Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya, a partisan, was executed 75 years ago in the village of Petrishchevo. About a short life, the circumstances of death and little-known details of the events that took place in this village in those days.
This story was first widely reported on January 27, 1942. On that day, the newspaper Pravda published the essay "Tanya" by the correspondent Peter Lidov. In the evening it was broadcast on the All-Union Radio. It was about a certain young partisan who was caught by the Germans during a combat mission. The girl endured the cruel torture of the Nazis, but she never told the enemy anything and did not betray her comrades.
It is believed that a specially created commission was then engaged in the investigation of the case, which established the real name of the heroine. It turned out that the girl's name was actually Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya, an 18-year-old schoolgirl from Moscow.
Then it became known that Zoya Anatolyevna Kosmodemyanskaya was born in 1923 in the village of Osino-Gai (otherwise - Osinovye Gai) of the Tambov region in the family of teachers Anatoly and Lyubov Kosmodemyanskiy. Zoya also had a younger brother, Alexander, whose family name was Shura. Soon the family managed to move to Moscow. At school, Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya studied diligently, was a modest and hardworking child. According to the memoirs of Vera Sergeevna Novoselova, a teacher of literature and the Russian language at school # 201 in Moscow, where Zoya studied, the girl was an excellent student.
“The girl is very modest, easily flushed with embarrassment, she found strong and courageous words when it came to her favorite subject - literature. Unusually sensitive to the artistic form, she knew how to clothe her speech, oral and written, in a vivid and expressive form,”the teacher recalled.
Sending to the front
On September 30, 1941, the Germans launched an offensive against Moscow. On October 7, on the territory of Vyazma, the enemy managed to encircle five armies of the Western and Reserve fronts. It was decided to mine the most important facilities in Moscow - including bridges and industrial enterprises. If the Germans entered the city, the objects were to be blown up.
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Zoya's brother Shura was the first to go to the front. “How good am I if I stayed here? The guys went, maybe, to fight, but I stayed at home. How can you do nothing now ?! " - remembered the words of her daughter Lyubov Kosmodemyanskaya in her book "The Story of Zoya and Shura".
Air raids on Moscow did not stop. At that time, many Muscovites joined the communist workers' battalions, combat squads, and detachments to fight the enemy. So, in October 1941, after a conversation with one of the groups of young men and women, among whom was Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya, the guys were enrolled in the detachment. Zoya told her mother that she had submitted an application to the Moscow district committee of the Komsomol and that she was taken to the front, would be sent to the rear of the enemy.
After asking her not to tell her brother, the daughter said goodbye to her mother for the last time.
Then they selected about two thousand people and sent them to military unit No. 9903, which was located in Kuntsevo. So Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya became a fighter in the reconnaissance and sabotage unit of the Western Front. This was followed by exercises, during which, as Zoya's brother-soldier Klavdia Miloradova recalled, the participants "went to the forest, planted mines, blew up trees, learned how to shoot sentries, use a map." In early November, Zoya and her comrades were given the first task - to mine the roads behind enemy lines, which they successfully completed and returned to the unit without loss.
Operation
On November 17, from the Headquarters of the Supreme High Command, order No. 0428 was received, according to which it was necessary to deprive the “German army of the opportunity to be located in villages and cities, drive the German invaders out of all settlements into the cold in the field, smoke them out of all rooms and warm shelters and make them freeze open air.
On November 18 (according to other sources - November 20), the commanders of the sabotage groups of Unit No. 9903 Pavel Provorov and Boris Krainov received the task: by order of Comrade Stalin on November 17, 1941, “burn 10 settlements: Anashkino, Gribtsovo, Petrishchevo, Usadkovo, Ilyatino, Grachevo, Pushkino, Mikhailovskoe, Bugailovo, Korovino . 5-7 days were allotted for the task execution. The groups went on a mission together.
In the area of the village of Golovkovo, the detachment came across a German ambush and a shootout took place. The groups scattered, part of the detachment died. “The remnants of the sabotage groups have united in a small detachment under the command of Krainov. Three of them went to Petrishchevo, which was 10 km from the Golovkovo state farm: Krainov, Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya and Vasily Klubkov ", - said in his article" Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya "candidate of historical sciences, deputy director of the Center for Scientific Use and Publication of the Archive Fund of the Association" Moscow State Archives "Mikhail Gorinov.
