Now on Russian television they show the series "Young Guard". The announcement of each episode says that this is a true
the history of the organization, and the cult of Oleg Koshevoy is being recreated. This lie is exposed in the following article.

"YOUNG GUARD" - SOME FACTS
A. Druzhinina, student of the Faculty of History and Social Sciences of the Leningrad State Regional University named after A.S. Pushkin.

Victor Tretyakevich.
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Studying for three years how the Young Guard came into being 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 was learned about almost immediately after the death of its participants. 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 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 comprehend (or do not want?) That the main feat of their life they - these boys and girls - performed exactly there, in prison, where they experienced inhuman torture, but to the end, until the very death from a bullet at the abandoned pit, where many were dumped while still alive, there were still 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 at the hour of death.
Beaten, exhausted, they walked into the night
in bloody scraps of clothing.
And the guys tried to help the girls
and even joked as before ...

Yes, that's right, at the 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 Molodogvardeytsy 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; people could not hold back tears while watching the film by Sergei Gerasimov; motor ships, streets, hundreds of educational institutions and pioneer detachments. More than three hundred museums of the Young Guard were created throughout the country (and even abroad), and the Krasnodon Museum was visited by about 11 million people.

And who knows about the Krasnodon underground fighters now? In the museum of Krasnodon last years empty and quiet, out of three hundred school museums in the country there are only eight, and in the press (both in Russia and in Ukraine), more and more often young heroes are called “nationalists”, “unorganized Komsomol lads”, and some even deny them Existence.

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

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

They studied in different ways - someone was an excellent student, and someone struggled to overcome 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 a theater school, and someone was going to a pedagogical institute.

The "Young Guard" was as multinational as the population of these southern regions of the USSR. Russians, Ukrainians (there were also Cossacks among them), Armenians, Belarusians, Jews, Azerbaijanis and Moldovans, ready to come to each other's aid 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 blazed, already ready for the German barracks. Seryozha Tyulenin began to act. One.

On August 12, 1942, he turned seventeen. Sergey wrote leaflets on pieces of old newspapers, and the police often found them in their pockets. He began to collect weapons, not even doubting that they will 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 in Krasnodon there were already several groups that were not connected with one another - there were a total of 25 people in them. The birthday of the underground Komsomol organization "Young Guard" was September 30: then a plan for the creation of a detachment was adopted, concrete 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 Sergei Tyulenin - members of the staff. Viktor Tretyakevich was elected Commissioner. The guys unanimously supported Tyulenin's proposal to name the detachment "Young Guard". And in early October, all scattered underground groups were united into one organization. Later, Ulyana Gromova, Lyubov Shevtsova, Oleg Koshevoy and Ivan Turkenich entered the headquarters.

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

And do these would-be critics understand that everything, literally everything, these boys and girls did 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 there is a firing squad for not surrendering a weapon? 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 look, and everyone can stop ... By the beginning of December, the Young Guards already had 15 machine guns, 80 rifles, 300 grenades, about 15 thousand cartridges in their warehouse. 10 pistols, 65 kilograms of explosives and several hundred meters of fuse-cord.

Isn't it scary to sneak past a German patrol at night, knowing that if you appear on the street after six in the evening, you will be shot? But most of the things were done at night. At night, the German Labor Exchange was burned down - and two and a half thousand Krasnodon residents were spared from German penal servitude. On the night of November 7, the Young Guards hung out red flags - and the next morning, seeing them, people experienced great joy: "They remember us, we are not forgotten by ours!" At night, prisoners of war were released, telephone wires were cut, they attacked German cars, captured a herd of 500 heads from the Nazis and dispersed it to the nearest farms and villages.

Even leaflets were pasted up mostly at night, although it happened that it was necessary to do this during the day. At first, leaflets were written by hand, then they began to be printed in the very organized printing house. In total, the Young Guard issued about 30 separate leaflets with a total circulation of almost five thousand copies - from which the Krasnodon residents recognized 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 should be allocated from all the underground workers, capable of acting separately from the main detachment. It was in him that Kosheva was supposed to become the commissar. The guys did not support this proposal. And nevertheless, Oleg, after another admission to the Komsomol of a group of young people, took temporary Komsomol tickets from Vanya Zemnukhov, but did not give them, as always, to Viktor Tretyakevich, but gave them to the newly admitted ones himself, signing: “Commissioner of the Molot partisan detachment Kashuk”

On January 1, 1943, three Young Guard members were arrested: Yevgeny Moshkov, Viktor Tretyakevich and Ivan Zemnukhov - the Nazis got into the very heart of the organization. On the same day, the remaining members of the headquarters urgently gathered and made a decision: all the Young Guards should immediately leave the city, and the leaders should not spend the night at home that night. All members of the underground were informed about the decision of the headquarters through the 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 apparatus of the punishers was set in motion. Mass arrests began. But why did not the majority of the Young Guards obey the order of the headquarters? After all, this first disobedience, and consequently a violation of the oath, almost all of them cost their lives! Probably, the lack of life experience affected. At first, the guys did not realize that a disaster had happened and their leading three would no longer get out of prison. Many could not decide for themselves: whether to leave the city, whether to help those arrested or voluntarily share their fate. They did not understand that the headquarters had already considered all the options and took into action the only correct one. But the majority did not fulfill 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 massacre - so it was splattered with blood. So that the screams of the tortured would not be heard in the courtyard, the monsters turned on the gramophone and turned it on at full volume.

The underground workers were hung by the neck from the window frame, imitating execution by hanging, and by the legs, from the ceiling hook. And they beat, beat, beat - with sticks and wire whips with nuts at the end. The girls were hanged by their braids, and their hair could not stand it, it broke off. The Young Guards were pressed with the door by the fingers of their hands, driven under the nails of the boot needles, planted on a hot stove, carved stars on the chest and back. They broke bones, knocked out and burned out their eyes, cut off their arms and legs ...

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

On a cold winter night on January 15, 1943, the first group of Young Guards, including Tretyakevich, was taken to the destroyed 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 fighters 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.

There were four remaining in the prison. They were taken to the city of Rovenki, Krasnodon District, and shot on February 9 along with Oleg Koshev who was there.

Soviet troops entered Krasnodon on February 14. February 17 became a mourning day, full of crying and lamentations. From a deep, dark pit, the bodies of tortured young men and women were taken out in 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 erected on the mass grave with the names of the victims and the words:

And drops of your hot blood,
Will sparkle like sparks in the darkness of life
And many brave hearts will be kindled!

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, as did most of her fellow countrymen, but the conclusions of the Commission of the Komsomol Central Committee under the leadership of Toritsin and Fadeev's later remarkable novel from an artistic point of view had an impact on the minds and hearts of millions of people. One can only regret that Fadeev's novel "Young Guard" did not turn out to be so remarkable in respect of the historical truth.

The investigating authorities also accepted the version of Tretyakevich's betrayal and, even when the later arrested true traitor Pocheptsov confessed to everything, the charges were not dropped 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 partisan detachment“ Hammer ”Kashuk”.

After 16 years, they managed to arrest one of the most ferocious executioners who tortured the Young Guard, Vasily Podtynny. During the investigation, he said: Tretyakevich was slandered, but he, despite cruel torture and beatings, did not betray anyone.

So, almost 17 years later, the truth has triumphed. By decree of December 13, 1960, the Presidium The Supreme Council 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 black mourning clothes, stood in front of the presidium of the solemn meeting in Voroshilovgrad when she was presented with the posthumous award of her son. The overcrowded hall, standing, applauded her, but it seemed that what was happening was no longer happy. 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 the rank of commissar was never restored and the title of Hero Soviet Union, which were awarded to the rest of the dead members of the headquarters of the "Young Guard", were not honored.

Concluding this short story about the heroic and tragic days of Krasnodon residents, 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.

Day 15 January is one of the most terrible in the history of Russia. Then, in 1943, in the Luhansk region, the German invaders and their servants began to dump members of the youth anti-fascist organization "Young Guard" into the Krasnodon mine No. 5, many of whom were not even 19 years old. When Soviet troops entered Krasnodon, bodies of tortured young men and women were taken out in a bucket from the 58-meter dark shaft of the mine. Volodya Osmukhin was 18 years old: “When I saw Vovochka, disfigured, almost without a head, without a left arm to the elbow, I thought that I would go crazy. I didn't believe it was him. He was in one sock, and the other leg was completely stripped off. Instead of a belt, a warm scarf is inserted. No outerwear. The hungry animals took off. The head is broken. The back of the head fell out completely, only the face remained, on which only Volodya's teeth remained. Everything else is disfigured. The lips are twisted, the nose is almost nonexistent. My grandmother and I washed Vovochka, dressed, decorated with flowers. A wreath was nailed to the coffin. Let the dear lie calmly. "

Klava Kovaleva, 17 years old, “... was taken out swollen, cut off the right breast, the feet were burned, the left arm was cut off, the head was tied with a handkerchief, the body shows traces of beatings. Found ten meters from the trunk, between the trolleys, it was probably dropped alive. " Volodya Zhdanov, 17 years old, “extracted with a laceration wound in the left temporal region, fingers were broken and twisted, bruises under the nails, two stripes three centimeters wide were cut out on the back, twenty-five centimeters long, eyes were gouged out and ears were cut off” ...
And there are dozens of such protocols, all of them are kept in the archives of the RGASPI, the FSB, the Young Guard Museum. They capture the undisguised bestial essence of Western civilization - the soulless world of humanoid monsters, cannibals and sadists, ready to suck all the juices from rebellious humanity for the sake of their own base material passions. What did the Young Guards do to tear them to pieces? Are they indignant that the invading occupiers began to rob their houses, take away their livestock, drive young people to Germany? They began to print leaflets, to call for resistance, on the eve of the 25th anniversary of the Great October Socialist Revolution, red flags were hung. As a youth, they vowed "to avenge mercilessly for the burned, devastated cities and villages, for the blood of our people, for the martyrdom of thirty hero miners."

