On November 29, 1941, partisan Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya was hanged by the Nazis. This happened in the village of Petrishchevo, Moscow region. The girl was 18 years old.
Wartime heroine
Every time has its own heroes. The heroine of the Soviet war period was Komsomol member Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya, who volunteered for the front as a schoolgirl. Soon she was sent to a sabotage and reconnaissance group, which acted on instructions from the headquarters Western Front.
Kosmodemyanskaya became the first woman during the Second World War to be awarded the title of Hero Soviet Union(posthumously). At the site of the fatal events there is a monument with the words “Zoe, the immortal heroine of the Soviet people.”
Tragic exit
On November 21, 1941, groups of our volunteers went beyond the front line with the task of committing arson in several populated areas. Repeatedly, the groups came under fire: some of the fighters died, others got lost. As a result, three people remained in the ranks, ready to carry out the order given to the sabotage group. Among them was Zoya.
After the girl was captured by the Germans (according to another version, she was caught by local residents and handed over to the enemies), the Komsomol member was subjected to severe torture. After prolonged torture, Kosmodemyanskaya was hanged on Petrishchevskaya Square.
Last words
Zoya was taken outside, with a wooden sign hanging on her chest with the inscription “House Arsonist.” The Germans rounded up almost all the villagers to execute the girl.
According to eyewitnesses, last words The partisans addressed the executioners were: “You will hang me now, but I am not alone. There are two hundred million of us. You cannot hang everyone. You will be avenged for me!”
The body hung in the square for about a month, frightening local residents and amusing German soldiers: drunken fascists stabbed dead Zoya with bayonets.
Before retreating, the Germans ordered the gallows to be removed. Local residents hastened to bury the partisan, who was suffering even after death, outside the village.
Fighting girlfriend
Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya has become a symbol of heroism, dedication and patriotism. But she was not the only one: at that time hundreds of volunteers were going to the front - young enthusiasts like Zoya. They left and did not return.
Almost at the same time when Kosmodemyanskaya was executed, her friend from the same sabotage group, Vera Voloshina, tragically died. The Nazis beat her half to death with rifle butts and then hanged her near the village of Golovkovo.
"Who was Tanya"
People started talking about the fate of Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya after the publication of Pyotr Lidov’s article “Tanya” in the Pravda newspaper in 1942. According to the owner of the house in which the saboteur was tortured, the girl steadfastly endured the bullying, never asked for mercy, did not give out information and called herself Tanya.
There is a version that it was not Kosmodemyanskaya who was hiding under the pseudonym “Tanya”, but another girl - Lilya Azolina. Journalist Lidov, in the article “Who Was Tanya,” soon reported that the identity of the deceased had been established. The grave was excavated and an identification procedure was carried out, which confirmed that it was Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya who was killed on November 29.
In May 1942, Kosmodemyanskaya’s ashes were transferred to the Novodevichy cemetery.
Name flower
Streets were named in honor of the young partisan who accomplished the feat (in Moscow there are Alexander and Zoya Kosmodemyansky streets), monuments and memorials were erected. There are other, more interesting objects dedicated to the memory of Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya.
For example, there are asteroids No. 1793 “Zoya” and No. 2072 “Kosmodemyanskaya” (according to official version, named after the girl’s mother, Lyubov Timofeevna).
In 1943, a lilac variety was named in honor of the heroine of the Soviet people. "Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya" has light lilac flowers collected in large inflorescences. According to Chinese wisdom, the color lilac is a symbol of positive spiritual strength and individuality. But among the African tribe this color is associated with death...
Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya, who accepted martyrdom in the name of patriotic ideals, will forever remain a model vital energy and courage. Whether it’s a real heroine or a military image - it’s probably not so important anymore. It is important to have something to believe in, someone to remember and something to be proud of.
Zoya Anatolyevna Kosmodemyanskaya (September 13, 1923 - November 29, 1941) - in Soviet times there was a legend that the girl was a partisan. After declassification and study of the archives, it became known that she was a saboteur thrown behind the lines of the German army. Posthumously awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union.
Childhood
Zoya was born in one of the villages of the Tambov province. Her parents were teachers and from childhood instilled in the girl a love of knowledge.
The girl’s grandfather was a priest, which is why, according to one version, after the massacre of him, the family ended up in the depths of Siberia. According to other sources, Zoya’s father’s careless speeches against the collectivization policy led to the fact that they had to hastily flee away from power in order to be able to sit out until passions subsided.
Be that as it may, the Kosmodemyanskys still managed to get out of the snow and get to Moscow. The head of the family died here in 1933, so care for the children - Zoya and her younger brother– one mother had to put it on her shoulders.
Youth
Zoya studied very well. The teachers praised her and said that the girl had a great future ahead of her. She was especially fascinated by literature and history. The girl dreamed of connecting her future life with them.
Social activism has also always been among Zoe's activities. Having become a member of the Lenin Komsomol, she managed to be a group organizer. However, being a modest girl with a keen sense of justice, she did not always find a common language with people who allowed themselves to be two-faced and fickle. That's why Zoya had few friends.
In 1940, Zoya became seriously ill. She was diagnosed with acute meningitis. Fortunately, there were no irreversible consequences, but the girl had to recover her strength for a very long time. For this reason, she spent almost the entire winter in a sanatorium near Moscow.
There she was lucky enough to meet the famous writer Arkady Gaidar. They became friends and talked a lot. For Zoe it was very important event, because she dreamed of connecting her life with the study of literature.
Returning home, Zoya very easily and quickly caught up with her classmates, although during her illness she had to do a lot of school curriculum skip. Having received the certificate, the girl was sure that now all doors were open to her. However, the war crossed out plans and shattered dreams.
Service
In the fall of 1941, Zoya decided to volunteer for the front. The smart and quick-witted girl was sent to a sabotage school, where they trained fighters for reconnaissance and sabotage units. There was no time for long studies, so the groups took a crash course and went to the front. Zoya found herself in one of them. Having successfully completed the test task, students of the sabotage school were recognized as ready for combat.
According to the next order of the command, the sabotage units were ordered to make the life of the German invaders in every possible way. The new goal was to destroy any buildings in which they were located or where they kept horses and equipment. The command believed that this would significantly weaken the enemy, because being in the cold in winter did not contribute to strengthening combat effectiveness.
The group, which included Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya, received one of these tasks. They had to destroy many buildings in various villages. However, initially things did not go as planned. The soldiers almost immediately came under fire and suffered big losses. The survivors were forced to retreat. However, it was decided to bring the matter to an end.
Zoya and several of her comrades managed to set fire to buildings in the village of Petrishchevo. At the same time, the Germans suffered significant losses, because the communications center and several dozen horses were killed in the fire. Retreating, Zoya missed her colleagues. Realizing this, the girl decided that she should return and continue to carry out the order.
However, this turned out to be her big mistake. The German soldiers were already ready for the meeting. In addition, the local residents were not happy about the fact that someone was destroying their homes. It was they who informed the enemies that a suspicious person had reappeared in the village. Soon Zoya was captured.
Heroic death
The Germans took their anger out on the defenseless girl for several hours. She also felt hatred from civilians, many of whom did not fail to inflict several brutal blows on her. However, nothing forced her to beg for mercy or give out any valuable information to her enemies.
At half past ten in the morning the mutilated girl was taken to a hastily constructed gallows. A sign saying “House Arsonist” was hung around her neck. Until her death, the girl never wavered.
Zoya was buried first in the village cemetery, and then reburied at Novodevichy in Moscow.
But Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya could have lived to this day - on September 13 she would have turned 90 years old... But the girl died, suffering torment and death. However, in recent years There were allegations that in the village of Petrishchevo the Germans executed not Zoya at all, but another girl. And in general, it turned out that many details of the story of Z. Kosmodemyanskaya were distorted or completely made up... But where is the truth and where is the lie? The girl who once lived, loved, dreamed was turned into a monument to ideology...
At the opening of the monument to the hero of the Great Patriotic War Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya Minister of Culture V. Medinsky made a speech.
- Life is full of coincidences: in two weeks Zoya would have turned 90 years old. She was an athlete, a strong girl, and would probably have lived to that age. Weak people were not accepted into special sabotage squads. But she didn’t live, she died. This is how the biblical saints died, and if our government had not been strictly atheistic, Zoya, who accepted martyrdom for her homeland and for her comrades, could have been recognized as a saint... These people were made of some special matter, inhuman, like aliens. Sometimes you just don’t understand where they came from...
Mr. Minister of Culture, of course, has little understanding of the criteria by which canonization is carried out, but oh well, what can you take from him...
Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya was the first woman to be awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union during the Great Patriotic War. And they didn’t just appropriate it, but created the biggest legend in the entire history of the war.
Let's start with the official Soviet version, as it was set out in the TSB:
Kosmodemyanskaya Zoya Anatolyevna(Tanya) (September 13, 1923, the village of Osinovye Gai, Tambov Region, - November 29, 1941, the village of Petrishchevo, Vereisky District, Moscow Region), Soviet partisan, heroine of the Great Patriotic War of 1941-45. Born into a family of an employee. Member of the Komsomol since 1938. Studied in the 201st high school Moscow. In October 1941, as a 10th grade student, she volunteered to join a partisan detachment. Near the village of Obukhove, near Naro-Fominsk, with a group of Komsomol partisans, she crossed the front line into territory occupied by the German occupiers. At the end of November 1941, in the village of Petrishchevo, she was captured by the Nazis while performing a combat mission. Despite the monstrous torture and bullying of the executioners, she did not betray her comrades, did not reveal her real name, calling herself Tanya. On November 29, 1941 she was executed. On February 16, 1942, K. was posthumously awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union. Devotion to the socialist Motherland and loyalty to the cause of communism made the name of the graduate of the Lenin Komsomol legendary.
In fact, there is a lot wrong here. Both the biography and the circumstances of death. And she wasn’t even a partisan, as Zoya was officially called.
Partisan detachments were under the department of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, special sabotage (partisan) detachments were subordinate to the NKVD. Z. Kosmodemyanskaya did not belong to either the department of the Central Committee of the Party or the NKVD; she was a fighter in military unit 9903 (Central Intelligence and Sabotage School of the Intelligence Department of the Western Front Headquarters), where she took the oath. The group, of which Zoya was a member, set out on the second (its last) mission on the direct orders of Red Army Major A. Sprogis.
Modern special forces consider Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya a sister
Her name is still shrouded in myths. A retired colonel of the Ministry of Internal Affairs managed to check some of them Vadim Astashin. Based on declassified FSB documents, he wrote the documentary story “The Return of Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya.”
