Mr Krasnodon Young Guard. Krasnodon process

For decades, the heroes of the Young Guard have aroused and continue to arouse the admiration of new generations. However, in the mid-1950s, new details about the activities of the Young Guard suddenly emerged. Newspaper publications signed by Kim Kostenko caused a real shock in society.

Mysteries of the history of Russia / Nikolay Nepomniachtchi. — M.: Veche, 2012.

The fact is that at the end of the Khrushchev thaw, the special correspondent of Komsomolskaya Pravda, Kim Kostenko, managed to get acquainted with secret materials relating to the Young Guard. The journalist found out absolutely incredible, at first glance, facts. It turned out that the members of the organization Stakhovich, Vyrikova, Lyadskaya, Polyanskaya, who were called traitors in A. Fadeev's novel "The Young Guard", were actually honest patriots. Moreover, it was Viktor Tretyakevich (in the book - Stakhovich), and not Oleg Koshevoy, who was the commissioner of the Young Guard!

Viktor Tretyakevich

Tretyakevich was seized on the same day as Moshkov and Zemnukhov. He betrayed no one and died like a hero. The underground organization was betrayed by a completely different person - Gennady Pocheptsov. Upon learning of the first arrests, he got scared and scribbled a denunciation to the police, in which he listed all the Young Guards.

Gennady Pocheptsov

Last row: second from right - Gennady Pocheptsov

It is unlikely that Alexander Fadeev could not have known these facts. However, he carried out the social order of the party, and Fadeev was advised by a major from the KGB. It should also be taken into account that when the writer arrived in Krasnodon, he got a paper in which the role of each underground worker was briefly outlined, and the names of the traitors were separately named: Tretyakevich, Vyrikova, Lyadskaya and Polyanskaya. So far, researchers have not been able to establish the authorship of the forged document.

Of course, Fadeev did not want to destroy these people. However, the customer of the book - the Central Committee of the Komsomol - demanded that the book be created in an extremely short time. In this rush, there was no way to check all existing documents. A significant role in the distortion of the truth was played by the mother of Oleg Koshevoy, with whom Fadeev lived. It was her personal memories that formed the basis of the novel. Many families of Krasnodon heroes bitterly complained that the writer never went to them and talked to them.

Until 1990, the Tretyakevich family was stigmatized as "relatives of a traitor." For many years they collected eyewitness accounts and documents about Victor's innocence. And only seven years ago he was finally rehabilitated.

Viktor Tretyakevich, Anna Iosifovna - the mother of Viktor Tretyakevich waited for the day when the honest name of her son was restored

In 1990, the real commander of the "Young Guard" Ivan Turkenich was posthumously awarded the title of Hero Soviet Union. Previously, this was unthinkable, because Turkenich ended up in Krasnodon, having escaped from German captivity.

Commander of the "Young Guard" Ivan Turkenich, 1943

Olga Lyadskaya was only 17 years old when the Germans captured her for the first time. The young beauty liked the deputy chief of police Zakharov, who had a separate office for intimate meetings. A few days later, her mother managed to ransom her daughter for a bottle of moonshine. After the release of Krasnodon, Olga told the SMERSH investigator her epic. He decided to “help” her and handed the girl a piece of paper, which she signed without looking. It was a confession of complicity with the invaders. For him, Olga Alexandrovna received ten years in prison. And after the publication of the novel "The Young Guard" she became an important state criminal and found herself in the Lubyanka. The authorities wanted to arrange a show trial over her, but it did not take place - Lyadskaya was found severe form tuberculosis. The "traitor of the Young Guard" was released only in 1956. In her hometown, no one ever reproached her. Olga managed to finish the institute, give birth to a child. However, in the 60s, publications about the Young Guard reappeared, in which she again appeared as a traitor. Where only Lyadskaya did not write, demanding justice! Finally, the letter got on the table to a decent person - an employee of the prosecutor's office, and he, having carefully studied her case, dropped the heavy charges.

Olga Lyadskaya (center) was also called a traitor, although she could not betray anyone

Both Zinaida Vyrikova and Sima Polyanskaya suffered. Almost nothing is known about the fate of the second. Vyrikova saw Sima among those exiled in Bugulma. Zinaida Alekseevna herself had to go through exile and camps. She was arrested before the novel was published. Released already in 1944, but soon expelled from the Komsomol. Zinaida Alekseevna got married, changed her last name, moved to live in another city. But they still recognized her: “Ah, the one who betrayed the Young Guard!”. For many years, an innocent woman lived in fear of a possible arrest. Of course, she also wrote, tried to reach out to higher authorities, but to no avail.

Zinaida Vyrikova

By the way, the surviving young guards were well aware of the innocence of Tretyakevich, Lyadskaya, Vyrikova, but for some reason they were silent ...

Novaya Gazeta is completing a cycle of publications about the legendary underground organization Young Guard, which was created exactly 75 years ago. And about how people live today in the Luhansk region, where the active phase of the last hostilities ended in March 2015, not 1943, and where there is still a front line. It is also the demarcation line established by the Minsk agreements between the Armed Forces of Ukraine and the formations of the self-proclaimed "Luhansk People's Republic" ("LNR").

After studying the party archives stored in Lugansk, the special correspondent of the "New" Yulia POLUKHINA returned to Krasnodon. Based on the materials of the archives, in previous publications we managed to tell about how the underground Komsomol organization of Krasnodon was created in September 1942, what role the connection with partisan detachments and underground regional committees of Voroshilovograd (as Lugansk was called during the war) and Rostov- on-Don and why the commissar of the "Young Guard" was first Viktor Tretyakevich (the prototype of the "traitor" Stakhevich in Fadeev's novel), and then Oleg Koshevoy. And both suffered posthumously for ideological reasons. Tretyakevich was branded a traitor, although even the author of The Young Guard himself said that Stakhevich was a collective image. Koshevoy, on the contrary, got it during the wave of struggle with Soviet mythology: they began to talk about him, too, as a collective image that Fadeev “painted” to please the party leadership.

Perhaps, neither the Krasnodon nor Luhansk archives make it possible to unambiguously say who was the leader of the Young Guard, how many big and small feats (or, in modern terms, special operations) she has on her account, and which of the guys already captured by the police confessed under torture.

But the fact is that the Young Guard is not a myth. It united living young people, almost children, whose main feat, accomplished against their will, was martyrdom.

We will tell about this tragedy in the last publication of the cycle about the Krasnodontsy, based on the memories of the native Young Guards, the stories of their descendants, as well as the protocols of interrogation of policemen and gendarmes involved in torture and executions.

The boys play football at the memorial to the executed young guards. Photo: Yulia Polukhina / Novaya Gazeta

Genuine, material evidence of what happened in Krasnodon in the first two weeks of 1943, when the Young Guards and many members of the underground party organization were first arrested and then executed, began to disappear already in the first days after the liberation of the city by the Red Army. The more valuable each unit of scientific funds of the museum "Young Guard". Museum staff introduce me to them.

“Here we have materials on policemen Melnikov and Podtynov. I remember how they were tried in 1965. The trial took place in the Palace of Culture. Gorky, the microphones were brought to the speakers outside, it was winter, and the whole city stood and listened. Even today we cannot reliably say how many of these policemen there were, one was caught in 1959, and the second in 1965, ”says Lyubov Viktorovna, chief custodian of the funds. For her, as for most museum workers, “The Young Guard is a very personal story. And this main reason the fact that in the summer of 2014, despite the approach of hostilities, they refused to evacuate: “We even began to put everything in boxes, what to send first, what to send second, but then we made a joint decision that we would not go anywhere. As part of decommunization, we were not ready to lie on the shelves and become overgrown with dust. At that time, there was no such law in Ukraine, but such conversations were already going on.

Decommunization really overtook Krasnodon, which ceased to exist, because in 2015 it was renamed Sorokino. However, this is not felt in the museum, and it would never occur to any of the local residents to call themselves Sorokinets.

“Look at this photo. On the walls of the cells in which the young guards were kept after the arrest, inscriptions are clearly visible - Lyubov Viktorovna shows me one of the rarities. And explains what its value is. - These photos were taken by Leonid Yablonsky, photojournalist of the newspaper of the 51st army "Son of the Fatherland". By the way, he was the first to film not only the story about the Young Guards, but also the Adzhimushkay quarries, and the Bagerov ditch, where the bodies of the executed residents of Kerch were dumped after mass executions. And the photo from the Yalta conference is also his. This, by the way, did not prevent Yablonsky from being repressed in 1951 for allegedly disrespectful statements about Stalin, but after the death of the leader, the photographer was released and later rehabilitated. So, according to Yablonsky, when the Red Army entered Krasnodon, it was already dark. Everything in the cells was scratched with inscriptions, both the window sills and the walls. Yablonsky took a few shots and decided that he would return in the morning. But in the morning he came - there was nothing, not a single inscription. And who rubbed, not the Nazis? This was done by local residents, we still don’t know what the guys wrote there, and which of the locals erased all these inscriptions.

“Children were identified by their clothes”

But it is known that Vasily Gromov, the stepfather of the Young Guard Gennady Pocheptsov, was initially entrusted with leading the work of extracting the bodies of the executed from the pit of mine No. 5. Under the Germans, Gromov was an unspoken police agent and was directly related at least to the arrests of the underground. Therefore, of course, he did not want the bodies with traces of inhuman torture to be raised to the surface.