No, this was not why the guardians of the "new order" mocked them. They tried to break the Komsomol spiritually, to force them to renounce the Soviet past, to betray their comrades and their Motherland. That's what they needed. And the traitors and policemen were especially zealous. As he wrote in his book "Po thin ice"Chekist writer Georgy Bryantsev," even before the war, we knew that the people inhabiting our vast country are not the same. Some actively, sparing no effort, built new life- there were an overwhelming majority of them. Others preferred to stand on the sidelines. They didn’t interfere, but they didn’t help us either, they looked closely, listened, groaned or giggled. In any case, they did not pose a real threat. Still others, rabid, hating everything new with animal hatred, sometimes openly, sometimes dressed in sheep's skins, did harm to us. They were waiting for the invaders and began to actively serve them. Of these, the so-called Russian self-government was recruited, police detachments were recruited, provocateurs, traitors, paid Gestapo agents, Abwehr informants, saboteurs were recruited. And they, these former Russian people who know our way of life, who have extensive connections among the townspeople, who are familiar with the true civil biography of many people, were more terrible and more dangerous than the Nazis. It was from them that our underground received the first blow ”.

In the first days of the new 1943, a knock was knocked on the door of the head of the district gendarmerie, the guardhouse master Zons ...
- Head of mine number 1-bis, - said the newcomer. - I have the honor to give you the following document. I hope it interests you ...
And he put on the table a sheet from his school notebook, covered with small, hasty handwriting. Here is the exact text of the dastardly denunciation, from which the tragic pages in the history of the "Young Guard" began:

STATEMENT

Head of mine No. 1-bis
I found traces of an underground youth organization and became a member. When I got to know its leaders, I am writing a statement to you. Please come to my apartment and I will tell you all the details. My address: st. Chkalov, N12, turn 1, apartment of Gromov Vasily Grigorievich.

Pocheptsov Gennady

The author of this denunciation was a peer and comrade of many of the Young Guard. He studied with them in the same school and lived with his stepfather, Vasily Gromov, the head of mine No. 1-bis and a secret agent of the Krasnodon police, a greedy, bilious and evil man. On January 5, the police began mass arrests of the underground, which continued until January 11, 1943.

Four cells of the city police were packed to capacity. The office of the chief of police, Solikovsky, looked more like a massacre - so it was splattered with blood. So that the screams of the tortured would not be heard in the courtyard, the monsters turned on the gramophone and turned it on at full volume. The children were hung by their necks from a window frame, imitating execution by hanging, and by their legs to a ceiling hook. And they beat, beat, beat - with sticks and wire whips with nuts at the end. The girls were hanged by their braids, and their hair could not stand it, it broke off ... The Young Guards were pressed with a door on their fingers, shoemaking needles were driven under their nails, put on a hot stove, stars were cut out on the chest and back. They broke bones, knocked out and burned out their eyes, cut off their arms and legs ...

But the fiends did not get their way. During the terrible tortures, the moral character of young patriots was revealed with unprecedented strength, the image of such spiritual strength that it will inspire many more generations. Then a rumor was spread among the Young Guard that they had been betrayed by Viktor Tretyakevich, the commissar of the Young Guard, who had been arrested first. Police investigator Kuleshov pointed out to him during the 1943 trial, stating that he could not stand the torture.

The truth was revealed only 16 years later, when it was possible to arrest one of the most ferocious executioners who tortured the Young Guard - Vasily Podtynny, who in 1942-1943 served as deputy head of the Krasnodon city police. In 1959, during the investigation, he said that Tretyakevich had been slandered, but he, despite cruel torture, did not betray anyone.

On February 14, 1943 Krasnodon was liberated by the Red Army. And two days later, NKVD investigators began arresting those involved in the death of the underground organization. As a result, lists of persons directly involved in the crimes were compiled - both Germans and collaborators. Pocheptsov, Gromov and Kuleshov were recognized as traitors to the Motherland and were shot by the verdict of the USSR Military Tribunal on September 19, 1943. According to local residents, “Gromov stood as frightened as white chalk. His eyes darted to the sides, hunched over, he trembled like a hunted animal. At first Pocheptsov fell, a crowd of residents moved on him, they wanted to tear him to pieces, but the soldiers at the last moment managed to pull him out of the crowd ... ...

And now, all sorts of subversive centers in our own country are demanding the rehabilitation of Nazi accomplices. “These are dissidents of the 40s, dissidents of the 30s. There were real battle groups. They have not been rehabilitated, although they did nothing, ”said Nikita Sokolov, director of science at the Yeltsin Center. In response, Dmitry Novikov, deputy chairman of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation, called on “to draw a line under the modern form of Goebbels' propaganda. Our society cannot allow Vlasov to make attempts to go on the offensive. Where this leads, he showed an example of rampant Bandera in Ukraine. I am convinced that by giving mockery to our past, we can cross out our future. "

How can the murderers who, together with the Germans killed over 10 million inhabitants in the occupied territories of the USSR during the war, be presented as fighters against the Bolshevik regime, pursuing some kind of "liberation" goals? In fact, these are just Nazis seeking, with the help of the Germans and other "cultured" peoples, to bring the Soviet people to their knees and exploit them, as they are demonstrating today in Ukraine.

And what they once did with the Young Guard is a demonstrative massacre, designed to break the spirit of the Soviet man. The same as the torture and murder in October 1993 of the courageous defenders of the White House.
“They can do me, like Toporkova,” Gleb Zheglov would say. - But to scare Zheglov - the guts are thin! "

On January 15, 16 and 31, 1943, partly alive, partly shot, the executioners threw seventy-one people tortured by cruel torture into the 58-meter shaft of mine No. 5, including forty-nine Young Guards and twenty-two members of the local underground party organization. Among them were Viktor Tretyakevich, Evgeny Moshkov, Ivan Zemnukhov, Ulyana Gromova, Sergei Tyulenin, Anna Sopova, Lydia Androsova, Angelina Samoshina, Maya Peglivanova, Alexandra Dubrovina, Alexandra and Vasily Bondarev, Antonina Eliseenko, Vladimir Zhdanov, Claudia Nina Kovaleva, , Sergei Levashov, Demyan Fomin, Antonina Ivanikhina and many other underground anti-fascists. On February 9, 1943, in the city of Rovenki, in the forest, Oleg Koshevoy, Lyubov Shevtsova, Semyon Ostapenko, Dmitry Ogurtsov, Viktor Subbotin were shot. Four more people were shot in other areas. All the Young Guards were subjected to cruel torture and torture before their death. On February 14, 1943, the city of Krasnodon was liberated by the Soviet troops of the Southwestern Front. After the liberation of the city, the bodies of the heroes mutilated beyond recognition were raised to the surface. On March 1, 1943, the anti-fascist heroes with military honors were buried in a mass grave in the Komsomol Park, in the very center of Krasnodon. Hundreds of people attended the funeral. Among them were the surviving Young Guard - Georgy Arutyunyants, Nina and Olya Ivantsov, Valeria Borts and Radiy Yurkin. A temporary wooden obelisk was erected on the heroes' grave.

On June 8, 1926, a Ukrainian was born, who for many years was destined to become a symbol of the courage and dedication of Soviet youth in the struggle against the Nazi invaders. This year marks exactly 90 years since the birth of Oleg Koshevoy.

Unlike the overwhelming majority of his fellow Young Guard, Oleg Koshevoy was not a native of Donbass. His homeland is the city of Priluki, Chernihiv region (this is northeastern Ukraine). I have already happened in my LJ biography of this hero of "Young Guard". Growing up far from Donbass, in the Chernigov and Poltava regions, Oleg came to Krasnodon (Luhansk region) only in 1940. Together with his mother, who by this time had managed to divorce his father (for some time Oleg lived in turns with his father, then with his mother). And with a certain moral baggage. People who knew him well describe Oleg as a principled, sympathetic, self-sacrificing person. In the memories of his mother, there was an episode how little Oleg, even before moving to Donbass, gave his beloved sailor to a boy from a needy family. Oleg was also distinguished by exceptional restraint - the most valuable quality for a future underground worker. A former classmate of Koshevoy tells how one day a high school bully accidentally broke Oleg's expensive watch, given to him by his grandmother, during recess. Oleg did not rush with his fists at the offender, but silently went to class, although the loss of these hours was for him, the boy, a real tragedy.

