Zoya is a hero. Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya - biography, feat

In 2015, all mankind will celebrate the end of one of the most terrible wars in its history. Especially a lot of suffering in the early 1940s fell to the lot, and it was the inhabitants of the USSR who showed the world examples of unprecedented heroism, stamina and love for the Motherland. For example, to this day, the feat of Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya has not been forgotten, a brief summary of the history of which is presented below.

background

On November 17, 1941, when the Nazis were on the outskirts of Moscow, it was decided to use the Scythian tactics against the invaders. In this regard, an order was issued ordering the destruction of all settlements behind enemy lines in order to deprive him of the opportunity to spend the winter in comfortable conditions. To fulfill the order, several sabotage groups were formed from among the fighters of the special partisan unit 9903 as soon as possible. This military unit, specially created at the end of October 1941, consisted mainly of Komsomol volunteers who underwent a rigorous selection. In particular, each of the young people was interviewed and warned that they would be required to perform tasks involving mortal risk.

Family

Before telling who Kosmodemyanskaya Zoya Anatolyevna was, whose feat made her a symbol of the heroism of the Soviet people, it is worth knowing some interesting facts about her parents and other ancestors. So, the first woman who received the title during the Second World War was born in a family of teachers. However, for a long time the fact was hidden that the paternal ancestors of the girl were clergymen. Interestingly, in 1918, her grandfather, who was a priest in the church of the village of Osino-Gai, where Zoya was later born, was brutally tortured and drowned in a pond by the Bolsheviks. The Kosmodemyansky family spent some time in Siberia, as the girl's parents feared arrest, but soon returned and settled in the capital. Three years later, Zoya's father died, and he and his brother were in the care of their mother.

Biography

Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya, all the truth and lies about whose feat became known to the public relatively recently, was born in 1923. After returning from Siberia, she studied at school N 201 in Moscow and was especially fond of humanitarian subjects. The girl's dream was to enter the university, but she was destined for a completely different fate. In 1940, Zoya suffered a severe form of meningitis and underwent a rehabilitation course at a specialized sanatorium in Sokolniki, where she met Arkady Gaidar.

When in 1941 a recruitment of volunteers was announced to complete the partisan unit 9903, Kosmodemyanskaya was one of the first to go for an interview and successfully passed it. After that, she and about 2,000 other Komsomol members were sent to special courses, and then transferred to the Volokolamsk region.

The feat of Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya: a summary

On November 18, the commanders of two sabotage groups of HF No. 9903, P. Provorov and B. Krainov, received an order to destroy 10 settlements located behind enemy lines within a week. As part of the first of them, the Red Army soldier Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya also went on a mission. The groups were fired upon by the Germans near the village of Golovkovo, and due to heavy losses, they had to unite under the command of Krainov. Thus, the feat of Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya was accomplished at the end of the autumn of 1941. More precisely, on her last assignment to the village of Petrishchevo, the girl went on the night of November 27, along with the group commander and fighter Vasily Klubkov. They set fire to three residential buildings along with stables, destroying 20 invaders' horses. In addition, subsequently, witnesses spoke about another feat of Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya. It turns out that the girl managed to incapacitate, which made it impossible for some German units occupying positions near Moscow to interact.

captivity

An investigation into the events that took place in Petrishchev at the end of November 1941 showed that Krainov did not wait for Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya and Vasily Klubkov and returned to his own. The girl herself, not finding her comrades in the agreed place, decided to continue fulfilling the order on her own and again went to the village on the evening of November 28. This time she failed to carry out the arson, as she was captured by the peasant S. Sviridov and handed over to the Germans by him. The Nazis, enraged by constant sabotage, began torturing the girl, trying to find out from her how many more partisans were operating in the Petrishchevo area. Investigators and historians, whose subject of study was the immortal feat of Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya, also found that two local residents took part in her beating, whose houses she set on fire the day before she was captured.

execution

On the morning of November 29, 1941, Kosmodemyanskaya was brought to the place where the gallows was built. A sign hung around her neck with an inscription in German and Russian, which said that the girl was a house arsonist. On the way, Zoya was attacked by one of the peasant women who were left homeless through her fault, and hit her on the legs with a stick. Then several German soldiers began to photograph the girl. Subsequently, the peasants, who were driven to see the execution of the saboteur, told the investigators about another feat of Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya. The summary of their testimony is as follows: before they put a noose around her neck, the fearless patriot made a short speech in which she called for fighting the Nazis, and ended it with words about the invincibility of the Soviet Union. The body of the girl was on the gallows for about a month and was buried by local residents only on the eve of the New Year.

