Zinaida Martynovna Portnova, commonly known as Zina Portnova (20 February 1926 – 15 January 1944) was a Russian teenager, Soviet partisan and Hero of the Soviet Union

Hero of the Soviet Union

The title Hero of the Soviet Union was the highest distinction in the Soviet Union, awarded personally or collectively for heroic feats in service to the Soviet state and society.-Overview:...

.

Biography

Zina Portnova was born in Leningrad

Saint Petersburg

Saint Petersburg is a city and a federal subject of Russia located on the Neva River at the head of the Gulf of Finland on the Baltic Sea...

 on 20 February 1926. She was the daughter of a working class Belarusian

Belarusians

Belarusians ; are an East Slavic ethnic group who populate the majority of the Republic of Belarus. Introduced to the world as a new state in the early 1990s, the Republic of Belarus brought with it the notion of a re-emerging Belarusian ethnicity, drawn upon the lines of the Old Belarusian...

 family. Her father worked at the Kirov Plant

Kirov Plant

The Kirov Plant Kirov Factory or Leningrad Kirov Plant is a major Russian machine-building plant in St. Petersburg, Russia....

. She was a seventh grade student at the 385th school in Leningrad in 1941, when she left for her grandmother's house in the Vitebsk region. Not long afterwards, Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union

Operation Barbarossa

Operation Barbarossa was the code name for Germany's invasion of the Soviet Union during World War II that began on 22 June 1941. Over 4.5 million troops of the Axis powers invaded the USSR along a front., the largest invasion in the history of warfare...

. An incident with the invading Nazi troops, who hit her grandmother while they were confiscating the cattle, led her to hate the Germans.

In 1942 Portnova joined the Belarusian resistance movement

Belarusian resistance movement

Belarusian resistance during World War II was focused towards Nazi Germany from 1941 until 1944. Belarus was one of the Soviet republics occupied during Operation Barbarossa...

, becoming a member of the local underground Komsomol

Komsomol

The Communist Union of Youth , usually known as Komsomol , was the youth division of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. The Komsomol in its earliest form was established in urban centers in 1918. During the early years, it was a Russian organization, known as the Russian Communist Union of...

 organization in Obol, Vitebsk Voblast, named Young Avengers. She began by distributing Soviet propaganda leaflets in the German-occupied Belarus

Belarus

Belarus , officially the Republic of Belarus, is a landlocked country in Eastern Europe, bordered clockwise by Russia to the northeast, Ukraine to the south, Poland to the west, and Lithuania and Latvia to the northwest. Its capital is Minsk; other major cities include Brest, Grodno , Gomel ,...

, collecting and hiding weapons for Soviet soldiers, and reporting on German Movements. After learning how to use weapons and explosives from the older members of the group, Portnova participated in sabotage

Sabotage

Sabotage is a deliberate action aimed at weakening another entity through subversion, obstruction, disruption, or destruction. In a workplace setting, sabotage is the conscious withdrawal of efficiency generally directed at causing some change in workplace conditions. One who engages in sabotage is...

 actions at a pump, local power plant, and brick factory. These acts are estimated to have killed upwards of 100 German soldiers.

In 1943, Portnova became employed as a kitchen aid in Obol. In August, she poisoned the food meant for the Nazi garrison stationed there. Immediately falling suspect, she said she was innocent and ate some of the food in front of the Nazis to prove it was not poisoned; after she did not fall ill immediately, they released her. Portnova became sick afterwards, vomiting heavily but eventually recovering from the poison after drinking much whey

Whey

Whey or Milk Serum is the liquid remaining after milk has been curdled and strained. It is a by-product of the manufacture of cheese or casein and has several commercial uses. Sweet whey is manufactured during the making of rennet types of hard cheese like cheddar or Swiss cheese...

. After she did not return to work, the Germans realized she had been the culprit and started searching for her. To avoid the Germans, she became a scout of the partisan unit named after Kliment Voroshilov

Kliment Voroshilov

Kliment Yefremovich Voroshilov , popularly known as Klim Voroshilov was a Soviet military officer, politician, and statesman...

. In a letter sent to her parents that month, she wrote that "together, [they] would beat the Nazis". In October 1943, Portnova joined the VLKSM.

In December 1943 or January 1944 Portnova was sent back to Obol to to infiltrate the garrison, discover the reason for the recent Young Avengers failures, then locate and contact the remaining members. She was quickly captured. Reports of her escape vary. One is that, during Gestapo

Gestapo

The Gestapo was the official secret police of Nazi Germany. Beginning on 20 April 1934, it was under the administration of the SS leader Heinrich Himmler in his position as Chief of German Police...

 interrogation in the village of Goriany, she took the investigator's pistol off the table, then shot and killed him. When two German soldiers entered after hearing the gunshots, she shot them as well. She then attempted to escape the compound and ran into the woods, where she was caught by the banks of a river.

Another version is that the Gestapo interrogator, in a fit of rage, threw his pistol to the table after threatening to shoot her. Taking the pistol, Postnova shot him. Escaping through the door, she shot a guard in the corridor, then another in the courtyard. After the pistol misfired when Portnova attempted to shoot a guard blocking her access to the street, she was captured.

After being recaptured, Portnova was tortured, possibly for information. She was later driven into the forest and executed or killed during torture on 15 January 1944.

Legacy

On 1 July 1958, Portnova was posthumously declared a Hero of the Soviet Union

Hero of the Soviet Union

The title Hero of the Soviet Union was the highest distinction in the Soviet Union, awarded personally or collectively for heroic feats in service to the Soviet state and society.-Overview:...

 by the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet

Presidium of the Supreme Soviet

The Presidium of the Supreme Soviet was a Soviet governmental institution – a permanent body of the Supreme Soviets . This body was of the all-Union level , as well as in all Soviet republics and autonomous republics...

. She also received the Order of Lenin

Order of Lenin

The Order of Lenin , named after the leader of the Russian October Revolution, was the highest decoration bestowed by the Soviet Union...

. In 1969, the village of Zuya dedicated a commemorative plaque

Commemorative plaque

A commemorative plaque, or simply plaque, is a plate of metal, ceramic, stone, wood, or other material, typically attached to a wall, stone, or other vertical surface, and bearing text in memory of an important figure or event...

 in her honour. She also had numerous Young Pioneer

Young Pioneer organization of the Soviet Union

The Young Pioneer Organization of the Soviet Union, also Vladimir Lenin All-Union Pioneer Organization The Young Pioneer Organization of the Soviet Union, also Vladimir Lenin All-Union Pioneer Organization The Young Pioneer Organization of the Soviet Union, also Vladimir Lenin All-Union Pioneer...

 groups named in her honour.

Portnova has had many school teams and groups named after her, as well the museum to the Komsomol, situated on the highway between Polotsk and Vitebsk

Vitebsk

Vitebsk, also known as Viciebsk or Vitsyebsk , is a city in Belarus, near the border with Russia. The capital of the Vitebsk Oblast, in 2004 it had 342,381 inhabitants, making it the country's fourth largest city...

, and a school in St Petersburgh. There are two monuments to her, a bust in Minsk

Minsk

- Ecological situation :The ecological situation is monitored by Republican Center of Radioactive and Environmental Control .During 2003–2008 the overall weight of contaminants increased from 186,000 to 247,400 tons. The change of gas as industrial fuel to mazut for financial reasons has worsened...

and an obelisk in the village of Obol.