In the USSR, the name of Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya was a symbol of the fight against fascism, a model of will and unparalleled heroism. But in the early 1990s, materials appeared in the press questioning the feat of the young partisan. Let's try to figure out what really happened.
Time of Doubt
The country learned about the feat of Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya from the essay “Tanya” by war correspondent Pyotr Lidov, published in the newspaper Pravda on January 27, 1942. It told the story of a young partisan girl who was captured by the Germans during a combat mission, survived the brutal bullying of the Nazis and steadfastly accepted death at their hands. This heroic image lasted until the end of perestroika.
With the collapse of the USSR, a tendency appeared in the country to overthrow previous ideals, and it did not bypass the story of the feat of Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya. The new materials that were released claimed that Zoya, who suffered from schizophrenia, arbitrarily and indiscriminately burned rural houses, including those where there were no Nazis. Ultimately, angry local residents captured the saboteur and handed her over to the Germans.
According to another popular version, it was not Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya who was hiding under the pseudonym “Tanya”, but a completely different person - Lilya Ozolina.
The fact of the torture and execution of the girl was not questioned in these publications, but the emphasis was placed on the fact that Soviet propaganda artificially created the image of the martyr, separating it from real events.
Behind enemy lines
In the troubled October days of 1941, when Muscovites were preparing for street battles, Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya, along with other Komsomol members, went to enroll in the newly created detachments for reconnaissance and sabotage work behind enemy lines.
At first, the candidacy of a fragile girl who had recently suffered from an acute form of meningitis and suffered from a “nervous illness” was rejected, but thanks to her persistence, Zoya convinced the military commission to accept her into the detachment.
As one of the members of Klavdiya Miloradov’s reconnaissance and sabotage group recalled, during classes in Kuntsevo they “went into the forest for three days, laid mines, blew up trees, learned to remove sentries, and use a map.” And already in early November, Zoya and her comrades received their first task - to mine the roads, which they successfully completed. The group returned to the unit without losses.
Fatal task
On November 17, 1941, the military command issued an order which ordered to “deprive the German army of the opportunity to be located in villages and cities, drive the German invaders out of all populated areas into the cold fields, smoke them out of all rooms and warm shelters and force them to freeze in the open air.”
In fulfillment of this order, on November 18 (according to other information - 20), the commanders of the sabotage groups were tasked with burning 10 villages occupied by the Germans. Everything was allocated from 5 to 7 days. One of the squads included Zoya.
Near the village of Golovkovo, the detachment came across an ambush and was scattered during the firefight. Some of the soldiers died, some were captured. Those who remained, including Zoya, united into a small group under the command of Boris Krainov.
The next target of the partisans was the village of Petrishchevo. Three people went there - Boris Krainov, Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya and Vasily Klubkov. Zoya managed to set fire to three houses, one of which had a communications center, but she never arrived at the agreed upon meeting place.
Fatal task
According to various sources, Zoya spent one or two days in the forest and returned to the village to complete the task. This fact gave rise to the version that Kosmodemyanskaya set fire to houses without orders.
The Germans were ready to meet the partisan, and they also instructed the local residents. When trying to set fire to the house of S.A. Sviridov, the owner notified the Germans who were lodged there and Zoya was captured. The beaten girl was taken to the Kulik family house.
The owner P. Ya. Kulik recalls how a partisan with “bleeding lips and a swollen face” was brought into her house, in which there were 20-25 Germans. The girl's hands were untied and she soon fell asleep.
The next morning, a small dialogue took place between the mistress of the house and Zoya. When Kulik asked who burned the houses, Zoya answered that “she.” According to the owner, the girl asked if there were victims, to which she replied “no.” The Germans managed to run out, but only 20 horses died. Judging from the conversation, Zoya was surprised that there were still residents in the village, since, according to her, they should have “left the village long ago from the Germans.”
According to Kulik, at 9 am they came to interrogate Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya. She was not present at the interrogation, and at 10:30 the girl was taken to execution. On the way to the gallows, local residents several times accused Zoya of setting houses on fire, trying to hit her with a stick or pour slop on her. According to eyewitnesses, the girl accepted her death courageously.
Hot on the heels
When in January 1942 Pyotr Lidov heard from an old man a story about a Muscovite girl executed by the Germans in Petrishchev, he immediately went to the village already abandoned by the Germans to find out the details of the tragedy. Lidov did not calm down until he spoke with all the village residents.
But to identify the girl, a photograph was needed. The next time he came with Pravda photojournalist Sergei Strunnikov. Having opened the grave, they took the necessary photographs.
In those days, Lidov met a partisan who knew Zoya. In the photograph shown, he identified a girl who was going on a mission to Petrishchevo and called herself Tanya. With this name the heroine entered the correspondent’s story.
The mystery of the name Tanya was revealed later when Zoya’s mother said that that was the name of her daughter’s favorite heroine, a participant in the civil war, Tatyana Solomakha.
But the identity of the girl executed in Petrishchev was finally confirmed only at the beginning of February 1942 by a special commission. In addition to the village residents, Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya’s classmate and teacher took part in the identification. On February 10, Zoya’s mother and brother were shown photographs of the dead girl: “Yes, this is Zoya,” they both answered, although not very confidently.
To remove final doubts, Zoya’s mother, brother and friend Klavdiya Miloradova were asked to come to Petrishchevo. All of them, without hesitation, identified the murdered girl as Zoya.
Alternative versions
In recent years, a version has become popular that Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya was betrayed to the Nazis by her comrade Vasily Klubkov. At the beginning of 1942, Klubkov returned to his unit and reported that he had been captured by the Germans, but then escaped.
However, during interrogations, he gave other testimony, in particular, that he was captured along with Zoya, handed her over to the Germans, and he himself agreed to cooperate with them. It should be noted that Klubkov’s testimony was very confused and contradictory.
Historian M. M. Gorinov suggested that investigators forced themselves to incriminate Klubkov either for career reasons or for propaganda purposes. One way or another, this version has not received any confirmation.
When in the early 1990s information appeared that the girl executed in the village of Petrishchevo was actually Lilya Ozolina, at the request of the leadership of the Central Archive of the Komsomol, a forensic portrait examination was carried out at the All-Russian Research Institute of Forensic Expertise using photographs of Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya, Lily Ozolina and photographs of the girl, executed in Petrishchevo, which were found in the possession of a captured German. The commission’s conclusion was unequivocal: “Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya is captured in German photographs.”
M. M. Gorinov wrote this about the publications that exposed Kosmodemyanskaya’s feat: “They reflected some facts of the biography of Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya, which were hushed up in Soviet times, but were reflected, as in a distorting mirror, in a monstrously distorted form.”
"The Headquarters of the Supreme High Command ORDERS:
1. Destroy and burn to the ground all populated areas in the rear of German troops at a distance of 40–60 km in depth from the front line and 20–30 km to the right and left of the roads.
To destroy populated areas within the specified radius, immediately deploy aviation, make extensive use of artillery and mortar fire, reconnaissance teams, skiers and partisan sabotage groups equipped with Molotov cocktails, grenades and demolition means.
