” When they were shooting, my grandfather, who was collecting coal, was forced to leave. But he climbed onto the waste heap and saw from above: some girls jumped on their own, not wanting to be touched by the hands of the executioners, some friends or lovers jumped hugging each other, the guys sometimes resisted - they spat at the police, cursed them with the last words, pushed them, tried to drag them into the trunk the mines behind them... When the Red Army soldiers later dismantled the mine, they brought the dead sisters. Lily's hand was cut off and her eyes were blindfolded with wire. Tonya is also mutilated. Then they brought coffins, and our Ivanikhins were put in one coffin.”
Tonya Ivanikhina
Klavdiya Kovaleva was arrested in early January and executed on the 16th: “Klavdiya Kovaleva, 17 years old, was taken out swollen from beatings. The right breast was cut off, the soles of the feet were burned, the left arm was cut off, the head was tied with a scarf, and black traces of beatings were visible on the body. The girl’s body was found ten meters from the trunk, between the trolleys, she was probably thrown alive and was able to crawl away from the pit” (Young Guard Museum, f. 1, no. 10.)
Antonina Mashchenko was executed on January 16. Antonina’s mother Maria Alexandrovna recalled: “As I found out later, my beloved child was also executed with terrible torture. When Antonina’s corpse was pulled out of the pit along with other Young Guards, it was difficult to identify my girl in it. She had barbed wire in her braids and half of her full hair was missing. My daughter was hung up and tortured by animals.”
Klava Kovaleva. Fragment of a family portrait with mother and uncle
Nina Minaeva was executed on January 16. The underground worker’s brother Vladimir recalled: “...My sister was recognized by her woolen gaiters - the only clothing that remained on her. Nina’s arms were broken, one eye was knocked out, there were shapeless wounds on her chest, her whole body was covered in black stripes...”
Nina Minaeva
Police officers Krasnov and Kalitventsev led Evgeniy Moshkov tied up around the city all night. It was severely frosty. The policemen brought Zhenka to the water intake well and began to dunk him in there on a rope. Into icy water. Dropped several times. Then Kalitventsev froze and brought everyone to his home. Moshkov was seated by the stove. They even gave me a cigarette. They drank the moonshine themselves, warmed up and took them out again... Zhenya was tortured all night, by dawn he could no longer move independently. The twenty-two-year-old “Young Guard,” a communist, nevertheless, choosing the right moment during the interrogation, hit the policeman. Then the fascist beasts hung Moshkov by his legs and kept him in this position until blood gushed from his nose and throat. They removed him and began interrogating him again. But Moshkov only spat in the executioner’s face. The enraged investigator who was torturing Moshkov hit him backhand. Exhausted by torture, the communist hero fell, hitting the back of his head on the door frame, and lost consciousness. They threw him into the pit unconscious, perhaps he had already died.
Zhenya Moshkov with friends (left)
Vladimir Osmukhin, who spent ten days in the hands of the police, was identified by sister Lyudmila from the remains of his clothes: “When I saw Vovochka, mutilated, almost completely headless, missing his left arm up to the elbow, I thought I was going crazy. I didn't believe it was him. He was wearing only one sock, and his other foot was completely bare. Instead of a belt, wear a warm scarf. No outerwear. The head is broken. The back of the head had completely fallen out, leaving only the face, on which only teeth remained. Everything else is mutilated. The lips are twisted, the mouth is torn, the nose is almost completely gone ... "
Viktor Petrov was arrested on January 6. On the night of January 15-16, he was thrown into a pit alive. Victor’s sister Natasha recalls: “When Vitya was taken out of the pit, he could have been about 80 years old. A gray-haired, emaciated old man... His left ear, nose, and both eyes were missing, his teeth were knocked out, hair remained only on the back of his head. There were black stripes around the neck, apparently traces of strangulation in a noose, all the fingers on the hands were finely broken, the skin on the soles of the feet was raised like a blister from a burn, there was a large deep wound on the chest, inflicted by a cold weapon. Obviously, it was inflicted while still in prison, because the jacket and shirt were not torn.”
Shura Dubrovina
Anatoly Popov was born on January 16. On his birthday, January 16, he was thrown into a pit alive. The last meeting of the Young Guard headquarters took place at Anatoly Popov’s apartment. From the protocol for examining the young man’s body: “Beaten, the fingers on his left hand and the foot on his right leg were cut off” (RGASPI F-1 Op.53 D.332.)
Angelina Samoshina was executed on January 16. From the protocol for examining the body: “Traces of torture were found on Angelina’s body: her arms were twisted, her ears were cut off, a star was carved on her cheek” (RGASPI. F. M-1. Op. 53. D. 331.). Geli’s mother, Anastasia Emelyanovna, wrote: “She sent a note from prison, where she wrote that they wouldn’t hand over a lot of food, that she felt good here, “like at a resort.” On January 18, they did not accept the transfer from us; they said that they were sent to a concentration camp. Nina Minaeva’s mother and I went to the camp in Dolzhanka, where they were not there. Then the policeman warned us not to go and look for us. But rumors spread that they were thrown into the pit of mine No. 5, where they were found. This is how my daughter died..."
