What did Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya briefly. Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya

But Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya could have survived to this day - on September 13 she would have turned 90 years old ... But the girl died, having accepted torment and death. However, in last years there were allegations that in the village of Petrishchevo, the Germans did not execute Zoya at all, but another girl. And in general, it turned out that many details of the story of Z. Kosmodemyanskaya were distorted or completely invented ... But where is the truth, and where is the lie? The girl who once lived, loved, dreamed - was turned into a monument of ideology...

At the opening of the monument to the hero of the Great Patriotic War Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya Minister of Culture V. Medinsky made a speech.
- Life is full of coincidences: in two weeks Zoya would have turned 90 years old. She was an athlete, a strong girl, and probably would have lived to this age. AT special units saboteurs were not taken weaklings. But she did not live, she died. This is how the biblical saints perished, and if our government were not rigidly atheistic, Zoya, who was martyred for her homeland and for her comrades, could be recognized as a saint ... These people were made of some special matter, inhuman, like aliens. Sometimes you just don't understand where they came from...

The Minister of Culture, of course, has a poor understanding of the criteria by which canonization is carried out, but oh well, what can you take from him ...

Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya was the first woman to be awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union during World War II. And not just appropriated, but created the biggest legend in the history of the war.
Let's start with the official Soviet version, as it was presented in the TSB:
Kosmodemyanskaya Zoya Anatolievna(Tanya) (September 13, 1923, the village of Osinovye Gai, Tambov Region, - November 29, 1941, the village of Petrishchevo, Vereisky District, Moscow Region), Soviet partisan, heroine of the Great Patriotic War of 1941-45. Born in the family of an employee. Member of the Komsomol since 1938. Studied in the 201st high school Moscow. In October 1941, being a student of the 10th grade, she volunteered for partisan detachment. Near the village of Obukhov, near Naro-Fominsk, with a group of Komsomol partisans, she crossed the front line into the territory occupied by the German invaders. At the end of November 1941, in the village of Petrishchevo, while performing a combat mission, she was captured by the Nazis. Despite the monstrous torture and humiliation of the executioners, she did not betray her comrades, did not reveal her real name, calling herself Tanya. November 29, 1941 was executed. On February 16, 1942, K. was posthumously awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union. Devotion to the socialist Motherland, loyalty to the cause of communism made the name of the pupil Lenin Komsomol legendary.

In fact, there is a lot wrong here. And the biography, and the circumstances of death. And even a partisan, as Zoya was officially called, she really was not.
Partisan detachments were under the jurisdiction of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, special sabotage (partisan) detachments were subordinate to the NKVD. Z. Kosmodemyanskaya did not belong to the department of the Central Committee of the party, nor to the NKVD, she was a fighter in military unit 9903 (Central reconnaissance and sabotage school of the Intelligence Department of the headquarters of the Western Front), where she took the oath. For the second (their last) task, the group, of which Zoya was a member, advanced on the direct order of Major A. Sprogis of the Red Army.

Modern special forces consider Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya sister

Her name is still covered in myths. Some of them were checked by a retired colonel of the Ministry of Internal Affairs Vadim Astashin. On the basis of declassified FSB documents, he wrote the documentary novel "The Return of Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya."

- There is still confusion: who was Kosmodemyanskaya after all - a partisan or a saboteur?
- She was a saboteur of the secret part of the brigade special purpose. They were trained to be thrown behind enemy lines and taught to use a variety of methods.

- That is, you can say that she was a commando?
- In those days, yes. The successor to the unit in which Zoya served was the Vympel special-purpose unit of the FSB, which masterfully masters, among other things, the art of sabotage work. By the way, special forces veterans whom I know well, Zoya is revered and considered their fighting sister.

“But she didn’t have to serve long?”
- Just a month. On October 30, 41, she was enlisted, and on November 29, the Nazis executed her in the village of Petrishchevo, where she set several arson. In total, this fighter managed to visit behind enemy lines only two or three times.

Zoya followed the order, but decided to take the initiative. Returning to the gathering place, in the night she stumbled upon the stable and tried to set it on fire. It was then that policeman Smirnov noticed her. He grabbed Zoya (the bull easily coped with a girl sixty-five meters tall), brought her into the house to her friends, with whom he bullied her all night. Then Zoya was given to the Germans. They continued the torture: they burned their lips with fire, cut them with a saw, beat them with belts, and drove them naked in the cold. But, despite the inhuman tests, she did not tell anything about her squad and the task. She didn't even give her real name. Said her name was Tanya...
(from here)

Version "KP":
Four disproved facts about the life and death of Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya:

On September 13, 1923, Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya was born - the first woman to be awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union during the Great Patriotic War. A young girl after her martyrdom became a symbol of heroism Soviet people. Around the personality of Zoe, controversy still does not fade away. We made a selection of four known facts about her that have been refuted.

