Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya
Encyclopedia
Zoya Anatolyevna Kosmodemyanskaya, alternatively Romanised as Kosmodem'yanskaya (September 13, 1923 – November 29, 1941) was a Soviet
partisan
, and a Hero of the Soviet Union
(awarded posthumously). She was one of the most revered hero
es of the Soviet Union
.
(Kosma and Demyan in Russian). From the 17th century, the Kosmodemyansky were priests in the Russian Orthodox Church
. Zoya's grandfather Pyotr Kosmodemyansky was murdered in 1918 by militant atheists for his opposition to blasphemy.
Zoya (her name is a Russian form of the Greek name Zoe
, which means "life") was born in 1923 in the village of Osino-Gay (Осино-Гай) (meaning Aspen Woods), near the city of Tambov
. Her father, Anatoly Kosmodemyansky, studied in a theological seminary, but did not graduate. He later worked as a librarian. Her mother, Lyubov Kosmodemyanskaya (nee
Churikova), was a school teacher. In 1925 Zoya's brother, Aleksandr Kosmodemyansky
, was born. Like his sister, he became a Hero of the Soviet Union
, and, like Zoya, posthumously.
In 1929, the family moved to Siberia for fear of persecution. In 1930 they moved to Moscow.
, Pushkin, Mikhail Lermontov
, Karamzin, Vasily Zhukovsky
, Byron, Molière
, Miguel Cervantes, Charles Dickens
, Wolfgang Goethe
, and William Shakespeare
. Zoya kept a notebook where she recorded her thoughts about the books she read. Such as: "In Shakespeare's tragedies the death of a hero is always accompanied by a triumph of a high moral cause." She liked Beethoven's Egmont
and often sang Klärchen's song "Die Trommel gerühret." Her favorite music was Tchaikovsky's Symphony No. 5
. Her striving for high ideals led to misunderstandings with her classmates. On the eve of 1939 the girls wrote each other notes with New Year wishes. Zoya received the following note "Zoya, don't judge people so strict. Don't take everything so close to heart. Know that most people are egoist, flatterers, are insincere and you can't depend on them. You should leave their words without attention. Such is my New Year wish." After reading the note Zoya said "If one thinks of people like that, then what has one to live for?"
Kosmodemyanskaya joined the Komsomol
in 1938. In October 1941, still a high school student in Moscow
, she volunteered for a partisan unit. To her mother, who tried to dissuade her from doing this, she answered "What can I do when the enemy is so close? If they came here I would not be able to continue living." Zoya was assigned to the partisan unit 9903 (Staff of the Western Front). Of the one thousand people who joined the unit in October 1941 only half survived the war. At the village of Obukhovo near Naro-Fominsk
, Kosmodemyanskaya and other partisans crossed the front line and entered territory occupied by the Germans
. They mined roads and cut communication lines. On November 27, 1941 Zoya received an assignment to burn the village of Petrischevo, where a German cavalry regiment was stationed.
In Petrischevo Zoya managed to set fire to horse stables and a couple of houses. However, one Russian collaborationist had noticed her and informed his masters. The Germans caught Zoya as she started to torch another house. She was tortured and interrogated throughout the night but refused to give up any information. The following morning she was marched to the center of the town with a board around her neck bearing the inscription 'Houseburner' and hanged.
Her final words were purported to be "Comrades! Why are you so gloomy? I am not afraid to die! I am happy to die for my people!" and to the Germans, "You'll hang me now, but I am not alone. There are two hundred million of us. You can't hang us all."
The Germans left Zoya's body hanging on the gallows for several weeks. Eventually she was buried just before the Soviet retook that territory in January 1942.
article which was written by Pyotr Lidov, was published on January 27, 1942. The journalist had heard about Zoya's execution from an elderly peasant, and was impressed by the young woman's courage. The witness recounted: "They were hanging her and she was giving a speech. They were hanging her and she was threatening them." Lidov travelled to Petrishchevo, details were collected from local residents and published in an article about the then-unknown partisan girl. Soon after, the article was noticed by Joseph Stalin
who proclaimed: "Here is the people's heroine", which started a propaganda campaign honouring Kosmodemyanskaya. In February, she was identified and was immediately awarded the order of Hero of the Soviet Union
.