Further, it turned out, as the author writes, that Zoe managed to set fire to three houses.
However, it is still not known for certain whether the partisan managed to burn down the very houses in which, among other things, the radio stations of the fascists could be. In December 1966, the journal "Science and Life" published a material in which a memo was presented. According to the text of the document, Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya “in early December came to the village of Petrishchevo at night and set fire to three houses (houses of citizens of Karelova, Solntsev, Smirnov), in which the Germans lived. Together with these houses, they burned down: 20 horses, one German, many rifles, machine guns and a lot of telephone cables. After the arson, she managed to leave."
It is believed that after the arson of three houses, Zoya did not return to the appointed place. Instead, after waiting in the forest, the next night (according to another version - through the night) again went to the village. It is this act, the historian notes, that will form the basis of a later version, according to which "she arbitrarily, without the commander's permission, went to the village of Petrishchevo."
At the same time, "without permission," as Mikhail Gorinov points out, she went there only a second time to carry out the order to burn down the village.
Nevertheless, according to the statements of many historians, when it got dark, Zoe did return to the village. However, the Germans were already ready to meet the partisans: it is believed that two German officers, an interpreter and the headman gathered local residents, ordering them to guard the houses and monitor the appearance of the partisans, and in case of meeting them, report immediately.
Further, as noted by many historians and participants in the investigation, Zoya was seen by Semyon Sviridov, one of the villagers. He saw her at the moment when the partisan tried to set fire to the barn of his house. The owner of the house immediately reported this to the Germans. Later it will become known that, according to the protocol of the interrogation of a resident of the village Semyon Sviridov by an investigator of the UNKVD in the Moscow region on May 28, 1942, "except for the wine, there was no other reward from the Germans" the owner of the house did not receive for the capture of the partisan.
As a resident of the village Valentina Sedova (11 years old) recalled, the girl had a bag with compartments for bottles, which hung over her shoulder. “They found three bottles in this bag, which they opened, smelled, then put them back in the case. Then they found a revolver under her jacket on a belt,”she said.
During the interrogation, the girl named herself Tanya and did not give out any information the Germans needed, for which she was severely beaten. As a resident of Avdotya Voronina recalled, the girl was repeatedly flogged with belts:
“She was flogged by four Germans, flogged four times with belts, as they came out with belts in their hands. She was asked and flogged, she is silent, she was flogged again. In the last spanking she sighed: "Oh, stop spanking, I don't know anything else and I won't tell you anything else."
As follows from the testimony of the villagers, which the Moscow Komsomol commission took on February 3, 1942 (shortly after Petrishchevo was freed from the Germans), after interrogation and torture, the girl was taken out into the street at night without outer clothing
and forced to stay in the cold for a long time.
“After sitting for half an hour, they dragged her out into the street. For about twenty minutes they dragged me down the street barefoot, then they brought me again.
So, barefoot she was taken out from ten o'clock in the morning to two o'clock in the morning - down the street, in the snow, barefoot. All this was done by one German, he is 19 years old , - said a resident of the village Praskovya Kulik, who the next morning approached the girl and asked her several questions:
"Where are you from?" The answer is Moscow. "What's your name?" - said nothing. "Where is parents?" - said nothing. "Why were you sent?" - "I was tasked to burn down the village."
The interrogation continued the next day, and again the girl said nothing. Later, another circumstance will become known - Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya was tortured not only by the Germans. In particular, residents of Petrishchevo, one of whom had previously burnt down a partisan's house. Later, when on May 4, 1942, Smirnova herself confesses to her deed, it will become known that women came to the house where Zoya was then kept. According to the testimony of one of the villagers, kept in the Central State Archives of the city of Moscow,
Smirnova "before leaving the house, she took the cast iron with slops on the floor and threw it into Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya."
“After a while, even more people came to my house, with whom Solina and Smirnova came a second time. Through the crowd of people Solina Fedosya and Smirnova Agrafena made their way to Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya, and then Smirnova began to beat her, insulting her with all sorts of bad words. Solina, being with Smirnova, waved her arms and shouted angrily: “Hit! Hit her!”, Insulting at the same time with all sorts of bad words the partisan Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya lying near the stove,” says the testimony of a resident of the village Praskovya Kulik.
Later Fedosya Solina and Agrafena Smirnova were shot.
