Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya

Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya (13 September 1923 – 29 November 1941) was a Soviet military personnel and partisan born in Tambov Oblast. During her life, she was a citizen of the Soviet Union and ultimately died in Moscow Oblast . Zoya was honored with the Order of Lenin and was recognized as a Hero of the Soviet Union .

Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya was born on September 13, 1923 in the village of Osinov Guy, Gavrilovsky district of the Tambov region. Mother Lyubov Timofeevna (nee Churikova) and father Anatoly Petrovich worked as school teachers.

Anatoly's father studied at the Theological Seminary for some time. He grew up in the family of the priest Peter Ioannovich Kozmodemyansky, who served in the church in the village of Osinov Guy. In the summer of 1918, for helping the counter-revolutionaries, the priest was captured and tortured to death by the Bolsheviks. The body was found only six months later. The priest is buried near the walls of the Znamenskaya Church, in which he conducted services.

Zoya's family lived in the village until 1929, and then, fleeing from denunciation, moved to Siberia, to the village of Shitkino, Irkutsk region. The family lived there for a little more than a year. In 1930, the elder sister Olga, who worked in the People's Commissariat of Education, helped the Kosmodemyanskys to move to Moscow. In Moscow, the family lived on the outskirts, near the Moscow metro station, in the Timiryazevsky Park area. Since 1933, after the death of her father (the girl's father died after an operation on the intestines) Zoya and her younger brother Sasha stayed three with their mother.

Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya graduated from the 9th grade of the 201st school (now Gymnasium No. 201 named after Zoya and Alexander Kosmodemyansky) in Moscow. She studied "excellent"; loved history and literature, dreamed of entering a Literary institute. Because of her direct nature, she found it difficult to find a common language with her peers.

Since 1939, according to her mother's memoirs, Zoya suffered from a nervous illness. At the end of 1940, Zoya fell ill with acute meningitis. In the winter of 1941, after a difficult recovery, she went to Sokolniki to recover her strength, to a sanatorium for people with nervous diseases. There she met and became friends with the writer Arkady Gaidar.

The war prevented Zoya's plans for the future, as well as her peers, from coming true. On October 31, 1941, Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya, along with 2,000 volunteers from the Komsomol, came to the recruiting station located in the Colosseum cinema, from where she went to a sabotage school for pre-combat training. The set was made from yesterday's schoolchildren. Preference was given to athletes: nimble, strong, hardy, able to withstand heavy loads (such were also called "people with increased cross-country ability").

When entering the school, recruits were warned that up to 5% survive in sabotage work. Most of the partisans die after being captured by the Germans while carrying out shuttle raids behind enemy lines.

After training, Zoya became a member of the reconnaissance and sabotage unit of the Western Front and was thrown behind enemy lines. Zoya's first combat mission was successfully completed. She, as part of a subversive group, mined a road near Volokolamsk.

Kosmodemyanskaya 's Feat

Kosmodemyanskaya received a new combat mission, in which in a short time the partisans were ordered to burn the villages of Anashkino, Gribtsovo, Petrishchevo, Usadkovo, Ilyatino, Grachev, Pushkino, Mikhailovskoye, Bugailovo, Korovine. Several molotov cocktails were given to the fighters to detonate. Such tasks were given to the partisans in accordance with the order of the Supreme Commander Joseph Stalin No. 0428. It was a policy of "scorched earth": the enemy was actively attacking on all fronts, and in order to slow down the advance, objects of vital activity were destroyed along the way.

According to many, these were very cruel and unjustified actions, but this was required in the realities of that terrible war — the Germans were rapidly approaching Moscow. On November 21, 1941, the day the saboteurs-scouts went on a mission, the troops of the western front fought heavy battles in the Stalinogorsk direction, in the area of Volokolamsk, Mozhaysk, Tikhoretsk.

Two groups of 10 people were allocated to complete the task: the group of B. S. Krainov (19 years old) and P. S. Provorov (18 years old), which included Kosmodemyanskaya. Near the village of Golovkovo, both groups were ambushed, suffering losses: some of the saboteurs were killed, and some partisans were captured. The remaining fighters united and continued the operation under the command of Krainov.

On the night of November 27, 1941, Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya, together with Boris Krainov and Vasily Klubkov, set fire to Petrishchev (this village acted as a transport interchange for the Germans) three houses in which the communication center was located, and the Germans were quartered before being sent to the front. And also destroyed 20 horses intended for transportation.

For further fulfillment of the task, the partisans gathered at the agreed place, but Krainov did not wait for his own and returned to the camp. Klubkov was captured by the Germans. Zoya decided to continue the task alone.