Many streets, kolkhoz
es and Pioneer
organizations in the Soviet Union
bore the name of Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya. Soviet poets, writers, artists and sculptors dedicated their works to Kosmodemyanskaya. In 1944, the film Zoya
was made about her. The Soviets erected a monument in her honour not far from the village of Petrishchevo (sculptors - O.A.Ikonnikov and V.A.Feodorov). Another statue is prominently located at the Partizanskaya
Moscow Metro
station. A 4108-meter (13,478 feet) mountain peak in Trans-Ili Alatau
is named after her. A minor planet
1793 Zoya
discovered in 1968 by Soviet astronomer Tamara Mikhailovna Smirnova
is named after her. Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya is buried at Novodevichy Cemetery
in Moscow
.
In the 2002 book Zoya's Story: An Afghan Woman's Struggle for Freedom the narrator tells of her decision to use the name "Zoya" as one of her pseudonyms when she joined The Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan
in her fight against fundamentalism. She cites the story of Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya as an inspiration in her own struggles.
Zoya Phan
, an outspoken political activist for the Karen people
and member of the Burma Campaign UK
, was named after Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya by her father, Padoh Mahn Sha Lah Phan. Her father chose this name because he had read about Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya while studying at Yangon University and saw several parallels between the Karen resistance against the Burmese government and the Soviet resistance against the Nazis in Europe.
In September 1991, almost fifty years after Zoya's death, an article by Aleksandr Zhovtis was published in the weekly Russian magazine Argumenty i Fakty
. The article alleged that there were no German troops in the village of Petrischevo, and that Zoya was caught by local peasants who were unhappy about the destruction of their property. The information was sourced to an anonymous school teacher who had apparently told Nikolai Anov the story. Anov, already dead, apparently passed it on to Zhovtis. At the end of the article, Zhovtis blamed Stalin's scorched earth
policy for the 'unnecessary' death of the young woman.
A month later, the same newspaper published another article completely based on letters from readers commenting on Zhovtis' publication. Some authors supported the mainstream version. A letter signed P.A. Lidov's family said that every house in the village was filled with German troops who were the target of Zoya's strike. The letter referred to documents supporting the info including unpublished protocols of NKVD
interviews with residents of the village. Other readers shared stories contradicting the mainstream version. A resident of Moscow
, Petrov, told a story he heard from a Petrischevo resident in 1958 about bizarre irregularities in the identification of "Tanya's" identity. A postgraduate student of the Institute of Russian History, Elena Sinyavskaya, published research supporting that the person executed in Petrischevo was not Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya but a "missing in action
" partisan, Lila Azolina.
The Argumenty i Fakty articles prompted a response from Pravda
observer Viktor Kozhemyaka in the form of an article titled Fifty years after her death Zoya is tortured and executed again. In the article, Kozhemyaka criticized Sinyavskaya's theory and upheld the official expert conclusion about the identity of the executed partisan. Later the Institute for Criminal Expertise and the Department of Justice of the Russian Federation issued an official conclusion stating that the family photographs of Kosmodemyanskaya belong to the same person as the Pravda photograph of the hanged partisan. The article ended in emotional sentences Let your names be sacred for centuries, Tanya, Zoya, Lila! So many of you gave for us the most precious thing you had; your lives. And we cannot, should not, and indeed have no right to forget or betray you.
Ten years later, Kozhemyaka wrote another article Zoya is executed yet again. In the article Kozhemyaka told how he was emotionally shaken when discovering some "absurd material" on internet boards. These materials alleged that Zoya hurt Russian peasants rather than German troops. They also alleged that Zoya suffered from schizophrenia
, was a fanatical Stalinist, and so on. Kozhemyaka attributed materials to the same Elena Sinyavskaya (now a Doctor of Historical Science). In her response (in the newspaper Patriot from 26 February 2006 Sinyavskaya stated she had no connections to the material except that a few quotes were from her monograph. The real author of the internet publication seems to have been an obscure "psychoanalytic
writer", Alexander Menyaylov.