- There is still confusion: who was Kosmodemyanskaya - a partisan or a saboteur?
- She was a saboteur of the secret part of the brigade special purpose. They were trained to be deployed behind enemy lines and taught to use a variety of methods.
- So we can say that she was a special forces soldier?
- At that time - yes. The successor to the unit in which Zoya served was the special purpose unit of the FSB “Vympel”, which masterfully mastered the art of sabotage work. By the way, the special forces veterans, whom I know well, respect Zoya and consider them their fighting sister.
- But she didn’t have to serve for long?
- Just a month. On October 30, 1941, she was enlisted, and on November 29, the Nazis executed her in the village of Petrishchevo, where she set several arson attacks. In total, this fighter managed to visit only two or three times behind enemy lines.
Zoya followed the order, but decided to take the initiative. Returning to the gathering place, in the night she came across a stable and tried to set it on fire. It was then that policeman Smirnov noticed her. He grabbed Zoya (the big man easily dealt with a girl sixty-five meters tall) and brought her into the house to his friends, with whom he tormented her all night. Then Zoya was given to the Germans. They continued the torture: they burned their lips with fire, cut them with a saw, beat them with belts, and led them naked in the cold. But, despite the inhuman tests, she did not say anything about her squad and mission. And she didn't even give her real name. She said her name was Tanya...
(from here)
Version "KP":
Four refuted facts about the life and death of Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya:
On September 13, 1923, Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya was born - the first woman awarded the title Hero of the Soviet Union during the Great Patriotic War. After her martyrdom, the young girl became a symbol of the heroism of the Soviet people. Controversy still rages around Zoya's personality. We have made a selection of four known facts about her that have been refuted.
1. Firstly, the date of birth of Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya, as it turned out, is not September 13, but 8. The falsification of the date of birth of the first girl who received the high title of Hero of the Soviet Union occurred by accident when Stalin showed increased interest in her feat. He believed that modern youth should be educated by Zoya’s example. The leader instructed Mikhail Kalinin to prepare a decree. But the “All-Union Elder” could not assign the heroic title to a certain “Tanya from Moscow,” as the intelligence officer called herself during torture. When, in search of information about Kosmodemyanskaya, they reached the head of the intelligence school, Major Arthur Sprogis, he made a detailed written submission to award Zoya such a high rank.
To receive detailed information about the girl, he called the Tambov region to the village where Zoya was born, but on the opposite end of the line there was a village klutz who, either due to his illiteracy or laziness, was unable to correctly read the document that was issued to the parents at the birth of the child. He accepted the date of registration of the recording act - September 13 - as Zoya's birthday. Now in all reference books, encyclopedias and textbooks, Kosmodemyanskaya’s birthday is distorted. Even in her “Tale of Zoya and Shura,” the mother of Heroes did not correct the date of birth of her daughter, leaving September 13, since the first reader of the work was Stalin. He would have ordered the person responsible for such confusion to be hanged for this inaccuracy.
2. On the night of November 21-22, 1941, Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya crossed the front line as part of a special sabotage and reconnaissance group of 10 people. In the forest in occupied territory, they ran into an enemy patrol. Someone died, someone escaped. Only three - group commander Boris Krainov, Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya and Komsomol organizer of the intelligence school Vasily Klubkov - continued their journey to the village of Petrishchevo. On the night of November 28, they came to a village in which several strategically important objects had to be destroyed. Zoya went to the southern part of the village and used Molotov cocktails to destroy the houses where the Germans lived, the eldest, Boris Krainov, went to the central part, where the headquarters was located, and Vasily Klubkov to the northern part.
The girl successfully completed the combat mission, but was captured after she returned to the village. She wanted to burn down several more houses with Germans, but she was noticed by the owner of the house that she wanted to set on fire. There is a version that Vasily Klubov gave her to the Germans. Zoya, hoping that she would be released, during interrogation did not admit that she was a Red Army soldier, and came to the village to set fire to houses, and Komsomol organizer Klubov, who was also captured that night, argued the opposite.
The version of betrayal is based on materials from the Klubkov case, declassified and published in the Izvestia newspaper in 2000. Klubkov, who returned to his unit, stated that that night he was captured by the Germans, escaped, was captured again, escaped again and managed to reach his people. However, during interrogations, he changed his testimony and stated that he was captured along with Zoya and handed her over, after which he agreed to cooperate with the Germans, was trained at an intelligence school and was sent on an intelligence mission. After this testimony, Klubkov was shot for treason.
However, the researcher M. Gorinov suggests that Klubkov was forced to incriminate himself. Someone, for his own career growth, against the backdrop of the unfolding propaganda campaign around Zoya, simply forced Klubkov to give such testimony. Or he was forced to lie in order to “justify” Zoya’s capture. Unworthy, according to the ideology of that time, of a Soviet fighter.
3. In the post-Soviet period, there were many publications in the press, which reprinted the same information that Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya suffered from schizophrenia. In particular, in issue No. 43, “Arguments and Facts” in 1991 published a number of “eye-opening” reader comments on Zoya’s personality. These comments are responses to the note by writer A. Zhovtis “Clarifications to the canonical version” (“AiF” No. 38, 1991), where the author refuted some of the circumstances of Zoya’s arrest.
From one comment, the author of which identified himself as “Leading physician of the Scientific and Methodological Center for Child Psychiatry A. Melnikov, S. Yuryev and N. Kasmelson,” it follows that “Before the war in 1938-1939. A 14-year-old girl named Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya was repeatedly examined at the Leading Scientific and Methodological Center for Child Psychiatry and was an inpatient in the children's department of the Kashchenko Hospital. She was suspected of schizophrenia. Immediately after the war, two people came to the archives of our hospital and took out Kosmodemyanskaya’s medical history.” This information was subsequently often reprinted by other media. But no one announced new evidence of Zoya’s schizophrenia.
Disputing this version, journalist N. Arabkina in her article “ Way of the Cross Zoe” writes: “...Once an article flashed in the press that Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya suffered from schizophrenia. Veterans of unit 9903 (the unit where Zoya served) retrieved the archives of the Institute of Psychiatry. The names of the doctors who allegedly diagnosed her were nowhere to be found...” However, Zoya’s mother and classmates write in her memoirs about the presence of a certain “nervous illness”. A nervous illness struck her when the girl was in 8th - 9th grade. This happened after a conflict with classmates, to which Zoya reacted very painfully. The girl turned to doctors for help regarding this disease.
4. Inhumane, but true: Zoya’s grave was dug up four times and buried again the same number of times. This was due to the fact that she was buried twice outside the village, and then her remains were transferred first to the center of Petrishchev, which was restored after the war, and then, after cremation, to the government Novodevichye cemetery in Moscow.
However, one case deserves special mention. In the late eighties, there was talk in the country that once several women gathered at Zoya’s grave and they began to argue about whose daughter was buried here. One of the women even bribed local men to dig up the corpse in order to become familiar with the special signs on the body of the deceased. By knowing these signs, the woman wanted to prove to the commission for the exhumation of the girl’s corpse that it was her child that was lying in the grave. Later, the adventurer was exposed and she suffered a well-deserved punishment. The fact that it was not Kosmodemyanskaya who was buried in the grave was thereby refuted.
(from here)
More questions:
Many people know this data, but they cannot answer the questions that some have repeatedly asked:
- How it was proven that the girl captured in Petrishchevo is Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya
- Where did the sabotage group, which included Tanya-Zoya, go?
- How exactly was Tanya-Zoya caught?
- Were the Germans in Petrishchevo at the time of the unsuccessful arson?
- Where Tanya-Zoya was hanged.
November 1941. The Germans are 30 km away. from Moscow. Hastily assembled divisions of the people's militia stood up to defend Moscow and blocked the path of the enemy's bloodless divisions. Blitzkrieg vehicles skidded among hundreds of thousands of corpses of the militia. Everyone who could hold a weapon was sent to the trenches, and those who could not were sent behind the front line to use scorched earth tactics. Everything that could somehow delay the German offensive was burned out. That is why the Komsomol saboteurs had no weapons, no grenades and mines, but only bottles of gasoline. They were mere cannon fodder that quickly burned out in the furnace of war. If the command does not feel sorry for its saboteurs, will it feel sorry for civilians, whose houses should burn down and not fall to the Germans, even theoretically. Civilians ended up in temporarily occupied territory, which means they are accomplices of the occupiers, so there is no point in dealing with them. Civilians, mostly old people, women and children, were not to blame for anything, these are the vicissitudes of war. When the front line passed through the same Petrishchevo, most of the village was destroyed and all the surviving residents huddled in several huts. Everyone remembers the winter of 1941 for its severe cold. In such cold weather, staying without a home is certain death.
Members of the sabotage group were tasked with burning the village. If anyone thinks that the partisan girl lay calmly on the edge of the forest and watched all the movements in the village with binoculars, then she is deeply mistaken. You can't really lie down in such cold weather. The main task is to run to the first house you come across, set it on fire, and whether there is anyone there or not, it depends on your luck or... unlucky. Nobody cares whether there are Germans in the village or not at all. The main thing is to complete the task.
A Komsomol saboteur, who later called herself Tanya, was caught carrying out this task. It was not possible to determine who caught her. But if documents have not yet been found in German archives that these were Wehrmacht soldiers, then it was not them. Civilians One can understand that they were fighting for their lives.
Why is the girl’s real name still not reliably known? The answer is simple in its tragedy. All the sabotage groups sent to this area died and it is not possible to document who this Tanya was. But no one cared about such trifles; the country needed Heroes. When news of the hanged partisan reached the political authorities, they sent to Petrishchevo, after his liberation, correspondents from not even front-line, but central newspapers - Pravda and Komsomolskaya Pravda. The correspondents also really liked everything that happened in Petrishchev. On January 27, 1942, Pyotr Lidov published the material “Tanya” in Pravda. On the same day, S. Lyubimov’s material “We will not forget you, Tanya” was published in Komsomolskaya Pravda. On February 18, 1942, Pyotr Lidov published the material “Who Was Tanya” in Pravda. The country's top leadership approved the material, and she was immediately awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union, her cult was created, the events in Petrishchev were embellished, reinterpreted and distorted, over the years a memorial was created, schools were named in her honor, everyone knew her.
