Thunderstorm Hitler's rear. To the Day of the partisans and underground fighters
29 June in Russia is celebrated the Day of partisans and underground fighters. This holiday was established in March 2009 by the State Duma of the Russian Federation on the initiative of the Bryansk Regional Duma in memory of the heroic people who selflessly fought against the Nazis in the occupied territories during the Great Patriotic War. The date for establishing the holiday was not chosen by chance, since it was 29 of June 1941 of the year that the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR and the Central Committee of the CPSU (b) issued a special directive addressed to party, Soviet, trade union and Komsomol bodies and ordered to create underground, guerrilla and sabotage troops and groups to fight the Nazi invaders. This directive gave rise to a powerful partisan and underground movement, which embraced almost all the territories of the USSR occupied by the Nazis and their allies.
The most powerful partisan movement developed in the forests of the European part of the USSR, primarily in the territory of the Byelorussian SSR and a number of adjacent regions of the RSFSR, primarily the Bryansk region. According to some information, during the years of the Great Patriotic War, more than a million Soviet partisans and underground fighters acted in the rear of the enemy - people of different ages, nationalities, professions who were not afraid to oppose the invaders in the occupied territories.
Perhaps the most famous Soviet partisan was Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya. October 31 1941, the year 18-year-old Zoya, among the two thousand Komsomol members, came to a volunteer gathering place, from where she was sent to a sabotage school. After three days of training, the group, which included Zoya, was transferred to the area of Volokolamsk, where the Soviet partisans mined the roads. Then, Zoya, as part of the sabotage group, was sent to carry out the task of setting fire to 10 settlements. In the area of the village of Golovkovo, Zoe’s group encountered superior enemy forces and suffered serious losses in battle.
Zoya herself was captured and, after brutal torture, was executed on November 29, 1941. The fate of Zoe, unfortunately, was typical of many thousands of very young Soviet citizens who volunteered for partisan detachments and sabotage groups. Until now, the exact number of partisans and underground workers who died during the war has not been established. But it is known that only partisans and underground members destroyed or captured more than a million Nazi soldiers and officers. More than 4000 tanks, 1100 aircraft, 65 cars - this is not a complete list of the damage that the Soviet partisans inflicted on the invaders.
The most famous partisan commander of the Great Patriotic War was, of course, Sidor Artemyevich Kovpak (1887-1967). By the time the war began, he was already 54 of the year, and behind his shoulders was a great life experience, participation in the First World War and the Civil War. Having worked as a laborer, since the beginning of World War I, Sydor Kovpak was drafted into the army, served in the 186 Aslanuza Infantry Regiment, participated in the legendary Brusilovsky breakthrough. About how Kovpak was a warrior, the best talk about two of St. George's cross, which he was awarded during the First World War. During the Civil War, Kovpak commanded a partisan detachment, fought as part of the Chapayev Division, and with the onset of peace he left for economic work. It seemed that he no longer had to fight.
Since 1937, Sidor Kovpak headed the Putivl City Executive Committee of the Sumy Region of the Ukrainian SSR, and when Hitler's troops invaded the territory of the Ukrainian SSR in 1941, the Soviet leadership remembered Sidor Artemievich's great military experience. He commanded the Putivl partisan detachment, then the partisan unit in Sumy region. In 1942, Sidor Artemyevich became the Hero of the Soviet Union, and in 1943, Kovpak was given the rank of Major General. The Sumy guerrilla unit, commanded by Kovpak, was renamed 1944 in the S. Kovpak Ukrainian Partisan Division in 1, and Major General Petr Petrovich Vershigora (1905-1963) was appointed as the division commander, who was formerly deputy Kuppak for reconnaissance .
Directed by profession, from military experience who had only a service as a drummer and a foreman of a musical team, Vershigora made a dizzying career during the war years — he started as an observer for the local air defense in Kiev, then served as assistant commander and platoon commander, company commander, and commander of the 264 battalion rifle division, was wounded, and after treatment he was transferred to the Intelligence Directorate of the Bryansk Front and was soon abandoned behind the front line, where in August 1942 became deputy commander of the compound Sidor Cove pack Peter Vershigora was a unique man who managed to combine the service as a commander of a partisan division with the daily work of a war correspondent. It is the unique photos of Vershigora that became the main evidence of the life and struggle of the Soviet partisans of the Great Patriotic War.