Gelya Samoshina
Anna Sopova's parents - Dmitry Petrovich and Praskovya Ionovna - witnessed the torture of their daughter. Parents were specifically forced to watch this, in the hope that the older generation would persuade the young partisans to confess and hand over their comrades. The old miner recalled: “They started asking my daughter who she knew, who she had a connection with, what did she do? She was silent. They ordered her to undress - naked, in front of the police and her father... She turned pale - and did not move. And she was beautiful, her braids were huge, lush, down to her waist. They tore off her clothes, wrapped her dress over her head, laid her on the floor and began to whip her with a wire whip. She screamed terribly. And then, when they started beating her on her hands and head, she couldn’t stand it, poor thing, and asked for mercy. Then she fell silent again. Then Plokhikh - one of the main executioners of the police - hit her in the head with something...” Anya was lifted out of the pit half bald - in order to further torture the girl, they hung her on her own braid and tore out half of her hair.
Anya Sopova with friends by the sea (second from left)
Among the last to be lifted from the mine was Viktor Tretyakevich. His father, Joseph Kuzmich, in a thin patched coat, stood day after day, clutching the post, and did not take his eyes off the pit. And when they recognized his son - without a face, with a black and blue back, with crushed hands - he fell to the ground, as if knocked down. No traces of bullets were found on Victor’s body, which means they dumped him alive...
Nina Startseva was taken out of the pit on the third day after the execution - the girl almost did not live to see the liberation of the city. Mom recognized her by her hair and the embroidery on the sleeve of her shirt. Nina had needles driven under her fingers, strips of skin were cut on her chest, and her left side was burned with a hot iron. Before being thrown into the pit, the girl was shot in the back of the head.
Demyan Fomin, on whom a sketch of a leaflet was found during a search, was subjected to especially cruel torture and was executed by beheading. Before his death, the guy had all the skin cut off from his back in narrow strips. When asked what he was like, Dyoma’s mother Maria Frantsevna answered: “A kind, gentle, responsive son. I was interested in technology and dreamed of driving trains.”
Alexander Shishchenko was arrested on January 8, executed on the 16th: “The nose, ears, lips were cut off, arms were twisted, the whole body was cut up, shot in the head...”
Ulyana Gromova kept a diary right up to her execution, managing to smuggle the notebook even into the dungeon. The entry in it dated November 9, 1942: “It is much easier to see heroes die than to listen to the cries of some coward for mercy. Jack London". Executed on January 16. “Ulyana Gromova, 19 years old, a five-pointed star was carved on her back, her right arm was broken, her ribs were broken.”
Ulya Gromova
In total, at the end of January, the occupiers and police threw 71 people, alive or shot, into the pit of mine No. 5, among whom were both “Young Guards” and members of the underground party organization. Other members of the Young Guard, including Oleg Koshevoy, were shot on February 9 in the city of Rovenki in the Thunderous Forest.
In the liberated city of Krasnodon, there were many living witnesses to both the struggle of the “Young Guards” and their deaths.
Uli's letter from prison
The first document of the declassified archival criminal case is a statement from Mikhail Kuleshov addressed to the leadership of the regional NKVD department dated February 20, 1943, says Vasily Shkola. - Then the first investigative actions were carried out. The facts of brutal torture of young people, whose bodies were removed from the pit of mine No. 5, have been established. In the materials of interrogations of members of the organization who were still alive at that time and who were subjected to torture, there is a description of the office of the police officer of the city of Krasnodon Solikovsky. - It is said that there are whips and heavy objects, including wooden ones.
From the testimony of Captain Emil Renatus, who commanded the Krasnodon district gendarmerie during the occupation: “Those arrested, suspected of criminal activities and who refused to testify, were laid on a bench and beaten with rubber whips until they confessed. If previous measures did not produce results, they were transferred to a cold room, where they had to lie on an ice floor. The same arrested persons had their arms and legs tied behind their backs, hung in this position with their face to the ground and held until the arrested person confessed. Moreover, all these executions were accompanied by regular beatings.”
Krasnodon resident Nina Ganochkina said: “I and two other women, on the orders of the police, were cleaning the girls’ cell. They could not do the cleaning themselves, since they were constantly taken for interrogation, and after torture they could not even get up. I once saw how Ulya Gromova was interrogated. Ulya did not answer questions accompanied by abuse. Policeman Popov hit her on the head so that the comb holding the scythe broke. He shouts: “Pick it up!” She bent down, and the policeman began to hit her in the face and everywhere. I was already cleaning the floor in the corridor, and Ulya had just finished torturing her. She, having lost consciousness, was dragged along the corridor and thrown into a cell.”
Oleg Koshevoy
As the burgomaster of Krasnodon Vasily Statsenkov showed during interrogation after the war in 1949, over 70 people were arrested for involvement in the Young Guard in Krasnodon and the surrounding areas alone within a few days.
Walter Eichhorn, who as part of the gendarme group directly participated in the beatings and executions of members of the Young Guard, was found in Thuringia, where he worked... in a doll factory. Ernst-Emil Renatus, the former head of the German district gendarmerie in Krasnodon, who also tortured the “Young Guards” and ordered the police to gouge out the guys’ eyes, was also found and arrested in Germany.
