Anna Sopova is one of those members of the Krasnodon underground whose name is not always heard. Even her parents rarely spoke about the circumstances of their daughter’s death. Maybe it was too painful to reopen the heart wound, or maybe they didn’t know how to take their pain out on people.
Anna Dmitrievna Sopova born on May 10, 1924 in the village of Shevyrevka, Krasnodonsky district, into a working-class family. In 1932 I went to first grade, and in 1935 the Sopov family moved to the city of Krasnodon. Anna continued her studies at school No. 1 named after A. M. Gorky. She studied well. Repeatedly, the teaching staff of the school awarded her with certificates and books, and twice she was awarded tourist trips to the Caucasus.
Crimea, Feodosia, August 1940. Happy young girls. The most beautiful, with dark braids, is Anya Sopova.
In 1939 she joined the ranks of the Lenin Komsomol. She immediately became actively involved in the life of the Komsomol organization of the school. Anya dreamed of becoming a pilot. She told the kids a lot about her favorite heroine, Valentina Grizodubova. When the war began, like many schoolchildren, she took part in the construction of defensive structures. On the eve of the occupation of Krasnodon I finished 10th grade.
At the beginning of October 1942, Sopova joined the underground Komsomol organization “Young Guard”; her comrades elected her commander of the five.
“There was a lot of gentleness, sensitivity, warmth in the character of this girl, and at the same time a lot of heroism and courage,” recalls teacher K. F. Kuznetsova.
Sopova’s group met at her home or at the house of Yuri Visenovsky, where they wrote leaflets, many of which were authored by Anna. She took part in many combat operations.
“In the evening, my daughter Nyusia was not at home. She arrived only in the morning. I didn’t question the girl; I knew that Nyusya often visited her friends. Only in the morning I noticed how she was shining, how her cheerful eyes were laughing. With special joy she kissed me, mother, and kept repeating:
"Under the scarlet banner our people..."
“What are you talking about, Nyusya?” “She took me outside and said: “Admire me, daddy.”
I raised my head and saw a scarlet flag above the directorate.”
“One early January morning someone knocked on our door,” Anna’s parents recalled. - It was the police. They came for our daughter. Nyusya calmly got dressed, asked us not to worry, and kissed us deeply goodbye. Her last words were: “Take care of yourself, dear ones.” She walked away with a firm, confident gait. We never saw her alive again."
...So the gendarmes dragged in a young, fragile girl with dimples on her cheeks and heavy brown braids. "Meister" lazily asked:
- What's your name?
- Anna Sopova...
These were the only words that the Gestapo men heard from the girl. She was twice suspended from the ceiling by her braids. The third time, one of the braids broke and the girl fell to the floor, bleeding. But she didn't say a word to them...
“...They began to ask her who she knew, with whom she had connections, what she did. She was silent. They ordered her to strip naked. She turned pale - and did not move. And she was beautiful, her braids were huge, lush, down to her waist. They tore off her clothes, wrapped her dress over her head, laid her on the floor and began to whip her with a wire whip. She screamed terribly. Then she fell silent again. Then Plokhikh, one of the main executioners of the police, hit her in the head with something...”
From the memoirs of Alexandra Vasilievna Tyulenina.
On January 31, after severe torture, she was thrown into the pit of mine No. 5. Anya was lifted out of the pit with one scythe - the other broke off. But the Nazis did not get a word from her.
She was buried in the mass grave of heroes in the central square of the city of Krasnodon. Anna Dmitrievna Sopova was posthumously awarded the Order of the Patriotic War, 1st degree, and the medal “Partisan of the Patriotic War,” 1st degree.
Information about the atrocities of the Nazi invaders, about the injuries inflicted on the underground fighters of Krasnodon as a result of interrogations and executions at the pit of mine No. 5 and in the Thunderous Forest of Rovenki. January-February 1943. (Archive of the Young Guard Museum.)
The certificate was compiled on the basis of the act of investigating the atrocities committed by the Nazis in the Krasnodon region, dated September 12, 1946, on the basis of archival documents of the Young Guard Museum and documents of the Voroshilovograd KGB.
DOCUMENT. (DESCRIPTION OF TORTURE):
1. Barakov Nikolay Petrovich, born in 1905. During interrogations, the skull was broken, the tongue and ear were cut off, the teeth and left eye were knocked out, the right hand was cut off, both legs were broken, and the heels were cut off.
2. Vystavkin Daniil Sergeevich, born in 1902, traces of severe torture were found on his body.
3. Vinokurov Gerasim Tikhonovich, born in 1887. He was pulled out with a crushed skull, a smashed face, and a crushed arm.
4. Lyutikov Philip Petrovich, born in 1891. He was thrown into the pit alive. Cervical vertebrae were broken, the nose and ears were cut off, there were wounds on the chest with torn edges.
5. Sokolova Galina Grigorievna, born in 1900. She was among the last to be pulled out with her head crushed. The body is bruised, there is a knife wound on the chest.
6. Yakovlev Stepan Georgievich, born in 1898. He was extracted with a crushed head and a dissected back.
7. Androsova Lidiya Makarovna, born in 1924.
Lydia printed and distributed anti-fascist leaflets and repeatedly damaged Nazi communications. On the eve of the 25th anniversary of the Great October Revolution, Lydia, together with Nina Kezikova and Nadezhda Petrachkova, made the Red Banner, which was hoisted at mine No. 1.
01/12/1943 Lydia was arrested along with other underground fighters. The Nazis brutally tortured Lydia. They cut off her hand, her ear, and cut out her eye. The Nazis executed Lydia by hanging on January 16, 1943; her mutilated body was thrown into the pit of mine No. 5.
8. Bondareva Alexandra Ivanovna, born in 1922. The head and right mammary gland were removed. The whole body is beaten, bruised, and black.
9. Vintsenovsky Yuri Semenovich, born in 1924. He was taken out with a swollen face, without clothes. There were no wounds on the body. Apparently he was dropped alive.
10. Glavan Boris Grigorievich, born in 1920. It was recovered from the pit, severely mutilated.
11. Gerasimova Nina Nikolaevna, born in 1924. The victim's head was flattened, her nose was depressed, her left arm was broken, and her body was beaten.
12. Grigoriev Mikhail Nikolaevich, born in 1924.
Mikhail participated in the execution of policemen and in many other military operations of the Young Guard, obtained weapons, printed and distributed anti-fascist leaflets.
01/27/1943 Mikhail was arrested. The Nazis brutally tortured him, beat him, he had lacerations on his head, his face was disfigured, his teeth were knocked out, his legs were chopped up, his body was black from wounds. Mikhail was thrown into pit No. 5 while still alive, causing him a severe gunshot wound.
13. Gromova Ulyana Matveevna, born in 1924.
Ulyana Gromova was one of the organizers of an underground group in the village of Pervomaika, which became part of the Young Guard.
Ulyana prepares and participates in combat operations of the Young Guards, distributes leaflets, collects medicines, and agitates Krasnodon residents to sabotage food supplies and the recruitment of young people to work in Germany.
On the eve of the 25th anniversary of the Great October Revolution, together with Anatoly Popov, Ulyana hung a red flag on the chimney of mine No. 1 - encore.
In January 1943, the Nazis arrested Ulyana. During interrogations, she was severely beaten, 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, she was put on a hot stove, her arm and ribs were broken. On January 16, 1943, the Nazis executed Ulyana and threw her into the pit of mine No. 5.
14. Gukov Vasily Safonovich, born in 1921. Beaten beyond recognition.
15. Dubrovina Alexandra Emelyanovna, born in 1919. She was pulled out without a skull, there were puncture wounds on her back, her arm was broken, her leg was shot.
16. Dyachenko Antonina Nikolaevna, born in 1924. There was an open fracture of the skull with a patchy wound, striped bruises on the body, elongated abrasions and wounds resembling imprints of narrow, hard objects, apparently from blows with a telephone cable.
17. Eliseenko Antonina Zakharovna, born in 1921. The victim had traces of burns and beatings on her body, and there was a trace of a gunshot wound on her temple.
18. Zhdanov Vladimir Alexandrovich, born in 1925. He was extracted with a laceration in the left temporal region. The fingers are broken, which is why they are twisted, and there are bruises under the nails. Two stripes 3 cm wide and 25 cm long were cut out on the back. Eyes were gouged out and ears were cut off.
19. Zhukov Nikolay Dmitrievich, born in 1922. Extracted without ears, tongue, teeth. An arm and a foot were severed.
20. Zagoruiko Vladimir Mikhailovich, born in 1927. Recovered without hair, with a severed hand. Despite the torture, Volodya held on courageously until the very last minutes of his life and when he was pushed into the pit, he shouted:
Long live the Motherland! Long live Stalin!
21. Zemnukhov Ivan Alexandrovich, born in 1923. He was taken out beheaded and beaten. The whole body is swollen. The foot of the left leg and the left arm (at the elbow) are twisted.
22. Ivanikhina Antonina Aeksandrovna, born in 1925. The victim's eyes were gouged out, her head was bandaged with a scarf and wire, and her breasts were cut out.
23. Ivanikhina Liliya Alexandrovna, born in 1925. The head was removed and the left arm was severed.
24. Kezikova Nina Georgievna, born in 1925. She was pulled out with her leg torn off at the knee, her arms twisted. There were no bullet wounds on the body; apparently, she was thrown out alive.