As for the cities occupied by the Nazis, as well as the territories whose landscape was not suitable for organizing a large-scale partisan movement, there were numerous underground organizations here. Perhaps the most famous urban organization of the underground during the war was the "Young Guard", which operated in the city of Krasnodon of the Voroshilovgrad region of the Ukrainian SSR.
The small mining town of Krasnodon was occupied by Hitler's troops 29 July 1942 of the year. After fierce fighting, the Wehrmacht still managed to take on a strategically important Donbass. However, almost immediately after the Germans entered Krasnodon, underground anti-fascist groups began to appear in the city. They united mostly young people - Komsomol members who lived in the city, as well as fighters and commanders of the Red Army who somehow ended up in Krasnodon - either lagged behind the retreating units, or secretly made their way into the city, fleeing from captivity.
At the end of September, 1942, scattered underground groups joined the organization “Young Guard”. 22-year-old Ivan Turkenich was elected its commander. The childhood and youth of Turkenich, who was born in the village of Novy Liman in the Voronezh Region, were held in Krasnodon, where his father, a miner, moved to the year of birth of Ivan. Here Ivan studied at the school, then at the pedagogical working faculty of the Voroshilovgrad State Pedagogical Institute named after Taras Shevchenko.
In 1940, the town of Turkenich completed three courses at the Sevastopol Railway Technical School and was drafted into the army. He was sent to study at the Sevastopol military school of anti-aircraft artillery, from where he was released in the year 1941 with the rank of lieutenant. Then Turkenich underwent training at the courses of commanders of mortar batteries in Samarkand, and in May 1942 of the year went to the front. From June 1942, he served as assistant chief of staff of the 614 th anti-tank artillery regiment, was wounded during the fighting on the Middle Don, was captured, but soon managed to escape during the transfer of prisoners to the Surovikino camp. Turkenich managed to get to his native Krasnodon, where he immediately joined the underground workers and, as a combat officer of the Red Army, became the commander of the Young Guard.
The name of the organization, by the way, was invented by 16-year-old Sergei Tyulenin - yesterday's schoolboy, and then a miner, who immediately joined the anti-fascist underground. Among the organizers of the "Young Guard" was Oleg Koshevoi, who, six weeks before the German troops entered Krasnodon, turned just 16 years old. In the "Young Guard" Oleg Koshevo was responsible for security issues, and some sources call him a commissioner of an underground organization. These very young guys, risking their own lives every day, waged a fierce struggle against the German occupiers for half a year. More than five thousand anti-fascist leaflets, sabotage against electromechanical workshops, hoisting up red flags on various city objects is not a complete list of actions of the “Young Guard”. Thus, the Young Guards set fire to the labor exchange, thanks to which more than two thousand Krasnodon young men and women escaped slavery to Germany.
The “Young Guard” had only a handful of months to reach the liberation of Donbass by Soviet troops, but shortly before the retreat, Hitler’s counterintelligence was able to reach the organization and its key members. In January, 1943, mass arrests of Young Guards began in Krasnodon. The fate of the heroes of the resistance was terrible. During 15, 16 and 31 in January of 1943, the Hitlerite executioners threw 58 people into the 5-meter pit of the mine No. 71, and some of them were shot dead, but many were dropped alive by the Nazis. So, they dropped into the mine 17-year-old Sergei Tyulenin with his hands broken during interrogations. 9 February 1943 in the area of the city of Rovenki shot Oleg Koshevoy and four more Young Guard men, and on February 14 Soviet troops liberated Krasnodon. Ours were only five days late.
A similar organization existed in 1941-1943. in Taganrog, and it was supervised by a metallurgical plant worker Vasily Ilyich Afonov (1910-1943). The detachment’s commissar and his real inspiration was Semyon Grigorievich Morozov, the first secretary of the Taganrog city committee of the All-Union Leninist Young Communist League, who immediately after the occupation of the city went into hiding under the pseudonym Nikolay and became one of the main organizers of resistance to the Nazi invaders. As in other cities, in Taganrog, the underground workers were engaged in putting up anti-fascist appeals, sabotage against infrastructure facilities, attacked small Hitlerite patrols, exposed and executed traitors and enemy agents.
