The Young Guard arose under the leadership of the party underground, headed by F. P. Lyutikov. After the Nazi occupation of Krasnodon (July 20, 1942), several anti-fascist youth groups were formed: I. A. Zemnukhov, O. V. Koshevoy, V. I. Levashov, S. G. Tyulenina, A. Z. Eliseenko, V. A. Zhdanova , N. S. Sumsky, U. M. Gromova, A. V. Popov, M. K. Peglivanova.
On October 2, 1942, communist E. Ya. Moshkov held the first organizational meeting of the leaders of youth groups in the city and nearby villages. The created underground organization was called "M.G." Its headquarters included: Gromova, Zemnukhov, Koshevoy (Commissioner of the M.G.), Levashov, V.I. Tretyakevich, I.V. Turkenich (commander of the M.G.), Tyulenin, L.G. Shevtsova.
The Young Guard consisted of 91 people. (including 26 workers, 44 students and 14 employees), of which 15 were communists. the organization had 4 radios, an underground printing house, weapons and explosives. Issued and distributed 5 thousand anti-fascist leaflets of 30 titles; on the eve of the 25th anniversary of the Great October Socialist Revolution, she hung 8 Soviet flags in the city. Members of the organization destroyed enemy vehicles with soldiers, ammunition and fuel. On November 15, 1942, Young Guards liberated 70 Soviet prisoners of war from a fascist concentration camp, and 20 Soviet prisoners of war who were in the hospital were also released.
As a result of the arson on the night of December 6, 1942, of the building of the fascist labor exchange, where lists of people intended for export to Germany were kept, about 2 thousand Krasnodon residents were saved from being taken into fascist slavery.
The underground party organization of the city and the Young Guard were preparing an armed uprising with the goal of destroying the fascist garrison and moving towards the Soviet Army. The betrayal of the provocateur Pocheptsov interrupted this preparation.
In the fascist dungeons, the Young Guard bravely and steadfastly withstood the most severe torture. On January 15, 16 and 31, 1943, the Nazis dropped 71 people, some alive, some shot. into the pit of mine No. 5, 53 m deep. Koshevoy, Shevtsova, S. M. Ostapenko, D. U. Ogurtsov, V. F. Subbotin, after brutal torture, were shot in the Thunderous Forest near the city of Rovenki on February 9, 1943. 4 people. shot in other areas. 11 people escaped police pursuit: A.V. Kovalev went missing, Turkenich and S.S. Safonov died at the front, G.M. Arutyunyants, V.D. Borts, A.V. Lopukhov, O.I. Ivantsova, N.M. Ivantsova, Levashov, M.T. Shishchenko and R.P. Yurkin remained alive. By decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR dated September 13, 1943, Gromova, Zemnukhov, Koshevoy, Tyulenin, Shevtsova were awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union, 3 participants in the "M. g." awarded the Order of the Red Banner, 35 - the Order of the Patriotic War, 1st degree, 6 - the Order of the Red Star, 66 - the medal "Partisan of the Patriotic War" 1st degree. The feat of the heroes "M. g." depicted in A. A. Fadeev’s novel “The Young Guard”. A new city in the Voroshilovgrad region was named in memory of the organization. - Molodogvardeysk (1961); Settlements, state farms, collective farms, ships, etc. are named after the heroes.
Lit.: Young Guard. Sat. documents and memoirs, 3rd ed., Donetsk, 1972.
Materials provided by the Rubricon project
Military affairs of the Krasnodon underground fighters
MINISTRY OF CULTURE OF THE USSR
Krasnodon State Order of Peoples' Friendship Museum "Young Guard"
Krasnodon, Voroshilovgrad region, pl. them. Young Guard, tel. No. 2-33-73
The Nazis occupied Krasnodon on July 20, 1942. About this time, the commander of the “Young Guard” Ivan Turkenich wrote in his report “Days of the Underground”: “A government, a labor exchange were created, the police were introduced, the Gestapo arrived. Mass arrests of communists, Komsomol members, order bearers, old red partisans began. They were all shot. .. In the days of the bloody fascist revelry, our “Young Guard” was born. A headquarters was created, which included Ivan Turkenich (commander), Oleg Koshevoy (commissar), Ulyana Gromova, Ivan Zemnukhov, Vasily Levashov, Viktor Tretyakevich, Sergei Tyulenin, Lyubov Shevtsova.
All combat activities of the youth organization took place under the direct leadership of the party underground, which was carried out through the headquarters of the Young Guard. The communists set the young underground workers the task of debunking the lies of Hitler's propaganda and instilling faith in the inevitable defeat of the enemy. The Young Guards considered it their duty to rouse the youth and population of the Krasnodon region to actively fight the fascists, provide themselves with weapons and, at a convenient moment, move on to open armed struggle.
From the first days of their rule, the Nazis tried to organize the work of the mines. Therefore, following the occupied troops, the so-called Directorate No. 10 arrived in Krasnodon, part of the system of the “Eastern Society for the Operation of Coal and Metallurgical Enterprises”, designed to pump Krasnodon coal. The work of the Central Electromechanical Workshops was resumed, where the leaders of the underground communists, Filipp Petrovich Lyutikov and Nikolai Petrovich Barakov, took a job, risking their lives. Using their official position, they accept underground workers into the workshops and from here they lead the Young Guard. Everything necessary is being done to ensure that the enterprise, which, according to the occupiers’ plan, was to restore the Krasnodon mines, does not operate at full capacity. Young heroes damaged equipment, slowed down work, destroying individual parts of machines, and committed sabotage. So, on the eve of the launch of mine No. 1 “Sorokino”, Yuri Vitsenovsky cut the rope with which the cage was lowered into the shaft. The multi-ton cage broke, destroying in its path everything that had been so laboriously restored by the invaders. Thanks to the active work of the people's avengers, the fascists did not manage to remove a single ton of coal from the Krasnodon mines.
The Young Guards attached great importance to distributing leaflets among the population. Radio receivers were installed in the apartments of Nikolai Petrovich Barakov, Oleg Koshevoy, Nikolai Sumsky, and Sergei Levashov. The underground members listened to the reports of the Sovinformburo, based on their texts they compiled leaflets, with the help of which they conveyed to the residents of the city and region the truth about the Red Army, about our Soviet power. At first, proclamations were written by hand on pieces of paper in school notebooks. This took a lot of time, so the Young Guard headquarters decided to create an underground printing house. She was located in the house of Georgy Harutyunyants on the outskirts of the city. Having closed the windows with shutters, Ivan Zemnukhov, Viktor Tretyakevich, Vasily Levashov, Vladimir Osmukhin, Georgy Arutyunyants and other guys sat at night at a primitive press, printing leaflets.
The first printed leaflets appeared in the city on November 7, 1942. When distributing them, underground members showed initiative and ingenuity. Oleg Koshevoy, for example, put on a police uniform at night and, moving freely on the street after curfew, posted leaflets; Vasily Pirozhok managed to stuff leaflets into the pockets of Krasnodon residents at the market, even attaching them to the backs of policemen; Sergei Tyulenin "patronized" the cinema. He appeared here before the start of the session. At the most convenient moment, when the projectionist turned off the lights in the hall, Sergei threw leaflets into the auditorium.