25. Kiikova Evgenia Ivanovna, born in 1924. Extracted without the right foot and right hand.
26. Kovaleva Klavdiya Petrovna, born in 1925. The right breast was pulled out swollen, the right breast was cut off, the feet were burned, the left breast was cut off, the head was tied with a scarf, traces of beatings were visible on the body. Found 10 meters from the trunk, between the trolleys. Probably dropped alive.
27. Koshevoy Oleg Vasilievich, born in 1924.
Oleg is one of the organizers and leaders of the Young Guard, participated in many of its military operations, including the destruction of traitors, obtained weapons, destroyed enemy equipment and food, printed and distributed anti-fascist leaflets.
01/12/1043 Oleg was arrested. The Nazis brutally tortured him, beat him, disfigured his face, and crushed the back of his head. Oleg turned gray from torture. On 02/09/1943, having failed to obtain a confession, the Nazis shot Oleg in the Thunderous Forest.
28. Levashov Sergey Mikhailovich, born in 1924. The radius bone of the left hand was broken. The fall caused dislocations in the hip joints and both legs were broken. One is in the femur and the other is in the knee area. The skin on my right leg was all torn off. No bullet wounds were found. Was dropped alive. They found him crawling far away from the crash site with his mouth full of earth.
29. Lukashov Gennady Alexandrovich, born in 1924. The victim was missing a foot, his hands showed signs of being beaten with an iron rod, and his face was disfigured.
30. Lukyanchenko Viktor Dmitrievich, born in 1927.
He was a member of Sergei Tyulenin's group. He produced and distributed anti-fascist leaflets.
December 5, 1942 Viktor Lukyanchenko Sergei Tyulenin, Lyubov Shevtsova participated in the arson of the labor exchange. As a result of the arson, documents of young Krasnodon residents prepared for theft to Germany were destroyed.
On January 27, 1943, at night, Viktor Lukyanchenko was arrested. On January 31, after severe torture, he was shot and thrown into the pit of mine No. 5.
Before the execution, the Nazis cut off the living Victor’s hand, cut out his eye and cut off his nose. He was buried in the mass grave of heroes in the central square of the city of Krasnodon.
31. Minaeva Nina Petrovna, born in 1924. She was pulled out with broken arms, a missing eye, and something shapeless was carved on her chest. The entire body is covered with dark blue stripes.
32. Moshkov Evgeniy Yakovlevich, born in 1920. During interrogations, his legs and arms were broken. The body and face are blue-black from beatings.
33. Nikolaev Anatoly Georgievich, born in 1922. The entire body of the extracted man was dissected, his tongue was cut out.
34. Ogurtsov Dmitry Uvarovich, born in 1922. In the Rovenkovo prison he was subjected to inhuman torture.
35. Ostapenko Semyon Makarovich, born in 1927. Ostapenko's body bore signs of cruel torture. The blow of the butt crushed the skull.
36. Osmukhin Vladimir Andreevich, born in 1925. During interrogations, the right hand was cut off, the right eye was gouged out, there were burn marks on the legs, and the back of the skull was crushed.
37. Orlov Anatoly Alekseevich, born in 1925. He was shot in the face with an explosive bullet. The entire back of my head is crushed. Blood is visible on the leg; he was removed with his shoes off.
38. Peglivanova Maya Konstantinovna, born in 1925.
Maya wrote and distributed leaflets, conducted anti-Hitler propaganda among the population, helped Soviet prisoners of war escape, and collected medicines and bandages for them.
On January 11, 1943, Maya was arrested. Translator Reiband told his mother that during interrogation Maya admitted that she was a partisan and proudly threw words of curse and contempt into the face of the executioners. The Nazis brutally tortured Maya: they cut out her eyes, cut off her breasts, and broke her legs. After severe torture, she was thrown into the pit of mine No. 5.
After the liberation of Krasnodon, the names of the young guard girls were written on the prison cell walls: Maya Peglivanova, Shura Dubrovina, Ulyasha Gromova and Gerasimova. They wrote: “We are being taken away... What a pity that we won’t see you again. Long live Comrade Stalin!
She was thrown into the pit alive. She was pulled out without eyes or lips, her legs were broken, lacerations were visible on her leg.
39. Petlya Nadezhda Stepanovna, born in 1924. The victim's left arm and legs were broken, her chest was burned. There were no bullet wounds on the body; she was dropped alive.
40. Petrachkova Nadezhda Nikitichna, born in 1924. The body of the extracted woman bore traces of inhuman torture, and was removed without a hand.
41. Petrov Viktor Vladimirovich, born in 1925. A knife wound was inflicted in the chest, fingers were broken at the joints, ears and tongue were cut off, and the soles of the feet were burned.
42. Pirozhok Vasily Makarovich, born in 1925. He was pulled out of the pit beaten. The body is bruised.
43. Polyansky Yuri Fedorovich,1924 year of birth. Extracted without left arm and nose.
44. Popov Anatoly Vladimirovich, born in 1924. The fingers of the left hand were crushed and the foot of the left foot was severed.
45. Rogozin Vladimir Pavlovich, born in 1924. The victim's spine and arms were broken, his teeth were knocked out, and his eye was gouged out.
46. Samoshinova Angelina Tikhonovna, born in 1924. During interrogations, his back was cut with a whip. The right leg was shot in two places.
47. Sopova Anna Dmitrievna, born in 1924.
Anna was the commander of the Five, participated in many military operations of the Young Guard, printed and distributed anti-fascist leaflets. Anna's "Five" planted the Red Flag on the Nazi administration building.
01/25/1043 Anna was arrested. The Nazis brutally tortured her, beat her, and hung her by her braids. Anna's corpse with one scythe was removed from pit No. 5 - the other was torn out with sections of skin.
48. Startseva Nina Illarionovna, born in 1925. She was pulled out with a broken nose and broken legs.
49. Subbotin Viktor Petrovich, born in 1924. The beatings on the face and twisted limbs were visible.
50. Sumskoy Nikolay Stepanovich, born in 1924. The eyes were blindfolded, there was a trace of a gunshot wound on the forehead, there were signs of lashing on the body, traces of injections under the nails were visible on the fingers, the left arm was broken, the nose was pierced, the left eye was missing.
51. Tretyakevich Viktor Iosifovich, born in 1924. The hair was torn out, the left arm was twisted, the lips were cut off, the leg was torn off along with the groin.
52. Tyulenin Sergey Gavrilovich, born in 1924.
Sergei’s “Five” carried out military operations: they stole cattle from the enemy, destroyed food carts, and on the night of October 7, 1942, they hoisted the Red Banner at school No. 4. 12/05/1943 Sergei, Lyubov Shevtsova, Viktor Lukyanchenko set fire to the Labor Exchange. In January 1943, Sergei crossed the front line and joined the Red Army. He fought, was captured, wounded and fled to Krasnodon from being shot.
On January 27, 1943, following a denunciation, Sergei was arrested. The Nazis brutally tortured him in front of his mother, broke his spine, and mutilated his entire body. The monsters burned through Sergei’s body, knocked out his teeth and broke his jaw. Sergei died from torture. On January 31, 1943, the Nazis threw Sergei’s body into the pit of mine No. 5.
53. Fomin Dementy Yakovlevich, born in 1925. Removed from a pit with a broken head.
54. Shevtsova Lyubov Grigorievna, born in 1924. Several stars are carved on the body. Shot in the face by an explosive bullet.
55. Shepelev Evgeniy Nikiforovich, born in 1924. Boris Galavan was removed from the pit, bound face to face with barbed wire, his hands were cut off. The face is disfigured, the stomach is ripped open.
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.
It’s not customary to talk about the Young Guard these days. And even more so trying to understand the events that happened in Krasnodon. Nowadays we often hear the following exclamations: “The Young Guard didn’t do anything, just think they burned down the labor exchange, so what? The guys died in vain, and Soviet propaganda made a hero out of it.” At this point the topic is closed as unworthy of any attention. But it’s still worth thinking about. For example, why in Krasnodon did the adult underground, seemingly more experienced, fail almost immediately, while the Young Guard operated successfully? Why out of 6,000 young people in Krasnodon only 93 people joined the organization? Why did Seryozhka Tyulenin, at such an early age, already understand things that many people are beyond their stature even in old age?
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.
Nowadays “Young Guard” is on TVC. I remember how we loved this picture as children! 
dreamed of being like the brave Krasnodon residents... vowed 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.
There is an amazing website where caring people collected miraculously preserved unique photographs and documents.
Come in and take a look. Read it.
“Ulyana Gromova, 19 years old, a five-pointed star is carved on her back, her right arm is broken, her ribs are broken” (KGB Archives of the USSR Council of Ministers).
“Lida Androsova, 18 years old, was taken out without an eye, ear, hand, with a rope around her neck, which was strongly cut into her body. Baked blood is visible on her neck” (Young Guard Museum, f. 1, d. 16).
Anya Sopova, 18 years old
“They beat her, hung her by her braids... They lifted Anya out of the pit with one braid - the other broke off.”
“Shura Bondareva, 20 years old, was taken out without her head and right breast, her whole body was beaten, bruised, and black in color.”
Lyuba Shevtsova, 18 years old (pictured first on the left in the second row)
On February 9, 1943, after a month of torture, she was shot in the Thunderous Forest near the city along with Oleg Koshev, S. Ostapenko, D. Ogurtsov and V. Subbotin.
Angelina Samoshina, 18 years old.
