The terrible truth about the young guard. The whole truth about the young guard is far from being fully revealed

27.09.2019

What the participants in the Young Guard partisan movement actually learned from the Nazis. Facts that were hushed up in the Soviet Union so as not to shock readers of the book of the same name.

And director Gerasimov also felt sorry for the audience - the film does not show all the torture that the guys endured. They were almost children, the youngest was barely 16. It’s scary to read these lines.

It’s scary to think about the inhuman suffering they endured. But we must know and remember what fascism is. The worst thing is that among those who mockingly killed the Young Guard, there were mainly policemen from the local population (the city of Krasnodon, where the tragedy occurred, is located in the Lugansk region). It is all the more terrible to watch now the revival of Nazism in Ukraine, the torchlight processions, and the slogans “Bandera is a hero!”

There is no doubt that today's twenty-year-old neo-fascists, the same age as their brutally tortured fellow countrymen, have not read this book or seen these photographs.

“They beat her and hung her by her braids. They lifted Anya out of the pit with one scythe - the other broke off.

Crimea, Feodosia, August 1940. Happy young girls. The most beautiful, with dark braids, is Anya Sopova.
On January 31, 1943, after severe torture, Anya was thrown into the pit of mine No. 5.
She was buried in the mass grave of heroes in the central square of the city of Krasnodon.

Here's what's happening in Ukraine now:

WHY FADEYEV TOOK SORRY FOR READERS

There is no doubt that today's twenty-year-old neo-fascists, the same age as their brutally tortured fellow countrymen, have not read this book or seen these photographs.

“They beat her and hung her by her braids. They lifted Anya out of the pit with one scythe - the other was broken.

Soviet people dreamed of being like the brave Krasnodon residents... They swore to avenge their death.
What can I say, tragic and beautiful story The Young Guards were shocked by the whole world, and not just the fragile minds of children.
The film became the box office leader in 1948, and the leading actors, unknown students of VGIK, immediately received the title of Stalin Prize Laureate - an exceptional case. “Woke up famous” is about them.
Ivanov, Mordyukova, Makarova, Gurzo, Shagalova - letters from all over the world came to them in bags.
Gerasimov, of course, felt sorry for the audience. Fadeev - readers.
Neither paper nor film could convey what really happened that winter in Krasnodon.

There is an amazing website http://www.molodguard.ru/, where caring people collected miraculously preserved unique photos and documents.

Come in and take a look. Read it.

“Ulyana Gromova, 19 years old, a five-pointed star carved on her back, her right arm is broken, her ribs are broken” (KGB Archives of the USSR Council of Ministers).

“Lida Androsova, 18 years old, was taken out without an eye, ear, hand, with a rope around her neck, which cut heavily into her body. You can see baked blood on the neck” (Young Guard Museum, f. 1, no. 16).

Anya Sopova, 18 years old
“They beat her, hung her by her braids... They lifted Anya out of the pit with one braid - the other was broken.”

“Shura Bondareva, 20 years old, was taken out without her head and right breast, her whole body was beaten, bruised, and black in color.”

Lyuba Shevtsova, 18 years old (pictured first on the left in the second row)

On February 9, 1943, after a month of torture, she was shot in the Thunderous Forest near the city along with Oleg Koshev, S. Ostapenko, D. Ogurtsov and V. Subbotin.

Angelina Samoshina, 18 years old.

“Traces of torture were found on Angelina’s body: her arms were twisted, her ears were cut off, a star was carved on her cheek” (RGASPI. F. M-1. Op. 53. D. 331)

Shura Dubrovina, 23 years old

“Two images appear before my eyes: the cheerful young Komsomol member Shura Dubrovina and the mutilated body raised from the mine. I saw her corpse only with the lower jaw. Her friend, Maya Peglivanova, lay in a coffin without eyes, without lips, with her arms twisted...“

Maya Peglivanova, 17 years old

“Maya’s corpse was disfigured: her breasts were cut off, her legs were broken. All outer clothing has been removed." (RGASPI. F. M-1. Op. 53. D. 331) She was lying in the coffin without lips, with her arms twisted.”

“Tonya Ivanikhina, 19 years old, was taken out without eyes, her head was bandaged with a scarf and wire, her breasts were cut out.”

Seryozha Tyulenin, 17 years old (in the photo - in a hat)
“On January 27, 1943, Sergei was arrested. Soon they took my father and mother and confiscated all my things. The police severely tortured Sergei in the presence of his mother, they staged a confrontation with a member of the Young Guard, Viktor Lukyancheiko, but they did not recognize each other.
On January 31, Sergei was tortured for the last time, and then, half-dead, he and other comrades were taken to the pit of mine No. 5...”

Funeral of Sergei Tyulenin

Nina Minaeva, 18 years old

“...My sister was recognized by her woolen gaiters - the only clothing that remained on her. Nina’s arms were broken, one eye was knocked out, there were shapeless wounds on her chest, her whole body was covered in black stripes...”

Tosya Eliseenko, 22 years old
“Tosia’s corpse was disfigured, tortured, and she was put on a hot stove.”

Victor Tretyaknvich, 18 years old

“...Viktor Tretyakevich was among the last to be raised. His father, Joseph Kuzmich, in a thin patched coat, stood day after day, clutching the post, and did not take his eyes off the pit. And when they recognized his son - without a face, with a black and blue back, with crushed hands - he fell to the ground, as if knocked down. No traces of bullets were found on Victor’s body, which means they dumped him alive...”

Oleg Koshevoy, 16 years old

When arrests began in January 1943, he attempted to cross the front line. However, he is forced to return to the city. Near -d. Kortushino station was captured by the Nazis and sent first to the police and then to the district Gestapo office in Rovenki. After terrible torture, together with L.G. Shevtsova, S.M. Ostapenko, D.U. Ogurtsov and V.F. Subbotin, on February 9, 1943, he was shot in the Thunderous Forest near the city.