Recognition of a feat

As already mentioned, immediately after Petrishchevo was liberated, a special commission arrived there. The purpose of her visit was to identify the corpse and interrogate those who personally saw the feat of Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya. Briefly, all the testimony was recorded on paper and sent to Moscow for further investigation. After studying these and other materials, the girl was posthumously awarded the high title of Hero of the Soviet Union by Stalin personally. The order was published by all the newspapers published in the USSR, and the whole country learned about it.

"Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya", M. M. Gorinov. New details about the feat

After the collapse of the USSR, a lot of “sensational” articles appeared in the press, in which everyone and everything was blackened. This cup did not pass and Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya. As the well-known researcher of Russian and Soviet history M. M. Gorinov notes, one of the reasons for this was the suppression and falsification of some facts of the biography of a brave girl in the Soviet period for ideological reasons. In particular, since it was considered a shame for a Red Army soldier, including Zoya, to be captured, a version was launched that her partner, Vasily Klubkov, had betrayed her. During the first interrogations, this young man did not report anything of the kind. But then he suddenly decided to confess and said that he had indicated her whereabouts to the Germans in exchange for her life. And this is just one example of the juggling of facts in order not to tarnish the image of the heroine-martyr, although Zoya's feat did not need such an adjustment at all.

Thus, when cases of falsification and suppression of the truth became known to the general public, some unfortunate journalists, in pursuit of cheap sensations, began to present them in a distorted form. In particular, in order to belittle the feat of Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya, a summary of whose history is presented above, emphasis was placed on the fact that she was undergoing therapy in a sanatorium specializing in the treatment of nervous diseases. Moreover, as in the children's game “broken phone”, the diagnosis changed from publication to publication. So, if in the first “revealing” articles it was written that the girl was unbalanced, then in subsequent ones they already began to call her almost a schizophrenic, who, even before the war, repeatedly set fire to

Now you know what the feat of Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya consisted of, which is rather difficult to describe briefly and without emotion. After all, no one can remain indifferent to the fate of an 18-year-old girl who was martyred for the sake of the liberation of her homeland.

On your face is the peace of death...
We will remember you differently.
You remained alive among the people,
And the Fatherland is proud of you.
You are like her fighting glory,
You are like a song calling to battle!

Agniya Barto

“No matter how much you hang us, don’t hang everyone, there are one hundred and seventy million of us. But our comrades will avenge you for me.”

…Yes. She said this - Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya - the first woman awarded the title Hero of the Soviet Union (posthumously).

Zoya Anatolyevna Kosmodemyanskaya was born on September 13, 1923 in a family of priests. The place of her birth is the village of Osino-Gai, Tambov province (USSR). Zoya's grandfather, Pyotr Ioannovich Kosmodemyansky, was brutally murdered by the Bolsheviks in 1918 for trying to hide counter-revolutionaries in a church. Zoya's father, Anatoly Kosmodemyansky, studied at the theological seminary, but did not have time to graduate from it, because. (according to Lyubov Kosmodemyanskaya - Zoya's mother) the whole family fled from the denunciation to Siberia. From where a year later she moved to Moscow. In 1933, Anatoly Kosmodemyansky died after an operation. Thus, Zoya and her brother Alexander (later Hero of the Soviet Union) remained in the upbringing of one mother. Zoya graduated from 9 classes of school No. 201. She was interested in such school disciplines as history and literature. But, unfortunately, it was difficult for her to find a common language with her classmates. In 1938, Zoya joined the All-Union Leninist Communist Youth Union (VLKSM).