“Traces of torture were found on Angelina’s body: her arms were twisted, her ears were cut off, a star was carved on her cheek” (RGASPI. F. M-1. Op. 53. D. 331)
Shura Dubrovina, 23 years old
“Two images appear before my eyes: the cheerful young Komsomol member Shura Dubrovina and the mutilated body raised from the mine. I saw her corpse only with the lower jaw. Her friend Maya Peglivanova was lying in a coffin without eyes, without lips, with her arms twisted... "
Maya Peglivanova, 17 years old
"Maya's corpse was disfigured: her breasts were cut off, her legs were broken. All outer clothing was removed." (RGASPI. F. M-1. Op. 53. D. 331) She was lying in the coffin without lips, with her arms twisted.”
“Tonya Ivanikhina, 19 years old, was taken out without eyes, her head was bandaged with a scarf and wire, her breasts were cut out.”
Seryozha Tyulenin, 17 years old (in the photo - in a hat)
“On January 27, 1943, Sergei was arrested. Soon his father and mother were taken away, all his belongings were confiscated. The police severely tortured Sergei in the presence of his mother, they confronted him with a member of the Young Guard, Viktor Lukyancheiko, but they did not recognize each other.
On January 31, Sergei was tortured for the last time, and then, half-dead, he and other comrades were taken to the pit of mine No. 5..."
Funeral of Sergei Tyulenin
Nina Minaeva, 18 years old
“...My sister was recognized by her woolen gaiters - the only clothes that remained on her. Nina’s arms were broken, one eye was knocked out, there were shapeless wounds on her chest, her whole body was covered in black stripes...”
Tosya Eliseenko, 22 years old
“Tosia’s corpse was disfigured, tortured, and she was put on a hot stove.”
Victor Tretyaknvich, 18 years old
"...Among the last, they raised Viktor Tretyakevich. His father, Joseph Kuzmich, in a thin patched coat, stood day after day, clutching a pole, not taking his eyes off the pit. And when they recognized his son, he was faceless, with a black face. blue back, with shattered arms - he fell to the ground, as if knocked down. No traces of bullets were found on Victor's body - which means they threw him out alive..."
Oleg Koshevoy, 16 years old
When arrests began in January 1943, he attempted to cross the front line. However, he is forced to return to the city. Near the railway Kortushino station was captured by the Nazis and sent first to the police and then to the district Gestapo office in Rovenki. After terrible torture, together with L.G. Shevtsova, S.M. Ostapenko, D.U. Ogurtsov and V.F. Subbotin, on February 9, 1943, he was shot in the Thunderous Forest near the city.
Oleg Koshevoy
Elena Nikolaevna Koshevaya, Oleg’s mother
Boris Glavan, 22 years old
“He was pulled out of the pit, tied up with Evgeniy Shepelev with barbed wire face to face, his hands were cut off. His face was mutilated, his stomach was ripped open.”
Evgeny Shepelev, 19 years old
"...Evgeniy's hands were cut off, his stomach was torn out, his head was broken...." (RGASPI. F. M-1. Op. 53. D. 331)
“Volodya Zhdanov, 17 years old, was taken out with a laceration in the left temporal region, his fingers were broken and twisted, there were bruises under his nails, two strips three centimeters wide, twenty-five centimeters long were cut out on his back, his eyes were gouged out and his ears were cut off” (Young Guard Museum) , f. 1, d. 36)
“Klava Kovaleva, 17 years old, was taken out swollen, her right breast was cut off, her feet were burned, her left hand was cut off, her head was tied with a scarf, traces of beatings were visible on her body. Found ten meters from the trunk, between trolleys, she was probably thrown alive” (Museum "Young Guard", f. 1, d. 10)
Evgeniy Moshkov, 22 years old (pictured left)
"... Young Guard communist Yevgeny Moshkov, choosing the right moment during interrogation, hit the policeman. Then the fascist animals hung Moshkov by his legs and kept him in that position until blood gushed from his nose and throat. They took him down and "They began to interrogate again. But Moshkov only spat in the executioner's face. The enraged investigator who was torturing Moshkov hit him with a backhand blow. Exhausted by the torture, the communist hero fell, hitting the back of his head on the door frame and died."
Volodya Osmukhin, 18 years old
“When I saw Vovochka, mutilated, almost headless, without his left arm up to the elbow, I thought I was going crazy. I didn’t believe it was him. He was wearing only one sock, and the other leg was completely bare. Instead of a belt, he was wearing a scarf warm. There is no outer clothing. Hungry animals took them off. The head is broken. The back of the head has completely fallen out, only the face remains, on which only Volodin’s teeth remain. Everything else is disfigured. The lips are distorted, the nose is almost completely gone. My grandmother and I washed Vovochka, dressed her, decorated her with flowers "A wreath was nailed to the coffin. Let the road lie peacefully."
Parents of Ulyana Gromova
Uli's last letter
Funeral of the Young Guards, 1943
In Soviet times, ships and schools were named in honor of these boys and girls, monuments were erected to them, books, songs and films were dedicated to their feat. Their actions were cited as an example of the mass heroism of Komsomol youth in the Great Patriotic War.
Then, in the wake of the post-reform boom of “glasnost,” many people surfaced who wanted to “reconsider” the services of young heroes to the fatherland. Active myth-making has done its job: today, a considerable number of modern people associate the word “Young Guards” with the youth wing of a popular political party rather than with the fallen Komsomol members of the Great Patriotic War. And in the homeland of heroes, in general, part of the population raises the names of their executioners on the flag...
Meanwhile, every honest person should know the true story of the feat and the true tragedy of the death of the “Young Guards”.
School amateur club. In a Cossack costume - Seryozha Tyulenin, a future underground worker.
“Young Guard” is an underground anti-fascist Komsomol organization that operated during the Great Patriotic War from September 1942 to January 1943 in the city of Krasnodon, Voroshilovgrad region of the Ukrainian SSR. The organization was created shortly after the occupation of the city of Krasnodon by Nazi Germany, which began on July 20, 1942.
The first underground youth groups to fight the fascist invasion arose in Krasnodon immediately after its occupation by German troops in July 1942. The core of one of them consisted of soldiers of the Red Army, who, by the will of military fate, found themselves surrounded in the rear of the Germans, such as soldiers Evgeny Moshkov, Ivan Turkenich, Vasily Gukov, sailors Dmitry Ogurtsov, Nikolai Zhukov, Vasily Tkachev.
At the end of September 1942, underground youth groups united into a single organization “Young Guard”, the name of which was proposed by Sergei Tyulenin.
Ivan Turkenich was appointed commander of the organization. The members of the headquarters were Georgy Arutyunyants - responsible for information, Ivan Zemnukhov - chief of staff, Oleg Koshevoy - responsible for conspiracy and security, Vasily Levashov - commander of the central group, Sergei Tyulenin - commander of the combat group. Later, Ulyana Gromova and Lyubov Shevtsova were brought into the headquarters. The overwhelming majority of the Young Guard members were Komsomol members; temporary Komsomol certificates for them were printed in the organization’s underground printing house along with leaflets.
Younger guys aged 14-17 were messengers and scouts. The Krasnodon Komsomol youth underground included about 100 people, more than 70 were very active. According to the lists of underground fighters and partisans arrested by the Germans, the organization includes forty-seven boys and twenty-four girls. The youngest of the prisoners was fourteen years old, and fifty-five of them never turned nineteen...
Lyuba Shevtsova with friends (pictured first on the left in the second row)
The most ordinary guys, no different from the same boys and girls of our country, the guys made friends and quarreled, studied and fell in love, ran to dances and chased pigeons. They participated in school clubs and sports clubs, played stringed musical instruments, wrote poetry, and many drew well. We studied in different ways - some were excellent students, while others had difficulty mastering the granite of science. There were also a lot of tomboys. We dreamed about our future adult life. They wanted to become pilots, engineers, lawyers, some were going to go to a theater school, and others to a pedagogical institute...
The “Young Guard” was as multinational as the population of these southern regions of the USSR. Russians, Ukrainians (there were also Cossacks among them), Armenians, Belarusians, Jews, Azerbaijanis and Moldovans, ready to come to each other’s aid at any moment, fought the fascists.
The Germans occupied Krasnodon on July 20, 1942. And almost immediately the first leaflets appeared in the city, a new bathhouse began to burn, already ready for German barracks. It was Seryozha Tyulenin who began to act. There is still only one...
On August 12, 1942 he turned seventeen. Sergei wrote leaflets on pieces of old newspapers, and the police often found them even in their pockets. He began to slowly steal weapons from the policemen, without even doubting that they would definitely come in handy. And he was the first to attract a group of guys ready to fight. At first it consisted of eight people. However, by the first days of September, several groups were already operating in Krasnodon, practically unrelated to one another - in total there were about 25 people in them.
The birthday of the underground Komsomol organization “Young Guard” was September 30: then a plan was adopted to create a detachment, specific actions of underground work were outlined, a headquarters was created, the active members of the organization were divided into fighting fives. For the purpose of secrecy, each member of the five knew only his comrades and commander, being unaware of the full composition of the headquarters.
The “Young Guards” put up leaflets - first handwritten ones, then they took out a printing press and opened a real printing house. 30 series of leaflets were published with a total circulation of about 5 thousand copies. The content is mainly calls for sabotage of forced labor and fragments of Sovinformburo reports received thanks to a secretly stored radio receiver.