Oleg Koshevoy

Elena Nikolaevna Koshevaya, Oleg’s mother

Boris Glavan, 22 years old

“He was pulled out of the pit, tied up with Evgeniy Shepelev face to face with barbed wire, his hands were cut off. The face is disfigured, the stomach is ripped open.”

Evgeny Shepelev, 19 years old
“...Evgeniy’s hands were cut off, his stomach was torn out, his head was broken...” (RGASPI. F. M-1. Op. 53. D. 331)

“Volodya Zhdanov, 17 years old, was taken out with a laceration in the left temporal region, his fingers were broken and twisted, there were bruises under his nails, two strips three centimeters wide, twenty-five centimeters long were cut out on his back, his eyes were gouged out and his ears were cut off” (Young Guard Museum) , f. 1, d. 36)

“Klava Kovaleva, 17 years old, was taken out swollen, her right breast was cut off, her feet were burned, her left arm was cut off, her head was tied with a scarf, traces of beatings were visible on her body. Found ten meters from the trunk, between the trolleys, she was probably dumped alive” (Young Guard Museum, f. 1, no. 10)

Evgeniy Moshkov, 22 years old (pictured left)

“...Young Guard communist Yevgeny Moshkov, choosing a good moment during interrogation, hit a policeman. Then the fascist beasts hung Moshkov by his legs and kept him in this position until blood gushed from his nose and throat. They removed him and began interrogating him again. But Moshkov only spat in the executioner’s face. The enraged investigator who was torturing Moshkov hit him with a backhand blow. Exhausted by torture, the communist hero fell, hitting the back of his head on the door frame and died.”

Volodya Osmukhin, 18 years old
“When I saw Vovochka, mutilated, almost without a head, without his left arm up to the elbow, I thought I would go crazy. I didn't believe it was him. He was wearing only one sock, and his other foot was completely bare. Instead of a belt, wear a warm scarf. No outerwear. The hungry animals took off. The head is broken. The back of the head had completely fallen out, only the face remained, on which only Volodin’s teeth remained. Everything else is mutilated. The lips are distorted, the nose is almost completely gone. My grandmother and I washed Vovochka, dressed her, and decorated her with flowers. A wreath was nailed to the coffin. Let the road lie peacefully."

Parents of Ulyana Gromova

Europe has recognized the crimes of Ukrainian punitive forces in southeastern Ukraine

Europe admitted that fighters of the Azov and Donbass battalions raped 12-year-old girls in the Donbass. European experts from the international monitoring commission, which works in the conflict zone in Ukraine, officially recognized the crimes of the security forces. Earlier, OSCE observers announced the discovery of about 400 bodies of executed civilians near Donetsk. Now girls who told the Europeans how they were raped by fighters of the Azov and Donbass battalions have spoken about the atrocities of the security forces. “A group of women approached us. They said that mercenaries from the Azov and Donbass battalions frequently gang-raped all the women in the village. The victims of abuse were teenage girls over 12 years old and elderly women,” said OSCE representative Einars Graudins.

How the Young Guards were killed

The Nazis and police began arresting them on January 1, 1943. The arrests continued for two weeks, and on January 15, 16 and 31, 1943, the occupiers, some alive and some shot, threw more than 70 people into the pit of mine No. 5, among whom were members of both the Young Guard and the underground party organization. On February 9, in the city of Rovenki in the Thundering Forest, Oleg Koshevoy, Lyubov Shevtsova, Semyon Ostapenko, Dmitry Ogurtsov, Viktor Subbotin were shot, 4 more people were shot in other areas. All Young Guards were mercilessly tortured and tormented before their death. And already on February 14, 1943, the city of Krasnodon was liberated by the Red Army. 71 years have passed since then...

From the novel “Young Guard” by Alexander Fadeev, the post-war generation of pioneers and Komsomol members knew that under that name there was an underground anti-fascist Komsomol organization that operated during the Great Patriotic War. Patriotic War mainly in the city of Krasnodon, Lugansk (at that time Voroshilovgrad) region of Ukraine. The organization was created shortly after the beginning of the fascist occupation of Krasnodon on July 20, 1942 and consisted of about 110 people, boys and girls, aged 15 to 18 years...

...When historians talk about the size of the Krasnodon underground youth organization “Young Guard”, they usually use a vague wording - “about 100 people.” What is known for sure today is that 72 Young Guards were thrown into the pit of mine No. 5, and five were executed in the Rovenky Forest...

However, the lives of not all young underground fighters were cut short in January-February 1943. Some still managed to cheat death. But not everyone managed to survive the battle with history, with time, and ultimately with the truth. Everything lasted an excruciatingly long time. Both for the underground fighters themselves and for their family and friends. Numerous questions still remain unanswered, among which is this: who exactly raised the heroes of the Young Guard?

The fates of those who escaped turned out differently. One can imagine how, after the arrival of Soviet troops, they, stunned, crushed by the death of their comrades, returned to their hometown. One can understand their desire to take revenge on those who betrayed them...

But only for a moment they managed to deceive fate in order to win, as they thought, completely. After the first edition of Fadeev’s “Young Guard” in 1947, as well as after first impressions and complaints about artistic work author (this is precisely what we should focus on the novel, since Alexander Alexandrovich himself said about it: “I didn’t write true story Young Guards, and a novel that not only allows, but even presupposes artistic fiction"), almost every episode from the past of the dead members of the underground youth organization was carefully monitored by all kinds of studies and numerous researchers. The sources of a wide variety of information were relatives, classmates, teachers and, of course, surviving members of the underground. And, perhaps, this burden turned out to be the heaviest for them. After all, it was precisely the mass of all kinds of inconsistencies in the memories that served as the basis for calling into question not only the heroism of the Young Guards, but also the very existence of the underground youth organization...