However, in a matter of days before the liberation of Taganrog by the Soviet troops, the Nazis were able to go on the trail of underground fighters. 14 February 1943, the Red Army liberated neighboring Rostov-on-Don, but Taganrog was still in German hands. 18 February 1943 The Gestapo seized Seeds Morozov and his associates, and 23 February 1943 of the year Moroz and 18 other underground fighters were shot on the coast of the Taganrog Bay. At this, the massacre of Soviet citizens did not stop - the Nazis were able to go on the trail of other underground workers. 2 June 1943. In a beam near the village of Petrushino, 120 people were executed. Among them was 13-year-old Tolik Nazarenko, despite his young age fulfilling very important and responsible tasks. Soviet troops were able to release Taganrog only 30 August 1943, when it became aware of the terrible fate of the Taganrog heroes - underground fighters.
Tragic was and story underground groups operating in Odessa. The city was under the control of German and Romanian occupiers from 1941 to 1944. When the Soviet troops left Odessa, they left in the city the underground Odessa Regional Committee of the CP (b) U and the Odessa Suburban District Committee of the CP (b) U. The regional committee organized the Odessa underground, and the Odessa suburban district committee created two partisan detachments operating in the Odessa region. Part of the underground workers were hiding from the Nazis in the famous Odessa catacombs.
During the years of occupation, more than 3 thousands of Romanian and German soldiers and officers were killed on the territory of Odessa and its environs by underground fighters and partisans. For example, the squad commanded by state security captain Vladimir Molodtsov, despite his number in 70-80 man, diverted enormous enemy forces in 16 to thousands of Romanian soldiers and officers. Unfortunately, in February 1942, as a result of the betrayal, Vladimir Molodtsov and his associates were arrested by Romanian counterintelligence. About how the underground fighters hiding in the Odessa catacombs fought against the invaders, the writer Valentin Kataev wrote the work “Waves of the Black Sea”.
Such underground organizations acted in many other cities and towns of the Soviet Union, which were occupied by the enemy. Illegally acting, every day on the verge of exposing, the Soviet underground fighters made their enormous contribution to the approach of the Great Victory. It should be noted that many cases of partisans and underground fighters are unknown to the general public until now. The voluminous history of the Soviet underground and the partisan movement is not written, and if it ever appears, then you can be sure that new heroic pages of resistance will open. Today, on the Day of the partisans and underground fighters, it is impossible not to remember all these fearless people with a kind word. We must never forget that it was thanks to the heroes who defended the Soviet country during the Great Patriotic War that they managed not only to defend the freedom and independence of our Motherland, but also to save its people from genocide and free the world from Nazism.
The most powerful partisan movement developed in the forests of the European part of the USSR, primarily in the territory of the Byelorussian SSR and a number of adjacent regions of the RSFSR, primarily the Bryansk region. According to some information, during the years of the Great Patriotic War, more than a million Soviet partisans and underground fighters acted in the rear of the enemy - people of different ages, nationalities, professions who were not afraid to oppose the invaders in the occupied territories.
Perhaps the most famous Soviet partisan was Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya. October 31 1941, the year 18-year-old Zoya, among the two thousand Komsomol members, came to a volunteer gathering place, from where she was sent to a sabotage school. After three days of training, the group, which included Zoya, was transferred to the area of Volokolamsk, where the Soviet partisans mined the roads. Then, Zoya, as part of the sabotage group, was sent to carry out the task of setting fire to 10 settlements. In the area of the village of Golovkovo, Zoe’s group encountered superior enemy forces and suffered serious losses in battle.
Zoya herself was captured and, after brutal torture, was executed on November 29, 1941. The fate of Zoe, unfortunately, was typical of many thousands of very young Soviet citizens who volunteered for partisan detachments and sabotage groups. Until now, the exact number of partisans and underground workers who died during the war has not been established. But it is known that only partisans and underground members destroyed or captured more than a million Nazi soldiers and officers. More than 4000 tanks, 1100 aircraft, 65 cars - this is not a complete list of the damage that the Soviet partisans inflicted on the invaders.