Captivity and torture

On November 28, after dark, a young partisan tried to set fire to the barn of the headman Sviridov, who was giving shelter to the fascists, but was noticed. Sviridov raised the alarm. The Germans rushed over and arrested the girl. Zoya did not shoot during the detention. Before the task, she gave the weapon to her friend, Claudia Miloradova, who was the first to leave for the task. Claudia's gun was faulty, so Zoya gave away a more reliable weapon.

From the testimony of the residents of the village of Petrishchevo Vasily and Praskovya Kulik, to whose house Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya was brought, it is known that the interrogation was conducted by three German officers with an interpreter. She was stripped and whipped with belts, driven naked in the cold. According to witnesses, the Germans failed to extract information about the partisans from the girl, even through inhuman tortures. The only thing she said was that she gave her name as Tanya.

Witnesses testified that local residents A.V. Smirnova and F. V. Solina, whose houses suffered from arson by partisans, also participated in the torture. Later they were sentenced to death under Article 193 of the Criminal Code of the RSFSR for cooperation with fascists during the war.

Execution

On the morning of November 29, 1941, the Komsomol member Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya, beaten, with frostbitten feet, was taken outside. The Germans have already prepared a gallows there. A sign was hung on the girl's chest, on which it was written in Russian and German: "Arsonist of houses". Many Germans and locals gathered to see the spectacle. Fascists took pictures. At that moment , the girl shouted:

"Citizens! Don't stand there, don't look. We need to help the Red Army fight, and our comrades will take revenge on the German fascists for my death. The Soviet Union is invincible and will not be defeated."

It is incredible courage to stand on the edge of the grave and, without thinking about death, appeal to selflessness. At the moment when Zoya was put on a noose around her neck, she shouted the words that have become a legend:

"No matter how much you hang us, you don't hang all of us, there are 170 million of us. But our comrades will take revenge on you for me."

Zoya didn't have time to say anything more.

The hanged Komsomol member was not removed from the gallows for another month. Fascists passing through the village continued to mock the tortured body. On New Year's Eve, 1942, Zoya's body, cut up with knives, bare, with her chest cut off, was removed from the gallows and allowed to be buried by the villagers. Later, when the Soviet land was cleared of fascists, Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya's ashes were reburied at the Novodevichy Cemetery in Moscow.

Confession

The young Komsomol is a symbol of the epoch, an example of the heroism of the Soviet people, manifested in the fight against the Fascist invaders during the Great Patriotic War.

However, information about the partisan movement of that time was classified for decades. This is due to military orders and methods of execution, in the simple opinion of the layman, too cruel. And the understatement leads to all kinds of speculation, or even just to the insinuations of "critics from history."

Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya was born on September 13, 1923 in the village of Osinov Guy, Gavrilovsky district of the Tambov region. Mother Lyubov Timofeevna (nee Churikova) and father Anatoly Petrovich worked as school teachers.

Anatoly's father studied at the Theological Seminary for some time. He grew up in the family of the priest Peter Ioannovich Kozmodemyansky, who served in the church in the village of Osinov Guy. In the summer of 1918, for helping the counter-revolutionaries, the priest was captured and tortured to death by the Bolsheviks. The body was found only six months later. The priest is buried near the walls of the Znamenskaya Church, in which he conducted services.

Zoya's family lived in the village until 1929, and then, fleeing from denunciation, moved to Siberia, to the village of Shitkino, Irkutsk region. The family lived there for a little more than a year. In 1930, the elder sister Olga, who worked in the People's Commissariat of Education, helped the Kosmodemyanskys to move to Moscow. In Moscow, the family lived on the outskirts, near the Moscow metro station, in the Timiryazevsky Park area. Since 1933, after the death of her father (the girl's father died after an operation on the intestines) Zoya and her younger brother Sasha stayed three with their mother.

Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya graduated from the 9th grade of the 201st school (now Gymnasium No. 201 named after Zoya and Alexander Kosmodemyansky) in Moscow. She studied "excellent"; loved history and literature, dreamed of entering a Literary institute. Because of her direct nature, she found it difficult to find a common language with her peers.

Since 1939, according to her mother's memoirs, Zoya suffered from a nervous illness. At the end of 1940, Zoya fell ill with acute meningitis. In the winter of 1941, after a difficult recovery, she went to Sokolniki to recover her strength, to a sanatorium for people with nervous diseases. There she met and became friends with the writer Arkady Gaidar.

The war prevented Zoya's plans for the future, as well as her peers, from coming true. On October 31, 1941, Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya, along with 2,000 volunteers from the Komsomol, came to the recruiting station located in the Colosseum cinema, from where she went to a sabotage school for pre-combat training. The set was made from yesterday's schoolchildren. Preference was given to athletes: nimble, strong, hardy, able to withstand heavy loads (such were also called "people with increased cross-country ability").