Perhaps the most omissions concerned the personality of Viktor Tretyakevich (in Stakhevich’s novel), who in post-war years suspected of treason. However, over time, Viktor Tretyakevich, the real leader of the underground, unjustly accused of informing in the novel, was rehabilitated only in 1959, after the death of Stalin and the historical and fateful 20th Congress of the Communist Party. Also, the mark of traitors remained for many years on the names of Olga Lyadskaya, Zinaida Vyrikova and Sima Polyanskaya, although in the same 1959 the name of the real traitor became known - Gennady Pocheptsov. Thus, it can be noted historical fact the fact that half a century ago the process of restoring historical justice in relation to the Young Guard, their relatives and friends began. But for everyone...

Why did it happen that for many years justice did not find those who were waiting for it in camps and prisons (first Hitler, then Stalin-Beria)? There are a lot of such historical revolutions in the history of the Young Guard. The most offensive thing is that contradictions can be noticed even in the memoirs of the same participants in the Krasnodon underground, simply written in different years. However, it is unlikely that the blame for them can be placed entirely on the shoulders of the survivors. During the war, it was known exactly who is friend and who is enemy, where is the lie and where is the truth. Peaceful times sometimes required compromise for the sake of some of their highest values and the notorious political expediency. And I also had to live with this. Then, but not today...

In the same 1947, when the first book version of Fadeev’s “Young Guard” was published, Elena Nikolaevna Kosheva’s book “The Tale of a Son” was published by the Detgiz publishing house. It came out just in time for the 30th anniversary of the Great October Revolution. Today, no one doubts the fact that the first version of the wonderful novel, which educated more than one generation of our youth, was far from reality. And it was not the fault, but the misfortune of the author - after all, for the anniversary, the party and the Komsomol set the task of publishing the book as soon as possible. In this creative rush, and even under pressure from above, serious miscalculations were made in the study of the behavior of the heroes, their role in the organization, as well as in the analysis of existing documents. Plus, we should add the fact that a show trial of the executioners of Donbass was scheduled for November 4, 1947, and the release of the “Young Guard” was supposed to become a kind of testimony to the heroes at the trial.

But there was another reason for some distortions of reality, or rather not a reason, but a person whose name is Elena Nikolaevna Koshevaya, the mother of one of the leaders of the Young Guard. While writing the novel, Alexander Fadeev spent a significant period of time (that is, lived) with Elena Nikolaevna (which is confirmed by many documents), and her personal memories formed the basis of the novel. To do this, it is enough to compare her “Tale of a Son” with the first part of Fadeev’s “Young Guard”. And at the same time, many relatives and friends of other Young Guards did not wait for Fadeev at home...

What is the reason? Why? After all, before last days in the life of Elena Nikolaevna Kosheva (she died in 1987), she was considered the main keeper of the memory of the Young Guard, but at the same time, the name of her husband and father of the Young Guard Oleg Koshevoy was never mentioned anywhere.

* * *

In Alexander Alexandrovich’s novel, all the Young Guard heroes are children of miners and collective farmers. Unlike other families of heroes of Krasnodon, the Koshev family had noble roots. Elena Nikolaevna, nee Korostyleva, was born in the village of Zgurovka (now the regional center of the Kyiv region). Then she moved to the city of Priluki, worked as a teacher in kindergarten, eventually - the manager. This profession was her life's work. Elena Nikolaevna got married at the age of seventeen to a native resident of Priluki, heir to an ancient Cossack-hetman family, accountant Vasily Fedoseevich Koshevoy. In the house, which is located in the center of Priluki on Kievskaya Street and where the memorial house-museum of Oleg Koshevoy is now, Elena Nikolaevna gave birth to her only son Oleg. He became a favorite not only for his parents, but also for his grandparents. But fate turned out that the marriage of Elena Nikolaevna and Vasily Fedoseevich was short-lived. The couple separated. The son was raised first by his father, sometimes by his mother, and loved both of them immensely...

Thanks to the research of Zhuravlev and Lukash, it became possible to lift the veil of mystery in the life of the father of the hero-Youth Guard. In Kosheva’s book “The Tale of a Son” cited above, Elena Nikolaevna says about Oleg’s father: “After the New Year, my husband became seriously ill, he was taken to Kyiv, to the hospital, and he never returned home.”

“Thanks to” this significant conclusion, Oleg’s father was always and everywhere considered dead. And even the guides of many Young Guard museums said this on excursions: they say, they got divorced, and then he died. However, quite recently it became reliably known that after the war Oleg’s father worked as an accountant in Krasnodon, where he died only in 1967. And before that (that is, before the war), he lived in Bokovo-Antratsit, where he and his new wife raised their son, also Oleg. And all because Elena Nikolaevna literally abandoned her husband, her son, and her mother to her son-in-law and left with a young man named Kashuk, who was their housemate in Priluki. And only in December 1939 or January 1940, when the new husband-cohabitant died (and according to other sources, was arrested for embezzlement), she came to Donbass. Moreover, she came at the request of her son, who himself took her to Krasnodon, to the house of her uncle and closer to her father.

But all this time, the hero’s father was forgotten in history, and the name of Vasily Fedoseevich Koshevoy - due to political expediency and as a result of Elena Nikolaevna’s novel and Fadeev’s mistakes while working on the novel - was not mentioned. Neither in the press, nor at meetings...

