Legend and reality. Is it possible to believe the history of the "Young Guard"? (12 photos)

During the Great Patriotic War, many underground organizations operated in the Soviet territories occupied by Germany, which fought against the Nazis. One of these organizations worked in Krasnodon. It consisted not of experienced military men, but of young men and women who were barely 18 years old. The youngest member of the Young Guard at that time was only 14.

What did the Young Guard do?

Sergey Tyulenin laid the foundation for everything. After the city was occupied by German troops in July 1942, he single-handedly began to collect weapons for the soldiers, put up anti-fascist leaflets, helping the Red Army to counteract the enemy. A little later, he assembled a whole detachment, and already on September 30, 1942, the organization numbered more than 50 people, headed by the chief of staff, Ivan Zemnukhov. [S-BLOCK]

The Young Guard carried out sabotage in the electromechanical workshops of the city. On the night of November 7, 1942, on the eve of the 25th anniversary of the Great October Socialist Revolution, the Young Guards hoisted eight red flags on the tallest buildings in the city of Krasnodon and the villages adjacent to it.

On the night of December 5-6, 1942, on the Day of the Constitution of the USSR, the Young Guards set fire to the building of the German labor exchange (the people dubbed it the "black exchange"), where lists of people (with addresses and filled out work cards) were stored, intended for hijacking for compulsory work in Nazi Germany, thereby about two thousand young men and women from the Krasnodon region were saved from forcible export. [S-BLOCK]

The Young Guards were also preparing to organize an armed uprising in Krasnodon in order to defeat the German garrison and join the advancing units of the Red Army. However, shortly before the planned uprising, the organization was uncovered.

On January 1, 1943, three young guards were arrested: Yevgeny Moshkov, Viktor Tretyakevich and Ivan Zemnukhov - the Nazis fell into the very heart of the organization. [S-BLOCK]

On the same day, the remaining members of the headquarters urgently gathered and decided: all the Young Guards should immediately leave the city, and the leaders should not spend the night at home that night. All underground workers were informed about the decision of the headquarters through messengers. One of them, who was in the group of the village of Pervomaika, Gennady Pocheptsov, having learned about the arrests, got cold feet and wrote a statement to the police about the existence of an underground organization.

massacre

One of the jailers, later convicted defector Lukyanov, said: “There was a continuous groan in the police, because during the entire interrogation the arrested were beaten. They lost consciousness, but they were brought to their senses and beaten again. I myself was sometimes terrified to look at these torments. They were shot in January 1943. 57 young guards. The Germans did not achieve any "frank confessions" from the Krasnodon schoolchildren. This, perhaps, was the most powerful moment for which the whole novel was written.

Viktor Tretyakevich - "the first traitor"

The Young Guards were arrested and sent to prison, where they were severely tortured. Viktor Tretyakevich, the organization's commissar, was treated with particular cruelty. His body was mutilated beyond recognition. Hence the rumors that it was Tretyakevich, unable to withstand the torture, betrayed the rest of the guys. Still trying to establish the identity of the traitor, the investigating authorities accepted this version. And only a few years later, on the basis of declassified documents, the traitor was established, it turned out to be not Tretyakevich at all. However, the charges were not dropped from him at the time. This will happen only 16 years later, when the authorities arrest Vasily Podtynny, who participated in the torture. During interrogation, he confessed that Tretyakevich had indeed been slandered. Despite the most severe torture, Tretyakevich held firm and did not betray anyone. He was rehabilitated only in 1960, posthumously awarded the Order. [S-BLOCK]

However, at the same time, the Central Committee of the All-Union Leninist Young Communist League adopted a very strange closed resolution: “There is no point in stirring up the history of the Young Guard, remaking it in accordance with some facts that have become known recently. We believe that it is inappropriate to revise the history of the "Young Guard" when appearing in the press, lectures, reports. Fadeev's novel has been published in our country in 22 languages ​​and in 16 languages ​​of foreign countries... Millions of boys and girls are brought up and will be brought up on the history of the Young Guard. Based on this, we believe that new facts that contradict the novel The Young Guard should not be made public.

Who is the traitor?

At the beginning of the 2000s, the Security Service of Ukraine in the Lugansk region declassified some materials in the case of the Young Guard. As it turned out, back in 1943, a certain Mikhail Kuleshov was detained by the SMERSH army counterintelligence. When the Nazis occupied the city, he offered them his cooperation and soon took the position of field police investigator. It was Kuleshov who led the investigation into the Young Guard case. Judging by his testimony, the real reason for the failure of the underground was the betrayal of the Young Guard Georgy Pocheptsov. When the news came that three Young Guardsmen had been arrested, Pocheptsov confessed everything to his stepfather, who worked closely with the German administration. He convinced him to turn himself in to the police. During the first interrogations, he confirmed the authorship of the applicant and his affiliation with the underground Komsomol organization operating in Krasnodon, named the goals and objectives of the underground, indicated the place where weapons and ammunition were stored, hidden in Gundor mine No. 18. [S-BLOCK]

As Kuleshov testified during the SMERSH interrogation on March 15, 1943: “Pocheptsov said that he really is a member of the underground Komsomol organization that exists in Krasnodon and its environs. He named the leaders of this organization, or rather, the city headquarters, namely: Tretyakevich, Lukashov, Zemnukhov, Safonov, Koshevoy. Pocheptsov called Tretyakevich the head of the citywide organization. He himself was a member of the May Day organization, headed by Anatoly Popov, and before that Glavan. The next day, Pocheptsov was again taken to the police and interrogated. On the same day, he was confronted with Moshkov and Popov, whose interrogations were accompanied by brutal beatings and cruel torture. Pocheptsov confirmed his previous testimony and named all members of the organization known to him. [C-BLOCK] From January 5 to 11, 1943, on the denunciation and testimony of Pocheptsov, most of the Young Guards were arrested. The traitor himself was released and was not arrested until the liberation of Krasnodon by the Soviet troops. Thus, the secret information that Pocheptsov had and which became known to the police turned out to be enough to liquidate the Komsomol youth underground. This is how the organization was revealed, having existed for less than six months.

After the liberation of Krasnodon by the Red Army, Pocheptsov, Gromov (Pocheptsov's stepfather) and Kuleshov were recognized as traitors to the Motherland and, on the verdict of the USSR military tribunal, were shot on September 19, 1943. However, the public learned about the real traitors for an unknown reason many years later.

Was there any betrayal?