In 1941, terrible events came for the country, the Great Patriotic War began. From the first days, the brave Zoya wanted to fight for her Motherland and go to the front. She turned to the Oktyabrsky district committee of the Komsomol. On October 31, 1941, Zoya, along with other volunteers - Komsomol members, was taken to a sabotage school. After three days of training, the girl became a fighter of the reconnaissance and sabotage unit (“partisan unit 9903 of the headquarters of the Western Front”). The leaders of the military unit warned that the participants in this operation were actually suicide bombers, the level of loss of fighters would be 95%. The recruits were also warned about torture in captivity and death. All unprepared were asked to leave the school. Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya, like many other volunteers, did not flinch, she was ready to fight for the victory of the Soviet Union in this terrible war. Then Kosmodemyanskaya was only 18 years old, her life was just beginning, but the Great War crossed out the life of young Zoya.

On November 17, order No. 428 of the Supreme High Command was issued, which ordered to deprive (quote) “the German army of the opportunity to be located in villages and cities, drive the German invaders from all settlements into the cold in the field, smoke them out of all premises and warm shelters and force them to freeze in the open sky", with the aim of "destroying and burning to the ground all the settlements in the rear of the German troops."

A team of saboteurs was given the task of burning ten settlements within 5-7 days. The group, which included Zoya, was given Molotov cocktails and dry rations for 5 days.

Kosmodemyanskaya managed to set fire to three houses, as well as destroy German transport. On the evening of November 28, while trying to set fire to the barn, Zoya was captured by the Germans. She was interrogated by three officers. It is known that the girl called herself Tanya and did not say anything about her reconnaissance detachment. German executioners brutally tortured the girl, they wanted to know who sent her and why. From the words of those present, it is known that Zoya, stripped to the naked, was flogged with belts, then for four hours they drove barefoot through the snow in the cold. It is also known that Smirnova and Solina, the housewives, whose houses were set on fire, took part in the beating. For this, they were subsequently sentenced to death.

The courageous Komsomol member did not say a word. Zoya was so brave and devoted to her Motherland that she did not even give her real name and surname.

At 10:30 the next morning, Kosmodemyanskaya was taken out into the street, where the gallows had already been built. All the people were forced to go outside to look at this "spectacle". A sign was hung on Zoya's chest with the inscription "The arsonist of houses." Then they put her on a box and put a noose around her neck. The Germans began to photograph her - they really liked to photograph people before execution. Zoya, taking advantage of the moment, began to speak loudly:

Hey comrades! Be bolder, fight, beat the Germans, burn. Grass!.. I'm not afraid to die, comrades. This is happiness, to die for your people. Farewell, comrades! Fight, don't be afraid! Stalin is with us! Stalin is coming!

The body of Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya hung on the street for a month. Passing soldiers shamelessly mocked him repeatedly. On New Year's Eve 1942, drunken fascist monsters took off clothes from the hanged woman and stabbed the body with knives, cutting off one breast. After such bullying, it was ordered to remove the body and bury it outside the village. Subsequently, the body of Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya was reburied in Moscow at the Novodevichy cemetery.

The fate of this courageous girl became known from the article "Tanya" by Pyotr Lidov, published on January 27, 1942 in the Pravda newspaper. And already on February 16, Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya was awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union. Kosmodemyanskaya are devoted to poems, stories, poems. Monuments to the Heroine are installed on the Minsk highway, at the Izmailovsky Park metro station, in the city of Tambov and the village of Petrishchevo. In tribute to the memory of Zoya, museums have been opened and streets have been named. Zoya - a young and selfless girl - became an inspiring example for the entire Soviet people. Her heroism and courage shown in the fight against the fascist invaders are admired and inspired to this day.

Contest topic:"Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya - who stepped into eternity."

MOU SOSH with. Berdyugye

Studying the archival documents of the school museum on the history of my native school, I discovered the fact that the pioneer squad of my school until the 90s was named after Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya. Here, I saw a photo of Zoe. A girl with a manly face was looking at me. It became interesting to me what this young and very beautiful girl did, to find out about her heroic fate.

An employee of the museum and my class teacher, Dyukova Galina Alexandrovna laid out before me illustrations, photographs, printed material and nonfiction books that I had to look through. The more I read into the life story of Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya, the more I wanted to know about her.

She was an ordinary girl, she was born on September 13, 1923. in the village of Osinovye Gai, Tambov Region, in an intelligent family.

Father, Anatoly Petrovich, was in charge of the club and the library; mother, Lyubov Timofeevna, was a teacher in a rural school.