From Eichhorn’s testimony (9.III.1949):
“While still in Magdeburg, before being sent to occupied Soviet territory, we received a number of instructions regarding the establishment of a “new order” in the East, which stated that the gendarmes should see in every Soviet citizen a communist partisan, and therefore, with all composure, each of We are obliged to exterminate peaceful Soviet citizens as our opponents.”
From the testimony of Renatus (VII.1949):
Arriving in July 1942 as part of a gendarme team in the city of Stalino, I participated in a meeting of officers of the “Einsatzkommando gendarmerie”... At this meeting, the head of the team, Lieutenant Colonel Ganzog, instructed us to first of all focus on the arrests of communists, Jews and Soviet activists. At the same time, Gantsog emphasized that the arrest of these persons does not require any action against the Germans. At the same time, Gantzog explained that all communists and Soviet activists should be exterminated and only as an exception imprisoned in concentration camps. Having been appointed head of the German gendarmerie in the city. Krasnodon, I followed these directives..."
“Artes Lina, a translator, told me that Zons and Solikovsky torture those arrested. Zons especially loved to torture arrested people. It was a great pleasure for him to summon prisoners after dinner and subject them to torture. Zons told me that he only brings prisoners to confession through torture. Artes Lina asked me to release her from work in the gendarmerie due to the fact that she could not be present during the beatings of those arrested.”
From the testimony of district police investigator Cherenkov:
“I interrogated members of the Young Guard organization, Komsomol members Ulyana Gromova, two Ivanikhin sisters, brother and sister Bondarevs, Maya Peglivanova, Antonina Eliseenko, Nina Minaeva, Viktor Petrov, Klavdiya Kovaleva, Vasily Pirozhok, Anatoly Popov, about 15 people in total... Using special measures of influence (torture and bullying), we established that soon after the Germans arrived in the Donbass, the youth of Krasnodon, mostly Komsomol members, organized themselves and waged an underground struggle against the Germans... I admit that during interrogations I beat the arrested members of the underground Komsomol organization Gromova and the Ivanikhin sisters "
Volodya Osmukhin
From the testimony of policeman Lukyanov (11/11/1947):
“The first time I participated in the mass execution of Soviet patriots was at the end of September 1942 in the Krasnodon city park... At night, a group of German gendarmes led by officer Kozak arrived at the Krasnodon police in cars. After a short conversation between Kozak and Solikovsky and Orlov, according to a pre-compiled list, the police began to take the arrested people out of their cells. In total, more than 30 people were selected, mainly communists... Having announced to the arrested that they were being transported to Voroshilovgrad, they were taken out of the police building and driven to the Krasnodon city park. Upon arrival at the park, the arrested were tied by the hands in groups of five and taken into a pit that had previously served as a refuge from German air raids and there they were shot. ... Some of those shot were still alive, and therefore the gendarmes who remained with us began to shoot those who still showed signs of life. However, the gendarmes soon got tired of this activity, and they ordered to bury the victims, among whom there were still living ones...”
Among the recently declassified investigative documents is a statement written by Gennady Pocheptsov. According to Levashov - under torture, according to the parents of those executed - voluntarily. ..
“To the head of mine No. 1 bis Mr. Zhukov
from Mr. Pocheptsov Gennady Prokofievich
Statement
Mr. Zhukov, an underground Komsomol organization “Young Guard” was organized in Krasnodon, of which I became an active member. I ask you to free time come to my apartment and I will tell you in detail about this organization and its members. My address: st. Chkalova, house 12, entrance No. 1, apartment of Gromov D.G.
20.XII.1942 Pocheptsov.”
From the testimony of Guriy Fadeev, an agent of German special forces:
“The police had such an order that first of all the arrested person was brought to Solikovsky, he brought him to consciousness, and ordered the investigator to interrogate him. Pocheptsov was called to the police. He said that he was indeed a member of an underground youth organization that existed in Krasnodon and its environs. He named the leaders of this organization, or rather, the city headquarters, namely: Tretyakevich, Zemnukhov, Lukashov, Safonov and Koshevoy. Pocheptsov named Tretyakevich as the head of the citywide organization. He himself is a member of the Pervomaisk organization, whose leader is Anatoly Popov. The May Day organization consisted of 11 people, including Popov, Glavan, Zhukov, Bondarevs (two), Chernyshov and a number of others. He said that the headquarters had weapons at its disposal: Popov had a rifle, Nikolaev and Zhukov had machine guns, Chernyshov had a pistol. He also said that in one of the quarries in the pit there was a weapons warehouse. There used to be a Red Army warehouse there, which was blown up during the retreat, but the youth found a lot of ammunition there. Organizational building there was the following: headquarters, Pervomayskaya organization, organization in the village of Krasnodon and city organization. He did not name the total number of participants. Before I was removed from my job, up to 30 people were arrested. Personally, I interrogated 12 people, incl. Pocheptsov, Tretyakevich, Lukashov, Petrov, Vasily Pirozhka and others. Of the members of the headquarters of this organization, Kosheva and Safonov were not arrested, because they disappeared.
As a rule, preliminary interrogations were carried out personally by Solikovsky, Zakharov and the gendarmerie, using whips, fists, etc. Even investigators were not allowed to be present during such “interrogations.” Such methods have no precedent in the history of criminal law.