When entering the school, recruits were warned that up to 5% survive in sabotage work. Most of the partisans die after being captured by the Germans while carrying out shuttle raids behind enemy lines.

After training, Zoya became a member of the reconnaissance and sabotage unit of the Western Front and was thrown behind enemy lines. Zoya's first combat mission was successfully completed. She, as part of a subversive group, mined a road near Volokolamsk.

Kosmodemyanskaya 's Feat

Kosmodemyanskaya received a new combat mission, in which in a short time the partisans were ordered to burn the villages of Anashkino, Gribtsovo, Petrishchevo, Usadkovo, Ilyatino, Grachev, Pushkino, Mikhailovskoye, Bugailovo, Korovine. Several molotov cocktails were given to the fighters to detonate. Such tasks were given to the partisans in accordance with the order of the Supreme Commander Joseph Stalin No. 0428. It was a policy of "scorched earth": the enemy was actively attacking on all fronts, and in order to slow down the advance, objects of vital activity were destroyed along the way.

According to many, these were very cruel and unjustified actions, but this was required in the realities of that terrible war — the Germans were rapidly approaching Moscow. On November 21, 1941, the day the saboteurs-scouts went on a mission, the troops of the western front fought heavy battles in the Stalinogorsk direction, in the area of Volokolamsk, Mozhaysk, Tikhoretsk.

Two groups of 10 people were allocated to complete the task: the group of B. S. Krainov (19 years old) and P. S. Provorov (18 years old), which included Kosmodemyanskaya. Near the village of Golovkovo, both groups were ambushed, suffering losses: some of the saboteurs were killed, and some partisans were captured. The remaining fighters united and continued the operation under the command of Krainov.

On the night of November 27, 1941, Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya, together with Boris Krainov and Vasily Klubkov, set fire to Petrishchev (this village acted as a transport interchange for the Germans) three houses in which the communication center was located, and the Germans were quartered before being sent to the front. And also destroyed 20 horses intended for transportation.

For further fulfillment of the task, the partisans gathered at the agreed place, but Krainov did not wait for his own and returned to the camp. Klubkov was captured by the Germans. Zoya decided to continue the task alone.

Captivity and torture

On November 28, after dark, a young partisan tried to set fire to the barn of the headman Sviridov, who was giving shelter to the fascists, but was noticed. Sviridov raised the alarm. The Germans rushed over and arrested the girl. Zoya did not shoot during the detention. Before the task, she gave the weapon to her friend, Claudia Miloradova, who was the first to leave for the task. Claudia's gun was faulty, so Zoya gave away a more reliable weapon.

From the testimony of the residents of the village of Petrishchevo Vasily and Praskovya Kulik, to whose house Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya was brought, it is known that the interrogation was conducted by three German officers with an interpreter. She was stripped and whipped with belts, driven naked in the cold. According to witnesses, the Germans failed to extract information about the partisans from the girl, even through inhuman tortures. The only thing she said was that she gave her name as Tanya.

Witnesses testified that local residents A.V. Smirnova and F. V. Solina, whose houses suffered from arson by partisans, also participated in the torture. Later they were sentenced to death under Article 193 of the Criminal Code of the RSFSR for cooperation with fascists during the war.

Execution

On the morning of November 29, 1941, the Komsomol member Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya, beaten, with frostbitten feet, was taken outside. The Germans have already prepared a gallows there. A sign was hung on the girl's chest, on which it was written in Russian and German: "Arsonist of houses". Many Germans and locals gathered to see the spectacle. Fascists took pictures. At that moment , the girl shouted:

"Citizens! Don't stand there, don't look. We need to help the Red Army fight, and our comrades will take revenge on the German fascists for my death. The Soviet Union is invincible and will not be defeated."

It is incredible courage to stand on the edge of the grave and, without thinking about death, appeal to selflessness. At the moment when Zoya was put on a noose around her neck, she shouted the words that have become a legend:

"No matter how much you hang us, you don't hang all of us, there are 170 million of us. But our comrades will take revenge on you for me."

Zoya didn't have time to say anything more.

The hanged Komsomol member was not removed from the gallows for another month. Fascists passing through the village continued to mock the tortured body. On New Year's Eve, 1942, Zoya's body, cut up with knives, bare, with her chest cut off, was removed from the gallows and allowed to be buried by the villagers. Later, when the Soviet land was cleared of fascists, Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya's ashes were reburied at the Novodevichy Cemetery in Moscow.

Confession

The young Komsomol is a symbol of the epoch, an example of the heroism of the Soviet people, manifested in the fight against the Fascist invaders during the Great Patriotic War.

However, information about the partisan movement of that time was classified for decades. This is due to military orders and methods of execution, in the simple opinion of the layman, too cruel. And the understatement leads to all kinds of speculation, or even just to the insinuations of "critics from history."