1. Firstly, the date of birth of Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya, as it turned out, is not September 13 at all, but 8. Falsification of the date of birth of the first girl who received high rank Hero of the Soviet Union, happened by chance when Stalin showed an increased interest in her feat. He considered that modern youth should be brought up on the example of Zoya. The leader instructed Mikhail Kalinin to prepare a decree. But the "All-Union Starosta" could not assign the heroic title to a certain "Tanya from Moscow", as the scout called herself during the torture. When, in search of information about Kosmodemyanskaya, they reached the head of the intelligence school, Major Arthur Sprogis, he made a detailed written submission for conferring such a high rank on Zoya.

For getting detailed information about a girl, he called to the Tambov region in the village where Zoya was born, but on the opposite end of the wire there was a rural idiot who, either due to his illiteracy or because of laziness, could not correctly read the document that was issued to parents at the birth of a child. He took the date of registration of the act of recording - September 13 - as Zoe's birthday. Now in all reference books, encyclopedias and textbooks Kosmodemyanskaya's birthday is distorted. Even in her Tale of Zoya and Shura, the mother of Heroes did not correct the date of birth of her daughter, leaving September 13, since Stalin was the first reader of the work. He would have ordered the hanging of the culprit of such confusion for this inaccuracy.

2. On the night of November 21-22, 1941, Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya crossed the front line as part of a special sabotage and reconnaissance group of 10 people. In the forest in the occupied territory, they ran into an enemy patrol. Some died, some ran away. Only three - the commander of the group Boris Krainov, Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya and the Komsomol organizer of the intelligence school Vasily Klubkov - continued on their way to the village of Petrishchevo. On the night of November 28, they came to the village, in which several strategically important objects had to be destroyed. Zoya went to southern part villages and Molotov cocktails destroyed the houses where the Germans lived, the eldest - Boris Krainov - went to central part, where the headquarters is located, and Vasily Klubkov - to the north.

The girl successfully completed the combat mission, but was captured after she returned to the village. She wanted to burn down a few more dwellings with the Germans, but she was noticed by the owner of the house, which she wanted to set on fire. There is a version that Vasily Klubov gave her to the Germans. Zoya, hoping that she would be released, during interrogation did not admit that she was a Red Army soldier, and came to the village to set fire to houses, and the Komsomol organizer of the Clubs, who was also captured that night, argued the opposite.

The version of betrayal is based on the materials of the Klubkov case, declassified and published in the Izvestia newspaper in 2000. Klubkov, who returned to his unit, stated that that night he was taken prisoner by the Germans, fled, was again captured, fled again and managed to get to his. However, during interrogations, he changed his testimony and stated that he was captured along with Zoya and betrayed her, after which he agreed to cooperate with the Germans, was trained at an intelligence school and was sent on a reconnaissance mission. After these testimonies, Klubkov was shot for treason.

However, the researcher M. Gorinov suggests that Klubkov was forced to incriminate himself. Someone for your career development, against the background of the unfolding propaganda campaign around Zoya, simply forced Klubkov to give such testimony. Or he was forced to lie in order to "justify" Zoya's capture. Unworthy, according to the then ideology, of a Soviet fighter.

3. In the post-Soviet period, there were many publications in the press that reprinted the same information that Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya suffered from schizophrenia. In particular, in No. 43 "Arguments and Facts" in 1991, a number of comments from readers "opening their eyes" to Zoya's personality were published. These comments are responses to a note by the writer A. Zhovtis "Clarifications to the canonical version" ("AiF" N 38, 1991), where the author denied some of the circumstances of Zoya's arrest.

From one comment, the author of which was identified as “The Leading Physician of the Scientific and Methodological Center for Child Psychiatry A. Melnikov, S. Yuriev and N. Kasmelson, it follows that “Before the war in 1938-1939. A 14-year-old girl named Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya was repeatedly examined at the Leading Scientific and Methodological Center for Child Psychiatry and was in a hospital in the children's department of the Kashchenko Hospital. She was suspected of having schizophrenia. Immediately after the war, two people came to the archives of our hospital and seized Kosmodemyanskaya’s medical history.” This information was subsequently often reprinted by other media. But no one has declared new evidence of Zoya's schizophrenia.

Disputing this version, journalist N. Arabkina in her article “ way of the cross Zoya writes: “... Somehow an article flashed in the press that Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya suffered from schizophrenia. Veterans of unit 9903 (the unit where Zoya served) raised the archives of the Institute of Psychiatry. The names of the doctors who allegedly diagnosed her were not found anywhere ... ” However, her mother and classmates write about the presence of a certain “nervous illness” in Zoya in her memoirs. A nervous illness struck her when the girl was in the 8th or 9th grade. This happened after a conflict with classmates, to which Zoya reacted very painfully. Regarding this disease, the girl turned to the doctors for help.

4. Inhumane, but true: Zoya's grave was dug up four times and buried again the same number of times. This was due to the fact that she was buried twice outside the village, and then her remains were transferred first to the center of Petrishchev, restored after the war, and then, after cremation, to the government Novodevichy cemetery in Moscow.

