95 years ago, Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya was born, who was destined to become a scout, partisan, the first woman - Hero of the Soviet Union. Every Soviet person knew her name after the war.
Zoya died at the very beginning of the Great Patriotic War - in November 1941. At the end of January 1942, the first publication about the girl appeared. It was the article "Tanya" by Pyotr Lidov. “The executioner rested his forged shoe against the box, and the box creaked on the slippery trampled snow. The top box fell down and thumped to the ground. The crowd recoiled … "- the journalist described the execution of an 18-year-old girl.
So the country learned the story of a young intelligence officer, caught by the Germans, whom they tortured, brutally beat, but without finding out any valuable information, was publicly executed. The events took place in the village of Petrishchevo near Moscow, Peter Lidov wrote an essay after her liberation from the Germans and did not yet know the real name of the partisan intelligence officer - Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya.
Already in the course of the war, Zoya became one of its main "official" heroes, the personification of the feat of a Soviet man who resisted the enemy. Therefore, it is not surprising that the wave of revision of the events of World War II, which began in the 90s, touched this story as well. Some publicists and historians questioned the official version of Zoe's feat. TASS, together with experts, figured out how the "canonical" story of Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya corresponds to the truth.
On the outskirts of Moscow
The events in Petrishchevo took place during the battle for Moscow. The situation at the front was difficult: the authorities did not rule out the option of surrendering the capital. The main People's Commissariats, the Central Committee apparatus, the General Staff, the diplomatic corps, at least 500 large industrial enterprises were evacuated from the city. In Moscow, only Stalin, Beria, Molotov and Kosygin remained from the top leadership.
TASS.
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“In October 1941, the Germans attacked the Bryansk, Western and Reserve fronts and broke through the defenses around Moscow in several places. The road to Moscow turned out to be open, - the historian of the special services Andrey Vedyaev tells TASS. - In November, the Headquarters of the Supreme High Command issued order No. 0428 on the destruction of settlements in the frontline zone, which stated that “the German army is poorly adapted for war in winter conditions, does not have warm clothing and … huddles in the frontline zone in populated areas. On vast sections of the front, German troops, having met stubborn resistance from our units, were forced to go over to the defensive and were located in settlements along the roads for 20-30 km on both sides. … The Soviet population of these points is usually evicted and thrown out by the German invaders."
It was decided to drive the German army out into the cold, in the field, thereby reducing its combat effectiveness. To do this, it was ordered to destroy "settlements in the rear of the German troops at a distance of 40-60 km in depth from the front edge and 20-30 km to the right and left of the roads," using "aviation … teams of scouts, skiers and partisan sabotage groups."
It was in these conditions that many Muscovites volunteered for the army. One of them was Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya. And although the girl did not inspire confidence either from an ideological point of view (the priest's granddaughter), or outwardly - she was too fragile and beautiful, and the scout had to be hardy and inconspicuous, she was very persistent.
Zoya was admitted to military unit 9903, one of the most secret in the Red Army. The unit was headed by the legendary scout-saboteur Artur Sprogis. In a few days he needed to teach 18-year-old boys and girls how to sleep in the snow, mine roads, navigate the terrain, says Vedyaev.
“The tragedy was that 90% of the unit's personnel were in irrecoverable losses as a result of operations. The fall of 1941 was an extremely difficult time for the Red Army, military intelligence and counterintelligence, the losses were very large,”notes the historian, member of the Central Council of the Russian Military Historical Society Armen Gasparyan.
Betrayal of the Komsomol
Before the fateful November exit, Zoya had already had the liquidation of an enemy motorcyclist in whose bag the scouts found valuable staff documents, including topographic maps. A group of scouts set off for Petrishchevo with a special mission.
“In this remote village, the Germans deployed a part of the army's radio intelligence. She intercepted our radio communications, arranged radio interference. In those days, the Soviet command was planning a powerful counteroffensive. It became necessary to disable the enemy station, at least for a while. They were guarded reliably. We sent several groups - no one completed the task,”- said Artur Sprogis in his post-war memoirs.