True, sometimes it came to an incident:
“The director and teachers of school No. 201 in Moscow named after Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya reported that in organizing and conducting excursions to the place of execution and the grave of Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya, the existing shortcomings should be eliminated. Many excursions come to the village of Petrishchevo, where Zoya was brutally tortured by the Nazis, most of the participants of whom are children and teenagers. But no one is in charge of these excursions. The excursions are accompanied by Voronina E.P., 72 years old, in whose house the headquarters where Zoya was interrogated and tortured, and citizen P.Ya. Kulik, who had Zoya before. execution. In their explanations about Zoya’s actions on the instructions of the partisan detachment, they note her courage, courage and perseverance. At the same time, they say: “If she had continued to come to us, she would have brought a lot of damage to the village, burned many houses. cattle." In their opinion, Zoya probably shouldn’t have done this. In their explanations of how Zoya was captured and taken prisoner, they say: “We really expected that Zoya would definitely be freed by the partisans, and we were very surprised when it didn't happen." This explanation does not contribute to the correct education of young people."
It was only during perestroika that silent information began to reach that not all was well in the “Kingdom of Denmark.” According to the recollections of the few remaining local residents, Tanya-Zoya was not arrested by the Germans, but captured by peasants who were outraged that she set fire to their houses and outbuildings. The peasants took her to the commandant’s office, located in another village (there were no Germans at all where she was captured). After the liberation, most of the residents of Petrishchev and adjacent villages who had at least some connection to this incident were taken to an unknown direction. The writer was the first to raise the question of the authenticity of the feat Alexander Zhovtis, who published the writer’s story in “Arguments and Facts” Nikolai Ivanov. Residents of Petrishchev allegedly caught Zoya setting fire to a peaceful peasant hut and, having beaten her pretty badly, turned to the Germans for justice. And there were supposedly no Germans stationed in Petrishchevo, but, having heeded the request of the village population, they came from a nearby village and protected the people from the tyranny of the partisans, which unwittingly won their sympathy.
Elena Senyavskaya from the Institute of Russian History believes that Tanya was not Zoya: “I personally know people who still believed that the partisan Tanya, executed by the Germans in the village of Petrishchevo, was not Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya.” There is a fairly convincing version that Tanya called herself a Komsomol member Lilya Azolina. On that day in Petrishchevo she was hanged and Vera Voloshina, which for some reason everyone forgot about.
But where did Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya come from? Gradually everything turned into a tragic farce. V. Leonidov writes: “The Germans left. After some time, a commission came to the village, with 10 women with it. They dug up Tanya. No one identified their daughter in the corpse, they buried her again. Photographs of the abuse of Tanya appeared in the newspapers, the girl was awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union. Soon after this decree, a commission arrived with other women. They pulled Tanya out of the grave again. Each woman in Tanya began to identify her daughter, and then, to the surprise of all the villagers, a fight broke out for the right to recognize the deceased. her daughter. The long and thin woman, who later turned out to be Kosmodemyanskaya, dispersed everyone. So Tanya became Zoya.”
There are several significant moments in this story that add up to a very ambiguous version.
First, for the first time a commission arrived with 10 candidates for the position of mother-heroine. The articles by Lidov and Lyubimov created a loud legend, and there were so many missing partisan girls. The press often published a trophy photograph of an unknown Komsomol member with a noose around her neck. Why didn’t anyone identify their daughter, and the correspondents didn’t take a post-mortem photograph? There is only one answer - the body was in such a condition that they thought it best to bury it. But the question could not hang in the air for long. They awarded him the title of Hero of the Soviet Union, which means pensions, benefits, fame, awards. Therefore, the future mother-heroines went for the second time not to restore historical justice and identify their own child, but to declare themselves as mother-heroines. That's why it turned out to be a circus performance. This is how the country found Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya.
E. Senyavskaya from the Institute of Russian History believes that Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya really existed and was even sent to the German rear, but did not die, although her fate was bitter. When Zoya was liberated by our advancing troops from a German concentration camp and she returned home, her mother did not accept her and kicked her out. In the photograph of the hanged "Tanya" published in newspapers, many women recognized their daughter as their daughter - and there would apparently be a thousand times more of them if Pravda and Komsomolskaya Pravda were read in every home, if potential "mothers of the heroine" had documents there were precisely daughters, and of precisely the appropriate age, and if they had volunteered to fight. The “heroine’s mother” is recognizable - not so much because she kicked her daughter in need of help out of the house, and then gave interviews for decades on the topic of how to raise young people to become Heroes, but because she was able to achieve recognition of her place in the system. Then a campaign began to glorify Zoya’s feat; her mother Lyubov Timofeevna actively participated in the campaign, continuously speaking and being elected to various committees and councils at various levels.
The second is why she was hanged, and not just hanged, but tortured with extreme cruelty. Tanya-Zoya did not cause any damage to the German army and was too young to be trusted with secret information. Was she captured along with Vera Voloshina or was there a third girl, the real Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya, who was sent to a concentration camp? The fact of execution and torture can be explained with only one assumption: the girls pretty much burned houses in Petrishchevo and neighboring villages. We will never know the whole truth; there are too many questions. It's a pity.
(from here)
More analysis:
Don't we have other heroes?
Yesterday in the city of Ruza (Moscow region) a monument to Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya was erected. We all know that she became a victim of the Nazis who tortured her for a long time before her execution. On November 29, 1941, she was hanged in the village of Petrishchevo. During the execution, she did not lose heart, she called on local residents to resist, for which she was posthumously awarded the title “Hero of the Soviet Union”
First, let's look at the big picture of what happened in the late autumn of 1941.
The fact is that on November 17, Order No. 428 of the Headquarters of the Supreme High Command was issued, deprive the German army the opportunity to be located in villages and cities, drive the German invaders out of all populated areas into the cold in the field, smoke them out of all rooms and warm shelters and force them to freeze in the open air,” with the purpose of “destroying and burning to the ground all populated areas in the rear 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.
Military Councils of fronts and individual armies to systematically check how tasks to destroy populated areas in the above radius from the front line are being carried out. Every 3 days, the headquarters will report in a separate report how many and what settlements have been destroyed over the past days.
Central Archive of the Ministry of Defense, f. 208, op. 2524, d. 1, l. 257-258 (signed by Stalin)
In order to destroy towns and villages captured by the Germans, hundreds of Soviet sabotage groups were thrown behind enemy lines. Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya was a member of one of these groups. In the village of Petrishchevo they burned 3 houses. After which part of the group left, and Zoya returned and tried to continue the arson. Then she was captured, tortured and hanged.
And here every normal person should have an attack of schizophrenia. On the one hand, we cannot calmly watch as enemies live in our villages, so burning houses is a reasonable decision. On the other hand, we must not forget that our own citizens still live in these houses. And just imagine that on a frosty winter night your house is set on fire by our own saboteurs. How is this, in general?
Do not miss such an important point as the fact that the head of the family at this time is at the front in the ranks of the Red Army (if he has not died yet). And his wife (or widow) with a bunch of children (at that time there were 5-10 children in families different ages, including very young ones) and elderly parents are trying to burn their own troops alive. And all this in order to make the invaders freeze in the open air.
Several tens of millions of people remained in the occupied territories. To all my grandparents in childhood came under German occupation. According to Stalin's logic, they should all have burned their houses so that the Germans had nowhere to stay warm? The war cost us 27 million dead. To this number should we have added another 30-40 million people who found themselves in the occupied territories and had to freeze in winter due to lack of housing? Any horror movie nervously smokes on the sidelines.
What do we want to erect a monument to, the fight against the Germans or the fight with ourselves? By the way, not a single Nazi in the village of Petrishchevo froze or, in general, died. It also remains unknown how many thousands of people were later executed by the Soviet authorities after the war because they did not allow saboteurs to burn their own houses. I don't know how true this is ( taken from here, but there is a link to the Central Archive of Social Movements of Moscow, f. 8682, op. 1, d. 561, l. 40-40), but two women, whose houses were burned in the village of Petrishchevo, were then sentenced to death by our authorities because they insulted Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya before execution.
I don’t want to discredit the name of Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya. She sincerely wanted to fight the invaders. But ask yourself why our saboteurs, instead of setting up ambushes on roads behind enemy lines, destroying ammunition depots and generally conducting active fighting , were engaged in burning to the ground their own(and not at all German) villages?
I'll tell you why this happened. I will quote the statement of the well-known Marshal Zhukov: It cannot be denied that the Americans sent us so much material, without which we would not have been able to form our reserves and would not have been able to continue the war... We did not have explosives or gunpowder. There was nothing to equip rifle cartridges with... and now they present the matter in such a way that we had all this in abundance.
But the Americans supplied us with all this mainly in 1943 and later, and at the beginning of the war we just lacked all this. Add here another 4.5 million (that’s 450 divisions) of our soldiers who surrendered to the Germans with all their weapons (New and recent history. 1996, No. 2 p. 91). I am not exaggerating, these are the official figures of our Ministry of Defense (the Germans believe that there were about 6 million). That’s why the people’s militia went to defend the Motherland with one rifle between them, and saboteurs burned houses instead of fighting the enemy.
Here it is - the truth. But they don’t like to remember her. Instead, everyone will celebrate a feat that didn’t make much sense. In our country, in general, it has become a tradition to honor people with incomprehensible achievements. Remember, for example, Tukhachevsky or Dybenko, many streets and even a metro station are named after them. But what did they do that was outstanding? They suppressed the Kronstadt uprising and fought with the peasants in the Tambov region. What good did they do? Can anyone tell?
What about Tukhachevsky, we regularly have ghouls who propose to name a street or even a city after the executioner Stalin. Didn’t we really have people in our country who did not cause rejection among a decent part of the people? Of course there is! We have many wonderful writers, poets, scientists, doctors who glorified our country throughout the world (without killing anyone), but we do not perpetuate their memory in street names. In Moscow, for example, there is no street named after Bulgakov (shame!), but there is a street of the regicide Voikov.
What does the installation of a monument to Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya have to do with it, you ask. This event is just a reason to tell you that in any matter you always need to understand it thoroughly. Now everyone will rush to argue whether or not Zoya’s feat can be discussed, although the essence of the problem is completely different. How could the Germans even travel from the western border of the USSR almost 1000 kilometers to Moscow and 1500 to the Volga? And why did the Molotov cocktail become the main weapon of the patriots, and not small arms...
And of course we had heroes, but most of them, unfortunately, will forever remain unknown, because they died, and there was simply no one to tell about their exploits. That's why the most important monument past war became the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier.
APD: hey, hey, well, before you write comments, at least read the post. We all remember how at school we were told that Kosmodemyanskaya is a hero. Therefore, the first reaction to my text among many is sharp rejection. Try to think without emotions.
from here
Is it possible to comprehend Zoya’s story without emotions?