2 In each regiment, create teams of hunters of 20–30 people each to blow up and burn settlements in which enemy troops are located. Select the most courageous and politically and morally strong fighters, commanders and political workers for the hunting teams, carefully explaining to them the tasks and significance of this event for the defeat of the German army.”
Stalin was obviously inspired by the practice of the Soviet-Finnish war - the Finns actively used scorched earth tactics. But the order itself was idiotic. It would look logical if the entire civilian population could be evacuated and property removed, as was done in Finland. However, in the chaos of the first months of the war, they managed to take out mainly only urban party workers and their families, and the villages were not touched at all. The prospect of being left in the cold without a roof over their heads and dying of starvation was not at all pleasing to the peasants, but the partisans and other “politically and morally strong” characters began to be perceived not as “our own,” but as bandits. The order literally pushed the local population into the arms of the Germans and at the same time undermined the basis of the partisan movement, since partisanship cannot be successful without interaction with the local population. Ilya Starinov, now considered the main Soviet saboteur, directly wrote in his memoirs that the order was absurd:
“Stalin thought to make it difficult for Hitler’s troops to advance deeper into the country. But in reality, this demand of the leader greatly helped the occupiers, even taking into account that it was not fully fulfilled.
The destruction of food during the retreat, the requirement to “drive the Germans out into the cold” by setting fire to the settlements in which they were located, greatly helped the occupiers. They carried out propaganda that all this was being done by the Soviet government because it no longer thought of returning, otherwise why destroy what could be preserved for use upon return.
Moreover, the demand for the destruction of unexported grain and theft of collective farm livestock helped to attract to the side of the enemy people who had lost faith in the victory of the Red Army, especially relatives of those who suffered during the repressions during collectivization. If Stalin’s demand had been fulfilled, then during the occupation almost the entire population of the left-bank regions of Ukraine and the occupied territories of Russia would have died out.”
More experienced partisans operating in the rear sabotaged this order and did not carry it out under various pretexts, since the survival of the detachment often depended on relations with local residents. However, in the Moscow region the order was carried out - inexperienced Komsomol youth were armed with bottles of combustible mixture and thrown into villages. To prevent boys and girls from having moral doubts about their assignments, they explained to the children that Soviet citizens had been evacuated from populated areas. Sometimes, to give a dramatic effect, they said that the occupiers still drove all the local residents out into the cold, the peasants froze in the forests, and burning houses was the best way to take revenge on the Germans.
Therefore, the Komsomol saboteurs acted in full confidence that there were no civilians in these villages. This also explains the fact that, according to witnesses to Kosmodemyanskaya’s detention, the girl was surprised to see many Soviet citizens in the village. She probably didn’t even realize that she was setting fire to the houses in which their owners lived.
Almost immediately after the order was issued, it began to be implemented in the Moscow region. After several days of preparation, a group of 10 people, which included Zoya, was sent into the forests with the task of setting fire to at least 5 settlements. Obviously, this is a deliberately impossible goal - in addition, the detachment was spotted almost immediately, the saboteurs came under fire, and half of the fighters died. The rest divided into two groups and went their separate ways. By November 27, a group of three people - Vasily Klubkov, Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya and Boris Krainov (the senior group) - reached the village of Petrishchevo. 
The Komsomol members decided to act separately, from different sides of the village. We agreed to meet after the operation at night, in the forest, in a pre-agreed place.
They managed to set fire to three houses. Kosmodemyanskaya burned one building and another one next door - it housed a German stable. Several horses died in the fire, but no Germans were injured. Soviet sources later claimed that Zoya allegedly burned down a German communications center, but this is a later myth. He had to demonstrate that the girl did not die in vain, since the death of several horses clearly did not cost a human life and did not cause any noticeable damage to the German army.
Krainov, the most prepared of the three, completed the task and returned to the meeting place, where he did not wait for anyone from the group and left, safely getting out to his own. Klubkov was detained in the forest by a German patrol. Kosmodemyanskaya also managed to return, but did not find anyone at the appointed place. Instead of following Krainov’s example and getting out to her own people, she decided to return to Petrishchevo and continue the arson.
It was a big mistake. However, an 18-year-old girl who graduated from school four months ago and received virtually no training, of course, could not know this. She probably did not take into account that the first success of the sabotage was due to surprise, and now the Germans would strengthen their security and be ready. It is possible that, left alone, Zoya was simply confused and did not know what to do next.
One way or another, the next night Kosmodemyanskaya again went to the village, where, of course, she was immediately caught. Local residents, like the Germans, were on their guard. The peasant Sviridov discovered the girl when she tried to set fire to his barn. There was a commotion, local residents came running, and eventually the Germans caught the arsonist. Several Molotov cocktails were found in her bag - it became clear that the girl was involved in the arson the previous night.
Soviet mythology has always emphasized that Zoya behaved very courageously during interrogation and, despite the torture, did not tell the Germans anything. However, here we must take into account that she could not tell anything. Kosmodemyanskaya knew nothing about the fate of her comrades, did not deny the arson, did not have the slightest idea about the location of the units and their staffing, and was less interesting to German counterintelligence than a simple Red Army soldier.
Another unchanging part of the legend is the terrible torture that the Germans subjected Zoya to. They are usually described in detail and in colors. It was believed that the Germans terribly tortured the girl, cut her with a saw, burned her alive, forced her to drink kerosene and tore out all her fingernails. Here, however, one recognizes part of the standard set of newspaper atrocities of the Nazis, which can be found in any front-line newspaper of those times (other traditional elements of the list are rape, crucifixion and, for some reason, binding with barbed wire). According to the testimony of local peasants, Kosmodemyanskaya was flogged. This does not suit the Germans at all, but still there is some difference between a belt and sawing a living person with a saw. In addition, the girl was taken from hut to hut barefoot, which can also be considered torture.
Apparently, the Germans quickly realized that Zoya didn’t know anything anyway, and left her alone. She was caught late in the evening, and already at two o’clock in the morning, according to local peasants, she was allowed to sleep, her hands were untied and guards were assigned to her.
The next morning, Kosmodemyanskaya was hanged as an arsonist. Several local residents were present at her execution. The official version of the legend reports that in her dying speech the Komsomol member praised Stalin and the Soviet Union, but there are several versions of this speech, and all of them were reworked by journalists in the spirit of the times. According to eyewitnesses, Zoya shouted that her death would be avenged, but did not mention Stalin at all. 
It is known that one of the peasant women, the owner of the burned house, threw a pot of slop at Zoya, scolding her for the fact that the house burned down, but still there was no damage to the Germans. The owner of another burnt house also cursed. Both women were shot after the arrival of Soviet troops.
The girl would have remained unknown if not for Pravda’s war correspondent Pyotr Lidov. After the liberation of the village, he learned from one of the residents about a Komsomol member executed by the Germans. Lidov began collecting information, and just a month and a half after the execution, Pravda published an article entitled “Tanya.”
Wait, which Tanya? Her name was Zoya, where did Tanya come from? The fact is that everyone knew the girl as Tanya - she called herself by this name to the Germans, local residents, and even her partisan comrades. Later, this even gave rise to rumors that there was no Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya, and that another girl was executed instead.