Here is how this moment is described in the memoirs of Maria Vintsenovsky, the mother of the deceased Yuri Vintsenovsky:

“For a long time he tormented us with his slowness. Either he doesn’t know how to extract, or he doesn’t know how to install a winch, or he simply delayed the extraction. Parents-miners told him what to do and how to do it. Finally, everything was ready. We hear Gromov's voice: "Who voluntarily agrees to go down in the tub?" - "I! I!" - we hear. One was my 7th grade student Shura Nezhivov, the other was a worker, Puchkov.<…>We, the parents, were allowed to take a seat in the front row, but at a decent distance. There was absolute silence. It was so quiet that you could hear your own heartbeat. Here comes the tub. Shouts are heard: "Girl, girl." It was Tosya Eliseenko. She was dropped by one of the first batch. The corpse was put on a stretcher, covered with a sheet and taken to the pre-mine bathhouse. Snow was laid out along all the walls in the bath, and corpses were laid on the snow. The tub descends again. This time the guys shouted: "And this is a boy." It was Vasya Gukov, also shot in the first game and also hanging on a protruding log. Third fourth. “And this naked one, he probably died there, his hands are folded on his chest.” Like an electric current went through my body. "Mine, mine!" I screamed. Words of consolation were heard from all sides. "Calm down, this is not Yurochka." What, in fact, is the difference, not the fourth, so the fifth will be Yuri. Grigoriev Misha was taken out third, Vintsenovsky Yura was the fourth, Zagoruiko V., Lukyanchenko, Sopova and the next Tyulenin Serezha were the fifth.<…>In the meantime, evening came, there were no more corpses in the mine. Gromov, after consulting with the doctor Nadezha Fedorovna Privalova, who is present here, announced that he would no longer extract corpses, since the doctor said that cadaveric poison was fatal. There will be a mass grave here. Work on the extraction of corpses was stopped. The next morning we were again at the pit, now it was already allowed to go into the bathhouse. Each mother tried to recognize her own in the corpse, but this was difficult, because. the children were completely disfigured. For example, I recognized my son only by signs on the fifth day. Zagoruika O.P. I was sure that my son Volodya was in Rovenki ( part of the Young Guard was taken away from Krasnodon to the Gestapo, they were already executed in Rovenki. — Yu. P.) passed a transmission there for him, walked calmly around the corpses. Suddenly a terrible scream, fainting. At the fifth corpse on his trousers, she saw a familiar patch, it was Volodya. Despite the fact that the parents identified their children, they went to the pit several times during the day. I went too. One evening my sister and I went to the pit. From a distance they noticed that a man was sitting over the very abyss of the pit and smoking.<…>It was Androsov, the father of Androsova Lida. “It’s good for you, they found the corpse of their son, but I won’t find the corpse of my daughter. Cadaveric poison is deadly. Let me die from the poison of my daughter's corpse, but I must get her. Just think, it's a tricky business to manage the extraction. I have been working in the mine for twenty years, I have a lot of experience, there is nothing tricky. I will go to the city committee of the party, I will ask permission to lead the extraction. And the next day, having received permission, Androsov set to work.

And here is a fragment of the memoirs of Makar Androsov himself. He is a hard worker, a miner, and casually describes the most terrible moments of his life as work:

"Arrived medical expertise. The doctors said that the bodies can be removed, but special rubber clothing is needed. Many parents of the Young Guard knew me as a professional miner, so they insisted that I be appointed responsible for rescue work.<…>Residents volunteered to help. The bodies were removed by mountain rescue workers. Once I tried to drive with them to the end, into the depths of the pit, but I could not. A suffocating stench wafted from the shaft. Rescuers said that the mine shaft was littered with stones and trolleys. Two corpses were placed in a box. After each extraction, the parents rushed to the box, cried, screamed. The bodies were taken to the mine bath. The cement floor of the bathhouse was covered with snow, and the bodies were laid directly on the floor. A doctor was on duty at the pit and revived the parents, who were losing consciousness. The bodies were mutilated beyond recognition. Many parents recognized their children only by their clothes. There was no water in the mine. The bodies retained their shape, but began to "disorder". Many bodies were found without arms and legs. Rescue work was carried out for 8 days. Daughter Lida was removed from the pit on the third day. I recognized her by her clothes and green cloaks that a neighbor sewed. In these cloaks she was arrested. Lida had a string around her neck. They probably shot in the forehead, because on the back of the head was big wound, but less on the forehead. One arm, leg, eye was missing. The cloth skirt was torn and kept only on the belt, the jumper was also torn. When they took out Lida's body, I fainted. A.A. Startseva said that she even recognized Lida by her face. There was a smile on his face. A neighbor (who was present when the corpses were removed) says that Lida's entire body was covered in blood. In total, 71 corpses were taken out of the pit. Coffins were made from old boards of dismantled houses. On February 27 or 28, we brought the bodies of our children from Krasnodon to the village. The coffins were placed at the council in one row. The coffin of Lida and Kolya Sumsky was placed in a grave nearby.

Tyulenin and his five

When you read these "sick" memoirs of your parents, though recorded over the years, you understand what exactly escapes during the debate about the historical truth in the history of the "Young Guard". That they were children. They got involved in a big adult nightmare and, although they took it with absolute, even deliberate seriousness, it was still perceived as a kind of game. And who, at the age of 16, will believe in a close tragic ending?

Most of the parents of the Young Guard had no idea what they were doing with their friends in the city occupied by the Germans. The principle of conspiracy also contributed to this: the Young Guard, as you know, were divided into fives, and ordinary underground workers knew only members of their group. Most often, the fives included young men and women who were friends or simply knew each other well before the war. The first group, which later became the most active five, was formed around Sergei Tyulenin. You can argue endlessly about who was the commissar in the Young Guard and who was the commander, but I got the confidence: the leader, without whom there would be no legend, is just Tyulenin.

His biography is in the archives of the Young Guard Museum:

“Sergey Gavrilovich Tyulenin was born on August 25, 1925 in the village of Kiselevo, Novosilsky district, Oryol region, in a working class family. In 1926, his entire family moved to live in the city of Krasnodon, where Serezha grew up. The family had 10 children. Sergei, the youngest, enjoyed the love and care of his older sisters. He grew up as a very lively, active, cheerful boy who was interested in everything.<…>Seryozha was sociable, gathered all his comrades around him, loved excursions, hikes, and Seryozha especially loved military games. His dream was to become a pilot. After graduating from seven classes, Sergei is trying to enter the flight school. For health reasons, he was recognized as quite fit, but not enlisted by age. I had to go back to school: in the eighth grade.<….>The war begins, and Tyulenin voluntarily leaves for the labor army - to build defensive structures.<…>At this time, at the direction of the Bolshevik underground, a Komsomol organization was created. At the suggestion of Sergei Tyulenin, she was named the "Young Guard" ...

Tyulenin was one of the members of the headquarters of the "Young Guard", took part in most military operations: in the distribution of leaflets, in setting fire to stacks of bread, collecting weapons.

November 7th was approaching. Sergey's group received the task to hoist the flag at school number 4. ( Tyulenin, Dadyshev, Tretyakevich, Yurkin, Shevtsova studied at this school. —Yu. P.). Here is what Radiy Yurkin, a 14-year-old participant in the operation, recalls:

“On the long-awaited night before the holiday, we went to carry out the task.<…>Serezha Tyulenin was the first to climb the creaky ladder. We are behind him with grenades at the ready. They took a look and immediately got to work. Styopa Safonov and Seryozha climbed onto the very roof using the fasteners on the wire. Lenya Dadyshev stood at the dormer window, peering and listening to see if anyone had crept up on us. I attached the banner towel to the pipe. All is ready. The "senior miner" of the steppe Safonov, as we later called him, said that the mines were ready.<…>Our banner proudly flies in the air, and below in the attic are anti-tank mines attached to the flagpole.<…>In the morning, a lot of people gathered near the school. Enraged police officers rushed to the attic. But immediately they returned back, confused, mumbling something about mines.

This is how Yurkin’s memoirs look like the second high-profile and successful action of the “Young Guard”: the arson of the labor exchange, which made it possible to avoid sending two and a half thousand Krasnodontsy to forced labor in Germany, including many “Young Guards” who received summons the day before.

“On the night of December 5-6, Sergey, Lyuba Shevtsova, Viktor Lukyanchenko quietly made their way to the attic of the exchange, scattered pre-prepared incendiary cartridges and set fire to the exchange.”

And here Tyulenin was the ringleader.

One of Sergey's closest friends was Leonid Dadyshev. Leonid's father, an Azerbaijani of Iranian origin, came to Russia to look for his brother, but then married a Belarusian. They moved to Krasnodon in 1940. Nadezhda Dadysheva, younger sister Leonida Dadysheva, described these months in her memoirs:

“Sergei Tyulenin studied with his brother, and we lived next door to him. Obviously, this was the impetus for their future friendship, which was no longer interrupted until the end of his short but bright life.<…>Lenya loved music. He had a mandalin, and he could sit for hours and perform Russian and Ukrainian folk melodies on it. Favorite were songs about the heroes of the Civil War. There were abilities in the field of drawing. The favorite subject of his drawings were warships (destroyers, battleships), cavalry in battle, portraits of generals. (During the search during the brother's arrest, the police took away a lot of his drawings.)<…>One day my brother asked me to bake homemade donuts. He knew that a column of Red Army prisoners of war would be led through our city, and, wrapping donuts in a bundle, went with his comrades to the main highway. The next day, his comrades said that Lenya threw a bundle of food into a crowd of prisoners of war, and also threw his winter hat with earflaps, and he himself walked in a cap in severe frost.

The finale of Nadezhda Dadysheva's memories brings us back to the pit of mine No. 5.

“On February 14, the city of Krasnodon was liberated by units of the Red Army. On the same day, my mother and I went to the police building, where we saw a terrible picture. In the police yard we saw a mountain of corpses. These were shot Red Army prisoners of war, covered with straw on top. With my mother, I went into the premises of the former police: all the doors were wide open, broken chairs and broken dishes lay on the floor. And on the walls of all the cells were written arbitrary words and poems of the dead. In one cell, it was written all over the wall in large letters: “Death to the German occupiers!” On one door was scrawled with something metallic: “Dadash Lenya was sitting here!” Mom cried a lot, it took me a lot of effort to take her home. Literally a day later, they began to remove the corpses of the dead young guards from the shaft of mine No. 5. The corpses were disfigured, but each mother recognized her son and daughter, and with each rise of the winch, heart-rending cries and weeping of exhausted mothers were heard for a long time.<…>More than forty years have passed since then, but it is always painful and disturbing to remember those tragic events. I can’t hear the words from the song “Eaglet” without excitement: I don’t want to think about death, believe me, at 16 boyish years “... My brother died at 16.”

The Dadyshevs' mother died soon after, she could not survive the death of her son. From the pit of Leonid they took out everything blue, because they were flogged with whips, with a severed right hand. Before being thrown into the pit, he was shot.

And Dadyshev's sister Nadezhda is still alive. True, it was not possible to talk with her, because due to the serious state of health last years She spends her life in the Krasnodon hospice.