In 1931 the family moved to Moscow, where Zoya and her younger brother Shura went to school. In October 1938, Zoya became a Komsomol member, having successfully passed all the commissions. Yes, and it was difficult not to accept this girl in the ranks of the Lenin Komsomol, since she studied well, was restrained, disciplined, and was awarded commendable letters. She especially loved literature and read a lot.

Once she read a book about the heroes of the Civil War, in which there was an essay about Tatyana Solomakh, a communist brutally tortured by the White Guards. The heroic image of Tanya shook Zoya to the core. She had someone to look up to! And it is not for nothing that she will be called the name of Tatyana before the execution.

Zoya successfully graduated from the 9th grade, moved to the 10th, it was 1941. The war has begun...

During the Nazi air raids on Moscow, Zoya, along with her brother Alexander, kept watch on the roof of the house where they lived. In October 1941, Zoya, on a ticket from the city committee of the Komsomol, volunteered for a reconnaissance detachment.

After a short training in the detachment, as part of a group, on November 4, she was transferred to the Volokolamsk region to complete a combat mission.

A few days later, having completed the next task, the group returned home, but Zoya thought this was not enough, and she literally persuaded the commander to return to the area of ​​​​the village of Petrishchevo, where the headquarters of a large Nazi unit was located. The girl managed to cut the field telephone wires and set the stable on fire. But the alarmed German sentries tracked down the girl and grabbed her. Zoya was undressed and beaten with fists, and after a while, beaten, barefoot, in one shirt, they took her through the whole village to the Voronins' house, where the headquarters was located.

Officers began to converge on the Voronins' house. The owners were ordered to leave. The senior officer himself interrogated the partisan in Russian.

The officer asked questions, and Zoya answered them without hesitation, loudly and boldly. Zoya was asked who sent her and who was with her. They demanded that she betray her friends. Answers came through the door: “No,” “I don’t know,” “I won’t tell.” Then the straps whistled, and you could hear them whipping over the young body. Four men took off their belts and beat the girl. The hosts counted 200 hits. Zoya didn't make a sound. And after that there was an interrogation again, she continued to answer: “No”, “I won’t tell”, - only more quietly.

After interrogation, she was taken to the house of Vasily Aleksandrovich Kulik. She walked under escort, still undressed, walking barefoot in the snow. Zoya was pushed into the hut, the owners saw her tormented body. She was breathing heavily. The lips were bitten into blood. She sat down on a bench, sat calmly and motionless, then asked for a drink. Vasily Kulik wanted to serve water from a tub, but the sentry, who was constantly in the hut, forced her to drink kerosene, bringing a lamp to her mouth.

The soldiers who lived in the hut were allowed to mock the Russian partisan. Once satisfied, they went to sleep.

Then the sentry, throwing his rifle at the ready, came up with a new kind of torture. Every hour he took the undressed girl out into the yard and took her around the house for 15-20 minutes. The sentries changed, as they could not withstand the Russian frost, but a very young girl survived. She did not ask for mercy from her enemies. She despised and hated them, and that made her even stronger. The Nazis from their impotence became even more furious.

On November 29, after terrible torture, Zoya was led to the gallows under heavy escort. The Nazis drove the villagers here too ...

Once Zoya wrote in her school notebook about Ilya Muromets: “When an evil praiser overcomes him, the Russian land itself pours strength into him.” And in those fateful moments, as if the native land itself gave her a mighty, unmaidenly strength. Even the enemy had to admit this power with amazement.

In her hour of death, the brave partisan with a contemptuous glance looked at the Nazis crowding around the gallows. The executioners lifted the brave girl, put her on a box and put a noose around her neck. The Germans began to take pictures. The commandant made a sign to the soldiers who were performing the duty of executioners to wait. Zoya, taking advantage of the opportunity, shouted, addressing the villagers:

“Be bolder, fight, beat the Germans, burn, poison! I'm not afraid to die, comrades. It is happiness to die for your people!”

Turning towards the German soldiers, Zoya continued: “You will hang me now, but I am not alone. There are two hundred million of us, you can't outweigh everyone. You will be avenged for me. Soldiers! Before it’s too late, surrender, anyway, victory will be ours!” How much courage did you have to have in order to finally spit in the face of the enemy again ?!

Russian people standing in the square were crying.