Many leaflets went outside the city - to the Sverdlovsk, Rovenkovsky, Novosvetlovsky districts, and to the Rostov region. In total, during the occupation, the Young Guards distributed more than 5,000 copies of leaflets of 30 titles.
The headquarters constantly worked to involve young people in the ranks of the Young Guard. If in September there were 35 people in the underground, then in December there were 92 underground members in the organization. On the recommendation of the communists, all members of the Young Guard were divided into fives, with whom the headquarters maintained contacts through liaison officers.
At the end of September, Young Guards led by Ivan Turkenich hanged two traitors to the Motherland in the city park, who were especially zealous in reprisals against civilians. Youth strike groups carried out successful operations to destroy German vehicles on the roads leading from Krasnodon to Sverdlovsk, Voroshilovgrad, Izvarino.
The 25th anniversary of the Great October Socialist Revolution was approaching. The communists instructed the Young Guard to hang red flags over the occupied city. On the night of November 7, eight groups of underground fighters set off to carry out a combat mission. The day before, the girls prepared the panels by sewing together pieces of fabric and dyeing them red. In the morning, Krasnodon residents saw red flags blazing in the autumn wind. This military operation of the underground made a huge impression on the city residents. “When I saw the flag at the school,” said an eyewitness to the events, M.A. Litvinova, “an involuntary joy overwhelmed me. I woke up the children and quickly ran across the road to Mukhina. I found her standing in her underwear on the windowsill, tears crawling in streams down her thin face. cheeks. She said: “Maria Alekseevna, this was done for us, Soviet people. We are remembered, we are not forgotten by ours..."
On this unforgettable day, young underground fighters distributed leaflets throughout the city and region and provided financial assistance to the families of front-line soldiers. “...We prepared holiday gifts for the families of workers, especially those who suffered at the hands of the German executioners,” wrote Ivan Turkenich. “We allocated money for them from our Komsomol fund and purchased food. I remember, on the eve of the holiday, I went with a bundle under my arm to the outskirts of the city , where the family of my fellow front-line soldier lived. He, too, like me, was a Soviet officer. His wife, an old mother and four children remained in Krasnodon. And so I brought them a holiday gift. The hungry children unwrapped the paper and with a cry of joy discovered bread and a little cereal. How grateful the exhausted people were to us for these modest gifts."
In December, Ivan Zemnukhov, Ivan Turkenich, Anatoly Popov, Demyan Fomin helped 20 prisoners of war, who were placed by the Nazis in the building of the Pervomaiskaya hospital, escape from captivity, and soon Evgeny Moshkov’s group freed more than 70 Soviet soldiers from a prisoner of war camp, which was located in the Volchensky village of the Rostov region.
The fame of the Young Guard grew. The Krasnodon underground did not limit itself to activities in the city and region. The communists believed that it was necessary to seek connections with partisans in other districts and regions. To establish contacts with the people's avengers operating in the Rostov region, the headquarters sent a liaison Oksana. Olga Ivantsova worked underground under this pseudonym. Oksana repeatedly visited the Kamensk partisans, met with liaison officers and the command of the detachment. It was about uniting the forces of partisans and underground fighters for a joint action against the fascists behind enemy lines.
The active activities of the underground workers caused impotent anger among the occupiers. The police are beginning to intensively search for the perpetrators of anti-fascist events. A harsh regime is being established in the city. To disguise the activities of the underground, Ivan Zemnukhov, Evgeny Moshkov, Viktor Tretyakevich, Valeria Borts, Lyubov Shevtsova, Vladimir Zagoruiko, Vasily Levashov and others, on the advice of communists, get a job at the Gorky club. Three circles began to operate here, in which most of the participants were underground fighters. Young people, under the guise of studying in circles, could meet without arousing suspicion from the authorities. From here the guys went on combat missions.
One day Lyuba Shevtsova came excited to a headquarters meeting. She learned that the Nazis were going to take young people to work in Germany. Lists at the labor exchange have already been prepared. The headquarters decided to disrupt the recruitment. To this end, several leaflets were issued calling on the population to save their children from fascist slavery. And Lyuba Shevtsova, Viktor Lukyanchenko and Sergei Tyulenin on the night of December 5 carried out a brilliant operation to set fire to the labor exchange. Documents prepared by the Nazis for more than 2,000 Krasnodon residents burned in the fire. By morning, only charred walls remained of the ominous exchange building, which was popularly nicknamed the “black exchange”.
The headquarters attached great importance to arming the underground. The Young Guards used all means to obtain weapons and ammunition. They stole them from the Nazis, collected them in places of recent battles, and finished them off in armed clashes with the enemy. The weapons were stored in the basements of the destroyed city bathhouse building. Ivan Turkenich noted in his report that by the end of 1942, “in the warehouse there were 15 machine guns, 80 rifles, 300 grenades, about 15,000 cartridges, 10 pistols, 65 kg of explosives and several hundred meters of fuse.” The underground members were going to direct all these weapons against the fascists located on the territory of Krasnodon. The Young Guards were actively preparing for an armed uprising. Their plan was to destroy the enemy and thereby help the Red Army quickly liberate their hometown. But a vile betrayal interrupted preparations for an armed uprising. Most of the Young Guards were arrested and, after severe torture, in January 1943 they were thrown into the pit of mine No. 5.
Directorate of the Museum "Young Guard"
Legends of the Great Patriotic War. "Young guard"
More than sixty years have passed since the world learned about the brutal massacre committed by the fascist occupiers against members of the Young Guard underground organization operating in the Ukrainian mining town of Krasnodon. However, to this day, despite the abundance of documented eyewitness accounts and court verdicts, it is not known for certain who was responsible for the defeat of the Krasnodon underground.
In mid-February 1943, after the liberation of Donetsk Krasnodon by Soviet troops, several dozen corpses of teenagers tortured by the Nazis, who were members of the underground organization “Young Guard” during the occupation, were recovered from the pit of the N5 mine located near the city.
And a few months later, Pravda published an article by Alexander Fadeev “Immortality”, on the basis of which a little later the novel “The Young Guard” was written, dedicated to the events that resulted in the death of the people discovered in the mine. Subsequently, it was from this work that the absolute majority of citizens, first of the Soviet Union, and then of Russia, formed an idea of the activities of the Krasnodon underground during the occupation. Until the end of the 80s, Fadeev’s novel was perceived as the canonized history of the organization, and any other interpretation of events was impossible by definition.
Meanwhile, it is no secret to anyone that the novel, which glorified its heroes - young underground fighters, had a rather difficult fate. The book was first published in 1946. However, after some time, Alexander Fadeev was sharply criticized for the fact that the “leading and guiding” role of the Communist Party was not clearly expressed in the novel. The writer took into account the wishes, and in 1951 the second edition of the novel “The Young Guard” was released. At the same time, Fadeev repeated more than once: “I was not writing the true history of the Young Guard, but a novel that not only allows, but even presupposes artistic fiction.”