Policemen and traitors

The scientific fund of the museum contains not only memories of heroes and victims, but also materials about traitors and executioners. Here are excerpts from the interrogations of investigative case No. 147721 from the archives of the VUCHN-GPU-NKVD. It was investigated against police investigator Mikhail Kuleshov, agent Vasily Gromov and his stepson Gennady Pocheptsov, a 19-year-old Young Guard who, frightened of arrests, wrote a statement on the advice of his stepfather, indicating the names of his comrades.

The police investigation into the Krasnodon case was headed by senior investigator Mikhail Kuleshov. According to the documents of the archives, before the war he worked as a lawyer, but his career did not develop, he was convicted and distinguished by systematic drinking. Before the war, he often received reprimands along the party line from Mikhail Tretyakevich - the elder brother of the young guard Tretyakevich, who was later exposed as a traitor - for "domestic decay." And Kuleshov had a personal dislike for him, which he later took out on Viktor Tretyakevich.

About the "betrayal" of the latter became known only from the words of Kuleshov, who was interrogated by the NKVD. Viktor Tretyakevich became the only Young Guard whose name was deleted from the award lists, worse, on the basis of Kuleshov’s testimony, the conclusions of the “Toritsyn commission” were formed, on the basis of which Fadeev wrote his novel.

From the protocol of the interrogation of the former investigator Kuleshov Ivan Emelyanovich dated May 28, 1943 .

“... There was such order in the police that the first person arrested was brought to Solikovsky, he brought him “to consciousness” and ordered the investigator to interrogate, draw up a protocol that must be handed over to him, i.e. Solikovsky, for viewing. When Davidenko brought Pocheptsov to Solikovsky's office, and before that, Solikovsky took out a statement from his pocket and asked if he had written it. Pocheptsov answered in the affirmative, after which Solikovsky again hid this statement in his pocket.<…>Pocheptsov said that he really is a member of an underground youth organization that exists in Krasnodon and its environs. He named the leaders of this organization, or rather, the city headquarters. Namely: Tretyakevich, Levashov, Zemnukhov, Safonov, Koshevoy. Solikovsky wrote down the named members of the organization for himself, called the policemen and Zakharov, and began to make arrests. He ordered me to take Pocheptsov and interrogate him and present him with the protocols of the interrogation. During interrogation, Pocheptsov told me that the headquarters had weapons at their disposal.<…>. After that, 30-40 members of the underground youth organization were arrested. I personally interrogated about 12 people, including Pocheptsov, Tretyakevich, Levashov, Zemnukhov, Kulikov, Petrov, Vasily Pirozhok, and others.”

From the protocol of interrogation of Pocheptsov Gennady Prokofievich dated April 8, 1943 and June 2, 1943.

“... On December 28, 1942, police chief Solikovsky, his deputy Zakharov, Germans and policemen drove up to Moshkov’s house (he lived next to me) on a sleigh. They searched Moshkov's apartment, found some kind of bag, put it on a sled, put Moshkov in a seat and left. My mother and I saw it all. Mother asked if Moshkov was from our organization. I said no, because I did not know about Moshkov's affiliation with the organization. After a while, Fomin came to see me. He said that, on behalf of Popov, he went to the center to find out which of the guys had been arrested. He said that Tretyakevich, Zemnukhov and Levashov had been arrested. We started discussing what to do, where to run, who to consult, but no decision was made. After Fomin left, I thought about my situation and, finding no other solution, showed cowardice and decided to write a statement to the police that I knew an underground youth organization.<…>Before writing a statement, I myself went to the Gorky Club and looked at what was being done there. Arriving there, I saw Zakharov and the Germans. They were looking for something in the club. Then Zakharov came up to me and asked if I knew Tyulenin, while he was looking at some kind of list, which included a number of other names. I said that I don't know Tyulenin. He went home and at home decided to extradite the members of the organization. I thought the police already knew everything…”

But in fact, it was Pocheptsov's "letter" that played a key role. Because the guys were initially taken as thieves, and there was no evidence against them. After a few days of interrogation, the chief of police ordered: "To flog the thieves and kick them out in the neck." At this time, Pocheptsov, summoned by Solikovsky, came to the police. He pointed out those whom he knew, primarily from the village of Pervomaika, in the group of which was Pocheptsov himself. From January 4 to 5, arrests began in Pervomaika. Pocheptsov simply did not know about the existence of underground communists Lyutikov, Barakov and others. But the machine shops where their cell operated were monitored by agents of Zons ( Deputy Chief of the Krasnodon Gendarmerie. — Yu. P.). Zons was shown lists of arrested underground workers, where there were only children of 16-17 years old, and then Zons ordered the arrest of Lyutikov and 20 other people, who had been closely monitored by his agents for a long time. So in the cells there were more than 50 people who had one or another relation to the "Young Guard" and the underground communists.

Viktor Tretyakevich was interrogated by Mikhail Kuleshov with particular passion.

On August 18, 1943, in an open court hearing in the city of Krasnodon, the Military Tribunal of the NKVD troops of the Voroshilovograd region sentenced Kuleshov, Gromov and Pocheptsov to capital punishment. The next day, the sentence was carried out. They were shot in public in the presence of five thousand people. Pocheptsov's mother Maria Gromova, as a member of the family of a traitor to the motherland, was exiled to the Kustanai region of the Kazakh SSR for a period of five years with a complete confiscation of property. Her further fate is unknown, but in 1991, Art. 1 of the law of the Ukrainian SSR "On the rehabilitation of victims of political repression in Ukraine". Due to the lack of a body of evidence confirming the validity of bringing to justice, she was rehabilitated.

Policeman Solikovsky managed to escape, he was never found. Although he was the main one among the direct executors of the execution of the Young Guard in Krasnodon.

Initially, the case of the Young Guard was conducted by the Krasnodon police, because they were accused of a banal criminal offense. But when a clear political component emerged, the gendarmerie of the city of Rovenki joined the case. Part of the Young Guard was taken there, because the Red Army was already advancing on Krasnodon. Oleg Koshevoy managed to escape, but he was arrested in Rovenki.

Later, this created grounds for speculation that Koshevoy was allegedly an agent of the Gestapo (according to another version, a member of the OUN-UPA, an organization banned in Russia), and for this reason he was not shot, but went with the Germans to Rovenki and then disappeared, starting new life on forged documents.

Similar stories are known, for example, if we recall the Krasnodon executioners, then not only Solikovsky managed to escape, but also the policemen Vasily Podtynny and Ivan Melnikov. Melnikov, by the way, was directly related not only to the torture of the Young Guards, but also to the executions of miners and communists buried alive in the Krasnodon city park in September 1942. After the retreat from Krasnodon, he fought in the Wehrmacht, was captured in Moldova, and in 1944 was drafted into the Red Army. He fought with dignity, was awarded medals, but in 1965 he was exposed as a former policeman and subsequently shot.

The fate of policeman Podtynny was similar: he was tried many years after the crime, but in Krasnodon, publicly. By the way, during the trial and investigation, Podtynny testified that Viktor Tretyakevich was not a traitor and that the investigator Kuleshov slandered him on the grounds of personal revenge. After that, Tretyakevich was rehabilitated (but Stakhevich remained a traitor in Fadeev's novel).

However, all these analogies are inapplicable to Koshevoy. The archives contain records of interrogations of direct participants and eyewitnesses of his execution in Rovenki.

From the transcript of the interrogation of Ivan Orlov, a Rovenkov police officer:

“I first learned about the existence of the Young Guard at the end of January 1943 from Oleg Koshevoy, a Komsomol member arrested in Rovenki. Then I was told about this organization by those who arrived at the beginning of 1943 in Rovenki st. investigators of the Krasnodon police Usachev and Didik, who took part in the investigation of the Young Guard case.<…>I remember that I asked Usachov if Oleg Koshevoy was involved in the Young Guard case. Usachev said that Koshevoy was one of the leaders of the underground organization, but he had escaped from Krasnodon and could not be found. In this regard, I told Usachov that Koshevoy had been arrested in Rovenki and shot by the gendarmerie.

From the protocol of interrogation of Otto-August Drewitz, a member of the Rovenky gendarmerie :

It turns out that Oleg Koshevoy was the last of the Young Guards to die, and there were no traitors, except for Pocheptsov, among them.

The story of the life and death of the Young Guard immediately began to acquire myths: first Soviet, and then anti-Soviet. And much is still unknown about them - not all archives are in the public domain. But be that as it may, for modern Krasnodon residents the history of the Young Guard is very personal, regardless of the name of the country in which they live.

Krasnodon

document. 18+ (description of torture)

Information about the atrocities of the Nazi invaders, about the injuries inflicted on the underground workers of Krasnodon as a result of interrogations and execution at the pit of mine No. 5 and in the Thundering Forest of the city of Rovenka. January-February 1943. (Archive of the Young Guard Museum.)

The certificate was compiled on the basis of an act on the investigation of the atrocities committed by the Nazis in the Krasnodon region, dated September 12, 1946, on the basis of archival documents of the Young Guard Museum and documents of the Voroshilovograd KGB.

1. Nikolai Petrovich Barakov, born in 1905. During interrogations, the skull was broken, the tongue and ear were cut off, the teeth and left eye were knocked out, the right hand was chopped off, both legs were broken, and the heels were cut off.

2. Daniil Sergeevich Vystavkin, born in 1902, traces of severe torture were found on his body.

3. Vinokurov Gerasim Tikhonovich, born in 1887. Extracted with a crushed skull, a broken face, a crushed hand.

4. Lyutikov Philip Petrovich, born in 1891. He was thrown into the pit alive. The cervical vertebrae were broken, the nose and ears were cut off, there were wounds on the chest with torn edges.

5. Sokolova Galina Grigorievna, born in 1900. Extracted among the last with a smashed head. The body is bruised, there is a knife wound on the chest.

6. Yakovlev Stepan Georgievich, born in 1898. Extracted with a smashed head, excised back.

7. Androsova Lidia Makarovna, born in 1924. Extracted without an eye, ear, hand, with a rope around the neck, which cut hard into the body, baked blood is visible on the neck.

8. Bondareva Alexandra Ivanovna, born in 1922. Extracted without head, right mammary gland. The whole body is beaten, bruised, has a black color.

9. Vintsenovsky Yuri Semenovich, born in 1924. Extracted with a swollen face, without clothes. There were no wounds on the body. Apparently he was dropped alive.