After I was recruited by the police to identify individuals distributing Young Guard leaflets, I met several times with the deputy chief of the Krasnodon police, Zakharov. During one of the interrogations, Zakharov asked me a question: “Which of the partisans recruited your sister Alla?” Knowing this from the words of my mother M.V. Fadeeva, I betrayed Vanya Zemnukhov to Zakharov, who actually made an offer to my sister to join an underground anti-fascist organization. I told him that in Korostylev’s apartment, Korostylev’s sister Elena Nikolaevna Koshevaya and her son Oleg Koshevoy, who was recording messages from the Sovinformburo, were listening to radio broadcasts from Moscow”...
From the testimony of the head of the Rovenkovo district police, Orlov (XI 14, 1943)
“Oleg Koshevoy was arrested at the end of January 1943 by a German gendarme and a railway policeman at a crossing 7 km from the city of Rovenki and brought to my police station. During the arrest, Koshevoy’s revolver was confiscated, and during a second search at the Rovenkovo police, a seal of the Komsomol organization and some two blank forms were found on him. I interrogated Koshevoy and received testimony from him that he is the leader of the Krasnodon underground organization.”
From the testimony of policeman Bautkin:
“At the beginning of January 1943, I arrested and brought to the police a member of the underground Komsomol organization “Young Guard” discovered by the police in Krasnodon... Dymchenko, who lived at mine No. 5. She was tortured by the police and, along with her other friends in the underground, was shot by the Germans... I arrested a “Young Guard” who lived at mine No. 2-4 (I don’t remember his last name) from whose apartment, during a search, we found and seized three notebooks with prepared texts anti-fascist leaflets."
From Renatus' testimony:
“...In February, Wenner and Zons reported to me that my order to shoot Krasnodon Komsomol members had been carried out. Some of those arrested... were shot in Krasnodon in mid-January, and the other part, due to the approach of the front line to Krasnodon, was taken from there and shot in the mountains. Rovenki."
From the testimony of policeman Davidenko:
“I admit that I took part in the executions of the “Young Guards” three times and with my participation about 35 Komsomol members were shot... In front of the “Young Guards”, first 6 Jews were shot, and then one by one all 13 “Young Guards”, whose corpses were thrown into the pit shaft No. 5 is about 80 meters deep. Some were thrown into the mine pit alive. To prevent shouting and proclamation of Soviet patriotic slogans, girls' dresses were lifted and twirled over their heads; in this state, the doomed were dragged to the mine shaft, after which they were shot and then pushed into the mine shaft.”
From the testimony of Schultz, a gendarme of the German district gendarmerie in Rovenki:
“At the end of January, I took part in the execution of a group of members of the underground Komsomol organization “Young Guard,” among whom was the leader of this organization, Koshevoy. ...I remember him especially clearly because I had to shoot him twice. After the shots, all those arrested fell to the ground and lay motionless, only Koshevoy stood up and, turning around, looked in our direction. This greatly angered Fromme and he ordered the gendarme Drewitz to finish him off. Drewitz approached the lying Koshevoy and shot him in the back of the head.
...Before escaping from Rovenki on February 8 or 9, 1943, Fromme ordered me, Drewitz and other gendarmes to shoot a group of Soviet citizens held in the Rovenki prison. These victims included five men, a woman with a three-year-old child, and active Young Guard member Shevtsova. Having delivered the arrested to the Rovenkovsky city park, Fromme ordered me to shoot Shevtsova. I led Shevtsova to the edge of the pit, walked away a few steps and shot her in the back of the head, but the trigger mechanism on my carbine turned out to be faulty and it misfired. Then Hollender, who was standing next to me, shot at Shevtsova. During the execution, Shevtsova behaved courageously, standing on the edge of the grave with her head held high, her dark shawl slid over her shoulders and the wind ruffled her hair. Before the execution, she did not utter a word about mercy...”
From the testimony of Geist, a gendarme of the German district gendarmerie in Rovenki:
“...I took part, together with... other gendarmes, in the execution in Rovenkovsky Park of Komsomol members arrested in Krasnodon for underground work against the Germans. Of the executed members of the Young Guard organization, I remember only Shevtsova. I remember her because I interrogated her. In addition, she attracted attention with her courageous behavior during the execution...”
From the testimony of policeman Kolotovich:
“Arriving at the mother of Young Guard member Vasily Bondarev, Davidenko and Sevastyanov told her that the police were sending her son to work in Germany, and he was asking her to give him things. Bondarev's mother gave Davidenko gloves and socks. The latter took gloves for himself upon leaving, and gave Sevastyanov socks and said: “There is a start!”
Then we went to the house of the Young Guard Nikolaev. Entering Nikolaev's house, Davidenko, turning to Nikolaev's sister, said that the police were sending her brother to work in Germany, and he asked for food and things for the road. Nikolaev’s sister apparently knew that he had been shot, so she refused to give him any things or food. After that, Davidenko and Sevastyanov, a policeman (I don’t know her last name) and I forcibly took away her man’s coat and sheep. Then we went to another Young Guard member (I don’t know his last name) and they also forcibly took four pieces of lard and a man’s shirt from the latter’s mother. Having put the lard in the sleigh, we went to the family of the Young Guard Zhukov. In this way, Davidenko, Sevastyanov and others robbed the families of the Young Guard.”