In the late 1990s, Vasily Levashov, one of the surviving members of the Young Guard, said in an interview with one of the well-known newspapers that the Germans got on the trail of the Young Guard by accident - because of poor conspiracy. Allegedly, there was no betrayal. At the end of December 1942, the Young Guards robbed a truck with Christmas gifts for the Germans. This was witnessed by a 12-year-old boy who received a pack of cigarettes from members of the organization for his silence. With these cigarettes, the boy fell into the hands of the police and told about the robbery of the car. [S-BLOCK]

On January 1, 1943, three young guards were arrested, participating in the theft of Christmas gifts: Yevgeny Moshkov, Viktor Tretyakevich and Ivan Zemnukhov. Without knowing it, the Nazis got into the very heart of the organization. during interrogations, the guys were silent, but during a search in Moshkov’s house, the Germans accidentally discovered a list of 70 members of the Young Guard. This list became the reason for mass arrests and torture.

It must be admitted that Levashov's "revelations" have not yet been confirmed.

In 1946, the writer's novel was published in the Soviet Union Alexandra Fadeeva"Young Guard", dedicated to the struggle of young underground workers with the Nazis.

Novel and film "in hot pursuit"

Roman Fadeev was destined to become a bestseller for several decades to come: "Young Guard" in the Soviet period withstood more than 270 publications with a total circulation of over 26 million copies.

"Young Guard" was included in the school curriculum, and there was not a single Soviet student who would not have heard of Oleg Koshevoy, Luba Shevtsova And Ulyana Gromova.

In 1948, the novel by Alexander Fadeev was filmed - the film of the same name "Young Guard" was shot by the director Sergey Gerasimov, involving in it students of the acting department of VGIK. The path to the stars began with the "Young Guard" Nonna Mordyukova, Inna Makarova, Georgy Yumatov, Vyacheslav Tikhonov…

Both the book and the film had an amazing feature - they were created not just on the basis of real events, but literally “in hot pursuit”. The actors came to the places where everything happened, communicated with the parents and friends of the dead heroes. Vladimir Ivanov, who played Oleg Koshevoy, was two years older than his hero. Nonna Mordyukova was only a year younger than Ulyana Gromova, Inna Makarova was a couple of years younger than Lyuba Shevtsova. All this gave the picture an incredible realism.

Years later, during the collapse of the USSR, the speed of creating works of art will become an argument with which they will prove that the history of the underground organization "Young Guard" is a fiction of Soviet propaganda.

Why all of a sudden it was the young underground workers from Krasnodon who received so much attention? Were there much more successful groups that did not receive a small fraction of the glory and recognition of the Young Guard?

Mine number five

No matter how cruel it sounds, but the fame of the Young Guard predetermined its tragic ending, which occurred shortly before the liberation of the city of Krasnodon from the Nazis.

In 1943, the Soviet Union was already systematically documenting Nazi crimes in the occupied territories. Immediately after the liberation of cities and villages, commissions were formed whose task was to record cases of massacres against Soviet citizens, establish the places of burial of victims, and identify witnesses to crimes.

On February 14, 1943, the Red Army liberated Krasnodon. Almost immediately, it became known from local residents about the massacre perpetrated by the Nazis on young underground workers.

The snow in the prison yard still had traces of their blood. In the chambers on the walls, relatives and friends found the last messages of the young guards who were dying.

The place where the bodies of the executed were located was also not a secret. Most of the Young Guards were thrown into the 58-meter pit of the Krasnodon mine No. 5.

The shaft where the Nazis executed members of the underground organization "Young Guard". Photo: RIA Novosti

“Arms are twisted, ears are cut off, a star is carved on the cheek”

The work of lifting the bodies was hard both physically and mentally. The executed young guards were subjected to sophisticated torture before their death.

The corpse examination protocols speak for themselves: “ Ulyana Gromova, 19 years old, a five-pointed star is carved on the back, the right arm is broken, the ribs are broken ... "

« Lida Androsova, 18 years old, removed without an eye, ear, hand, with a rope around his neck, which cut hard into the body. Dried blood is visible on the neck.

« Angelina Samoshina, 18 years. Traces 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 is disfigured: cut off the chest, lips, broken legs. All outer clothing has been removed.

« Shura Bondareva, 20 years old, removed without a head and right breast, the whole body is beaten, bruised, has a black color.

« Viktor Tretyakevich, 18 years. Extracted without a face, with a black-and-blue back, with shattered hands.

"Let me die, but I have to get her"

In the process of studying the remains, one more terrible detail came to light - some of the guys were thrown into the mine alive, and died as a result of a fall from a great height.

A few days later, work was suspended - due to the decomposition of the bodies, lifting them became dangerous for the living. The bodies of the rest were much lower and it seemed that they could not be lifted.

Father of the deceased Lida Androsova, Makar Timofeevich, an experienced miner, said: "Let me die from the poison of my daughter's corpse, but I must get her."

The mother of the deceased Yuri Vintsenovsky recalled: “A gaping abyss, around which small parts of our children’s toilet were lying: socks, combs, felt boots, bras, etc. The slag heap wall is all spattered with blood and brains. With a soul-rending cry, every mother recognized the dear things of her children. Moans, screams, fainting... Corpses that did not fit in the bath were laid on the street, in the snow under the walls of the bath. Creepy picture! In the bathhouse, around the bathhouse there are corpses, corpses. 71 dead!"

On March 1, 1943, Krasnodon saw off the Young Guards on their last journey. They were buried with military honors in a mass grave in the Komsomol park.

The funeral of the young guards. Photo: RIA Novosti

Comrade Khrushchev reports

Not only material evidence of the massacre, but also German documents, as well as Hitler's accomplices, who were directly related to the death of the Young Guard, fell into the hands of Soviet investigators.

It was not possible to quickly understand the circumstances of the activities and death of other underground groups due to lack of information. The uniqueness of the "Young Guard" was that everything seemed to be known about it at once.

In September 1943, Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine Nikita Khrushchev writes a report on the activities of the "Young Guard" on the basis of established data: "The Young Guards began their activities with the creation of a primitive printing house. Students of grades 9-10 - members of an underground organization - made a radio receiver on their own. Some time later, they were already receiving messages from the Soviet Information Bureau and began to publish leaflets. Leaflets were pasted everywhere: on the walls of houses, in buildings, on telephone poles. Several times the Young Guard managed to stick leaflets on the backs of the policemen... Members of the "Young Guard" also wrote slogans on the walls of houses and fences. On religious holidays, they came to church and shoved into the pockets of believers handwritten sheets of paper with the following content: “As we lived, so we will live, as we were, and we will be under the Stalinist banner,” or: “Down with Hitler’s 300 grams, Come on, Stalin's kilo." On the day of the 25th anniversary of the October Revolution, a red banner hoisted over the city, hoisted by members of an underground organization ...