On occasion, Komsomol members stole weapons from Germans and policemen - at the time of the defeat of the organization, 15 machine guns, 80 rifles, 300 grenades, about 15 thousand cartridges, 10 pistols, 65 kilograms of explosives and several hundred meters of fuse cord had already been accumulated in its secret warehouse. With this arsenal, Oleg Koshevoy was going to arm the Komsomol partisan detachment “Molot”, which he intended to soon separate from the organization and redeploy outside the city to openly fight the enemy, but these plans were no longer destined to come true...
The guys burned a barn with bread that the Germans had taken by force from the population. On the day of the 25th anniversary of the October Revolution, red flags were hung around the city of Krasnodon, which the girls had sewn the day before from the red curtains of the stage of the former House of Culture. Several dozen prisoners of war were rescued from the camp.
Most of the Young Guard's actions took place at night. By the way, there was a curfew in Krasnodon during the entire period of occupation, and a simple walk around the city after six in the evening was punishable by arrest followed by execution. The Komsomol members also tried to establish contact with the partisan detachments operating in the Rostov region. However, it was not possible to find the Voroshilovgrad partisans and underground fighters. First of all, because in the forests the partisans kept a good secret, and in the city the underground was already defeated by the enemy and virtually ceased to exist.
This is where the first myth arises, created during the era of work on the famous novel by the writer Alexander Fadeev. As if the Komsomol members of Krasnodon fought against fascism exclusively as messengers and saboteurs under the leadership of an underground party organization led by Nikolai Barakov and Philip Lyutikov. Senior comrades develop an operation plan - Komsomol members, risking their lives, carry it out...
By the way, in the first edition of Fadeev’s novel there is no mention of the “adult” communist underground. Only by the second edition the author “strengthened” the connections between the Komsomol and the “adult” underground and introduced a scene of joint preparation for sabotage in one of the mines that the Germans wanted to launch.
In fact, the communist miners Barakov and Lyutikov really planned to disrupt the launch of the mine. But - completely independent of the “Young Guards”. The guys also prepared sabotage - on their own - and it was they who carried out it.
For the Nazis, coal was a strategic raw material, so they sought to put at least one of the Krasnodon mines into operation. Using the labor of prisoners of war and the force of driven local residents, the Germans prepared Sorokin mine No. 1 for launch.
But literally on the eve of the start of work at night, underground Komsomol member Yuri Yatsinovsky entered the pile driver and damaged the cage lift: he misregulated the mechanism and cut the lifting ropes. As a result, when the lift was launched, the cage with mining tools, in which there were also German foreman, and policemen with weapons, and forced miners, and several strikebreakers who voluntarily agreed to work for the enemy, collapsed into the mine shaft. I feel sorry for the dead slaves of fascism. But the launch of the mine was disrupted; until the end of the occupation, the Germans were unable to raise the cage and clear the shaft pit of the collapsed parts of the lift. As a result, during the six months of their rule, the Germans were never able to remove a ton of coal from Krasnodon.
Krasnodon Komsomol members also thwarted the mass deportation of their peers to Germany. The Young Guards introduced one of the underground workers into the labor exchange, who copied the list of young people compiled by the Germans. Having learned about the number and timing of the departure of the train of “Ostarbeiters,” the guys burned the stock exchange with all the documentation, and warned potential farm laborers of the need to flee the city. This action infuriated the police and the German commandant's office, and almost two thousand Krasnodon residents were spared from German hard labor.
Even such a seemingly purely demonstrative action as hanging red flags on November 7 and congratulating residents on the 25th anniversary of the October Revolution was of great importance for the occupied city. The residents, eagerly awaiting liberation, realized: “They remember us, we are not forgotten by our people!”
Oleg Koshevoy
In addition, the “Young Guards” recaptured more than 500 head of livestock confiscated from the population from the horse-riding police. Animals were returned to those who could, the rest of the cows, horses and goats were simply distributed to the population of the surrounding farms, who were very poor after being robbed by German marauders. How many peasant families were saved from hunger thanks to such a “partisan gift” is now difficult to even calculate.
The real combat operation was the organization, jointly with the partisans, of a mass escape of prisoners of war from a temporary camp organized by the invaders outside the city in the open air. Those of the Red Army soldiers who were not yet completely exhausted from wounds and beatings joined the partisan detachment. Those unable to hold weapons were sheltered in their homes by villagers - and everyone left. Thus, the lives of almost 50 people were saved.
The German telephone wires were regularly cut. Moreover, the restless Seryozha Tyulenev came up with or read somewhere about a cunning method: the wire was cut in two places lengthwise with a thin knife. Then, using a crochet hook similar to a crochet hook, a section of the copper core was removed between the cuts. Outwardly, the wire looked intact, until you feel it along its entire length - you simply cannot find these thinnest cuts. Therefore, it was not easy for German signalmen to repair the communication gap - most often they were forced to re-lay the line.
Basically, the guys acted secretly, the only armed action of the underground took place on the eve of the New Year 1943 - the Young Guards made a daring raid on German vehicles with New Year's gifts for Wehrmacht soldiers and officers. The cargo was confiscated. In the future, German gifts, consisting mainly of food and warm clothes, were planned to be distributed to Krasnodon families with children. The Komsomol members decided to slowly sell the cigarettes, which were also gifts, at a local flea market, and use the proceeds for the needs of the organization.
Isn’t this what ruined the young underground fighters? In 1998, one of the surviving “Young Guards” Vasily Levashov put forward his version of the disclosure of the organization. According to his recollections, some of the cigarettes were given to a boy of 12-13 years old who knew the underground, who went to the market to exchange tobacco for food. During the raid, the guy was caught and didn’t have time to throw away the goods. They began to interrogate him, and with cruelty. And the teenager “split” under the beatings, admitting that his older friend, Genka Pocheptsov, gave him the cigarettes. On the same day, the Pocheptsovs’ home was searched, Gennady himself was arrested and also tortured.
According to Levashov’s version, it was Gennady, who was tortured in the presence of the named father - Vasily Grigorievich Gromov, the head of mine No. 1-bis and part-time secret agent of the Krasnodon police - on January 2, 1943, began to admit to participating in the underground. The Germans extracted from the guy all the information he possessed, and the commandant’s office became aware of the names of those underground fighters whose group operated in the Pervomaika area.
Then the Germans took the search for the partisans seriously, and within a few days two high school students were arrested because they did not have time to safely hide the bags of gifts. Levashov did not name the names of these guys, as well as his younger friend Gena Pocheptsov.
Levashov’s version can be doubted because, according to his memoirs, Gena Pocheptsov began speaking on January 2. And on the first day, the Germans took three “Young Guards” - Evgeny Moshkov, Viktor Tretyakevich and Vanya Zemnukhov. Most likely, this was the result of an investigation that the Germans conducted after the Komsomol attack on a convoy carrying Christmas gifts.
On the day of the arrest of three members of the Young Guard headquarters, a secret meeting of Komsomol members took place. And at it a decision was made: all “Young Guards” should immediately leave the city, and the leaders of the combat groups should not spend the night at home that night. All underground workers were notified of the headquarters’ decision through liaison officers. But the entire punitive apparatus has already begun to move. Mass arrests began...
Why did most of the “Young Guards” not follow the orders of headquarters? After all, this first disobedience cost almost all of them their lives? There can be only one answer: during the days of mass arrests, the Germans spread information throughout the city that they knew the full composition of the “gangster partisan gang.” And that if any of the suspects leave the city, their families will be shot en masse.
The guys knew that if they ran away, their relatives would be arrested in their place. Therefore, they remained faithful children to the end and did not try to protect themselves by the death of their parents,” surviving underground fighter Vladimir Minaev later said in an interview with Komsomolskaya Pravda journalists.
Only twelve “Young Guards,” at the insistence of their relatives, managed to escape in those days. But later, two of them - Sergei Tyulenin and Oleg Koshevoy - were nevertheless arrested. The four cells of the city police jail were packed to capacity. In one they kept girls, in the other three – boys.
No matter how much they have previously written about the Young Guard, as a rule, researchers spare the feelings of readers. They write carefully - that Komsomol members were beaten, sometimes, following Fadeev, they talk about bloody stars carved on the body. The reality is even worse... But none of the popular publications mentions the names of the torturers in detail - only general phrases: “fascist monsters, occupiers and accomplices of the occupiers.” However, documents from the regional department of state security indicate that mass torture and executions were not carried out by ordinary Wehrmacht soldiers. For the role of executioners, the Germans used either special SS units - Einsatzgruppen, or police units recruited from the local population.
The SS Einsatzgruppe arrived in the Lugansk region in September 1942, the headquarters was located in Starobelsk, the special detachment of executioners was commanded by SS Brigadefuehrer Major General of Police Max Thomas. However, he, a professional torturer, preferred to place his soldiers in the cordon of the prison, dispatching only three hefty soldiers to punish the prisoners with rubber whips. And, in fact, the reprisal against the underground was carried out mainly by policemen of the local Krasnodon branch. Cossacks, as they called themselves...
Leaflet "Young Guard"
What these monsters - both the SS men and their local henchmen - did to the young partisans is scary to even read. But we have to. Because without this it is impossible to fully understand either the horrors of fascism or the heroism of those who dared to oppose themselves to it.
Almost immediately after the massacre of the teenagers, Krasnodon was liberated from the fascist invaders - in February 1943. Within two days, NKVD investigators began arresting individuals involved in the death of the underground organization. As a result, lists of people directly involved in the crimes were compiled - both Germans and local Nazi servants. Hence the special scrupulousness of the investigation and the search for criminals.