It is no coincidence that Alexander Fadeev, the father of the hero, in the novel “The Young Guard,” and subsequently the director of the film of the same name, Sergei Gerasimov, did not identify him in any way. Why did this happen? Maybe Vasily Fedoseevich somehow compromised himself, had, as they say, “bad personal data”? Was he captured? In the Gulag?

No, there was nothing like that in his biography, because in 1939 he was drafted into the army, with which he went through the liberation campaign in Western Ukraine, the Finnish and Great Patriotic Wars. The fate of Vasily Fedoseevich Koshevoy is the fate of a man of the era of triumph and tragedy, true heroism and crippled lives. By the moral standards of that time, Vasily Fedoseevich’s entire guilt was that he divorced the hero’s mother, although, as we already know, everything was the other way around. From recently published sources it became known that throughout his short life, Oleg, who sincerely and like a man loved his father, constantly kept in touch with him. And the father, as the heir of a glorious Cossack family, fully supported his son in the fight for freedom. It is no coincidence that one of Oleg Koshevoy’s favorite books was “Taras Bulba”, with the prototype of which the underground worker’s grandfather linked his ancestry...

Since 1947, since the publication of “The Young Guard” and “The Tale of a Son,” the name of Oleg Koshevoy’s own father has been erased from the chronicles of the heroic underground. But all these years, first in Anthracite, and then in Krasnodon, his father lived near his son’s grave. To this day, local residents say that immediately after his liberation, Vasily Fedoseevich settled in Krasnodon and worked as chief accountant at mine No. 21, which bore the name of his son. Here in Krasnodon he died in 1967 and was buried not far from his son. But all these years he experienced the death of his son very hard, as well as the injustice towards himself. In Krasnodon they talked about how for many years an elderly man often came to the Young Guard Museum, and in his presence the questions of numerous excursionists were asked: “Who was Oleg Koshevoy’s father?” Each time the guides did not give an answer. And the one in question just stood nearby and cried. In the same “quiet way” he visited his home in Priluki, where Oleg was born and where he and Elena Nikolaevna lived the most wonderful years. Unfortunately, he did not live to see the hour when a museum named after his son appeared in Pryluki...

How did it happen that fate separated father and son forever? Oleg Koshevoy moved to his mother, Elena Nikolaevna, only in 1939, after graduating from Antratsitovskaya high school seventh grade, when Vasily Fedoseevich was drafted into the Red Army, which at that time was carrying out a liberation mission in Western Ukraine. Then there was the war with the White Finns, and, finally, the Great Patriotic War... It separated father and son forever. Vasily Fedoseevich learned about the death of his son while at the front and, naturally, was very worried. After the war, having been demobilized from the ranks Soviet army, went to the city of Krasnodon, where Oleg lived and died. And the ex-wife, Elena Nikolaevna, did everything to erase from people’s memory the years the son spent with his father in Anthracite. That’s why a version of my father’s death was invented...

...In 1946, by Decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Council USSR“For active assistance provided to the underground Komsomol organization “Young Guard”, Elena Nikolaevna Koshevaya was awarded the Order of the Patriotic War, 2nd degree. The best reward for Vasily Fedoseevich Koshevoy was his son, whom he, it was he, raised as a hero...

Afterword to the secret of the Young Guard. On May 13, 1956, Alexander Fadeev shot himself with a revolver at his dacha in Peredelkino near Moscow. In the obituary, the official cause of suicide was stated to be alcoholism. In fact, according to the recollections of his relatives, two weeks before his suicide, Alexander Alexandrovich stopped drinking. Contrary to his last wish - to be buried next to his mother - Fadeev was buried at the Novodevichy cemetery...

...The real reasons for Fadeev’s suicide are indicated in his suicide letter addressed to the CPSU Central Committee and published for the first time in the weekly journal of the CPSU Central Committee “Glasnost”: “I don’t see the opportunity to live, since the art to which I gave my life was ruined by the self-confident and ignorant leadership of the party and is no longer can be corrected... Literature - this highest fruit of the new system - is humiliated, persecuted, ruined. The complacency of the nouveau riche with the great Leninist teaching, even when they swear by it, by this teaching, led to complete distrust of them on my part, because even worse can be expected from them... My life as a writer loses all meaning, and with great joy I getting rid of this vile existence, where meanness, lies and slander fall upon you, I am leaving this life. The last hope was to at least tell this to the people who rule the state, but for three years, despite my requests, they couldn’t even accept me. I ask you to bury me next to my mother. A. Fadeev."

From Elena Kosheva’s book “The Tale of a Son”: “The lilacs were blooming. White grapes peered into the open window of my room. It was June 8, 1926 in Priluki, Chernihiv region. On this day my son was born...

Pryluki is a noisy and cheerful Ukrainian city. It stands on the banks of the winding and picturesque Uday River. This river is not marked on the maps, but my memory has preserved it forever. More than once my son and I wandered through the silk grasses of Uday’s levadas, moved to the other shore, looked into the mirror water, watched the fish play, collected flowers in the meadows, wove wreaths from them...

I still remember my son’s birthday. The sunlight shimmered merrily on the leaves of the trees, shadows flickered on the ceiling and walls of the room. The birds chirped loudly. I didn't take my eyes off my firstborn. I really wanted a boy to be born to me, so that he would be beautiful, so that he would have long, soft hair. I even prepared the scallop in advance... And that’s what happened. My son turned out to have fluffy, flaxen-long hair. My husband and I decided: if it’s a boy, we’ll call it Alexey, and if it’s a girl, we’ll call it Svetlana. A son was born, and such a huge one. The old doctor asked: “What will you name your son?” “Alexey,” I answered. “Oh no,” the doctor playfully protested, “it doesn’t fit! Such a bummer needs a heroic name!”