These circumstances became fertile ground for the emergence of many speculations about the reality of the events described in the novel. At first, distrust of the official version manifested itself mainly at the level of quiet whispers in kitchens and vulgar children's jokes, and with the beginning of perestroika it spilled over onto the pages of newspapers and magazines.
And for more than a decade and a half, there has been a fairly lively correspondence discussion between those who continue to adhere to the traditional version and those who do not give up attempts to separate facts from fiction of the author of the novel “The Young Guard,” the end of which is not yet in sight. Moreover, most copies break down around several key points: the reality of the events described by Fadeev, the names of the real organizers and leaders of the underground, as well as the true culprits in the death of the majority of the organization’s members.
Parade of "traitors"
To be fair, it is worth noting that there were not so many of those who tried to challenge the very fact of the existence of an underground youth organization in Krasnodon. Facts collected in the post-war years, memories of eyewitnesses, as well as surviving members of the Young Guard, indicated that an underground organization really existed. Moreover, it not only existed, but was also very active.
In 1993, a press conference of a special commission to study the history of the Young Guard was held in Lugansk. As Izvestia wrote then (05/12/1993), after two years of work, the commission gave its assessment of the versions that had excited the public for almost half a century. The researchers' conclusions boiled down to several fundamental points. In July-August 1942, after the Nazis captured the Luhansk region, many underground youth groups spontaneously arose in the mining town of Krasnodon and its surrounding villages. They, according to the memoirs of contemporaries, were called “Star”, “Sickle”, “Hammer”, etc. However, there is no need to talk about any party leadership of them. In October 1942, Viktor Tretyakevich united them into the Young Guard. It was he, and not Oleg Koshevoy, according to the commission’s findings, who became the commissioner of the underground organization. There were almost twice as many “Young Guard” participants as was later recognized by the competent authorities. The guys fought like a guerrilla, taking risks, suffering heavy losses, and this, as was noted at the press conference, ultimately led to the failure of the organization.
At the instigation of Alexander Fadeev, the image of the main culprit in the death of the “Young Guard” - Yevgeny Stakhovich, who under torture revealed the names of the majority of the underground fighters, has become firmly entrenched in the public consciousness. At the same time, although Fadeev himself repeatedly stated that the traitor Stakhovich is a collective image and the similarity with real Young Guards is accidental, many, and first of all the participants in those events who managed to survive, were deeply convinced that its prototype, paradoxically, was the already mentioned Viktor Tretyakevich. The debate about how the hero suddenly turned into a traitor continues to this day.
In 1998, the newspaper "Duel" (09/30/1998) published an article by A.F. Gordeev "Heroes and traitors". It described in sufficient detail the history of the emergence, activity and collapse of the Krasnodon underground, which differed significantly from that described by Fadeev in the novel “The Young Guard”.
According to Gordeev, the Young Guard (the real name of the Hammer organization) was created in early October 1942 on the initiative of Viktor Tretyakevich. Its core was the anti-fascist Komsomol youth groups of Ivan Zemnukhov, Evgeny Moshkov, Nikolai Sumsky, Boris Glavan, Sergei Tyulenin and others, which spontaneously arose and operated scatteredly in Krasnodon and its environs. On October 6, 1942, Gennady Pocheptsov, whose stepfather, was also accepted into the organization , V.G. Gromov, collaborated with the occupation authorities and subsequently played a fatal role in the history of the Young Guard.
“Duel,” referring to archival documents, writes that upon learning of the arrest of the underground leaders (Zemnukhov, Tretyakevich and Moshkov were captured on January 1, 1943) and not finding a way out of the current situation, Pocheptsov turned to his stepfather for advice. Gromov immediately suggested that his stepson immediately inform the police about the underground fighters. Gromov confirmed this treacherous parting word during interrogation on May 25, 1943: “I told him that he could be arrested and, in order to save his life, he must write a statement to the police and hand over the members of the organization. He listened to me.”
On January 3, 1943, Pocheptsov was taken to the police and interrogated first by V. Sulikovsky (chief of the Krasnodon regional police), and then by investigators Didyk and Kuleshov. The informant confirmed the authorship of the applicant and his affiliation with the underground Komsomol organization operating in Krasnodon, named the goals and objectives of its activities, indicated the storage location of weapons and ammunition hidden in the Gundorov mine No. 18. As Kuleshov later testified, “Pocheptsov said that he really belongs to "member of the underground Komsomol organization... named the leaders of this organization, or rather, the city headquarters, namely: Tretyakevich, Lukashov, Zemnukhov, Safonov, Koshevoy. Pocheptsov named Tretyakevich as the head of the citywide organization. He himself was a member of the May Day organization." The secret information that Pocheptsov possessed and which became the “property” of the police turned out to be quite enough to uncover the Komsomol youth underground and eliminate it. In total, more than 70 people were arrested for belonging to the underground in Krasnodon and its environs.
"Duel" cites the testimony of some participants in the brutal massacre of underground fighters.
During the interrogation on July 9, 1947, the head of the gendarmerie, Renatus, said: “... Translator Lina Artes asked to be released from work, since the gendarmes treat the arrested too harshly during interrogations. Guard Master Zons allegedly beat the arrested severely after lunch. I granted her request and spoke with Zons about this issue. He admitted that he really beat the arrested people, but for the reason that he could not get testimony from them in any other way."
Police investigator Cherenkov about Sergei Tyulenin: “He was mutilated beyond recognition, his face was covered with bruises and swollen, blood was oozing from open wounds. Three Germans immediately entered and after them came Burgardt (translator A.G.), called by Sulikovsky. One German asked Sulikovsky who was this man who was beaten like that. Sulikovsky explained. The German, like an angry tiger, knocked Sergei down with a blow of his fist and began to torment his body with forged German boots. He struck him with terrible force in the stomach, back, face, trampled and tore into pieces his clothes along with his body. At the beginning of this terrible execution, Tyulenin showed signs of life, but soon he fell silent and was dragged dead from the office."
Other Young Guards also held up courageously during interrogations. Ulyana Gromova was hung by her hair, a five-pointed star was cut out on her back, her breasts were cut off, her body was burned with a hot iron, her wounds were sprinkled with salt, and she was placed on a hot stove. However, she was silent, just as Bondareva, Ivanikhina, Zemnukhova and many others, who were subsequently dumped into the pit of the N5 mine, were silent.
Pocheptsov, according to Duel, after the arrival of Soviet troops managed to hide for some time, and he was arrested only on March 8, 1943. To mitigate his guilt, Pocheptsov, already at the first interrogation, cast a shadow of suspicion on Viktor Tretyakevich. Answering the question of the Soviet investigator about what prompted him to hand over the members of the underground organization, he referred to Ivan Zemnukhov, who allegedly told him on December 18, 1942 that Tretyakevich had betrayed the “Young Organization” and that the police had information about it. This news allegedly prompted Pocheptsov to file a statement with the police.