Lidiya Androsova was arrested on January 12. According to Pocheptsov's denunciation. It was the police who took her - and according to the testimony of the girls’ parents, during the search they mercilessly looted the house, not even disdaining women’s underwear. The girl spent five days in the police custody... When Lida’s body was removed from the pit of the mine where she was executed, her relatives identified her daughter only by the remnants of her clothes. The girl’s face was mutilated, one eye was cut out, her ears were cut off, her hand was chopped off with an ax, her back was striped with whips so that her ribs were visible through the cut skin. A piece of the rope loop with which Lida was dragged to execution remained on her neck.
Lida Androsova
Kolya Sumsky, whom his friends considered Lida’s first friend and even boyfriend, was taken on January 4 at the mine, where he was picking out coal crumbs from a waste heap. Ten days later they were sent to Krasnodon, and four days later they were executed. The teenager’s body was also mutilated: traces of beatings, broken arms and legs, cut off ears...
The same police arrested Alexandra Bondareva and her brother Vasily on January 11. The torture began on the first day. The brother and sister were kept in separate cells. On January 15, Vasya Bondarev was led to execution. He was not allowed to say goodbye to his sister. The young man was thrown alive into the same pit of mine No. 5 where Lida Androsova was killed. On the evening of January 16, Shura was also taken to execution. Before pushing the girl into the mine, the police beat her again with rifle butts until she fell into the snow. Vasya and Shura’s mother Praskovya Titovna, when she saw the bodies of her children raised from the mine, almost died of a heart attack.
Shura Bondareva
Seventeen-year-old Nina Gerasimova was executed on January 11. From the protocol of identification of the body by relatives: “A girl of 16-17 years old, thin build, was thrown into a pit almost naked - in her underwear. The left arm is broken; the whole body, and especially the chest, are black from beatings, the right side of the face is completely disfigured” (RGASPI Fund M-1, inventory 53, item 329.)
Close friends Borya Glavan and Zhenya Shepelev were executed together - tied face to face with barbed wire. During torture, Boris's face was smashed with a rifle butt, both hands were cut off, and they stabbed him in the stomach with a bayonet. Evgeniy’s head was pierced, and his hands were also chopped off with an axe.
Borya Glavan
Mikhail Grigoriev tried to escape on January 31 along the road to the place of execution. Pushing the guard aside, he rushed across the virgin snow into the darkness... The police quickly overtook the teenager, exhausted from the beatings, but finally dragged him to the mine and threw him into the pit alive. The women who went to the waste heap for coal chips heard for several days that Misha remained alive for a long time, groaning in the trunk, but they could not help - the pit was guarded by a police patrol.
Vasily Gukov, executed on January 15, was identified by his mother by the scar on his chest. The young man's face was trampled under police boots, his teeth were knocked out, and his eyes were cut out.
Seventeen-year-old Leonid Dadyshev was tortured for ten days. They mercilessly flogged him and cut off the hand on his right hand. Lenya was shot with a pistol and thrown into a pit on January 15.
Zhenya Shepelev
Maya Peglivanova experienced such tortures before her death that no inquisitor would have imagined. The girl's nipples were cut off with a knife and both legs were broken.
Maya's friend Shura Dubrovina probably could have even been saved - the Germans were never able to prove her connection with the underground. In prison, the girl looked after the wounded Maya until the very end and was literally forced to carry her friend to execution in her arms. The police also cut Alexandra Dubrovina's chest with knives, and then right next to the mine shaft, they killed the girl with the butt of a rifle.
Zhenya Kiikova, arrested on January 13, gave her family a note from prison. “Dear mom, don’t worry about me - I’m fine. Kiss grandpa for me, feel sorry for yourself. Your daughter is Zhenya.” This was the last letter - during the next interrogation, all the girl’s fingers were broken. In five days at the police station, Zhenya turned gray like an old woman. She was executed together with her friend Tosya Dyachenko, who had been arrested the day before, tied up. The friends were then buried in the same coffin.
Maya Peglivanova
Antonina Eliseenko was arrested on January 13 at two in the morning. The police burst into the room where Antonina was sleeping and ordered her to get dressed. The girl refused to dress in front of men. The police were forced to leave. The girl was executed on January 18. Antonina's body was disfigured, with her genitals, eyes, ears cut out...
“Tosya Eliseenko, 22 years old, was executed in a pit. During torture, she was forced to sit on a hot potbelly stove; her body was removed from the mine with 3rd and 4th degree burns on her thighs and buttocks.”
Tosya Eliseenko
Vladimir Zhdanov was taken from his home on January 3. He also gave his family a note, hiding it in the bloody laundry that was being taken out for washing: “Hello, dears... I’m still alive. My fate is unknown. I don't know anything about the others. I am sitting separately from everyone in solitary confinement. Goodbye, they’ll probably kill me soon... I kiss you deeply.” On January 16, Vladimir, along with other Young Guard members, was taken to the pit. The square was cordoned off by police. They brought 2-3 people to the place of execution, shot the prisoners in the head and threw them into the mine. Tied up, having suffered severe beatings with a rubber whip and a Cossack whip, Vovka Zhdanov at the last moment tried to push the chief of police Solikovsky, who was observing the execution, into the pit with his head. Luckily for the executioner, he stood on his feet, and the executioners immediately began to torture Vovka himself further, and then shot him. When the young man’s body was lifted from the mine, the parents fainted: “Volodya Zhdanov, 17 years old, was pulled out with a laceration in the left temporal region from point-blank shooting, the fingers of both hands were broken and twisted, there were bruises under the nails, two stripes three times wide were cut on his back centimeter long, twenty-five centimeters, eyes gouged out and ears cut off” (Young Guard Museum, f. 1, no. 36).
At the beginning of January, Kolya Zhukov was also arrested. After torture, on January 16, 1943, the guy was shot and thrown into the pit of mine No. 5: “Nikolai Zhukov, 20 years old, was taken out without ears, tongue, teeth, his arm was cut off at the elbow and his foot was cut off” (Young Guard Museum, f. 1, d. 73).
Vladimir Zagoruiko was arrested on January 28. Police Chief Solikovsky personally took part in the arrest. On the way to prison, the chief policeman was sitting in a cart, Vladimir was walking through the snowdrifts, tied up, barefoot, in only underwear, in a frost of minus 15. The police pushed the guy with rifle butts, pinned him with bayonets and offered to warm up... by dancing: “Dance, red-bellied, they say you’re before the war I studied in a dance ensemble!” During the torture, Volodya had his arms twisted at the shoulders on a rack and hung by his hair. They threw him into the pit alive.
Vova Zhdanov
Antonina Ivanikhina was arrested on January 11. Until the last hour, the girl looked after her comrades, weakened after torture. Execution - January 16. “Tonya Ivanikhina, 19 years old, was taken out of the mine without eyes, her head was tied with a scarf, under which a wreath of barbed wire was tightly placed on her head, her breasts were cut out” (Young Guard Museum, f. 1, no. 75).
Antonina's sister Lilia was arrested on January 10 and executed on the 16th. The surviving third sister, Lyubasha, who was very young during the war, recalled: “One day, our distant relative, the wife of a policeman, came to us and said: “My husband was placed as a watchman near mine No. 5. I don’t know if yours are there or not, but My husband found combs and combs... Look at the things, maybe you’ll find your own. Most likely, don’t look for your daughters, probably yours are there, in the pit.” When they were shooting, my grandfather, who was collecting coal, was forced to leave. But he climbed onto the waste heap and saw from above: some girls jumped on their own, not wanting to be touched by the hands of the executioners, some friends or lovers jumped hugging each other, the guys sometimes resisted - they spat at the police, cursed them with the last words, pushed them, tried to drag them into the trunk the mines behind them... When the Red Army soldiers later dismantled the mine, they brought the dead sisters. Lily's hand was cut off and her eyes were blindfolded with wire. Tonya is also mutilated. Then they brought coffins, and our Ivanikhins were put in one coffin.”
Tonya Ivanikhina
Klavdiya Kovaleva was arrested in early January and executed on the 16th: “Klavdiya Kovaleva, 17 years old, was taken out swollen from beatings. The right breast was cut off, the soles of the feet were burned, the left arm was cut off, the head was tied with a scarf, and black traces of beatings were visible on the body. The girl’s body was found ten meters from the trunk, between the trolleys, she was probably thrown alive and was able to crawl away from the pit” (Young Guard Museum, f. 1, no. 10.)
Antonina Mashchenko was executed on January 16. Antonina’s mother Maria Alexandrovna recalled: “As I found out later, my beloved child was also executed with terrible torture. When Antonina’s corpse was pulled out of the pit along with other Young Guards, it was difficult to identify my girl in it. She had barbed wire in her braids and half of her full hair was missing. My daughter was hung up and tortured by animals.”
Klava Kovaleva. Fragment of a family portrait with mother and uncle
Nina Minaeva was executed on January 16. The underground worker’s brother Vladimir recalled: “...My sister was recognized by her woolen gaiters - the only clothing that remained on her. Nina’s arms were broken, one eye was knocked out, there were shapeless wounds on her chest, her whole body was covered in black stripes...”