Another important development was the publication by the newspaper Glasnost of the previously unknown protocols of the official commission of residents of Petrischevo village and Gribtsovsky selsovet on 25 January 1942 (two months after Zoya's execution). The protocol stated that Kosmodemyanskaya was caught while trying to destroy a stable containing more than 300 German horses. It also quite graphically described her torture and execution.
A slightly different story was told by the notes of Pyotr Lidov published in Parlamentskaya Gazeta in 1999. Apparently, Lidov for years meticulously collected all the available information on Kosmodemyanskaya. The notes supported the version that Kosmodemyanskaya and Vasily Klubkov were caught while asleep on the outskirts of Petrischevo. The Germans were called by Petrischevo resident Semyon Sviridov. Lidov's notes also included an interview with a German noncommissioned officer taken prisoner by the Red Army. The interview described the negative effect on the morale
of the German soldiers who witnessed the burning of the houses.
Marius Broekmeyer in his 2004 book claims that she was reported to the Germans by angry neighbors because she had burned their stables and killed their horses while trying to destroy supplies before the Germans could get to them.
's Chief Military Prosecutor Office, and it was decided that Vasily Klubkov, who betrayed Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya, was not eligible for rehabilitation. According to criminal case 16440, three Soviet combatants: Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya, Vasily Klubkov, and their commander Boris Krainov had to perform acts of sabotage in Reichskommissariat Ostland
. They had been given the task of setting fire to houses in the village of Petrishchevo, where German troops were quartered. Krainov was to operate in the central part of the village, Kosmodemyanskaya in the southern and Klubkov in the northern parts. Krainov was the first to carry out his task and returned to the base. Zoya performed her task too, as was evidenced by three columns of flame in the southern part of Petrischevo seen from the base. Only the northern part was not set on fire. According to Klubkov, he was captured by two German soldiers and taken to their headquarters. A German officer threatened to kill him, and Klubkov gave him the names of Kosmodemyanskaya and Krainov. After this, Kosmodemyanskaya was captured by the Germans.
or even that she was a believing Christian
, the Russian Orthodox Church
has not yet taken any action on this proposal..
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
partisan
Soviet partisans
The Soviet partisans were members of a resistance movement which fought a guerrilla war against the Axis occupation of the Soviet Union during World War II....
, and 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:...
(awarded posthumously). She was one of the most revered hero
Hero
A hero , in Greek mythology and folklore, was originally a demigod, their cult being one of the most distinctive features of ancient Greek religion...
es of the Soviet Union
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
.
Family
The Kosmodemyansky family name was constructed by joining the names of Saints Cosmas and DamianSaints Cosmas and Damian
Saints Cosmas and Damian were twin brothers, physicians, and early Christian martyrs born in Cilicia, part of today's Turkey. They practiced their profession in the seaport of Ayas, Adana, then in the Roman province of Syria...
(Kosma and Demyan in Russian). From the 17th century, the Kosmodemyansky were priests in the Russian Orthodox Church
Russian Orthodox Church
The Russian Orthodox Church or, alternatively, the Moscow Patriarchate The ROC is often said to be the largest of the Eastern Orthodox churches in the world; including all the autocephalous churches under its umbrella, its adherents number over 150 million worldwide—about half of the 300 million...
. Zoya's grandfather Pyotr Kosmodemyansky was murdered in 1918 by militant atheists for his opposition to blasphemy.
Zoya (her name is a Russian form of the Greek name Zoe
Zoe (name)
Zoe is a feminine first name, which came from ancient Greece and means "life" in Greek.-People:*Zoë , English pop star *Zoey, J-Pop singer *Zoe of Rome Zoe (and variants) is a feminine first name, which came from ancient Greece and means "life" in Greek.-People:*Zoë (singer), English pop star...