Several mothers recognized their daughter in the photo in Pravda. All of them were sent for an interview with the commander of military unit 9903 Sprogis, and he eliminated all the applicants except for two. They went to identify the body along with several of Zoya’s classmates from school 201. And then the unexpected happened:
“Sprogis firmly said that this is 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.”
Problem. Her classmates, brother and commander recognize the girl, but her mother does not. Besides, she is Zoya, not Tanya. What should I do? They began to question everyone in more detail, to find out what signs there were. As a result, the scar on her left leg matched, and the mother, apparently coming to terms with the loss, began to recognize the deceased as Zoya. In addition, all newspapers had already written about the girl, glorifying her feat, and the issue of awarding her the title of Hero of the Soviet Union was being decided. The confusion with “Tanya” and Zoya was solved simply: they say, she called herself Tanya in honor of the fiery red partisan Tatyana Solomakha, who was killed by the whites during the Civil War. 
While the issue of identifying the person was being resolved, Komsomol organizer Klubkov returned to the unit’s location. The attitude towards him from the very beginning was suspicious - they say, why didn’t you burn in the tank? In his defense, Klubkov stated that he was captured by the Germans and was their prisoner, and then fled. At first, the fugitive was not touched, but when the story of Tanya-Zoya began to appear in newspapers, competent comrades began to take a closer look at him and study him for cooperation with the Germans. At first, the recent captive stubbornly denied his guilt, but the authorities knew how to be convincing, and soon Klubkov admitted that he had been recruited while in captivity. By that time, the story of Tanya-Zoya had already thundered throughout the country, and the comrade commissars had built an ideal scheme in their heads: Klubkov not only agreed to cooperate with the Germans, but also handed over the heroic girl to be torn to pieces by the executioners. Klubkov stubbornly denied this, but then the experts worked with him, and the 18-year-old boy broke down - he signed obviously dictated confessions. Why dictated? Because the special officers did not know the details of the Kosmodemyanskaya case, did not know the testimony of witnesses and eyewitnesses of her detention and execution, and proceeded from the picture born in their inflamed brain. This picture had a number of serious contradictions with the official version. Here is Klubkov’s testimony:
“Before reaching the house where the headquarters of the German troops was located in the village. Ashes, I was spotted by German soldiers. To avoid being detained, I ran into the forest, but 3 German soldiers came out of the forest towards me and detained me. The soldiers brought me to the house that I wanted to set on fire - it was the headquarters of the German troops, the German officer began to interrogate me: what unit I am from, what the unit does and where it is located, why I came and with whom. I told the German officer that I, together with Krainov and Kosmodemyanskaya, arrived on instructions from the intelligence department of the Western Front with sabotage missions, and told him where the headquarters of the Western Front and RO were located. I answered the German officer and told him everything I knew. A few minutes after my interrogation, they brought Kosmodemyanskaya to the headquarters of the German officer. The German officer asked me if I knew this girl. I told the officer that this was Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya, sent with me on a sabotage mission. A German officer began to interrogate Kosmodemyanskaya in my presence, but Kosmodemyanskaya did not answer the officer. When they started beating Zoya, the latter said “kill me, but I won’t say anything.” The officer stripped Zoya naked and beat her until she lost consciousness, after which she was taken out of the headquarters, and I never saw Zoya again. The officer asked Kosmodemyanskaya where she was from, who she came with and why, but Kosmodemyanskaya did not answer the officer. When Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya was taken unconscious from the headquarters premises, the officer told me: “You will now be our intelligence officer.”
What are the contradictions? Firstly, none of the real witnesses to the detention mentions any Klubkov or any other saboteurs at all. None of the village residents saw Klubkov. And of course, the peasants would not remain silent about the Russian traitor Red Army soldier. Several peasants were interviewed, and not one mentioned the detained Russian saboteur, in whose presence the girl was beaten (although the peasants saw the moment of the beating, it happened in their huts). Non-commissioned officer Beyerlein, who was then in the village and was later captured and interrogated in the Kosmodemyanskaya case, also does not mention Klubkov. Secondly, from Klubkov’s testimony it turns out that Zoya was caught a few minutes, or at best a couple of hours after his own arrest. However, in reality, Zoya was detained at least a day later, when she returned to the village for the second time. Thirdly, Klubkov names the village Pepelishchevo, not Petrishchevo. The special officers could well have confused what kind of village it was, but it’s hard to believe that a person who was sent on a sabotage mission to a populated area could not have known its name. Fourthly, Klubkov states that he gave the Germans the girl’s secret identity, calling her Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya, but the Komsomol organizer could not know her last name - she called herself “Tanya”, and only the command staff of the unit knew the real identity of the girl. Fifthly, Klubkov claims that the Germans did not know that Kosmodemyanskaya set fire to houses, since there was no evidence against her. The peasants say that Zoya immediately confessed to the arson, since Molotov cocktails were found in her bag - there was simply no point in denying it.
Probably, the special officers, having read about the incident in the newspapers, decided to update the diamonds in their buttonholes and quickly prepared a case against the boy, based on their ideas about what happened. Here he is, Judas, who betrayed the Soviet Joan of Arc. This case could have turned Zoya's story into an ideal myth, but it was not advertised until the late 90s. Why did Soviet propaganda miss such a tidbit?
Because soon after Klubkov, the peasant Sviridov was shot, who was also accused of extraditing Kosmodemyanskaya. It turned out that two completely unrelated people were shot for the same crime, whose testimonies did not coincide with each other at all. How did this become possible? The fact is that Klubkov was tried by the Military Tribunal of the Western Front, and Sviridov - by the Military Tribunal of the NKVD troops of the Moscow District. Various courts. We didn’t figure it out, didn’t coordinate the actions, and it didn’t turn out well. Even if we consider one of the versions to be true, it turns out that one of the executed was shot by mistake.
At the same time, all the testimony of the village peasants spoke in favor of Sviridov’s guilt. Witnesses claimed that Sviridov discovered Zoya while trying to set fire to the barn, and this was completely inconsistent with the version of Klubkov’s betrayal, which completely contradicts numerous testimonies of peasants in all details without exception.
Undoubtedly, as part of the construction of the myth, its builders became acquainted with both versions, and then one of them was classified, just in case. It is interesting that newspapers had already begun to publish materials about the treacherous nature of Klubkov, but after the verdict they stopped and switched to Sviridov.
It is very noteworthy that the journalist Lidov, who promoted the story of Kosmodemyanskaya, knew that Klubkov was not a traitor and did not betray the girl, but he was silent about this, preferring not to go against the system - he only wrote in his personal diary that Klubkov did not betray Zoya.
Zoya was survived by her younger brother Alexander, who became a tank driver and died in April 1945. He was also awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union. After the war, the Kosmodemyanskys’ mother was treated kindly by the Soviet authorities, received an apartment in a prestigious Moscow district, became a member of the peace committee, and constantly spoke to pioneers and Komsomol members. There are no descendants of the Kosmodemyanskys left along this line; Lyubov died in 1978. There should have been many descendants from the line of the Churikov brothers and sisters; there are probably descendants from the line of Anatoly Kosmodemyansky’s brothers. One of them is known - this is a girl from the Ranetki group named Zhenya Ogurtsova, who introduces herself as Kosmodemyanskaya’s grandniece. It is believed that her maternal grandfather was Zoe's cousin. Whether this is true or not is quite difficult to find out, since the singer’s grandfather, Anatoly Kosmodemyansky, is the namesake of Zoya’s father, and all references to this name point to the latter. Theoretically, this is quite possible, since Anatoly had four brothers.