The executioner pulled up the rope, and the noose squeezed Tanino's throat. But she parted the noose with both hands, rose on her toes and shouted, straining with all her strength: “Farewell, comrades! Fight, don't be afraid!”... The executioner rested his shoe on the box. The box creaked and thudded to the ground. The crowd reeled...

She died in enemy captivity on a fascist rack, without a single sound expressing her suffering, without betraying her comrades. She accepted martyrdom as a heroine, as the daughter of a great nation, which no one can ever break. Her memory lives on forever!

For about a month, the body of a young partisan hung on the village square. Tanya was buried outside the village, under a birch, a blizzard covered the grave mound with snow.

The feat of the Moscow schoolgirl Zoya, her martyrdom, heroic death in Petrishchev was first learned at the end of January 1942, when the Red Army drove the Nazi army to the west. And Peter Lidov's story about Zoya came at that time. He did not know the real name of the heroine, and Zoya called herself the name “Tanya” to the locals, under this heading the article was published. And only from the photographs (taken by the Nazis during the execution) accompanying the article, friends and relatives recognized Zoya, a Moscow schoolgirl, Zoya Anatolyevna Kosmodemyanskaya.

I look again and again at the photo: a correct, open face with solid features that reflect the strength of her character. It is much more difficult for ourselves to answer the question: where does this strength, this unbending courage come from? Zoya died when she was as old as we are now. And there was something in her that gave her the courage to die a hero, having seen so little in life, not having experienced everything that is given to experience a person. Zoya became a heroine because she, our age, already firmly knew what she needed from life and what she should give her. Only a person with very clear and firm principles could live his short life so beautifully and brightly.

Literature:

1. Addresses of victory. - Tyumen: OJSC "Tyumen Publishing House", 2010. – page 155

2. Great Patriotic. A short illustrated history of the war for youth. - Moscow publishing house "Young Guard" 1975. – page 213

3. "Russian patriot" Special issue, 2010

4. Trail of heroes - art. Roads lead to Moscow. Publishing house "Young Guard", 1977. page 26

5. Archival documents of the school museum.

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 that cast doubt on the feat of the young partisan. Let's try to figure out what really happened.

Doubt time

The country learned about the feat of Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya from the essay "Tanya" by war correspondent Pyotr Lidov, published in the Pravda newspaper on January 27, 1942. It told about a young partisan girl who, while performing a combat mission, was captured by the Germans, survived the brutal abuse 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 the old ideals; it did not bypass the story of the feat of Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya. The new materials that saw the light claimed that Zoya, who suffered from schizophrenia, arbitrarily and indiscriminately burned rural houses, including those where there were no fascists. In the end, angry locals grabbed the saboteur and handed her over to the Germans.

According to another popular version, under the pseudonym "Tanya" it was not Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya who was hiding, but a completely different person - Lilya Ozolina.
The fact of torture and execution of the girl in these publications was not questioned, however, the emphasis was placed on the fact that Soviet propaganda artificially created the image of a martyr, separating him from real events.

Behind enemy lines

In the anxious October days of 1941, when Muscovites were preparing for street fighting, Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya, among other Komsomol members, went to enlist in the detachments being created for reconnaissance and sabotage work behind enemy lines.
At first, the candidacy of a fragile girl who had recently suffered an acute form of meningitis and suffered from a “nervous illness” was rejected, but thanks to her perseverance, Zoya convinced the military commission to accept her into the detachment.

As one of the members of the reconnaissance and sabotage group, Claudia Miloradova, recalled, during classes in Kuntsevo, they “went into the forest for three days, laid mines, blew up trees, learned to remove sentries, use a map.” And already in early November, Zoya and her comrades received the first task - to mine the roads, which she successfully coped with. The group returned to the unit without loss.

fatal mission

On November 17, 1941, the military command issued an order that ordered "to deprive the German army of the opportunity to be located in villages and cities, drive the German invaders out of all settlements into the cold in the field, smoke them out of all rooms and warm shelters and make them freeze in the open air."

In pursuance of this order, on November 18 (according to other sources - 20), the commanders of sabotage groups were ordered to burn 10 villages occupied by the Germans. Everything took 5 to 7 days. One of the units included Zoya.