However, one case deserves special mention. In the late eighties, people in the country started talking about the fact that once several women gathered at Zoya's grave, and they began to argue about whose daughter was buried here. One of the women even bribed local men to dig up the corpse in order to get acquainted with the special signs on the body of the deceased. By the fact that she knows these signs, the woman wanted to prove to the commission for the exhumation of the girl’s corpse that it was her child in the grave. Later, the adventurer was exposed and she suffered a well-deserved punishment. The fact that it was not Kosmodemyanskaya buried in the grave was thereby refuted.
(from here)

More questions:
Many people know this data, but they cannot answer the questions that some people have more than once:
- As it was proved that the girl captured in Petrishchevo is Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya
- Where did the sabotage group, which included Tanya-Zoya, go?
- How exactly Tanya-Zoya was caught
- Were the Germans in Petrishchevo at the time of the unsuccessful arson
- Where Tanya-Zoya was hanged.

November 1941 The Germans are 30 km away. from Moscow. The hastily assembled divisions of the people's volunteer corps rose to the defense of Moscow and blocked the path of the enemy's bloodless divisions. Blitzkrieg cars skidded in hundreds of thousands of militia corpses. Everyone who could hold a weapon was sent to the trenches, and those who could not, used the scorched earth tactics behind the front line. Everything that could somehow delay the German offensive was burned. That is why the Komsomol saboteurs had no weapons, no grenades and mines, but only bottles of gasoline. They were simple cannon fodder, which quickly burned out in the furnace of war. If the command does not feel sorry for its saboteurs, will it regret civilians, whose houses should burn down and not get to the Germans, even theoretically. Civilians ended up in a temporarily occupied territory, which means they are accomplices of the invaders, so there is nothing to deal with them. Civilians, mostly old people, women and children were not to blame for anything, these are the vicissitudes of war. When the front line passed through the same Petrishchevo, most of the village was destroyed and all the surviving residents huddled in several huts. Everyone remembers the winter of 1941 with its fierce cold. In such a cold to be left without a home is certain death.

Members of the sabotage group were given the task of burning down the village. If someone thinks that the partisan girl lay calmly on the edge of the forest and watched all the movements in the village through binoculars, then she is deeply mistaken. In such a cold, you won’t lie down especially. The main task is to run to the first house that comes across, set it on fire, and is there anyone there, is it not, it’s either lucky or ... unlucky. Nobody cares if there are Germans in the village or not at all. The main thing is to complete the task.

For the fulfillment of this task, a Komsomol saboteur was caught, who later called herself Tanya. It was not possible to establish by whom she was caught. But if so far no documents have been found in the German archives that they were Wehrmacht soldiers, then they were not them. Civilians can be understood - they fought for their lives.

Why is the real name of the girl still not known for certain? The answer is simple in its tragedy. All sabotage groups abandoned in this area died and it is not possible to document who this Tanya was. But such trifles did not bother anyone, the country needed Heroes. When the news of the hanged partisan reached the political administration, they sent to Petrishchevo, after his release, correspondents of not even front-line newspapers, but central ones - Pravda and Komsomolskaya Pravda. Correspondents also liked everything that happened in Petrishchevo. On January 27, 1942, the material "Tanya" was published by Pyotr Lidov in Pravda. On the same day, S. Lyubimov's material was published in " Komsomolskaya Pravda""We will not forget you, Tanya." On February 18, 1942, Pyotr Lidov published the material "Who was Tanya" in Pravda. The country's top leadership approved the material, and she was immediately awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union, her cult was created, the events in Petrishchev were embellished, reinterpreted and distorted, over the years a memorial was created, schools were named after her, everyone knew her.

True, sometimes it came to an incident:
"The director and teachers of school No. 201 in Moscow named after Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya reported that in organizing and conducting excursions to the place of execution and the grave of Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya, the existing shortcomings should be eliminated. Many excursions come to the village of Petrishchevo, where Zoya was brutally tortured by the Nazis, most of the participants The excursions are accompanied by Voronina E.P., 72 years old, in whose house the headquarters was located, where Zoya was interrogated and tortured, and Kulik P.Ya., who had Zoya until executions. In their explanations about Zoya's actions on the instructions of the partisan detachment, they note her courage, courage and steadfastness. At the same time, they say: "If she continued to go to us further, she would bring a lot of loss to the village, burn many houses and cattle." In their opinion, this, perhaps, Zoya should not have done. In explaining how Zoya was captured and captured, they say: "We really expected that Zoya would be freed by the partisans, and were very surprised when it didn't happen." This explanation does not help proper education youth".

Only in perestroika times began to reach deaf data that not everything is fine in the "Kingdom of Denmark". According to the recollections of the few remaining local residents, Tanya-Zoya was not arrested by the Germans, but captured by the peasants, who were outraged that she set fire to their houses and outbuildings. The peasants took her to the commandant's office, located in another village (there were no Germans at all where she was captured). After the release, most of the residents of Petrishchev and the surrounding villages, who had at least some relation to this incident, were taken to an unknown direction. The first question about the reliability of the feat was raised by the writer Alexander Zhovtis, who placed in "Arguments and Facts" the story of the writer Nikolai Ivanov. Residents of Petrishchev allegedly caught Zoya setting fire to a peaceful peasant hut and, after beating him pretty badly, turned to the Germans for justice. And it was as if there were no Germans camping in Petrishchev, but, having heeded the request of the village population, they came from a nearby village and protected the people from the arbitrariness of the partisans, which involuntarily won their sympathy.

