Torture of Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya summary. Combat mission of Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya’s group

"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 devices.

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 to death 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 down 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 people. 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, they allowed her to sleep, untied her hands and assigned guards 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 fire to - 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, Kosmodemyanskaya was brought 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 arrest mention 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, does not mention Klubkov either. 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 secret identity of the girl, 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, who was also accused of extraditing Kosmodemyanskaya, was shot. 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."

Zoya Anatolyevna Kosmodemyanskaya. Born on September 13, 1923 in the village of Osino-Gai, Tambov province, she died on November 29, 1941 in the village of Petrishchevo, Moscow region. Soviet intelligence officer-saboteur, fighter of the sabotage and reconnaissance group of the headquarters of the Western Front, abandoned in 1941 to the German rear. The first woman awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union (February 16, 1942; posthumously) during the Great Patriotic War.

Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya was born on September 13, 1923 in the village of Osino-Gai (Osinov Gai / Osinovye Gai) in the Tambov province (now Gavrilovsky district of the Tambov region). According to other sources, she was born on September 8.

Father - Anatoly Petrovich Kosmodemyansky, teacher, from the clergy.

Mother - Lyubov Timofeevna (nee Churikova), teacher.

The surname comes from the name of the church of Saints Kozma and Damian, where their ancestor served (in the language of worship it was written as “Kozmodemyansky”).

Grandfather - Pyotr Ioannovich Kozmodemyansky was a priest of the Znamenskaya Church in the village of Osino-Gai. According to the old-timers of the village, on the night of August 27, 1918, he was captured by the Bolsheviks and, after severe torture, drowned in the Sosulinsky pond. His corpse was discovered only in the spring of 1919 and was buried next to the church, which was closed by the Soviet authorities in 1927.

Younger brother - Alexander Kosmodemyansky, Soviet tanker, Hero of the Soviet Union. After the death of Zoe, he went to the front at the age of 17, wanting to avenge the death of his sister. He fought on a KV tank, on which he wrote the inscription “For Zoya.” Known for his exploits during the storming of Königsberg. On April 6, 1945, Alexander in Königsberg on a self-propelled gun SU-152 independently crossed the Landgraben Canal, destroyed an enemy battery there and held a bridgehead until the crossing of Soviet troops was created. On April 8, a battery of self-propelled guns SU-152 under his command captured the key defense point of Koenigsberg, Fort Queen Louise. On April 13, 1945, in a battle with an enemy anti-tank battery in the north-west of Köningsberg, after his self-propelled gun was knocked out, with the support of other self-propelled guns under his command, he entered into a shooting battle with German infantry and captured a key strong point in the town of Vierbrudenkrug, was fatally wounded in this battle.

In 1929, the Kosmodemyansky family ended up in Siberia. According to some reports, they were exiled for their father’s speech against collectivization. According to the mother's testimony, published in 1986, they fled to Siberia to escape denunciation.

For a year, the family lived in the village of Shitkino (Irkutsk region) on Biryusa, but then managed to move to Moscow - perhaps thanks to the efforts of Lyubov’s sister Olga, who served in the People’s Commissariat for Education. In the book “The Tale of Zoya and Shura,” Lyubov Kosmodemyanskaya reports that the move to Moscow occurred after a letter from her sister.

The family lived on the far outskirts of Moscow, not far from the Podmoskovnaya railway station, first on the Old Highway (now Vucheticha Street in the Timiryazevsky Park area), then in a two-story wooden house in Aleksandrovsky Proezd, house No. 7 (now the Koptevo district, along Zoya and Alexandra Kosmodemyansky Street , 35/1; the house has not survived).

In 1933, my father died after surgery. Zoya and her younger brother Alexander remained in the arms of their mother.

At school, Zoya studied well, was especially interested in history and literature, and dreamed of entering the Literary Institute. In October 1938, Zoya joined the ranks of the Lenin Komsomol.

Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya during the war years:

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.”

Secretary of the Komsomol MGK A. N. Shelepin and the leaders of reconnaissance and sabotage military unit No. 9903 warned recruits that the participants in the operations were essentially suicide bombers, since their expected level of losses for reconnaissance and sabotage groups was 95%, with a significant part of saboteur recruits most likely will die from torture by the Germans if captured, so those who do not agree to die painfully must leave the intelligence school.

Kosmodemyanskaya, like most of her comrades, remained in the intelligence school. After a short training lasting three days, Zoya as part of the group was transferred to the Volokolamsk area on November 4, where the group successfully completed the task of mining the road.

At that moment, the decision was made to apply scorched earth tactics on a large scale. The Supreme High Command Order No. 428, issued on November 17, ordered to deprive the “German army 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,” for which purpose “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.”

Combat mission of Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya’s group:

In pursuance of order No. 428, on November 18 (according to other sources - 20), the commanders of sabotage groups of unit No. 9903 P. S. Provorov (Zoya was included in his group) and B. S. Krainov were ordered to burn 10 populated areas within 5-7 days points, including the village of Petrishchevo (Vereysky district) (now Ruzsky district of the Moscow region).