Why exactly did Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya receive such posthumous fame after the war? After all, she was not the only one who died in this way. The Germans hanged many underground women: Vera Tereshchenko, Maria Bruskina, Galina Arzhanova. In the end, there was Vera Voloshina from Zoya’s group - she went to another village and died almost on the same day. In the best case, they were awarded by posthumously being awarded the Order of the Patriotic War, and Zoya immediately received the Hero of the Union, and did not cause any damage to the Germans and died on the first mission.
The fact is that Zoya was the first to become known almost immediately, without delay. Journalist Lidov, who dug up the story, learned about it a month and a half later. At the beginning of 1942, it was still unclear where the pendulum would swing, so propaganda was in dire need of heroes. Such a hero was Kosmodemyanskaya, who, although she did not cause any damage to the Germans, went on a suicide mission and sacrificed her life at the call of the party. And all the other girls who appeared later were no longer needed for pragmatic propaganda - it was more convenient to concentrate all their striking power on one character rather than scatter their efforts. The same thing happened with Pavlik Morozov, and with Stakhanov, and with Alexander Matrosov. 
The most tragic character in this story is not Zoya at all. She at least received posthumous glory, which the other millions of Soviet citizens who died in that war did not have. And not even the peasants caught between the Soviet hammer and the Nazi anvil. The most tragic character in this story is 18-year-old Komsomol organizer Vasily Klubkov, who voluntarily went on a suicide mission, but instead of thanks and glory, he was shot by his own people - because the legendary Zoya needed an antagonist (and even a spare one). Some Soviet comrades still, out of inertia, continue to write angry articles about the traitor Klubkov, who allegedly handed over Kosmodemyanskaya to the Germans.
You can always say that Klubkov did not betray Zoya, but admitted that he was recruited by the Germans and released - that’s why he was shot, they say. But in general, this is a 50/50 story, and the same can be said about absolutely any Red Army soldier who was in German captivity. And there were many such cases - especially in the first year of the war, when the camps were not yet properly guarded and were located on Soviet territory. The entire case against Klubkov is based on his own testimony, which was clearly obtained under torture.
If any moral can be extracted from the real story of Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya, then only this: the Soviet government never spared Russian children."
Kosmodemyanskaya Zoya Anatolyevna, the truth about whose feat still haunts those who like to debunk Soviet heroes, was born on September 13, 1923 in the Tambov region, with. Aspen Guys. The girl’s parents were teachers, and her father’s ancestors were representatives of the clergy.
In 1929, the Kosmodemyansky family was forced to move to Siberia. According to the recollections of Zoya's mother, they did this to escape denunciation, since her husband opposed collectivization.
A year later, they managed to move to live in Moscow, thanks to a relative who served in the People's Commissariat for Education.
At school, Zoya was a good student; she loved literature, history, and wanted to enter the Literary Institute. But as Wikipedia writes, the romantically exalted girl, who reacted sharply to any injustice, suffered from nervous breakdowns, which were complicated by the meningitis she suffered in 1940. Despite a debilitating illness and many missed classes, Zoya found the strength to catch up with her classmates and finish her studies at school.
When the Great Patriotic War began, a girl among 2,000 young Komsomol members came to the Colosseum cinema as a volunteer, ready to go to the front. From there she was sent to a sabotage school, where after a short course of training she became a reconnaissance saboteur. Soon she was sent on her first mission - mining a road in the Volokolamsk area.
Meanwhile, on November 17, 1941, an order was issued from the Headquarters of the Supreme High Command on the obligation of sabotage groups to deprive the Nazis of any opportunity to settle for the winter in occupied villages, for which it was necessary to burn and destroy to the ground all populated areas behind enemy lines (an excerpt of the document is given on Wikipedia).
It was to carry out this order that on November 18 or 20 the commanders of the sabotage detachments, B.S. Krainov and P.S. Provorov (Zoya Anatolyevna was part of Provorov’s group) were supposed to burn ten settlements within a week, among which was the village of Petrishchevo in the Vereisky (now Ruzaevsky) district. While carrying out the task, both groups came under fire, and those who survived united under the command of B. Krainov.
On November 27, the survivors Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya, Boris Krainov and Vasily Klubkov managed to set fire to three residential buildings in the village of Petrishchevo.
The truth (!?) about the feat of Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya
While carrying out the task, V. Klubkov was captured, B. Krainov, not knowing anything about this, waited for all three of them at the appointed place, but did not wait and returned to the detachment. Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya also did not find her comrades and therefore decided to return to the village to destroy at least one more house with the Nazis. Captured Klubkov later, during interrogation by the Soviet military, confessed that he had betrayed Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya to the Nazis out of fear and cowardice. But, according to some historians, pressure was put on him so that the truth about the exploit of the cosmos was untainted by her allegedly bad qualities as a scout who allowed herself to be captured.
Be that as it may, the Germans already knew that saboteurs were operating in the village, so she was quickly discovered and captured. The entire further truth about the partisan’s feat was told by eyewitnesses of this event - local residents who were struck by the courage and fortitude of Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya, who did not submit to the enemy even after cruel torture.
During interrogation, she called herself Tanya and refused to provide any information or name other names. To force her to speak, the Nazis stripped Zoya naked and beat her with rubber sticks. Then they took her naked and barefoot through the cold, where the girl was subjected to bullying by local women, whose houses she set on fire.
The next morning, she was taken outside to the gallows erected for execution. The table “House Arsonist” was placed on her chest. According to the testimony of local residents, Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya behaved proudly and with dignity, until the last moment she called on people to fight the Nazis, and offered the Germans themselves to surrender. The enraged executioners knocked the stool out from under the unconquered woman’s feet, not allowing her to finish her fiery speech.
The body of Zoya Anatolyevna Kosmodemyanskaya hung on the gallows for about a month, subjected to repeated abuse by the Nazis; in the end, she was buried by the residents of Petrishchevo.
In May 1942, the ashes of Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya were transferred with military honors from Petrishchevo to Moscow to the Novodevichy cemetery. In 1954, a monument in the form of a half-length sculpture on a cylindrical pedestal was erected at her grave. Zoya was depicted as a partisan with intensely strong-willed facial features. Her relatives found an amazing portrait resemblance of the monument to Zoya. In the second half of the 80s, this monument was replaced by another, more pathetic one. In this image, she stands with her head thrown back and her arm to the side. Her entire figure symbolizes pain and suffering.
As reported on Wikipedia, for the first time the whole truth about feat and the fate of Zoya Anatolyevna Kosmodemyanskaya found out Pyotr Lidov, who published a story about her in the newspaper Pravda (1942), entitled “Tanya”. Lidov compiled his description of those events based on collected eyewitness accounts of what happened. So the identity of Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya was established, and her body was exhumed and identified.