Vanya Turkenich
From the testimony of Orlov, the head of the Rovenkovsky district police:
“Shevtsova was required to indicate the storage location of the radio transmitter that she used to communicate with the Red Army. Shevtsova categorically refused, saying that she was not Lyadskaya, and called us monsters. The next day, Shevtsova was handed over to the gendarmerie department and shot”...
It's time to talk about another myth related to the history of the Young Guard. In Fadeev’s novel, written hot on the heels of the liberation of the city, the collapse of the underground is explained by betrayal. The names of the informers are mentioned - a certain Stakhovich, Vyrikova, Lyadskaya and Polyanskaya.
Where did the writer get these “traitors”? The fact is that literally immediately after the arrest of three representatives of the headquarters, the Germans started a rumor that Viktor Tretyakevich “split during interrogation. The writer, who was staying with Oleg Koshevoy’s mother while working on the book, allegedly received a note in which an unknown local resident named the names of the informers...
The version does not stand up to criticism. Fadeev wrote the book hastily; he did not even have time to meet the relatives of many Young Guards, for which many Krasnodon residents later reproached him. Meanwhile, the parents of many Young Guards are L. Androsova, G. Harutyunyanants, V. Zhdanova. O. Koshevoy, A. Nikolaev, V. Osmukhin, V. Petrov, V. Tretyakevich - not only knew about the underground activities of their sons and daughters, but also helped them in every possible way in equipping the printing house, storing weapons, radios, collecting medicines, making leaflets , red flags...
The note itself has not survived, which may be why until now researchers have not been able to establish the authorship of the forged document. But for a long time There was a rumor circulating around Krasnodon that Viktor Tretyakevich was brought out under the name of Stakhovich in Fadeev’s novel. Until 1990, the Tretyakevich family was labeled as “relatives of a traitor.” For many years they collected eyewitness accounts and documents about Victor’s innocence...
Olga Lyadskaya is a real person. The girl was only 17 years old when she was captured by the Germans for the first time. The young beauty attracted the attention of Deputy Chief of Police Zakharov, who had a separate office for intimate meetings. A few days later, her mother managed to ransom her daughter from her concubines for moonshine and warm clothes. But the stigma of “police litter” remained with Olya. The frightened girl, whom the policeman promised to hang if she did not return to him, and who was condemned by all her neighbors for her connection with the punisher, was even afraid to leave the house. Is this why Lyuba Shevtsova uttered the words “I’m not Lyadskaya to you!” during one of the interrogations?
After Krasnodon’s release, Olga initially served as a witness in the case of police atrocities, but later told the SMERSH investigator that she was taken to confront the arrested “Young Guardsmen.” They asked: “Do you know such and such?” And she, seeing that her peers were being cruelly tortured, said that she went to school with some of the kids, danced with someone in an ensemble, made gliders with someone in the House of Pioneers... Lyadskaya allegedly said nothing about the underground , because I simply didn’t know about it. But nevertheless, in the investigation materials there is a confession signed by Olya personally in cooperation with the occupiers and the police. Most likely, the girl, with her will broken even by Zakharov, thought that for cohabitation with a policeman, especially a forced one, in the worst case, she would simply be exiled. And living for several years away from shame, even in Siberia, seemed to her not the worst outcome of the matter... But as a result, Olga received ten years in Stalin’s camps...
And after the publication of the novel “The Young Guard,” the investigation into the case of “Lyadskaya’s betrayal” was resumed, and a show trial was being prepared. True, it did not take place: Olga fell ill with tuberculosis and was released, and there was clearly little evidence “from the book” for Soviet justice. She managed to recover, even finish her studies at the institute, get married, give birth to a son... Later, Olga Lyadskaya, through the prosecutor’s office, applied for further investigation – herself. And all charges of betrayal of the “Young Guards” were dropped after a careful study of the materials of her case.
Zina Vyrikova and Serafima Polyanskaya, released from the police as “not involved in a partisan gang,” also went into exile in Bugulma after the liberation of the city. SMERSH arrested them even before the publication of Fadeev’s book. Subsequently, Zinaida Vyrikova also got married, changed her last name and left for another city, but until her death she was afraid that she would be identified as a “traitor” and arrested... Neither Zina nor Sima, by the way, could extradite any of the “Moldovan Guards” - their own knowledge of the composition and activities of the underground was limited to rumors that “the leaflets were planted by boys from our school.”
For those who died in fascist dungeons Vitya Treryakevich, slandered by German henchmen, was defended by his parents. They wrote all the way to the Komsomol Central Committee, seeking the truth. Only 16 years after the war, it was possible to arrest one of the most ferocious executioners who tortured the Young Guard, policeman Vasily Podtynny. During the investigation, he stated: Tretyakevich was slandered. In this way they wanted to “set an example for other partisans” - they say, your leader has already spoken, it’s time for you to loosen your tongue! A special state commission created after the trial of the policeman established that Viktor Tretyakevich was the victim of a deliberate slander, and “one of the members of the organization, Gennady Pocheptsov, was identified as the real traitor.”