I began to remember all sorts of heroes and settled on one from our history - Oleg. My father liked this name. But grandfather and grandmother could not get used to it. It seemed to them that only an adult is called Oleg, but what should they call a grandchild? And they came up with a name for him: Olezhek. Fedosy Osipovich never raised his voice to Oleg: “Our lad is the spitting image of my dad Osip Koshevoy! Just as meticulous!”

Father often told Oleg about the Zaporozhye Sich, about the invasion of the horde into Ukraine, about the defeat of the Swedes near Poltava. Oleg’s brown eyes then lit up. With bated breath, he eagerly listened to the stories of antiquity, and first became acquainted with Gogol’s wonderful story “Taras Bulba” in his father’s retelling...

We lived in Priluki until 1932, when my husband was transferred to work in Poltava. Oleg was six years old at the time. In Poltava we settled on Oktyabrskaya Street, not far from the Korpusny Garden. I remember how Oleg froze in front of the monument erected by Peter I in honor of the victory of Russian troops over the Swedes. We also visited the Swedish grave, the local history museum and other historical places that beautiful Poltava is so rich in...

Oleg and I often went to visit my relatives, the Korostylevs, who lived not far from Poltava, in the village of Zgurovka. In this friendly and hospitable family, Oleg felt at ease and quickly became friends with Uncle Kolya, then still a pioneer, grandfather Nikolai Nikolaevich, my father. Then there were: Rzhishchev, Kyiv, Kanev. And already on January 14, 1940 - to Krasnodon, to my mother’s brother. By that time, we, as parents, had divorced, especially since Oleg’s father disappeared”...

Historical and analytical information: Oleg Vasilyevich Koshevoy (June 8, 1926, Priluki, now Chernihiv region - February 9, 1943, near the city of Rovenka) - member, one of the organizers of the underground anti-fascist organization "Young Guard".

It is necessary to take into account that there are, as it were, two Oleg Koshevoys. One is a real person, a hero of the Great Patriotic War, whose youth fell during a terrible wartime, who joined an underground organization to fight the fascists, and the second is a character in the novel by writer Alexander Fadeev “The Young Guard”. It must be taken into account that the author created a work of art, a novel, and not a truthful, scrupulous essay supported by documentation. And it is also necessary to remember that although in a literary work the author “appointed” him as the chief commissar of the movement (which he was not) and attributed to his character feats not accomplished by a real person, this in no way diminishes the significance of the real heroic act of Oleg Koshevoy himself and his friends - underground workers.

Born into the family of an employee. In 1932-33, the Koshev family lived in Poltava, where Oleg’s father was transferred to work. From 1936 to 1938 he studied at secondary school No. 1 in the city of Anthracite. Since 1940, he lived in Krasnodon, Voroshilovgrad region, and studied at high school. Member of the headquarters (based on Fadeev’s novel “The Young Guard”, one of the organizers) of the underground Komsomol organization “Young Guard” during the Great Patriotic War of 1941-45. Member of the Komsomol since 1942.

After the occupation of Krasnodon by German troops(July 1942) under the leadership of the party underground, he participated in the creation of the Komsomol underground organization, a member of its headquarters. In January 1943, the organization was exposed by the German security service. Koshevoy tried to cross the front line, but was captured at the Kortushino station, where during a routine search at the checkpoint he was found to have a Komsomol card sewn into his clothes, which he refused to leave, contrary to the requirements of secrecy.

After torture, he was shot on February 9, 1943 near the city of Rovenka, Voroshilovgrad (Lugansk) region. On September 13, 1943, Oleg Koshevoy was posthumously awarded the title Hero Soviet Union. Koshevoy’s name was given to mines, state farms, schools, and pioneer squads in the USSR and abroad. Streets in many cities of Ukraine and Russia are named after him...

Funeral of the Young Guards

Funeral of Young Guards in Krasnodon March 1, 1943

Funeral of Young Guard Sergei Tyulenin

Funeral of Young Guard member Ivan Zemnukhov

Funeral of Young Guard member Vladimir Kulikov

Funeral of Young Guard soldier Gennady Lukashov

Boldly forward, and a firmer step,
And higher is the youth banner!
We are the young guard
Workers and peasants!

The small Ukrainian city of Krasnodon, located on the Bolshaya Kamenka River 50 km from Voroshilovgrad, former and present Lugansk, was little known until February 1943 locality regional significance. On February 14, troops of the 3rd Guards Army entered Krasnodon Southwestern Front. And a very short time after this, the name of a small mining town in the southeast of the region became known to the whole country, which learned about the active activities of the underground youth organization during the occupation. The military learned about the young underground fighters who suffered martyrdom at the hands of the Nazis and their accomplices on the same day and sent an urgent message to the Front Political Department. Together with the mothers of the victims, they visited the city police building, entered the cells, and examined the offices where the arrested boys and girls were subjected to terrible torture. There were black traces of blood everywhere, on the walls of the cells there were inscriptions with names, words of farewell to relatives. Then everyone hurried to the pit of mine No. 5. Although the executions of the underground workers took place hastily and secretly, a rumor spread throughout the city that the executioners had chosen her for execution. A terrible picture appeared before the eyes of the Krasnodon residents: the black mouth of an abandoned pit that swallowed up their children, melted snow mixed with earth and blood. There were scraps of clothing, shoes, and personal belongings lying around. It became completely clear that everything happened here. A few days later, mine rescuers began to remove the bodies of those executed from the pit. Having installed a gate and a winch, they descended into the tub, two at a time, to a depth and raised to the surface the bodies of the dead, sometimes mutilated beyond recognition. Broken arms and legs, broken fingers, terrible burns, torn skin, cut off ears, knocked out teeth, stars carved on their backs, severed hands, gouged out and scorched eyes... Women, having identified their children by indirect signs, lost consciousness, and men , stern miners and front-line soldiers, could not help but cry. How could people do such a thing, and can they even be called people after that? Already on April 18, the army newspaper “Son of the Fatherland” published photographs taken by military photojournalist L.I. Yablonsky photographs of the walls of police department cells. On one of the walls, poems and the signature “Anna Sopova” were written in blue pencil; on the other, a heart pierced by an arrow and four names in it: Bondareva, Minaeva, Gromova, Samoshina. Next to it is “Those who died at the hands of the Nazis on January 15, 1943 at 9 o’clock at night” and below, in the same hand of Ulyana Gromova, “Death to the German occupiers.” The photographs were accompanied by comments from military journalist Vladimir Smirnov. It was in them that the name of the organization – “Young Guard” – was first published in the press.