On February 16, 1942, she, the first woman from the Second World War, was awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union, and her image forever became the standard of courage, perseverance and loyalty to their ideals of Soviet youth during the war.
Even at the height of the war, in 1943, Vasily Dekhterev staged the opera “Tanya”. And in 1944, the film studio “Soyuzdetflm” released the film “Zoya” directed by Leo Arnstam, which shows the life and feat of the heroine. The film features music by Dmitry Shestakovich. These works were intended to use her example to inspire the younger generation to new exploits.
Of the entire Soviet pantheon of Komsomol heroes, Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya became the most famous. After the war, streets throughout the country and beyond were named in Zoya’s honor, museums were opened, and monuments were erected. The first of them appeared in Kyiv in 1945. In total, more than 50 monuments and busts were erected to Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya in the Soviet Union. Also, there are at least two dozen works of art dedicated to the feat of Kosmodemyanskaya. In addition, many objects were named after her, both in the Soviet Union and beyond its borders - schools, pioneer camps, ships, trains and others. The tank regiment of the National People's Army of the GDR bore her name.
In the early 90s, when there was a boom in publications on history and they were looking for unknown facts, they began to write that Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya had not accomplished any feat. Moreover, she set fire to the houses of civilians, and the peasants themselves handed her over to the Germans...
Another “stuck” version: as a child, Zoya suffered from severe meningitis, had mental problems, suffered from pyromania - just give me matches and kerosene...
“It’s all a lie,” says Alexandra Nikolaevna Nikitina.
She is the daughter of Kosmodemyanskaya’s military friend, intelligence officer Claudia Miloradova, who served with Zoya. Miloradova survived the war and passed away in 2007. But her war diaries remained, which we had the opportunity to leaf through.
A scout is a suicide bomber
From the memoirs of Klavdia Miloradova: “The first time I saw Zoya was near the Colosseum cinema on Chistye Prudy (now the Sovremennik Theater. - Author)
– there was a collection point for volunteers there. Tall, dark. Brown coat, wool knitted hat. Short hair. Expressive dark gray eyes with long eyelashes. At first they didn’t even want to take her into the sabotage group: a scout should be inconspicuous, but she was bright and beautiful. But Zoya said: “Accept it - you won’t be mistaken in me.” ...
Although she was quiet and modest, she had strong convictions. (“And absolutely healthy!” notes Alexandra Nikolaevna. “After all, future intelligence officers underwent a serious medical examination; a sick person would not be accepted into intelligence.”) ... I approached her, said my name, she extended her hand - “Zoya.” “Are you going to the labor front?” – I asked. She laughed: “Yes.” It was like a password. We told our parents that we were going to the labor front...
A car pulled up and we got into the back with other guys and girls. Someone took out a button accordion, and we sang: “The order has been given for him to go to the west,” and then we even danced right on the move in the car - hopaka and polka.
Zoya did not take part in the dances. She said: “I don’t dance and sing well, but I love listening and watching.”
Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya Photo:
From the home archive of A. Nikitina... Moscow seemed alive to us - a girl more beautiful than whom you could not find in the world. And the enemy was moving towards her. Moscow, as if frozen in a daze, begged for help: “Help, protect...” Could we remain indifferent?! They went to the district Komsomol committee and demanded that we be sent to the front. We heard in response:
“You understand, scouts are suicide bombers, you will not return!” We stood up at our sides: “When should we start completing the task?”
Saved my friend's life
“Zoya saved my mother’s life,” says Alexandra Nikitina. “Mom had a pistol with a tight trigger, Zoya knew this, and once before the task she firmly said: “Klava, let’s exchange weapons!” Still, I go as part of a group, and you happen to be alone...” A few days later, my mother ran into German dugouts in the forest. I went into one - no one was there, and there were cards and documents on the table. Mom grabbed them, got ready to run away - and then a German entered. Hefty, pink-cheeked, blue-eyed. Mom later said: “He grabbed the pistol, but I shot first, from Zoya, with the trigger not retracted. The fascist squealed like a pig and fell…” The documents turned out to be incredibly valuable for our troops - for them my mother was nominated for her first military award, the Order of the Red Star.
Zoya's mother Lyubov Timofeevna at her daughter's funeral. April 1942 Photo: From the home archive of A. Nikitina And here is a new task.
Zoya and a scout named Klubkov were sent to Petrishchevo. Kosmodemyanskaya did not return from there. Later it turned out that her partner was caught by the Germans, broke under torture and betrayed his fighting friend. Local residents will tell you how the Nazis tortured Zoya. They beat me, stripped me, dragged me around the village in a nightgown in forty-degree frost, and then hanged me in the central square. They even mocked the dead:
They stabbed with bayonets and cut out their chests. ...The story of the partisan was described in an article by a journalist from the Pravda newspaper. – The editors were literally inundated with letters from women from all over the USSR: this is my daughter! In April 1942, the military command decided to exhume the body in order to officially establish the truth.
Photo: From the home archive A. Nikitina From Moscow to Petrishchevo, Kosmodemyanskaya’s mother Lyubov Timofeevna, reconnaissance detachment commander Arthur Sprogis and friend Klavdiya Miloradova came to the identification. From the memoirs of Klavdia Miloradova: “Zoya was lying in front of me, as if she was sleeping.
Even after cruel torture, she has the face of a calm, asleep person. Her body was not decomposed at all. As they explained later, due to winter frosts and low temperatures, the ground was frozen and Zoya lay as if in a refrigerator. Lyubov Timofeevna knelt down in front of her daughter, and before my eyes her hair turned white. She also lost her hearing..."
– In the same 1942, my mother was sent deep behind the German lines in Belarus. And she worked in the commandant’s office of the German General Horst, later recognized as a war criminal, and passed on secret information to ours,” continues Alexandra Nikitina.
– The fact that she remained alive is a miracle... Mom celebrated the victory in Moscow. She said: strangers cried and hugged. The loudspeakers played military marches, including my mother’s favorite song, “Wide is my native country.” Mom said more than once: “I dream of one thing: that no one will ever have to go through what we went through. At what cost did we get the victory..."
Many people still don’t know what Zoya’s feat was. She managed to burn down a German communications center. And some fascist units in the Moscow region were unable to interact with each other. And then our people attacked - and the Germans stationed in that area began to retreat. This was the first, in fact, major victory of our troops near Moscow in the winter of 1941,” our interlocutor summed up.
War heroine intelligence officer K. A. Miloradova Photo: Victoria Kataeva /
short facts
They wrote that Kosmodemyanskaya doused houses with gasoline or a Molotov cocktail. This is wrong. Alexandra Nikitina: “They didn’t carry kerosene with them. They were given two Molotov cocktails, which were heavy and uncomfortable. Mom threw hers away. And Zoya wore it. She said: “I have no right to throw away state property.” But she set the fire with the help of special thermite matches and balls - small, like the ones the kids used to play lapta with, but the fire cannot be extinguished by three fire trucks.”