To complete the task, the saboteurs were given Molotov cocktails and dry rations for 5 days. Despite the fact that the saboteurs were most likely supposed to set fire to houses in which there were German soldiers with automatic weapons, the saboteurs were only given pistols as weapons, including those that had problems with the mechanics of the platoon. Since the fires could unmask the saboteurs, it was assumed that they would sleep in the cold in the forest without fire and warm up with alcohol, for which the saboteurs were given a bottle of vodka.

Having gone out on a mission together, both groups of saboteurs (10 people each) near the village of Golovkovo (10 km from Petrishchev) were ambushed, organized as part of the military outpost of villages used for logistics of German troops. Lacking serious weapons, the saboteurs suffered heavy losses and partially dispersed. Some of the saboteurs were captured.

The Nazis brutally tortured Vera Voloshina from the group, trying to find out what task the group had. Having failed to achieve results, the Nazis took her to execution. The severely beaten Vera stood up and shouted before her death: “You came to our country and will find your death here! You will not take Moscow... Farewell, Motherland! Death to fascism!

The remnants of the sabotage group united under the command of Boris Krainov. Since their comrades died during interrogation, but did not reveal the purpose of the sabotage, they were able to continue the mission.

On November 27 at 2 a.m., Boris Krainov, Vasily Klubkov and Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya set fire to three houses in Petrishchevo (residents of Karelova, Solntsev and Smirnov). During interrogation, Zoya also stated that she managed to destroy 20 horses for transporting goods by the Nazis in the outbuildings of the burned yards. Smirnova A.V. confirmed this fact with her testimony.

Zoya’s friend from the sabotage school, Klavdiya Miloradova, claims that one of the houses Zoya burned was used as a German communications center. According to witnesses, the house of the Voronin family in the village was indeed used as a headquarters for officers of the relocated troops, but was not burned.

Many members of the sabotage group note that houses were set on fire in which German soldiers spent the night, and also kept their horses in the courtyards, which were used to transport military cargo.

After the first attempt at arson, Krainov did not wait for Zoya and Klubkov at the agreed upon meeting place and left, returning to his own people. Later, Klubkov was also captured by the Germans.

Zoya, having missed her comrades and being left alone, decided to return to Petrishchevo and continue the arson. However, the German military authorities in the village had by that time organized a gathering of local residents, at which they created a militia to prevent further arson. Its members wore white bands on their arms.

Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya in captivity:

On the evening of November 28, while trying to set fire to Sviridov’s barn, Kosmodemyanskaya was noticed by the owner. The Germans who were quartered with him, called by him, grabbed the girl at about 7 o’clock in the evening. According to fellow villagers, Sviridov was rewarded by the Germans with a bottle of vodka for this. Sviridov was a member of the self-defense group organized by the Germans to prevent arson and wore a white armband as a distinctive sign. Subsequently, Sviridov was sentenced by a Soviet court to death.

It is known that Kosmodemyanskaya did not shoot back. At the same time, her personal revolver No. 12719 ended up with her friend Claudia Miloradova. According to her, they exchanged weapons because her pistol was not self-cocking. She left on a mission earlier, and Kosmodemyanskaya gave her a more reliable weapon, but her friends did not have time to make a return exchange. Some researchers suggest that Zoya did not have time to put the weapon into combat condition.

A number of sources (the book “The Tale of Zoya and Shura”, the film “The Battle of Moscow”) tell a version that the commander of the German 332nd Infantry Regiment of the 197th Infantry Division, Lieutenant Colonel Ludwig Rüderer, interrogated Zoya personally. Joseph Stalin, having learned about the brutal execution of Kosmodemyanskaya, ordered that the soldiers and officers of the 197th division not be taken prisoner.

It is known that the interrogation was conducted by three officers and an interpreter in the house of Vasily and Praskovya Kulik. During interrogation, Zoya identified herself as Tanya and did not say anything definite. The name Tanya, which Zoya called herself, was chosen by her in memory of Tatyana Solomakha, who was executed during the Civil War.

According to Praskovya Kulik, Zoya was stripped naked and flogged with belts. Then residents of the village of Petrushkina, Voronina and others saw how the sentry assigned to Kosmodemyanskaya periodically led her barefoot in her underwear down the street in the cold for four hours. The two of them stayed outside for up to half an hour, then the sentry came in for 15 minutes to warm up and brought Kosmodemyanskaya into the house. Zoya’s legs received frostbite, the manifestation of which was seen by Praskovya Kulik. At about 2 a.m. the guard changed. He allowed Zoya to lie down on the bench, where she stayed until the morning.

According to witnesses, A.V. Smirnova and F.V. Solina, whose property was damaged by arson, took part in the beatings of Kosmodemyanskaya. For this, they were subsequently convicted under Article 193 of the Criminal Code of the RSFSR for collaboration and shot.