“The military tribunal of the NKVD troops of the Moscow district opened a criminal case. The investigation lasted several months. On June 17, 1942, Agrafena Smirnov, and on September 4, 1942, Fedosya Solina were sentenced to capital punishment. The information about the beating of Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya by them was kept secret for a long time,”Mikhail Gorinov said in his article. Also, after a while, Semyon Sviridov himself will be convicted, who handed over the partisan to the Germans.
Body identification and version of events
The next morning, the partisan was taken out into the street, where they had already prepared the gallows. A plaque was hung on her chest with the words "Firestarter of houses".
Later, one of the Germans killed in 1943 will have five photographs taken at the execution of Zoe.
It is still not known for certain what the last words of the partisan were. Nevertheless, it should be noted that after the published essay by Pyotr Lidov, the story acquired more and more new details, various versions of the events of those years appeared, including thanks to Soviet propaganda. There are several different versions of the famous partisan's last speech.
According to the version set forth in the essay of the correspondent Peter Lidov, just before her death, the girl uttered the following words: “You will hang me now, but I am not alone, we are two hundred million, you will not outweigh everyone. You will be avenged for me …”The Russian people who stood in the square were crying. Others turned away so as not to see what was about to happen. The executioner pulled the rope, and the loop squeezed Tanino's throat. But she parted the noose with both hands, raised herself on her toes and shouted, straining her strength:
“Farewell, comrades! Fight, don't be afraid! Stalin is with us! Stalin will come!.."
According to the recollections of a resident of the village Vasily Kulik, the girl did not say about Stalin:
“Comrades, victory will be ours. German soldiers, before it's too late, surrender. " The officer shouted angrily: "Rus!" “The Soviet Union is invincible and will not be defeated,” she said all this at the moment when she was photographed. They photographed her from the front, from the side where the bag is, and from the back.
Soon after being hanged, the girl was buried on the outskirts of the village. Later, after the area was liberated from the Germans, the body was also identified during the investigation.
According to the act of inspection and identification of February 4, 1942, “Citizens from. Petrishchevo, according to the photographs presented by the intelligence department of the headquarters of the Western Front, they identified that the Komsomol member Z. A. Kosmodemyanskaya was hanged. The commission excavated the grave where Kosmodemyanskaya Zoya Anatolyevna was buried. Inspection of the corpse confirmed the testimony of the abovementioned comrades, once again confirmed that the hanged man was Comrade ZA Kosmodemyanskaya.
According to the act of exhumation of the corpse of Z. A. Kosmodemyanskaya dated February 12, 1942, among those identified were Zoya's mother and brother, as well as her brother-soldier Klavdia Miloradova.
On February 16, 1942, Kosmodemyanskaya was posthumously awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union, and on May 7, 1942, Zoya was reburied at the Novodevichy cemetery in Moscow.
Over the years, history has never ceased to acquire new interpretations, including various "revelations" appeared in the late 1980s - early 1990s. Historians also began to offer new versions of not only the events of those years, but also the personality of the girl herself. So, according to the hypothesis of one of the scientists, in the village of Petrishchevo, the Nazis seized and tortured not Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya, but another partisan who disappeared during the war, Lilya Azolina.
The hypothesis was based on the memories of Galina Romanovich, a disabled war veteran, and on materials collected by one of the Moskovsky Komsomolets correspondents. The first, allegedly back in 1942, saw a photograph of Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya in Komsomolskaya Pravda and recognized it as Lilya Azolina, with whom she studied at the Geological Prospecting Institute. In addition, Lilya was recognized in the girl, according to Romanovich, and her other classmates.
According to another version, there were no Germans in the village at the time of those events: Zoya was allegedly caught by the villagers when she tried to set fire to the houses. However, later, in the 1990s, this version will be refuted thanks to the residents of Petrishchevo who survived the dramatic events, some of whom survived until the early 1990s and were able to tell in one of the newspapers that the Nazis were still in the village at that time.
After Zoya's death, throughout her life, Lyubov Kosmodemyanskaya, Zoya's mother, will receive many letters.
Throughout the war years, according to Lyubov Timofeevna, messages will come "from all fronts, from all over the country." “And I realized: letting grief break you down means insulting Zoya's memory. You can't give up, you can't fall, you can't die. I have no right to despair. We must live,”wrote Lyubov Kosmodemyanskaya in her story.