10. Glavan Boris Grigoryevich, born in 1920. Removed from the pit heavily mutilated.

11. Gerasimova Nina Nikolaevna, born in 1924. The extracted head was flattened, the nose was pressed in, the left hand was broken, the body was beaten.

12. Grigoriev Mikhail Nikolaevich, born in 1924. The extracted one had a lacerated wound on the temple, resembling a five-pointed star. The legs were cut, covered with scars and bruises: the whole body was black, the face was mutilated, the teeth were knocked out.

13. Uliana Matveevna Gromova, born in 1924. A five-pointed star was carved on her back, her right arm was broken, her ribs were broken.

14. Gukov Vasily Safonovich, born in 1921. Beaten beyond recognition.

15. Alexandra Emelyanovna Dubrovina, born in 1919. Extracted without a skull, stab wounds on the back, the arm is broken, the leg is shot through.

16. Dyachenko Antonina Nikolaevna, born in 1924. There was an open fracture of the skull with a patchy wound, banded bruises on the body, oblong abrasions and wounds resembling prints of narrow, hard objects, apparently from blows with a telephone cable.

17. Eliseenko Antonina Zakharovna, born in 1921. The extracted body had traces of burns and beatings, there was a trace of a gunshot wound on the temple.

18. Zhdanov Vladimir Aleksandrovich, born in 1925. Retrieved from laceration in the left temporal region. The fingers are broken, which is why they are twisted, there are bruises under the nails. Two strips 3 cm wide and 25 cm long are carved on the back. Eyes gouged out, ears cut off.

19. Zhukov Nikolai Dmitrievich, born in 1922. Extracted without ears, tongue, teeth. A hand and foot were cut off.

20. Zagoruiko Vladimir Mikhailovich, born in 1927. Extracted without hair, with a severed hand.

21. Zemnukhov Ivan Alexandrovich, born in 1923. Extracted decapitated, beaten. The whole body is swollen. The foot of the left leg and the left arm (at the elbow) are twisted.

22. Ivanikhina Antonina Aeksandrovna, born in 1925. The eyes of the extracted woman were gouged out, her head was tied with a scarf and wire, her breasts were cut out.

23. Ivanikhina Liliya Alexandrovna, born in 1925. Removed headless, left arm severed.

24. Kezikova Nina Georgievna, born in 1925. Extracted with a leg torn off at the knee, arms twisted. There were no bullet wounds on the body, apparently, it was dropped alive.

25. Evgeniya Ivanovna Kiykova, born in 1924. Extracted without the right foot and right hand.

26. Klavdia Petrovna Kovaleva, born in 1925. Extracted swollen, cut off right breast, the feet were burned, the left breast was cut off, the head was tied with a scarf, there were signs of beatings on the body. Found 10 meters from the trunk, between the trolleys. Probably dropped alive.

27. Koshevoy Oleg Vasilyevich, born in 1924. The body bore traces of inhuman torture: there was no eye, there was a wound in the cheek, the back of the head was knocked out, the hair on the temples was gray.

28. Levashov Sergey Mikhailovich, born in 1924. The extracted one had a broken radius bone of the left hand. During the fall, dislocations were formed in the hip joints and both legs were broken. One in femur and the other in the knee area. The skin on the right leg is all torn off. No bullet wounds were found. Was dropped alive. Found far crawled from the crash site with a mouthful of earth.

29. Lukashov Gennady Alexandrovich, born in 1924. The man who was taken out had no foot, his hands showed signs of being beaten with an iron rod, his face was mutilated.

30. Lukyanchenko Viktor Dmitrievich, born in 1927. Extracted without a hand, eye, nose.

31. Minaeva Nina Petrovna, born in 1924. Extracted with broken arms, an eye gouged out, something shapeless was carved on her chest. The whole body is covered with dark blue stripes.

32. Moshkov Evgeny Yakovlevich, born in 1920. During interrogations, his legs and arms were broken. The body and face are blue-black from beatings.

33. Nikolaev Anatoly Georgievich, born in 1922. The extracted body was excised, the tongue was cut out.

34. Ogurtsov Dmitry Uvarovich, born in 1922. In Rovenkovskaya prison he was subjected to inhuman torture.

35. Ostapenko Semyon Makarovich, born in 1927. Ostapenko's body bore traces of cruel torture. The skull was shattered by a butt blow.

36. Osmukhin Vladimir Andreevich, born in 1925. During interrogations, the right hand was cut off, the right eye was gouged out, there were traces of burns on the legs, the back of the skull was crushed.

37. Orlov Anatoly Alekseevich, born in 1925. He was shot in the face with an explosive bullet. The entire back of the head is shattered. Blood is visible on the leg, it was taken out with shoes on.

38. Peglivanova Maya Konstantinovna, born in 1925. She was thrown into the pit alive. Extracted without eyes, lips, legs are broken, lacerated wounds are visible on the leg.

39. Loop Nadezhda Stepanovna, born in 1924. The extracted left arm and legs were broken, the chest was burned. There were no bullet wounds on the body, she was dropped alive.

40. Petrachkova Nadezhda Nikitichna, born in 1924. The body of the extracted person bore traces of inhuman tortures, extracted without a hand.

41. Petrov Viktor Vladimirovich, born in 1925. A stab wound was inflicted on the chest, fingers were broken at the joints, ears and tongue were cut off, and feet were burned.

42. Pirozhok Vasily Makarovich, born in 1925. Removed from the pit beaten. Body in bruises.

43. Polyansky Yuri Fedorovich - 1924 year of birth. Removed without left arm and nose.

44. Popov Anatoly Vladimirovich, born in 1924. The fingers of the left hand were crushed, the foot of the left leg was cut off.

45. Rogozin Vladimir Pavlovich, born in 1924. The extracted man's spine, arms were broken, his teeth were knocked out, his eye was gouged out.

46. ​​Angelina Tikhonovna Samoshinova, born in 1924. During interrogations, his back was cut with a whip. Shot through right leg in two places.

47. Sopova Anna Dmitrievna, born in 1924. Bruises were found on the body, a scythe was torn out.

48. Nina Illarionovna Startseva, born in 1925. Extracted with a broken nose, broken legs.

49. Subbotin Viktor Petrovich, born in 1924. The beatings on the face were visible, the limbs were twisted.

50. Sumy Nikolai Stepanovich, born in 1924. His eyes were blindfolded, there was a trace of a gunshot wound on his forehead, there were traces of beatings with a whip on his body, traces of injections under the nails were visible on his fingers, his left arm was broken, his nose was pierced, his left eye was missing.

51. Tretyakevich Viktor Iosifovich, born in 1924. Hair was torn out, the left arm was twisted, lips were cut off, the leg was torn off along with the groin.

52. Tyulenin Sergey Gavrilovich, born in 1924. In the police cell, they tortured him in front of his mother, Alexandra Tyulenina, during torture he received a through gunshot wound on his left hand, which was burned with a red-hot rod, fingers were placed under the door and clamped until the limbs of the hands were completely dead, needles were driven under the nails, hung on ropes. When extracting from the pit was lower jaw and the nose is knocked to the side. Broken spine.

53. Fomin Dementy Yakovlevich, born in 1925. Removed from the pit with a broken head.

54. Shevtsova Lyubov Grigorievna, born in 1924. Several stars are carved on the body. Shot with an explosive bullet in the face.

55. Evgeny Nikiforovich Shepelev, born in 1924. They pulled him out of the pit face to face, tied with Boris Galavan with barbed wire, cut off his hands. The face is disfigured, the stomach is ripped open.

56. Shishchenko Alexander Tarasovich, born in 1925. Shishchenko had a head injury, stab wounds on his body, his ears, nose and upper lip. Left hand was broken in the shoulder, elbow and hand.

57. Shcherbakov Georgy Kuzmich, born in 1925. The face of the person extracted was bruised, the spine was broken, as a result of which the body was removed in parts.

A. Druzhinina, student of the Faculty of History and Social Sciences, Leningrad State Regional University. A. S. Pushkin.

Viktor Tretyakevich.

Sergei Tyulenin.

Ulyana Gromova.

Ivan Zemnukhov.

Oleg Koshevoy.

Lyubov Shevtsova.

Monument "Oath" on the square named after the Young Guard in Krasnodon.

A corner of the museum dedicated to the Young Guards is the banner of the organization and the sledge on which weapons were carried. Krasnodon.

Anna Iosifovna, the mother of Viktor Tretyakevich, waited for the day when the honest name of her son was restored.

Studying for three years how the “Young Guard” arose and how it worked behind enemy lines, I realized that the main thing in its history is not the organization itself and its structure, not even the feats it accomplished (although, of course, everything done by the guys causes immense respect and admiration). Indeed, during the Second World War, hundreds of such underground or partisan detachments were created in the occupied territory of the USSR, but the Young Guard became the first organization that they learned about almost immediately after the death of its members. And almost everyone died - about a hundred people. The main thing in the history of the "Young Guard" began precisely on January 1, 1943, when its leading troika was arrested.

Now some journalists write with disdain about the fact that the Young Guard did nothing special, that they were OUN members at all, or even just “Krasnodon lads”. It's amazing how seemingly serious people cannot understand (or don't want to?) that they - these boys and girls - performed the main feat of their lives right there, in prison, where they experienced inhuman torture, but to the end, until death from a bullet at the abandoned pit, where many were dumped while still alive, they remained people.

On the anniversary of their memory, I would like to recall at least some episodes from the life of the Young Guard and how they died. They deserve it. (All facts are taken from documentary books and essays, conversations with eyewitnesses of those days and archival documents.)

They were brought to an abandoned mine -
and pushed out of the car.
The guys led each other by the arms,
supported in the hour of death.
Beaten, exhausted, they walked into the night
in bloody rags.
And the boys tried to help the girls
and even joked, as before ...

Yes, that's right, at an abandoned mine, most of the members of the underground Komsomol organization "Young Guard", which fought in 1942 against the Nazis in the small Ukrainian town of Krasnodon, lost their lives. It turned out to be the first underground youth organization about which it was possible to collect quite detailed information. The Young Guards were then called heroes (they were heroes), who gave their lives for their homeland. A little over ten years ago, everyone knew about the Young Guard. The novel of the same name by Alexander Fadeev was studied in schools; at the screening of Sergei Gerasimov's film, people could not hold back their tears; motor ships, streets, hundreds of educational institutions and pioneer detachments were named after the Young Guards. More than three hundred Young Guard museums were created throughout the country (and even abroad), and about 11 million people visited the Krasnodon Museum.