The surviving underground fighter Levashov confirmed that his father was arrested three times to find out where his son was hiding. Levashov Sr. sat with Tretyakevich in the same cell, where he saw how the latter was brought from interrogations completely crippled, which, in the opinion of Levashov’s father himself, was clear evidence that “...Viktor still did not split.”
By the way, the fate of Gennady Pocheptsov himself, who was released from the police three days after the denunciation, was cruel but fair: after the liberation of the city of Krasnodon by the Red Army, Gena Pocheptsov, as well as police agents Gromov and Kuleshov, were put on trial.
The investigation into the case of the Young Guard traitors lasted 5 months. On August 1, 1943, an indictment was presented to Pocheptsov and Gromov. Having familiarized himself with it, Pocheptsov stated: “I plead guilty in full to the charges brought against me, namely that, as a member of the underground youth organization “Young Guard,” I betrayed its members to the police, named the leaders of this organization and told the police about the presence of weapons.” .
After the indictment was approved by the head of the operational group of the NKGB of the Ukrainian SSR, Lieutenant Colonel Bondarenko, the case against Pocheptsov and his stepfather was considered by the Military Tribunal of the NKVD troops of the Voroshilovgrad (now Lugansk) region, the visiting sessions of which were held in Krasnodon from August 15 to 18, 1943. When Gromov, contrary to previous in his testimony, began to assert that he did not advise his stepson to betray the underground members, the latter asked to speak and said, “Gromov is not telling the truth, he advised me to file a police report against members of the youth organization, telling me that by doing this I would save my life and the life of my family, according to We never quarreled with him on this issue." In his last word, Pocheptsov, addressing the court, stated: “I am guilty, I committed a crime against my Motherland, I betrayed my comrades, judge me as the law requires.”
Funeral of the "Young Guards"
Having found Gromov and Pocheptsov guilty of treason, the Military Tribunal sentenced them to capital punishment - execution with confiscation of personal property.
On September 9, 1943, the issue of the verdict of the Military Tribunal of the NKVD troops was discussed at the Military Council of the Southwestern Front. His resolution, signed by the front commander, Army General R.Ya. Malinovsky, stated: “The verdict of the Military Tribunal of the NKVD troops of the Voroshilovgrad region dated August 18 of this year in relation to ... Vasily Grigorievich Gromov and Gennady Prokofievich Pocheptsov is to be approved and carried out on place where the crime was committed - in public."
Having familiarized themselves with the verdict of the Military Tribunal, Gromov and Pocheptsov appealed to the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR with a petition for pardon. Pocheptsov wrote: “I consider the verdict of the tribunal to be correct: I filed a statement with the police as a member of an underground youth organization, saving my life and the life of my family. But the organization was discovered for other reasons. My statement did not play a corresponding role, because it was written later than the organization was exposed. And therefore I ask the Presidium of the Supreme Council of the Union to save my life, since I am still young. I ask you to give me the opportunity to wash away black spot, which fell on me. Please send me to the front line."
However, the petitions of the convicts were rejected, and the verdict of the Military Tribunal was carried out on September 19, 1943. A native of Krasnodon, Igor Cherednichenko, who studied the history of the organization, cited in one of his articles the words of his godfather, who witnessed the execution:
“Gromov stood scared, as white as chalk. His eyes ran around, hunched over, he was trembling like a hunted animal. Pocheptsov first fell, a crowd of residents moved towards him, they wanted to tear him to pieces, but the soldiers at the last moment managed to snatch him from the crowd. And Kuleshov stood near the side of the car with his head raised and it seemed that this did not concern him. He died with indifference on his face... Pocheptsova was even going to shoot her own mother, but someone held her, although she was roaring and demanding to give her rifle. By the way, his mother was a very respected person in the city. She trimmed everyone at the lowest prices, did not refuse anyone."
So, almost 17 years later, the truth triumphed. By decree of December 13, 1960, the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR rehabilitated Viktor Tretyakevich and awarded him the Order of the Patriotic War, 1st degree (posthumously). His name began to be included in all official documents along with the names of other heroes of the Young Guard.
Anna Iosifovna, Victor’s mother, who never took off her black mourning clothes until the end of her life, stood in front of the presidium of the ceremonial meeting in Voroshilovgrad when she was presented with her son’s posthumous award. The crowded hall stood and applauded her. Anna Iosifovna turned to her comrade who was rewarding her with only one request: not to show the film “The Young Guard” in the city these days, shot by the brilliant director Gerasimov based on the novel by Fadeev...
By the decision of the Presidium of the Lugansk Regional Court, which, implementing the law of Ukraine of April 17, 1991 “On the rehabilitation of victims political repression in Ukraine", on December 9, 1992, reviewed the conclusion of the Lugansk Regional Prosecutor's Office on criminal cases on charges of Gromov and Pocheptsov, it was recognized that these citizens were convicted justifiably and are not subject to rehabilitation.
Thus another myth collapsed. And the feat will remain for centuries...