At two o'clock in the morning, three members of the reconnaissance group - Krainov, Klubkov and Kosmodemyanskaya - reached Petrishchevo and set fire to three houses where the Germans lived. Boris Krainov managed to leave, and Klubkov was captured by the Germans and betrayed Kosmodemyanskaya.
This is what the Soviet press did not mention. Arthur Sprogis explained it this way: “Peter Lidov in his essay“Tanya”wrote vaguely“two more went with Zoya, but … soon she was left alone”. Why? And because Klubkov was a Komsomol leader, before the war he headed the Komsomol organization of a large Moscow plant … and we had a Komsomol organizer in our detachment. You couldn't write about his betrayal."
And then the events described in Lidov's note took place: soldiers, with the support of two local residents, seized Zoya, tortured and executed. After the execution, her body hung in a noose for more than a month. The gallows was cut down only on January 1, 1942. And at the end of January, the village was already liberated by Soviet troops.
Myths about Zoe
If the role of the Komsomol member Klubkov was hidden by Soviet propaganda, then it was truthfully written about Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya. At least all attempts to neutralize her feat were unsuccessful. For example, in the 1990s, a version was discussed that the Soviet authorities "appointed" Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya as a heroine. Elena Senyavskaya, an employee of the Institute of Russian History of the Russian Academy of Sciences, then suggested that in Petrishchevo, the Nazis executed Leyli Ozolina, a 19-year-old intelligence officer of the special forces of the Western Front, who disappeared at about the same time.
After the liberation of Petrishchevo, “the act of identification was drawn up by a commission consisting of representatives of the Komsomol, officers of the Red Army, a representative of the RK VKP (b), the village council and villagers. It identifies Zoya's personality,”Andrei Vedyaev refutes this version.
In addition, after doubts arose about the identity of the intelligence officer who was executed by the Germans, the Research Institute of Forensic Expertise of the Russian Ministry of Justice conducted a forensic portrait examination, which also confirmed the identity of Kosmodemyanskaya.
Information was also spread that Zoya was mentally ill. For example, the artist and psychiatrist Andrei Bilzho wrote that “I read the case history of Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya, which was kept in the archives of the Psychiatric Hospital. P. P. Kashchenko … she suffered from schizophrenia. " According to him, Zoya's medical history was destroyed during the perestroika years at the insistence of her relatives in order to hide the diagnosis. And Zoya was silent during the execution, because she was in a state of "catatonic stupor with mutism."
In fact, in November 1940, Zoya suffered an acute meningococcal infection and was really in the hospital, only not named after Kashchenko, but named after Botkin, and after recovering until March 1941 she underwent rehabilitation at the Sokolniki sanatorium.
“People allow themselves cynical and vile comments about genuine folk heroes. This has been happening for almost 30 years. Unfortunately, in our country there is still no mechanism for serious resistance to this, says Armen Gasparyan. "If such statements about the heroes of, say, the First World War were made in Great Britain or Germany, these people would go to prison for humiliation and desecration of national shrines."
The country needed the image of a hero
During the defense of Moscow, at about the same time as the tragedy in Petrishchevo, thousands of Soviet soldiers and intelligence officers were killed at the front and in the rear of the Germans. The fact that it was Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya who became one of the main heroic images of the entire war has its own explanation.
This was facilitated, in particular, by the fact that after "Tanya", Pravda published two more essays by Pyotr Lidov about Zoya: "Who was Tanya", in which her real name was revealed, and "5 photographs", in which five images of Zoya's execution found in the belongings of the murdered German photographer.
“Zoya has rightfully taken an absolute, bright place in the synodikon of heroes of the first year of the Great Patriotic War,” Armen Gasparyan is sure. - The country needed a similar image. An 18-year-old girl who ascends the scaffold, even before she dies, shows everyone that the struggle will still continue and victory will be ours. The very vivid image of Zoe, of course, influenced the morale of the Workers 'and Peasants' Red Army then, in the winter of 1941. Zoe by her example inspired hundreds of thousands of people to resist the enemy. Heroism was a massive phenomenon. The whole army is a hero. It's just that Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya became the first vivid example of the struggle against the exterminatory Nazi policy in the occupied territories. Then there were many similar cases of heroism - tens of thousands of young men and women”.
Yulia Avdeeva