And who now knows about the Krasnodon underground? In recent years, the Krasnodon Museum has been empty and quiet, only eight out of three hundred school museums in the country have remained, and in the press (both in Russia and Ukraine), young heroes are increasingly called “nationalists”, “unorganized Komsomol lads”, and some and even denies their existence.

What were they like, these young men and women who called themselves Young Guardsmen?

The Krasnodon Komsomol youth underground included seventy-one people: forty-seven boys and twenty-four girls. The youngest was fourteen, and fifty-five of them never turned nineteen. The most ordinary, no different from the same boys and girls of our country, the guys were friends and quarreled, studied and fell in love, ran to dances and chased pigeons. They were in school circles, sports sections, played stringed musical instruments, wrote poetry, many drew well.

They studied in different ways - someone was an excellent student, and someone with difficulty overcame the granite of science. There were also a lot of tomboys. Dreamed of a future adult life. They wanted to become pilots, engineers, lawyers, someone was going to enter the theater school, and someone - to the pedagogical institute.

The “Young Guard” was as multinational as the population of these southern regions of the USSR. Russians, Ukrainians (there were Cossacks among them), Armenians, Belarusians, Jews, Azerbaijanis and Moldavians, ready to help each other at any moment, fought against the Nazis.

The Germans occupied Krasnodon on July 20, 1942. And almost immediately the first leaflets appeared in the city, a new bathhouse, already ready for the German barracks, was on fire. It was Seryozhka Tyulenin who began to act. One.

On August 12, 1942, he turned seventeen. Sergey wrote leaflets on pieces of old newspapers, and the policemen often found them in their pockets. He began to collect weapons, not even doubting that they would definitely come in handy. And he was the first to attract a group of guys ready to fight. It initially consisted of eight people. However, by the first days of September, several groups were already operating in Krasnodon, not connected with one another - in total there were 25 people in them. The birthday of the underground Komsomol organization "Young Guard" was September 30: then the plan for creating a detachment was adopted, specific actions for underground work were outlined, and a headquarters was created. It included Ivan Zemnukhov - chief of staff, Vasily Levashov - commander of the central group, Georgy Arutyunyants and Sergey Tyulenin - members of the headquarters. Viktor Tretyakevich was elected commissar. The guys unanimously supported Tyulenin's proposal to name the detachment "Young Guard". And in early October, all the scattered underground groups were united into one organization. Later, Uliana Gromova, Lyubov Shevtsova, Oleg Koshevoy and Ivan Turkenich joined the headquarters.

Now you can often hear that the Young Guards did nothing special. Well, they put up leaflets, collected weapons, burned and contaminated the grain intended for the invaders. Well, they hung out several flags on the day of the 25th anniversary of the October Revolution, burned the Labor Exchange, saved several dozen prisoners of war. Other underground organizations have existed longer and done more!

And do these unfortunate critics understand that everything, literally everything, these boys and girls committed on the verge of life and death. Is it easy to walk down the street when warnings are posted on almost every house and fence that if you don’t hand over your weapon, you will be shot. And at the bottom of the bag, under the potatoes, there are two grenades, and you have to walk past several dozen policemen with an independent air, and everyone can stop ... By the beginning of December, the Young Guard already had 15 machine guns, 80 rifles, 300 grenades, about 15 thousand rounds of ammunition, 10 pistols, 65 kilograms of explosives and several hundred meters of Fickford cord.

Isn't it scary to sneak past the German patrol at night, knowing that for appearing on the street after six in the evening there is a threat of execution? But most of the work was done at night. At night, they burned the German Labor Exchange - and two and a half thousand Krasnodon residents were delivered from German hard labor. On the night of November 7, the Young Guards hung out red flags - and the next morning, when they saw them, people experienced great joy: “We are remembered, we are not forgotten by ours!” At night, prisoners of war were released, telephone wires were cut, German vehicles were attacked, a herd of cattle of 500 heads was recaptured from the Nazis and dispersed to the nearest farms and settlements.

Even leaflets were pasted mostly at night, although it happened that they had to do it during the day. At first, leaflets were written by hand, then they began to be printed in the same organized printing house. In total, the Young Guards issued about 30 separate leaflets with a total circulation of almost five thousand copies - from which Krasnodon residents learned the latest reports from the Sovinformburo.

In December, the first disagreements appeared at the headquarters, which later became the basis of the legend that still lives on and according to which Oleg Koshevoy is considered the commissar of the Young Guard.

What happened? Koshevoy began to insist that a detachment of 15-20 people be singled out from all the underground workers, capable of operating separately from the main detachment. It was in him that Koshevoy was supposed to become a commissar. The guys did not support this proposal. Nevertheless, Oleg, after another admission to the Komsomol of a youth group, took temporary Komsomol tickets from Vanya Zemnukhov, but did not give them, as always, to Viktor Tretyakevich, but issued them to the newly accepted ones himself, signing: “Commissar of the Molot partisan detachment Kashuk.”

On January 1, 1943, three young guards were arrested: Yevgeny Moshkov, Viktor Tretyakevich and Ivan Zemnukhov - the Nazis fell into the very heart of the organization. On the same day, the remaining members of the headquarters urgently gathered and decided: all the Young Guards should immediately leave the city, and the leaders should not spend the night at home that night. All underground workers were informed about the decision of the headquarters through messengers. One of them, who was in the group of the village of Pervomaika, Gennady Pocheptsov, having learned about the arrests, got cold feet and wrote a statement to the police about the existence of an underground organization.

The entire punitive apparatus was set in motion. Mass arrests began. But why didn't the majority of the Young Guards follow the order of the headquarters? After all, this first disobedience, and hence the violation of the oath, cost almost all of them their lives! Probably due to the lack of life experience. At first, the guys did not realize that a catastrophe had happened and their leading trio could no longer get out of prison. Many could not decide for themselves: whether to leave the city, whether to help the arrested, or voluntarily share their fate. They did not understand that the headquarters had already considered all the options and took the only correct one into action. But most of them didn't do it. Almost everyone was afraid for their parents.

Only twelve young guards managed to escape in those days. But later, two of them - Sergei Tyulenin and Oleg Koshevoy - were nevertheless arrested. Four cells of the city police were packed to capacity. All the guys were terribly tortured. The office of the chief of police, Solikovsky, looked more like a slaughterhouse - it was so spattered with blood. In order not to hear the screams of the tortured in the yard, the monsters started the gramophone and turned it on at full volume.

Underground workers were hung by the neck to the window frame, simulating execution by hanging, and by the legs, to the ceiling hook. And they beat, beat, beat - with sticks and wire whips with nuts on the end. The girls were hung by braids, and the hair could not stand it, it broke off. The Young Guards were crushed by the door with fingers, shoe needles were driven under the nails, they were put on a hot stove, stars were cut out on the chest and back. Their bones were broken, their eyes were gouged out and burnt out, their arms and legs were cut off…

The executioners, having learned from Pocheptsov that Tretyakevich was one of the leaders of the Young Guard, decided at all costs to force him to speak, believing that then it would be easier to cope with the rest. He was tortured with extreme cruelty, he was mutilated beyond recognition. But Victor remained silent. Then a rumor was spread among the arrested and in the city: Tretyakevich had betrayed everyone. But Victor's comrades did not believe it.

On a cold winter night on January 15, 1943, the first group of Young Guardsmen, including Tretyakevich, was taken to the ruined mine for execution. When they were put on the edge of the pit, Victor grabbed the deputy chief of police by the neck and tried to drag him along with him to a depth of 50 meters. The frightened executioner turned pale with fear and almost did not resist, and only the gendarme arrived in time, hitting Tretyakevich on the head with a pistol, saved the policeman from death.

On January 16, the second group of underground workers was shot, on the 31st - the third. One of this group managed to escape from the place of execution. It was Anatoly Kovalev, who later went missing.

Four remained in prison. They were taken to the city of Rovenki in the Krasnodon region and shot on February 9 along with Oleg Koshev, who was there.

On February 14, Soviet troops entered Krasnodon. February 17 became a day of mourning, full of weeping and lamentations. From a deep, dark pit, the bodies of tortured young men and women were taken out with a bucket. It was difficult to recognize them; some of the children were identified by their parents only by their clothes.

A wooden obelisk was placed on the mass grave with the names of the dead and with the words:

And drops of your hot blood,
Like sparks flare up in the darkness of life
And many brave hearts will be lit!

The name of Viktor Tretyakevich was not on the obelisk! And his mother, Anna Iosifovna, never took off her black dress again and tried to go to the grave later so as not to meet anyone there. She, of course, did not believe in her son's betrayal, just as most of her fellow countrymen did not, but the conclusions of the commission of the Central Committee of the All-Union Leninist Young Communist League under the leadership of Toritsin and the subsequently remarkable novel by Fadeev, which was published in artistic terms, had an impact on the minds and hearts of millions of people. One can only regret that Fadeev's novel The Young Guard did not turn out to be equally remarkable in respecting historical truth.

The investigating authorities also accepted the version of Tretyakevich's betrayal, and even when the true traitor Pocheptsov, who was subsequently arrested, confessed to everything, the charge was not removed from Viktor. And since, according to party leaders, a traitor cannot be a commissar, Oleg Koshevoy was elevated to this rank, whose signature was on the December Komsomol tickets - “Commissar of the Molot partisan detachment Kashuk.”

After 16 years, one of the most ferocious executioners who tortured the Young Guards, Vasily Podtynny, was arrested. During the investigation, he stated: Tretyakevich was slandered, but he, despite severe torture and beatings, did not betray anyone.

So almost 17 years later, the truth triumphed. By decree of December 13, 1960, the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR rehabilitated Viktor Tretyakevich and awarded him the Order Patriotic War I degree (posthumously). His name began to be included in all official documents, along with the names of other heroes of the Young Guard.

Anna Iosifovna, Victor's mother, who never took off her mourning black clothes, stood in front of the presidium of the solemn meeting in Voroshilovgrad when she was presented with her son's posthumous award. The crowded hall, standing up, applauded her, but it seemed that what was happening no longer pleased her. Maybe because her mother always knew that her son was an honest man... Anna Iosifovna turned to her comrade, who was rewarding her, with only one request: not to show the film "Young Guard" in the city these days.