Soon these two words became known throughout the country, and with them the names of the organization’s leaders - Oleg Koshevoy, Ulyana Gromova, Ivan Zemnukhov, Sergei Tyulenin, Lyubov Shevtsova. These five posthumously received the title of Hero of the Soviet Union, and their parents received a good pension, honor and respect from the entire country. Three Young Guards - Anatoly Popov, Nikolai Sumskoy and Ivan Turkenich - were awarded the Order of the Red Banner of Battle, five people - the Order of the Red Star, another thirty-five - the Order of the Patriotic War, 1st degree, the rest - medals "Partisan of the Patriotic War" 1st and 2nd degree. “Years will pass, Hitler’s trash will disappear from the earth, wounds will be healed, pain and sorrow will subside, but the Soviet people will never forget. immortal feat organizers, leaders and members of the underground Komsomol organization “Young Guard,” wrote Pravda in September 1943, in which the Decree on the award was published. And in the fall of the same year, the famous writer Alexander Fadeev appeared in Krasnodon, who was instructed to collect material about the Young Guards and write an essay, story or even a novel about them. Fadeev was fired up by this story. He met and talked with teachers and parents of the Young Guards, and especially became friends with Elena Nikolaevna Kosheva, Oleg’s mother.
- I want to know the characters of the Young Guard, their interests, their moral character, their souls and dreams. “I want to study in detail each member of the underground organization “Young Guard”, to collect genuine, factual life material,” the writer told the Krasnodon residents, and they helped him as much as they could. And especially E.N. Koshevaya, in whose hospitable house he settled. The writer provided invaluable assistance high commission from Moscow, headed by Colonel A.V. Toritsyn. As a result, the novel “The Young Guard” was born, which became widely known not only in the USSR, but throughout the world. The novel taught young people patriotism and was part of the compulsory school curriculum, a wonderful feature film was made based on it. Beautiful Russian language, lively style, bright, soul-stirring images of the main characters, especially their leader, ideologist and commissar Oleg Koshevoy, and also, of course, Uli Gromova, Seryozhka Tyulenin, mischievous and energetic Lyubka Shevtsova. Each image is unique, individual, and remembered for a lifetime. Fadeev showed great skill and talent, and his novel would have been good for everyone, if not for one “but”: it has a very distant relationship with the true history of the “Young Guard”, and those who want to know the truth about it should not even try look for it in this work.

As a matter of fact, Fadeev himself repeatedly emphasized that his novel was not a documentary, but an artistic work, and he himself had the right to artistic fiction. In a letter to the parents of Lydia Androsova, an active member of the Young Guard, brutally tortured in fascist dungeons and thrown into a pit, Fadeev wrote: “Although the heroes of my novel bear real names and surnames, I did not write the history of the Young Guard, but a work of art , which contains a lot of fiction and even has fictitious names. The novel has the right to do so." But indeed: not a single historical literary work cannot do without artistic invention. If only because the author was not present at the conversations of his real-life heroes and cannot know exactly what they thought. He also cannot know everyone without exception. characters the story he describes, and therefore he has to introduce fictitious characters into the novel to fill in the gaps. But the author must still rely on known facts, and not distort them to please anyone, and certainly not call white black and black white, covering up lies and slander with the right to artistic invention. Aren't such expressions too harsh when applied to Fadeev's novel? Alas, it contains not only distortions of facts, hushing up names, belittling the role of some people and exaggerating the role of others, but also direct slander, which cost some innocent people shame, and others - long years of imprisonment in Stalin’s camps.

However, let's look at everything in order. Let's start with the fact that the novel does not mention at all the names of two of the three members of the headquarters who were at the origins of the creation of the Young Guard and turned it into an effective military organization with strict discipline and secrecy. These people are Young Guard Commissioner Viktor Tretyakevich and staff member Vasily Levashov. The third was Ivan Zemnukhov. Sergei Tyulenin initially acted autonomously, then he and his combat group joined the organization already created by Tretyakevich, Levashov and Zemnukhov. The main leaders of the Young Guard, who held all the threads in their hands and planned combat and subversive operations, were Viktor Tretyakevich, Ivan Turkenich, Vasily Levashov, Ivan Zemnukhov and Evgeny Moshkov. Oleg Koshevoy and Georgy Harutyunyants were also members of the headquarters. Of these seven people, only Zemnukhov and Koshevoy received the title of Hero and national fame in 1943, along with young heroes Gromova, Shevtsova and Tyulenin. But Ulyana Gromova, Lyubov Shevtsova and Sergei Tyulenin, contrary to the novel and official version, after all, they were not members of the headquarters, although they deservedly received their Hero stars.