Elena Senyavskaya from the Institute of Russian History believes that Tanya was not Zoya: "I personally know people who still believed that the partisan Tanya, who was executed by the Germans in the village of Petrishchevo, was not Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya." There is a rather convincing version that a Komsomol member called herself Tanya Lilya Azolina. On that day in Petrishchevo she was hanged and Vera Voloshina which for some reason everyone forgot about.

But where did Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya come from? Gradually, everything turned into a tragedy. V. Leonidov writes: “The Germans left. After some time, a commission arrived in the village, with 10 women with it. They dug up Tanya. No one identified their daughter in the corpse, they buried her again. Union. Shortly after this decree, a commission arrived with other women. They pulled Tanya out of the grave for the second time. The performance began. Each woman in Tanya identified her daughter. Tears, lamentations for the deceased. And then, to the surprise of all the villagers, a fight broke out for the right to recognize the deceased her daughter. Everyone was dispersed by a long and thin woman, who later turned out to be Kosmodemyanskaya. So Tanya became Zoya. "

There are several iconic moments in this story that add up to a very ambiguous version.

First, for the first time, a commission arrived with 10 candidates for the position of mother-heroine. The articles of Lidov and Lyubimov created a loud legend, and there were oh so many missing partisan girls. The press often published a trophy photograph of an unknown Komsomol member with a noose around her neck. Why did no one identify their daughter, and the correspondents did not take a posthumous photograph. There is only one answer - the body was in such a state that they considered it best to bury it. But the question could not hang in the air for long. They were awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union, and these are pensions, benefits, fame, awards. Therefore, the future mother-heroines went for the second time not to restore historical justice and identify their own child, but to declare themselves as a mother-heroine. That's why it was a circus performance. So the country found Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya.

E. Senyavskaya from the Institute of Russian History believes that Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya really existed and was even sent to the German rear, but did not die, although her fate is bitter. When our advancing troops released Zoya from the German concentration camp and she returned home, her mother did not accept her and kicked her out. In the photo of the hanged "Tanya" published in the newspapers, it was many women who recognized their daughter - and there would apparently be a thousand times more if Pravda and Komsomolskaya Pravda were read in every house, if the potential "heroine's mothers" had documents there were precisely daughters, and precisely of the appropriate age, and if they had gone as volunteers to fight. The "mother of the heroine" is recognizable - not so much because she kicked her daughter out of the house in need of help, and then gave interviews for decades on the topic of how to raise the young to become Heroes, but because she was able to achieve recognition of her place in the system. Then a campaign began to glorify the feat of Zoya, her mother Lyubov Timofeevna actively joined the campaign, continuously speaking and being elected to various committees and councils of different levels.

The second is why she was hanged, and not just hanged, but tortured with particular cruelty. Tanya-Zoya did not cause any damage to the German army and was too young to be trusted secret information. Was she captured along with Vera Voloshina, or was there a third girl, the real Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya, who was sent to a concentration camp? The fact of execution and torture can be explained by only one assumption: the girls pretty much burned houses in Petrishchevo and neighboring villages. We will never know the whole truth for sure, there are so many questions. It's a pity.
(from here)

More analysis:

Don't we have other heroes?

Yesterday in the city of Ruza (Moscow region) a monument was erected to Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya. We all know that she was a victim of the Nazis who tortured her for a long time before being executed. On November 29, 1941, she was hanged in the village of Petrishchevo. During the execution, she did not lose heart, called on local residents to resist, for which she was posthumously awarded the title "Hero of the Soviet Union"

First let's look at big picture what happened in the late autumn of 1941.

The fact is that on November 17, the Stavka Order was issued Supreme High Command № 428, deprive the German army the opportunity to be located in villages and cities, drive out the German invaders from all settlements into the cold in the field, smoke them out of all the premises and warm shelters and make them freeze in the open air", with the aim of "destroying and burning to the ground all settlements in the rear German troops at a distance of 40-60 km in depth from the front line and 20-30 km to the right and left of the roads.

Military Councils of the fronts and individual armies systematically check how tasks are being carried out to destroy settlements in the above radius from the front line. The rate every 3 days to report in a separate summary how many and which settlements have been destroyed over the past days.
Central Archive of the Ministry of Defense, f. 208, op. 2524, d. 1, l. 257-258 (signed by Stalin)

In order to destroy the towns and villages captured by the Germans, hundreds of sabotage Soviet groups were thrown into the enemy rear. A member of one of these groups was Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya. In the village of Petrishchevo, they burned 3 houses. After that, part of the group left, and Zoya returned and tried to continue the arson. Then she was captured, tortured and hanged.