At 10:30 the next morning, Kosmodemyanskaya was taken to the street where a gallows had already been erected; a sign was hung on her chest with the inscription in Russian and German: “Arsonist of houses.” When Kosmodemyanskaya was brought 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 described 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 German officer yelled angrily. But she continued: “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."

Photographs of Zoya's execution were found in the possession of one of the killed Wehrmacht soldiers near the village of Potapovo near Smolensk.

Kosmodemyanskaya’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.

In the act of identification of the corpse dated February 4, 1942, carried out by a commission consisting of representatives of the Komsomol, officers of the Red Army, a representative of the RK All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, the village council and village residents, on the circumstances of the death, based on the testimony of eyewitnesses of the search, interrogation and execution, it was established that Komsomol member Kosmodemyanskaya Before the execution, Z.A. uttered the words of appeal: “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." 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.”

Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya called on the Germans to surrender from the scaffold

Subsequently, Kosmodemyanskaya 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 in Petrishchev from a witness - an elderly peasant who was shocked by the courage of an 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, based on their questions, published an article. Her identity was soon established, as reported by Pravda in Lidov’s February 18 article “Who Was Tanya.”

On February 16, 1942, she was awarded the Gold Star Medal of the Hero of the Soviet Union and the Order of Lenin (posthumously).

Betrayal of Vasily Klubkov:

There is a version that Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya was betrayed by her squadmate, Komsomol organizer Vasily Klubkov. It is 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, 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.

“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 Krainev 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 Krainev.

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 beating 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...”

Klubkov was shot for treason on April 16, 1942. His testimony, as well as the very fact of his presence in the village during Zoya’s interrogation, is not confirmed in other sources. In addition, Klubkov’s testimony is confused and contradictory: first he says that Zoya mentioned his name during interrogation by the Germans, then he says she didn’t mention his name; states that he did not know Zoe’s last name, further claims that he called her by her first and last name, and so on. He even calls the village where Zoya died not Petrishchevo, but “Ashes”. The purpose of the German torture also remains unclear: after all, Klubkov had already told the Germans everything that Zoya could know.

Disease of Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya:

In 1939, Zoya had a conflict with her classmates, according to the testimony of relatives, on the following basis: Zoya was elected as a Komsomol group organizer of the class and immediately suggested that her classmates take on a social burden - after school, work with the illiterate. This proposal was accepted, but then the students began to shirk their responsibilities, and since Zoya continued to insist and shame them, they did not re-elect her as group organizer. After this, Zoya moved away from her classmates, and she began to show signs of a nervous illness.

The surviving data about Zoya’s nervous illness is contained in the memoirs of her classmate V.I. Belokun and her mother. Belokun wrote: “This story (the conflict with classmates and failure to be re-elected as a group organizer) had a great effect on Zoya. She somehow gradually began to withdraw into herself. I became less sociable and loved solitude more. In the 7th grade, we began to notice strange things about her even more often, as it seemed to us... Her silence, always thoughtful eyes, and sometimes some absent-mindedness were too mysterious for us. And the incomprehensible Zoya became even more incomprehensible. In the middle of the year we learned from her brother Shura that Zoya was sick. This made a strong impression on the guys. We decided that we were to blame for this.”

According to her mother, “Zoe had been suffering from a nervous disease since 1939, when she moved from the 8th to the 9th grade... She... had a nervous disease for the reason that her children did not understand.”

In issue No. 43 of the newspaper “Arguments and Facts” for 1991, material was published signed “Leading doctor of the Scientific and Methodological Center for Child Psychiatry A. Melnikova, S. Yuryeva and N. Kasmelson.” It said: “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 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.”

Later, this information often appeared in other newspapers, but no other sources or new evidence of Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya’s schizophrenia were ever cited.

No other evidence or documentary evidence of suspicion of schizophrenia was mentioned in the articles. In subsequent publications, newspapers citing Argumenty i Fakty often omitted the word “suspected.”

In 2016, publicist Andrei Bilzho, a psychiatrist by profession, stated that he personally saw Kosmodemyanskaya’s medical history in the Kashchenko hospital, and that this history was removed only during perestroika.

It is also known that at the end of 1940, Zoya suffered from acute meningitis, with which she was hospitalized in the Botkin hospital, and then until March 24, 1941, she underwent rehabilitation at the Sokolniki sanatorium, where she met Arkady Gaidar, her favorite writer, who was also vacationing there.

The image of Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya in culture and art:

Art films:

“Zoe” is a 1944 film directed by Leo Arnstam;
“In the Name of Life” is a 1946 film directed by Alexander Zarkhi and Joseph Kheifits. (There is an episode in this film where the actress plays the role of Zoya in the theater);
“The Great Patriotic War”, film 4. “Partisans. War behind enemy lines";
“Battle for Moscow” is a 1985 film directed by Yuri Ozerov.

