Video: Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya: a war heroine, whose name has overgrown with ridiculous myths
2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55
75 years ago, on November 29, 1941, the Nazis executed Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya … In the era of the USSR, all schoolchildren knew her name, and her feat was considered a textbook example of a selfless struggle against fascism. But in the 1990s. a series of publications appeared in which it was proved that Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya was guided not by patriotic feelings, but by mental illness. Since then, debates have not ceased about how to really assess her actions, and which of the myths - heroic or anti-heroic - has real grounds.
Zoya was born in 1923 in the village of Osinovye Gai, Tambov Region. Her grandfather, Peter Kozmodemyanovsky, was a priest. In 1918, he refused to give the horses to the Bolsheviks, and they drowned him in a pond. Zoe's father opposed collectivization, and the family was exiled to Siberia. Moscow relatives tried to get them back from exile, and Zoya was registered in Moscow. There she studied at school and was going to enter a literary institute.
Relations with classmates were not easy: she was betrayed more than once by her friends, and she felt lonely. Zoya's mother, Lyubov Timofeevna, said that in the 8th grade the girl suddenly became withdrawn and silent. In addition, she was elected as a Komsomol grouporg, and then was not reapproved. She was very upset about these events. Her mother confessed that in 1939 Zoya suffered from a nervous illness, and in 1940 she underwent rehabilitation in a sanatorium for nervous diseases.
This fact formed the basis for the version that appeared in the 1990s, according to which Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya suffered from a mental disorder. But it is not entirely clear where the diagnosis of schizophrenia came from. The authors of the publications claimed that the NKVD officers deliberately selected the neurotic and formed from them groups of saboteurs - potential kamikaze who do not have a sense of fear and self-preservation. True, this version has not received documentary evidence.
When the war began, Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya voluntarily joined the reconnaissance and sabotage detachment. Then the Germans approached Moscow, and the order was given to "destroy and burn to ashes all the settlements in the rear of the German troops." For a long time, the documents that the soldiers received an official order to burn down the villages near Moscow (with the fascists stationed there) were classified, and these facts were kept silent. But this task was carried out by Zoya's detachment in the village of Petrishchevo. They managed to set fire to 3 houses, but the Nazis managed to run out into the street. One of the saboteurs did not wait for the others at the agreed place and returned to the detachment, Zoya, left alone, decided to return to the village and continue the arson.
This fact served as the basis for speculation that Kosmodemyanskaya did not follow the order, but acted arbitrarily. At the same time, it was argued that the girl suffered from pyromania and burned not only those houses in which the Nazis were located, but all indiscriminately dwellings, and that there were no Germans at all in the village of Petrishchevo. However, this is more like speculation in order to present Zoya as an obsessed arsonist.
Zoya was noticed when she tried to set fire to the shed of the Nazi accomplice S. Sviridov - he grabbed her. The girl was interrogated and tortured for several hours: she was stripped naked, flogged with belts, and forced to walk in the snow with her bare feet. She held fast, never admitting anything. On November 29, they took her out to the central village square, hung a sign on her chest with the inscription "Arsonist" and hung her in front of everyone. During the execution, a local woman, whose house was burned down by Zoya, approached her and hit her legs with a stick. For about a month, her body hung in the same place, and only then was it possible to bury her.
Her feat became known thanks to an article by Pyotr Lidov, published in January 1942. True, the author called the girl Tanya - that is how she introduced herself for conspiracy purposes. Later, her identity was identified, and the whole Union learned about Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya. She became the first woman to be awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union during the Great Patriotic War.
It seems that the authors of the publications "debunking" the cult of heroes, in fact, intended not to get to the bottom of the truth, but at all costs to refute the myths of the Soviet era, regardless of the facts that formed their basis. Here, rather, it is necessary not to deny the merits of famous heroes, but to recall those names that were undeservedly forgotten: on the same day, November 29, 1941, the Nazis in a neighboring village executed a girl from the same sabotage group Vera Voloshin, whose feat deserves no less honors and admiration.
The poem "Zoya" is dedicated to the feat of Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya Margarita Aliger, who wrote about the main thing in a relationship
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