The pit of Mine No. 5, where the heroes were executed, became part of the memorial park
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The Krasnodonsky district of the Voroshilovgrad region of the Ukrainian SSR was occupied by the Germans, Romanians and Italians from July 1942 to February 1943. Before the war, about 80,000 miners lived here (20,000 of them in Krasnodon itself) and collective farmers; not all of them were able to evacuate. Those dissatisfied with the “New Order” were dragged to the police, tortured, and killed. According to the ChGK, 242 people were killed, 3,471 were taken to Germany, and 532 were missing. In Krasnodon, on September 28, 1942, the Nazis buried 32 miners alive in a park for refusing to work for the invaders, for participating in extermination squads and partisan activities. The very next day, the underground organization “Young Guard” was created (it included individual resistance groups and newcomers), so about a hundred boys and girls from 14 to 25 years old decided to take revenge on the occupiers. Their actions attracted the attention of the Germans, but the reasons for their failure remain a mystery to this day. According to the version of the Krasnodon trial, the traitor Pocheptsov reported to the police, and in January 1943, most of the members of the underground, after terrible torture, were shot at the pit, all the wounded and killed were thrown into the mine. |
Much has been written and filmed about the struggle and death of the Young Guard. Little is known about their killers, who were tried in four trials. About 70 people took part in the interrogations, torture and executions of the Young Guard: Germans from the field commandant’s office and Soviet traitors from the auxiliary police (their role in the atrocities was the main one). In hot pursuit, only three of those involved were caught.
Member of the “Young Guard” G. Pocheptsov was afraid of arrest and decided to write a denunciation - on the advice of his experienced stepfather V. Gromov (a secret German informant under the nickname “Vanyusha”). Their testimony was accepted by senior police investigator M. Kuleshov, who also participated in the interrogation of the Young Guards using torture (as Voroshilovgradskaya Pravda wrote: “With the hatred of the Soviet regime and our people inherent in a seasoned enemy, Kuleshov was especially furious while conducting an investigation into the case.” Young Guard." On his instructions, "impressive" interrogations of the Young Guard were carried out." In an effort to whitewash themselves, the traitors blamed the Young Guard commissar V. Tretyakovich, allegedly he could not stand the torture (gouging out eyes, etc.) and told everything.
The investigation into the case of the traitors lasted five months - confrontations, testimony of witnesses. The Krasnodon trial itself lasted three days, August 15-18, but not all sessions were open. Residents of Krasnodon came as spectators and acted as witnesses, appealed, appealed to the court with a request to impose a harsh sentence. The military tribunal of the NKVD troops of the Voroshilovgrad region tried without a defense, the materials of the trial were not published, local newspapers wrote about it only after the fact and in general terms. Kuleshov, Pocheptsov and Gromov were shot in public; about 5,000 residents of Krasnodon were present.
Unfortunately, the commission of the Komsomol Central Committee believed the slander of traitors and the name of the innocent V. Tretyakevich (whose eyes were even gouged out during torture) was crossed out from award sheets and newspapers, this suspicion was reinforced by A. Fadeev in the novel “The Young Guard”, portraying him as a traitor Stakhovich. The hero was rehabilitated only in 1959.
After the war, 13 executioners were found, including the initiator of the execution, gendarmerie captain E. Renatus. Minister of State Security V. Abakumov planned to hold an open trial against them in Krasnodon from December 1 to 10, 1947, in the wake of other trials. To do this, on November 18, 1947, he sent memo No. 3428/A to I. Stalin, V. Molotov and Secretary of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks A. Kuznetsov. Their reaction is unknown, but the process took place in closed form. The sentence for the murderers turned out to be lighter than for the traitors: from 15 to 25 years in the camps (after Stalin’s death, German war criminals were sent home). All materials were secret, even for the relatives of the dead Young Guards.
Other executioners skillfully disguised themselves. Policeman V. Podtynny fled from Krasnodon with the Wehrmacht, corrected his passport data, ended up in the Red Army, had a combat wound and awards. After the war, he returned to Donbass, started a family, became chairman of the village council and a member of the CPSU. In 1959, a fellow countryman recognized Podtynny - he was arrested. A year later, he was openly tried in Lugansk and sentenced to death.
Policeman I. Melnikov personally gouged out the eyes of the Young Guard. He also forged documents, fought in the Red Army, and received the medal “For Courage.” Then he hid on a collective farm in the Odessa region. Found, convicted at an open trial in Krasnodon on December 14-16, 1965, shot in 1966.
Some executioners were never found. For example, police chief V. Solikovsky hid in Austria and Germany, lived in New York until 1967, then moved to the Brazilian city of Porto Alegre, where he died in the 1970s.
Only a small part of the court materials from 1943-1965. was published. Perhaps this is why the story of the Young Guard is still controversial. In Ukraine, things have reached the incredible - since the 1990s, there has been a version that the “Young Guard” was a “national communist” cell of the OUN that hated Hitler and Stalin! OUN member E. Stakhiv called himself in interviews and books the same Stakhovich from A. Fadeev’s “Young Guard”. All this directly contradicts the facts.
Testimony about torture
Source: Glazunov G. It was in Krasnodon / Inevitable retribution. M.: Voenizdat, 1979 .