At the same time, in 1999, the newspaper "Top Secret" (03/17/1999), referring to the materials of Case N20056 on charges of policemen and German gendarmes in the reprisal of the underground organization "Young Guard", expressed the opinion that the "official traitor" Pocheptsov was not told investigators nothing new. Before him, Olga Lyadskaya, who was not an underground member and was arrested completely by accident, had allegedly already told the Germans in detail about the activities of the underground.
After the arrest of Zemnukhov, Tretyakevich and Moshkova came to Tosa Mashchenko in search of Valya Borts, who by that time had already gone to the front line. The policeman liked Tosya's tablecloth and decided to take it with him. Under the tablecloth lay an unsent letter from Lyadskaya to her acquaintance Fyodor Izvarin. She wrote that she did not want to go to Germany for “SLAVERY”. That's right: in quotes and in capital letters. The investigator promised to hang Lyadskaya at the market for her capital letters in quotation marks, if he did not immediately name others dissatisfied with the new order. The publication further cites Lyadskaya’s testimony contained in Case N20056:
“I named the people whom I suspected of partisan activity: Kozyrev, Tretyakevich, Nikolaenko, because they once asked me if there were partisans on our farm and if I was helping them. And after Solikhovsky threatened to beat me up, I gave Mashchenko's friend, Borts... "
As for Pocheptsov, according to the “Top Secret” version, he actually surrendered the group in the village of Pervomaisky and the headquarters of the “Young Guard” in the following order: Tretyakevich (chief), Lukashev, Zemnukhov, Safonov and Koshevoy. In addition, Pocheptsov named the commander of his “five” - Popov. However, his testimony, according to the publication, was no longer so important, since Tretyakevich was betrayed by another underground participant, Tosya Mashchenko. After this, Tretyakevich himself “gave him over to Shevtsov and began calling the “Young Guards” entire villages.”
But “Top Secret” is not limited to this list of traitors and notes that in the documents a certain Chinese Yakov Ka Fu is also mentioned as a traitor to the “Young Guard”. He supposedly could have been offended by the Soviet regime, because before the war he was removed from work due to his poor knowledge of the Russian language.
...for lack of corpus delicti
For a long time, Zinaida Vyrikova was considered another culprit in the death of the Young Guard. She, like Lyadskaya, was one of the anti-heroines of the novel “Young Guard”. At the same time, Fadeev did not even change the girls’ surnames, which subsequently greatly complicated their lives. Both Vyrikova and Lyadskaya were convicted of treason and sent to camps for a long time. As Moskovsky Komsomolets notes (06/18/2003), the stigma of traitors from women was removed only in 1990, after their numerous complaints and strict checks by the prosecutor's office.
“MK” quotes the “certificate” that Olga Aleksandrovna Lyadskaya received after 47 years of shame (approximately the same document, according to the publication, was received by Zinaida Vyrikova): “Criminal case on charges of Lyadskaya O.A., born in 1926, revised by the military tribunal of the Moscow Military District on March 16, 1990. The resolution of the Special Meeting of the USSR Ministry of State Security dated October 29, 1949 in relation to Lyadskaya O.A. was canceled, and the criminal case was discontinued due to the lack of corpus delicti in her actions. Olga Aleksandrovna Lyadskaya in this case rehabilitated."
There is not a word in the Moskovsky Komsomolets material about whether Lyadskaya’s confession that it was she who betrayed Kozyrev, Tretyakevich, Nikolaenko, Mashchenko, and Borts was taken into account when deciding on the issue of rehabilitation. At the same time, the article names two more new names of persons through whose fault the Young Guard could have been defeated.
"MK", just like the newspaper "Top Secret" four years earlier, refers to materials found in the archives of the FSB. Namely, a criminal case against 16 traitors to the Motherland who worked for the Germans in occupied Krasnodon. 14 of them openly collaborated with the German gendarmerie. And only two persons involved, according to the publication, stand out somewhat from the overall picture of absolute traitors - 20-year-old Georgy Statsenko and 23-year-old namesake of the author of the novel “Young Guard” Guriy Fadeev.
George's father, Vasily Statsenko, was the burgomaster of Krasnodon. That's why Georgiy ended up on the pencil list. In addition, he was a Komsomol member and knew the Young Guards: Zemnukhov, Koshevoy, Tretyakevich, Levashov, Osmukhin, Turkenich and others.
Moskovsky Komsomolets provides excerpts from the testimony of Statsenko, who was arrested on September 22, 1946:
“Being a Komsomol member, I enjoyed the trust of my comrades, since outwardly I showed myself to be devoted to Soviet power. I told my father about Levashov’s offer to me to join the underground Komsomol organization. I also said that Zemnukhov showed me a leaflet and read poems he had written against the Germans. And in general, I told my father, my school comrades: Zemnukhov, Arutyunyants, Koshevoy and Tretyakevich, are members of an underground organization and are actively working against the Germans.”
Guriy Fadeev, as MK writes, also knew members of the Young Guard, and was especially friendly with the family of Oleg Koshevoy. He became suspicious after he was caught by the police one night - at an inopportune hour, a German patrol caught him on the street and, during a search, found an anti-fascist leaflet in his pocket. However, for some reason, the gendarmerie quickly released him. And then, according to witnesses, he almost never left the police.
“After I was recruited by the police to identify persons distributing Young Guard leaflets, I met with deputy police chief Zakharov several times. During one of the interrogations, Zakharov asked: “Which of the partisans recruited your sister Alla?” I, knowing about this, from the words of my mother, I gave Vanya Zemnukhov to Zakharov, who actually made an offer to my sister to join the underground anti-fascist organization. I told him that in the apartment of Korostylev (Oleg Koshevoy’s uncle) Korostylev’s sister Elena Nikolaevna Koshevaya and her son were listening to radio broadcasts from Moscow Oleg, who records messages from the Sovinform Bureau."
According to Fadeev, recorded in the interrogation protocol, it turned out that during the occupation he entered the service of the German directorate as a geologist and was engaged in redrawing geological maps, plans for mines and developments drawn up under the Soviet regime. At the same time, Fadeev signed a statement that he undertakes to help the police in identifying the partisans.
The most curious thing in this story is that neither Statsenko nor Fadeev were shot. On March 6, 1948, a special meeting at the USSR Ministry of State Security sentenced Guriy Fadeev to 25 years in the camps for treason, and Georgy Statsenko to 15 years (the other 14 people involved in this case received 25 years in prison each). But the amazing adventures of Statsenko and Fadeev did not end there. In 1954, with Khrushchev coming to power, the “case of traitors” was revised: the sentence was left unchanged for everyone except Statsenko. His sentence was reduced by 5 years.
Moskovsky Komsomolets quotes the case materials, which shed light on the reasons for the unexpected commutation of the sentence:
“During interrogation on October 4, 1946, Statsenko admitted his guilt, but later retracted his testimony. He claimed that the arrests of the Young Guards began long before his conversation with his father. From the testimony of the father of the convicted Statsenko, it is not clear that the reason for the arrest of the Young Guards was the data reported his son... None of those convicted in this case testified that the son of the burgomaster would have provided any information that would have been used by the police in arresting the Young Guard members... Thus, the accusation of the convicted G.V. Statsenko of betraying members of the underground Komsomol organization "Young Guard" has not been proven by the investigation materials."