Documentary film:

“Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya. The truth about the feat" (2005);
“Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya. The truth about the feat" (2008);
“Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya. Difficult decision" (2012)

Fiction:

M.I. Aliger dedicated the poem “Zoya” to Zoya. In 1943, the poem was awarded the Stalin Prize;
L. T. Kosmodemyanskaya published “The Tale of Zoya and Shura (literary recording by F. A. Vigdorova, over 30 reprints);
Soviet writer V. Kovalevsky created a dilogy about Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya. The first part, the story “Brother and Sister,” describes the school years of Zoya and Shura Kosmodemyansky. The story "Don't be afraid of death!" is dedicated to Zoya’s activities during the Great Patriotic War;
Kosmodemyanskaya's poems were dedicated to the Chuvash poet Pyotr Khuzangay, the Turkish poet Nazym Hikmet and the Chinese poet Ai Qing; poems by A. L. Barto (“Partisan Tanya”, “At the Monument to Zoya”), R. I. Rozhdestvensky, Yu. V. Drunina, V. P. Turkin (“Zoya”) and other poets.

Music:

Music by Dmitri Shostakovich for the 1944 film Zoya by Leo Arnstam;
“Song about Tanya the Partisan”, lyrics by M. Kremer, music by V. Zhelobinsky;
One-act opera “Tanya” by V. Dekhterev (1943);
Orchestral suite “Zoya” (1955) and opera “Zoya” (1963) by N. Makarova;
Ballet “Tatyana” by A. Crane (1943);
Musical and dramatic poem “Zoya” by V. Yurovsky, lyrics by M. Aliger;
“Song about Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya”, words by P. Gradov, music by Y. Milyutin.

Painting:

Kukryniksy. “Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya” (1942-1947);
Dmitry Mochalsky “Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya”;
K. N. Shchekotov “The Last Night (Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya)”

Works of art:

Borisov N. A. With the name Zoya;
Kovalevsky V. Do not be afraid of death;
Lachin Samed-zade Hell's Honor (excerpt from the novel “God Sneaks Unnoticed”);
Frida Vigdorova Heroes are next to you (excerpt from the book “My Class”);
Uspensky V. Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya;
Titov V. Be useful! (story);
Aliger M. Zoya (poem);
Frolov G. Immortality (excerpt from the book “Part No. 9903”);
Argutinskaya L. Tatyana Solomakha (essay);
Emelyanov B. Zoya and Gaidar (published in the magazine “Smena”);
Kosmodemyanskaya L. T. The Tale of Zoya and Shura;
Karpel R., Shvetsov I. Museum in Petrishchevo

Articles:

P. Lidov. Tanya (“Pravda”, January 27, 1942);
P. Lidov. Who was Tanya (“Pravda”, February 18, 1942);
P. Lidov. Partisan Tanya (Pioneer magazine, January-February 1942);
P. Lidov. Five German photographs (Pravda, October 24, 1943);
S. Lyubimov. We won't forget you, Tanya! (“Komsomolskaya Pravda”, January 27, 1942);
P. Nilin. Meanness (essay about the trial of the Military Tribunal over a resident of the village of Petrishchevo, Agrafena Smirnova, who beat Zoya, September 1942);
Ya. Miletsky. Who betrayed Tanya (“Red Star”, April 22, 1942);
Letter to young people from L. T. Kosmodemyanskaya “Avenge my daughter” (Pyatigorsk, 1942);
A. Kosmodemyansky. My sister (February-May 1942);
A. Kosmodemyansky. I take revenge on the murderers of my sister (newspaper “On the Enemy”, October 1943).

The story was first widely reported on January 27, 1942. On that day, the essay “Tanya” by correspondent Pyotr Lidov appeared in the Pravda newspaper. In the evening it was broadcast on All-Union Radio. It was about a certain young partisan who was caught by the Germans during a combat mission. The girl endured cruel torture by the Nazis, but never told the enemy anything and did not betray her comrades.

It is believed that a specially created commission then took up the investigation of the case, which established the true name of the heroine. It turned out that

the girl's name was actually Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya, she was an 18-year-old schoolgirl from Moscow.

Then it became known that Zoya Anatolyevna Kosmodemyanskaya was born in 1923 in the village of Osino-Gai (otherwise Osinovye Gai) in the Tambov region in the family of teachers Anatoly and Lyubov Kosmodemyansky. Zoya also had a younger brother, Alexander, whom his loved ones called Shura. Soon the family managed to move to Moscow. At school, Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya studied diligently and was a modest and hardworking child. According to the memoirs of Vera Sergeevna Novoselova, a teacher of literature and Russian language at school No. 201 in Moscow, where Zoya studied, the girl studied excellently.

“A very modest girl, easily flushed with embarrassment, she found strong and bold words when it came to her favorite subject - literature. Unusually sensitive to artistic form, she knew how to put her speech, oral and written, into a bright and expressive form,” the teacher recalled.