Near the village of Golovkovo, the detachment stumbled upon an ambush and, during the skirmish, was dispersed. Some of the soldiers died, some were captured. The rest, including Zoya, united in 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 communication center, but she never came to the agreed meeting place.

fatal mission

According to various sources, Zoya spent one or two days in the forest and returned to the village to complete the task to the end. This fact was the reason for the appearance of the version that Kosmodemyanskaya carried out arson of houses without an order.

The Germans were ready to meet with the partisan, they also instructed the local residents. When trying to set fire to the house of S. A. Sviridov, the owner notified the Germans quartered there and Zoya was captured. The beaten girl was taken to the home of the Kulik family.
The hostess P. Ya. Kulik recalls how a partisan with “expired lips and a swollen face” was brought to 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 asked by Kulik who burned the houses, Zoya answered that “she”. According to the hostess, the girl asked if there were victims, to which she answered “no”. The Germans managed to run out, and only 20 horses were killed. Judging from the conversation, Zoya was surprised that there were still residents in the village, since, according to her, they should have "long ago left the village from the Germans."

According to Kulik, at 9 am Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya was interrogated. She was not present at the interrogation, and at 10:30 the girl was taken to be executed. On the way to the gallows, local residents several times accused Zoya of setting fire to houses, trying to hit her with a stick or pour mud over her. According to eyewitnesses, the girl accepted the 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 Petrishchevo, 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 inhabitants of the village.

But to identify the girl, a photograph was needed. The next time he arrived with Pravda photojournalist Sergei Strunnikov. Having opened the grave, they took the necessary pictures.
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 riddle with 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 only at the beginning of February 1942, a special commission was able to finally confirm the identity of the girl executed in Petrishchev. In addition to the villagers, a classmate and teacher Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya participated in the identification. On February 10, Zoya's mother and brother were shown pictures of the deceased girl: “Yes, this is Zoya,” both answered, although not very confidently.
To remove the final doubts, Zoya's mother, brother and friend Claudia Miloradova were asked to come to Petrishchevo. All of them, without hesitation, identified Zoya in the murdered girl.

Alternative versions

In recent years, a version has become popular that Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya was betrayed to the Nazis by her friend Vasily Klubkov. In early 1942, Klubkov returned to his unit and reported that he had been taken prisoner by the Germans, but then escaped.
However, during interrogations, he already gave other testimonies, in particular, that he was captured along with Zoya, betrayed her 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 slander Klubkov, either for career reasons or for propaganda purposes. One way or another, this version has not received any confirmation.
When information appeared in the early 1990s 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 Scientific Research Institute of Forensic Examinations based on photographs of Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya, Lily Ozolina and pictures of the girl, executed in Petrishchev, who were found with a captured German. The conclusion of the commission was unequivocal: "Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya is captured in German photographs."
M. M. Gorinov wrote about the publications that exposed the feat of Kosmodemyanskaya: “They reflected some facts of the biography of Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya, which were hushed up in Soviet times, but were reflected, as in a crooked mirror, in a monstrously distorted form.”

Zoya Anatolyevna Kosmodemyanskaya was born on September 13, 1923 in the village of Osino-Gai, Gavrilovsky district, Tambov region, in a family of hereditary local priests.

Her grandfather, the priest Pyotr Ioannovich Kosmodemyansky, was executed by the Bolsheviks for hiding counter-revolutionaries in the church. On the night of August 27, 1918, the Bolsheviks seized him, and after severe tortures, drowned him in a pond. Zoya's father Anatoly studied at the theological seminary, but did not graduate from it; married a local teacher Lyubov Churikova.

In 1929 the family ended up in Siberia; according to some statements, they were exiled, but according to Zoya's mother, Lyubov Kosmodemyanskaya, they fled from the denunciation. For a year, the family lived in the village of Shitkino on the Yenisei, but then managed to move to Moscow - perhaps thanks to the efforts of sister Lyubov Kosmodemyaskaya, who served in the People's Commissariat of Education. In the children's book The Tale of Zoya and Shura, Lyubov Kosmodemyanskaya also reports that the move to Moscow occurred after a letter from her sister Olga.

Zoya's father - Anatoly Kosmodemyansky - died in 1933 after an operation on the intestines, and the children (Zoya and her younger brother Alexander) were raised by their mother.

