How an actress destroyed 130 fascists and became a doctor of oriental studies: the twists and turns of fate by Ziba Ganieva

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

When the Great Patriotic War began, the fragile girl was eighteen years old. She studied at GITIS and dreamed of becoming an actress, but voluntarily went to the front. Ziba brilliantly coped with the duties of a radio operator and a scout. And she accomplished the feat as a sniper. She has 129 German soldiers on her account. But in a peaceful life, Ziba Ganieva found her place and the opportunity to be useful to society.

From actress to snipers

Ziba's hometown is Shemakha, located in Azerbaijan. The ancient and legendary settlement is mentioned in the works of many oriental authors. Alexander Sergeevich Pushkin also paid attention to the city. In "The Tale of the Golden Cockerel" the main female character is the Shemakhan Queen.

Ziba came from a mixed family. Father is Azerbaijani, and mother was Uzbek. But the family idyll turned out to be fleeting. At the end of the thirties, the machine of Stalinist repression reached Azerbaijan. Mother got under the skating rink, she was repressed in 1937. The father was also in disgrace. And to save his daughter, he renounced parental rights. As for Ziba, she left her hometown and settled in Tashkent. Here she became a student of the choreography department of the local philharmonic society. Teachers appreciated the student, predicting a great future for her. And so Ziba decided to continue her creative path. In 1940, she managed to enter the acting department of the Moscow GITIS.

The fun and interesting life of the student ended in the summer of 1941. When the Germans attacked the Soviet Union, the girl decided not to sit in the rear. Along with many Moscow students, at the end of June 1941, she came to the military registration and enlistment office and asked to send her to "beat the fascists." As the situation was disastrous, almost everyone accepted applications, regardless of age, occupation and gender. So Ziba got to shooting courses, where they managed to prove themselves from the best side. No one could believe that a short, fragile girl, who yesterday dreamed of an acting career, would be able to “make friends” with a firearm so quickly.

Ganieva's baptism of fire took place in the fall. She happened to take part in the terrible battles for Moscow. She went through those battles as a radio operator and scout. It is known that Ziba made his way to the rear of the enemy sixteen times in order to obtain vital information about the movement of the enemy. With her example, Ganieva inspired other fighters, proving in practice that even a fragile girl can become a real hero who is not afraid of difficulties.

Ziba also had a chance to take part in the legendary parade on Red Square, which took place on November 7, 1941. At that time, Ganieva was assigned to the third Moscow Communist Rifle Division. And after the celebration, the girl was first at the Leningrad, and then at the North-Western fronts.

In parallel, she studied sniper skills, showing impressive results. For example, in the spring of 1942, Ganieva, together with one of her combat friends, organized a sortie. The day turned out to be calm, both Soviet and German troops were preparing for the next confrontation. It was this lull that the girls decided to take advantage of. They got close to the Germans and chose the most convenient positions for sniper fire. The opponents behaved in a relaxed manner, they could not even think that someone would decide to attack them. Having chosen their targets, the girls pulled the trigger. The "hunt" was successful, two fascists were killed.

Soon Ziba became a sniper-reconnaissance officer of the one hundred and fifty-first separate motorized rifle reconnaissance battalion. In the spring of 1942, she fought in the Leningrad region and in a short time managed to destroy two dozen enemies. Her successes did not go unnoticed. Ganieva became an example for all female soldiers of the USSR. Many newspapers wrote about her heroic deeds, supplementing the articles with photographs of a smiling girl with a sniper rifle in her hands.

And when the Nazi troops began to break through to the Caucasus, Ziba, realizing her status, appealed to all local women, urging them to take up arms to defend the Motherland. Her fiery speech was published in the magazine "Worker".

The main feat of Ganieva

Ziba's "finest hour" came on May 23, 1942. At that time, her regiment fought with the enemy for the village of Bolshoye Vragovo, in the Leningrad region. The settlement was captured by the Germans and the command set the task to knock them out of there. Ganieva conducted sniper fire at enemy positions, destroying several fascists. And when the enemy began to retreat thanks to the blow of Soviet tankers, the girl, leading a detachment of nine snipers, rushed in pursuit. While moving around the village, they came under machine gun fire. It turned out that one fascist remained to cover the retreat of his colleagues. Ziba bypassed his position from the rear and shot him.

It is known that in the battle for Bolshoye Vragovo, she eliminated six opponents. But the battle almost ended in tears for the girl-sniper herself. During a mortar attack, she was wounded by a shrapnel. Before being sent to one of the Moscow hospitals for treatment, she received the Order of the Big Red Banner.

The wound turned out to be much more serious than the doctors thought at the beginning. Due to lost time and lack of necessary medicines, her blood poisoning began. The doctors did their best, but the chances of salvation were minimal … Most likely, Ziba would have died in the hospital if not for Maria Feodorovna Shvernik (her husband Nikolai Mikhailovich took over the post of Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR after the war). She took over the responsibility of caring for the girl.

Ganieva's recovery lasted for eleven long months. And every day Maria Fyodorovna was next to her. And when the girl was on the mend, she said with a smile that she had “borne” Ziba not for nine months, like all normal women, but for eleven. And soon Shvernik officially adopted Ganieva, because she fell in love with her as her own child. Ziba returned to the front. But in one of the battles she was wounded again. And again, the treatment dragged on for a long time. After that, Ganieva was demobilized. The war is over, the Soviet Union won.

Ziba has received many awards and even received the Order of the Red Star, because the girl has a total of 129 enemies destroyed. But she never became a Hero of the USSR. There is a version that this title was not given to her because of the repressed mother, who in 1937 was accused of counter-revolutionary activities. But is it really so - it is hardly possible to find out.

The war and serious injuries did not break Ganieva. On the contrary, she managed to reveal herself even more in peacetime. First, she fulfilled her dream and starred in the film. The woman played one of the secondary roles in the film "Takhir and Zukhra", filmed by the Tashkent film studio already in 1945. This is a fairy tale, the plot of which is similar to the story of Romeo and Juliet.

Soon, Ganieva married Tofig Kadyrov, an Azerbaijani diplomat. The woman devoted herself to the humanities, becoming a professor and doctor of oriental studies. And since 1956 she began to work at the Institute of Oriental Studies of the USSR Academy of Sciences. An amazing woman has lived a long and happy life. And she died in 2010.

It is worth saying that creative people often found themselves on the fronts of the Great Patriotic War. And one day how a story from life suggested to Peter Todorovsky the plot of the film "Field-of-War".