Sending to the front

Zoya's brother Shura was the first to go to the front. “How good am I if I stayed here? The guys went, maybe to fight, but I stayed at home. How can you do nothing now?!” — Lyubov Kosmodemyanskaya recalled the words of her daughter in her book “The Tale of Zoya and Shura.”

Air raids on Moscow did not stop. Then many Muscovites joined communist workers' battalions, combat squads, and detachments to fight the enemy. So, in October 1941, after a conversation with one of the groups of boys and girls, among whom was Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya, the guys were enrolled in the detachment. Zoya told her mother that she had submitted an application to the Moscow district Komsomol committee and that she had been taken to the front and would be sent behind enemy lines.

Having asked not to tell her brother anything, the daughter said goodbye to her mother for the last time.

Then about two thousand people were selected and sent to military unit No. 9903, which was located in Kuntsevo. So Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya became a fighter in the reconnaissance and sabotage unit of the Western Front. This was followed by exercises, during which, as Zoe’s fellow soldier Klavdiya Miloradova recalled, the participants “went into the forest, laid mines, blew up trees, learned to remove sentries, and use a map.” At the beginning of November, Zoya and her comrades were given their first task - to mine roads behind enemy lines, which they successfully completed and returned to their unit without losses.

Operation

On November 18 (according to other information - November 20), the commanders of the sabotage groups of unit No. 9903, Pavel Provorov and Boris Krainov, received the task: by order of Comrade Stalin on November 17, 1941, “to burn 10 settlements: Anashkino, Gribtsovo, Petrishchevo, Usadkovo, Ilyatino, Grachevo, Pushkino, Mikhailovskoye, Bugailovo, Korovino.” 5-7 days were allotted to complete the task. The groups went on missions together.

Near the village of Golovkovo, the detachment came across a German ambush and a shootout took place. The groups scattered, part of the detachment died. “The remnants of the sabotage groups united into a small detachment under the command of Krainov. The three of them went to Petrishchevo, located 10 km from the Golovkovo state farm: Krainov, Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya and Vasily Klubkov,” said Candidate of Historical Sciences, Deputy Director of the Center for Scientific Use and Publication of the Association’s Archival Fund in his article “Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya”. Moscow City Archive" Mikhail Gorinov.

However, it is still not known for certain whether the partisan managed to burn down the very houses that could have contained fascist radio stations. In December 1966, the magazine “Science and Life” published a material presenting a memorandum. According to the text of the document, Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya “in early December at night came to the village of Petrishchevo and set fire to three houses (the houses of citizens Karelova, Solntsev, Smirnov) in which the Germans lived. Along with these houses, the following burned:

20 horses, one German, many rifles, machine guns and a lot of telephone cable. After the arson she managed to escape.”

It is believed that after setting fire to three houses, Zoya did not return to the appointed place. Instead, after waiting in the forest, the next night (according to another version - the next night) she again went to the village. It is this act, the historian notes, that will form the basis of a later version, according to which “she went to the village of Petrishchevo without permission, without the permission of the commander.”

Moreover, “without permission,” as Mikhail Gorinov points out, she went there only the second time to carry out the order to burn the village.

However, according to many historians, when it got dark, Zoya actually returned to the village. However, the Germans were already ready to meet the partisans: it is believed that two German officers, a translator and a headman gathered local residents, ordering them to guard houses and monitor the appearance of partisans, and if they met them, to report immediately.

Further, as many historians and participants in the investigation note, Zoya was seen by Semyon Sviridov, one of the village residents. He saw her at the moment when the partisan was trying to set fire to the barn of his house. The owner of the house immediately reported this to the Germans. Later it will become known that, according to the protocol of the interrogation of village resident Semyon Sviridov by the NKVD investigator for the Moscow region on May 28, 1942, “except for treating him to wine,” the owner of the house did not receive any other reward from the Germans for the capture of the partisan.

As village resident Valentina Sedova (11 years old) recalled, the girl had a bag with compartments for bottles that hung over her shoulder. “They found three bottles in this bag, which they opened, sniffed, then put them back in the case. Then they found a revolver on her belt under her jacket,” she said.

During interrogation, the girl identified herself as Tanya and did not give out any information the Germans needed, for which she was severely beaten. As resident Avdotya Voronina recalled, the girl was repeatedly flogged with belts:

“Four Germans flogged her, flogged her four times with belts, as they came out with belts in their hands. They asked her and flogged her, she remained silent, she was flogged again. During the last spanking she sighed: “Oh, stop spanking, I don’t know anything else and I won’t tell you anything else.”

As follows from the testimony of village residents, which was taken by the Moscow Komsomol commission on February 3, 1942 (shortly after Petrishchevo was liberated from the Germans), after interrogation and torture, the girl was taken out into the street at night without outer clothing

and forced to remain in the cold for a long time.