<…>Alexandra Vasilievna Tyulenina told in court how the police mocked her:
“Two days after my arrest, on Zakharov’s orders, the police undressed me and laid me face down on the floor. They began to beat me with whips. They beat me for a long time. At this time someone said: “Bring him here, now he will tell everything.” My son Sergei was brought into the room. His face was bruised. I was asked about partisans and weapons. I replied that I knew nothing about the partisans, and there were no weapons in our house and there were never any. After such an answer, they began to torture their son. One of the gendarmes put Sergei’s fingers in the door frame and began to close it. A hot rod was threaded through the gunshot wound on the son's arm. Needles were driven under the nails. Then they hung him on ropes. They beat me again, after which they poured water on me... I repeatedly lost consciousness.
According to Maria Andreevna Borts, on January 1, 1943, gendarmes raided their apartment, and policeman Zakharov demanded that Maria Andreevna tell where her daughter Valya was hiding and with whom she left. Having received a negative answer, he turned white with anger. His small, quickly moving eyes were bloodshot. Zakharov pulled out a revolver, brought it closer to the woman’s face and, pushing her with his foot, shouted: “I’ll shoot you, you bastard!” After a search of the apartment, Maria Andreevna was taken to the police as a hostage, searched, and filled out a form. Then they took him to Solikovsky for interrogation. On the table in front of him lay a set of whips: thick, thin, wide, with lead tips. Vanya Zemnukhov, mutilated beyond recognition, stood by the sofa, with inflamed red eyes and bruises on his face. His clothes were covered in blood. There were red pools of blood on the floor next to him. Solikovsky, a tall man with a strong build, sluggishly rose from the table. A black hat is pulled down over his forehead. The voice is authoritative and loud. He asked: “Where is my daughter?” Bortz replied that she knew nothing. Then he shouted: “And you also don’t know anything about grenades and mail?” - and began to hit her in the face with terrible force. Davidenko, who was standing right there, jumped up to Maria Andreevna and also began beating her. Barely able to stand, she was thrown into a cell located opposite Solikovsky’s office. With bated breath, she listened to the screams and moans coming from the office, the terrible swearing and the clanging of iron. Policemen were running along the corridor. They dragged one victim after another for interrogation. This continued until the morning.
—Which of the Young Guards were you in the cell with? - the presiding officer asked Maria Andreevna.
She replied that she was with Lyuba Shevtsova, Ulyana Gromova, Shura Bondareva, Tonya Ivanikhina (Lilia Ivanikhina’s sister), Nina Minaeva, Klavdiya Kovaleva and Tosya Mashchenko. The girls were repeatedly tortured by the police; they were brought out of interrogations half-dead. They suffered not only physical suffering. Ulyana Gromova said that it was easier to endure physical pain than the humiliation to which the executioners subjected her. The girls were stripped naked and mocked. Solikovsky’s wife was sometimes here, who usually sat on the sofa and burst into laughter.
Letter from parents of Young Guard members to the military tribunal
Source: Journal “Socialist Legality”, No. 3, 1959, P. 60. Cited. by: Young Guard. Documents, memories / comp. V.N. Borovikova, I.I. Grigorenko, V.I. Potapov. Donetsk: Publishing House "Donbass", 1969.
August 1943.
COMRADES JUDGES OF THE MILITARY TRIBUNAL!
You are now examining, during a judicial investigation, the facts of crimes committed by a group of traitors to our Motherland.
We, the parents of our children who died at the hands of the fascist executioners and their accomplices, who are currently sitting in the dock, cannot listen without shuddering when these fascist scoundrels tell you how they, with the cold-blooded hand of brutal executioners, killed our children who gave their lives for our Motherland, for liberation from the fascist hordes. These fascist mercenaries did not escape the hands of Soviet justice.
We, the parents of our dead children, add our voice of revenge to the damned executioners and ask the tribunal to pronounce a severe sentence on these scoundrels and death penalty carry out in the square so that all the people of Krasnodon can see that these scoundrels got what they deserved.
And let those fascist henchmen who are hiding somewhere, see what kind of retribution awaits those who betray our Soviet Motherland and its people.
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| Source: Koshevaya E. The Tale of a Son. M, 1947. |
Article in a regional newspaper about the trial
Source: Newspaper “Voroshilovgradskaya Pravda”, No. 136 (8275), August 29, 1943. Quoted. by: Young Guard. Documents, memories / comp. V.N. Borovikova, I.I. Grigorenko, V.I. Potapov. Donetsk: Publishing House "Donbass", 1969.
COURT OF THE PEOPLE
Krasnodon. The other day, the trial of traitors to the Motherland, vile Judases who betrayed many members of the underground Komsomol youth organization “Young Guard”, ended here. Members of the Young Guard organization, whose work was repeatedly written about by Voroshilovgradskaya Pravda, waged a tireless struggle against the Nazi invaders and their accomplices during the occupation of the region. Young patriots wrote and distributed leaflets that exposed false fascist propaganda, accepted messages from the Soviet Information Bureau about military operations on the fronts of the Patriotic War, and brought the Bolshevik truth to the people who temporarily fell under the yoke of Hitler’s thugs. Detachments of the “Young Guard” physically destroyed soldiers and officers of the German army and their accomplices - traitors to the Motherland.
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Temporary Komsomol card issued to a member of the underground organization “Young Guard” |