, which means "life") was born in 1923 in the village of Osino-Gay (Осино-Гай) (meaning Aspen Woods), near the city of Tambov
Tambov
Tambov is a city and the administrative center of Tambov Oblast, Russia, located at the confluence of the Tsna and Studenets Rivers southeast of Moscow...
. Her father, Anatoly Kosmodemyansky, studied in a theological seminary, but did not graduate. He later worked as a librarian. Her mother, Lyubov Kosmodemyanskaya (nee
NEE
NEE is a political protest group whose goal was to provide an alternative for voters who are unhappy with all political parties at hand in Belgium, where voting is compulsory.The NEE party was founded in 2005 in Antwerp...
Churikova), was a school teacher. In 1925 Zoya's brother, Aleksandr Kosmodemyansky
Aleksandr Kosmodemyansky
Aleksandr Anatolyevich Kosmodemyansky was a first lieutenant and a hero of the Soviet Union, who was bestowed this title posthumously after having fallen during World War II in Firbrudenkrug, East Prussia, Germany. He was the brother of Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya...
, was born. Like his sister, he became 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:...
, and, like Zoya, posthumously.
In 1929, the family moved to Siberia for fear of persecution. In 1930 they moved to Moscow.
Life and death
Zoya's favorite subject in school was literature. Her teachers noted her essays for deep understanding of the subject and for imagery. She read far beyond the curriculum. The list of authors she read includes Leo TolstoyLeo Tolstoy
Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy was a Russian writer who primarily wrote novels and short stories. Later in life, he also wrote plays and essays. His two most famous works, the novels War and Peace and Anna Karenina, are acknowledged as two of the greatest novels of all time and a pinnacle of realist...
, Pushkin, Mikhail Lermontov
Mikhail Lermontov
Mikhail Yuryevich Lermontov , a Russian Romantic writer, poet and painter, sometimes called "the poet of the Caucasus", became the most important Russian poet after Alexander Pushkin's death in 1837. Lermontov is considered the supreme poet of Russian literature alongside Pushkin and the greatest...
, Karamzin, Vasily Zhukovsky
Vasily Zhukovsky
Vasily Andreyevich Zhukovsky was the foremost Russian poet of the 1810s and a leading figure in Russian literature in the first half of the 19th century...
, Byron, Molière
Molière
Jean-Baptiste Poquelin, known by his stage name Molière, was a French playwright and actor who is considered to be one of the greatest masters of comedy in Western literature...
, Miguel Cervantes, Charles Dickens
Charles Dickens
Charles John Huffam Dickens was an English novelist, generally considered the greatest of the Victorian period. Dickens enjoyed a wider popularity and fame than had any previous author during his lifetime, and he remains popular, having been responsible for some of English literature's most iconic...
, Wolfgang Goethe
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe was a German writer, pictorial artist, biologist, theoretical physicist, and polymath. He is considered the supreme genius of modern German literature. His works span the fields of poetry, drama, prose, philosophy, and science. His Faust has been called the greatest long...
, and William Shakespeare
William Shakespeare
William Shakespeare was an English poet and playwright, widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's national poet and the "Bard of Avon"...
. Zoya kept a notebook where she recorded her thoughts about the books she read. Such as: "In Shakespeare's tragedies the death of a hero is always accompanied by a triumph of a high moral cause." She liked Beethoven's Egmont
Egmont (Beethoven)
Egmont, Op. 84, by Ludwig van Beethoven, is a set of incidental music pieces for the 1787 play of the same name by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. It consists of an overture followed by a sequence of nine additional pieces for soprano, male narrator and full symphony orchestra...
and often sang Klärchen's song "Die Trommel gerühret." Her favorite music was Tchaikovsky's Symphony No. 5
Symphony No. 5 (Tchaikovsky)
The Symphony No. 5 in E minor, Op. 64 by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky was composed between May and August 1888 and was first performed in St Petersburg at the Hall of Nobility on November 6 of that year with Tchaikovsky conducting. It is dedicated to Theodore Avé-Lallemant.-Structure:A typical...