The "Young Guard" was not limited to propaganda work, it was actively preparing for an armed uprising. To this end, they collected: 15 machine guns, 80 rifles, 300 grenades, more than 15,000 rounds of ammunition and 65 kg of explosives. By the beginning of the winter of 1942, the organization was a close-knit, fighting detachment with experience in political and combat activities. The underground thwarted the mobilization of several thousand residents of Krasnodon to Germany, burned down the labor exchange, saved the lives of dozens of prisoners of war, recaptured 500 head of cattle from the Germans and returned it to the inhabitants, carried out a number of other sabotage and terrorist acts.

Prompt award

1. To award /posthumously/ Oleg Vasilyevich KOSHEV, Ivan Aleksandrovich ZEMNUHOV, Sergey Gavrilovich TYULENIN, Ulyana Matveevna GROMOVA, Lyubov Grigoryevna SHEVTSOVOY the title of Hero of the Soviet Union, as the most outstanding organizers and leaders of the Young Guard.

2. To award 44 members of the “Young Guard” with orders of the USSR for their valor and courage in the fight against the German invaders behind enemy lines / 37 of them - posthumously /.

Stalin supported Khrushchev's proposal. The note addressed to the leader is dated September 8, and already on September 13 the Decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR was issued on rewarding the Young Guards.

No extra feats were attributed to the boys and girls from the Young Guard - they managed to do a lot for unprepared amateur underground workers. And this is the case when there was no need to embellish anything.

What was corrected in the film and book?

And yet, there are things that are still being argued about. For example, about the contribution to the common cause of each of the leaders. Or about whether it is legitimate to call Oleg Koshevoy the commissioner of the organization. Or about who became the culprit of the failure.

For example, one of the Nazi accomplices at the trial stated that he had betrayed the Young Guards, unable to withstand the torture, Viktor Tretyakevich. Only 16 years later, in 1959, during the trial of Vasily Podtyny, who served as deputy head of the Krasnodon city police in 1942-1943, it became known that Tretyakevich became a victim of a slander, and became a real informer Gennady Pocheptsov.

Pocheptsov and his stepfather Vasily Gromov were exposed as Nazi accomplices as early as 1943, and were shot by the verdict of the tribunal. But the role of Pocheptsov in the death of the Young Guard was revealed much later.

Due to new information in 1964, Sergei Gerasimov even re-edited and partially re-voiced the film "Young Guard".

Alexander Fadeev had to rewrite the novel. And not because of inaccuracies, which the writer explained by the fact that the book is fiction, not documentary, but because of Comrade Stalin's dissenting opinion. The leader did not like the fact that the youth in the book act without the help and guidance of older communist comrades. As a result, in the 1951 version of the book, Koshevoy and his comrades were already guided by wise party members.

Patriots without special training

Such additions were later used to denounce the Young Guard as a whole. And the relatively recently discovered fact that Lyuba Shevtsova took a three-month NKVD course as a radio operator is ready to be presented by some as proof that the Young Guards are not patriot schoolchildren, but seasoned saboteurs.

In fact, there was neither the leading role of the party, nor sabotage training. The guys did not know the basics of underground activities, improvising on the go. Under such conditions, failure was inevitable.

Suffice it to recall how Oleg Koshevoy died. He managed to avoid detention in Krasnodon, but he failed to cross the front line, as he planned.

He was detained by the field gendarmerie near the town of Rovenki. Koshevoy's face was not known, and he could well have avoided exposure, if not for a mistake that is completely impossible for a professional illegal intelligence officer. During a search, they found a Komsomol ID sewn into his clothes, as well as several other documents revealing him as a member of the Young Guard.

Their courage struck enemies

The desire to keep the Komsomol card in such a situation is an insane act, life-threatening boyishness. But Oleg was a boy, he was only 16 years old ... He met his last hour on February 9, 1943 steadfastly and courageously. From the testimony Schultz- a 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 which was the head of this organization Koshevoy ... I remember him especially clearly because I had to shoot him twice . After the shots, all the arrested fell to the ground and lay motionless, only Koshevoy got up and, turning around, looked in our direction. This made me very angry Fromme and he ordered the gendarme Drevitz finish him off. Drevitz went up to the lying Koshevoy and shot him in the back of the head ... "

His comrades also died fearlessly. SS man Drevitz told during the interrogation about the last minutes of the life of Lyuba Shevtsova: “Of the number of those shot in the second batch, I remember Shevtsova well. She drew my attention with her appearance. She had a beautiful, slender figure, an oblong face. Despite her youth, she held herself very courageously. Before the execution, I led Shevtsova to the edge of the execution pit. She did not utter a word about mercy and calmly, with her head held high, accepted death.

“I did not join the organization in order to ask your forgiveness later; I regret only one thing, that we managed to do little! ”, Ulyana Gromova threw in the face of the Nazi investigator.

"Bandera myth": how the Young Guards were recorded as Ukrainian nationalists

During the years of independent Ukraine, a new misfortune befell the Young Guard - it was suddenly declared ... an underground organization of Ukrainian nationalists.

This version is recognized by all historians who have studied documents related to the Young Guard as complete nonsense. I must say that the city of Krasnodon, adjacent to the modern Russian-Ukrainian border, has never belonged to the territory where the positions of nationalists are strong.

The author of the "stuffing" is US citizen Yevgeny Stakhov. A veteran of the Bandera movement in the early 1990s, he began to introduce himself in interviews as the organizer of the nationalist underground in the Donbass, to which he “joined” the Young Guard. Stakhov's revelations were refuted not only by the real facts in which he was confused, but also by the statements of those Young Guardsmen who survived and lived until the 1990s. However, until now in Ukraine, and in Russia, one can sometimes hear about the “Bandera trace” of the “Young Guard”.

After the "Euromaidan" in Ukraine, the desecration of the memory of the heroes of the Great Patriotic War became the norm. The Young Guards were lucky - the city of Krasnodon is located on the territory of the Lugansk People's Republic, where the memory of the patriots who gave their lives for their Motherland is still sacred.

Discussion:

Documentary film "Young Guard":

"Young Guard" - an underground anti-fascist Komsomol organization of boys and girls that operated during the Great Patriotic War (from September 1942 to January 1943), mainly in the city of Krasnodon, Voroshilovgrad region of the Ukrainian SSR.

The organization was created shortly after the beginning of the occupation of the city of Krasnodon by the troops of Nazi Germany, which began on July 20, 1942. The "Young Guard" consisted of about one hundred and ten participants - boys and girls. The youngest member of the underground was fourteen years old.

Krasnodon underground

During the work of a special commission of the Voroshilovgrad regional committee of the CP (b) U in 1949-1950, it was established that an underground party group headed by Philip Lyutikov operated in Krasnodon. In addition to his assistant Nikolai Barakov, communists Nina Sokolova, Maria Dymchenko, Daniil Vystavkin and Gerasim Vinokurov participated in the underground work.

The underground workers began their work in August 1942. Subsequently, they established a connection with the youth underground organizations of Krasnodon, whose activities they directly supervised.