Nina Minaeva
Police officers Krasnov and Kalitventsev led Evgeniy Moshkov tied up around the city all night. It was severely frosty. The policemen brought Zhenka to the water intake well and began to dunk him in there on a rope. Into icy water. Dropped several times. Then Kalitventsev froze and brought everyone to his home. Moshkov was seated by the stove. They even gave me a cigarette. They drank the moonshine themselves, warmed up and took them out again... Zhenya was tortured all night, by dawn he could no longer move independently. The twenty-two-year-old “Young Guard,” a communist, nevertheless, choosing the right moment during the interrogation, hit the policeman. Then the fascist beasts hung Moshkov by his legs and kept him in this position until blood gushed from his nose and throat. They removed him and began interrogating him again. But Moshkov only spat in the executioner’s face. The enraged investigator who was torturing Moshkov hit him backhand. Exhausted by torture, the communist hero fell, hitting the back of his head on the door frame, and lost consciousness. They threw him into the pit unconscious, perhaps he had already died.
Zhenya Moshkov with friends (left)
Vladimir Osmukhin, who spent ten days in the hands of the police, was identified by sister Lyudmila from the remains of his clothes: “When I saw Vovochka, mutilated, almost completely headless, missing his left arm up to the elbow, I thought I was going crazy. I didn't believe it was him. He was wearing only one sock, and his other foot was completely bare. Instead of a belt, wear a warm scarf. No outerwear. The head is broken. The back of the head had completely fallen out, leaving only the face, on which only teeth remained. Everything else is mutilated. The lips are twisted, the mouth is torn, the nose is almost completely gone ... "
Viktor Petrov was arrested on January 6. On the night of January 15-16, he was thrown into a pit alive. Victor’s sister Natasha recalls: “When Vitya was taken out of the pit, he could have been about 80 years old. A gray-haired, emaciated old man... His left ear, nose, and both eyes were missing, his teeth were knocked out, hair remained only on the back of his head. There were black stripes around the neck, apparently traces of strangulation in a noose, all the fingers on the hands were finely broken, the skin on the soles of the feet was raised like a blister from a burn, there was a large deep wound on the chest, inflicted by a cold weapon. Obviously, it was inflicted while still in prison, because the jacket and shirt were not torn.”
Shura Dubrovina
Anatoly Popov was born on January 16. On his birthday, January 16, he was thrown into a pit alive. The last meeting of the Young Guard headquarters took place at Anatoly Popov’s apartment. From the protocol for examining the young man’s body: “Beaten, the fingers on his left hand and the foot on his right leg were cut off” (RGASPI F-1 Op.53 D.332.)
Angelina Samoshina was executed on January 16. From the protocol for examining the body: “Traces of torture were found on Angelina’s body: her arms were twisted, her ears were cut off, a star was carved on her cheek” (RGASPI. F. M-1. Op. 53. D. 331.). Geli’s mother, Anastasia Emelyanovna, wrote: “She sent a note from prison, where she wrote that they wouldn’t hand over a lot of food, that she felt good here, “like at a resort.” On January 18, they did not accept the transfer from us; they said that they were sent to a concentration camp. Nina Minaeva’s mother and I went to the camp in Dolzhanka, where they were not there. Then the policeman warned us not to go and look for us. But rumors spread that they were thrown into the pit of mine No. 5, where they were found. This is how my daughter died..."
Gelya Samoshina
Anna Sopova's parents - Dmitry Petrovich and Praskovya Ionovna - witnessed the torture of their daughter. Parents were specifically forced to watch this, in the hope that the older generation would persuade the young partisans to confess and hand over their comrades. The old miner recalled: “They started asking my daughter who she knew, who she had a connection with, what did she do? She was silent. They ordered her to undress - naked, in front of the police and her father... She turned pale - and did not move. And she was beautiful, her braids were huge, lush, down to her waist. They tore off her clothes, wrapped her dress over her head, laid her on the floor and began to whip her with a wire whip. She screamed terribly. And then, when they started beating her on her hands and head, she couldn’t stand it, poor thing, and asked for mercy. Then she fell silent again. Then Plokhikh - one of the main executioners of the police - hit her in the head with something...” Anya was lifted out of the pit half bald - in order to further torture the girl, they hung her on her own braid and tore out half of her hair.
Anya Sopova with friends by the sea (second from left)
Among the last to be lifted from the mine was Viktor Tretyakevich. His father, Joseph Kuzmich, in a thin patched coat, stood day after day, clutching the post, and did not take his eyes off the pit. And when they recognized his son - without a face, with a black and blue back, with crushed hands - he fell to the ground, as if knocked down. No traces of bullets were found on Victor’s body, which means they dumped him alive...
Nina Startseva was taken out of the pit on the third day after the execution - the girl almost did not live to see the liberation of the city. Mom recognized her by her hair and the embroidery on the sleeve of her shirt. Nina had needles driven under her fingers, strips of skin were cut on her chest, and her left side was burned with a hot iron. Before being thrown into the pit, the girl was shot in the back of the head.
Demyan Fomin, on whom a sketch of a leaflet was found during a search, was subjected to especially cruel torture and was executed by beheading. Before his death, the guy had all the skin cut off from his back in narrow strips. When asked what he was like, Dyoma’s mother Maria Frantsevna answered: “A kind, gentle, responsive son. I was interested in technology and dreamed of driving trains.”
Alexander Shishchenko was arrested on January 8, executed on the 16th: “The nose, ears, lips were cut off, arms were twisted, the whole body was cut up, shot in the head...”
Ulyana Gromova kept a diary right up to her execution, managing to smuggle the notebook even into the dungeon. The entry in it dated November 9, 1942: “It is much easier to see heroes die than to listen to the cries of some coward for mercy. Jack London". Executed on January 16. “Ulyana Gromova, 19 years old, a five-pointed star was carved on her back, her right arm was broken, her ribs were broken.”
Ulya Gromova
In total, at the end of January, the occupiers and police threw 71 people, alive or shot, into the pit of mine No. 5, among whom were both “Young Guards” and members of the underground party organization. Other members of the Young Guard, including Oleg Koshevoy, were shot on February 9 in the city of Rovenki in the Thunderous Forest.
In the liberated city of Krasnodon, there were many living witnesses to both the struggle of the “Young Guards” and their deaths.
Uli's letter from prison
The first document of the declassified archival criminal case is a statement from Mikhail Kuleshov addressed to the leadership of the regional NKVD department dated February 20, 1943, says Vasily Shkola. - Then the first investigative actions were carried out. The facts of brutal torture of young people, whose bodies were removed from the pit of mine No. 5, have been established. In the materials of interrogations of members of the organization who were still alive at that time and who were subjected to torture, there is a description of the office of the police officer of the city of Krasnodon Solikovsky. - It is said that there are whips and heavy objects, including wooden ones.
From the testimony of Captain Emil Renatus, who commanded the Krasnodon district gendarmerie during the occupation: “Those arrested, suspected of criminal activities and who refused to testify, were laid on a bench and beaten with rubber whips until they confessed. If previous measures did not produce results, they were transferred to a cold room, where they had to lie on an ice floor. The same arrested persons had their arms and legs tied behind their backs, hung in this position with their face to the ground and held until the arrested person confessed. Moreover, all these executions were accompanied by regular beatings.”
Krasnodon resident Nina Ganochkina said: “I and two other women, on the orders of the police, were cleaning the girls’ cell. They could not do the cleaning themselves, since they were constantly taken for interrogation, and after torture they could not even get up. I once saw how Ulya Gromova was interrogated. Ulya did not answer questions accompanied by abuse. Policeman Popov hit her on the head so that the comb holding the scythe broke. He shouts: “Pick it up!” She bent down, and the policeman began to hit her in the face and everywhere. I was already cleaning the floor in the corridor, and Ulya had just finished torturing her. She, having lost consciousness, was dragged along the corridor and thrown into a cell.”
Oleg Koshevoy
As the burgomaster of Krasnodon Vasily Statsenkov showed during interrogation after the war in 1949, over 70 people were arrested for involvement in the Young Guard in Krasnodon and the surrounding areas alone within a few days.
Walter Eichhorn, who as part of the gendarme group directly participated in the beatings and executions of members of the Young Guard, was found in Thuringia, where he worked... in a doll factory. Ernst-Emil Renatus, the former head of the German district gendarmerie in Krasnodon, who also tortured the “Young Guards” and ordered the police to gouge out the guys’ eyes, was also found and arrested in Germany.
From Eichhorn’s testimony (9.III.1949):
“While still in Magdeburg, before being sent to occupied Soviet territory, we received a number of instructions regarding the establishment of a “new order” in the East, which stated that the gendarmes should see in every Soviet citizen a communist partisan, and therefore, with all composure, each of We are obliged to exterminate peaceful Soviet citizens as our opponents.”
From the testimony of Renatus (VII.1949):
Arriving in July 1942 as part of a gendarme team in the city of Stalino, I participated in a meeting of officers of the “Einsatzkommando gendarmerie”... At this meeting, the head of the team, Lieutenant Colonel Ganzog, instructed us to first of all focus on the arrests of communists, Jews and Soviet activists. At the same time, Gantsog emphasized that the arrest of these persons does not require any action against the Germans. At the same time, Gantzog explained that all communists and Soviet activists should be exterminated and only as an exception imprisoned in concentration camps. Having been appointed head of the German gendarmerie in the city. Krasnodon, I followed these directives..."
“Artes Lina, a translator, told me that Zons and Solikovsky torture those arrested. Zons especially loved to torture arrested people. It was a great pleasure for him to summon prisoners after dinner and subject them to torture. Zons told me that he only brings prisoners to confession through torture. Artes Lina asked me to release her from work in the gendarmerie due to the fact that she could not be present during the beatings of those arrested.”