“After sitting for half an hour, they dragged her outside. They dragged me along the street barefoot for about twenty minutes, then they brought me back again.

So, they took her out barefoot from ten o'clock at night until two o'clock in the morning - along the street, in the snow, barefoot. All this was done by one German, he is 19 years old,”

- said a resident of the village, Praskovya Kulik, who the next morning approached the girl and asked her several questions:

"Where are you from?" The answer is Moscow. "What is your name?" — she remained silent. "Where is parents?" — she remained silent. “Why were you sent?” - “I was tasked with burning the village.”

The interrogation continued the next day, and again the girl said nothing. Later, another circumstance will become known - Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya was tormented not only by the Germans. In particular, residents of Petrishchevo, one of whom had previously had her house burned down by a partisan. Later, when on May 4, 1942, Smirnova herself admits to what she had done, it becomes known that the women came to the house where Zoya was then kept. According to the testimony of one of the village residents, stored in the Central State Archives of Moscow,

Smirnova “before leaving the house, she took the cast iron with slop on the floor and threw it at Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya.”

“After some time, even more people came to my house, with whom Solina and Smirnova came a second time. Through the crowd of people, Solina Fedosya and Smirnova Agrafena made their way to Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya, and then Smirnova began to beat her, insulting her with all sorts of bad words. Solina, being with Smirnova, waved her arms and shouted angrily: “Hit! Beat her!”, while insulting the partisan Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya lying near the stove with all sorts of bad words,” states the text of the testimony of a resident of the village of Praskovya Kulik.

Later, Fedosya Solina and Agrafena Smirnova were shot.

“The military tribunal of the NKVD troops of the Moscow district opened a criminal case. The investigation lasted several months. On June 17, 1942, Agrafena Smirnova, and on September 4, 1942, Fedosya Solina, were sentenced to capital punishment. Information about their beating of Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya was kept secret for a long time,” Mikhail Gorinov said in his article. Also, after some time, Semyon Sviridov himself, who surrendered the partisan to the Germans, will be convicted.

Identification of the body and versions of events

Later, five photographs taken at Zoya’s execution will be found in the possession of one of the Germans killed in 1943.

It is still not known for certain what the last words of the partisan were. Nevertheless, it should be noted that after the published essay by Pyotr Lidov, history became increasingly rich in new details, and various versions of the events of those years appeared, including thanks to Soviet propaganda. There are several different versions of the last speech of the famous partisan.

According to the version outlined in the essay by correspondent Pyotr Lidov, immediately before her death the girl uttered the following words: “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 Russian people standing in the square were crying. Others turned away so as not to see what was about to happen. The executioner pulled the rope, and the noose squeezed Tanino’s throat. But she spread the noose with both hands, rose up on her toes and shouted, straining her strength:

“Farewell, comrades! Fight, don't be afraid! Stalin is with us! Stalin will come!..”

According to the recollections of village resident Vasily Kulik, the girl did not talk about Stalin:

“Comrades, victory will be ours. German soldiers, before it’s too late, surrender.” The officer shouted angrily: “Rus!” “The Soviet Union is invincible and will not be defeated,” she said all this while she was being photographed. They photographed her from the front, from the side where the bag is, and from the back.

Soon after the hanging, the girl was buried on the outskirts of the village. Later, after the area was liberated from the Germans, the investigation also included identification of the body found.

According to the inspection and identification report dated February 4, 1942, “Citizens of the village. Petrishchevo<...>Based on the photographs presented by the intelligence department of the Western Front headquarters, it was identified that the hanged person was Komsomol member Z.A. Kosmodemyanskaya. 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.”

According to the act of exhumation of the corpse of Z.A. Kosmodemyanskaya dated February 12, 1942, among those identified were Zoya’s mother and brother, as well as fellow soldier Klavdiya Miloradova.

On February 16, 1942, Kosmodemyanskaya was posthumously awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union, and on May 7, 1942, Zoya was reburied at the Novodevichy Cemetery in Moscow.

Over the years, the story continued to gain new interpretations, including various “revelations” in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Historians also began to offer new versions not only of the events of those years, but also of the personality of the girl herself. So, according to the hypothesis of one of the scientists, in the village of Petrishchevo the Nazis captured and tortured not Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya, but

and another partisan who disappeared during the war, Lilya Azolina.

The hypothesis was based on the memoirs of war invalid Galina Romanovich and materials collected by one of the Moskovsky Komsomolets correspondents. The first allegedly saw a photograph of Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya in Komsomolskaya Pravda back in 1942 and recognized her as Lilya Azolina, with whom she studied at the Geological Exploration Institute. In addition, according to Romanovich, her other classmates recognized the girl as Lilya.

According to another version, there were no Germans in the village at the time of those events: Zoya was allegedly caught by village residents when she tried to set fire to houses. However, later, in the 1990s, this version would be refuted thanks to the residents of Petrishchevo who survived the dramatic events, some of whom lived until the early 1990s and were able to tell in one of the newspapers that the Nazis were still in the village at that time.