After exhumation, Kosmodemyanskaya’s body was cremated. Previously, relatives and friends were allowed to watch the terrible process through a peephole in the crematorium door. Alexandra Nikitina: “The coffin was open, without a lid. And mom, approaching the peephole, saw that Zoya... sat up abruptly. Then it turned out: the physical reaction of the body, the tendons were supposed to be cut in the morgue, but for some reason they forgot. And mom screamed: “She’s alive! You are burying me alive!” – and lost consciousness. Later, everyone was banned from observing the cremation.”
Zoya's colleague Nikolai Razumtsev: Photo: Victoria Kataeva
Zoya's co-worker Nikolai Razumtsev: I dreamed of hugging my “old” mother
The only fighter from Kosmodemyanskaya’s detachment who has survived to this day is Nikolai Vasilyevich Razumtsev. The 91-year-old veteran lives in Moscow.
Kosmodemyanskaya Zoya Anatolyevna
Hero of the Soviet Union
Knight of the Order of Lenin
Zoya Anatolyevna Kosmodemyanskaya was born on September 13, 1923 in the village of Osino-Gai, Gavrilovsky district, Tambov region, into a family of hereditary local priests.
Her grandfather, priest Pyotr Ioannovich Kosmodemyansky, was executed by the Bolsheviks for hiding counter-revolutionaries in the church. The Bolsheviks captured him on the night of August 27, 1918, and after severe torture they drowned him in a pond. Zoya's father Anatoly studied at the theological seminary, but did not graduate from it. He married a local teacher, Lyubov Churikova, and in 1929 the Kosmodemyansky family ended up in Siberia. According to some statements, they were exiled, but according to Zoya’s mother, Lyubov Kosmodemyanskaya, they fled from denunciation. For a year, the family lived in the village of Shitkino on the Yenisei, then managed to move to Moscow - perhaps thanks to the efforts of sister Lyubov Kosmodemyaskaya, who served in the People's Commissariat for Education. In the children's book “The Tale of Zoya and Shura,” Lyubov Kosmodemyanskaya also reported that the move to Moscow occurred after a letter from sister Olga.
Zoya's father, Anatoly Kosmodemyansky, died in 1933 after an intestinal operation, and the children (Zoya and her younger brother Alexander) were left to be raised by their mother.
At school, Zoya studied well, was especially interested in history and literature, and dreamed of entering the Literary Institute. However, her relationships with her classmates did not always develop in the best way - in 1938 she was elected Komsomol group organizer, but then was not re-elected. According to Lyubov Kosmodemyanskaya, Zoya had been suffering from a nervous disease since 1939, when she moved from 8th to 9th grade... Her peers did not understand her. She didn’t like the fickleness of her friends: Zoya often sat alone, worried about it, saying that she was a lonely person and that she couldn’t find a friend.
In 1940, she suffered from acute meningitis, after which she underwent rehabilitation in the winter of 1941 at a sanatorium for nervous diseases in Sokolniki, where she became friends with the writer Arkady Gaidar, who was lying there. That same year, she graduated from the 9th grade of secondary school No. 201, despite a large number of missed classes due to illness.
On October 31, 1941, Zoya, among 2,000 Komsomol volunteers, came to the gathering place at the Colosseum cinema and from there was taken to the sabotage school, becoming a fighter in the reconnaissance and sabotage unit, officially called the “partisan unit 9903 of the headquarters of the Western Front.” After three days of training, Zoya as part of the group was transferred to the Volokolamsk area on November 4, where the group successfully dealt with the mining of the road.
On November 17, Stalin issued Order No. 0428, which ordered that “the German army be deprived of the opportunity to be stationed in villages and cities, drive the German invaders out of all populated areas into the cold fields, smoke them out of all rooms and warm shelters and force them to freeze in the open air,” with which the goal is “to destroy and burn to the ground all populated areas in the rear of German troops at a distance of 40-60 km in depth from the front line and 20-30 km to the right and left of the roads.”
To carry out this order, on November 18th (according to other sources, 20th) the commanders of sabotage groups of unit No. 9903 P.S. Provorov (Zoya was included in his group) and B.S. Krainev were ordered to burn within 5-7 days 10 settlements, including the village of Petrishchevo (Ruzsky district, Moscow region). The group members each had 3 Molotov cocktails, a pistol (for Zoya it was a revolver), dry rations for 5 days and a bottle of vodka. Having gone out on a mission together, both groups (10 people each) came under fire near the village of Golovkovo (10 kilometers from Petrishchev), suffered heavy losses and were partially scattered. Later, their remnants united under the command of Boris Krainev.
On November 27 at 2 o'clock in the morning, Boris Krainev, Vasily Klubkov and Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya set fire to three houses of residents of Karelova, Solntsev and Smirnov in Petrishchevo, while the Germans lost 20 horses.
What is known about what happened next is that Krainev did not wait for Zoya and Klubkov at the agreed upon meeting place and left, safely returning to his people. Klubkov was captured by the Germans, and Zoya, having missed her comrades and being left alone, decided to return to Petrishchevo and continue the arson. However, both the Germans and local residents were already on guard, and the Germans created a guard of several Petrishchevsky men who were tasked with monitoring the appearance of arsonists.
With the onset of the evening of November 28, while trying to set fire to the barn of S.A. Sviridov (one of the “guards” appointed by the Germans), Zoya was noticed by the owner. The Germans who were quartered by him grabbed the girl at about 7 o'clock in the evening. Sviridov was awarded a bottle of vodka by the Germans for this and was subsequently sentenced by a Soviet court to death. During interrogation, Kosmodemyanskaya identified herself as Tanya and did not say anything definite. Having stripped her naked, she was flogged with belts, then the guard assigned to her for 4 hours led her barefoot, in only her underwear, along the street in the cold. Local residents Solina and Smirnova (a fire victim) also tried to join in the torture of Zoya, throwing a pot of slop at Zoya. Both Solina and Smirnova were subsequently sentenced to death.
At 10:30 the next morning, Zoya was taken out into the street, where a hanging noose had already been erected, and a sign with the inscription “Arsonist” was hung on her chest. When Zoya was led to the gallows, Smirnova hit her legs with a stick, shouting: “Who did you harm? She burned my house, but did nothing to the Germans...”
One of the witnesses describes the execution itself as follows: “They led her by the arms all the way to the gallows. She walked straight, with her head raised, silently, proudly. They brought him to the gallows. There were many Germans and civilians around the gallows. They brought her to the gallows, ordered her to expand the circle around the gallows and began to photograph her... She had a bag with bottles with her. She shouted: “Citizens! Don't stand there, don't look, but we need to help fight! This death of mine is my achievement.” 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 framed 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. She wanted to say something else, but at that moment the box was removed from under her feet, and she hung. She grabbed the rope with her hand, but the German hit her hands. After that everyone dispersed."
The above footage of Zoe's execution was taken by one of the Wehrmacht soldiers, who was soon killed.
Zoya's body hung on the gallows for about a month, repeatedly being abused by German soldiers passing through the village. On New Year's Day 1942, drunken Germans tore off the hanged woman's clothes and once again violated the body, stabbing it with knives and cutting off her chest. The next day, the Germans gave the order to remove the gallows and the body was buried by local residents outside the village.