Creation of the "Young Guard"

Underground anti-fascist youth groups arose in Krasnodon immediately after the start of the occupation of the city by Nazi German troops, which began on July 20, 1942. By the beginning of September 1942, soldiers of the Red Army who ended up in Krasnodon join them: soldiers Yevgeny 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. Who was the commissioner of the "Young Guard" is still not known for certain.

The overwhelming majority of the Young Guard were members of the Komsomol, temporary Komsomol certificates for them were printed in the underground printing house of the organization along with leaflets

The activities of the "Young Guard"

Over the entire period of its activity, the Young Guard organization issued and distributed in the city of Krasnodon more than five thousand anti-fascist leaflets with data on the real state of affairs at the front and calls on the population to rise in a merciless fight against the German invaders.

Along with the underground communists, members of the organization participated in sabotage in the electromechanical workshops of the city.

On the night of November 7, 1942, on the eve of the 25th anniversary of the Great October Socialist Revolution, the Young Guards hoisted eight red flags on the tallest buildings in the city of Krasnodon and the villages adjacent to it.

On the night of December 5-6, 1942, on the Day of the Constitution of the USSR, the Young Guards set fire to the building of the German labor exchange (the people dubbed it the "black exchange"), where lists of people (with addresses and filled out work cards) were stored, intended for hijacking for compulsory work in Nazi Germany, thereby about two thousand young men and women from the Krasnodon region were saved from forcible export.

The Young Guards were also preparing to organize an armed uprising in Krasnodon in order to defeat the German garrison and join the advancing units of the Red Army. However, shortly before the planned uprising, the organization was uncovered.

Disclosure of the "Young Guard"

Shortly before fleeing from the advancing units of the Red Army, the German counterintelligence, the Gestapo, the police and the gendarmerie intensified their efforts to capture and eliminate the Komsomol-communist underground in the Krasnodon region.

Using informants (most of whom, after the liberation of the Ukrainian SSR, were exposed and convicted of treason and collaboration with the Nazis), the Germans got on the trail of young partisans, and in January 1943 mass arrests of members of the organization began.

On January 1, 1943, Yevgeny Moshkov and Viktor Tretyakevich were arrested, their arrest was due to the fact that they tried to sell New Year's gifts on the local market from looted German trucks, which had been attacked by the Young Guards the day before.

On January 2, Ivan Zemnukhov was arrested, who was trying to rescue Moshkov and Tretyakevich, and on January 5, the police began mass arrests of underground workers, which continued until January 11, 1943.

Traitor

Until 1959, it was believed that the young guards were given to the SS by the commissioner of the Young Guard, Viktor Tretyakevich, who was pointed out during the 1943 trial by the former investigator of the occupation police, Mikhail Emelyanovich Kuleshov, stating that Viktor could not stand the torture.

However, in 1959, during the trial of Vasily Podtynny, recognized as a traitor to the Motherland, who served as deputy chief of the Krasnodon city police in 1942-1943 and for sixteen years hiding under a false name, often changing work and place of residence, new circumstances of the death of the fearless young guards.

A special state commission created after the process established that Viktor Tretyakevich was the victim of a deliberate slander, and one of the members of the organization, Gennady Pocheptsov, was identified as a real traitor, who on January 2, 1943, on the advice of his stepfather Vasily Grigorievich Gromov, head of mine No. 1-bis and a secret agent police of Krasnodon, made a corresponding denunciation to the occupying authorities and named the names of all the members of the Young Guard known to him.

After the liberation of Krasnodon by the Red Army, Pocheptsov, Gromov and Kuleshov were recognized as traitors to the Motherland and, according to the verdict of the USSR military tribunal, on September 19, 1943, they were shot.

Vasily Gromov, immediately after the liberation of Krasnodon, was forced to participate in the extraction of the corpses of the Young Guards, thrown by the Nazis into the mine.

"Young Guard": but still young people were killed

The Central Archive of the FSB gave us the opportunity to study Case No. 20056 - twenty-eight volumes of investigation materials on charges of policemen and German gendarmes in the massacre of the underground organization Young Guard, which operated in the Ukrainian city of Krasnodon in 1942. Recall that the novel "The Young Guard", which we have not re-read for a long time, tells in detail about these events. Writer Alexander Fadeev made a special trip to Krasnodon after his release and wrote an essay for Pravda, and then a book. With the same name.

Oleg Koshevoy, Ivan Zemnukhov, Ulyana Gromova, Sergei Tyulenin and Lyubov Shevtsova were immediately awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union.

After that, not only the dead, but even the surviving "Young Guards" no longer belonged to themselves, but to Fadeev. In 1951, at the insistence of the Central Committee, he introduced communist mentors into his book. Immediately and in life, kilometers of dissertations were written about their role in leading the Krasnodon youth underground. And not a writer from eyewitnesses, but real participants in the events began to ask the writer: what was the Young Guard really doing? Who led it? Who betrayed her? Fadeev replied: "I wrote a novel, not a story."

The investigation was in hot pursuit, when not all the witnesses and defendants had time to read the novel, which quickly became a classic. This means that in their memory and testimony, the well-known book underground heroes have not yet had time to replace completely real boys and girls executed by the Krasnodon police. So, having read the facts, the author found ...

One of the leaflets of the "Young Guard"

Or was it anyway? So, facts.

From the case file No. 20056: Valya Borts:“I joined the Young Guard through my school friend Seryozha Safonov, who introduced me to Sergei Tyulenin in August 1942. Then the organization was small and was called the Hammer detachment. I took an oath. The commander was Viktor Tretyakevich, the commissar was Oleg Koshevoy, and the staff members were Ivan Zemnukhov, Sergei Tyulenin and Ulyana Gromova. Later, the headquarters was increased by Lyuba Shevtsova.

Korostylev, engineer of the Krasnougol trust:“Somehow, in early October 1942, I handed over a radio to the Young Guards. The reports they wrote down were multiplied, and then spread throughout the city.

Valya Borts:“... On November 7, red flags were hung on the buildings of the coal directorate and the club of mine No. 5-bis. The labor exchange was burned down, which contained lists of Soviet citizens to be deported to Germany. Shevtsov, Lukyanchenko and Tyulenin set fire to the labor exchange.

The building of the Krasnodon police, where prisoners were kept

In fact, only twenty-five gendarmes were left to support the Ordnung of the Germans for the entire region. Then they sent five more. They were led by a fifty-year-old German - the head of the gendarmerie Renatus, a member of the NSDAP since 1933. And for thirty Germans in the area there were four hundred policemen. And the competition for a place in the police was such that they took only on the recommendation.

“On the facts of the arson of the labor exchange and the hanging of flags,” the police reported the next day: eight people were arrested. The head of the gendarmerie, without hesitation, ordered everyone to be shot.