And here everyone normal person an attack of schizophrenia should begin. On the one hand, it is impossible to calmly watch how the enemies lodge in our villages, so burning houses is a reasonable decision. On the other hand, we must not forget that our own citizens remained to live in these houses. And now imagine that on a frosty winter night your house is set on fire by our own saboteurs. How is this in general?

Do not miss such an important moment as the fact that the head of the family at that time is at the front in the ranks of the Red Army (if he has not died yet). And his wife (or widow) with a bunch of children (then families had 5-10 children different ages, including very young ones) and elderly parents are trying to burn their own troops alive. And all this in order to make the invaders freeze in the open air.

Several tens of millions of people remained in the occupied territories. To all my grandparents childhood came under German occupation. According to Stalin's logic, they all had to burn their houses so that the Germans had nowhere to warm themselves? The war cost us 27 million dead. To this number, it was necessary to add another 30-40 million people who ended up in the occupied territories and had to freeze in winter due to lack of housing? Any horror movie nervously smokes on the sidelines.

What do we want to erect a monument to, the fight against the Germans or the battle with ourselves? By the way, not a single Nazi in the village of Petrishchevo froze to death and, in general, did not die. It also remains unknown how many thousands of people were later executed by the Soviet authorities after the war for not allowing saboteurs to burn their own houses. I don't know how true this is taken from here, but there is a link to the Central Archive Social Movements Moscow, f. 8682, op. 1, d. 561, l. 40-40), but two women, whose houses were burned in the village of Petrishchevo, were then sentenced to death by our bodies, because they insulted Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya before execution.

I do not want to discredit the name of Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya. She sincerely wanted to fight the invaders. But ask yourself why our saboteurs, instead of ambushing roads behind enemy lines, destroying ammunition depots and generally leading active fighting , engaged in burning to the ground of your own(and not at all German) villages?

I'll tell you why this happened. I will quote the statement of the well-known marshal Zhukov: it is undeniable that the Americans gave us so many materials, without which we could not form our reserves and could not continue the war ... We did not have explosives, gunpowder. There was nothing to equip rifle cartridges .... and now they present the matter in such a way that we had all this in abundance.

But the Americans supplied us with all this mainly in 1943 and later, and at the beginning of the war we just lacked all this. Add here another 4.5 million (this is 450 divisions) of our soldiers who surrendered to the Germans with all their weapons (New and recent history. 1996, No. 2 p. 91). I am not exaggerating, these are the official figures of our Ministry of Defense (the Germans believe that there were about 6 million). That is why civil uprising and went to defend the Motherland with one rifle for three, and saboteurs burned houses instead of fighting the enemy.

Here it is - the truth. But they do not like to remember her. Instead, everyone will honor the feat, which did not make much sense. In our country, in general, it has become a tradition to honor people with incomprehensible achievements. Remember, for example, Tukhachevsky or Dybenko, many streets and even a metro station are named after them. But what did they do that stood out? They suppressed the Kronstadt uprising, fought the peasants in the Tambov region. What good have they done? Can anyone tell?

Why is there Tukhachevsky, we regularly get ghouls who offer to name some street or even a city in honor of the executioner-Stalin. Didn't we have people in our country who do not cause rejection among a decent part of the people? Of course have! We have many wonderful writers, poets, scientists, doctors who glorified our country throughout the world (without killing anyone), but we will not perpetuate their memory in street names. In Moscow, for example, there is no street named after Bulgakov (shame!), but there is a street of the regicide Voykov.

And here is the installation of a monument to Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya, you ask. This event is just an excuse to tell you that in any business you always need to understand thoroughly. Now everyone will rush to argue whether it is possible or not to discuss the feat of Zoya, although the essence of the problem is completely different. How could the Germans even pass from the western border of the USSR almost 1000 kilometers to Moscow and 1500 to the Volga? And why the Molotov cocktail, and not small arms, became the main weapon of the patriots...

And of course we had heroes, but most of them, unfortunately, will forever remain unknown, because they died, and there is simply no one to tell about their exploits. That is why the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier became the most important monument of the last war.

APD: hey hey, well, before commenting, at least read the post. We all remember how we were told at school that Kosmodemyanskaya was a hero. Therefore, the first reaction to my text for many is a sharp rejection. Try to think without emotion.
from here

Is it possible to comprehend Zoya's story without emotions?
(continuation )

The first woman to be awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union. A Komsomol member who defended her country until the last moments of her life. A partisan who did not surrender under Nazi torture. And finally, an 18-year-old girl who had not yet finished school and was killed in 1941. All this is Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya.

Her last words, as you know, was: “No matter how much you hang us, you don’t hang everyone! We are 170 million. Our comrades will avenge you for me!” BUT last entry in a girl's diary before being sent to the front: “Cutting and sewing courses. Taganskaya st., 58 "- as an unfulfilled hope for a peaceful life after the war.

"It was a warm fresh morning"

Photo of little Zoe for the Komsomol ticket. Photo: commons.wikimedia.org

Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya was born in 1923 in the village of Osino-Gai, Tambov Region. Her grandfather and father were priests.