(continuation )
Part 6
POST-MORTH ORDERLES OF ZOYA KOSMODEMYANSKAYA
Before moving on to the narrative, I want to explain to the reader why this essentially final part of the work is named so.
ABOUT tragic fate Zoe became widely known in the USSR from the article “Tanya” by Pyotr Lidov, published in the newspaper Pravda on January 27, 1942.
The author accidentally heard about the execution in Petrishchevo from a witness - an elderly peasant who was shocked by the courage of the unknown girl: “They hanged her, and she spoke a speech. They hanged her, and she kept threatening them...” Lidov went to Petrishchevo, questioned the residents in detail and published an article based on their questions.
Her identity was soon established, as reported by Pravda in Lidov’s February 18 article “Who Was Tanya”; even earlier, on February 16, a decree was signed awarding her the title of Hero of the Soviet Union.
But between January 27 and February 16, 1942, several manipulations were carried out by Soviet authorities both around the personality of Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya and her body. For example, to identify her identity, 2 grave openings and one forensic examination of the body were carried out. Then Zoya’s body was reburied on the territory of the village of Petrishchevo, then the body was dug up again, cremated and the ashes were buried in Moscow at the Novodevichy cemetery. In 1945, her brother’s body was brought from Konigsberg and buried next to Zoya.
In this regard, the reader may have questions like why was all this necessary if the command of military unit 9903 already knew everything reliably from the testimony of V. Kolobov.
But the fact is that after January 27, 1941, about 20 mothers of the daughters of military personnel who disappeared during the battles began to claim. That “partisan Tanya” from the village of Petrishchevo is their own daughter. In connection with this, the authorities were forced to carry out two exhumations of the body of Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya.
In the end, everything was documented. True, no one took into account the tragedy of Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya’s mother during all these manipulations with her body, but this is no longer the subject of our research. The time was such that people were not particularly valued as a value because they were a kind of consumable material!
And now that the reader has delved into the topic, I will again cite only genuine archival files from the declassified archives of the Russian Federation that are related to Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya.
№1
From the memoirs of K.A. Miloradova - about the identification and reburial of Zoya’s body
1983 - 2003
<...>I had the sad fate of accompanying Lyubov Timofeevna on a trip to Petrishchevo in February 1942 to identify the deceased heroine. We have just returned from another mission behind enemy lines. We went skiing, sometimes day and night, and my hands and feet, like most people, were frostbitten.
And suddenly there was a call: “Report to the unit headquarters urgently.” From the headquarters we went to the building where the military examination was located.
There were two of the fighters: Boris Krainov and me. Boris, having read Lidov’s article “Tanya,” confidently said that this girl was Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya, he had no doubts.
And here we are at the military examination building.
I saw another car ahead. And next to him stood a young man who looked remarkably like Zoya.
It was her brother Sasha. We met. He led me to the car in which Lyubov Timofeevna was sitting.
Never forget what her face was like. It bears the stamp of that numbness that many who have experienced a serious misfortune know. Mom was tall and thin, with dark brown hair, curly almost like Zoya’s, wearing a gray down shawl.
A few days before, Lyubov Timofeevna was in Petrishchevo for the first exhumation of the deceased heroine. Our unit commander A.K.
Sprogis spoke in Moscow with several mothers who believed that “Tanya” was their daughter.
After talking with him, there were two contenders left, one of which was L.T. Kosmodemyanskaya.
Sprogis, two mothers, as well as Vera Sergeevna Novoselova and Viktor Belokun, a teacher and student of school 201, went to Petrishchevo, who were asked to help identify the dead woman.
A.K. Sprogis firmly said that this was Kosmodemyanskaya.
But the second mother began to cry that this was her Tanya.
But Lyubov Timofeevna both recognized her daughter and did not recognize her.
When the corpse was leaned upright against a tree, she confidently said that Zoya was much shorter.
The body of the deceased was greatly elongated, as it hung on the gallows for more than a month. Lyubov Timofeevna was also embarrassed by the fact that her daughter found herself in the thick of the war, and when we met, she asked me if we really fought in the Vereisky region.
A whole commission went to the second exhumation: from our unit - Major A.K. Sprogis, B. Krainov and I; Alexander Shelepin - from the Komsomol MK; Mikhail Kleimenov - from the headquarters of the Western Front; Lyubov Timofeevna and Shura Kosmodemyansky and a doctor - a specialist in military expertise.
Shura remembered the photograph in Pravda well and was almost sure that the deceased was his sister. So he told Boris and me: “I’ll stand in the middle and take your hands. I will squeeze your palms and, no matter what we see, don’t cry. Mom may not be able to stand it."
And here is the road to Petrishchevo. We drove slowly and for a very long time. Finally we turned off the Minsk highway. At the entrance to Petrishchevo there was still a sign in German.
The Nazis left less than a month ago. After they left, local residents removed the corpse from the gallows and buried it in the hole created by the crater. We got out of the trucks.
It was very cold and stormy. In some hut we were all fed lunch and taken to the grave. Zoya was lying in an excavated grave, on a torn off door. Opposite there was a school building, that was the school door. Boris, Shura and I stood up as agreed. And mommy rushed to the grave. The body of the deceased was horribly mutilated.
One breast is cut off, arms are like whips, and fingers are without nails, instead of nails there are pink dimples. Mommy knelt down in front of her, froze, and stroked her whole body... Shura squeezed our palms, my tears flowed, but silently. I looked at him and his tears were flowing. And Boris too.
The doctor came up to me: “What signs do you remember?”
And I remain silent - my throat tightens.
He shook me: “Are you a fighter or not?”
I gathered my courage. I answer:
“On her left leg there is a scar across the knee; she was the one who, as a child in Osinovye Gai, escaped from a bull and climbed through barbed wire" (Zoya told me about the scar when they took us to the bathhouse in Kuntsevo.) They pulled down the stocking slightly on the numb leg - this very scar.
And mom was still on her knees. The wind blew, the snowflakes were blown away, and it was as if she remained in that Petrishchevsky snow forever. Mommy turned blonde - she turned gray before our eyes.
And then she fell down, losing consciousness, they ran up to her and carried her to the car... On the way back, my mother was sitting in the cab of the truck and Shura was with her, and everyone else was in the back. And Lyubov Timofeevna kept asking her son: “Why is it so quiet?”
All sounds on earth froze for her - from the shock she experienced, her mother almost lost her hearing.
Soon, Peter Lidov’s article “Who Was Tanya” and a decree on the posthumous awarding of the title of Hero of the Soviet Union to Zoya were published.
Following this, mother and Shura moved - they were given a room at the beginning of Gorky Street (opposite the Central Telegraph).
At the end of February, I visited Lyubov Timofeevna for the first time.
It was big bright room in two windows.
Zoya's bed stood neatly made. A fluffed pillow with a white beret on it, which Zoya loved very much and put there like that before leaving for the front. Mom did not allow me to approach the bed.
Above her is Zoya's portrait in full height, possibly my brother's work. It was hard to be in this room, next to the inconsolable, grief-stricken mother.
And in the spring, on May 5, we went to Petrishchevo again - it was necessary to bury Zoya properly. We understood that the ground had already melted greatly, and it would be difficult to rite the corpse.
Komsomol Central Committee instructor Lida Sergeeva took with her several meters of blue crepe de Chine. When we swaddled Zoya in this airy fabric, the women of Petrishchev howled and screamed... Then cremation. It was hard, terrible.
When Zoya was buried at the Novodevichy cemetery (3), the orchestra played “You fell a victim in the fatal struggle...” Zoya loved this song very much from the time she heard it in a Siberian village, when they were burying those killed by the fists of communists. I stood, holding her portrait and saw nothing because of the tears that blurred my eyes. And that day I swore to myself that if I didn’t die, I would serve your memory for the rest of my life, Zoya... Boris Krainov was also at the funeral. Shura was not there, he had already left for the Ulyanovsk Tank School.<...>
Monument to mother: memories of Lyubov Timofeevna
Kosmodemyanskaya. Tambov. 2010. pp. 32 - 36.
Notes:
(1) There was another irrefutable proof. Talking with Sprogis in Moscow, L.T. Kosmodemyanskaya said that Zoya had only one sign: a large black mole near her navel (and not a knotted navel, as for some reason they wrote later. Zoya was born not in a field, but in the hut of her grandmother Lydia Fedorovna Kosmodemyanskaya) (note. E.G. Ivanova).
№2
The act of examining and identifying the body of Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya
February 4, 1942
We, the undersigned members of the commission consisting of: Comrade Vladimirov - from the Central Committee of the Komsomol, Comrade Shelepin - from the Komsomol MK, senior lieutenant Comrade Kleimenov - from the Red Army, Comrade Muravyov - from the Vereisky Republic Committee of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks), Comrade Berezina - from the Gribtsovsky village council, vol. Sedova, Voronina, Kulik - from residents of the village. Petrishchevo, on February 4, 1942, drew up this act for the inspection and identification of an unknown citizen who was hanged in the village. Petrishchevo, Gribtsovsky village council, Vereisky district, Moscow region.
We have established the following:
1. When interviewing eyewitnesses, citizens of the village. Petrishchevo - Sedova V.N., Sedova M.I., Voronina A.P., Kulik P.Ya., Kulik V.A. - it was established that in the first days of December 1941 in the houses of citizens of the village. Petrishchevo - Sedova M.I., Voronina A.P., Kulik V.A. an unknown Soviet girl was searched, interrogated and brutally tortured by German soldiers and officers.
After a search, interrogation and brutal abuse of her, the next day she was hanged in the center of the village. Petrishchevo at the crossroads.
Citizens of the village Petrishchevo - Sedova V.N., Sedova M.I., Voronina A.P., Kulik P.Ya., Kulik V.A., as well as language and literature teacher Comrade Novoselova V.S. and student Belokun V.I. Based on the photographs presented by the Intelligence Department of the Western Front headquarters, it was identified that the hanged Komsomol member Zoya Anatolyevna Kosmodemyanskaya.
2. The commission excavated the grave where Zoya Anatolyevna Kosmodemyanskaya was buried. An examination of the corpse confirmed the testimony of the above-mentioned comrades and once again confirmed that the hanged woman was Comrade Z.A. Kosmodemyanskaya.
3. The commission, based on the testimony of eyewitnesses of the search, interrogation and execution, established that Komsomol member Z.A. Kosmodemyanskaya. behaved like a true patriot of her socialist homeland and died the death of a hero. Addressing the local population, gathered by the German command for execution, she uttered the words of a call for a merciless fight against the German occupiers:
“Citizens! Don't stand there, don't look. We must help the Red Army fight, and for my death our comrades will take revenge on the German fascists. The Soviet Union is invincible and will not be defeated. Comrades! Victory will be ours!”