Fadeev also had a chance to be released ahead of time, for whom a large number of relatives, neighbors and acquaintances interceded. The Main Military Prosecutor's Office was not too lazy to re-interrogate everyone who testified against Fadeev ten years earlier. Military prosecutor Gorny even prepared a protest to the military tribunal of the Moscow Military District with a request that “the resolution of the Special Meeting of the Ministry of State Security of March 6, 1948 regarding Fadeev be canceled and the case dismissed due to lack of proof of the charges brought.” However, someone’s superior hand wrote on the same document in blue ink: “I find no grounds for filing a protest. Fadeev’s complaint must be left unsatisfied.”
However, Fadeev was still released early. According to MK, he served only 10 years out of 25. His conviction was cleared, but he was denied rehabilitation. So formally, he is still considered the main traitor of the Young Guards.
Truck with parcels
Meanwhile, the last of the eight Young Guards who survived the war, Vasily Ivanovich Levashov, shortly before his death (he died in 2001), gave an interview to the Komsomolskaya Pravda newspaper (06/30/1999) in which he stated that in fact there were no traitors, and " The organization went down in flames because of stupidity."
The former underground worker said that after reading Fadeev’s book for the first time, he had the most contradictory feelings. On the one hand, he was delighted by how subtly the writer captured the moods and experiences of the Young Guards. On the other hand, Levashov was outraged by the free handling of some facts: the traitor Stakhovich appeared in the novel, and there was no person with that name in the organization, so there was a clear allusion to Viktor Tretyakevich, the Young Guard commissar.
“In fact, there were no traitors, the organization burned down due to stupidity,” said Vasily Ivanovich. “A truck with parcels for the Germans for Christmas arrived in Krasnodon, and we decided to capture them. We dragged everything at night to the barn of one of our guys, "and the next morning they transported them to the club in torn bags. On the way, a box of cigarettes fell out. A boy of about twelve was hanging around nearby and grabbed it. Tretyakevich gave him the cigarettes for silence. And a day later the boy was captured by the Germans at the market."
According to Levashov, Tretyakevich was slandered by the police for his persistence during interrogations. Vasily Ivanovich’s father sat in the same cell with the Young Guard commissar and saw how he was taken away for interrogation and dragged back by his legs, beaten and barely alive. And the names of the underground workers, according to Levashov, the fascists could have learned from the lists of employees of the club, the director of which was the Young Guard member Moshkov. The latter compiled these lists for the labor exchange: hundreds of young people were taken to work in Germany, and “reservations” were given for club employees.
Viktor Tretyakevich was rehabilitated only in 1959. Before this, his relatives had to live with the stigma of being relatives of a traitor. According to Vasily Levashov, Victor’s rehabilitation was achieved by his middle brother Vladimir. Viktor Tretyakevich was posthumously awarded, but was never restored to the rank of Young Guard commissar.
In a conversation with a Komsomolskaya Pravda correspondent, Levashov touched upon the fate of another resident of Krasnodon, accused of treason, Georgy Statsenko:
“Statsenko served 15 years for betraying the Young Guard,” said Levashov. “He came out of prison and wrote a letter to the KGB asking them to remove the guilt from him, because he did not betray. And he asked to call me and Harutyunyants as witnesses. I was summoned for interrogation by the KGB, and I said that Statsenko had nothing to do with the Young Guard at all, and therefore could not know anything. We brought him into the organization, like many other outside guys, for conspiracy. The same thing was said by Arutyunyants. Statsenko was cleared of guilt."
At the same time, some facts indicate that not everything is as simple in the story of the rehabilitation of Viktor Tretyakevich, as Vasily Levashov told about it. And there are still many pitfalls in this matter...
I arrived in Krasnodon on the morning of May 8 to meet several good people there and discuss humanitarian matters. But the realities of Novorossiya made their own adjustments, namely, there was a global drop in communications. Neither local nor Russian numbers were called from approximately five in the evening on May 7th until noon on the 8th. At least it was at 5 pm on the 7th that I started calling alonso_kexano , but couldn't get through.
On the 8th I met Vera, who was coming from Moscow, in Krasnodon odinokiy_orc , which carried banners for the May 9th parade in Stakhanov and vitamins for the grandfather-veteran. We didn’t have time to agree on the exact meeting place, so I spent some time running circles around Krasnodon, trying to find some way to get through. However, we successfully met at the bus station. To connect with e_m_rogov , with whom it was also planned to meet and devirtualize, there was no possibility. So we went to the Young Guard Museum, and then walked to Mine No. 5, the same one where the Young Guards were executed.
Krasnodon is the first large settlement after the border. Now he is relatively in the rear. But all the same, war is war, and the comparative prosperity of Krasnodon does not mean at all that people there are not afraid of war or do not experience problems due to the lack of salaries and pensions. The museum staff works enthusiastically without receiving a salary. Our guide mentioned that she was afraid of air bombing; according to her, it was much worse than even artillery.
The impressive Red Banner flies over the city's central square.
It is huge, and, judging by the clearly visible seams, I believe it is self-sewn. In general, in Novorossiya before May 9 there were a considerable number of red banners. Apparently, when it is not possible to raise the Victory Banner, they simply hang out a red banner. However, as my friend Roman from Stakhanov said, “we miss you here without the red banners.” They symbolize not only Victory, but are also associated with the good times of the USSR for Donbass, when the region prospered and was part of a single power with the RSFSR.
Museum and surroundings 
In front of the Young Guard Museum we came across the house of Oleg Koshevoy 
Memorial plaque 
Busts of the Young Guards 
We walked along the alley with monuments to them and Fadeev, who wrote the novel 
And we went to the museum itself 
There I photographed an exhibition of children's drawings for May 9th 
Here is a whole allegory of the history of the Second World War being reshaped in a living way. 
And here the child drew more from the stories of his brother or father than from his grandfather or great-grandfather. What can you do, they also had to fight, defending their native land 
The inscription is in Ukrainian, as the children of the Russian Krasnodon were taught in schools in Ukraine, and this did not stop the local authorities from sending the drawing to the exhibition 
The museum itself, despite the war, is open. Although the collections were packed in case of need to evacuate.
Parents of Young Guards 
I was especially interested in the portrait of the Knight of St. George - the father of Ulyana Gromova 
Prehistory. The lands of the modern LPR are the Cossack region, the territory of the Don Army 
The first mines in Krasnodon, their life and the revolution of 1917 
Life in a mining town in the 30s. Stakhanov movement 
Childhood 
Komsomol tickets? 
School years of the future Young Guard 
School essay 
War 
Especially for tarkhil
photographed medical instruments 
Field radio 
Workers of Krasnodon who tried to sabotage work for Germany, and were brutally executed for this by punitive forces (they were buried alive in the ground), which some future Young Guards witnessed 
Camps and work in Germany, where residents of Krasnodon were taken 
Life during the occupation 
Young guard 
Oath. According to the guide, the Krasnodon militia slightly altered the text to suit modern realities, and pronounced it as an oath. 