Zoya studied well at school, was especially fond of history and literature, dreamed of entering the Literary Institute. However, relations with classmates did not always develop in the best way - in 1938 she was elected a Komsomol group organizer, but then not re-elected. According to Lyubov Kosmodemyanskaya, Zoya had been suffering from a nervous illness since 1939, when she moved from the 8th to the 9th grade ... Her peers did not understand her. She did not like the fickleness of her friends: Zoya often sat alone. But she experienced all this, said that she was a lonely person, that she could not find a girlfriend for herself.

In 1940, she suffered acute meningitis, after which she underwent rehabilitation in the winter of 1941 at a sanatorium for nervous diseases in Sokolniki, where she became friends with the writer Arkady Gaidar, who was also lying there. In the same year, she graduated from the 9th grade of secondary school No. 201, despite the large number of missed classes due to illness.

On October 31, 1941, Zoya, among 2,000 Komsomol volunteers, came to the gathering place at the Coliseum cinema and from there was taken to a sabotage school, becoming a fighter of the reconnaissance and sabotage unit, which officially bore the name "partisan unit 9903 of the headquarters of the Western Front." After a three-day training, Zoya, as part of a group, was transferred on November 4 to the Volokolamsk region, where the group successfully coped with mining the road.

On November 17, Stalin's order No. 0428 was issued, ordering to deprive "the German army of the opportunity to be located in villages and cities, drive the German invaders out of all settlements into the cold in the field, smoke them out of all rooms and warm shelters and make them freeze in the open air", with which with the aim of "destroying and burning to the ground all settlements in the rear of the 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 fulfill this order, on November 18 (according to other sources, on November 20), the commanders of sabotage groups of unit No. 9903 P. S. Provorov (Zoya entered his group) and B. S. Krainev were ordered to burn 10 settlements, including the village of Petrishchevo (Ruzsky district of the Moscow region). The group members each had 3 Molotov cocktails, a pistol (Zoya had a revolver), dry rations for 5 days and a bottle of vodka. Having gone on a mission together, both groups (10 people each) came under fire near the village of Golovkovo (10 km from Petrishchev), suffered heavy losses and partially dispersed; their remnants united under the command of Boris Krainev.

On November 27 at 2 am, Boris Krainev, Vasily Klubkov and Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya set fire to three houses in Petrishchevo (residents of Karelova, Solntsev and Smirnov); while the Germans lost 20 horses.

It is known about the future that Krainev did not wait for Zoya and Klubkov at the agreed meeting place and left, safely returning to his own; Klubkov was captured by the Germans; Zoya, having missed her comrades and left alone, decided to return to Petrishchevo and continue the arson. However, both the Germans and the locals were already on their guard, and the Germans created a guard of several Petrishchev's men who were instructed to monitor the appearance of arsonists.

With the onset of the evening of November 28, when trying to set fire to the barn of S. A. Sviridov (one of the "guards" appointed by the Germans), Zoya was noticed by the owner. The last quartered Germans, called by the latter, seized the girl (at about 7 pm). Sviridov was awarded a bottle of vodka for this (subsequently sentenced to death by the court). During the interrogation, she called herself Tanya and did not say anything specific. Having stripped naked, she was flogged with belts, then the sentry assigned to her for 4 hours led her barefoot, in her underwear, down the street in the cold. Local residents Solina and Smirnova (a fire victim) also tried to join in the torture of Zoya, throwing a pot of slop at Zoya (Solina and Smirnova were subsequently sentenced to death).

At 10:30 the next morning, Zoya was taken outside, where a hanging loop had already been built; a sign was hung on her chest with the inscription "Pyro". When Zoya was brought to the gallows, Smirnova hit her on the legs with a stick, shouting: “Who did you harm? She burned down my house, but did nothing to the Germans…”.

One of the witnesses describes the execution itself as follows:

All the way to the gallows they led her by the arms. She walked straight, with her head held high, silently, proudly. They took me to the gallows. There were many Germans and civilians around the gallows. They led her to the gallows, ordered to expand the circle around the gallows and began to photograph her ... She had a bag with bottles with her. She shouted: “Citizens! You do not stand, do not look, but you need to help fight! This death of mine is my achievement.” After that, one officer swung, while others shouted at her. Then she said: “Comrades, victory will be ours. German soldiers, before it's too late, surrender." The officer yelled angrily: "Rus!" “The Soviet Union is invincible and will not be defeated,” she said all this at the moment when she was photographed ... Then they set up a box. She, without any command, stood on the box herself. A German approached and began to put on a noose. At that time, she shouted: “No matter how much you hang us, you don’t hang everyone, we are 170 million. But our comrades will avenge you for me.” She said this already 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 on the hands. After that, everyone dispersed.