Oleg, according to the testimony of people who knew him (mother, grandmother, classmates), was keenly interested in history native land... This interest was instilled in him by his father and grandfather. Let me emphasize: Koshevoy was not just a "Soviet patriot", he was Ukrainian patriot. Stories about the Zaporozhye Cossacks, the invasion of the Swedes and their inglorious defeat at Poltava invariably agitated his soul. Since childhood, Oleg loved Gogol's "Taras Bulba" and the famous "Song of Shchors" during the Soviet years. His love for his great homeland, the USSR, came from his love for his native Ukraine, which he did not consider "occupied" and "oppressed", on the contrary - he was proud of his belonging to the Ukrainian people and its glorious past.

Oleg was a creatively gifted person, he wrote poetry (I already mentioned this in my last publication about him). He sang and danced. Together with his friend Ivan Zemnukhov, he published a humorous wall newspaper that aroused the keenest interest of the entire school. At the same time, he was a versatile person, developed not only intellectually, but also physically. He swam well and rowed on a boat, was an excellent shooter (even had badge of honor"Voroshilovsky shooter"), played football. He worked with enthusiasm at the rescue station on the Dnieper ... Yet books were his main hobby in his life. Especially - "How the Steel Was Tempered" by N. Ostrovsky. It was probably there that he learned the first lessons of courage in his life.

People who knew Oleg closely and his undoubted organizational skills, which allowed him to quickly get close in 1940 with new classmates, to find friends among them - future companions in the "Young Guard", note. These organizational skills will still be useful to Oleg "in the terrible glow of war", when, on the instructions of an underground organization, he will start accepting those who wish to join the underground Komsomol ...

Fadeev's novel "Young Guard" and a film based on this novel by director Gerasimov taught several generations to consider Oleg Koshevoy as the commissar of "Young Guard". Later research by historians convincingly showed that Viktor Tretyakevich was the real commissar. Nevertheless, the version about Oleg the commissar is not entirely unfounded. The fact is that Tretyakevich appeared in Krasnodon at a time when the Komsomol underground was already in full swing. One of the underground youth organizations was created in the city by Oleg Koshevoy, mainly from among his former classmates. This organization was called "Hammer", and Oleg became its commissar. He was mentally prepared for such a role: during the retreat of the Soviet troops, Commissar Govorushchensky lived in the Koshevs' apartment for three weeks, with whom Oleg communicated a lot. Other pre-Young Guard organizations were called "Serp" and "Zvezda" - in full accordance with the Soviet state symbols. When Viktor Tretyakevich appeared in the city, who had real experience partisan struggle against the occupiers, it was decided to unite all these underground cells into one structure, the name of which - "Young Guard", as I already had the honor to write, was invented by Sergei Tyulenin. Oleg Koshevoy also joined the headquarters of the united organization. Despite his young age, he was a respected person in the ranks of the underground (for example, Valya Borts, the beloved of Sergei Tyulenin, was so impressed by Oleg's charisma that until the end of her days she stubbornly called him the commissar of the entire Young Guard, and did not exist before her " Hammer "). It is not possible to establish specifically which of the guys was doing what, now, with rare exceptions, it is not possible - there are too few documents left about the activities of the Young Guard, and most of them were either born in the bowels of the occupation police, or were memoirs - a rather obscure and contradictory source ... But judging by the fact that the Germans seized Oleg with a pile of forms of temporary Komsomol tickets, it can be assumed with a high degree of probability that Koshevoy's task was primarily to recruit new members underground and admit those who wish to the Komsomol.

Oleg Koshevoy was killed by the German invaders on February 9, 1943 in the Thundering Forest near Rovenki. Together with him, Lyubov Shevtsova, Semyon Ostapenko, Dmitry Ogurtsov and Viktor Subbotin died. But before that there were agonizing weeks of interrogations, torture, beatings. From the mass grave he was taken out in such condition: "there was no eye, there was a wound in the cheek, the back of the head was knocked out." During the interrogations, the young underground fighter turned completely gray. It is difficult to say why the agonizing occupation regime was so anxious to get from Oleg some new names of the underground, unknown to the investigators. They did not have time to spin the case with all the necessary scope and end it with a demonstrative execution: the Red Army literally stepped on their heels, Koshevoy did not live only five days before the liberation of his native Luhansk region. Most likely, understanding the courage of the person who fell into their hands, realizing that with the liberation of his native land, Oleg would not stop fighting, the enemies tried to smear his name with mud (as they did with Viktor Tretyakevich), force him to betray and thereby knock him out from the ranks of the winners of one of the most persistent, albeit young, fighters. Oleg did not give them such pleasure and went to the grave undefeated.

Interrogation of Oleg Koshevoy by the German invaders

Another curious myth is associated with the name of Oleg Koshevoy. After the Great Patriotic War, when the majority of Hitler's criminals received the reward they deserved, and the pitiful remnants of their former accomplices scattered across the emigration, the name of a certain Bandera member by the name of Stakhiv suddenly surfaced in the press. Seizing on the similarity of his surname with the surname of Stakhovich (a fictional character in Fadeev's novel, who in the novel is the main culprit in the death of the organization), this traitor to the Motherland declared that he was this very Stakhovich, but he did not betray any "Young Guard" for betrayal, Fadeev hung him falsely - to hide the name of the real traitor - Oleg Koshevoy. Say, Oleg joined the OUN and agreed to cooperate with the invaders to save his life, as a result of which he was taken by the Germans to the West and lived there comfortably. Moreover, Stakhiv argued that Oleg secretly penetrated the territory of the USSR in the mid-1950s and saw his mother, citing the fact that, allegedly, Oleg's mother was visited after the war by a person strikingly similar to her son and with an order for breasts. This version, however, crumbles to dust as soon as you start thinking about it. First of all: if Oleg Koshevoy did not die, but retreated to the West along with the German troops, where did he get the Soviet order on his chest? How did he manage to get it in this way? In addition, it is known for sure that the actor - the performer of the role of Oleg Koshevoy in the film, visited the mother of his hero and communicated with her in order to get to know Oleg's character better and get used to the image. Probably, communication with Elena Nikolaevna Kosheva did not interrupt with the actor even after finishing work on the film - he could well visit her in his free time and help with the housework. In addition, Oleg's body was found and reburied with honors, about which a protocol has been preserved in the archives. And Ivan Turkenich, giving his famous oath on the graves of his comrades, turned primarily to Oleg Koshevoy. In general, the version of Oleg's betrayal is not confirmed by any of the surviving Young Guard. So Stakhiv, who tried to bring to a logical conclusion what Hitler's investigators failed to do, only made himself look stupid. The order, in fact, turns out to be the breastplate of the Stalin Prize laureate, which Vladimir Ivanov (the actor who played Oleg) received in 1949.

Here is the very photo that Stakhiv was pushing against. It really shows
performer of the role of Oleg Koshevoy Vladimir Ivanov with Elena Kosheva.

And yet, it seems that it is no coincidence that it was Oleg Koshevoy who became a kind of symbol of the "Young Guard". Oleg was probably the youngest in the headquarters of the organization. Let's think about it: the war found him only an eighth grader! Nowadays, many at this age only think about computer games, fashionable cinema novelties, but they begin to think about relationships with the opposite sex. And Oleg was not afraid to rally around himself the same as he, schoolchildren and together with them, without any guidance from older comrades (contact with the adult underground was established later, after the unification of scattered Komsomol groups in the "Young Guard") to challenge the strongest at that time the army of Europe. To challenge the invaders, who already did not stand on ceremony with the population of the occupied territories, round-ups, arrests and extrajudicial executions took place throughout Krasnodon. To challenge in conditions when the scales were tipping on the side of the enemy, and our army was rapidly retreating. And in these conditions, as they rightly write on the site dedicated to the "Young Guard", it does not matter how many leaflets they posted, how many red flags they hung and how many policemen were eliminated. The main thing is that they were. That they rebelled. And among others in the ranks of the first - the young Ukrainian Oleg Koshevoy, who failed to betray the memory of the heroes of the Zaporizhzhya Sich and the Battle of Poltava. This means that he read the necessary books as a child.

Novaya Gazeta completes a series of publications about the legendary underground organization Molodaya Gvardiya, 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, not 1943, but 2015, and where there is still a front line. It is also the line of demarcation established by the Minsk Agreements between the Armed Forces of Ukraine and the formations of the self-proclaimed "Luhansk People's Republic" ("LPR").

Having studied the party archives stored in Lugansk, Novaya's special correspondent Yulia POLUKHINA returned to Krasnodon. Based on the materials of the archives, in previous publications we were able to tell about how the underground Komsomol organization of Krasnodon was created in September 1942, what role in its work was played by the connection with partisan detachments and underground regional committees of Voroshilovograd (as Luhansk was called during the war) and Rostov- on-Don and why the commissioner of the "Young Guard" was first Viktor Tretyakevich (the prototype of the "traitor" Stakhevych in Fadeev's novel), and then Oleg Koshevoy. And both suffered posthumously for ideological reasons. Tretyakevich was branded as 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 against 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 the Luhansk archives make it possible to say unequivocally who was the leader of the "Young Guard", how many great and small feats (or, speaking modern language, special operations) on her account, and which of the guys already captured by the police gave confessions under torture.

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

We will tell about this tragedy in the last publication of the cycle about Krasnodon residents, relying on the recollections of relatives of the Young Guard, the stories of their descendants, as well as the protocols of the interrogation of policemen and gendarmes involved in torture and executions.