The commander of the Young Guard was a military officer, former assistant Chief of Staff of the 614th Fighter Anti-Tank Artillery Regiment, Lieutenant Ivan Turkenich. In one of the battles on the middle Don, he was captured, escaped and returned to his native Krasnodon, joined an underground organization and introduced military discipline into it. Each operation was carefully thought out and planned. Through his efforts, the Young Guard began to represent a significant fighting force, operating according to the laws of military tactics. Turkenich and Levashov did not receive the title of Heroes because they did not fall into the hands of the Gestapo and escaped martyrdom. In addition, Turkenich was still a prisoner. When Tretyakevich, Zemnukhov and Moshkov were arrested, and the headquarters decided to leave the city, he managed to pass through the front line and died at the front in 1944, liberating Poland. Only in 1990 was he posthumously nominated for the title of Hero, including for the Young Guard.

Vasily Levashov also managed to reach his own people, reached Berlin as a private, and received many military awards. After the war, he became a naval officer and taught at the Popov Higher Naval School of Radio Electronics. Despite the fact that it Active participation in the Krasnodon youth underground it was no secret to anyone; for the “Young Guard” he received only the medal “Partisan of the Great Patriotic War”, 2nd degree.

Yevgeny Moshkov maintained contact between the Young Guard and the Krasnodon underground prepared by the NKVD before the war, was arrested first along with Tretyakevich and, after terrible torture, was executed along with him. It was through him that the notorious party leadership over the Young Guard was exercised. Here Fadeev did not sin against the truth; the communists Lyutikov and Barakov existed in reality and were actively working.
If Turkenich and Moshkov at least appear in the novel as characters, then there is not a single word about Vasily Levashov. But quite a lot has been written about his cousin Sergei Levashov, a dear friend of Lyuba Shevtsova. He was a former paratrooper and commander of a combat group. Why Fadeev wrote that he was killed while crossing the front line, when in fact Sergei was arrested and, after brutal torture, thrown into a pit, is also completely unclear.

It is also useless to look for the name of Viktor Tretyakevich in the book, but the character Evgeniy Stakhovich, invented by Fadeev, acts in him. This is an ambiguous figure. On the one hand, he is an active underground fighter and former partisan, on the other hand, he is a traitor who cannot withstand terrible torture and betrays the names of his comrades to the police. But the policemen and Germans, nevertheless, continue to torture him, knocking out more and more new names, and then they execute him among the very first. Psychologically this is a completely unrealistic situation. A person broken by torture, having begun to betray, no longer stops in his betrayal and lays out everything he knows, just to avoid repetition of the torment. There is no need to torture him anymore. And if he is killed, it will not be the first, but the last. It is strange that the “engineer of human souls” Alexander Fadeev did not understand this. Not only that, he also provided the fictional traitor Stakhovich with the basic facts of the biography of... Tretyakevich, including the circumstances of his arrest. But even before describing Stakhovich’s betrayal, Fadeev gradually and masterfully leads the reader to this, creating hostility and distrust of this character with details. Knowing the truth about who the person who served the author of the novel as the prototype for Stakhovich actually was, reading all this is completely unbearable. Fadeev “appointed” Oleg Koshevoy as the commissioner of the “Young Guard,” who had never been one, and it’s a stretch to consider him one of the leaders of the organization, since he joined it only at the beginning of November 1942. This is such a cute “fiction”, which represents a real slander against the main leader of the Young Guard, whose outstanding role was unanimously recognized by all its surviving members. Also, thank you for at least changing your first and last name. Can a person who gave information as a result of monstrous torture be considered a vile traitor? big question, for there is a limit to human endurance. Only a few could withstand the measures of “special influence” of professional bonebreakers of the NKVD and Gestapo. The absolute majority signed everything and admitted to anything. And before blaming them, it’s worth imagining yourself in their place. Of course, not all of the Young Guards could withstand the wild medieval tortures, but it was Viktor Tretyakevich who withstood them, showing incomprehensible fortitude and perseverance. He was pushed into the pit alive, since he still tried, gathering his remaining strength, to drag one of the policemen with him. How did it happen that such a person was slandered? And who did it? Is it really Fadeev himself? Of course not. We will return to this issue later, but the fact is that Fadeev knew perfectly well the name of the real traitor of the Young Guard.

Komsomol member Gennady Pocheptsov was not arrested or tortured. He himself ran to the police when his stepfather, who served with the invaders, intimidated him when he saw his stepson holding cigarettes from a truck looted by the Young Guards with the Fuhrer’s Christmas gifts for Wehrmacht soldiers. The traitor was shot in the same 1943, together with the traitor Kuleshov and the secret agent of the Krasnodon police Gromov, nicknamed “Vanyusha,” who was the same stepfather. So: Pocheptsov’s name is not in the novel, and Fadeev explained this by saying that he did not want to ruin the lives of his namesakes who lived in the region. But then the surname could have simply been changed instead of replacing the true story of betrayal with a false one, according to which the organization was betrayed by two schoolgirl friends: Olga Lyadskaya and Zinaida Vyrikova. Moreover, these names just belonged to real girls, who in fact did not know each other. Both received long sentences for treason that they did not commit, and only in 1990, after a repeated thorough check of all the circumstances of the case, were they rehabilitated for lack of corpus delicti.