The most famous partisan commander of the Great Patriotic War was, of course, Sidor Artemyevich Kovpak (1887-1967). By the time the war began, he was already 54 of the year, and behind his shoulders was a great life experience, participation in the First World War and the Civil War. Having worked as a laborer, since the beginning of World War I, Sydor Kovpak was drafted into the army, served in the 186 Aslanuza Infantry Regiment, participated in the legendary Brusilovsky breakthrough. About how Kovpak was a warrior, the best talk about two of St. George's cross, which he was awarded during the First World War. During the Civil War, Kovpak commanded a partisan detachment, fought as part of the Chapayev Division, and with the onset of peace he left for economic work. It seemed that he no longer had to fight. Since 1937, Sidor Kovpak headed the Putivl City Executive Committee of the Sumy Region of the Ukrainian SSR, and when Hitler's troops invaded the territory of the Ukrainian SSR in 1941, the Soviet leadership remembered Sidor Artemievich's great military experience. He commanded the Putivl partisan detachment, then the partisan unit in Sumy region. In 1942, Sidor Artemyevich became the Hero of the Soviet Union, and in 1943, Kovpak was given the rank of Major General. The Sumy guerrilla unit, commanded by Kovpak, was renamed 1944 in the S. Kovpak Ukrainian Partisan Division in 1, and Major General Petr Petrovich Vershigora (1905-1963) was appointed as the division commander, who was formerly deputy Kuppak for reconnaissance .
Directed by profession, from military experience who had only a service as a drummer and a foreman of a musical team, Vershigora made a dizzying career during the war years — he started as an observer for the local air defense in Kiev, then served as assistant commander and platoon commander, company commander, and commander of the 264 battalion rifle division, was wounded, and after treatment he was transferred to the Intelligence Directorate of the Bryansk Front and was soon abandoned behind the front line, where in August 1942 became deputy commander of the compound Sidor Cove pack Peter Vershigora was a unique man who managed to combine the service as a commander of a partisan division with the daily work of a war correspondent. It is the unique photos of Vershigora that became the main evidence of the life and struggle of the Soviet partisans of the Great Patriotic War.
As for the cities occupied by the Nazis, as well as the territories whose landscape was not suitable for organizing a large-scale partisan movement, there were numerous underground organizations here. Perhaps the most famous urban organization of the underground during the war was the "Young Guard", which operated in the city of Krasnodon of the Voroshilovgrad region of the Ukrainian SSR.
The small mining town of Krasnodon was occupied by Hitler's troops 29 July 1942 of the year. After fierce fighting, the Wehrmacht still managed to take on a strategically important Donbass. However, almost immediately after the Germans entered Krasnodon, underground anti-fascist groups began to appear in the city. They united mostly young people - Komsomol members who lived in the city, as well as fighters and commanders of the Red Army who somehow ended up in Krasnodon - either lagged behind the retreating units, or secretly made their way into the city, fleeing from captivity.
At the end of September, 1942, scattered underground groups joined the organization “Young Guard”. 22-year-old Ivan Turkenich was elected its commander. The childhood and youth of Turkenich, who was born in the village of Novy Liman in the Voronezh Region, were held in Krasnodon, where his father, a miner, moved to the year of birth of Ivan. Here Ivan studied at the school, then at the pedagogical working faculty of the Voroshilovgrad State Pedagogical Institute named after Taras Shevchenko. In 1940, the town of Turkenich completed three courses at the Sevastopol Railway Technical School and was drafted into the army. He was sent to study at the Sevastopol military school of anti-aircraft artillery, from where he was released in the year 1941 with the rank of lieutenant. Then Turkenich underwent training at the courses of commanders of mortar batteries in Samarkand, and in May 1942 of the year went to the front. From June 1942, he served as assistant chief of staff of the 614 th anti-tank artillery regiment, was wounded during the fighting on the Middle Don, was captured, but soon managed to escape during the transfer of prisoners to the Surovikino camp. Turkenich managed to get to his native Krasnodon, where he immediately joined the underground workers and, as a combat officer of the Red Army, became the commander of the Young Guard.
The name of the organization, by the way, was invented by 16-year-old Sergei Tyulenin - yesterday's schoolboy, and then a miner, who immediately joined the anti-fascist underground. Among the organizers of the "Young Guard" was Oleg Koshevoi, who, six weeks before the German troops entered Krasnodon, turned just 16 years old. In the "Young Guard" Oleg Koshevo was responsible for security issues, and some sources call him a commissioner of an underground organization. These very young guys, risking their own lives every day, waged a fierce struggle against the German occupiers for half a year. More than five thousand anti-fascist leaflets, sabotage against electromechanical workshops, hoisting up red flags on various city objects is not a complete list of actions of the “Young Guard”. Thus, the Young Guards set fire to the labor exchange, thanks to which more than two thousand Krasnodon young men and women escaped slavery to Germany.