By official sources, Zoya's grandfather hid counter-revolutionaries in the church, for which he was executed by the Bolsheviks. And her father died during an operation on the intestines, when Zoya was ten years old. She and her younger brother Sasha remained in the care of their mother.

The small family lived in Moscow. Zoya loved school, like all children, worried about grades and dreamed of entering the Literary Institute. Her diary, which contains entries from 1936, is full of exclamation points and memories of sunny days.

“May 1 is a holiday of cheerful happiness! In the morning at half past seven, my mother went to the demonstration. The weather was sunny, but the wind was blowing. When I woke up I had good mood. I quickly cleaned up, ate and went to the tram to look at the demonstrators who were going to Red Square.”

“I plowed my garden, and my dream is: my mother will buy different seeds: flower and vegetable, and then my garden will be great!”

“... we went to watch the wonderful movie “The Motherland Calls”. Then we saw N.S. in the garden. Khrushchev. We greeted him and were very happy.”

The girl's health was poor. In her memoirs, her mother wrote that in 1939 Zoya suffered a "nervous illness", and the next year - acute meningitis, after which she rehabilitated in a sanatorium for a long time.

Smoke out the enemy

On October 31, 1941, about two thousand volunteers gathered near the Moscow cinema "Coliseum", who decided to go to the front. Among them was Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya, who had just entered the tenth grade of the 201st school.

For a long time it remained unknown whether Zoya was a partisan or a fighter of a secret group. active army. The memorandum of the secretary of the Moscow Committee and the Moscow City Committee of the VLKSMU Pegov says that on November 1, the Komsomol member Kosmodemyanskaya was placed at the disposal of the intelligence department of the Western Front. It is believed that Zoya was a Red Army soldier from the brigade of Arthur Sprogis, who organized more than one sabotage behind enemy lines.

On November 17, 1941, Stalin ordered "to deprive the German army of the opportunity to be located in villages and cities, drive the German invaders out of all settlements into the cold in the field, smoke them out of all rooms and warm shelters and make them freeze in the open air." The task was simple - it is better to destroy all habitable houses than to let the enemy use them.

“They flogged her and asked her: “Will you tell or not tell?” But she remained silent all the time, not uttering a single word. Only at the end of the spanking, from severe pain, did she sigh and say: “Stop spanking. I won't tell you anything more."

Death of a heroine

Monument to Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya Novodevichy cemetery. Photo: commons.wikimedia.org

Today everyone knows about the events that took place on November 27-29 in the village of Petrishchevo. For the first time, Pravda journalist Pyotr Lidov spoke about them in 1942. He learned about history from a peasant, shocked by the feat of a girl who called herself Tanya to the Nazis. In the same year, in his memorandum, the secretary of the Komsomol, Pegov, described in detail the history of Zoya's feat.

At 2 am on November 27, together with the group commander Boris Krainev and Komsomol organizer Vasily Klubkov, who was shot after for treason, Zoya made her way to the village of Petrishchevo. She managed to set fire to three houses, burn 20 German horses. Krainev managed to get away, and Klubkov was then captured by the Germans. Zoya decided to return to the village and set fire to a few more houses. In the evening of the next day, she was noticed by the local headman Sviridov, when the girl tried to set fire to his barn. Sviridov handed over a partisan to the Germans for a bottle of vodka - later he was sentenced for this Soviet power to death.

Zoya was brought to the house of a villager, where the German headquarters was located. She had a revolver and a bag with bottles of combustible mixture. The girl was stripped and beaten.

The execution of Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya. Photo: Photo from the site / http://chtoby-pomnili.com/

“They flogged her and asked her: “Will you tell or not tell?” But she remained silent all the time, not uttering a single word. Only at the end of the spanking, from severe pain, did she sigh and say: “Stop spanking. I won’t tell you anything else,” writes Pegov.

Later, two villagers - Agrafena Smirnova and Fedosya Solina - admitted that they also mocked the girl who set fire to their houses. At night, they came to the German headquarters, where they kept Zoya, and doused her with slop. And on the day of the execution, Smirnova hit the partisan on the legs with a stick with the words “Who did you hurt? She burned down my house, but did nothing to the Germans…”. At night, she was taken out into the cold several times - in one undershirt and barefoot. Finally, having surrendered, the Germans left the beaten girl with her legs stiff from frostbite to sleep on a bench. And in the morning they took me to the scaffold.

The shots of the last minutes of the life of Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya, made by a German officer, spread all over the world. She stands straight and calm. On the chest is a sign with the inscription "Pyro". On the side is the same bag with flammable liquid. The partisan's body hung in a noose for another month and was subjected to abuse until the Germans allowed the locals to bury her.

"…Dear Mom! How do you live now, how do you feel, are you sick? Mom, if possible, write at least a few lines. I'll be back from my assignment, so I'll come to visit home.
Your Zoya...