The footage of Zoya's execution shown here was made by one of the Wehrmacht soldiers, who was soon killed.

Zoya's body hung on the gallows for about a month, repeatedly abused by German soldiers passing through the village. On New Year's Eve, 1942, drunken Germans tore off clothes that had been hung up and once again abused the body, stabbing it with knives and cutting off the chest. The next day, the Germans gave the order to remove the gallows and the body was buried by local residents outside the village.

Subsequently, Zoya was reburied at the Novodevichy Cemetery in Moscow.

The fate of Zoya became widely known from the article "Tanya" by Pyotr Lidov, published in the Pravda newspaper 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 hung her, and she spoke. They hung her, and she kept threatening them…” Lidov went to Petrishchevo, questioned the residents in detail, and published an article based on their inquiries. It was alleged that the article was noted by Stalin, who allegedly said: “here is the national heroine,” and it was from that moment that the propaganda campaign around Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya began.

Her identity was soon established, Pravda reported in Lidov's February 18 article "Who Was Tanya"; even earlier, on February 16, a decree was signed on awarding her the title of Hero of the Soviet Union (posthumously).

During and after perestroika, in the wake of anti-communist propaganda, new information about Zoya also appeared in the press. As a rule, it was based on rumors, not always accurate eyewitness accounts, and in some cases, speculation - which was inevitable in a situation where documentary information, contrary to the official "myth", continued to be kept secret or was just declassified. MM. Gorinov wrote about these publications that they "reflected some facts of the biography of Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya, hushed up in Soviet times, but reflected, as in a crooked mirror, in a monstrously distorted form."

Some of these publications claimed that Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya suffered from schizophrenia, others that she arbitrarily set fire to houses in which there were no Germans, and was captured, beaten and handed over to the Germans by the Petrishchevites themselves. It was also suggested that in fact the feat was not accomplished by Zoya, but by another Komsomol saboteur, Lilya Azolina.

Some newspapers wrote that she was suspected of schizophrenia, based on the article "Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya: Heroine or Symbol?" in the newspaper "Arguments and Facts" (1991, No. 43). The authors of the article, the leading physician of the Scientific and Methodological Center for Child Psychiatry A. Melnikova, S. Yurieva and N. Kasmelson, wrote:

Before the war in 1938-39, a 14-year-old girl named Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya was repeatedly examined at the Leading Scientific and Methodological Center for Child Psychiatry and was in a hospital in the children's department of the hospital. Kashchenko. She was suspected of having schizophrenia. Immediately after the war, two people came to the archives of our hospital and seized Kosmodemyanskaya's medical history.

Other evidence or documentary evidence of suspicions of schizophrenia was not mentioned in the articles, although the memoirs of her mother and classmates really talk about the “nervous disease” that struck her in grades 8-9 (as a result of the mentioned conflict with classmates), about which she underwent examinations. In subsequent publications, newspapers referring to Arguments and Facts often omitted the word "suspected."

In recent years, there is a version that Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya was betrayed by her squadmate (and Komsomol organizer) Vasily Klubkov. It is based on materials from the Klubkov case, declassified and published in the Izvestia newspaper in 2000. Klubkov, who appeared in his unit in early 1942, stated that he had been taken prisoner by the Germans, fled, was again captured, fled again and managed to get to his. However, during interrogations at SMERSH, he changed his testimony and stated that he had been captured along with Zoya and betrayed her. Klubkov was shot "for treason" on April 16, 1942. His testimony contradicts the testimony of witnesses - the inhabitants of the village, and besides, it is internally contradictory.

Researcher M.M. Gorinov suggests that the SMERSHites forced Klubkov to incriminate himself either out of career considerations (in order to get their share of the dividends from the unfolding propaganda campaign around Zoya), or out of propaganda (in order to "justify" Zoya's capture, unworthy, according to the then ideology, of a Soviet fighter). However, the version of betrayal was never launched into propaganda circulation.

Prepared from Wikipedia.