So, the stigma of a traitor was removed from Viktor Tretyakevich, but he was never restored to the rank of commissar and the title of Hero of the Soviet Union, which was awarded to the rest of the dead members of the Young Guard headquarters, was not honored.

Finishing this short story about the heroic and tragic days of the Krasnodon people, I would like to say that the heroism and tragedy of the Young Guard are probably still far from being revealed. But this is our history, and we have no right to forget it.

Alexander Fadeev. Why did the famous Soviet writer shoot himself? What secrets does his novel The Young Guard keep? And how did Fadeev's work affect the inhabitants of the city of Krasnodon? prepared a special report.

And waiting in the barrel for a cartridge

In the house of Alexander Fadeev, the usual midday fuss is set on the table. The writer's son, eleven-year-old Mikhail, is sent to call his father for dinner. He does not have time to reach his office, when suddenly a shot is heard. Unexpectedly for everyone, the famous writer committed suicide.

The next day, the newspapers will print only a mean obituary about Fadeev's death. Alcoholism will be listed as the cause of suicide, but few will believe it. Why did Fadeev shoot himself? His death is still shrouded in myths, just like the story of his last novel, The Young Guard.

Winter 1945. There is a second World War. Alexander Fadeev lives in Peredelkino near Moscow. Having barely finished the first chapters of his new work, he hurries to check what was written on the audience. So he reads to his neighbors a few pages of "The Young Guard", a novel that will become fatal for him.

The playwright Alexander Nilin has just returned from his dacha in Peredelkino. The best writers of the country lived in this village for many years. There he once met Alexander Fadeev.

Fadeev worries like a schoolboy, although at that time he was already a recognized writer. The first success was brought to him by the novel Defeat, after which Stalin himself wanted to meet him personally. Since then, his literary career has skyrocketed.

He grew up to the post of chairman of the board of the Union of Writers of the USSR and ... stopped writing. For 20 years he went to his second novel - the novel "The Young Guard". Then the family will remember how he often jumped up at night and sat down to write. He wrote and wept, wept over the suffering of his heroes. After publication, all-Union glory and accusations of falsification will fall upon him. But could it lead to suicide?

“Krasnodon has no strategic significance, no partisans and party members were supposed to be there, and the children did all this at their own peril and risk. And, perhaps, Fadeev was fascinated by such a topic that young people, children, remembered something from their youth. He is also a very early person. He was a delegate to the 10th Congress, that's when the Kronstadt rebellion took place. And he suppressed this rebellion, he was wounded. He was such a person. Something was close to him there," says Nilin.

There really is no ultimate accuracy in the novel "The Young Guard". And this is still a matter of controversy. So what is Fadeev accused of? What exactly did he do wrong? What could push him to the extreme step? The youth organization existed in the Ukrainian city of Krasnodon for four months, from September 1942 to January 1943. Most of the underground workers were caught and brutally executed.

Elena Mushkina remembers the effect the appearance of the novel had. Read it avidly. She even dedicates her thesis to him. And Fadeev's book was typed by her mother, a typist for the largest literary magazine.

“The novel went off the rails, it was necessary to be in time, the end of the war was already approaching. It was Stalin who kept his finger on the pulse. And my mother typed like crazy,” recalls publicist Elena Mushkina.

Fadeev took up this story after the appearance of a small note in the newspaper: when the Nazis began to retreat in Ukraine, a Soviet photojournalist got into the liberated Krasnodon. He witnessed how the dead young guards were taken out of the mine, where the Nazis threw them still alive.

“Stalin realized that it was impossible to limit himself to one such. And he called Fadeev and told him: “Find a talented writer and urgently send him on a business trip to Krasnodon,” to which Fadeev said: “I will go to Krasnodon myself,” says Elena Mushkina.

For the duration of the war, Fadeev was relieved of his duties as chairman of the Writers' Union. He, along with his other colleagues, works at the front - he writes messages for the Soviet Information Bureau. When the writer arrives in Krasnodon, he is settled in the house of Elena Kosheva, the mother of one of the Young Guards.

She is considered the most educated in the mining town - she works in kindergarten educator. This distribution will play a key role in the fate of Fadeev and in the fate of his novel. Elena quickly realizes that her son can become a hero of the country along with Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya.

Documents are stored in the Russian Archive of Socio-Political History. Koshevaya describes her version of events in detail, almost minute by minute. These folders have only recently been made available to journalists.

"I wrote a diploma, and we tried, my mother told him:" Lena writes a diploma, but she knows little, a university graduate, maybe Alexander Alexandrovich, you will meet her, tell something? , while there is no time. "But I have a diploma, deadlines. And then I refused. So there was no meeting. And then we were very offended, my mother was very offended by him:" Shame on him, we have been working together for so many years! when all this was revealed ... ", - says Elena Mushkina.

Monument to the heroes of the "Young Guard" in Krasnodon Photo: TASS / Vladimir Voitenko

Nikita Petrov discovered this fact in the archives of the FSB. At one time, he was admitted to closed files in the case of the Young Guard. What he was able to find undermines the very basis of the myth of the underground. So what was an unpleasant discovery and disappointment in his time for Fadeev? What led to depression and then to suicide?

“The Soviet regime built such, I would say, reference points for patriotic education. Such examples were needed. And Fadeev in this case was very proud and said that “my novel is built on facts.” And this was his kind of trump card. But this is what happened later, it, of course, broke both the framework of the literary narrative and our idea of ​​\u200b\u200bwhat really happened in Krasnodon," says historian Nikita Petrov.

Based on Fadeev's novel, under the conditions of the information blockade, the Young Guard secretly listened to the radio and wrote leaflets. The Nazis tore them off the poles, but the news managed to scatter. And when on November 7, 1942, a red flag began to flutter over the roof of the local school in honor of the October Revolution, it became quite obvious to the enemy that an underground group was operating in the town.

“They did not perform a number of feats that were attributed to the guys. They did not actually burn the mine administration, the so-called directorate, it was burned by the retreating Soviet troops. The labor exchange administration, where, it would seem, according to the novel, the lists of young people who should were sent to Germany to work, they didn’t burn it either, it’s not their merit either. And moreover, Oleg Koshevoy’s mother actually made friends with the Germans, and German officers lived in her apartment, "says Nikita Petrov.

But for years it was believed that it was in the house of the Koshevs that the headquarters of the Young Guard was deployed. Here they gathered secretly in the evenings, and Oleg's grandmother sold pies on the street and, seeing the Nazis, began to sing ditties, thereby signaling the guys to leave. A pack of cigarettes, which will be found in the market from one boy, will destroy the Young Guard.

The day before, a German convoy with New Year's gifts was robbed. The police are angry and wary. They were ordered to search the local bazaar for those who would sell the stolen goods. So the brother of one of the underground workers comes across.

“We were brought up on the images of heroes, we brought up patriotism in us and we in our children. That’s where it started. But when I graduated from school and entered the history department, my dad said: “Are you sure that everything was like in the novel? “Well, of course, I was sure. He says: “Look at the documents.” That's it, it came from this,” says historian Nina Petrova.

Frame from the film "Young Guard"

Nina Petrova herself is from those places. Her father is the party organizer of the mine, Konstantin Petrov, the one who made Alexei Stakhanov famous by convincing him to set a record for coal production. Subsequently, Konstantin became a great party official. He knew firsthand how Soviet propaganda worked and how it crippled people's lives.

His daughter has been collecting documents about the Young Guard from the archives for many years. She is well aware of the details of the biggest Soviet myth. How was he born? And why did Fadeev fall for him so easily?

“This issue of indignation in general began a long time ago, as soon as the novel appeared, we have documents, the first letters have already appeared, people simply rebelled there, organized actions of rejection of this material,” says Nina Petrova.

Fadeev, who proudly sent the first copies to Krasnodon, is stunned: Moscow accepts the novel with enthusiasm, and the families of the Young Guards, whom he glorified throughout the country, grumble. The doubt crept in that something was wrong here.

But he's already screwed up. He is awarded the Stalin Prize. Director Sergei Gerasimov begins to shoot the film. Metropolitan theaters put on performances based on the novel one after another. Some heroes are awarded posthumously. It seemed to be a success. But in moments of depression, which will wash over the writer shortly before his death, in impotent despair, he will remember something else.

“After all this hell, all the parents of the dead Young Guards were somehow united in their grief. They were all affected by this grief - the execution of their children. And the parents were not in the know, they were semi-literate, it was some kind of village, you know, and then they didn’t know. After all, it was a conspiracy among the guys. So no one delved into the details of the parents, and they were worried in unison, "explains Elena Mushkina.

"Firstly, they started a drama, discord - why is your son on the list, it's not just like piece of art, and at the end, if you remember, he lists the dead, but why is your son on this list and why is there a lot about him in the novel, although I know that he did nothing? And why my son, my daughter, why are they not there? And here the question began: is it artistic? Fadeev did not even try to justify himself, but to explain that this was precisely a work of art, and that therefore he had the right to make some changes. But, you know, change is different," says Elena Mushkina.

Fadeev changed history, but the names of the Young Guards indicated the real ones. Only a traitor passes under a fictitious name. In the novel, he is called Stakhovich, but according to some biographical facts, readers and relatives quickly guess Viktor Tretyakevich in him.

When the investigation becomes aware that it was he, and not Oleg Koshevoy, who was the head of the underground organization, it will be too late. The life of his family has already been crippled forever, and passers-by literally spit in the face of Victor's parents.

“Of course, it’s not good for a writer, after collecting people’s opinions, to assert later that the novel is built on facts, but, in the end, when Fadeev already prepared the canonical version of the novel in 1951, he never spoke about facts again. He was very worried, by the way speaking, at first he held on to the original version of the novel, but in a conversation he explained to Ehrenburg that Stalin demanded this, and in this case he obediently carried out his will. This, by the way, ruined Fadeev himself, "says Nikita Petrov.

Scandal around Stalin's favorite

Natalya Ivanova works in the same magazine where Fadeev was published. Befriends his family. The son of a famous writer avoids communication with the press. In literary circles, they know what it cost Mikhail to forget that terrible day when his father died. As a journalist, Natalya is also aware of the scandal that erupted around Stalin's favorite.