Boys play football at the memorial to the executed Young Guard. Photo: Julia 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 is each unit of scientific funds of the Museum "Young Guard". The museum staff introduces me to them.

“Here we have materials on policemen Melnikov and Podtynov. I remember being tried in 1965. The trial took place in the Palace of Culture. Gorky, the microphones were brought out to the speakers outside, it was winter, and the whole city was standing and listening. Today we cannot reliably say how many of these policemen were, one was caught in 1959, and the other in 1965, ”says Lyubov Viktorovna, the chief custodian of the funds. For her, like 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 started to lay out everything in boxes, first of all, what to send in the second, but then we made a joint decision that we would not go anywhere. We were not ready to lie on the shelves and get covered with dust as part of decommunization. At that time there was no such law in Ukraine yet, but such conversations were already going on. "

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

“Look at this photo. On the walls of the cells in which the Young Guards were held 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, a photojournalist for the 51st Army newspaper "Son of the Fatherland". By the way, he was the first to shoot not only the story of the Young Guards, but also the Adzhimushkai quarries and the Bagerov ditch, where the bodies of the executed Kerch residents were dumped after the 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 then rehabilitated. So, according to Yablonsky, when the Red Army men entered Krasnodon, it was already dark. Everything in the cells was scratched with inscriptions - both the windowsills 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 erased, not the Nazis? This was done by local residents, we still do not know what the guys wrote there, and who from the local erased all these inscriptions. "

"Children were identified by their clothes"

The shaft of mine No. 5 is a mass grave of the Young Guards. Photo: RIA Novosti

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

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

“For a long time he tormented us with his slowness. Either he didn’t know how to extract, then he didn’t know how to install the winch, or he simply delayed the extraction. Parents-miners told him what and how to do. Finally, everything was ready. We hear Gromov's voice: "Who voluntarily agrees to go down into 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. Such a silence that one could hear one's own heartbeat. Here comes the bucket. Shouts are heard: "Girl, girl." It was Tosya Eliseenko. It was dropped by one of the first batch. The corpse was laid on a stretcher, covered with a sheet and carried to the pre-mine bath. Snow was laid out along all the walls in the bathhouse, 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, who was also shot in the first game and also hung on a protruding beam. Third fourth. "And this naked one, he probably died there, his hands are folded on his chest." How the electric current went through my body. "My, my!" I shouted. 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. The third was extracted Grigoriev Misha, the fourth - Vincenovsky Yura, the fifth Zagoruiko V., Lukyanchenko, Sopova and the subsequent Tyulenin Seryozha.<…>In the meantime, evening came, there were no more corpses in the mine. Gromov, having consulted with the doctor Nadezhda Fyodorovna Privalova, who was present here, announced that there would be no more corpses to be removed, since the doctor said that the cadaveric poison was fatal. There will be a mass grave here. The work on the removal of the corpses was stopped. The next morning we were again at the pit, now it was allowed to go to 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. Zagoruykoy O.P. I was sure that my son Volodya was in Rovenki ( part of the Young Guard was taken from Krasnodon to the Gestapo, they were executed already in Rovenki. — Yu.P.) transmitted a transmission there for him, walked calmly around the corpses. Suddenly a terrible cry, fainting. On the fifth corpse on the trousers she saw a familiar spatula, 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. Once in the evening my sister and I went to the pit. From a distance, they noticed that over the very abyss of the pit, a man was sitting and smoking.<…>It was Androsov, the father of Androsova Lida. “It's good for you, they found the corpse of your 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 thing to manage the extraction. I have been working in the mine for twenty years, I have great experience, there is nothing tricky. I will go to the city party committee and ask permission to direct 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 describes the most terrible moments of his life as casually as work:

“A medical examination has arrived. Doctors said the bodies could be removed, but special rubber clothing was needed. Many parents of the Young Guard knew me as a career miner, so they insisted that I be appointed responsible for the rescue work.<…>Residents volunteered to help. The corpses were removed by mining and rescue workers. Once I tried to ride with them to the end, into the depths of the pit, but I could not. A suffocating corpse smell came from the mine. Rescuers said that the shaft of the mine was littered with stones and trolleys. Two corpses were placed in the box. After each extraction, the parents rushed to the box, cried, shouted. The bodies were taken to the mine bath. The cement floor of the bathhouse was shaken 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 corpses were disfigured 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 "go wrong". Many bodies were taken out without arms and legs. Rescue work was carried out for 8 days. Daughter Lida was taken out of the pit on the third day. I recognized her by her clothes and by the green cloaks that my neighbor was sewing. She was arrested wearing these cloaks. Lida had a string around her neck. They probably shot in the forehead, because there was a large wound on the back of the head, and less on the forehead. One hand, one leg, one eye was missing. The cloth skirt was torn and kept only at the waist, the jumper was also torn. When they took out Lida's body, I fainted. A.A. Startseva said that she recognized Lida even by her face. There was a smile on his face. A neighbor (who was present at the removal of the corpses) says that Lida's entire body was bloodied. In total, 71 corpses were taken out of the pit. The coffins were made from old planks of demolished houses. On February 27 or 28, we brought the bodies of our children from Krasnodon to the village. The coffins were placed in one row near the town council. The coffin of Lida and Kolya Sumsky was placed in the grave next to each other.

Tyulenin and his five

Sergey Tyulenin

When you read these "sick", although over the years, the recorded memories of their parents, you understand what exactly escapes when arguing 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 perceived it with absolute, even deliberate seriousness, it was perceived as a kind of game. And who at the age of 16 will believe in the 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. This was also facilitated by the principle of conspiracy: the Young Guards, as you know, were divided into fives, and ordinary underground workers knew only the members of their group. Most often, the five consisted of boys and girls who were friends or simply knew each other well before the war. The first group, which later became the most active five, formed around Sergei Tyulenin. You can argue endlessly who was the commissar in the Molodaya Gvardiya and who was the commander, but I was convinced that the leader, without whom there would be no legend, is Tyulenin.

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

“Sergei Gavrilovich Tyulenin was born on August 25, 1925 in the village of Kiselevo, Novosilsky District, Oryol Region, into a working class family. In 1926, his whole family moved to live in the city of Krasnodon, where Seryozha grew up. The family had 10 children. Sergei, the youngest, enjoyed the love and care of his older sisters. He grew up a very lively, agile, cheerful boy who was interested in everything.<…>Seryozha was sociable, cobbled together all his comrades around him, loved excursions, campaigns, and especially Seryozha loved war 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 enrolled by age. I had to go to school again: to the eighth grade.<….>The war begins, and Tyulenin voluntarily goes into 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 "Young Guard" ...

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

November 7 was approaching. Sergei's group was given the task of hoisting a flag at school number 4. ( Tyulenin, Dadyshev, Tretyakevich, Yurkin, Shevtsova studied at this school. -Yu.P.). This is what Radiy Yurkin, a 14-year-old participant in the operation, recalls:

“On the long-awaited night on the eve of the holiday, we went to carry out the task.<…>Seryozha Tyulenin was the first to climb the creaky ladder. We are behind him with grenades at the ready. We looked around and immediately set to work. Styopa Safonov and Seryozha climbed onto the very roof by wire fasteners. Lenya Dadyshev stood at the dormer window, peering and listening to see if anyone had crept up to 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 lie anti-tank mines attached to the flagpole.<…>In the morning, a lot of people gathered near the school. The enraged policemen rushed into the attic. But now they came back, confused, muttering something about mines. "

This is how the second loud and successful action of the Young Guard looks like in Yurkin's memoirs: the arson of the labor exchange, which made it possible to avoid sending two and a half thousand Krasnodon residents to forced labor in Germany, including many "Young Guard" who had received summons the day before.

“On the night of December 5-6, Sergey, Lyuba Shevtsova, Viktor Lukyanchenko quietly made their way into the attic of the exchange, threw incendiary cartridges prepared in advance and set fire to the exchange."

And here Tyulenin was the ringleader.

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

“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 mandalina, 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 also abilities in the field of drawing. A favorite theme of his drawings were warships (destroyers, battleships), cavalry in battle, and portraits of generals. (During the search when the brother was arrested, the police took a lot of his drawings.)<…>One day, my brother asked to bake homemade donuts. He knew that a column of Red Army prisoners of war would be led through our city, and, wrapping himself in a bundle of donuts, set off with his comrades on the main highway. The next day, his comrades said that Lenya threw a bundle of food into the crowd of prisoners of war, and also threw his winter hat with earflaps, and he himself wore a cap in the bitter cold. "

The final memories of Nadezhda Dadysheva bring us back to the pit of mine No. 5.

“On February 14, the city of Krasnodon was liberated by the Red Army. On the same day, my mother and I went to the police building, where we saw a terrible picture. In the courtyard of the police, we saw a pile of corpses. These were the executed prisoners of war of the Red Army, covered with straw from above. I went into the room with my mother former police: all the doors were wide open, there were broken chairs and broken dishes on the floor. And on the walls of all cells were written arbitrary words and poems of the deceased. In one cell, the entire wall in large letters was written: "Death to the German occupiers!" On one door there was something metallic scrawled: "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 extract 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 ascent of the winch upward, heartbreaking cries and cries of exhausted mothers were heard for a long time.<…>More than forty years have passed since then, but it is always painful and anxious to remember those tragic events. I cannot hear the words from the song “Eaglet” without excitement: I don’t want to think about death, believe me, at the age of 16 ”... My brother died at the age of 16”.