. Her striving for high ideals led to misunderstandings with her classmates. On the eve of 1939 the girls wrote each other notes with New Year wishes. Zoya received the following note "Zoya, don't judge people so strict. Don't take everything so close to heart. Know that most people are egoist, flatterers, are insincere and you can't depend on them. You should leave their words without attention. Such is my New Year wish." After reading the note Zoya said "If one thinks of people like that, then what has one to live for?"
Kosmodemyanskaya joined the 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...
in 1938. In October 1941, still a high school student in Moscow
Moscow
Moscow is the capital, the most populous city, and the most populous federal subject of Russia. The city is a major political, economic, cultural, scientific, religious, financial, educational, and transportation centre of Russia and the continent...
, she volunteered for a partisan unit. To her mother, who tried to dissuade her from doing this, she answered "What can I do when the enemy is so close? If they came here I would not be able to continue living." Zoya was assigned to the partisan unit 9903 (Staff of the Western Front). Of the one thousand people who joined the unit in October 1941 only half survived the war. At the village of Obukhovo near Naro-Fominsk
Naro-Fominsk
Naro-Fominsk is a town and the administrative center of Naro-Fominsky District of Moscow Oblast, Russia, situated southwest from Moscow, on the Nara River. The Moscow – Kiev railway passes through the town. Population: -History:...
, Kosmodemyanskaya and other partisans crossed the front line and entered territory occupied by the Germans
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
. They mined roads and cut communication lines. On November 27, 1941 Zoya received an assignment to burn the village of Petrischevo, where a German cavalry regiment was stationed.
In Petrischevo Zoya managed to set fire to horse stables and a couple of houses. However, one Russian collaborationist had noticed her and informed his masters. The Germans caught Zoya as she started to torch another house. She was tortured and interrogated throughout the night but refused to give up any information. The following morning she was marched to the center of the town with a board around her neck bearing the inscription 'Houseburner' and hanged.
Her final words were purported to be "Comrades! Why are you so gloomy? I am not afraid to die! I am happy to die for my people!" and to the Germans, "You'll hang me now, but I am not alone. There are two hundred million of us. You can't hang us all."
The Germans left Zoya's body hanging on the gallows for several weeks. Eventually she was buried just before the Soviet retook that territory in January 1942.
Fame
The story of Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya became popular after a PravdaPravda
Pravda was a leading newspaper of the Soviet Union and an official organ of the Central Committee of the Communist Party between 1912 and 1991....
article which was written by Pyotr Lidov, was published on January 27, 1942. The journalist had heard about Zoya's execution from an elderly peasant, and was impressed by the young woman's courage. The witness recounted: "They were hanging her and she was giving a speech. They were hanging her and she was threatening them." Lidov travelled to Petrishchevo, details were collected from local residents and published in an article about the then-unknown partisan girl. Soon after, the article was noticed by Joseph Stalin
Joseph Stalin
Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin was the Premier of the Soviet Union from 6 May 1941 to 5 March 1953. He was among the Bolshevik revolutionaries who brought about the October Revolution and had held the position of first General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union's Central Committee...
who proclaimed: "Here is the people's heroine", which started a propaganda campaign honouring Kosmodemyanskaya. In February, she was identified and was immediately awarded the order of 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:...
.