“As it turns out, at that moment Stalin just didn’t read the Young Guard, he didn’t have time. And Fadeev was awarded the Stalin Prize. Stalin watched the movie, and after he watched the film, the first version, he terribly disliked that it does not reflect the role of the party in any way, that the Komsomol members act there on their own.

Almost the next week after this viewing, a large article appeared in the Pravda newspaper, and it was 1949, which subjected the film and the novel to severe criticism precisely because of the lack of a guiding, inspiring, organizing role of the Communist Party in the underground city of Krasnodon. - says Natalia Ivanova.

Fadeev takes on the second edition of the novel. In conversations with friends, he admits: "I am remaking the Young Guard to the old one." Gerasimov has to shoot the film. It turns out that the writer added so many scenes with party members that the movie turned out to be a two-part movie. The episodes with the traitor are being cut, and his name is being re-voiced.

By that time, researchers believe that another Young Guard had surrendered to the underground. The role of Stakhovich of little honor is played by the actor Yevgeny Morgunov, who later became the star of Gaidai's films. And he will be the only one of the young artists who will not receive an award for this film.

Film critic Kirill Razlogov notes that Gerasimov's agitation based on Fadeev's novel still has artistic value. Gosfilmofond is now trying to restore the first version of the film.

"In 1948, a picture came out that already corresponded to the second version of the novel and corresponded to what Stalin demanded. Since then there was a period of few pictures, there were almost no films, and it is natural that a picture on such a topic would be a nationwide and nationwide sensation, which it became But, besides, it was a collection of very young very talented people, some were older, like Sergei Bondarchuk, and Nona Mordyukova, Slava Tikhonov, this generation came from the wheels of VGIK, "says Kirill Razlogov.

The scene of the massacre of the Young Guards is the most terrible in the film. It was filmed in the same place where it all happened, just a couple of years after the execution. Thousands of people came to the mine, friends and relatives of the victims. When the actor who played the role of Oleg Koshevoy delivered his monologue, the parents lost consciousness. For a long time it was believed that the organization consisted of about a hundred people. Most were caught and died.

Nina Petrova recently discovered the first list of the Young Guard, which was compiled immediately after the liberation of Krasnodon. There are 52 names here. Fadeev hardly saw this document. This would be contrary to party propaganda, would reduce the scale of the tragedy. By the way, the name Koshevoy is listed on a par with everyone else.

"I want to say that Koshevaya is very interesting. Nikolaevna told Fadeev a lot, the woman is bright, colorful, he was carried away by her, came there twice, stayed at the apartment twice. She shared what she knew. And what did she know? For participation in the underground she was presented to a young organization, awarded, and grandmother was also awarded the corresponding government award.

Why was grandma introduced? The motivation was that she was an active member of the Young Guard, that she had alerted the underground organization to impending arrests. She didn't do anything, she didn't tell anyone. And the first who left the underground organization was Oleg Koshevoy, Valeria Borts, Ivantsovs, and the rest escaped as best they could," says Nina Petrova.

unknown facts

Captain's Documents Soviet army Vladimir Tretyakevich, brother of Victor, the very one whom Fadeev brought out in the novel as a traitor. Vladimir at first tries to justify Victor, collects signatures and stories in his favor. But in the end, many, under pressure from party officials, will retract their words. Vladimir himself will have to do the same under the threat of a tribunal.

Years later, in the mid-60s, the chief researcher of the Institute of History Georgy Kumanev, as part of a special commission from Moscow, went to Krasnodon. He will find there temporary Komsomol tickets signed by Tretyakevich, and from the local KGB he will learn the real story of his death.

“Everyone who was arrested in Krasnodon or in its vicinity was brought to the mine pit. The deepest abyss. Their hands were tied behind with barbed wire or just wire. Among them was a German officer who decided to see what it was there.

He approached this cliff and began to look there. This was noticed by Viktor Tretyakevich, rushed at him with his hands tied behind him and pushed him there. But he, falling, managed to grab onto some kind of hook, or something sticking out.

They ran and pulled him out, and Tretyakevich was the first to be pushed there, and a trolley with stones, coal and other stuff was thrown over him," says Georgy Kumanev, head of the Center for Military History of Russia at the Institute of Russian History of the Russian Academy of Sciences.

Did Fadeev know about this? When he reworks the novel, he will add only episodes with party workers. The main line will not change. All attempts by the inhabitants of Krasnodon to break through to the author, to convey what he is wrong about, will not be successful.

Koshevaya will slam the door in front of each visitor with the words: "Do not interfere, the writer is working!". But shortly before his death, he will answer several letters from the parents of the Young Guard, as if dotting the "i" before his departure.

“In the novel of the first edition, Fadeev wrote that the diary of Lida Androsova came to the Germans, and it was from this diary that they were able to find the whole organization. And when her mother read it, she wrote a letter to which he did not even answer.

She wrote an illiterate letter: “You didn’t even ask us about our daughter. We were so happy that such a writer came to us, but what we read, maybe someone told you something bad about us. And the diary was kept in the Kizikova family.

He replied: “Yes, I know that the Germans did not have the diary, because it is now on my desk, I used it when I was working on the novel, and I will return it to you. But I deliberately decided to exaggerate and I came up with it so that the bright role of your daughter in this organization was more visible, "says Elena Mushkina.

The writer will then be told how a group of comrades from Moscow came to Krasnodon to calm down the rebellious city. People in civilian clothes entered the houses and advised the residents to adhere to Fadeev's interpretation of events. Those who did not have a novel were given their own copies. By the time a full-scale investigation begins, former young guards and relatives of the victims will begin to testify as if written.

“That is, they begin to believe in something, or it is more convenient for them to believe in what the author attributed to them. But that was not so bad. If we go through the materials of the criminal case to those who dealt with young guys, we will see that, in general - something like an organization, that's how it is described by Fadeev, none of this happened.

Yes, there were young people, they listened to the radio, someone distributed leaflets, someone wrote something, someone finally robbed a car with Christmas gifts, which is why the story began to unwind. But already in the police this story was given a different sound," says historian Nikita Petrov.

Was there a "Young Guard"?

The police gave a different sound to embellish their work. It's one thing to catch a lone thief, it's another thing to uncover conspirators, fighters against the Nazi regime. Fadeev was informed in 1947 that there were doubts about the existence of the Young Guard organization.

This happens after the State Security Minister Abakumov is informed about the testimony of the arrested policemen. They do not understand why they are being tortured. They only remember the executed young people who were caught in company with the thief of New Year's gifts and one blond guy who turned gray from their beatings.

He was found during an ordinary search of a house on the outskirts of Krasnodon, dressed in a woman's dress. He immediately said that he was an underground worker, but they remembered him, because during the execution he did not turn away. Even the name of the policeman did not forget - Koshevoy.

“19 people were arrested, including two Germans, and this process must be done by all means. But Abakumov already had one thought clearly. That is, it turned out that in general these facts could not sound at all in an open trial.

But Abakumov made a very important postscript. He left all these facts outside the investigation and there will be no talk about this at an open trial. That is, no contradictions with the novel will be made public," says Nikita Petrov.

Abakumov's note, which he sends to Stalin, worries Fadeev. But it had no consequences for the writer's career. So what was really behind his suicide?

"A work of art does not have as its task the exact embodiment of any realities. This is the task of historians, the task of scientists who can really change their points of view under the influence of new archival documents and republish their works with references to what they used to think so, now they think so. If you subject the novel "War and Peace" or the novel "The Young Guard" to such processing, you get quite a lot of absurdities, "says Kirill Razlogov.

Fadeev also understood that no one would have known about the organization without him. And perhaps this thought comforted him in difficult times. There were many such underground groups throughout the country, some of which consisted of up to a thousand people, and they all died.

“He drank godlessly afterwards, and this greatly affected him. And to say, it seems to be coherent, he was forced to rewrite this historical novel twice, and he went and was unable to withstand all these wishes to redo everything and so on, all this writing of his, he shot himself. Apparently, there were some other reasons, but I named one reason," says Georgy Kumanev.

Another reason could be alcoholism. Fadeev always drank, had a weakness for alcohol, and then he simply began to disappear in the local shaman, as they called the pub in Peredelkino. But still, the writer's friends did not agree, which ruined his addiction to alcohol. Three months before his death, he did not drink at all. So what happened to him?

“He loved a wide lifestyle, he could wander from Peredelkin in such a state, a state of drunkenness to Vnukov, and, in general, this sometimes went on for three weeks. According to legend, Stalin once asked Fadeev, and Fadeev was not in place at the next times. And he asked what was happening to him. They told him that he had such an illness, he was on a drinking binge. Stalin asked: "How long does this last for him?" - "Three weeks, Iosif Vissarionovich." ask comrade Fadeev to make it last two weeks, no more?", - says Natalya Ivanova.

Why did the writer Fadeev shoot himself?

Fedor Razzakov is getting ready for work. Before starting to write a biography of his next hero, he listens to the music of that era. What he managed to learn about Fadeev is enough for a book. The life of the author of "The Young Guard", despite the laurels and the favor of the leader of the peoples, is a continuous drama. Having become a high-flying bird, he could no longer write. Even before the fatal shot was fired, he committed literary suicide.

“Stalin, apparently, this split in Fadeev’s character caused such irony, and so, in general, he treated him with respect, otherwise he would not have kept him in the secretary post for so long. This is a fairly responsible position, because it’s just so Stalin would not have appointed him to such a responsible position, because he represented not only Soviet writers within the country, he also began to travel abroad after the war, "says the writer Fyodor Razzakov.

The location of Stalin for Fadeev means a lot. When the General Secretary dies in 1953, it will become a personal tragedy for the writer. After, at the XX Congress of the party, the cult of personality of the leader will be exposed. Fadeev seemed to leave the ground from under his feet. The ideals he had believed in all his life would crumble. In three months, he himself will be gone.

“Now such things are called a project. So I think that it was Comrade Stalin’s best ideological project to make Fadeev the writer’s minister. Not a single person in this post was so loved, although he may have done more harm than subsequent ministers.

But subsequent ministers were not like that. interesting people. Fadeev himself is much more interesting than that, What he wrote. Someone may have been expelled, and he was in favor, and then he could give him money. Everyone understood that he was fulfilling some kind of higher will," says Alexander Nilin.

At the same Twentieth Party Congress, which will be held in February 1956, Fadeev will be openly accused of repressing writers from the rostrum. By this time, many of them, arrested in 1937, will have already been rehabilitated. Soon, in his absence, the writers' minister will be removed from his post as chairman of the board of the Union of Writers of the USSR.