The “Young Guard” had only a handful of months to reach the liberation of Donbass by Soviet troops, but shortly before the retreat, Hitler’s counterintelligence was able to reach the organization and its key members. In January, 1943, mass arrests of Young Guards began in Krasnodon. The fate of the heroes of the resistance was terrible. During 15, 16 and 31 in January of 1943, the Hitlerite executioners threw 58 people into the 5-meter pit of the mine No. 71, and some of them were shot dead, but many were dropped alive by the Nazis. So, they dropped into the mine 17-year-old Sergei Tyulenin with his hands broken during interrogations. 9 February 1943 in the area of the city of Rovenki shot Oleg Koshevoy and four more Young Guard men, and on February 14 Soviet troops liberated Krasnodon. Ours were only five days late.
A similar organization existed in 1941-1943. in Taganrog, and it was supervised by a metallurgical plant worker Vasily Ilyich Afonov (1910-1943). The detachment’s commissar and his real inspiration was Semyon Grigorievich Morozov, the first secretary of the Taganrog city committee of the All-Union Leninist Young Communist League, who immediately after the occupation of the city went into hiding under the pseudonym Nikolay and became one of the main organizers of resistance to the Nazi invaders. As in other cities, in Taganrog, the underground workers were engaged in putting up anti-fascist appeals, sabotage against infrastructure facilities, attacked small Hitlerite patrols, exposed and executed traitors and enemy agents.
However, in a matter of days before the liberation of Taganrog by the Soviet troops, the Nazis were able to go on the trail of underground fighters. 14 February 1943, the Red Army liberated neighboring Rostov-on-Don, but Taganrog was still in German hands. 18 February 1943 The Gestapo seized Seeds Morozov and his associates, and 23 February 1943 of the year Moroz and 18 other underground fighters were shot on the coast of the Taganrog Bay. At this, the massacre of Soviet citizens did not stop - the Nazis were able to go on the trail of other underground workers. 2 June 1943. In a beam near the village of Petrushino, 120 people were executed. Among them was 13-year-old Tolik Nazarenko, despite his young age fulfilling very important and responsible tasks. Soviet troops were able to release Taganrog only 30 August 1943, when it became aware of the terrible fate of the Taganrog heroes - underground fighters.
Tragic was and story underground groups operating in Odessa. The city was under the control of German and Romanian occupiers from 1941 to 1944. When the Soviet troops left Odessa, they left in the city the underground Odessa Regional Committee of the CP (b) U and the Odessa Suburban District Committee of the CP (b) U. The regional committee organized the Odessa underground, and the Odessa suburban district committee created two partisan detachments operating in the Odessa region. Part of the underground workers were hiding from the Nazis in the famous Odessa catacombs.
During the years of occupation, more than 3 thousands of Romanian and German soldiers and officers were killed on the territory of Odessa and its environs by underground fighters and partisans. For example, the squad commanded by state security captain Vladimir Molodtsov, despite his number in 70-80 man, diverted enormous enemy forces in 16 to thousands of Romanian soldiers and officers. Unfortunately, in February 1942, as a result of the betrayal, Vladimir Molodtsov and his associates were arrested by Romanian counterintelligence. About how the underground fighters hiding in the Odessa catacombs fought against the invaders, the writer Valentin Kataev wrote the work “Waves of the Black Sea”.
Such underground organizations acted in many other cities and towns of the Soviet Union, which were occupied by the enemy. Illegally acting, every day on the verge of exposing, the Soviet underground fighters made their enormous contribution to the approach of the Great Victory. It should be noted that many cases of partisans and underground fighters are unknown to the general public until now. The voluminous history of the Soviet underground and the partisan movement is not written, and if it ever appears, then you can be sure that new heroic pages of resistance will open. Today, on the Day of the partisans and underground fighters, it is impossible not to remember all these fearless people with a kind word. We must never forget that it was thanks to the heroes who defended the Soviet country during the Great Patriotic War that they managed not only to defend the freedom and independence of our Motherland, but also to save its people from genocide and free the world from Nazism.
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