From the testimony of district police investigator Cherenkov:
“I interrogated members of the Young Guard organization, Komsomol members Ulyana Gromova, two Ivanikhin sisters, brother and sister Bondarevs, Maya Peglivanova, Antonina Eliseenko, Nina Minaeva, Viktor Petrov, Klavdiya Kovaleva, Vasily Pirozhok, Anatoly Popov, about 15 people in total... Using special measures of influence (torture and bullying), we established that soon after the Germans arrived in the Donbass, the youth of Krasnodon, mostly Komsomol members, organized themselves and waged an underground struggle against the Germans... I admit that during interrogations I beat the arrested members of the underground Komsomol organization Gromova and the Ivanikhin sisters "
Volodya Osmukhin
From the testimony of policeman Lukyanov (11/11/1947):
“The first time I participated in the mass execution of Soviet patriots was at the end of September 1942 in the Krasnodon city park... At night, a group of German gendarmes led by officer Kozak arrived at the Krasnodon police in cars. After a short conversation between Kozak and Solikovsky and Orlov, according to a pre-compiled list, the police began to take the arrested people out of their cells. In total, more than 30 people were selected, mainly communists... Having announced to the arrested that they were being transported to Voroshilovgrad, they were taken out of the police building and driven to the Krasnodon city park. Upon arrival at the park, the arrested were tied by the hands in groups of five and taken into a pit that had previously served as a refuge from German air raids and there they were shot. ... Some of those shot were still alive, and therefore the gendarmes who remained with us began to shoot those who still showed signs of life. However, the gendarmes soon got tired of this activity, and they ordered to bury the victims, among whom there were still living ones...”
Among the recently declassified investigative documents is a statement written by Gennady Pocheptsov. According to Levashov - under torture, according to the parents of those executed - voluntarily. ..
“To the head of mine No. 1 bis Mr. Zhukov
from Mr. Pocheptsov Gennady Prokofievich
Statement
Mr. Zhukov, an underground Komsomol organization “Young Guard” was organized in Krasnodon, of which I became an active member. I ask you to come to my apartment in your free time and I will tell you in detail about this organization and its members. My address: st. Chkalova, house 12, entrance No. 1, apartment of Gromov D.G.
20.XII.1942 Pocheptsov.”
From the testimony of Guriy Fadeev, an agent of German special forces:
“The police had such an order that first of all the arrested person was brought to Solikovsky, he brought him to consciousness, and ordered the investigator to interrogate him. Pocheptsov was called to the police. He said that he was indeed a member of an underground youth organization that existed in Krasnodon and its environs. He named the leaders of this organization, or rather, the city headquarters, namely: Tretyakevich, Zemnukhov, Lukashov, Safonov and Koshevoy. Pocheptsov named Tretyakevich as the head of the citywide organization. He himself is a member of the Pervomaisk organization, whose leader is Anatoly Popov. The May Day organization consisted of 11 people, including Popov, Glavan, Zhukov, Bondarevs (two), Chernyshov and a number of others. He said that the headquarters had weapons at its disposal: Popov had a rifle, Nikolaev and Zhukov had machine guns, Chernyshov had a pistol. He also said that in one of the quarries in the pit there was a weapons warehouse. There used to be a Red Army warehouse there, which was blown up during the retreat, but the youth found a lot of ammunition there. The organizational structure was as follows: headquarters, Pervomaiskaya organization, organization in the village of Krasnodon and city organization. He did not name the total number of participants. Before I was removed from my job, up to 30 people were arrested. Personally, I interrogated 12 people, incl. Pocheptsov, Tretyakevich, Lukashov, Petrov, Vasily Pirozhka and others. Of the members of the headquarters of this organization, Kosheva and Safonov were not arrested, because they disappeared.
As a rule, preliminary interrogations were carried out personally by Solikovsky, Zakharov and the gendarmerie, using whips, fists, etc. Even investigators were not allowed to be present during such “interrogations.” Such methods have no precedent in the history of criminal law.
After I was recruited by the police to identify individuals distributing Young Guard leaflets, I met several times with the deputy chief of the Krasnodon police, Zakharov. During one of the interrogations, Zakharov asked me a question: “Which of the partisans recruited your sister Alla?” Knowing this from the words of my mother M.V. Fadeeva, I betrayed Vanya Zemnukhov to Zakharov, who actually made an offer to my sister to join an underground anti-fascist organization. I told him that in Korostylev’s apartment, Korostylev’s sister Elena Nikolaevna Koshevaya and her son Oleg Koshevoy, who was recording messages from the Sovinformburo, were listening to radio broadcasts from Moscow”...
From the testimony of the head of the Rovenkovo district police, Orlov (XI 14, 1943)
“Oleg Koshevoy was arrested at the end of January 1943 by a German gendarme and a railway policeman at a crossing 7 km from the city of Rovenki and brought to my police station. During the arrest, Koshevoy’s revolver was confiscated, and during a second search at the Rovenkovo police, a seal of the Komsomol organization and some two blank forms were found on him. I interrogated Koshevoy and received testimony from him that he is the leader of the Krasnodon underground organization.”
From the testimony of policeman Bautkin:
“At the beginning of January 1943, I arrested and brought to the police a member of the underground Komsomol organization “Young Guard” discovered by the police in Krasnodon... Dymchenko, who lived at mine No. 5. She was tortured by the police and, along with her other friends in the underground, was shot by the Germans... I arrested a “Young Guard” who lived at mine No. 2-4 (I don’t remember his last name) from whose apartment, during a search, we found and seized three notebooks with prepared texts anti-fascist leaflets."
From Renatus' testimony:
“...In February, Wenner and Zons reported to me that my order to shoot Krasnodon Komsomol members had been carried out. Some of those arrested... were shot in Krasnodon in mid-January, and the other part, due to the approach of the front line to Krasnodon, was taken from there and shot in the mountains. Rovenki."
From the testimony of policeman Davidenko:
“I admit that I took part in the executions of the “Young Guards” three times and with my participation about 35 Komsomol members were shot... In front of the “Young Guards”, first 6 Jews were shot, and then one by one all 13 “Young Guards”, whose corpses were thrown into the pit shaft No. 5 is about 80 meters deep. Some were thrown into the mine pit alive. To prevent shouting and proclamation of Soviet patriotic slogans, girls' dresses were lifted and twirled over their heads; in this state, the doomed were dragged to the mine shaft, after which they were shot and then pushed into the mine shaft.”
From the testimony of Schultz, a gendarme of the German district gendarmerie in Rovenki:
“At the end of January, I took part in the execution of a group of members of the underground Komsomol organization “Young Guard,” among whom was the leader of this organization, Koshevoy. ...I remember him especially clearly because I had to shoot him twice. After the shots, all those arrested fell to the ground and lay motionless, only Koshevoy stood up and, turning around, looked in our direction. This greatly angered Fromme and he ordered the gendarme Drewitz to finish him off. Drewitz approached the lying Koshevoy and shot him in the back of the head.
...Before escaping from Rovenki on February 8 or 9, 1943, Fromme ordered me, Drewitz and other gendarmes to shoot a group of Soviet citizens held in the Rovenki prison. These victims included five men, a woman with a three-year-old child, and active Young Guard member Shevtsova. Having delivered the arrested to the Rovenkovsky city park, Fromme ordered me to shoot Shevtsova. I led Shevtsova to the edge of the pit, walked away a few steps and shot her in the back of the head, but the trigger mechanism on my carbine turned out to be faulty and it misfired. Then Hollender, who was standing next to me, shot at Shevtsova. During the execution, Shevtsova behaved courageously, standing on the edge of the grave with her head held high, her dark shawl slid over her shoulders and the wind ruffled her hair. Before the execution, she did not utter a word about mercy...”
From the testimony of Geist, a gendarme of the German district gendarmerie in Rovenki:
“...I took part, together with... other gendarmes, in the execution in Rovenkovsky Park of Komsomol members arrested in Krasnodon for underground work against the Germans. Of the executed members of the Young Guard organization, I remember only Shevtsova. I remember her because I interrogated her. In addition, she attracted attention with her courageous behavior during the execution...”
From the testimony of policeman Kolotovich:
“Arriving at the mother of Young Guard member Vasily Bondarev, Davidenko and Sevastyanov told her that the police were sending her son to work in Germany, and he was asking her to give him things. Bondarev's mother gave Davidenko gloves and socks. The latter took gloves for himself upon leaving, and gave Sevastyanov socks and said: “There is a start!”
Then we went to the house of the Young Guard Nikolaev. Entering Nikolaev's house, Davidenko, turning to Nikolaev's sister, said that the police were sending her brother to work in Germany, and he asked for food and things for the road. Nikolaev’s sister apparently knew that he had been shot, so she refused to give him any things or food. After that, Davidenko and Sevastyanov, a policeman (I don’t know her last name) and I forcibly took away her man’s coat and sheep. Then we went to another Young Guard member (I don’t know his last name) and they also forcibly took four pieces of lard and a man’s shirt from the latter’s mother. Having put the lard in the sleigh, we went to the family of the Young Guard Zhukov. In this way, Davidenko, Sevastyanov and others robbed the families of the Young Guard.”
Vanya Turkenich
From the testimony of Orlov, the head of the Rovenkovsky district police:
“Shevtsova was required to indicate the storage location of the radio transmitter that she used to communicate with the Red Army. Shevtsova categorically refused, saying that she was not Lyadskaya, and called us monsters. The next day, Shevtsova was handed over to the gendarmerie department and shot”...