Arson by the Young Guard of the Labor Exchange building, which saved many people from being deported to Germany 
Banners raised in Krasnodon on the anniversary of the Great October Revolution 
An amateur club where the Young Guards held their meetings 
Preserved surroundings and costumes 
Dress by Lyubov Shevtsova 
Suicide letters 
Arrest 
On the left is a photograph of a prison (or rather, not even an adequate prison, but a bathhouse adapted for it, not really heated, and in January, when the Young Guards were arrested, extremely uncomfortable)
Camera 
Interrogation room, or rather torture room 
The noose is presented because one of the tortures was to simulate hanging. A man was hanged, he began to choke, he was taken down, brought to his senses, asked to confess, and the procedure was repeated as a result of his refusal.
Lyuba Shevtsova, one of the last Young Guards was shot. They wanted to execute her with a bullet in the back of the head, but she didn’t want to kneel, so they shot her in the face 
Mine No. 5 is the place of execution of the main group. Personal items by which relatives identified the dead children
WHY FADEYEV TOOK SORRY FOR READERSAnd director Gerasimov also felt sorry for the audience - the film does not show all the torture that the guys endured. They were almost children, the youngest was barely 16. It’s scary to read these lines.
It’s scary to think about the inhuman suffering they endured. But we must know and remember what fascism is. The worst thing is that among those who mockingly killed the Young Guard, there were mainly policemen from the local population (the city of Krasnodon, where the tragedy occurred, is located in the Lugansk region). It is all the more terrible to watch now the revival of Nazism in Ukraine, the torchlight processions, and the slogans “Bandera is a hero!”
There is no doubt that today's twenty-year-old neo-fascists, the same age as their brutally tortured fellow countrymen, have not read this book or seen these photographs.
“They beat her and hung her by her braids. They lifted Anya out of the pit with one scythe - the other was broken.
Crimea, Feodosia, August 1940. Happy young girls. The most beautiful, with dark braids, is Anya Sopova.
On January 31, 1943, after severe torture, Anya was thrown into the pit of mine No. 5.
She was buried in the mass grave of heroes in the central square of the city of Krasnodon.
Soviet people dreamed of being like the brave Krasnodon residents... They swore to avenge their death.
What can I say, the tragic and beautiful story of the Young Guards shocked the whole world, and not just the fragile minds of children.
The film became the box office leader in 1948, and the leading actors, unknown VGIK students, immediately received the title of Stalin Prize Laureate - an exceptional case. “Woke up famous” is about them.
Ivanov, Mordyukova, Makarova, Gurzo, Shagalova - letters from all over the world came to them in bags.
Gerasimov, of course, felt sorry for the audience. Fadeev - readers.
Neither paper nor film could convey what really happened that winter in Krasnodon.
But what is happening now in Ukraine.
The Soviet people first learned the history of the “Young Guard” in 1943, immediately after the liberation of Krasnodon by the Red Army. The underground organization “Young Guard” included seventy-one people: forty-seven boys and twenty-four girls, the youngest was 14 years old.
Krasnodon was occupied by the enemy on July 20, 1942. Sergei Tyulenin was the first to start underground activities. He acted boldly, scattered leaflets, began collecting weapons, and attracted a group of guys ready for an underground struggle. This is how the story of the Young Guard began.
On September 30, the detachment’s action plan was approved and headquarters was organized. Ivan Zemnukhov was appointed chief of staff, Viktor Tretyakevich was elected commissar. Tyulenin came up with a name for the underground organization - “Young Guard”. By October, all the disparate groups united and the legendary Oleg Koshevoy and Ivan Turkenich, Ulyana Gromova, Lyubov Shevtsova entered the headquarters of the Young Guard.
The Young Guards posted leaflets, collected weapons, burned grain and poisoned food intended for the occupiers. On the day of the October Revolution, several flags were hung, the Labor Exchange was burned, and this saved more than 2,000 people sent to work in Germany. By December 1942, the Young Guards had a fair amount of weapons and explosives stored in their warehouse. They were preparing for open battle. In total, the underground organization “Young Guard” distributed more than five thousand leaflets - from them residents of occupied Krasnodon learned news from the fronts.
The underground organization “Young Guard” committed many desperately courageous acts, and the most active and courageous members of the “Young Guard”, such as Oleg Koshevoy, Ulyana Gromova, Lyubov Shevtsova, Sergei Tyulenin, Ivan Zemnukhov, could not be restrained from recklessness. They wanted to completely “twist the hands of the enemy”, already before the arrival of the Victorious Red Army.
Their careless actions (seizure of the New Year's convoy with gifts for the Germans in December 1942) led to punitive actions.
On January 1, 1943, Young Guard members Viktor Tretyakevich, Ivan Zemnukhov, and Evgeniy Moshkov were arrested. The headquarters decided to immediately leave the city, and all Young Guards were ordered not to spend the night at home. Headquarters liaison officers conveyed the news to all underground fighters. Among the connections there was a traitor - Gennady Pocheptsov, when he learned about the arrests, he chickened out and reported to the police about the existence of an underground organization.
Mass arrests began. Many members of the underground organization “Young Guard” thought that leaving meant betraying their captured comrades. They did not realize that it was better to retreat to their own, save lives and fight until victory. Most didn't leave. Everyone was afraid for their parents. Only twelve Young Guards escaped. 10 survived, two of them - Sergei Tyulenin and Oleg Koshevoy - were nevertheless caught.
Youth, fearlessness, and courage helped the majority of the Young Guards to withstand with honor the cruel tortures to which they were subjected by a ruthless enemy. Fadeev’s novel “The Young Guard” describes terrible episodes of torture.
Pocheptsov betrayed Tretyakevich as one of the leaders of the underground organization “Young Guard”. He was tortured with extreme cruelty. The young hero courageously remained silent, then a rumor was spread among those arrested and in the city that it was Tretyakevich who betrayed everyone.
Young Guard member Viktor Tretyakevich, accused of treason, was acquitted only in the 50s, when the trial of one of the executioners, Vasily Podtynny, took place, who admitted that it was not Tretyakevich, but Pocheptsov who betrayed everyone.
And only on December 13, 1960, by Decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, Viktor Tretyakevich was rehabilitated and posthumously awarded the Order of the Patriotic War, 1st degree.
When Viktor Tretyakevich’s mother was presented with the award, she asked not to show Sergei Gerasimov’s film “The Young Guard,” where her son appears as a traitor.
More than 50 young people died at the very beginning of their lives, after terrible suffering, without betraying their idea, their Motherland, or faith in Victory.
Executions of Young Guards took place from mid-January to February 1943; batches of exhausted Komsomol members were thrown into abandoned coal mines. Many could not be identified after their bodies were removed by relatives and friends, so they were mutilated beyond recognition.