"German soldiers! Before it's too late, surrender. No matter how much you hang, you can’t hang everyone, there are 170 million of us!”
Protocol of interviewing eyewitnesses - residents of the village. Petrishchevo, documents - passport and Komsomol card of Comrade Kosmodemyanskaya Zoya are attached.
Comrades were involved in the work of the commission. Novoselova V.S. - teacher of language and literature at school No. 201<г. Москва>and a 10th grade student of this school, Comrade V.I. Belokun, who have known Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya for several years.
This is what this act was about.
Signatures:
1. Vladimirov
2. Shelepin
3. Kleimenov
4. Muravyov 5. Berezin
6. Sedova
7. Voronina
8. Kulik
WITH<ело>Petrishchevo, Gribtsovsky s/s, Vereisky district, Moscow region, February 4, 1942
The copy from the original is correct(1) A. Shelepin
CAOPIM. F. 3. Op. 52. D. 145. L. 13-15.
Certified typewritten copy with Shelepin's autograph;
right there. F. 8682. 0p.1. D. 561. L. 31 - 33.
Uncertified typewritten copy with certified typewritten copy
copies. RGALI. F.1865. Op. 1. D. 110. L. 13 - 15.
Uncertified typewritten copy. Publ.: Zoya's feat (documents)
// Science and life. 1966. No. 12. P. 10; Moscow is frontline.
1941 - 1942: archival documents and materials. M., 2001. S. 566 -567.
Printed according to the text of a certified typewritten copy of CAOPIM.
№3
The act of exhumation of the corpse of Z.A. Kosmodemyanskaya
February 12, 1942
A commission consisting of Lieutenant Colonel Sprogis, Senior Lieutenant Kleimenov from the Red Army, Shelepin - from the Moscow City Komsomol Committee, Nikiforov - SME (1) MosOME and in the presence of Miloradova went to the village of Petrishchevo, Vereisky district, Moscow region, where the corpse of an unknown female partisan was taken out of the grave, hanged by the Germans in this village.
This corpse was presented for identification to citizen L.T. Kosmodemyanskaya. and her son Kosmodemyansky A.A. and Miloradova K.A., who affirmatively stated that the corpse of an unknown female partisan is her daughter and brother [sic] of her son according to the following signs:
1. Height.
2. Hair cutting and hairstyle.
3. Facial features.
4. Navel condition.
5. Jacket.
6. Socks and stockings.
The corpse is in a frozen state, well preserved for identification.
Members of the commission:
1. Sprogis
2. Shelepin
3. Kleimenov
4. Nikiforov
Those who identified the corpse:
1. Kosmodemyanskaya
2. Kosmodemyansky
3. Miloradova
CAOPIM. F. 8682. Op. 1. D. 561. L. 36-36 vol.
Autograph in blue ink. Autographs of Shelepin, Kleimenov,
Nikiforov, Kosmodemyanskaya, Kosmodemyansky, Miloradova
in blue ink and Sprogis' autograph in blue pencil.
Publ.: Front-line Moscow. 1941 - 1942:
archival documents and materials. M., 2001. P. 574.
Notes:
(1) SME - Forensic medical examination.
№4
Act
We, the undersigned members of the commission consisting of: Comrade Vladimirov - from the Central Committee of the Komsomol, Comrade Shelepin - from the Komsomol MK, senior lieutenant Comrade Kleimenov - from the Red Army, Comrade Muravyov - from the Vereisky Republic Committee of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks), Comrade Berezina - from the Gribtsovsky village council, vol. Sedova, Voronina, Kulik - from the residents of the village of Petrishchevo - drew up this act on February 4, 1942 for the inspection and identification of an unknown citizen hanged in the village of Petrishchevo, Gribtsovsky village council, Vereisky district, Moscow region.
We have established the following:
1. When interviewing eyewitnesses - citizens of the village of Petrishchevo - V.N. Sedova, M.I. Sedova, A.P. Voronina, P.Ya. Kulik, V.A. Kulik. It was established that in the first days of December 1941, in the houses of citizens of the village of Petrishchevo, Sedova M.I., Voronina A.P., Kulik V.A. a search, interrogation and brutal mockery of an unknown Soviet girl were carried out by German soldiers and officers.
After a search, interrogation and brutal abuse of her, the next day she was hanged in the center of the village of Petrishcheva at a crossroads.
Citizens of the village of Petrishchevo - Sedova V.N., Sedova M.I., Voronina A.P., Kulik P.Ya., Kulik V.A., as well as language and literature teacher comrade. Novoselova V.S. and student Belokun V.I. Based on the photographs presented by the intelligence department of the Western Front headquarters, it was identified that the hanged Komsomol member Zoya Anatolyevna Kosmodemyanskaya.
2. The commission excavated the grave where Zoya Anatolyevna Kosmodemyanskaya was buried. An examination of the corpse confirmed the testimony of the above-mentioned comrades and once again confirmed that the hanged person was comrade. Kosmodemyanskaya Z.A.
3. The commission, based on the testimony of eyewitnesses of the search, interrogation and execution, established that Komsomol member Z.A. Kosmodemyanskaya. behaved like a true patriot of the socialist Motherland and died the death of a hero.
Addressing the local population, gathered by the German command for execution, she uttered the words of a call for a merciless fight against the German occupiers:
“Citizens! Don't stand there, don't look. We must help the Red Army fight, and for my death our comrades will take revenge on the German fascists. The Soviet Union is invincible and will not be defeated.
Comrades! Victory will be ours!”
Addressing the German soldiers, Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya said:
"German soldiers! Before it's too late, surrender. No matter how much you hang us, you can’t hang us all, there are 170 million of us.”
Protocol of interviewing eyewitnesses - residents of the village of Petrishchevo, documents - passport and Komsomol card of comrade. Kosmodemyanskaya Zoya are attached.
Comrade V.S. Novoselova was involved in the work of the commission. - teacher of language and literature at school No. 201, and a 10th grade student of this school, Comrade V.I. Belokun, who knew Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya for several years.
This is what the present act was about.
Signatures: 1. Vladimirov.
2. Shelepin.
3. Kleimenov.
4. Muravyov.
5. Berezin.
6. Sedova.
7. Voronina.
8. Kulik.
Petrishchevo village, Gribtsovsky s/s, Vereisky district, Moscow region, February 4, 1942.
In MK and MGK VKP (b)
Comrade Shcherbakova,
Comrade Popov,
Comrade Chernousov.
Memorandum
In January 1942, the Pravda newspaper No. 27 (8798) (dated January 27) published an article by Comrade. Lidova "Tanya". The Komsomol Moscow City Committee created a commission to investigate the facts set out in this article, which established the following.
In early December 1941, in the village of Petrishchevo, Gribtsovsky s/s, Vereisky district, Moscow region, an unknown Soviet citizen was brutally tortured and hanged by the German occupiers.
A thorough check has established that she is a Komsomol member, a student of the 10th grade of the 201st school in the Timiryazevsky district of Moscow - Z.A. Kosmodemyanskaya, who expressed a desire to voluntarily join the army and was mobilized by the Komsomol Moscow City Committee to the intelligence department of the Western Front. The intelligence department sent her to work behind enemy lines.
On November 1, the Komsomol Moscow City Committee sent a group of Komsomol members, including Komsomol member Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya, to the disposal of the intelligence department of the Western Front.
After the arson she managed to escape.
Two days later, at seven o’clock in the evening, she came to the same village again.
While trying to set fire to a house on the edge of the village, she was captured by German patrols, who brought her to the house of a resident of this village, citizen V.N. Sedova.
From the stories of local residents: gr. Sedova V.N., Sedova M.I., Voronina A.P., Kulik P.Ya., Kulik V.A. The commission established the following circumstances of the search, interrogation and execution.
To the house of gr. Sedova M.I. Three German patrols brought her with her hands tied at about 7 pm.
She was wearing a jacket, cold boots, a balaclava, and sheepskin mittens. She had a backpack hanging over her shoulders, and a bag with flammable liquid. One of the Germans pressed her to the stove, two others carried out a search. During the search, another 15-20 Germans were present who lived in this house.
They laughed at her all the time and shouted: “Partisan, partisan!” First, they removed her backpack, then her bag with flammable liquid. Under her jacket they found a revolver hanging over her shoulder. The Germans undressed her: they took off her jacket, balaclava, jacket, and boots. She was left in quilted trousers, socks and a white undershirt.
An interpreter was not present during the search. The Germans didn’t ask her any questions, they just talked among themselves, laughed and hit her on the cheeks several times.
She behaved courageously and did not utter a single word. The search in this house lasted no more than 20 minutes.
After the search, the eldest of them commanded: “Rus! March!"
She calmly turned around and walked out with her hands tied, accompanied by German soldiers, from this house into the street.
The Germans brought her to the house of gr. Voronina A.P., where the German headquarters of the signal troops was located.
Entering the house, the Germans who brought her shouted:
"Uterus! Rus! She was the one who burned the houses!” Here she was searched a second time. Bottles with flammable liquid showed gr. Voronina, and said: “Here, mother, what they use to set houses on fire,” and after that they hung a bag of bottles around this girl’s neck.
Gr. The Germans ordered Voronina to climb onto the stove, and they themselves began to undress this girl.
They took off her trousers, and she was left in only her underwear, after which the officer began asking her in Russian: “Where are you from?”
She answered: “From Saratov.” “Where were you going?” Answer: “To Kaluga.” “How long did it take you to cross the front line?”
She replied: “Three days.” "Who were you with?" Answer: “There were two of us, my friend was detained by the Germans in Kubinka.”
How many houses have you burned?” Answer: “Three.”
“What else have you done?” She replied: “I didn’t do anything else and I won’t say anything more.”
This answer infuriated the officer, and he ordered four soldiers to flog her. They flogged her with belts, intermittently, they hit her with belts more than 200 times.
They spanked her and asked her: “Will you tell or not tell?”
But she was silent all the time, did not utter a single word. Only at the end of the spanking did she sigh from severe pain and say:
“Stop flogging. I won’t tell you anything more.”
During the flogging, the officer went into another room several times and held his head in his hands, since he himself could not look at this picture.
Then she was taken to another room wearing only her undershirt. She looked exhausted, her legs and pelvis were blue from the blows.
She behaved courageously, proudly, and answered their questions sharply.
During the flogging, several hundred Germans came to the house, watched and laughed.