After Zoya's death, Lyubov Kosmodemyanskaya, Zoya's mother, will receive many letters throughout her life.

Throughout the war years, according to Lyubov Timofeevna, messages will come “from all fronts, from all corners of the country.” “And I realized: letting grief break you means insulting Zoe’s memory. You can't give up, you can't fall, you can't die. I have no right to despair. We must live,” wrote Lyubov Kosmodemyanskaya in her story.

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, to drive the German invaders out of all populated areas into the cold fields, to smoke them out of all rooms and warm shelters and to 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 ordered to burn 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.

In hot pursuit

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. Without hesitation, they all 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.”

On December 5, 1941, a counteroffensive of Soviet troops began near Moscow. The German Wehrmacht suffered its first major defeat during the Second World War.

Live and remember

Along with the liberation of cities and towns, the terrible truth was revealed about what the Nazis were doing in the occupied territories. In the hands of Soviet investigators were the first irrefutable evidence of war crimes, which were committed not only by representatives of the Nazi intelligence services, but also by Wehrmacht soldiers and officers.

“Innocent victims,” as some representatives of Germany, as well as a number of figures in Russia, are trying to call them today, left behind a terrible memory.

A memory that today they are trying to erase, citing the statute of limitations and the fact that “new generations no longer understand this.”

But new generations have no right not to remember at what cost their right to life was obtained and what enemy their great-grandfathers faced.

Massacre in the village of Petrishchevo

On November 29, 1941, in the village of Petrishchevo near Moscow, a girl was executed, who had been detained the day before while trying to set fire to a barn. The detainee stated that her name was Tanya and earlier she had set fire to a German stable with horses, as well as houses where Hitler’s military personnel were housed.

The Germans were unable to obtain any more information from the girl. German officers, irritated by her stubbornness, ordered “Tanya” to be stripped naked and flogged with belts. According to witnesses, the girl was struck at least 200 times. Then she was driven around in the cold in her underwear for about four hours, as a result of which she suffered frostbite on her legs.

At about half past ten in the morning, “Tanya” was taken out into the street, with a sign “House Arsonist” hung on her chest. The girl was led by two soldiers who held her - after the torture she herself could hardly stand on her feet.

The villagers were rounded up for execution. The Germans filmed what was happening with a camera. Before the execution the girl said:

- Citizens! Don't stand there, don't look, but we need to help fight! This death of mine is my achievement!

The Germans tried to silence her, but she spoke again:

- Comrades, victory will be ours. German soldiers, before it’s too late, surrender! The Soviet Union is invincible and will not be defeated!

“Tanya” climbed onto the box herself, after which a noose was thrown over her. At this moment she shouted again:

“No matter how much you hang us, you can’t hang us all, there are 170 million of us.” But our comrades will avenge you for me!

The German knocked the box out from under her feet.

“They hanged her, and she kept threatening them...”

The corpse of the executed woman hung there for almost another month - the Nazis forbade local residents to bury her. Drunk soldiers mocked the body - stabbed with knives, cut off the chest.

Finally, it was allowed to bury “Tanya”.

In January 1942, during the counter-offensive of Soviet troops, the village of Petrishchevo was liberated. But what happened at the end of November became known almost by accident.

During the battles for Mozhaisk, a group of war correspondents spent the night in a hut in the village of Pushkino that survived the fire. Pravda correspondent Peter Lidov got into a conversation with an elderly peasant who was returning to his native place, in the Vereya region.

During the occupation, the old man ended up in Petrishchev and witnessed the execution of a girl. “They hung her, and she spoke. They hanged her, and she kept threatening them...,” said the peasant.

On November 29, 1941, Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya was tortured and executed by the Germans. Carrying out a combat mission “to burn 10 settlements (Stalin’s order No. 428 of November 17, 1941),” she was caught by local residents setting fire to 3 residential buildings in the village of Petrishchevo. pic.twitter.com/TWUesldF1t

— War in History (@VojnavIstorii) November 29, 2017

"Tanya" was Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya

Peter Lidov was shocked by this story. He went to Petrishchevo, which he had to visit several times before the approximate circumstances of the girl’s death became clear.

On January 27, 1942, the essay “Tanya” appeared in the Pravda newspaper. The courage of the young heroine and the toughness of the Nazis shocked readers. An investigation began into the events that occurred in Petrishchevo. During the investigation, the girl's real name was established - Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya. On February 18, 1942, Pyotr Lidov told new details of the story in the essay “Who Was Tanya.”

By a decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR dated February 16, 1942, for the courage and heroism shown in the fight against the German fascists, Zoya Anatolyevna Kosmodemyanskaya was awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union (posthumously).

The story of Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya became one of the first documented cases of a crime committed by soldiers and officers of the Wehrmacht, which became widely known.