In the File there is a mention of only one victim of police reporting - the daughter of the collective farm manager Kaseev, who confessed to flying flags. It is absolutely known that Kaseyeva was never a “Young Guard” and does not appear on the lists of heroes.

The "guilty" of posting leaflets was also found immediately. The wife of an engineer of the coal directorate was just solving family problems. And in order to get rid of her husband, she reported to the police: here one engineer maintains contact with the partisans. The “sticker” was miraculously saved by a neighbor in the yard, burgomaster Statsenko.

Alexander Fadeev's novel "The Young Guard"

On the night of December 25-26, 1942, a German car was robbed near the building of the Krasnodon district government, in which there were mail and New Year's gifts for German soldiers and officers. The driver of the car reported this to the Krasnodon gendarmerie.

The head of the Krasnodon police, Solikovsky, gathered all the policemen, showed a pack of cigarettes of the same brand as those stolen, ordered them to immediately go to the local market and deliver to the police everyone who would sell such cigarettes.

Soon, the interpreter Burgart and a German in civilian clothes walking with him through the bazaar managed to detain twelve-year-old Alexander Grinev (aka Puzyrev). The boy admitted that Yevgeny Moshkov gave him cigarettes. Eight boxes of cigarettes and cookies were found in Moshkov's apartment. So the head of the club Moshkov, the head of the string circle Tretyakevich and some others were arrested.

And then they took Olga Lyadskaya. In fact, she was arrested quite by accident. They came to Tosya Mashchenko in search of the “robber” Valya Borts, who by that time was already walking towards the front line. The policeman liked Tosya's tablecloth and decided to take it with him. Under the tablecloth lay Lyadskaya's unsent letter to her friend Fyodor Izvarin. She wrote that she did not want to go to Germany in "SLAVERY". That's right: in quotation marks and capital letters.

Olga Lyadskaya (center) was also called a traitor, although she could not betray anyone

The investigator did not expect more. But Lyadskaya fell for the hook and named a couple more names - those whom she remembered from her active Komsomol work even before the war, who had nothing to do with the Young Guard.

From the materials of case No. 20056: Lyadskaya:“I named the people whom I suspected of partisan activity: Kozyrev, Tretyakevich, Nikolaenko, because they once asked me if we had partisans on the farm and if I helped them. And after Solikovsky threatened to beat me, I betrayed Mashchenko's girlfriend - Borts ... ". And eighty others. Even according to the post-war lists, the organization consisted of about seventy ...

For a long time, in addition to Lyadskaya, the “Young Guard” Pocheptsov was considered an “official” traitor. Indeed, investigator Cherenkov recalls that Gennady Pocheptsov, the nephew of the former head of the Krasnodon police, handed over the group in the village of Pervomaisky to Solikovsky and Zakharov in writing. And he issued the MG headquarters in this order: Tretyakevich (chief), Lukashev, Zemnukhov, Safonov and Koshevoy. He also named the commander of his "five" - ​​Popov.

Delivered to the police, Tosya Mashchenko admitted that she was distributing leaflets. And she betrayed Tretyakevich, who had been extradited for the third time since the New Year. Tretyakevich betrayed Shevtsova and began to call the “Young Guards” entire villages.

Sergei Tyulenin is one of the most reckless "Young Guard"

Indeed, the “Young Guard” Gennady Pocheptsov, who after the war was made “the official traitor of the Young Guard”, gave out on his own initiative. But he no longer told Solikovsky anything new.

The documents mention the Chinese Yakov Ka-Fu as a traitor to the Young Guard. Investigator Zakharov told investigator Orlov already in Italy, at the very end of the war, that this Chinese had betrayed the organization. The post-war investigation was able to establish only one thing: Yakov could be offended by the Soviet authorities, because before the war he was fired from his job because of his poor knowledge of the Russian language.

Imagine how the offended Chinese Ka-Fu handed over an underground organization. How he answered in detail the questions of the investigators - probably on the fingers. It is strange that if not the whole of China, then at least the entire Krasnodon region of "Shanghai" did not appear on the lists of the "Young Guards".

For decades there has been a debate about how the real story of the Young Guard differs from that written by Fadeev. It turns out that the argument is pointless. Case No. 20056 - that in the book it was not life that was embellished, but a myth already created before the writer. At first, the exploits of the youth underground were multiplied by the Krasnodon police itself.

Viktor Tretyakevich was first considered a traitor

But all this was only the prehistory of the Young Guard. The story only begins now.

From the case file No. 20056: Maria Borts:“... When I entered the office, Solikovsky was sitting at the table. In front of him lay a set of lashes: thick, thin, wide, lead-tipped straps. Vanya Zemnukhov, mutilated beyond recognition, stood by the sofa. His eyes were red, the eyelids were very inflamed. There are bruises and bruises on the face. All of Vanya's clothes were covered in blood, the shirt on his back was stuck to his body, and blood was seeping through it.

Nina Zemnukhova:“From a resident of Krasnodon Lensky Rafail Vasilyevich, who was kept with Vanya in the same cell, I learned that the executioners took Vanya undressed to the police yard and beat him unconscious in the snow.

Zhenya Moshkov was taken to the Kamenka River, frozen in an ice hole and then thawed in a nearby hut in the stove, after which they were again taken to the police for interrogation ... Volodya Osmukhin had a broken bone in his arm and every time during interrogation they twisted his broken arm ... ".

Ulyana Gromova

Cherenkov (police investigator): “I held a confrontation between Gromova, Ivanikhina and Zemnukhov. At that moment, Solikovsky entered the office with his wife. Having laid Gromova and Ivanikhina on the floor, I began to beat them. Solikovsky, encouraged by his wife, snatched the whip from my hands and began to deal with the arrested himself. ... Since the cells of the prison were filled with young people, many, like Olga Ivantsova's mother, simply lay in the corridor.

Maria Borts:“...Solikovsky, Zakharov, Davidenko forced the girls to strip naked, and then they began to mock them, accompanied by beatings. Sometimes this was done in the presence of Solikovsky's wife, who usually sat on the sofa and burst into laughter. ... Ulya Gromova was hung up by her braids ... They trampled on her chest with boots. ... Police officer Bautkin beat Popov with a whip and forced him to lick the blood that had splashed onto the wall with his tongue.

Uli Gromova's suicide note

The decision to execute at mine No. 5 bis was made by the chief of police, Solikovsky, and burgomaster Statsenko. The place was checked, the Krasnodonites were already shot there.

According to the Case, the “Young Guards” were taken out to be executed in four steps. For the first time, on January 13, there were thirteen girls on a truck, with six Jews hooked up to them. First they shot and threw Jews into the pit of mine No. 5 bis. And then the girls started screaming that they were not guilty of anything. The police began to lift and tie the girls' dresses over their heads. And some were thrown into the mine alive.