The mother of the Dadyshevs died soon, she could not survive the death of her son. From the pit of Leonidas they took out all blue, because they whipped with whips, with the 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 to her, because due to her severe health condition, she spends the last years of her life in the Krasnodon hospice.

Policemen and traitors

Gennady Pocheptsov

The scientific fund of the museum contains not only memories of heroes and victims, but also materials about traitors and executioners. Here are excerpts of interrogations of investigation 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, on the advice of his stepfather, wrote a statement indicating the names of his comrades.

From the protocol of interrogation of Vasily Grigorievich Gromov dated June 10, 1943.“... When, at the end of December 1942, young people robbed a German car with gifts, I asked my son: was he involved in this robbery and did he receive a share of these gifts? He denied. However, when I got home, I saw that someone was at home from outside. But from the words of his wife I learned that Gennady's comrades came and smoked. Then I asked my son if there were members of an underground youth organization among those arrested for the theft. The son replied that indeed some of the members of the organization were arrested for stealing German gifts. In order to save my son's life, and also so that the blame for belonging to my son's organization would not fall on me, I suggested that Pocheptsov (my step-son) immediately write to the police a statement that he wanted to extradite the members of the youth underground organization. The son promised to fulfill my offer. When I soon asked him about this, he said that he had already written a statement to the police, which one he wrote, I did not ask.

The investigation into the Krasnodont police 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 was distinguished by systematic drinking. Before the war, he often received reprimands on the party line from Mikhail Tretyakevich - the elder brother of the Young Guard Tretyakevich, who was later exposed as a traitor - for "everyday corruption." And Kuleshov felt a personal dislike for him, which he later took out on Viktor Tretyakevich.

Policemen Solikovsky (left), Kuleshov (standing on the right in the central photo) and Melnikov (in the far right photo in the foreground).

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

“… The order in the police was such that before anything arrested was brought to Solikovsky, he brought him“ to consciousness ”and ordered the investigator to interrogate him, draw up a protocol that must be handed over to him, that is, Solikovsky, for viewing. When Davidenko brought Pocheptsov to Solikovsky's office, and before that, Solikovsky took a statement out of 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 signed up for himself the named members of the organization, summoned the police and Zakharov and began to make arrests. He ordered me to take Pocheptsov and interrogate him and present him with the interrogation protocols. During interrogation, Pocheptsov told me that the headquarters had weapons at their disposal<…>... After that, 30-40 people of the members of the underground youth organization were arrested. I personally interrogated 12 people, including Pocheptsov, Tretyakevich, Levashov, Zemnukhov, Kulikov, Petrov, Vasily Pirozhok and others. "

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

“… On December 28, 1942, Police Chief Solikovsky, his deputy Zakharov, the Germans and the police drove up to Moshkov's house (he lived next to me) in a sleigh. They searched Moshkov's apartment, found some kind of sack, put it on the sled, put Moshkov in and drove away. 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 belonging to the organization. After a while Fomin came to see me. He said that on instructions from Popov, he went to the center to find out which of the guys had been arrested. He said that Tretyakevich, Zemnukhov and Levashov were arrested. We began to discuss what to do, where to run, with whom to consult, but we made no decision. 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 the application, I myself went to the Gorky club and looked at what was going on 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 looked at some list, which contained a number of surnames. I said that I didn’t know Tyulenin. I went home and made a decision at home to hand over the members of the organization. I thought that 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 several days of interrogations, the chief of police ordered: "To whip the thieves and kick them in the neck." At this time, Pocheptsov, summoned by Solikovsky, came to the police. He indicated those whom he knew, primarily from the village of Pervomayka, in whose group Pocheptsov himself was. Arrests began on January 4-5 in Pervomaika. Lyutikov, Barakov and other Pocheptsov simply did not know about the existence of the underground communist fighters. But the mechanical workshops 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 aged 16-17, and then Zons ordered the arrest of Lyutikov and 20 other people, whom his agents had been closely following for a long time. So in the cells were more than 50 people who have this or that relation to the "Young Guard" and the underground communists.

Testimony of police officer Alexander Davydenko.“In January, I went into the office of the police secretary, it seems, to get a salary, and through an open door I saw arrested members of the Young Guard, Tretyakevich, Moshkov, Gukhov (inaudible) in the office of the police chief of Solikovsky. The police chief Solikovsky, his deputy, Zakharov, the translator Burkhard, a German, whose last name I do not know, and two policemen, Guhalov and Plokhikh, were interrogated by the police chief Solikovsky, who was there. The Young Guards were interrogated about how and under what circumstances they stole gifts from cars intended for German soldiers. During this interrogation, I also went into Solikovsky's office and saw the entire process of this interrogation. During the interrogation of Tretyakevich, Moshkov and Gukhov, they were beaten and tortured. They were not only beaten, but hung by a rope from the ceiling, staged execution by hanging. When the Young Guards began to lose consciousness, they were removed and poured water on the floor, bringing them to their senses. " Victor Tretyakevich

Viktor Tretyakevich was interrogated with particular passion by Mikhail Kuleshov.

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 sentence was carried out the next day. They were shot in public in the presence of 5,000 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 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." In the absence of a body of evidence confirming the validity of the prosecution, 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 Guards in Krasnodon.

From the transcript of the interrogation of gendarme Walter Eichhorn dated November 20, 1948.“Under the force of torture and humiliation, testimonies were obtained from those arrested about their involvement in an underground Komsomol organization operating in the mountains. Krasnodon. About these arrests, Meister Shen ( chief of the gendarme post of Cransodon. — Yu.P.) reported on command to his boss Wenner. Later, an order was received to shoot the youth.<…>They began to take out to our yard one by one the arrested, prepared to be sent to be shot, besides us, the gendarmes, there were five policemen. One car was accompanied by Commandant Sanders, and with him in the cockpit was Zons ( Shen's deputy chief. — Yu.P.), and I was standing on the step of the car. The second car was accompanied by Solikovsky, and there was the head of the criminal police Kuleshov.<…>About ten meters from the mine, the cars stopped and were cordoned off by gendarmes and policemen who accompanied them to the place of execution.<…>... I was personally close to the place of execution and saw how one of the policemen one by one took the arrested from the cars, undressed them and brought them to Solikovsky, who shot them at the shaft of the mine, dumped the corpses into the pit of the mine ... "

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

Oleg Koshevoy

Later, this created the basis 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 left with the Germans in Rovenki and then disappeared, starting a 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 retreating from Krasnodon, he fought as part of the Wehrmacht, was captured in Moldova, in 1944 he was drafted into the Red Army. He fought with dignity, was awarded medals, but in 1965 he was exposed as a former policeman and was subsequently shot.

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

However, all these analogies do not apply to Koshevoy. The archives contain protocols of interrogations of direct participants and eyewitnesses of his execution in Rovenki.

From the interrogation protocol of Ivan Orlov, police officer Rovenkov:

“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. Krasnodon police investigators Usachev and Didik, who took part in the investigation of the Young Guard case.<…>I remember that I asked Usachev 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 disappeared from Krasnodon, and they could not find him. In this regard, I told Usachev that Koshevoy had been arrested in Rovenki and shot by the gendarmerie. "

From the transcript of the interrogation of Otto-August Drewitz, gendarmerie officer Rovenkov :

Question: You are shown a slide with the image of Oleg Koshevoy, head of the illegal Young Guard Komsomol organization operating in Krasnodon. Isn't this the young man you shot? Answer: Yes, this is the same young man. I shot Koshevoy in the city park in Rovenki. Question: Tell us about the circumstances under which you shot Oleg Koshevoy. Answer: At the end of January 1943, I received an order from the deputy commander of the gendarmerie unit Fromme to prepare for the execution of the arrested Soviet citizens. In the courtyard, I saw policemen who were guarding nine arrested persons, among whom was also the identified Oleg Koshevoy. We led, on the orders of Fromme, those sentenced to death to the place of execution in the city park in Rovenki. We put the prisoners on the edge of a large hole dug in the park in advance and shot everyone on Fromme's orders. Then I noticed that Koshevoy was still alive, he was only wounded, I went closer to him and shot him right in the head. When I shot Koshevoy, I was returning with other gendarmes who participated in the execution back to the barracks. Several police officers were sent to the place of execution to bury the corpses. " Protocol of interrogation of the gendarme from Rovenki Drevnitz, who shot Oleg Koshevoy

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

The story of the life and death of the Young Guard immediately began to grow over with 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 German fascist invaders, about the injuries inflicted on the underground workers of Krasnodon as a result of interrogations and executions at the shaft of mine No. 5 and in the Thundering Forest of Rovenka. January-February 1943. (Archive of the Young Guard Museum.)

The certificate was drawn up on the basis of the 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. Barakov Nikolai Petrovich, born in 1905. During interrogations, the skull was broken, the tongue and ear were cut off, the teeth and the left eye were knocked out, the right hand was cut off, both legs were broken, the heels were cut off.

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

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

4. Lyutikov Philip Petrovich, born in 1891. 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 loosened head. The body is bruised, there is a knife wound on the chest.