Soviet troops entered Krasnodon on February 14. On February 17, the city dressed in mourning. A wooden obelisk was erected at the mass grave with the names of the victims and the words:
And drops of your hot blood,
Like sparks, they will flash in the darkness of life
And many brave hearts will be lit!
The courage of the Young Guards instilled courage and dedication in future generations of Soviet youth. The names of the Young Guard are sacred to us, and it’s scary to think today that someone is trying to depersonalize and belittle their heroic lives, sacrificed to the common goal of the Great Victory.
Victoria Maltseva
The Great Patriotic War is often presented as one continuous feat on the front line. But along with the feat of the soldiers of the Soviet army - as well as along with the feat of home front workers - there was also a feat of the people who found themselves in the occupied territories. They fought the fascist invaders by joining partisan detachments or acting underground. Moreover, this struggle took place against the backdrop of everyday life, when people fell in love, quarreled, and held small holidays. Even when performing a feat, they remained people with their fears, dreams and weaknesses.
Years pass, and we forget precisely about the human component of war. The heroes become bronzed, the enemies become more and more cruel and sketchy, and human life becomes less and less valuable. This was precisely the main tragedy of the war - the need to remain human in the most terrible and extreme conditions. Which not everyone succeeded in doing.
What is the "Young Guard"? For modern young people, these are primarily names. Streets, metro stations, publishing houses, shops. For a long time now, the school literature curriculum has not included the novel of the same name by Alexander Fadeev - the times are different. What is the “Young Guard” really? These are young people (and mostly even teenagers) from the city of Krasnodon who united in a secret organization and fought the Nazis. In Soviet times, their feat was glorified in every possible way - hence, by the way, the above-mentioned names that have survived to this day. As a reaction to the official glorification, there was also an opinion that the “Young Guard” was just a myth of Soviet propaganda.
What really happened? Why, speaking about heroes, do we - already in a completely different era, based on a completely different worldview - remember these guys?
In September 1942, in the Nazi-occupied city of Krasnodon (Lugansk region in Ukraine), several underground youth organizations united into the “Young Guard”. Here we immediately need to clarify two words - Krasnodon and organization.
Why Krasnodon? The location of the action is not at all accidental. This is Donbass, these are coal mines, and coal is a strategic raw material for industry, including the military. It is not surprising that Hitler’s troops, having captured the Donbass, forced local residents to continue mining coal, but for the needs of the German army. Why organization? Because this word in this case sounds quite strange. When we say “organization,” we imagine serious adults who professionally resolve certain issues. And here are boys and girls, the youngest of whom was 14 years old, and the eldest just over 20. An organization that arose spontaneously. An organization where, in most cases, teenagers acted independently, although it was controlled by adult underground members.
From September to January, the guys wrote leaflets, collected weapons, carried out sabotage in coal mines, and sometimes attacked German soldiers. And from the beginning of January 1943, the Young Guard was discovered as a result of betrayal; for almost a month, dozens of young men and women endured inhuman torture and were thrown alive into one of the mines.
The story of the “Young Guard” is an amazing combination of martyrdom, mutual assistance, resourcefulness, fantastic luck and tragedy.
When you get acquainted with materials devoted to the history of young underground fighters, you constantly catch yourself thinking how the teenagers who fought the fascists acted naively, carelessly... frankly, childishly.
Judge for yourself. The organization consisted, according to various sources, from 85 to 100 people. These were high school students and graduates of several Krasnodon schools, a young teacher and a military man. They were led by several communists who remained in the Krasnodon underground, but most members of the Young Guard knew only their peers and classmates, with whom they fought the fascists.
The main goal of the boys and girls was to collect more weapons in order to raise an anti-Hitler uprising in the city before the arrival of the Soviet army.
In the memoirs of the surviving Young Guards (12 young fighters against the fascists were able to escape the massacre, 8 of them survived the Great Patriotic War) one can find almost fantastic stories about how the underground fighters searched for each other. During the occupation, students from different schools or classes met, for example, in a city park and almost immediately offered to join the organization: “In the morning, unexpectedly, I met Vanya Zemnukhov. We studied with him at different schools, but we met through Komsomol work. He had a firm, energetic face and dreamy eyes. He was considered the best orator, and his writings were famous throughout the city. His comrades loved him, we all took his opinion into account. In addition, he was a friend of Oleg Koshevoy. Vanya asked if I hid a weapon somewhere? I was surprised, but he repeated the question again.
“Young Guard” leaflet
“I think that you are the same as before,” he said seriously and told me that an underground Komsomol organization “Young Guard” had been organized in the city, which would fight enemies with all its might, organize sabotage and prevent the invaders from establishing their order. " (From the memoirs of Young Guard member Nina Ivantsova).
According to this scheme, other young men and women came to the Young Guard. It’s simply amazing how the guys could hold out from September 1942 until January 1943 with an almost complete absence of conspiracy. Sometimes it seems that the only people from whom the children managed to hide their activities were their own parents. And then the schoolchildren did it somehow clumsily and completely childishly.
Young Guard member Anatoly Orlov locks himself in his room. My sister comes in and sees her brother stamping something. In response to Marusya’s question, the boy replies: “This doesn’t concern you,” puts the papers in his briefcase and leaves. Soon, my sister and my mother find a briefcase, open it and see there temporary Komsomol IDs and reports from the Soviet Information Bureau (underground workers secretly listened to the radio in basements and attics and then printed leaflets in which they talked about the successes of the Soviet troops and the state of affairs at the front).
Or this is the story. On November 7, a group of underground workers wants to hang several red flags on the buildings of Krasnodon. At night, the boys set off on a dangerous journey. They quietly penetrate the Voroshilov school, hang up a banner, lay mines so that the Nazis cannot immediately tear down the banner, and then “Styopa Safonov said that the mines are ready, and wanted to sing his favorite song of the soldier Schweik: “I really like sausages and cabbage.” , but Lenya covered his mouth with his hat. I looked out the dormer window and saw about six policemen. The outfit passed by without noticing anything.” (From the memoirs of Radiy Yurkin).
Singing songs during a combat operation - there is something completely childish about it. Perhaps the boy tried to relieve the monstrous tension, but this was not an isolated incident. Several boys and girls are walking along Krasnodon in the evening and singing a song about three tank crews. Policemen who speak Russian are sent towards them. At the last moment, he miraculously manages to avoid arrest and trouble.
In order to understand how dangerous this situation is, the reader can imagine a group of teenagers who, in the evening in besieged Leningrad, would sing some bravura march in German.
However, in the short history of the “Young Guard” there were real military operations, and the distribution of five thousand leaflets that helped Krasnodon residents not to lose heart, and technical sabotage (they did everything so that the Nazis did not receive enough energy from the local power plant and were unable to start production not in any of the mines), and the heroic behavior of young men and women after the arrest, but all exploits were always marked by the age of the people who performed them.
Young Guard members hung caricatures on the backs of policemen, in the crowd of the market they stuffed leaflets into the pockets of German soldiers, and once in an open church they replaced the texts of prayers with leaflets.