The next day, sixteen more people, including Moshkov and Popov, were taken to the mine in three wagons.

Tretyakevich was thrown into the mine alive, because he managed to grab police investigator Zakharov and tried to drag him along. So decide for yourself what Viktor Tretyakevich really was, about whom not a single writer wrote a single line for twenty years after his execution.

Place of execution of the "Young Guards"

For almost a week, Oleg Koshevoy hid from persecution in farms, dressed in a woman's dress. Then he lay down for three days - under the bed in the apartment of a relative. Koshevoy thought that the Krasnodon police were looking for him as a commissar of the Young Guard. In fact, he was caught as a participant in a robbery of a car with New Year's gifts. And they took it for neither one nor the other - simply because in the front-line zone then they grabbed and searched all young people ...

The look of the gray-haired boy Oleg Koshevoy was remembered by the executioners forever

Koshevoy shouted to Orlov: I am an underground commissar! But the investigator did not listen to the “Young Guard”: they say, can real partisans pretend to be so stupid? But the young man irritated the investigator so much that during the six days of interrogation Oleg turned gray.

About how Koshevoy was dying, the Germans from the firing squad testified. They hardly remembered how, during breakfast, the head of the gendarmerie, Fromme, came into the dining room and said: hurry up, there is work. As usual, the prisoners were taken to the forest, divided into two parties, and placed facing the pits...

But they clearly remembered that one gray-haired boy, after a volley, did not fall into the pit, but remained lying on the edge. He turned his head and just looked in their direction. The gendarme Drevitz could not stand it, came up and shot him in the back of the head with a rifle ...

For the Germans, neither the name of Oleg Koshevoy nor the Young Guard existed. But even a few years after the war, they did not forget the look of a gray-haired boy lying on the edge of the pit ...

After the liberation of Krasnodon, on March 1, 1943, forty-nine corpses of the dead were stacked in coffins and transported to the park. Komsomol. It was snowing, immediately turning to mud. The funeral went on from morning until late in the evening...

Monument to the "Young Guards" in Krasnodon

In 1949, Lyadskaya asked to be given the opportunity to independently complete the 10th grade program, because she had been imprisoned since the age of seventeen. Olga Lyadskaya was rehabilitated in the mid-nineties on the grounds that she was not a member of the Young Guard youth Komsomol organization, which means she could not extradite her.

In 1960, Viktor Tretyakevich was included in the lists of the "Young Guard" and awarded the Order of the Patriotic War, I degree, posthumously ...

The editors express their gratitude to the leadership of the CA FSB.

Eric SCHUR, "Top Secret"

Bolder forward, and firmer step,
And above the youthful banner!
We are the young guard
Workers and peasants!

The small Ukrainian city of Krasnodon, located on the Bolshaya Kamenka River, 50 km from Voroshilovgrad, the former and present Lugansk, until February 1943 was a little-known settlement of regional significance. On February 14, troops of the 3rd Guards Army of the Southwestern Front entered Krasnodon. And after a very short time after that, the name of a small mining town in the south-east of the region became known to the whole country, which learned about the active work of the underground youth organization during the occupation. On the same day, the military learned about the young underground workers who were martyred at the hands of the Nazis and their accomplices and sent an urgent message to the Political Department of the Front. Together with the mothers of the dead, they visited the building of the city police, entered the cells, examined the offices where the arrested boys and girls were subjected to terrible torture. Everywhere there were black traces of blood, on the walls of the cells there were inscriptions with names, words of farewell to relatives. Then everyone hurried to the pit of mine No. 5. Although the executions of the underground workers took place in a hurry and secretly, a rumor spread around the city that the executioners had chosen her for the massacre. A terrible picture appeared before the eyes of Krasnodon residents: the black mouth of an abandoned pit that swallowed their children, melted snow mixed with earth and blood. Scraps of clothes, shoes, personal items were scattered around. It became completely clear that everything happened here. A few days later, mine rescuers began to remove the bodies of the executed from the pit. Having installed a gate and a winch, they descended in a tub two by two to a depth and raised the bodies of the dead, sometimes mutilated beyond recognition, to the surface. Broken arms and legs, broken fingers, terrible burns, flayed skin, cut off ears, knocked out teeth, stars carved on the backs, severed hands, gouged out and burned eyes... Women, having identified their children by indirect signs, lost consciousness, and men , harsh miners and front-line soldiers, could not help but cry. How could people do this, and can they be called people after that? Already on April 18, the army newspaper “Son of the Fatherland” published photos taken by the military photojournalist L.I. Yablonsky pictures of the walls of the cells of the police department. On one of the walls, poems and the caption “Anna Sopova” were written in blue pencil, on the other, a heart pierced by an arrow and four names in it: Bondareva, Minaeva, Gromova, Samoshin. Nearby - "They died at the hands of the Nazis on January 15, 1943 at 9 o'clock in the morning" and below with the same hand of Ulyana Gromova - "Death to the German occupiers." The photographs were accompanied by comments by military journalist Vladimir Smirnov. It was in them that the name of the organization, “Young Guard”, was first mentioned in the press.

Soon these two words became known throughout the country, and with them the names of the leaders of the organization - Oleg Koshevoy, Ulyana Gromova, Ivan Zemnukhov, Sergey Tyulenin, Lyubov Shevtsova. These five received posthumously the titles of Heroes of the Soviet Union, and their parents received a good pension, honor and respect from the whole country. Three young guardsmen - Anatoly Popov, Nikolai Sumskoy and Ivan Turkenich - were awarded the Order of the Red Banner of War, five people - the Order of the Red Star, another thirty-five - the Order of the Patriotic War of the 1st degree, the rest - medals "Partisan of the Patriotic War" 1st and 2nd “Years will pass, Hitler’s trash will disappear from the earth, wounds will be healed, pain and sorrow will subside, but the Soviet people will never forget the immortal feat of the organizers, leaders and members of the underground Komsomol organization Young Guard,” she wrote in September 1943 "Pravda", in which the Decree on the award was published. And in the fall of the same year, the famous writer Alexander Fadeev appeared in Krasnodon, who was instructed to collect material about the Young Guard and write an essay, story or even a novel about them. Fadeev caught fire with this plot. He met and He talked with teachers and parents of the Young Guard, especially became friends with Elena Nikolaevna Kosheva, Oleg's mother.
- I want to know the characters of the Young Guard, their interests, their moral character, their souls and dreams. I want to study in detail each member of the underground organization "Young Guard", to collect genuine, factual life material, - the writer said to the Krasnodon people, and they helped him as much as they could. And especially E.N. Koshevaya, in whose hospitable house he settled. Invaluable assistance to the writer was provided by a high commission from Moscow, headed by Colonel A.V. Toritsyn. As a result, the novel "Young Guard" was born, which became widely known not only in the USSR, but throughout the world. The novel taught young people patriotism, was included in the compulsory school curriculum, and a wonderful feature film was shot on it. Beautiful Russian language, lively style, vivid images of the main characters that sink into the soul, especially their leader, ideologist and commissar Oleg Koshevoy, as well as, of course, Uli Gromova, Seryozhka Tyulenin, mischievous and energetic Lyubka Shevtsova. Each image is unique, individual, remembered for a lifetime. Fadeev showed great skill and talent, and his novel would be good for everyone, if not for one “but”: he has a very distant relation to the true history of the Young Guard, and those who want to know the truth about it should not even try look for it in this work.