6. Yakovlev Stepan Georgievich, born in 1898. Retrieved with a crushed head, an 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 breast. The whole body is beaten, bruised, and has a black color.

9. Vincenovsky Yuri Semenovich, born in 1924. Extracted with a swollen face, no clothes. There were no wounds on the body. Obviously dropped alive.

10. Glavan Boris Grigorievich, born in 1920. Retrieved from a pit severely disfigured.

11. Gerasimova Nina Nikolaevna, born in 1924. The removed one had a flattened head, a depressed nose, a broken left hand, and a beaten body.

12. Mikhail Nikolaevich Grigoriev, born in 1924. The removed one had a laceration at the temple that resembled a five-pointed star. The legs were excised, with scars and bruises: the whole body was black, the face was disfigured, teeth were knocked out.

Ulyana Gromova

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

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

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

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

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

18. Zhdanov Vladimir Alexandrovich, born in 1925. Extracted with a laceration in the left temporal region. The fingers are broken, due to which they are bent, bruises under the nails. Two stripes 3 cm wide and 25 cm long are carved on the back. Eyes are gouged out, ears are cut off.

19. Zhukov Nikolai Dmitrievich, born in 1922. Extracted without ears, tongue, teeth. An arm and a foot were severed.

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

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

22. Ivanikhina Antonina A., born in 1925. The eyes were gouged out, the head was tied with a handkerchief and wire, the breasts were cut out.

23. Ivanikhina Lilia Alexandrovna, born in 1925. Extracted headless, left arm severed.

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

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

26. Kovaleva Klavdia Petrovna, born in 1925. The swollen one was taken out, the right breast was cut off, the feet were burned, the left breast was cut off, the head was tied with a handkerchief, traces of beatings are visible on the body. Found 10 meters from the trunk, between minecarts. Probably dropped alive.

27. Koshevoy Oleg Vasilievich, 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 radius bone of the left arm was broken in the retrieved one. During the fall, dislocations in the hip joints were formed and both legs were broken. One in the thigh bone and the other in the knee. The skin on the right leg is all flayed. No bullet wounds were found. Was dropped alive. Found crawling far from the crash site with a mouthful of earth.

29. Lukashov Gennady Alexandrovich, born in 1924. The man who was extracted did not have a foot, traces of beating with an iron bar were visible on his hands, his face was disfigured.

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

31. Minaeva Nina Petrovna, born in 1924. It was pulled out with broken arms, an eye gouged out, and something shapeless was carved into its chest. The entire body is covered with dark blue stripes.

32. Moshkov Evgeny Yakovlevich, 1920 year of birth. During interrogations, his legs and arms were broken off. The body and face are bluish-black from the beatings.

33. Nikolaev Anatoly Georgievich, born in 1922. The entire body of the retrieved person 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 smashed by the blow of the butt.

36. Osmukhin Vladimir Andreevich, born in 1925. During interrogations, the right hand was cut off, the right eye was gouged out, there were burn marks 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 crushed. Blood is visible on the leg, removed with his shoes on.

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

39. Loop Nadezhda Stepanovna, born in 1924. The removed left arm and legs were broken, the chest was burnt. There were no bullet wounds on the body; it was dropped alive.

40. Petrachkova Nadezhda Nikitichna, born in 1924. The body of the retrieved wore traces of inhuman torture, retrieved without a hand.

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

42. Pie Vasily Makarovich, born in 1925. Extracted from the pit, beaten. The body is bruised.

43. Polyansky Yuri Fedorovich - 1924 year of birth. Extracted without left hand and nose.

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

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

46. ​​Samoshinova Angelina Tikhonovna, born in 1924. During interrogations, the back was excised with a whip. The right leg was shot in two places.

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

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

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

50. Sumskoy Nikolai Stepanovich, born in 1924. The eyes were blindfolded, there was a gunshot wound on the forehead, there were traces of whipping on the body, there were traces of injections under the nails on the fingers, the left hand was broken, the nose was pierced, the left eye was missing.

51. Tretyakevich Viktor Iosifovich, born in 1924. The hair was pulled out, the left arm was twisted, the 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 in front of her mother, Alexandra Tyulenina, received a through gunshot wound on his left hand during torture, which was burned with a hot rod, fingers were put under the door and pinched until the limbs of the hands were completely dead, needles were driven under the nails, and hung on ropes. When removed from the pit, the lower jaw and nose were knocked to the side. The spine is broken.

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

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

55. Shepelev Evgeny Nikiforovich, born in 1924. They removed from the pit face to face, tied to Boris Galavan with barbed wire, their hands were severed. The face is disfigured, the stomach is ripped open.

56. Shishchenko Alexander Tarasovich, born in 1925. Shishchenko's head was injured, stab wounds on his body, ears, nose and upper lip were torn off. The left arm was severed at the shoulder, elbow and hand.

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

The answer to this question is given by life itself.

"Whom Koshevoy's mother mourned" - this is the title of a large article that took up a whole page in the newspaper "Courant" on November 23, 1991. The author of the article, Margarita Volina, did not put a question mark, and therefore the title of the article sounds in the affirmative, leaving no doubt that the author knows the true truth regarding this tragic topic ...

For a person who is informed, the article causes not only bewilderment, but also indignation. In the article, Margarita Volina constantly calls Kosheva Elena Andreevna, while (this is known to almost every former schoolchild!) Kosheva was called Elena Nikolaevna. Viktor Tretyakevich, a member of the Young Guard headquarters, is called Tretyakovich.
In the past, an actress and now a journalist, M. Volina describes her stay in Krasnodon at the time when she arrived there to perform on stage with her comrades with a literary editing based on the novel "Young Guard".

“In Krasnodon, we were not allowed to give a“ performance-concert ”based on the novel“ Young Guard ”,” the former actress said.
Why wasn’t they allowed? Because, she claims, no one in Krasnodon knew anything about the exploits of the Young Guard, that "everything described in the novel" Young Guard "is untrue and false!"
This is how she describes her stay in Krasnodon: “I wanted to wander around Krasnodon alone and visit Oleg Koshevoy's museum alone. Alas! Not only about Koshevoy's museum, but even about Oleg himself, either no one heard anything, or did not want to talk to me. "

There are good reasons to doubt such meetings with Krasnodon residents ... When, just two years after the end of the war, the film "Young Guard" was filmed on the fresh trail of events, we witnessed how detachments of schoolchildren passed through the streets of Krasnodon to the sound of horns and drums. Sadovaya street to the House-Museum "Young Guard". So it was not difficult to find a museum - there would be a desire. And of course, Krasnodon residents knew very well about the exploits of their fellow countrymen - after the publication of the novel, the largest mines of the city, where most of the townspeople worked, were renamed and began to be called: the mine named after Oleg Koshevoy, the mine named after Sergei Tyulenin, the Molodogvardeyskaya mine, etc. etc.

Talking about the museum is not the main topic in M. Volina's article. The main thing is that she completely denies the veracity of the events described in the novel. And, according to her, she came to these conclusions after a conversation with the mother of Seryozha Tyulenin, Alexandra Vasilievna. Here's how the meeting is described:
“Alexandra Vasilievna was not shy in expressions. She made fire, honored Alexander Alexandrovich, and only did not curse him with swearing words. Along the way, Kosheva got it.
“The Germans were welcoming! And your Alexander Alexandrovich was rubbing around her! Of course, she is the youngest, most cultured mother of all! And with us, with the old women, what is his interest? What Koshevaya blabbed to him, he blabbed! And I was in prison, not Koshevaya. And they beat me with mortal combat, not her! "

If we turn to the judicial testimony with which we had to get acquainted, it will become clear that it was not only Alexandra Vasilyevna who was beaten in prison with mortal combat. They mercilessly beat both Maria Andreevna Borts and her little daughter Lyusya, whom the police hanged on a wire in the window opening on a lattice, imitating hanging. Mother was then lying on the floor unconscious, and blood was gushing from the girl's neck ... The scar around her neck remained forever, although nearly fifty years had passed since the torture ... Lyuba Shevtsova's mother, Efrosinya Mironovna, was also beaten. They also beat other parents of the Young Guard, as well as their relatives. Elena Nikolaevna Kosheva was also beaten ...

As you know, the failure of the organization began with a denunciation-note by Gennady Pocheptsov.

In the investigative case concerning this traitor, one can read the testimony he gave to our military tribunal: "I also told the police that the commissar of the entire Molodaya Gvardiya is Oleg Koshevoy ..." Because of this, the testimony of E. N. Kosheva was taken to the very first police! The interrogation was carried out by the Gestapo Fromme and Schweide. Elena Nikolaevna was beaten to a pulp, breaking two processes in the spine. For this reason, she remained a sick person forever. The disease progressed every year. For the last ten years, Elena Nikolaevna has not gone outside.

During the first interrogation, the Gestapo demanded that Oleg's grandmother, Vera Vasilyevna, be immediately taken to the prison. In their opinion, unlike the mother, the grandmother had to give the necessary testimony. To their demand, the policemen replied that the grandmother was sick with typhus, was unconscious and could not be delivered. The frightened Gestapo ordered to take Elena Nikolaevna home and not to bring her to prison in the future because of the danger of typhus spread ...