Many streets, kolkhoz
Kolkhoz
A kolkhoz , plural kolkhozy, was a form of collective farming in the Soviet Union that existed along with state farms . The word is a contraction of коллекти́вное хозя́йство, or "collective farm", while sovkhoz is a contraction of советское хозяйство...
es and Pioneer
Pioneer movement
A pioneer movement is an organization for children operated by a communist party. Typically children enter into the organization in elementary school and continue until adolescence. The adolescents then typically joined the Young Communist League...
organizations in the Soviet Union
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
bore the name of Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya. Soviet poets, writers, artists and sculptors dedicated their works to Kosmodemyanskaya. In 1944, the film Zoya
Zoya (film)
Zoya is a 1944 Soviet war film directed by Lev Arnshtam. It was entered into the 1946 Cannes Film Festival.-Cast:*Galina Vodyanitskaya as Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya*Tamara Altseva as Zoya's Teacher*Aleksey Batalov*Anatoli Kuznetsov as Boris Fomin...
was made about her. The Soviets erected a monument in her honour not far from the village of Petrishchevo (sculptors - O.A.Ikonnikov and V.A.Feodorov). Another statue is prominently located at the Partizanskaya
Partizanskaya
Partizanskaya , known until 2005 as Izmailovskiy Park, is a station on the Arbatsko-Pokrovskaya Line of the Moscow Metro. It was built during World War II and is dedicated to the Soviet partisans who resisted the Nazis. The name was changed on the 60th anniversary of Soviet victory to better...
Moscow Metro
Moscow Metro
The Moscow Metro is a rapid transit system serving Moscow and the neighbouring town of Krasnogorsk. Opened in 1935 with one line and 13 stations, it was the first underground railway system in the Soviet Union. As of 2011, the Moscow Metro has 182 stations and its route length is . The system is...
station. A 4108-meter (13,478 feet) mountain peak in Trans-Ili Alatau
Trans-Ili Alatau
Trans-Ili Alatau , , also spelt as Zailiyski Alatau, Zailiysk Alatau, etc., is a part of the Northern Tian Shan mountain system in Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan. It is the northernmost mountain range of Tian Shan stretching for about 350 km with maximal elevation of 4,973m . The term "Alatau" refers...
is named after her. A minor planet
Minor planet
An asteroid group or minor-planet group is a population of minor planets that have a share broadly similar orbits. Members are generally unrelated to each other, unlike in an asteroid family, which often results from the break-up of a single asteroid...
1793 Zoya
1793 Zoya
1793 Zoya is a main-belt asteroid discovered on February 28, 1968 by Tamara Mikhaylovna Smirnova at Nauchnyj. It is named after Soviet world war 2 hero Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya.- External links :*...
discovered in 1968 by Soviet astronomer Tamara Mikhailovna Smirnova
Tamara Mikhailovna Smirnova
Tamara Mikhailovna Smirnova was a Russian astronomer.From 1966 to 1988 she was a staff member of the Institute of Theoretical Astronomy at Leningrad. She co-discovered the periodic comet 74P/Smirnova-Chernykh, along with Nikolai Stepanovich Chernykh. She has also discovered various asteroids...
is named after her. Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya is buried at Novodevichy Cemetery
Novodevichy Cemetery
Novodevichy Cemetery is the most famous cemetery in Moscow, Russia. It is next to the 16th-century Novodevichy Convent, which is the city's third most popular tourist site. It should not be confused with the Novodevichy Cemetery in Saint Petersburg....
in Moscow
Moscow
Moscow is the capital, the most populous city, and the most populous federal subject of Russia. The city is a major political, economic, cultural, scientific, religious, financial, educational, and transportation centre of Russia and the continent...
.
In the 2002 book Zoya's Story: An Afghan Woman's Struggle for Freedom the narrator tells of her decision to use the name "Zoya" as one of her pseudonyms when she joined The Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan
Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan
The Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan is a women's organization based in Quetta, Pakistan, that promotes women's rights and secular democracy...
in her fight against fundamentalism. She cites the story of Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya as an inspiration in her own struggles.
Zoya Phan
Zoya Phan
Zoya Phan is a high profile exiled political activist from Burma of Karen descent. Currently, she resides in the United Kingdom, where she is International Coordinator of the human rights organization Burma Campaign UK...