After the flogging at 10 pm from the house of gr. Voronina, barefoot, with her hands tied, wearing only her undershirt, was led through the snow into the house of the gr. Kulik V.A., where 25 Germans lived.
Entering the house, the Germans shouted: “Matka! They caught a partisan."
She was put on a bench. She moaned in pain. Her lips were black, caked from the heat, her face was swollen, her forehead was broken. She asked for a drink. Instead of water, one of the Germans brought a burning kerosene lamp without glass under her chin and burned her chin.
After sitting for half an hour, the Germans dragged her in her undershirt and barefoot into the cold. They took her barefoot and undressed in the cold for about 20 minutes. Then they brought her back to the house, after 10-15 minutes they took her out into the cold again, then they brought her back into the house.
This went on from ten o'clock in the evening until two o'clock in the morning. All this was done by a 19-year-old German assigned to her.
At two o'clock in the morning this German was replaced by another, who was assigned to her by an officer.
This German put her on the bench to sleep. After lying down for a while, she asked him in German to untie her hands.
He untied her hands. She fell asleep and slept for three hours. At 7 o’clock in the morning, the owner of the house, Kulik P.Ya, approached her and managed to talk to her a little.
That's what she said to her.
The hostess asked: “Where are you from?” She answered: “Moscow.” "What is your name?" She remained silent. "Where are your parents?"
She remained silent. “Why did they send you?” She replied: “I was tasked with burning the village.” “Who was with you?”
She said: “There was no one with me, I was alone.” The hostess asked: “Who burned the houses last night?”
She replied: “I burned these houses.” Then she asked the landlady: “How many houses have I burned?”
The owner answered that she had burned three houses and twenty horses. She also asked the hostess if there were victims. Then she advised the hostess to leave the village from the Germans.
She asked the hostess to give her something to put on.
But the hostess didn’t give her anything; she herself had nothing.
In conclusion, she said: “Victory is still ours. Let them shoot me, let these monsters mock me, but still they won’t shoot us all.”
Several Germans were present during the conversation, but they did not speak Russian.
One German asked her: “Where is Stalin?”
She replied: “Stalin is on duty.”
Then she turned away and told the German: “I won’t talk to you anymore!”
After this, the owner was kicked out of the house. She was transferred to a bunk, she lay down, and hundreds of Germans came to look at her. This all happened at 8 o'clock in the morning.
At 9 o'clock, 3 officers came with translators and began to interrogate her.
During the interrogation, except for the Germans, there was no one in this room, since they kicked out the mistress and owner of the house, but the owner of the house stayed in another room and heard the interrogation.
As soon as the officers entered, she told them: “Your Germans left me completely barefoot and naked.”
One of the officers ordered her to bring trousers.
She was given wet cotton trousers brought from the street to wear.
After that they began to interrogate her.
The translator asked several times: “Where are you from, what is your name?”
But she didn’t say a single word.
They didn't ask her any more questions. She could not put on the trousers brought to her herself, since her feet were frostbitten and she could not stand on her feet.
She put on her trousers while sitting, with the help of one officer, while other officers shouted at her: “Get dressed quickly!” When she asked them for boots, they laughed and did not give them to her.
After that, at 10:30 a.m., she was taken outside to the gallows that had been prepared in advance.
Two soldiers led her by the arms, since she herself could not walk from the beating, pain and frostbitten legs.
Around her walked a large crowd of Germans on foot and on horseback, heading towards the gallows.
Many Germans and civilians had already gathered at the gallows. As soon as they took her out of the house, they hung a plywood sign around her neck with the inscription: “House Arsonist.” It was written in Russian and German: in Russian - in large letters, in German - in small letters.
From the house to the gallows she walked smoothly, proudly, with her head raised. When they brought her to the gallows, the officer ordered to expand the circle of spectators. After that they started taking pictures of her. They photographed it from three sides: from the front, from the side, on which a bag with a flammable liquid hung, and from the back (it was turned each time).
At the time of filming, she uttered the following phrases:
“Citizens! Don't stand there, don't look. We must help the Red Army fight. This death of mine is my achievement.”
For these words, one officer swung his fist at her and wanted to hit her, others screamed.
But she continued to say:
“Comrades! Victory will be ours."
Addressing the German soldiers, she said:
"German soldiers! Before it’s too late, surrender!”
The officer yelled angrily: “Rus!..”
But she continued to say:
“The Soviet Union is invincible and will not be defeated!”
Then they placed a wooden box under the rope. She climbed onto the box herself without any command. The German began to put a noose around her neck. She still managed to say:
“No matter how much you hang us, you can’t hang us all!” There are 170 million of us. Our comrades will avenge you for me!”
She said this with a noose around her neck. She grabbed the noose with her hand and wanted to say something else, but the soldier hit her hands and knocked the box out from under her feet.
The people present here and the soldiers dispersed."
Here I am forced to interrupt the quotation of this important document and remind the reader that not all residents of the village of Petrishchevo treated Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya well.
Two of them took exactly the opposite position, which was classified by the NKVD of the USSR as treason and both women were shot by a military tribunal!
Secondly, these statements raise great doubts:
On November 28-29, it was sent across the front line in the Vereisky direction. In the area of the village. In Obukhovo she was thrown out of the car and went behind enemy lines.
In early December, she came to the village of Petrishchevo at night and set fire to three houses (the houses of citizens Karelova, Solntsev, Smirnov) in which the Germans lived.
Along with these houses, the following were burned: 20 horses, one German, many rifles, machine guns and a lot of telephone cable.
After the arson she managed to escape."
In the course of our historical investigation, we reliably established that she was sent to the rear of the Germans not alone, but in a group of 20 people (two DRGs).
While crossing the front line, they were all ambushed and in the end there were only 6 of them left! Of these, Krainov, Kolobov and Kosmodemyanskaya went to the village of Petrishchevo!!!
The attack on the village of Petrishchevo was carried out once and Krainov and Kosmodemyanskaya managed to set fire to three huts, but there were no German soldiers and officers in them!
Therefore, it is hardly appropriate to talk about any damage from fires for the command of the 332nd Infantry Regiment.
Indeed, Z. Kosmodemyanskaya for the second time on the same day, using the last bottle of KS, tried to set fire to a barn with hay near Sitnikov’s house.
Where did the Germans really live? As a result, she was discovered by the owner of the house, Sitnikov, and was soon detained by German guards!!!
Continued citing documents No. 5
"IN within three For days, German sentries stood near the gallows. It hung like that for a month and a half. They hung it in the center of the village, at a crossroads. Three days before the retreat, the German command ordered her to be removed from the gallows and buried in the ground.
The headman of the village of Petrishchevo carried out this order, and it was buried 50 meters from the school.
When checking all the circumstances of her death, the grave was opened and the corpse was examined in order to establish her belonging to the front group.
The testimony of citizens Sedova V.N., Sedova M.I., Voronina A.P., Kulik V.A., Kulik P.Ya., examination of the corpse and comparison with photographs confirmed that she was Kosmodemyanskaya Z.A., indeed that Komsomol member who was mobilized by the Komsomol Moscow City Committee and placed at the disposal of the intelligence department of the Western Front.
From all of the above, we can conclude that Komsomol member Zoya Anatolyevna Kosmodemyanskaya led as a true patriot of the socialist Motherland and died the death of a hero, as befits the daughter of the Lenin Komsomol.
5/II. 1942 Secretary of the MK and MGK Komsomol PEGOV.
The style, spelling and punctuation of the document have been preserved. - M.T.
Material from the monthly popular science magazine “Science and Life”, No. 12, December 1966 (pp. 10-13).
№7
Recorded conversation with mother, brother Shura and school friends
Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya in the Timiryazevsky Republic Committee of the Komsomol
February 10, 1942
Comrade Kosmodemyanskaya. Zoya's death was not unexpected for me, since Zoya went to the front. So she said: “Either I die a hero, or I come as a hero.” I cried, and she told me: “What are you, be proud that you have a hero daughter.”
Zoya was born in 1923. She spoke like an adult, and I consulted with her. Zoya said that you need to act decisively: once you have outlined a plan, then carry it out. That's what she told me. I would need to teach her, but it turned out that she taught me by saying this.
Zoya was a pioneer from the age of 9; she studied with her brother Shura in the same class until the 10th grade. I myself used to work as a teacher at school number 9 in the Oktyabrsky district, now school number 216.
Zoya loved literature very much and was going to be a writer. She wrote an essay: “I want to learn to recognize people.” She kept a diary since 1936, and she burned the last diary.
Zoya wanted to take him to the labor front, but I said that this could not be done, then she threw her last diary into the oven, but I wanted to know what she wrote there. Representatives of the Komsomolskaya Pravda newspaper took from us her diary, which had been kept since 1936.
How Zoya was dressed when she went to the front. She was wearing a beige wool sweatshirt, this sweatshirt is mine, with a beige turn-down collar. The sweatshirt had three gray-beige buttons. One elbow is sewn with threads of the same color. The coat is long, striped, already old, with fur at the bottom, and a large collar.
In addition, she had a men's overalls-shirt gray with pockets on the sides and a leather belt made of leaves. There was nothing fur on her. There was a wool scarf on his head pistachio color, she took with her a beret that she did not wear.
On her hands were green home-knitted mittens. She took with her two pairs of small mittens, the second pair in beige factory knit. On her feet were brown shoes with Viennese heels, leg warmers and beige stockings. She had dark blue panties and two or three pairs of lighter ones. There was also a shirt with wide lace.
Zoya began living in Moscow in 1931. This year she began studying in first grade. Her homeland is the village of Osinovye Gai, Tambov region.
We live in our ex's house student dormitory Timiryazev Agricultural Academy.
Zoya joined the Komsomol at school 201. This was a real event for her. She was preparing to join the Komsomol and was proud of it. It was necessary to know the Charter, and when she was accepted, she came radiant. When she received the ticket, it was also a big event for her. She was very worried. At home, Zoya worked seriously and persistently. Mathematics was difficult for her, but literature was easy. Zoya worked on her essays for a long time, for example, Shura prepared an essay in an hour, and Zoya sat the whole night, but Shura also had good essays. Zoya's cool essays were left at our house. There are no personal notes of hers at all.
She loved Mayakovsky very much and said that only those who do not understand do not like him, and that books about Mayakovsky should be read by everyone. She beautifully recited and read his works. Zoya also loved Gorky.
(From school: Zoya read Mayakovsky’s poem “Good!” at a school party)
Zoya was very interested in literature and also loved music. She always regretted that we didn't have a piano. When Zoya was in the sanatorium, she took advantage of several music lessons there. The teacher told her that she could be an excellent musician.