As a matter of fact, Fadeev himself repeatedly emphasized that his novel was not a documentary, but an artistic thing, and he himself had the right to fiction. In a letter to the parents of Lydia Androsova, an active member of the Young Guard, brutally tortured in Nazi dungeons and thrown into a pit, Fadeev wrote: “Although the heroes of my novel have real names and surnames, I did not write the history of the Young Guard, but a work of art , in which there is a lot of fictitious and even fictitious names. The novel has the right to do so. "But really: not a single historical literary work can do without fiction. If only because the author was not present at the conversations of his real-life heroes and cannot know exactly what they thought. He also does not may know all the characters of the story he describes without exception, and therefore he has to introduce fictional characters into the novel to fill in the gaps.But the author must still rely on known facts, and not distort them to please anyone, and even more so call white black and black white, covering up lies and slander with the right to fiction.Are such expressions too harsh in relation to Fadeev's novel?Alas, it contains not only distortions of facts, suppression of names, downplaying the role of some people and exaggerating the role of others , but also direct slander, which cost some innocent people shame, and others - long years of imprisonment in Stalin's camps.

However, let's take a look at everything in order. Let's start with the fact that the novel does not mention at all the names of two of the three members of the headquarters who stood at the origins of the creation of the "Young Guard" and turned it into an effective military organization with strict discipline and secrecy. These people are the commissar of the "Young Guard" Viktor Tretyakevich and a member of the staff Vasily Levashov. The third was Ivan Zemnukhov. Sergei Tyulenin at first acted autonomously, then entered with his combat group into the organization already created by Tretyakevich, Levashov and Zemnukhov. The main leaders of the Young Guard, who held all the threads in their hands and planned military and subversive operations, were Viktor Tretyakevich, Ivan Turkenich, Vasily Levashov, Ivan Zemnukhov and Evgeny Moshkov. Oleg Koshevoy and Georgy Arutyunyants were also members of the headquarters. Of these seven people, only Zemnukhov and Koshevoy received the title of Hero in 1943 and national fame along with the young heroes Gromova, Shevtsova and Tyulenin. But Ulyana Gromova, Lyubov Shevtsova and Sergey Tyulenin, contrary to the novel and the official version, were not members of the headquarters, although they deservedly received their stars of Heroes.

The commander of the "Young Guard" was a combat officer, former assistant chief of staff of the 614th anti-tank artillery regiment, Lieutenant Ivan Turkenich. In one of the battles on the middle Don, he was captured, fled from it and returned to his native Krasnodon, joined an underground organization and introduced military discipline into it. Each operation was carefully thought out and planned by him. Through his efforts, the "Young Guard" became a significant fighting force, acting according to the laws of military tactics. Turkenich and Levashov did not receive the title of Heroes because they did not fall into the hands of the Gestapo and escaped martyrdom. In addition, Turkenich was still in captivity. When Tretyakevich, Zemnukhov and Moshkov were arrested, and the headquarters decided to leave the city, he managed to get through the front line and died at the front in 1944, liberating Poland. Only in 1990, he was posthumously presented with the title of Hero, including for the "Young Guard".

Vasily Levashov also managed to get to his own, reached Berlin as a private, received many military awards. After the war, he became a naval officer and taught at the Popov Higher Naval School of Radio Electronics. Despite the fact that his active participation in the Krasnodon youth underground was no secret to anyone, for the "Young Guard" he received only a medal "Partisan of the Great Patriotic War" of the 2nd degree.

Yevgeny Moshkov maintained contact between the "Young Guard" and the Krasnodon underground, prepared before the war by the NKVD, was the first to be arrested along with Tretyakevich and, after terrible tortures, was executed along with him. It was through him that the notorious party leadership was carried out over the Young Guard. Here Fadeev did not sin against the truth, the communists Lyutikov and Barakov actually existed and were actively working.
If Turkenich and Moshkov at least appear in the novel as characters, then there is not a single word about Vasily Levashov. But quite a lot has been written about his cousin Sergei Levashov, a cordial friend of Lyuba Shevtsova. He was a former paratrooper, commander of a combat group. Why Fadeev wrote that he was killed while crossing the front line, when in fact Sergei was arrested and, after brutal torture, thrown into a pit, is also completely incomprehensible.

It is also useless to look for the name of Viktor Tretyakevich in the book, but the character Yevgeny Stakhovich, invented by Fadeev, acts in it. This figure is ambiguous. On the one hand, he is an active underground worker and former partisan, on the other hand, he is a traitor who cannot stand the terrible torture and gives out the names of his comrades to the police. But the policemen and the Germans, nevertheless, continue to torture him, knocking out all the new names, and then they are among the very first to be executed. Psychologically, this is a completely unrealistic situation. A person broken by torture, having begun to betray, no longer stops in his betrayal and lays out everything he knows, just to avoid a repetition of torment. You don't need to ask him anymore. And if they kill him, then not the first, but the last. It is strange that the "engineer of human souls" Alexander Fadeev did not understand this. Not only that, he also provided the fictitious traitor Stakhovich with the main facts of the biography of ... Tretyakevich, including the circumstances of his arrest. But even before describing the betrayal of Stakhovich, Fadeev gradually and skillfully leads the reader to this, in details creates hostility and distrust for this character. Knowing the truth about who the person who served as the prototype of Stakhovich was, in fact, the author of the novel, it is absolutely unbearable to read all this. Fadeev “appointed” Oleg Koshevoy, who never was one of the leaders of the organization, as a commissar of the Young Guard, and he can hardly be considered one of the leaders of the organization, since he joined it only at the beginning of November 1942. Here is such a cute "fiction", which is a real slander on the main leader of the "Young Guard", whose outstanding role was unanimously recognized by all its surviving members. Thanks again for changing my first and last name. Whether it is possible to consider a vile traitor a person who gave information as a result of monstrous torture being applied to him, this is still a big question, because there is a limit to human stamina. Only a few could withstand the measures of "special impact" of professional bone-breakers of the NKVD and the Gestapo. The vast majority signed everything in a row and confessed to anything. And before you blame them, you should imagine yourself in their place. Of course, not all of the Young Guard could endure the wild medieval tortures, but it was Viktor Tretyakevich who withstood them, showing incomprehensible fortitude and stamina. He was pushed into the pit alive, as he still tried, having gathered the remnants of his strength, to drag one of the policemen with him. How did it happen that such a person was slandered? And who did it? Is it Fadeev himself? Of course not. We will return to this issue later, but the fact is that Fadeev knew perfectly well the name of the real traitor of the Young Guard.