Now let's return to the story with Tretyakevich. The first to slander the already dead hero was the fascist henchman and executioner, police investigator Kuleshov, who personally tortured and executed the Young Guard. Why Tretyakevich? Apparently, the leader of the Young Guard aroused such fierce hatred among his enemies with his courage and fortitude that they decided to discredit his name after his death. But why did Colonel Toritsyn’s commission, and after it Fadeev, believe the scum and did not want to listen to the opinion of the surviving Young Guards - Turkenich, Nadya Tyulenina, Zhora Harutyunyants, Radik Yurkin, Valeria Borts? But here Elena Nikolaevna Koshevaya tried very hard, who seized on the version of Tretyakevich’s betrayal and declared her son commissar of the Young Guard. Her house was a hospitable and cozy haven not only for Fadeev and Toritsyn, but also for the German officers during the occupation of Krasnodon, and in order to avoid awkward questions from the Soviet authorities, she needed to become the mother of not just a Young Guard, but their leader and ideological inspirer . The legend about Commissar Koshevoy was also facilitated by the fact that after Tretyakevich’s arrest, Oleg arbitrarily took Komsomol tickets issued by Tretyakevich and forwarded the signature “Slavin” (Tretyakevich’s underground pseudonym) on them to Kashuk. With these tickets he was arrested by the gendarmerie near the city of Rovenki. During interrogation, he called himself the commissar of the Young Guard. After brutal torture, Oleg Koshevoy was shot in Rovenki along with Lyuba Shevtsova. The version about Koshevoy’s commissarship and Tretyakevich’s betrayal was accepted by a high commission, then a novel was written around it, and for many years the name of the true and only commissar of the organization was consigned to oblivion, his parents did not receive a pension, and a literary legend for the general public replaced the true story of “Young guard." It must be said that the dishonest actions of E.N. Koshevoy ended up damaging her son's reputation. When everything finally became clear, there were unscrupulous researchers and journalists who began to accuse Oleg Koshevoy himself of treason and even deny the fact of his death.

And the arrest in 1959 of the seasoned executioner Vasily Podtynny, a former lieutenant of the Red Army, who voluntarily surrendered to the Germans, then fled from them, ended up in Krasnodon and went to work for the city police, headed by the former criminal Solikovsky, helped restore the country’s good name to Viktor Tretyakevich. . Together with Solikovsky, Zakharov, Kuleshov, Cherenkov and other degenerates, he personally tortured and executed the Young Guards, but managed to escape retribution when the city was occupied Soviet troops. Almost everyone was punished with the exception of the main executioner Solikovsky, who disappeared without a trace. In Fadeev’s novel there is no name Podtynny, unlike the names of Solikovsky and Kuleshov, but the MGB knew about him very well and was constantly searching. As a result, the traitor was found in one of the state farms in the Stalin region, where he quietly and peacefully worked as a cattleman. At first, he pretended that he did not understand what he was being asked about, but specialists from the MGB quickly loosened his tongue using “special methods,” and he began to tell everything he knew. They did not stand on ceremony with the former executioner during interrogations, and one must assume that, once in the dungeons, he bitterly regretted not only his atrocities, but also the fact that he had ever been born. It turned out that, having fled from Krasnodon, he made his way... into the active army, reached Berlin and even had military awards. Sometimes you can simply be amazed when studying examples of the work of Soviet intelligence services. Hero of the Soviet Union fighter pilot Ivan Babak, the prototype of the main character in the film " Clear sky", they were beaten to death after German captivity, and only the intervention of A.I. himself. Pokryshkin snatched him from the tenacious clutches of army counterintelligence. But the traitor and executioner was accepted into the active army, and the vaunted counterintelligence service SMERSH did not even bother to check whether it was the same Podtynny who was rampaging in Krasnodon.
One way or another, Podtynny’s testimony helped put an end to the “Tretyakevich case” and remove all suspicion from him. It would seem that if so, give him the posthumous title of Hero of the Soviet Union and recognize him as a commissar. But no! IN higher spheres it was decided to posthumously award Victor only with the Order of the Patriotic War, 1st degree, and assign his mother a personal pension. Heartbroken and crushed by shame, Victor’s father did not live to see this happy day. And it was decided to continue to officially consider Oleg Koshevoy as the commissioner of the Young Guard. Why? Yes, just so as not to change or explain anything. There is no need to stir up the past; now we will consider Stakhovich a completely fictional character, that’s all. A very convenient solution, but it could not suit those who respect the history of their country. The truth is always better than hypocritical half-truths and myth-making. The current political leadership could put an end to this story by awarding Viktor Tretyakevich the title of Hero of Russia.
***

Dear reader!
I present to your attention the book "Shadow Genius".

The book is written in the genre of artistic documentary prose and is a collection of works united by the theme of military aviation of the 20th century: the work of outstanding aircraft designers, the history of creation and combat use various samples aviation technology of the past century, the war in Spain, the combat path of the Normandy-Niemen air regiment, the Battle of Britain, the history of radar, the Allied air terror and the tragedy of Dresden, three stars of Alexandra Pokryshkina, Adolf Galland and Werner Mölders, difficult fate Willy Messerschmitt.

https://ridero.ru/books/sumrachnyi_genii/

WHY FADEYEV TOOK SORRY FOR READERS

There is no doubt that today's twenty-year-old neo-fascists, the same age as their brutally tortured fellow countrymen, have not read this book or seen these photographs.

“They beat her and hung her by her braids. They lifted Anya out of the pit with one scythe - the other was broken.

Soviet people dreamed of being like the brave Krasnodon residents... They swore to avenge their death.
What can I say, the tragic and beautiful story of the Young Guards shocked the whole world, and not just the fragile minds of children.
The film became the box office leader in 1948, and the leading actors, unknown VGIK students, immediately received the title of Stalin Prize Laureate - an exceptional case. “Woke up famous” is about them.
Ivanov, Mordyukova, Makarova, Gurzo, Shagalova - letters from all over the world came to them in bags.
Gerasimov, of course, felt sorry for the audience. Fadeev - readers.
Neither paper nor film could convey what really happened that winter in Krasnodon.

But what is happening now in Ukraine.

samarapedsovet.ru

Europe has recognized the crimes of Ukrainian punitive forces in southeastern Ukraine

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Funeral of the Young Guards