She also loved the theater very much and said that she would not have breakfast, but would go to the theater. Zoya said: “If, mom, they give you a ticket, then buy a second one for me.” She was very brave and was not afraid of anything in life. During the raids of German planes on Moscow, even the men of our house hid in a shelter or somewhere behind the door, and she and Shura went to the attic to watch, or Zoya walked around the house, not talking to anyone, as people sometimes looked at this with ridicule and they thought that she was boasting of her courage, not being afraid of fragments. But this was not a showy side.
Our house is made of wood and sometimes shook from the shooting. When I started to worry, she told me: “Mom, be ashamed, aren’t you ashamed, why are you shaking,” and she herself was so calm. Our room is on the second floor of the house, and I was worried when Zoe was downstairs.
She didn't have any special close friends. There was one girl, Serikova, whom she dated. In my opinion, Shura was sitting with her in class.
(From school: This girl is now in Omsk with her parents and works there.)
Ira Pozdnyak also went to Zoya, but during the war they developed differences in views. When they made bomb shelters and trenches, they had different opinions and quarreled, but Ira is an empty-headed girl.
When the school stopped working, Zoya and Shura entered the Borets plant. There Zoya met a good Stakhanovite and said that he was a serious person. But Zoya was dissatisfied with the work environment she found herself in at the factory, and she was worried about it all. Zoya’s goal was to study, and she entered the plant to do something, since the school was not working, and as soon as the school started working, she immediately left the plant. They didn't let her go.
I used to work at this plant as a teacher. And they told me that my daughter had just started work and was leaving in three days, but she was dissatisfied with the order at the plant.
I have already said that at the plant she really liked one Stakhanovite, and during three days of work she somehow got along with her. I don’t know the name of this Stakhanovka, she spoke on the radio. Zoya earned 40 rubles at the factory. in three to four days.
At the sanatorium for nervous diseases in Sokolniki, Zoya was also friends with one sister, who, in my opinion, also spoke on the radio or her letter was published from the front.
This sister was a serious girl. Comrade Gaidar was also in this sanatorium, who taught her moral lessons, and she did the same to him. They went ice skating together. He was with her all the time, and I would like to know from him what they talked about.
Zoya stayed in the sanatorium for 40 days, and no matter how often I came to see her, I always saw them together in the park. Zoya had been suffering from a nervous disease since 1939, when she moved from 8th to 9th grade, and when moving from 9th to 10th grade in 1940 she suffered from acute meningitis. At first, doctors said that there was no hope for recovery, but she went to Professor Margulis, who saved her. If she had ended up with someone else, she would not have survived. The doctors were even surprised when she was discharged from the hospital.
She endured such painful injections into the spinal cord! Zoya was in memory and said that the injections were very painful. She was resilient and patient.
When my friends looked at Tanya’s photo, they decided that it was Zoya, not Tanya, but they didn’t tell me.
(Looks at the photo shown to her.) Yes, this is Zoya, she looks similar, her hair, nose and lips.
(Son: Everything is very similar, the hair is very similar.)
Yes, this is Zoya. It was removed earlier for the passport, and later for the Komsomol card, and here it is more similar.
(Son: It’s more typical on the passport.)
Her last photograph is on her Komsomol card.
Firewood has just been brought to us, and we are heating it in the morning, so the temperature has now risen a little. We have a stove that opens into two adjacent rooms, and when you heat it up, there is no heat, your arms and legs cannot move from the cold. I asked to at least temporarily transfer us somewhere warmer, but nothing has been done so far.
I’m not working right now, but they promised to give me a job. It is impossible not to work, as there will be nothing to live on. If today, for example, I sell Zoya’s coat, how will I live?
We live in this area all the time, at first we lived in another house. They wanted to evict us after my husband's death, but the prosecutor did not allow it. My husband worked as an accountant at the Timiryazev Agricultural Academy.
I also worked at a school at the academy, teaching student children. My husband died unexpectedly.
(From school: In September, school students went to dig potatoes, and Zoya went. At first she worked separately from the brigade, but her labor productivity was no worse than that of others. When she started working in the brigade, there were four boys there, things happened conversations, work was going badly, but she loved to work properly, and so she began to work alone).
Mother: Zoya said that some people work dishonestly and leave potatoes in the field. She tried to choose all of him.
(From school: She said that some people are dishonest about their work. Zoya tried to work as best as possible.)
Mother: Zoya said: “When I see the poster “How did you help the front?”, it takes me by the heart and I think how I helped the front.” I said that she was on the labor front and that she helped.
“No, that’s not it,” Zoya answered. She wanted to go to the front and talked about it with her history teacher. When Zoya returned from the labor front, she said that she would go to the front. After that she became so serious.
Zoya wanted to take a nursing course and did everything in one day. She was given a health certificate. But she did not go to nursing courses and two days later she announced that she would go to the front.
Zoya said: “I can’t help but tell you, mom, you are the most close person that I am joining a partisan detachment. But don't tell anyone." She was so pleased and excited.
He says: “I was given a task, but Shura was not given it.” She didn’t have a tear when she left, she was even offended by me when she saw the tears: “Since you’re crying, then don’t come to see me off.”
When Comrade Molotov spoke on the radio about the declaration of war, Shura and I were not at home, so I don’t know how Zoya reacted to this. But Zoya was confident that victory would be ours, even though ours were giving up the cities. Zoya said that she was ready to tear to pieces people who hesitate, doubting our victory. She knew we would win.
Lately, I even doubted who Zoya had a connection with. She always told me when she went where, but two or three times she disappeared somewhere and came home even more convinced. It felt like someone was influencing her. I understood that someone was influencing her. Zoya didn't say where she was going.
She stated that she would come soon and asked not to worry about her.
(Son: When someone started talking about where the bombs and shrapnel fell, Zoya always said: “We should shoot such people, they only create panic.” When it happened that you quarreled with her over something, she replies: “What are you, a fascist, or what?!”)
She was greatly influenced by Comrade Stalin’s report. She went to the front in November, when the Germans were approaching Moscow.
Mother: On the third day after her departure, I received a postcard with the “Field Mail” stamp. Shura even said that the postcard was probably from Moscow, and not from the front, but there was a mark “Army in the field.” I also received the second letter quickly, probably within a week.
It has survived, although it is written very briefly and laconically: “I feel good. Don't worry about me. After completing the task, I’ll come and stay.”
She did physical education, did rubdowns cold water, went ice skating.
(Son: Zoya got permission from the doctor to do physical exercise. We had good equipment in gymnasium school, and she really wanted to study. If she didn’t do well on the apparatus, she continued to study hard.)
Zoya got up quickly in the morning and did physical exercise, but I couldn’t follow the entire daily routine. She managed to do everything. He goes to the store, cooks dinner, washes the floor, although our room is small. I managed to do everything. It was difficult for her to wash the floor for health reasons, but she said that I was older than her.
Sometimes I went to the cinema, rarely to the theater. She never sat and talked to gossips, as others did. Zoya loved to read, she would borrow books from the library, and I would also get books for her. She read mainly classics - Sholokhov153, Fadeev154, Furmanov155, Tolstoy, etc.
She wanted to enter the Literary Institute. She was going to enter a university in the 9th grade, but they told her that there was no such situation, that she needed to complete the ten-year course. Zoya said that she prepared herself in literature. But then she left this matter.
I've been thinking about writing about Zoya since her birth. I wrote to the newspaper myself and I think I can write about Zoya. Three years ago, Pravda published an article about how one mother was raising her daughter, but I didn’t like this article, and I wrote a refutation to Pravda. I was told that my article was valuable and that the article was self-praising, but I wrote this article a month after the first one was published. So maybe I will succeed if I start writing about Zoya.
She even had a nervous illness for the reason that her guys did not understand. She didn’t like the fickleness of her friends, as sometimes happens - today a girl will share her secrets with one friend, tomorrow with another, these will be shared with other girls, etc. Zoya did not like this and often sat alone. But she was worried about all this, saying that she was a lonely person, that she could not find a girlfriend.
After her illness, they began to treat her more sensitively at school and got her a ticket to a sanatorium (1).
CAOPIM. F. 8682. Op. 1. D. 561. L. 56-63.
Typewritten copy. Publ.: Front-line Moscow. 1941 - 1942:
archival documents and materials. M., 2001. S. 572 - 574.
Further events developed in the following way.
Having reburied Zoya at the Novodeviachevo cemetery in the USSR, they gradually began to forget about her. There was a war in the country, more and more new heroes and heroines appeared, then there was restoration and peaceful life.
But in 1961, to commemorate the 20th anniversary of her feat, the Soviet propaganda apparatus remembered the feat of Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya, and from that time she, together with her brother Alexander, became cult heroes for pioneers and Komsomol members in the USSR.
Here, as if from a “horn of plenty,” books began to be written and published, and museums were created. build in different places The USSR has numerous monuments, not to mention the street names. and steamships!!!
But all good things come to an end sooner or later. in August 1991, the USSR collapsed, democracy and glasnost began, archives gradually began to be opened, and in the country, as it is not strange, the figure of Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya arose again. Moreover, the interest is negative. They tried to remove her as a symbol of tollitarianism, and knowing the state of affairs 26 years later, we must admit that the anti-communists almost succeeded!
In order not to be unfounded, I will further cite another document. This is an act of forensic examination. Because in 1992 Once again, the media began to raise the question that it was not Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya who was buried in the village of Petrishchevo, but another serviceman from military unit 9903, Liliya Azolina.
№8
Conclusion of a VNII specialist forensic examinations
Alexander Alexandrovich Gusev at the request of the Komsomol Central Assembly
on conducting an examination to establish the identity of the partisan who died in the village of Petrishchevo
No. 1828/020 January 4, 1992
On December 17, 1991, the All-Russian Research Institute of Forensic Expertise received 9 photographs from the Central Archive of the Komsomol with a transmittal letter from the head of the Komsomol Central Archive V. Khorunzhego dated December 16, 1991:
two with the image of Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya,
three with the image of Lily Azolina,
one with a picture of a girl among German soldiers,
three depicting the corpse of a hanged girl.