Soviet soldiers wrote “For Zoya!” on shells, mines and bombs. The fighters wanted to take revenge on the girl’s executioners.

Executioners from the 332nd Regiment

Soviet intelligence established that units of the 332nd Infantry Regiment of the 197th Infantry Division were stationed in the village of Petrishchevo. The regiment was commanded by a lieutenant colonel Ludwig Rüderer. According to one version, Rüderer personally participated in the interrogations of Zoya and gave orders for torture. This information, however, has not been confirmed. But it has been reliably established that Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya was tortured and hanged by soldiers and officers of the 332nd Infantry Regiment.

Legend says that Joseph Stalin, having familiarized himself with the materials of the case about the death of Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya, gave a special order - the soldiers and officers of the 197th division, which included the 332nd infantry regiment, were not to be taken prisoner.

Whether there was such an order or not, a real hunt really began for the executioners of Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya. As soon as intelligence reported that units of a division were deployed in front of the Soviet positions, whose soldiers had Zoya’s blood on their hands, strikes against the Nazis were dealt with particular ferocity.

Nakhodka near Smolensk and the end of the 197th division

In the fall of 1943, in the battles near Smolensk, the 197th Infantry Division of the Wehrmacht was defeated.

War correspondent for the newspaper “Forward to the Enemy!” Major Dolin wrote on October 3, 1943 about the fate of the 332nd regiment: “ In the battles near the village of Verdino, the German regiment of our Zoya’s executioners was completely defeated. Hundreds of Nazi corpses remained in destroyed bunkers and trenches. When a captured non-commissioned officer of the regiment was asked what he knew about the execution of a young partisan, he, trembling with fear, began to babble:

- It wasn’t me who did it, it was Rüderer, Rüderer...

Another soldier captured the other day stated during interrogation that in the 332nd regiment, only a few people survived from those who were near Moscow and participated in the execution of Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya...».

There, near Smolensk, previously unknown evidence of the massacre of Zoya was found. In the area of ​​the village of Potapovo, when examining the corpse of a murdered German officer, five photographs were discovered. They depicted the execution of the girl in every detail.

The division, defeated near Smolensk, was reorganized by the Nazis, but did not last long. The 197th Division and its 332nd Infantry Regiment were finally defeated in the summer of 1944 during Operation Bagration.

General Böge's case

Colonel Ludwig Rüderer was luckier. He not only lived to see the end of the war, but was also captured by the Americans. It is known that he lived until 1960.

In May 1945, the commander of the 18th German Army, General Ehrenfried Böge. It was established that in 1942 he commanded the 197th Infantry Division of the Wehrmacht.

Here is the official document related to the Boege case:

The operational department of the UPVI Ministry of Internal Affairs for the Moscow Region is conducting an investigation into the case of the organizer of mass atrocities and atrocities of the prisoner of war, General Böge Ehrenfried, who from February 1942 to February 1943 commanded the 197th German Infantry Division.

During the investigation, it was established that the personnel of the 332nd Infantry Regiment of this division in December 1941 in the village. Petrishchevo, Vereisky district, Moscow region. Komsomol partisan Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya was brutally tortured and hanged.

In accordance with the fact that the brutal massacre of Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya was carried out by the personnel of the 332nd Regiment of the 197th German Infantry Division, I ask:

1. Give the task to identify, through official and intelligence means, persons who were in 1941 as part of the 332nd regiment in the area of ​​Vereya, Moscow Region.

2. Interrogate such persons and take them into active intelligence investigation in order to establish what they know about the hanging of Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya and who was the organizer and executor of this brutal massacre.

I do not exclude that among the prisoners of war from this regiment there are criminals we are looking for.

I ask you to immediately inform the Operational Directorate of the Main Inspectorate of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the USSR about the results of your activities.

Deputy Head of the GUPVI Ministry of Internal Affairs of the USSR

Lieutenant General A. Kobulov»

However, at the time of the execution of Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya, Böge did not command the 197th division. He took office on April 1, 1942. This fact, obviously, saved the general from execution.

On January 12, 1949, by the military tribunal of the troops of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Moscow Region, Böge was sentenced to 25 years in prison on the basis of Decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR of April 19, 1943 No. 39 “On punitive measures for Nazi villains guilty of murder and torture of the Soviet civilian population and captured Red Army soldiers, for spies, traitors to the motherland from among Soviet citizens and for their accomplices.”

The general served six years of his term. On October 6, 1955, he was handed over to the authorities of the Federal Republic of Germany, where he died in 1965. He did not give any comments about the story that happened in the village of Petrishchevo, and became furious at the mere mention of this topic.

Lieutenant General Hermann Mayer-Rabingen, who commanded the 197th Infantry Division during the Battle of Moscow, was recalled from the Eastern Front in the spring of 1942 and subsequently commanded reserve units involved, in particular, in the occupation of France. At the very end of the war, he was captured by the Western allies, escaped responsibility for war crimes, and died in Germany in the early 1960s.