"He was removed precisely for this, because he was a person who expressed this time. Not Stalin's alter ego, this is too loudly said, but, nevertheless, when Khrushchev came to power, who could not replace the entire composition of that time, but in literature, it seemed to him that here he would replace Fadeev, and something, they say, would change. And he, in general, missed the mark, and this ruined Fadeev. Suddenly, in this new time, he did not see any use for himself, "says Nilin.

Fadeev no longer has influence. His idol is gone. Colleagues turn away from him, and, in fact, his whole life flies downhill. Writers loyal to Stalin only yesterday are beginning to publicly condemn the former leader of the peoples. They republish their books, blacking out his name. Directors hastily re-edit their films, cutting out all the shots with the Generalissimo.

“The majority renounced Stalin. Fadeev did not belong to this number, he would never have counted himself among this, therefore they began to beat him, from the point of view of knocking the foundation out from under him. Some compromising story had to be invented, to knock out Fadeev.

And therefore, in my opinion, this whole story with a trip there, raising this case, with betrayal and so on - because this is the only thing that could be seriously presented to Fadeev in his novel - this is that he unfairly slandered the honest man Tretyakevich ", - says Fedor Razzakov.

dying message

He leaves for Peredelkino. Stops talking to friends. At the same time, his mother dies. Somehow Fadeev admits that he loved and was afraid of two people - his mother and Stalin.

“It’s all just what led him to suicide. People who meant something to him left, the common environment left with them. There was no family life as such at that time either, because the actress Angelina Stepanova, he wrote wonderfully about her, a good wife, and so on, but she did not become his friend, comrade.

Then he had a mistress, whom he fell in love with very much, but she lived with Kataev, did not want to leave him. That is, there were no people or any events that could delay him in this life at that moment, in 1956, in May, when he decided to commit suicide, "says Razzakov.

On top of that, he felt that he had disappeared as a writer. The novel "Black Metallurgy", which began to be written by order of the party during Stalin's lifetime, did not go at all, and then turned out to be completely unnecessary to anyone.

“He never finished writing it. Suddenly, after Stalin’s death, it turned out that this was all fake, in modern terms, that these were all some exaggerated and completely incomprehensible achievements. And, in the end, in 1956 he left a suicide note , which, in general, reveals everything to us," says Nikita Petrov.

It turns out that there are several reasons for his depression. And he decides to take a desperate step, even realizing that he is leaving his little son who adores him, who will remember that he had never seen his father drunk. He seemed to be trying to keep up with him. The child did not understand why the newspapers wrote about his father's alcoholism. He had no idea about his suicide letter. But Fadeev still tried to explain his act to others.

“Indeed, he had not drunk for several months before, and I think that this was an attempt to discredit Fadeev, of course. But the letter that he left, it was hidden, I think, solely out of short-sightedness and, dare I say, short-sightedness of our authorities. Therefore that the letter was absolutely in the spirit of the 20th Congress, in the spirit of Khrushchev's changes, that our literature was ruined by incorrect instructions from the Party.

Returning to Fadeev’s contradictions, if he really understood and realized all this, in fact, he killed himself, because he thought, and he was right in this, that he was such a switchman, to put it mildly, of this power that he was used in this by everything that he actually ruined himself as a writer completely in vain, "says Natalia Ivanova.

There are no such damning words in his suicide letter that would reflect his condition. It is all the more strange that the note was made public only 35 years later.

“He couldn’t have repentance. There could have been grief that he had reached a dead end, that neither one nor the other, and there seems to be no strength and no new ideas - yes, I believe in that. And that he repented ... Firstly , and before whom was he to blame? That he endorsed the lists? Otherwise, they wouldn’t have arrested him? Was he in the KGB, or something? Well, it was supposed that another organization endorses. Therefore, this is really a depression, really a logical dead end, " - says Alexander Nilin.

A quote from Fadeev's dying letter, which was made public only in 1990: "My life as a writer loses all meaning. And with great joy, as a deliverance from this vile existence, where meanness, lies, slander fall upon you, I am leaving this life The last hope was to at least say this to the people who rule the state, but for the past three years, despite my requests, they can’t even accept me.”

"And this will always worry. Books will be forgotten, and this story will always be interesting, why, how, what did he think. Like my friend had a physical education teacher at school, and he asked him:" Listen, why did Fadeev shoot himself? was from a literary family, he says: “Well, I don’t know.” - “But what about his apartment there, was it normal?” He did not imagine any big difficulties, there was no apartment. He was restless at that moment. There was an apartment, and there was a dacha, but he could not find any place for himself in this situation, "Nilin believes.

The story of Alexander Fadeev is like the American dream. A talented boy who came to conquer the capital with Far East. He achieved fame, wealth and friendship with those in power. But one day he had to pay for it. Fadeev became a victim of the system that he canonized. And as soon as he turned out to be objectionable, this system destroyed him as a writer and as a person.

MY COMMENT

Reading the works of that time is very interesting.
What is written there is not at all what you think, but what was actually in a generalized artistic form. Aesthetic illusion of reality, sometimes quite virtual.
If censorship and propaganda have worked in the work, these artifacts are easily recognized and reality is easily restored from them.

Discussion:

Documentary film "Young Guard":

"Young Guard" - an underground anti-fascist Komsomol organization of boys and girls that operated during the Great Patriotic War (from September 1942 to January 1943), mainly in the city of Krasnodon, Voroshilovgrad region of the Ukrainian SSR.

The organization was created shortly after the beginning of the occupation of the city of Krasnodon by the troops of Nazi Germany, which began on July 20, 1942. The "Young Guard" consisted of about one hundred and ten participants - boys and girls. The youngest member of the underground was fourteen years old.

Krasnodon underground

During the work of a special commission of the Voroshilovgrad regional committee of the CP (b) U in 1949-1950, it was established that an underground party group headed by Philip Lyutikov operated in Krasnodon. In addition to his assistant Nikolai Barakov, communists Nina Sokolova, Maria Dymchenko, Daniil Vystavkin and Gerasim Vinokurov participated in the underground work.

The underground workers began their work in August 1942. Subsequently, they established a connection with the youth underground organizations of Krasnodon, whose activities they directly supervised.

Creation of the "Young Guard"

Underground anti-fascist youth groups arose in Krasnodon immediately after the start of the occupation of the city by Nazi German troops, which began on July 20, 1942. By the beginning of September 1942, soldiers of the Red Army who ended up in Krasnodon join them: soldiers Yevgeny Moshkov, Ivan Turkenich, Vasily Gukov, sailors Dmitry Ogurtsov, Nikolai Zhukov, Vasily Tkachev.

At the end of September 1942, underground youth groups united into a single organization "Young Guard", the name of which was proposed by Sergei Tyulenin. Ivan Turkenich was appointed commander of the organization. Who was the commissioner of the "Young Guard" is still not known for certain.

The overwhelming majority of the Young Guard were members of the Komsomol, temporary Komsomol certificates for them were printed in the underground printing house of the organization along with leaflets

The activities of the "Young Guard"

Over the entire period of its activity, the Young Guard organization has produced and distributed in the city of Krasnodon more than five thousand anti-fascist leaflets with data on the real state of affairs at the front and calls on the population to rise in a merciless fight against the German invaders.

Along with the underground communists, members of the organization participated in sabotage in the electromechanical workshops of the city.

On the night of November 7, 1942, on the eve of the 25th anniversary of the Great October Socialist Revolution, the Young Guards hoisted eight red flags on the tallest buildings in the city of Krasnodon and the villages adjacent to it.

On the night of December 5-6, 1942, on the Day of the Constitution of the USSR, the Young Guards set fire to the building of the German labor exchange (the people dubbed it the "black exchange"), where lists of people (with addresses and filled out work cards) were stored, intended for hijacking for compulsory work in Nazi Germany, thereby about two thousand young men and women from the Krasnodon region were saved from forcible export.

The Young Guards were also preparing to organize an armed uprising in Krasnodon in order to defeat the German garrison and join the advancing units of the Red Army. However, shortly before the planned uprising, the organization was uncovered.

Disclosure of the "Young Guard"

Shortly before fleeing from the advancing units of the Red Army, the German counterintelligence, the Gestapo, the police and the gendarmerie intensified their efforts to capture and eliminate the Komsomol-communist underground in the Krasnodon region.

Using informants (most of whom, after the liberation of the Ukrainian SSR, were exposed and convicted of treason and collaboration with the Nazis), the Germans got on the trail of young partisans, and in January 1943 mass arrests of members of the organization began.

On January 1, 1943, Yevgeny Moshkov and Viktor Tretyakevich were arrested, their arrest was due to the fact that they tried to sell New Year's gifts on the local market from looted German trucks, which had been attacked by the Young Guards the day before.

On January 2, Ivan Zemnukhov was arrested, who was trying to rescue Moshkov and Tretyakevich, and on January 5, the police began mass arrests of underground workers, which continued until January 11, 1943.

Traitor

Until 1959, it was believed that the young guards were given to the SS by the commissioner of the Young Guard, Viktor Tretyakevich, who was pointed out during the 1943 trial by the former investigator of the occupation police, Mikhail Emelyanovich Kuleshov, stating that Viktor could not stand the torture.

However, in 1959, during the trial of Vasily Podtynny, recognized as a traitor to the Motherland, who served as deputy chief of the Krasnodon city police in 1942-1943 and for sixteen years hiding under a false name, often changing work and place of residence, new circumstances of the death of the fearless young guards.

A special state commission created after the process established that Viktor Tretyakevich became the victim of a deliberate slander, and one of the members of the organization, Gennady Pocheptsov, was identified as a real traitor, who on January 2, 1943, on the advice of his stepfather Vasily Grigoryevich Gromov, head of mine No. 1-bis and secret agent police of Krasnodon, made a corresponding denunciation to the occupying authorities and named the names of all the members of the Young Guard known to him.

After the liberation of Krasnodon by the Red Army, Pocheptsov, Gromov and Kuleshov were recognized as traitors to the Motherland and, according to the verdict of the USSR military tribunal, on September 19, 1943, they were shot.

Vasily Gromov, immediately after the liberation of Krasnodon, was forced to participate in the extraction of the corpses of the Young Guards, thrown by the Nazis into the mine.