Parts and
elements of the face Features of appearance Signs of appearance images on
object 1 object 2 object 3
1 2 3 4 5
Head shape oval oval oval
Hair growth boundary tortuous smooth tortuous
color dark dark dark
density average average average
shape slightly wavy straight slightly wavy
face shape oval round oval
width average more than average average
degree of completeness average average average
eyebrow shape arched slightly arched arched
position:
relative to the horizontal slightly oblique internal horizontal slightly oblique internal
relative to each other distant average distant
forehead height average low average
width average more than average average
nose bridge width average average average
nasal septum slightly protruding slightly protruding
nasolabial
hole width wide medium wide
mouth size average average average
position of the corners of the mouth horizontal horizontal horizontal
chin height average more than average average
ear tragus shape slightly protruding protruding slightly protruding
form
auditory
comma-shaped holes rounded comma-shaped
It is necessary to establish whether Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya, Lilya Azolina or another person is depicted in the presented photographs of the corpse of a hanged girl?
The research was entrusted to candidate of legal sciences Alexander Aleksandrovich Gusev, who has specialized in the field of forensic portrait examination since 1948.
After the research, the submitted photographs are marked with the stamp “All-Union NIISE”.
All received photographs are produced on glossy photo paper. The face in the photographs of 3. Kosmodemyanskaya is captured with a turn to the left, in two photographs by L. Azolina - with a turn to the right, and in one - to the left, in the photograph of a girl among German soldiers, as well as in post-mortem photographs, with a turn to the left. In seven photographs the image is full-length, and in two it is full-length.
For the convenience of writing the conclusion, photographs of Z. Kosmodemyanskaya are conventionally designated “Object 1”, L. Azolina - “Object 2”, and the corpse of the hanged girl - “Object 3”.
The study was carried out using methods: microscopic, measuring and comparison. At the same time, it was established that the persons at the specified compared objects are characterized the following signs appearance (see summary table in the text).
The listed features in their totality for each object of study are unique and in their totality are sufficient to conclude that Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya is depicted in the photographs of the corpse of the hanged girl.
Specialist A.A. Gusev
RGASPI. F. M-7. D. 649. Part 1. L. 4a - 4a vol.
Typewritten text autographed in black ink by Gusev.
Publ.: Front-line Moscow. 1941 - 1942:
archival documents and materials. M., 2001. P. 581.
So finally, the issue of identifying Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya was put to rest.
On this I also want to assure this work.
I believe that the dear reader, having familiarized himself with all parts of this work, can now accurately answer the question. main question:
"Is Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya hero The Great Patriotic War or one of its countless martyrs"?
Author: Alexey Natalenko // Union of Citizens of Ukraine
On November 29, 1941, Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya died heroically. Her feat became a legend. She was the first woman to be awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union during the Great Patriotic War. Her name has become a household name and is inscribed in capital letters in heroic history. the Russian people - the victorious people.
The Nazis beat and tortured
Kicked out barefoot into the cold,
My hands were tied with ropes,
The interrogation lasted for five hours.
There are scars and abrasions on your face,
But silence is the answer to the enemy.
Wooden platform with crossbar,
You are standing barefoot in the snow.
A young voice sounds over the fire,
Above the silence of a frosty day:
- I’m not afraid to die, comrades,
My people will avenge me!
AGNIYA BARTO
For the first time, Zoya’s fate became widely known from an essay Peter Alexandrovich Lidov“Tanya”, published in the newspaper “Pravda” on January 27, 1942 and telling about the execution by the Nazis in the village of Petrishchevo near Moscow of a partisan girl who called herself Tanya during interrogation. A photograph was published next to it: a mutilated female body with a rope around her neck. At that time, the real name of the deceased was not yet known. Simultaneously with the publication in Pravda in "Komsomolskaya Pravda" material was published Sergei Lyubimov"We won't forget you, Tanya."
We had a cult of the feat of “Tanya” (Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya) and it firmly entered the ancestral memory of the people. Comrade Stalin introduced this cult personally . February 16 In 1942, she was awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union posthumously. And Lidov’s continuation article, “Who Was Tanya,” was published only two days later - February 18 1942. Then the whole country learned the real name of the girl killed by the Nazis: Zoya Anatolyevna Kosmodemyanskaya, tenth grade student at school No. 201 in the Oktyabrsky district of Moscow. Her school friends recognized her from the photograph that accompanied Lidov’s first essay.
“In early December 1941, in Petrishchev, near the city of Vereya,” Lidov wrote, “the Germans executed an eighteen-year-old Komsomol member from Moscow, who called herself Tatyana... She died in enemy captivity on a fascist rack, without making a single sound, without betraying her suffering, without betraying her comrades. She accepted martyrdom as a heroine, as the daughter of a great people that no one can ever break! May her memory live forever!”
During the interrogation, a German officer, according to Lidov, asked the eighteen-year-old girl the main question: “Tell me, where is Stalin?” “Stalin is at his post,” Tatyana answered.
In the newspaper "Publicity". September 24, 1997 in the material of professor-historian Ivan Osadchy under the heading “Her name and her feat are immortal” An act drawn up in the village of Petrishchevo on January 25, 1942 was published:
“We, the undersigned, - a commission consisting of: Chairman of the Gribtsovsky Village Council Mikhail Ivanovich Berezin, Secretary Klavdiya Prokofievna Strukova, collective farmers-eyewitnesses of the collective farm “8th of March” - Vasily Alexandrovich Kulik and Evdokia Petrovna Voronina - drew up this act as follows: During the occupation Vereisky district, a girl who called herself Tanya was hanged by German soldiers in the village of Petrishchevo. Later it turned out that it was a partisan girl from Moscow - Zoya Anatolyevna Kosmodemyanskaya, born in 1923. German soldiers caught her while she was on a combat mission, setting fire to a stable containing more than 300 horses. The German sentry grabbed her from behind, and she did not have time to shoot.
She was taken to the house of Maria Ivanovna Sedova, undressed and interrogated. But there was no need to get any information from her. After interrogation by Sedova, barefoot and undressed, she was taken to Voronina’s house, where the headquarters was located. There they continued to interrogate, but she answered all questions: “No! Don't know!". Having achieved nothing, the officer ordered that they start beating her with belts. The housewife, who was forced onto the stove, counted about 200 blows. She didn't scream or even utter a single moan. And after this torture she answered again: “No! I won't tell! Don't know!"
She was taken out of Voronina's house; She walked, stepping bare feet in the snow, and was brought to Kulik’s house. Exhausted and tormented, she was surrounded by enemies. German soldiers mocked her in every possible way. She asked for a drink - the German brought her a lighted lamp. And someone ran a saw across her back. Then all the soldiers left, leaving only one sentry. Her hands were tied back. My feet are frostbitten. The guard ordered her to get up and led her out into the street under his rifle. And again she walked, stepping barefoot in the snow, and drove until she froze. The guards changed after 15 minutes. And so they continued to lead her along the street the whole night.
P.Ya. Kulik (maiden name Petrushin, 33 years old) says: “They brought her in and sat her on a bench, and she gasped. Her lips were black, baked black, and her face was swollen on her forehead. She asked my husband for a drink. We asked: “Can I?” They said, “No,” and one of them, instead of water, raised a burning kerosene lamp without glass to his chin.
When I talked to her, she told me: “Victory is still ours. Let them shoot me, let these monsters mock me, but still they won’t shoot us all. There are still 170 million of us, the Russian people have always won, and now victory will be ours.”
In the morning they brought her to the gallows and began to photograph her... She shouted: “Citizens! Don’t stand there, don’t look, but we need to help fight!” After that, one officer swung his arms, and others shouted at her.
Then she said: “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...
Then they set up the box. She stood on the box herself without any command. A German came up and began to put on the noose. At that time she shouted: “No matter how much you hang us, you won’t hang us all, there are 170 million of us. But our comrades will avenge you for me.” She said this with a noose around her neck.”A few seconds before death, and a moment before Eternity she announced, with a noose around her neck, the verdict of the Soviet people: “ Stalin is with us! Stalin will come!
In the morning they built a gallows, gathered the population and publicly hanged him. But they continued to mock the hanged woman. Her left breast was cut off and her legs were cut with knives.
When our troops drove the Germans away from Moscow, they hastened to remove Zoya’s body and bury it outside the village; they burned the gallows at night, as if wanting to hide the traces of their crime. She was hanged in early December 1941. This is what the present act was drawn up for.”
And a little later, photographs found in the pocket of a murdered German were brought to the Pravda editorial office. 5 photographs captured the moments of the execution of Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya. At the same time, another essay by Pyotr Lidov appeared, dedicated to the feat of Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya, under the title “5 photographs.”
Why did the young intelligence officer call herself by this name (or the name “Taon”) and why was it her feat that Comrade Stalin singled out? Indeed, at the same time, many Soviet people committed no less heroic deeds. For example, on the same day, November 29, 1942, in the same Moscow region, partisan Vera Voloshina was executed, for her feat she was awarded the Order of the Patriotic War, 1st degree (1966) and the title of Hero of Russia (1994).
To successfully mobilize the entire Soviet people, Russian civilization, Stalin used the language of symbols and those triggering moments that could extract a layer of heroic victories from the ancestral memory of the Russians. We remember the famous speech at the parade on November 7, 1941, in which the great Russian commanders and the national liberation wars, in which we invariably emerged victorious, were mentioned. Thus, parallels were drawn between the victories of our ancestors and the current inevitable Victory. The surname Kosmodemyanskaya comes from the consecrated names of two Russian heroes - Kozma and Demyan. In the city of Murom there is a church named after them, erected by order of Ivan the Terrible.
Ivan the Terrible’s tent once stood on that spot, and Kuznetsky Posad was located nearby. The king was wondering how to cross the Oka, on the other bank of which there was an enemy camp. Then two blacksmith brothers, whose names were Kozma and Demyan, appeared in the tent and offered their help to the king. At night, in the dark, the brothers quietly crept into the enemy camp and set fire to the khan’s tent. While they were putting out the fire in the camp and looking for spies, the troops of Ivan the Terrible, taking advantage of the commotion in the enemy camp, crossed the river. Demyan and Kozma died, and in their honor a church was built and named after the heroes.
As a result - in one family, both children perform feats and are awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union! Streets were named after Heroes in the USSR. Normally there would be two streets named after each Hero. But in Moscow one the street, and not by chance, received a “double” name - Zoya and Alexandra Kosmodemyansky
In 1944, the film “Zoya” was shot, which received the award for best screenplay at the 1st International Film Festival in Cannes in 1946. Also, the film “Zoya” was awarded Stalin Prize, 1st degree, we received it Leo Arnstam(director), Galina Vodyanitskaya(performer of the role of Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya) and Alexander Shelenkov(cameraman).
“She died in enemy captivity on a fascist rack, without making a single sound, without betraying her suffering, without betraying her comrades.
She accepted martyrdom as a heroine, as the daughter of a great people that no one can ever break!
May her memory live forever!”
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