According to official documents, Zoya Anatolyevna Kosmodemyanskaya was born on September 13, 1923 in the village of Osinovye Gai, Tambov Region, and died on November 29, 1941, in the village of Petrishchevo, Vereisky District, Moscow Region. Zoya's grandfather, Pyotr Ioannovich Kozmodemyanovsky, was a priest. On the night of August 27, 1918, he was captured by the Bolsheviks and, refusing to hand over the horses to them, was drowned in a pond after severe torture. The son of the executed - Anatoly Petrovich, Zoya's father - together with his wife Lyubov Timofeevna worked in the village as teachers. When Zoya was 6 years old, collectivization came to Osinovye Gai. Anatoly Petrovich spoke at one of the meetings with criticism of the proposed new order, and soon the family of rural intellectuals, together with the "kulaks", was relocated from the black earth Tambov region to the distant village of Shitkino near Irkutsk. The exiles had relatives from Moscow. Elder sister Lyubov Timofeevna, Olga, worked in the apparatus of the People's Commissariat for Education, where N. K. Krupskaya herself worked as deputy people's commissar. After another plea from her employee, Lenin's widow rescued Zoya's family from Siberia and helped her register in Moscow. From exile, the Kozmodemyanovskys returned as the Kosmodemyanskys. In the 201st metropolitan school, Zoya studied well. She was fond of history, loved to read and dreamed of entering the Literary Institute.

In 1938, the girl became a member of the Komsomol, she was elected a Komsomol group organizer, but then not reapproved. It was not easy to develop relationships in the school team. On this basis, Zoya developed a mysterious "nervous disease", about which former classmates then they wrote:

“She didn’t like the inconstancy of her friends: as sometimes happens, today a girl will share her secrets with one friend, tomorrow with another, these will share with other girls, etc. Zoya didn’t like this and often sat alone. But she experienced all this , said that she was a lonely person that she could not find a girlfriend for herself.

In 1940, Zoya suffered acute meningitis, after which she underwent rehabilitation at a sanatorium for nervous diseases in Sokolniki, where she became friends with the writer Arkady Gaidar, who was also lying there. A year later, the war began ... According to documents, in October 1941, when the Nazis were furiously rushing to our capital, Kosmodemyanskaya graduated from the Central Reconnaissance and Sabotage School and voluntarily joined a partisan fighter detachment. Her detachment performed its last task in the village of Petrishchevo, Vereisky district, Moscow region - here Zoya and her comrades Boris Krainev and Vasily Klubkov monitored the Germans and prepared to set fire to the houses in which the invaders settled down for the night. Having dispersed throughout the village, the partisans carried out their plan. But the Nazis, frightened by the unexpected raid of saboteurs, managed to run out of the burning houses.

O further development events, it is known that Krainev did not wait for Zoya and Klubkov at the agreed meeting place and, having left, returned safely to his own. Klubkov was captured by the Germans, and Zoya, having missed her comrades and left alone, decided to return to Petrishchevo and continue the arson. However, both the Germans and the locals were already on their guard, and the Nazis put up guards from several Petrishchev's men. Zoya was noticed while trying to set fire to the shed of the Nazi accomplice S. A. Sviridov - the owner of the building himself saw her and called the Nazis, and for the capture of the partisan Sviridov was awarded by the Germans with a bottle of vodka, and later, by our court, sentenced to death.

Interrogations of the infiltrator began. Zoya did not say anything definite to the Nazis, she hid her real name and called herself "Tanya from Moscow." The Nazis undressed the girl, flogged her with belts, after which the sentry assigned to her for 4 hours led her barefoot, in her underwear, in the cold down the street. Local residents Solina and Smirnova also tried to join Zoya's torture - both of them were later sentenced to death. On November 29, 1941, Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya was taken to the central village square, where local residents were herded. Before the executionfor Zoya, the Nazis built a gallows,on her shoulder they hung a bag with flammable liquid, and on her chest - a sign, where it was written in large Russian and small in German "House arsonist"and started taking pictures.

Before the massacre, Kosmodemyanskaya shouted:

"Citizens! Don't stand, don't look, but you have to help fight! This death of mine is my achievement."

The German officer waved, but Zoya continued:

"Comrades, victory will be ours. German soldiers, before it's too late, surrender. Soviet Union invincible and will not be defeated ... No matter how much you hang us, you do not outweigh everyone - we are 170 million. Our comrades will avenge you for me" , - said Kosmodemyanskaya already with a noose around her neck.

Her body hung for about a month, repeatedly abused by those passing through the village. German soldiers. On New Year's Eve, 1942, the drunken Germans tore off clothes that had been hung up and once again abused the body, stabbing it with knives. The next day, the Germans gave the order to remove the gallows, and Zoya was buried. local residents outside the village.

After the war, Kosmodemyanskaya, posthumously awarded the Star of the Hero of the Soviet Union, was solemnly reburied at the Novodevichy Cemetery in Moscow. The fate of Zoya became widely known from the article "Tanya" by Pyotr Lidov, published in the newspaper "Pravda" on January 27, 1942. The author accidentally heard about the execution in Petrishchev from a witness - an elderly peasant who was shocked by the courage of an unknown girl: "They hung her, and she spoke. They hung her, and she kept threatening them ...". Lidov went to Petrishchevo, questioned the residents in detail, and published an article based on their inquiries. The identity of the girl was soon established - and the whole USSR learned about the feat of Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya. Dozens of journalistic investigations are devoted to the life, deed and death of Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya.