Several people received a sample of such a prayer in advance, then printed leaflets on paper of the same format and came to the temple before the service. A half-blind and half-deaf old man in a church shop, seeing several guys, rushed to guard the candles. The underground members quietly stuffed their leaflets into the pile of prayers and left. And the parishioners then thanked grandfather and asked: “When will there be such prayers again?”
It is easy to imagine that the situation could have turned out completely differently. Someone could inform on grandfather, and he would go to visit the Gestapo. At the same time, the Nazis could close the church and punish the priest.
However, the Germans also behave somehow strangely. On the one hand, back in September 1942 they killed 30 hero miners for sabotage, which was the reason for the creation of the Young Guard. On the other hand, until January 1943 they showed miracles of some amazing tolerance.
Almost all the leaders of the underground organization get a job in a theater organized by the occupiers. There they hold their meetings, help friends avoid punishment by passing them off as artists, and make sure that all anti-Soviet productions and numbers disappear from the repertoire. But the fascists don’t notice anything.
Here in Krasnodon, after the start of curfew, an underground worker was detained on the street with a gramophone in his hands. They bring him to the police, they want to give him from 15 to 50 lashes, but one of the leaders of the Young Guard asks the policeman to let the artist go, giving him only 5 lashes as a warning. A teenager with the same gramophone goes across the city to a meeting of Young Guards, his comrades reprimand him for carelessness, in response he opens the box, and everyone sees that in the case from the gramophone there are parts and an almost assembled radio station.
Neither the fascists nor the police, having caught the troublemaker, even looked into the box, otherwise the heroic feat of the underground could have ended much earlier.
And the very end of The Young Guard looks very strange. At the end of December, teenagers carry out a very risky operation and deprive the Germans of Christmas gifts that were in the trucks. On January 1, searches were carried out in the homes of two people. The Nazis find some of the New Year's gifts that the boys did not have time to hide. Interrogations and arrests begin. The Young Guards organize a meeting and order the members of the organization to leave Krasnodon. And then inexplicable things begin. Until the end of January 1943, many boys, girls, men and women simply sat in their homes, going to work for the Germans. They are arrested one by one. They torture me terribly. The first underground members were shot on January 15, but at the end of January the fascists caught several more boys and girls, the five of whom wanted to attack the building where their comrades were being held with weapons and free them.
In the end, 71 people die after terrible suffering. Let’s not scare you with details, we’ll just note that the mildest injuries were traces of beatings and spinal fractures, and Oleg Koshevoy, a Komsomol organizer of the organization, turned gray in a few days from inhuman torture. The death of the Young Guards was truly martyrdom. In the dungeons after torture, they supported each other. And when going to be shot, they sang “Ilyich’s favorite song” (Lenin. - A.Z.) - “Tortured by severe captivity.”
What might have seemed like a child's prank just a month ago, in December 1942, has now turned into a terrible tragedy. Yesterday's Soviet schoolchildren acted like martyrs, their steadfastness testifying to their loyalty to their convictions.
In the notebook of Ulyana Gromova, one of the six heroes of the Soviet Union among the Krasnodon underground fighters, you can find extracts from the works of Lenin, Maxim Gorky, Leo Tolstoy, and from Soviet textbooks. The extracts are bright, biting in the spirit of “It is better to die standing than to live on your knees.” The extracts are faded and inconspicuous, like “Take your time when reading the book. Read the text carefully, write down words and expressions that you don’t understand, and check their meaning in a dictionary or with your teacher.” The extracts are banal, girlish: “Die, but don’t give a kiss without love,” “Everything in a person should be beautiful: soul, clothes, and thoughts” (Chernyshevsky and Chekhov). But all together they create a portrait of a person who could grow into a very bright and strong personality. That did not happen. Ulyana died at the age of 19, but she and some of her peers seemed to have a presentiment of their destiny. In the diaries and memoirs of the Young Guards you can read that Soviet troops were leaving the city, the Germans were 20 or 10 kilometers away. Many people are fleeing Krasnodon, but they sit and wait. At the last moment, someone breaks down and, together with their parents, brothers and sisters, tries to escape, but the mousetrap slams shut and they return home.
Similar dramas played out in January 1943. Some underground fighters try to escape, but they are caught, or they fall from fatigue and frostbite and return home. When they come to arrest them, they are calm. Only sometimes does teenage bravado slip into one’s behavior, and another of the girls will shout in the face of the executioners that she is a partisan and underground member, trying to piss off the torturers.
The situation becomes even more tragic if you know that the Soviet army will liberate Krasnodon on February 14, just a few days after the death of the last members of the organization.
Already in September 1943, five members of the Young Guard posthumously became Heroes of the Soviet Union, and the story of the underground fighters in Krasnodon itself became a favorite plot for Soviet propaganda.
Alexander Fadeev will dedicate the novel “The Young Guard” to the feat of the Young Guard. He will rewrite the text several times to strengthen the role of the Communist Party in the activities of the underground, but this will be an almost hopeless task.
Even in documents published under Soviet rule, it is clear that teenagers often acted at their own peril and risk, and communists and older comrades could only sometimes prevent the most risky and unprepared operations and give at least some semblance of organization to the largely spontaneous feat of children.
The text of the oath of the Young Guard members is reminiscent of the terrible stories that boys and girls love to tell each other: “If I break this sacred oath under torture or because of cowardice, then let my name, my family be forever damned, and myself let the harsh hand of my comrades punish. Blood for blood! Death for death!
This is how you imagine boys and girls who create a mysterious secret organization. However, in 1941–1945, children in many countries of the world, and especially in the USSR, could not afford to play heroes. Life forced them to be heroes or traitors.
Heroism is an extreme effort to change oneself, to overcome one’s completely forgivable fears and weaknesses. And here the motive is extremely important: what is it all for? To demonstrate to others your own “coolness”? To improve your self-esteem? Or is it for the sake of some higher value, unconditionally positive? This is exactly what happened with the teenage Youth Guards. Yes, they are naive children, yes, they did stupid things... but at the same time, their feat is a real feat. Their conscience did not allow them to do otherwise. They really decided to give their lives for their Motherland - and they really gave them up.
List of references for the article
Young guard. Documents and memories of the heroic struggle of the underground fighters of Krasnodon during the days of the temporary fascist occupation (July 1942 - February 1943). (5th edition, revised and supplemented). Donetsk, “Donbas”, 1977. 360 p.
“Let’s remember everyone by name.” Memories of the surviving members of the Young Guard about their comrades in the underground. 2nd edition, expanded. Compiled by Lidia Stepanovna Krivonogova, Anatoly Grigorievich Nikitenko. Donetsk “Donbass”, 1986
Our Zhora. A collection of memoirs about Georgy Harutyunyants, a member of the underground Komsomol organization “Young Guard” in the city of Krasnodon. M., 2012
Fire of memory. A collection of documentary essays about the heroes of the Young Guard. Lugansk 2003.
Read more materials about the Great Patriotic War in the section
At the announcement Monument to the Heroes of Krasnodon. Saint Petersburg.