Komsomol member Gennady Pocheptsov was never arrested or tortured. He himself ran to the police when he was intimidated by his stepfather, who served for the invaders, when he saw his stepson cigarettes from a truck looted by the Young Guards with Christmas gifts from the Fuhrer for Wehrmacht soldiers. The traitor was shot in the same 1943, along with the traitor Kuleshov and the secret agent of the Krasnodon police Gromov, nicknamed "Vanyusha", who was the same stepfather. So: the name of Pocheptsov is not in the novel, and Fadeev explained this by saying that he did not want to spoil the life of his namesakes who lived in the region. But then the surname could simply be changed instead of replacing the true story of betrayal with a false one, according to which the organization was betrayed by two schoolgirl friends: Olga Lyadskaya and Zinaida Vyrikova. Moreover, these names just belonged to real girls who, in fact, were not familiar with each other. Both received long sentences for betrayal, which they did not commit, and only in 1990, after a thorough re-examination of all the circumstances of the case, they were rehabilitated due to the absence of corpus delicti.

And now back to the story of Tretyakevich. The first to slander the already dead hero was the fascist henchman and executioner, police investigator Kuleshov, who personally tortured and executed the Young Guards. Why exactly Tretyakevich? Apparently, the head of the "Young Guard" aroused such fierce hatred among the enemies with his courage and steadfastness that they decided to discredit his name after death. But why did the commission of Colonel Toritsyn, and after it Fadeev, believe the bastard and did not want to listen to the opinion of the surviving young guards - Turkenich, Nadia Tyulenina, Zhora Arutyunyants, Radik Yurkin, Valeria Borts? And here Elena Nikolaevna Koshevaya tried very hard, who seized on the version of Tretyakevich's betrayal and declared her son the commissioner of the Young Guard. Her house was a hospitable and cozy haven not only for Fadeev and Toritsyn, but also for the gentlemen of the German officers during the occupation of Krasnodon, and in order to avoid uncomfortable questions from the Soviet authorities, she needed to become the mother of not just a Young Guard, but their leader and ideological inspirer . The legend about Commissar Koshevoy was also aided by the fact that after Tretyakevich's arrest, Oleg arbitrarily took the Komsomol tickets issued by Tretyakevich and forwarded the signature "Slavin" (Tretyakevich's underground pseudonym) to Kashuk on them. With these tickets, he was arrested by the gendarmerie near the city of Rovenki. During interrogation, he called himself the commissioner of the Young Guard. After severe torture, Oleg Koshevoy was shot in Rovenki along with Lyuba Shevtsova. The version about Koshevoy's commissariat and Tretyakevich's betrayal was accepted by a high commission, then a novel was written under it, and for many years the name of the true and only commissar of the organization was forgotten, his parents did not receive a pension, and a literary legend for the broad masses replaced the true story "Young guards." I must say that the dishonorable actions of E.N. Koshevoy ended up damaging her son's reputation. When everything finally became clear, there were unscrupulous researchers and journalists who began to accuse Oleg Koshevoy himself of betrayal and even deny the fact of his death.

And the arrest in 1959 of the hardened executioner Vasily Podtynny, a former lieutenant of the Red Army, who voluntarily surrendered to the Germans, then fled from them, found himself in Krasnodon and went to work in the city police, led by the former criminal Solikovsky . Together with Solikovsky, Zakharov, Kuleshov, Cherenkov and other degenerates, he personally tortured and executed the Young Guards, but managed to escape retribution when the city was occupied by Soviet troops. Almost everyone was punished, with the exception of the chief executioner Solikovsky, who disappeared without a trace. In Fadeev's novel, there is no name of Podtynny, unlike the names of Solikovsky and Kuleshov, but the MGB knew about him very well and conducted a constant search. As a result, the traitor was found in one of the state farms of the Stalin region, where he quietly and peacefully worked as a cattleman. At first, he pretended not to understand what he was being asked about, but experts from the MGB quickly loosened his tongue with “special methods,” and he began to tell everything he knew. They did not stand on ceremony with the former executioner during interrogations, and it must be assumed that, once in the dungeons, he bitterly regretted not only his atrocities, but also that he had ever been born at all. It turned out that, having fled from Krasnodon, he made his way ... to the army in the field, reached Berlin and even had military awards. Sometimes you can just be amazed by studying examples of the work of the Soviet special services. The hero of the Soviet Union, fighter pilot Ivan Babak, the prototype of the main character in the film "Clear Sky", was beaten to death after German captivity, and only the intervention of A.I. Pokryshkin pulled him out of the tenacious paws of the army counterintelligence. And the traitor and the executioner were accepted into the army, and the vaunted SMERSH counterintelligence did not even bother to check if it was Podtynny who raged in Krasnodon.
One way or another, Podtynny's testimony helped put an end to the "Tretyakevich case" and remove all suspicions from him. It would seem, if so, give him the posthumous title of Hero of the Soviet Union and recognize him as a commissar. But no! In the higher spheres, it was decided to award Victor posthumously only with the Order of the Patriotic War of the 1st degree and assign his mother a personal pension. Heartbroken and crushed by shame, Victor's father did not live to see this happy day. And it was decided to continue to officially consider Oleg Koshevoy as the commissioner of the Young Guard. Why? Yes, just not to change or explain anything. There is no need to stir up the past, we will now consider Stakhovich a completely fictional character, that's all. A very convenient solution, but it could not suit those who respect the history of their country. The truth is always better than hypocritical half-truths and myth-making. The current political leadership could put an end to this story by awarding Viktor Tretyakevich the title of Hero of Russia.
***

Dear reader!
I bring to your attention the book "Gloomy Genius".

The book is written in the genre of fiction and documentary prose and is a collection of works united by the theme of military aviation of the 20th century: the work of outstanding aircraft designers, the history of the creation and combat use of various types of aviation equipment of the past century, the war in Spain, the combat path of the Normandie-Niemen air regiment, the battle for Britain, the history of radar, the air terror of the Allies and the tragedy of Dresden, the three stars of Alexander Pokryshkin, Adolf Galland and Werner Melders, the difficult fate of Willy Messerschmitt.

https://ridero.ru/books/sumrachnyi_genii/