The secret services also conducted their research. So, for example, employees of the Central Archive of the FSB, together with correspondents from the Izvestia newspaper, published in 2000 previously classified documents from the case of the man who betrayed the legendary intelligence officer, Vasily Klubkov. The one who was captured by the Germans on the fateful night. According to Izvestia, Klubkov was discovered at the end of February 1942. As the former partisan who “miraculously escaped” later said, after he completed the task behind the front line in a group of saboteurs, he had to escape from German captivity several times and finally managed to get to his own. During all this time, he did not tell anything about Kosmodemyanskaya and was not interested in her fate. Klubkov was arrested, suspecting that it was he who betrayed his group, and then he was completely recruited by German intelligence. Soon he confessed to everything and was shot.

It turns out that back on April 3, 1942, the Military Tribunal of the Western Front sentenced the culprit of the death of Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya - a Red Army soldier of military unit 9903 Vasily Andreevich Klubkov, born in 1923, to capital punishment - execution, without confiscation of property for lack of such, for a crime under Art. 58-1 p. "b" of the Criminal Code of the RSFSR (military treason to the motherland).

Zoya Anatolyevna Kosmodemyanskaya (September 13, 1923 - November 29, 1941) - in Soviet times there was a legend that the girl was a partisan. After declassifying and studying the archives, it became known that she was a saboteur, abandoned in the rear of the German army. Posthumously awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union.

Childhood

Zoya was born in one of the villages of the Tambov province. Her parents were teachers and from childhood instilled in the girl a love of knowledge.

The girl's grandfather was a priest, therefore, according to one version, after the massacre of him, the family ended up in the depths of Siberia. According to other sources, the careless speeches of Zoya's father himself against the policy of collectivization led to the fact that they had to hastily run away from power in order to be able to sit out until passions subsided.

Be that as it may, but the Kosmodemyanskys still managed to get out of the snow and get to Moscow. Here, in 1933, the head of the family died, so the care of the children - Zoya and her younger brother - had to be shouldered by one mother.

Youth

Zoya studied very well. Her teachers praised her, saying that the girl had a great future. She was especially interested in literature and history. With them, the girl dreamed of tying her later life.

Social activity has also always been among Zoya's activities. Having joined the Lenin Komsomol, she managed to be a group organizer. However, being a modest girl with a heightened sense of justice, she did not always find mutual language with people who allowed themselves to be two-faced and fickle. Therefore, Zoe had few friends.

In 1940, Zoya became seriously ill. She was diagnosed with acute meningitis. Fortunately, there were no irreversible consequences, but the girl had a very long time to restore her strength. For this reason, she spent almost the entire winter in a sanatorium near Moscow.

There she was lucky to meet the famous writer Arkady Gaidar. They became friends and talked a lot. For Zoya it was very significant event, because she dreamed of connecting her life with the study of literature.

Returning home, Zoya very easily and quickly caught up with her classmates, although during her illness she had to do a lot of school curriculum skip. Having received a certificate, the girl was sure that now all doors were open to her. However, the war crossed out plans and shattered dreams.

Service

In the fall of 1941, Zoya decided to volunteer for the front. A smart and quick-witted girl was sent to a sabotage school, where fighters were trained for reconnaissance and sabotage units. There was no time for a long study, so the groups took an accelerated course and went to the front. Zoya was in one of them. Having successfully completed the test task, the students of the sabotage school were recognized as ready for combat operations.

According to the next order of the command, sabotage units were instructed to complicate the life of the German invaders in every possible way. New goal was the destruction of any buildings in which they were located or kept horses and equipment. The command believed that this would significantly weaken the enemy, because being in the cold in winter did not contribute to strengthening combat capability.

The group, which included Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya, received one of these tasks. They had to destroy many buildings in various villages. However, initially things did not go as planned. The soldiers almost immediately came under fire and suffered heavy losses. The survivors were forced to retreat. However, it was decided to bring the matter to an end.

Zoya and several of her comrades managed to set fire to buildings in the village of Petrishchevo. At the same time, the Germans suffered significant losses, because a communications center and several dozen horses died in the fire. Retreating, Zoya missed her colleagues. Realizing this, the girl decided that she should return and continue to carry out the order.

However, this turned out to be her big mistake. The German soldiers were already ready to meet. In addition, the locals were not delighted that someone was destroying their homes. It was they who informed the enemies that a suspicious person had reappeared in the village. Soon Zoya was captured.

Heroic death

The Germans took their anger out on the defenseless girl for several hours. She also felt hatred from civilians, many of whom did not fail to inflict several cruel blows on her. However, nothing made her beg for mercy or give out any valuable information to her enemies.

At half past eleven in the morning, the mutilated girl was taken to a hastily built gallows. Around her neck they hung a sign "Arsonist". Until her death, the girl did not flinch.

Zoya was buried first in the village cemetery, and then reburied at Novodevichy in Moscow.