Subsequently, Zoya was reburied at the Novodevichy cemetery in Moscow.
Zoya’s fate became widely known from the article “Tanya” by Pyotr Lidov, published in the newspaper Pravda on January 27, 1942. The author accidentally heard about the execution of Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya in Petrishchev 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. It was claimed that the article was noted by Stalin, who allegedly said: “Here is a national heroine,” and it was from this moment that the propaganda campaign around Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya began.
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 to posthumously award her the title of Hero of the Soviet Union.
During and after perestroika, in the wake of anti-communist propaganda, new information about Zoya appeared in the press. As a rule, it was based on rumors, not always accurate memories of eyewitnesses, and in some cases, speculation - which was inevitable in a situation where documentary information contradicting the official “myth” continued to be kept secret or was just being declassified. M.M. Gorinov wrote about these publications that they “reflected some facts of the biography of Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya, which were hushed up during Soviet times, but were reflected, as in a distorting mirror, in a monstrously distorted form.”
Some of these publications claimed that Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya suffered from schizophrenia, others - that she arbitrarily set fire to houses in which there were no Germans, and was captured, beaten and handed over to the Germans by the Petrishchevites themselves. It was also suggested that in fact it was not Zoya who accomplished the feat, but another Komsomol saboteur, Lilya Azolina.
Some newspapers wrote that she was suspected of schizophrenia, based on the article “Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya: Heroine or Symbol?” in the newspaper “Arguments and Facts” (1991, No. 43). The authors of the article - the leading doctor of the Scientific and Methodological Center for Child Psychiatry A. Melnikova, S. Yuryeva and N. Kasmelson - wrote: “Before the war in 1938-39, a 14-year-old girl named Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya was repeatedly examined at the Leading Scientific and Methodological Center Center for Child Psychiatry and was an inpatient in the children's department of the hospital named after. Kashchenko. 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.”
No other evidence or documentary evidence of suspicion of schizophrenia was mentioned in the articles, although the memoirs of her mother and classmates did talk about a “nervous disease” that struck her in grades 8-9 (as a result of the mentioned conflict with classmates), for which she was examined. In subsequent publications, newspapers citing Argumenty i Fakty often omitted the word “suspected.”
In recent years, there was a version that Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya was betrayed by her squadmate (and Komsomol organizer) Vasily Klubkov. It was based on materials from the Klubkov case, declassified and published in the Izvestia newspaper in 2000. Klubkov, who reported to his unit at the beginning of 1942, stated that he was captured by the Germans, escaped, was captured again, escaped again and managed to get to his own. However, during interrogations at SMERSH, he changed his testimony and stated that he was captured along with Zoya and betrayed her. Klubkov was shot “for treason to the Motherland” on April 16, 1942. His testimony contradicted the testimony of witnesses - village residents, and was also contradictory.
Researcher M.M. Gorinov assumed that the SMERSHists forced Klubkov to incriminate himself either for career reasons (in order to receive his share of dividends from the unfolding propaganda campaign around Zoya), or for propaganda reasons (to “justify” Zoya’s capture, which was unworthy, according to the ideology of that time , Soviet fighter). However, the version of betrayal was never launched into propaganda circulation.
In 2005, a documentary film “Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya. The truth about the feat."
Text prepared by Andrey Goncharov
Materials used:
Internet materials
ANOTHER LOOK
“The Truth about Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya”
The story of Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya’s feat since the war era is essentially textbook. As they say, this has been written and rewritten. Nevertheless, in the press, and recently on the Internet, no, no, and some “revelation” of a modern historian will appear: Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya was not a defender of the Fatherland, but an arsonist who destroyed villages near Moscow, dooming the local population to death in severe frosts. Therefore, they say, the residents of Petrishchevo themselves seized her and handed her over to the occupation authorities. And when the girl was brought to execution, the peasants allegedly even cursed her.
"Secret" mission
Lies rarely arise out of nowhere; their breeding ground is all sorts of “secrets” and omissions of official interpretations of events. Some circumstances of Zoya's exploit were classified, and because of this, somewhat distorted from the very beginning. Until recently, the official versions did not even clearly define who she was or what exactly she did in Petrishchevo. Zoya was called either a Moscow Komsomol member who went behind enemy lines to take revenge, or a partisan reconnaissance woman captured in Perishchevo while carrying out a combat mission.
Not so long ago I met front-line intelligence veteran Alexandra Potapovna Fedulina, who knew Zoya well. The old intelligence officer said:
— Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya was not a partisan at all.
She was a Red Army soldier in a sabotage brigade led by the legendary Arthur Karlovich Sprogis. In June 1941, he formed a special military unit No. 9903 to carry out sabotage operations behind enemy lines. Its core consisted of volunteers from Komsomol organizations in Moscow and the Moscow region, and the command staff was recruited from students of the Frunze Military Academy. During the Battle of Moscow, 50 combat groups and detachments were trained in this military unit of the intelligence department of the Western Front. In total, from September 1941 to February 1942, they made 89 penetrations behind enemy lines, destroyed 3,500 German soldiers and officers, eliminated 36 traitors, blew up 13 fuel tanks and 14 tanks. In October 1941, we studied in the same group with Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya at the brigade reconnaissance school. Then together we went behind enemy lines on special missions. In November 1941, I was wounded, and when I returned from the hospital, I learned the tragic news of Zoya’s martyrdom.
— Why was the fact that Zoya was a fighter in the active army kept silent for a long time? — I asked Fedulina.
— Because the documents that determined the field of activity, in particular, of the Sprogis brigade, were classified.
Later, I had the opportunity to familiarize myself with the recently declassified order of the Supreme Command Headquarters No. 0428 dated November 17, 1941, signed by Stalin. I quote: It is necessary to “deprive the German army of the opportunity to be located in villages and cities, drive the German invaders out of all populated areas into the cold fields, smoke them out of all rooms and warm shelters and force them to freeze in the open air. Destroy and burn to the ground all populated areas in the rear of German troops at a distance of 40-60 km in depth from the front line and 20-30 km to the right and left of the roads. To destroy populated areas within the specified radius, immediately deploy aviation, make extensive use of artillery and mortar fire, reconnaissance teams, skiers and sabotage groups equipped with Molotov cocktails, grenades and demolition devices. In the event of a forced withdrawal of our units... take the Soviet population with us and be sure to destroy all populated areas without exception, so that the enemy cannot use them.”
This is the task that the soldiers of the Sprogis brigade, including Red Army soldier Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya, performed in the Moscow region. Probably, after the war, the leaders of the country and the Armed Forces did not want to exaggerate the information that soldiers in the active army were burning villages near Moscow, so the above-mentioned order from Headquarters and other documents of this kind were not declassified for a long time.
Of course, this order reveals a very painful and controversial page of the Moscow Battle. But the truth of war can be much more cruel than our current understanding of it. It is unknown how the bloodiest battle of World War II would have ended if the Nazis had been given full opportunity to rest in flooded village huts and fatten up on collective farm grub. In addition, many fighters of the Sprogis brigade tried to blow up and set fire only to those huts where the fascists were quartered and headquarters were located. It is impossible not to emphasize that when there is a life-or-death struggle, at least two truths are manifested in people’s actions: one is philistine (to survive at any cost), the other is heroic (readiness to self-sacrifice for the sake of Victory). It is the collision of these two truths, both in 1941 and today, that occurs around Zoya’s feat.