It's time to talk about another myth related to the history of the Young Guard. In Fadeev’s novel, written hot on the heels of the liberation of the city, the collapse of the underground is explained by betrayal. The names of the informers are mentioned - a certain Stakhovich, Vyrikova, Lyadskaya and Polyanskaya.
Where did the writer get these “traitors”? The fact is that literally immediately after the arrest of three representatives of the headquarters, the Germans started a rumor that Viktor Tretyakevich “split during interrogation. The writer, who was staying with Oleg Koshevoy’s mother while working on the book, allegedly received a note in which an unknown local resident named the names of the informers...
The version does not stand up to criticism. Fadeev wrote the book hastily; he did not even have time to meet the relatives of many Young Guards, for which many Krasnodon residents later reproached him. Meanwhile, the parents of many Young Guards are L. Androsova, G. Harutyunyanants, V. Zhdanova. O. Koshevoy, A. Nikolaev, V. Osmukhin, V. Petrov, V. Tretyakevich - not only knew about the underground activities of their sons and daughters, but also helped them in every possible way in equipping the printing house, storing weapons, radios, collecting medicines, making leaflets , red flags...
The note itself has not survived, which may be why until now researchers have not been able to establish the authorship of the forged document. But for a long time there was a rumor in Krasnodon that Viktor Tretyakevich was brought out under the name of Stakhovich in Fadeev’s novel. Until 1990, the Tretyakevich family was labeled as “relatives of a traitor.” For many years they collected eyewitness accounts and documents about Victor’s innocence...
Olga Lyadskaya is a real person. The girl was only 17 years old when she was captured by the Germans for the first time. The young beauty attracted the attention of Deputy Chief of Police Zakharov, who had a separate office for intimate meetings. A few days later, her mother managed to ransom her daughter from her concubines for moonshine and warm clothes. But the stigma of “police litter” remained with Olya. The frightened girl, whom the policeman promised to hang if she did not return to him, and who was condemned by all her neighbors for her connection with the punisher, was even afraid to leave the house. Is this why Lyuba Shevtsova uttered the words “I’m not Lyadskaya to you!” during one of the interrogations?
After Krasnodon’s release, Olga initially served as a witness in the case of police atrocities, but later told the SMERSH investigator that she was taken to confront the arrested “Young Guardsmen.” They asked: “Do you know such and such?” And she, seeing that her peers were being cruelly tortured, said that she went to school with some of the kids, danced with someone in an ensemble, made gliders with someone in the House of Pioneers... Lyadskaya allegedly said nothing about the underground , because I simply didn’t know about it. But nevertheless, in the investigation materials there is a confession signed by Olya personally in cooperation with the occupiers and the police. Most likely, the girl, with her will broken even by Zakharov, thought that for cohabitation with a policeman, especially a forced one, in the worst case, she would simply be exiled. And living for several years away from shame, even in Siberia, seemed to her not the worst outcome of the matter... But as a result, Olga received ten years in Stalin’s camps...
And after the publication of the novel “The Young Guard,” the investigation into the case of “Lyadskaya’s betrayal” was resumed, and a show trial was being prepared. True, it did not take place: Olga fell ill with tuberculosis and was released, and there was clearly little evidence “from the book” for Soviet justice. She managed to recover, even finish her studies at the institute, get married, give birth to a son... Later, Olga Lyadskaya, through the prosecutor’s office, applied for further investigation – herself. And all charges of betrayal of the “Young Guards” were dropped after a careful study of the materials of her case.
Zina Vyrikova and Serafima Polyanskaya, released from the police as “not involved in a partisan gang,” also went into exile in Bugulma after the liberation of the city. SMERSH arrested them even before the publication of Fadeev’s book. Subsequently, Zinaida Vyrikova also got married, changed her last name and left for another city, but until her death she was afraid that she would be identified as a “traitor” and arrested... Neither Zina nor Sima, by the way, could extradite any of the “Moldovan Guards” - their own knowledge of the composition and activities of the underground was limited to rumors that “the leaflets were planted by boys from our school.”
His parents stood up for Vitya Treryakevich, who died in fascist dungeons and was slandered by German henchmen. They wrote all the way to the Komsomol Central Committee, seeking the truth. Only 16 years after the war, it was possible to arrest one of the most ferocious executioners who tortured the Young Guard, policeman Vasily Podtynny. During the investigation, he stated: Tretyakevich was slandered. In this way they wanted to “set an example for other partisans” - they say, your leader has already spoken, it’s time for you to loosen your tongue! A special state commission created after the trial of the policeman established that Viktor Tretyakevich was the victim of a deliberate slander, and “one of the members of the organization, Gennady Pocheptsov, was identified as the real traitor.”
The surviving underground fighter Levashov confirmed that his father was arrested three times to find out where his son was hiding. Levashov Sr. sat with Tretyakevich in the same cell, where he saw how the latter was brought from interrogations completely crippled, which, in the opinion of Levashov’s father himself, was clear evidence that “...Viktor still did not split.”
By the way, the fate of Gennady Pocheptsov himself, who was released from the police three days after the denunciation, was cruel but fair: after the liberation of the city of Krasnodon by the Red Army, Gena Pocheptsov, as well as police agents Gromov and Kuleshov, were put on trial.
The investigation into the case of the Young Guard traitors lasted 5 months. On August 1, 1943, an indictment was presented to Pocheptsov and Gromov. Having familiarized himself with it, Pocheptsov stated: “I plead guilty in full to the charges brought against me, namely that, as a member of the underground youth organization “Young Guard,” I betrayed its members to the police, named the leaders of this organization and told the police about the presence of weapons.” .
After the indictment was approved by the head of the operational group of the NKGB of the Ukrainian SSR, Lieutenant Colonel Bondarenko, the case against Pocheptsov and his stepfather was considered by the Military Tribunal of the NKVD troops of the Voroshilovgrad (now Lugansk) region, the visiting sessions of which were held in Krasnodon from August 15 to 18, 1943. When Gromov, contrary to previous in his testimony, began to assert that he did not advise his stepson to betray the underground members, the latter asked to speak and said, “Gromov is not telling the truth, he advised me to file a police report against members of the youth organization, telling me that by doing this I would save my life and the life of my family, according to We never quarreled with him on this issue." In his last word, Pocheptsov, addressing the court, stated: “I am guilty, I committed a crime against my Motherland, I betrayed my comrades, judge me as the law requires.”
Funeral of the "Young Guards"
Having found Gromov and Pocheptsov guilty of treason, the Military Tribunal sentenced them to capital punishment - execution with confiscation of personal property.
On September 9, 1943, the issue of the verdict of the Military Tribunal of the NKVD troops was discussed at the Military Council of the Southwestern Front. His resolution, signed by the front commander, Army General R.Ya. Malinovsky, stated: “The verdict of the Military Tribunal of the NKVD troops of the Voroshilovgrad region dated August 18 of this year in relation to ... Vasily Grigorievich Gromov and Gennady Prokofievich Pocheptsov is to be approved and carried out on place where the crime was committed - in public."
Having familiarized themselves with the verdict of the Military Tribunal, Gromov and Pocheptsov appealed to the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR with a petition for pardon. Pocheptsov wrote: “I consider the verdict of the tribunal to be correct: I filed a statement with the police as a member of an underground youth organization, saving my life and the life of my family. But the organization was discovered for other reasons. My statement did not play a corresponding role, because it was written later than "The organization was exposed. And therefore I ask the Presidium of the Supreme Council of the Union to save my life, since I am still young. I ask for the opportunity to wash away the black stain that has fallen on me. I ask to be sent to the front line."
However, the petitions of the convicts were rejected, and the verdict of the Military Tribunal was carried out on September 19, 1943. A native of Krasnodon, Igor Cherednichenko, who studied the history of the organization, cited in one of his articles the words of his godfather, who witnessed the execution:
“Gromov stood scared, as white as chalk. His eyes ran around, hunched over, he was trembling like a hunted animal. Pocheptsov first fell, a crowd of residents moved towards him, they wanted to tear him to pieces, but the soldiers at the last moment managed to snatch him from the crowd. And Kuleshov stood near the side of the car with his head raised and it seemed that this did not concern him. He died with indifference on his face... Pocheptsova was even going to shoot her own mother, but someone held her, although she was roaring and demanding to give her rifle. By the way, his mother was a very respected person in the city. She trimmed everyone at the lowest prices, did not refuse anyone."
So, almost 17 years later, the truth triumphed. By decree of December 13, 1960, the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR rehabilitated Viktor Tretyakevich and awarded him the Order of the Patriotic War, 1st degree (posthumously). His name began to be included in all official documents along with the names of other heroes of the Young Guard.
Anna Iosifovna, Victor’s mother, who never took off her black mourning clothes until the end of her life, stood in front of the presidium of the ceremonial meeting in Voroshilovgrad when she was presented with her son’s posthumous award. The crowded hall stood and applauded her. Anna Iosifovna turned to her comrade who was rewarding her with only one request: not to show the film “The Young Guard” in the city these days, shot by the brilliant director Gerasimov based on the novel by Fadeev...
By the decision of the Presidium of the Lugansk Regional Court, which, implementing the law of Ukraine of April 17, 1991 “On the rehabilitation of victims of political repression in Ukraine,” on December 9, 1992, reviewed the conclusion of the Lugansk Regional Prosecutor’s Office on criminal cases charging Gromov and Pocheptsov, it was recognized that these citizens were convicted justifiably and are not subject to rehabilitation.
Thus another myth collapsed. And the feat will remain for centuries...
The pit of Mine No. 5, where the heroes were executed, became part of the memorial park