Elena Nikolaevna's brother Nikolai Nikolaevich Korostelev told me in detail about this difficult period of their life. Oleg and his comrades managed to leave the city. The policemen drove grandmother Vera and Elena Nikolaevna into a dark closet that had previously served as a storage room. Policemen were on duty around the clock in the house. It seemed that due to the fact that Elena Nikolaevna was forbidden to be brought in for interrogations, relative peace should have come in the house. But that was not the case. The deputy chief of police Zakharov came several times a week, sometimes the chief, Solikovsky, also appeared. They came drunk and, trying to get the necessary information, brutally beat Elena Nikolaevna, most often to the point of unconsciousness. At the same time, Nikolai Nikolaevich got it. It was forbidden to bring food and water into the house ... During this terrible period, Elena Nikolaevna lost almost all her teeth. One can be surprised at her unbending will. It is hard to imagine where she found the strength when, upon learning about the death of her son, she set off for sixty-three kilometers across the snow-covered steppe to the city of Rovenki, where she had to travel for about three days due to physical ailment. Only mother's love is capable of this! Probably, Elena Nikolaevna alone could not overcome such a distance. She was accompanied by members of the "Young Guard" - sisters Ivantsov, Nina and Olya, who led her by the arms ... There was no strength to return back to Krasnodon. The military took pity - they sent me to the "nurse".

Alexander Alexandrovich Fadeev arrived in Krasnodon to start collecting materials and to work on the novel, seven months after the liberation of the city - in September 1943 (by the way, one of the business trips was issued to him by the editorial board of Pravda; the first essay on the "Young Guard" - "Immortality").
Employees of the Gorky Film Studio, who decided to create a two-part film under the direction of film director S.A. Gerasimov, began filming in Krasnodon much later - in the early spring of 1947.

Before leaving for Krasnodon, the film's creative team met with Fadeev. I will dwell only on what parting words Alexander Alexandrovich gave to me personally.
- You must settle in Krasnodon with Elena Nikolaevna and with grandmother Vera. This will help you identify with the role. They have a lot to tell. They have a photograph of Elena Nikolaevna in their album, taken in September 1943 at my insistence. Elena Nikolaevna did not want to be photographed. She moved around the house with great difficulty - either relying on homemade crutches, or with the help of Vera Vasilievna. Still, we managed to persuade her. We sat her down on a stool and leaned her against the wall. She looked at the floor, at one point, and when, at our request, she tried to raise her eyes to look into the lens, she felt dizzy. This is how we photographed her ... This photo was taken seven months after the liberation of the city.
Alexander Alexandrovich rummaged in the table and handed me a photograph.
- Here, take it for yourself. I still have.
Treat Oleg's mother and grandmother with special attention. These are truly holy women!

In M. Volina's article "Whom Koshevoy's mother mourned" everything looks different. As if relying on an outside opinion, she informs the reader: "Koshevaya lived well ..." M. Volina's offensive attacks are directed not only at Elena Nikolaevna, but also at her son Oleg and, of course, at the writer A. A. Fadeev (if throw mud, so all at once!). The author of the article, with her characteristic cynicism, dares to assume that Oleg Koshevoy is alive!

This is what, according to her, they allegedly told her: “In Rovenki, the already half-decomposed corpses of people shot by the Germans were dug from a common grave. Elena Andreevna, she was there, rushed to the dead body of the gray-haired old man and yelled: "Olezhka, Olezhka!" Everyone sees: in front of her is an old gray-haired man, and she yells: "Olezhka!" They did not argue and ... they buried that unknown old man for the second time as Oleg Koshevoy. Fadeev, on this basis, invented that Oleg was tortured in the Rovno prison and therefore in one night the sixteen-year-old boy turned gray! This is how Oleg Kosheva became the main character of the novel.
The documents prove otherwise.

This is what the teacher from the city of Rovenka G.P. Vorobyova, with whom I had to meet, wrote in her memoirs. Memories were published more than once:
“They were buried in Rovenki near the club named after Gorky. A lot of people came ... In the last coffin was the body of Oleg Koshevoy. The lid of the coffin was half opened and a photograph of Oleg was placed on it. I remember that the face of the dead Oleg was clean, his hair was dark blond, and gray at his temples. They were combed up, and the wind stirred them slightly. The people said: "What a young man." Oleg's mother, Elena Nikolaevna, was sitting on a stool near the coffin. She didn't cry, she just looked at him. The women said: "Here is the poor woman, she has already cried all the tears!" In the second coffin lay Lyuba Shevtsova ... "

Sisters Ivantsov, Nina and Olya, accompanying Elena Nikolaevna, told me in detail how in Rovenki, on the third day of their search, they found the corpses of five Young Guard soldiers. There was deep snow, so their bodies were well preserved.
“He was as if he were alive,” said Oleg's friend Nina Ivantsova. - I thought he was about to open his eyes. The Germans pulled everything off him. He was barefoot. He was wearing the shirt he loved. Bullet marks were black on his shirt ... When Oleg was buried, he was dressed in a military uniform. I begged Elena Nikolaevna to give the shirt to me. I decided to keep it as a memory of a loved one. When I returned from the front, the museum workers attacked me. Sister Olya told them about the shirt. I had to give it up. Now it is kept as an exhibit in the museum of the city of Rovenka, in the basement where a Nazi prison was once located ...
Recently we filmed at the Gorky Film Studio a large full-length documentary and publicistic film "In the footsteps of the" Young Guard "" and visited the city of Rovenki. I saw that bullet-riddled shirt again.

There are a lot of documents telling about where and how Oleg died. In the investigative cases about the "Young Guard" there are testimonies of Gestapo officers - Heidemann, Fromme, Geist, Jacob Schultz, Drewitz and others, recorded and signed by the criminals. All of them were shown a photograph of Koshevoy during the trial, and they all confirmed that they remember this person well. The criminals reported that Koshevoy was shot in the Thundering Forest on the outskirts of the town of Rovenka. I will cite the statements of only one Gestapo man. Officer Drevitz, who took part in the execution, said at the trial: “They were shot on the orders of Fromme. Then I noticed that Koshevoy was still alive and was only wounded. I went closer to him and shot him right in the head ... "

Some of these documents, which I am talking about, are kept in the Krasnodon Museum "Young Guard", those who wish can get acquainted with them. A. A. Fadeev thoroughly familiarized himself with all the investigative cases that concerned the "Young Guard". Both during the filming of the feature film "Young Guard" and during the recent filming of the documentary full-length film "In the footsteps of the" Young Guard " war, with the workers of the Krasnodon Museum, I had to meet in Moscow with General Philip Denisovich Bobkov, and with other competent persons. All came to the same conclusion: Fadeev knew very deeply the details of the Krasnodon events of the war days.

But Margarita Volina, without using any documentary source, dares to convince the reader of the opposite.
“The image of the traitor Stakhovich (in the life of Viktor Tretyakovich) has not undergone changes. But soon, apparently after numerous letters and statements, Viktor Tretyakovich was posthumously rehabilitated and awarded posthumously, if I am not mistaken, the Order of Glory. His portrait appeared on the wall among the Young Guard in the Museum of the Revolution. And all of them (all of them? - V. I.) learned that their commissar was Viktor Tretyakovich, and not Oleg Koshevoy at all. "

Although the journalist makes the reservation “if I’m not mistaken,” she is mistaken in many ways, or, more precisely, in absolutely everything. First, Viktor Tretyakevich was not awarded the Order of Glory, but the Order of the Patriotic War. Secondly, he was never rehabilitated, since no one has ever officially declared him a traitor, only all sorts of talkers. Positive documents about him were often published in print. Such a document, for example, is the report to the Central Committee of the Komsomol of the commander of the "Young Guard" Ivan Turkenich, which was first published during the war, in 1943, in the magazine "Smena" (No. 21-22). And finally, Tretyakevich was never a commissar. This is evidenced by the testimony of all the Young Guard without exception, including the commander himself, who in his report says that Vitya Tretyakevich was a member of the headquarters, but not a commissar.

“A headquarters was elected to direct the entire work,” he writes. Oleg Koshevoy, the soul and inspirer of the whole case, was appointed commissar. Ivan Zemnukhov - in charge of intelligence and conspiracy. Tretyakevich and Levashov - members of the headquarters ... "
On November 5, 1988, the Pravda newspaper published a conversation with the former headquarters liaison Valeria Borts. The newspaper's correspondent asked a question: “But what about the rumors about the living Oleg? They say he was seen last year at his mother's grave, and foreign correspondents even filmed ... "

Answer: "This nonsense arose after the filming of a new feature-publicistic film" Following the film "Young Guard" ", which will soon be released on screens. So, during the filming of this film, the actor V. Ivanov, who played the role of Oleg Koshevoy in the Gerasimov film "Young Guard", which is memorable to every Soviet cinema goer, came to the grave of Oleg's mother and laid flowers. And it was in him that they recognized the "matured Koshevoy", especially since the artist Ivanov really outwardly looked like Oleg. Rumors with lightning speed went for a walk in the cities and villages: they say, Oleg is alive! And, frankly, this suggests that it is profitable for someone to heat up the atmosphere around the name of our Oleg ... "

Volina has no right to draw an analogy between the traitor Stakhovich, described in the novel, and Viktor Tretyakevich, since Fadeev has repeatedly stated that the image of the traitor Stakhovich is collective. Some journalists and literary critics, collecting rumors, are still trying to prove that there was a "real" traitor who betrayed the entire organization. Meanwhile, there was no such traitor who betrayed everyone. It's much more complicated. The invaders and their henchmen, sensing their imminent death, grabbed all the suspects, their families and even neighbors and acquaintances. They embarked on provocations, blackmail, and in order to find out who voluntarily and who completely unwittingly became a participant in this terrible tragedy, it is necessary to familiarize yourself with many volumes of investigative cases.