What happened in Petrishchevo
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. Already in the occupied territory, the fighters in the depths of the forest ran into an enemy patrol. Someone died, someone, showing cowardice, turned back, and only three - group commander Boris Krainov, Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya and Komsomol organizer of the reconnaissance school Vasily Klubkov continued moving along the previously determined route. On the night of November 27-28, they reached the village of Petrishchevo, where, in addition to other military installations of the Nazis, they were to destroy a field radio and radio-technical reconnaissance point carefully disguised as a stable.
The eldest, Boris Krainov, assigned roles: Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya penetrates into the southern part of the village and destroys houses where the Germans live with Molotov cocktails, Boris Krainov himself - in the central part, where the headquarters is located, and Vasily Klubkov - in the northern part. Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya successfully completed a combat mission - she destroyed two houses and an enemy car with KS bottles. However, when returning back to the forest, when she was already far from the site of sabotage, she was noticed by the local elder Sviridov. He called the fascists. And Zoya was arrested. The grateful occupiers poured a glass of vodka for Sviridov, as local residents told about this after the liberation of Petrishchevo.
Zoya was tortured for a long time and brutally, but she did not give out any information about the brigade or where her comrades should wait.
However, the Nazis soon captured Vasily Klubkov. He showed cowardice and told everything he knew. Boris Krainov miraculously managed to escape into the forest.
Traitors
Subsequently, fascist intelligence officers recruited Klubkov and, with a “legend” about his escape from captivity, sent him back to the Sprogis brigade. But he was quickly exposed. During interrogation, Klubkov spoke about Zoya’s feat.
“Clarify the circumstances under which you were captured?
— Approaching the house I had identified, I broke the bottle with “KS” and threw it, but it did not catch fire. At this time, I saw two German sentries not far from me and, showing cowardice, ran away into the forest, located 300 meters from the village. As soon as I ran into the forest, two German soldiers pounced on me, took away my revolver with cartridges, bags with five bottles of “KS” and a bag with food supplies, among which was also a liter of vodka.
—What evidence did you give to the German army officer?
“As soon as I was handed over to the officer, I showed cowardice and said that there were three of us in total, naming the names of Krainov and Kosmodemyanskaya. The officer gave some order in German to the German soldiers; they quickly left the house and a few minutes later brought Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya. I don’t know whether they detained Krainov.
— Were you present during the interrogation of Kosmodemyanskaya?
- Yes, I was present. The officer asked her how she set the village on fire. She replied that she did not set the village on fire. After this, the officer began to beat Zoya and demanded testimony, but she categorically refused to give one. In her presence, I showed the officer that it was indeed Kosmodemyanskaya Zoya, who arrived with me in the village to carry out acts of sabotage, and that she set fire to the southern outskirts of the village. Kosmodemyanskaya did not answer the officer’s questions after that. Seeing that Zoya was silent, several officers stripped her naked and severely beat her with rubber truncheons for 2–3 hours, extracting her testimony. Kosmodemyanskaya told the officers: “Kill me, I won’t tell you anything.” After which she was taken away, and I never saw her again.”
From the interrogation protocol of A.V. Smirnova dated May 12, 1942: “The next day after the fire, I was at my burned house, citizen Solina came up to me and said: “Come on, I’ll show you who burned you.” After these words she said, we headed together to the Kulikov house, where the headquarters had been transferred. Entering the house, they saw Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya, who was under the guard of German soldiers. Solina and I began to scold her, in addition to scolding, I swung my mitten at Kosmodemyanskaya twice, and Solina hit her with her hand. Further, Valentina Kulik did not allow us to mock the partisan, who kicked us out of her house. During the execution of Kosmodemyanskaya, when the Germans brought her to the gallows, I took a wooden stick, walked up to the girl and, in front of everyone present, hit her on the legs. It was at that moment when the partisan was standing under the gallows; I don’t remember what I said.”
Execution
From the testimony of V.A. Kulik, a resident of the village of Petrishchevo: “They hung a sign on her chest, on which was written in Russian and German: “Arsonist.” They led her by the arms all the way to the gallows, because due to torture she could no longer walk on her own. There were many Germans and civilians around the gallows. 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 the army fight! My death for my Motherland is my achievement in life.” Then she said: “Comrades, victory will be ours. German soldiers, before it’s too late, surrender. The Soviet Union is invincible and will not be defeated." She said all this while she was being photographed.
Then they set up the box. She, without any command, having gained strength from somewhere, stood on the box herself. 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. She wanted to say something else, but at that moment the box was removed from under her feet, and she hung. She instinctively grabbed the rope with her hand, but the German hit her on the hand. After that everyone dispersed."
The girl’s body hung in the center of Petrishchevo for a whole month. Only on January 1, 1942, the Germans allowed residents to bury Zoya.
To each his own
On a January night in 1942, during the battle for Mozhaisk, several journalists found themselves in a village hut that had survived the fire in the Pushkino region. Pravda correspondent Pyotr Lidov talked with an elderly peasant who said that the occupation overtook him in the village of Petrishchevo, where he saw the execution of a Muscovite girl: “They hanged her, and she gave a speech. They hanged her, and she kept threatening them..."
The old man’s story shocked Lidov, and that same night he left for Petrishchevo. The correspondent did not calm down until he spoke with all the residents of the village and found out all the details of the death of our Russian Joan of Arc - that’s what he called the executed partisan, as he believed. Soon he returned to Petrishchevo along with Pravda photojournalist Sergei Strunnikov. They opened the grave, took a photo, and showed it to the partisans.
One of the partisans of the Vereisky detachment recognized the executed girl, whom he had met in the forest on the eve of the tragedy that took place in Petrishchevo. She called herself Tanya. The heroine was included in Lidov’s article under this name. And only later it was discovered that this was a pseudonym that Zoya used for conspiracy purposes.
The real name of the woman executed in Petrishchevo in early February 1942 was established by a commission of the Moscow City Committee of the Komsomol. The act dated February 4 stated:
"1. Citizens of the village of Petrishchevo (last names follow) identified from photographs presented by the intelligence department of the headquarters of the Western Front that the hanged person was Komsomol member Z.A. Kosmodemyanskaya.
2. The commission excavated the grave where Zoya Anatolyevna Kosmodemyanskaya was buried. An examination of the corpse... once again confirmed that the hanged person was Comrade. Kosmodemyanskaya Z.A.”
On February 5, 1942, the commission of the Moscow City Committee of the Komsomol prepared a note to the Moscow City Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks with a proposal to nominate Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya for awarding the title of Hero of the Soviet Union (posthumously). And already on February 16, 1942, the corresponding Decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR was published. As a result, Red Army soldier Z.A. Kosmodemyanskaya became the first female holder of the Golden Star of the Hero in the Great Patriotic War.
Headman Sviridov, traitor Klubkov, fascist accomplices Solina and Smirnova were sentenced to capital punishment.