The residents of Krasnodon turned to the writer with a question: why did he not use the name of the traitor Pocheptsov in the book, who was the first to inform the police about the existence of an underground organization? The writer explained that more than one Pocheptsov family lives in Krasnodon and in the Krasnodon region, and he did not want to denigrate them.
Having created a generalized image of a traitor, A.A.Fadeev made, in my opinion, a humane step - he got the opportunity not to name the names of people who, by chance, not of their own free will, became participants in this terrible tragedy.

To A. Zhdanov's request of March 6, 1948 regarding the authenticity of the novel, Fadeev replied (see Al. Fadeev. Letters. Publishing house "Sov. Writer", 1967, 230): “This material is almost a shorthand record of stories all the surviving Young Guard members, their parents, teachers, schoolmates, witnesses, as well as the diaries of the participants themselves, factual documents, numerous photos, etc.
I personally was in Krasnodon in September 1943 and also personally interviewed at least about a hundred people ... This material formed the basis of my novel.
As you know, I did not write the history of the "Young Guard", but wrote piece of art, in which, along with real heroes and events, there are also fictional heroes and events. "

Relying only on rumors, not taking into account the statements of the writer himself, Volina dares to give the novel her assessment, declaring that the novel is "full of spreading lies", that it is a work "boring, falsely edifying." However, she herself reports that when she performed on stage with excerpts from the novel, "sobs were heard in the hall." Is it from "boring, falsely edifying"? Here, as they say, the "widow" whipped herself!

One could cite hundreds of the highest, most authoritative confessions addressed to the Fadeev novel. I will cite at least one thing. The Parisian newspaper Lettre Française, which has always been considered the arbiter of the work of writers around the world, declared on its pages: “If the history of one civilization and one of its greatest moments should be expressed in a literary work alone, then in the USSR such a work may well serve as“ Young guard "A. Fadeev ..."
And one more "discovery" of the journalist M. Volina: as if relying on the story of A. V. Tyulenina, she informs the readers that three years after the liberation of Donbass from the invaders, Oleg Koshevoy began to visit his mother and grandmother.

“A boy appeared in the house of the Koshevs. The spitting image of Olezhka, only grew up in three years and therefore became higher in growth. He calls Elena Andreevna mom, grandmother - granny. People asked Elena Andreevna, who is he, like Oleg? She replied: “An orphan from Odessa. The Germans tortured his parents, came down to us. Do not expel the same! I took him for my son instead of Oleg. " People laugh: "Why is there" instead of Oleg, "when he himself is Oleg." A commission came from Krasnodon to the village of Shakhtny to look: who lives with Kosheva instead of his son? And he is no longer there. "Where is he?" - they ask. Elena Andreevna answers: “They drove out. The bully turned out to be. Bold. We refused him from the house. Gone…""
M. Volina further describes in detail the mood of Alexandra Vasilyevna Tyulenina: “She was indignant at Kosheva, who renounced her living son for the sake of a dead hero.
And again and again she showered Fadeeva with abuse. Everything, they say, according to his grace ... "

Definitely stating that Oleg could be alive three years later, M. Volina makes an inherently ominous conclusion regarding Oleg Koshevoy at the end of the article: “His resurrection was inappropriate. And I think they hurried to remove him, as we were able to remove all the annoying obstacles that prevent our all-powerful lie to flourish. "
I can only add with regret that rumors "about the living Oleg" began to spread abroad long ago, immediately after the release of the film "Young Guard", which had success on the world screen. Apparently, someone was interested in spreading such rumors!

I remember an unpleasant incident when in 1950 I was summoned to the KGB on Dzerzhinsky Square. The committee member showed me the photo, half covering it with his palm, and asked if it was really me or not. I answered in the affirmative. He withdrew his hand, and fear pierced me - in the photo I was wearing the military uniform of a Bundeswehr officer. Probably, my face changed so much that the Chekist, frightened, raised a glass of water to my lips. And later I saw more than one such skillfully executed photographic camouflage, where I was depicted either next to Elena Nikolaevna, or surrounded by strangers, and every time in these "photographs" I was dressed in a fascist uniform. What Valeria Borts told the correspondent of the newspaper Pravda about is also characteristic. I dare to assume that the blasphemous rumors that Oleg is alive, that he went over to serve on the side of the Nazis, to a large extent arose due to the fact that I visited the Koshev family every year and still often visit Krasnodon ...

The brighter, stronger a work of art, the more rumors about its heroes go. Rumors are circulating not only about the "Young Guard", but also about " Quiet Don", And about N. Ostrovsky's novel" How the Steel Was Tempered ". However, journalist M. Volina makes different conclusions:
“Alexander Alexandrovich atoned for many of his sins by suicide. But still, it seems to me inappropriate that the Central House of Writers still bears his name ... "

And the journalist did not realize that the representatives of our literature, having named the Central House of Writers after A. Fadeev, paid tribute to him not only as a great master of fiction, but also as a highly moral person who, entering into acute conflicts with the then leaders, complaining to Stalin , managed to ward off trouble from many fellow writers. Hundreds of letters were written to them in various instances in defense of their comrades, and each letter is an experience. These letters will forever remain witnesses of his spiritual kindness, his sincere desire to help his neighbor. Not everyone was capable of this at the time!

I remember the day of farewell to A. A. Fadeev. After the funeral on Novodevichy cemetery relatives and friends went to the apartment of the deceased for a commemoration. Some of the fellow writers decided to arrange a commemoration at the restaurant of the Writers' Union. I found myself among them. N. S. Tikhonov, sitting to my right, was crying like a child. He said something like the following:
- Everything! Now there will be no one to protect honest Russian writers ... Sasha saved Anna Akhmatova from a fatal disaster, freed her son Lev Gumilyov from prison, dared to help Marisha Tsvetaeva, defended Olga Bergholts ... Who else is capable of such a thing? In difficult times, he supported Yuri German and Misha Zoshchenko. Recent times he gave all his strength to protect Boris Pasternak from attacks. And now that's it! Mark my word, Boris will either be imprisoned or forbidden to print, and no one will be able to help him ...
Sitting next to S.N. Preobrazhensky and K.A.Fedin restrained Nikolai Semyonovich:
- Kolya, pull yourself together. Here the walls hear ...
Nikolai Semyonovich's words turned out to be prophetic. Two years after the death of A. A. Fadeev, Pasternak, at the behest of Khrushchev, was expelled from the Writers' Union.
A. A. Fadeev's active correspondence with Theodore Dreiser, Elton Sinclair, HG Wells, Frederic Joliot-Curie, high reviews of many prominent authorities make him a world-famous writer. In my opinion, this is especially important to remind right now - after all, tomorrow marks the 90th anniversary of the birth of Alexander Alexandrovich. And I cannot accept the derogatory accusations against one of his best books. After all, the novel "Young Guard" is studied in many colleges abroad. In the West, it is given a new special sound. Such a new approach to the novel, for example, was recently proposed by a professor from the Federal Republic of Germany, Fary von Lilienfeld. She writes:
“In the Young Guard, Fadeev inherits the best spiritual traditions, even those that were preached by religion. His young heroes were summoned to fight fascism with compassion, self-sacrifice, a sense of heroism for the sake of life and goodness! "

I believe that the clearly criminal attitude towards Fadeev and his novel on the part of some journalists should be publicly condemned. Young people take misinformation in print at face value and react instantly. Sometimes he just reacts wildly! So, a few days after the publication of the article “Who was mourned by Koshevoy's mother” in the “Courants” in the city of Luhansk, unbelievable hooligans threw busts of the Young Guard heroes from the pedestals ...

I stayed at the front from February 1942 until the very end of the war. He served in intelligence. He was wounded three times. I am a disabled person of the Patriotic War of the 2nd group. And I know that not everyone experienced the war in the same way. There were deserters at the front, and "crossbowmen", and traitors. Fadeev never forgot about it! And we forget ... In all countries there are Fraternal cemeteries where soldiers are buried. I saw it myself! Such cemeteries of warriors who fought for the interests of their states exist in America, Germany, and Japan ... The Day of Holy Remembrance is annually celebrated there, people bring flowers to the graves, read prayers ... We do not have such a Day of Remembrance. We have a tendency to overturn the gravestones, as the journalist M. Volina does. And the dead cannot say anything in their defense! .. This must be done by the living.

Once it was fashionable to destroy temples, now - monuments. But with construction we are very bad, especially with the moral and spiritual! And so that it does not further deteriorate even more, it is necessary to remember the biblical commandment: "Do not bear false witness!" It is known that a society cannot exist on perjury - it dies ...

Vladimir IVANOV,
artist, laureate of the State Prize, Moscow.
Pravda, December 12, 1991