, an outspoken political activist for the Karen people
Karen people
The Karen or Kayin people , are a Sino-Tibetan language speaking ethnic group which resides primarily in southern and southeastern Burma . The Karen make up approximately 7 percent of the total Burmese population of approximately 50 million people...
and member of the Burma Campaign UK
Burma Campaign UK
Burma Campaign UK founded in 1991 is a London based Non Governmental Organisation that aims to achieve the 'restoration of human rights and democracy in Burma . BCUK campaigns on behalf of the Burmese pro-democracy movement and is the largest campaigning organisation for Burma in Europe...
, was named after Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya by her father, Padoh Mahn Sha Lah Phan. Her father chose this name because he had read about Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya while studying at Yangon University and saw several parallels between the Karen resistance against the Burmese government and the Soviet resistance against the Nazis in Europe.
Controversy
The biography of Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya became a subject of media controversy during the 1990s.In September 1991, almost fifty years after Zoya's death, an article by Aleksandr Zhovtis was published in the weekly Russian magazine Argumenty i Fakty
Argumenty i fakty
Argumenty i Fakty is a weekly newspaper based in Moscow and a publishing house in Russia and worldwide. As of 2008, it is owned by Promsvyazbank and the newspaper is edited by Nikolay Zyatkov.- History :...
. The article alleged that there were no German troops in the village of Petrischevo, and that Zoya was caught by local peasants who were unhappy about the destruction of their property. The information was sourced to an anonymous school teacher who had apparently told Nikolai Anov the story. Anov, already dead, apparently passed it on to Zhovtis. At the end of the article, Zhovtis blamed Stalin's scorched earth
Scorched earth
A scorched earth policy is a military strategy or operational method which involves destroying anything that might be useful to the enemy while advancing through or withdrawing from an area...
policy for the 'unnecessary' death of the young woman.
A month later, the same newspaper published another article completely based on letters from readers commenting on Zhovtis' publication. Some authors supported the mainstream version. A letter signed P.A. Lidov's family said that every house in the village was filled with German troops who were the target of Zoya's strike. The letter referred to documents supporting the info including unpublished protocols of NKVD
NKVD
The People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs was the public and secret police organization of the Soviet Union that directly executed the rule of power of the Soviets, including political repression, during the era of Joseph Stalin....
interviews with residents of the village. Other readers shared stories contradicting the mainstream version. A resident of Moscow
Moscow
Moscow is the capital, the most populous city, and the most populous federal subject of Russia. The city is a major political, economic, cultural, scientific, religious, financial, educational, and transportation centre of Russia and the continent...
, Petrov, told a story he heard from a Petrischevo resident in 1958 about bizarre irregularities in the identification of "Tanya's" identity. A postgraduate student of the Institute of Russian History, Elena Sinyavskaya, published research supporting that the person executed in Petrischevo was not Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya but a "missing in action
Missing in action
Missing in action is a casualty Category assigned under the Status of Missing to armed services personnel who are reported missing during active service. They may have been killed, wounded, become a prisoner of war, or deserted. If deceased, neither their remains nor grave can be positively...
" partisan, Lila Azolina.
The Argumenty i Fakty articles prompted a response from Pravda
Pravda
Pravda was a leading newspaper of the Soviet Union and an official organ of the Central Committee of the Communist Party between 1912 and 1991....
observer Viktor Kozhemyaka in the form of an article titled Fifty years after her death Zoya is tortured and executed again. In the article, Kozhemyaka criticized Sinyavskaya's theory and upheld the official expert conclusion about the identity of the executed partisan. Later the Institute for Criminal Expertise and the Department of Justice of the Russian Federation issued an official conclusion stating that the family photographs of Kosmodemyanskaya belong to the same person as the Pravda photograph of the hanged partisan. The article ended in emotional sentences Let your names be sacred for centuries, Tanya, Zoya, Lila! So many of you gave for us the most precious thing you had; your lives. And we cannot, should not, and indeed have no right to forget or betray you.
Ten years later, Kozhemyaka wrote another article Zoya is executed yet again. In the article Kozhemyaka told how he was emotionally shaken when discovering some "absurd material" on internet boards. These materials alleged that Zoya hurt Russian peasants rather than German troops. They also alleged that Zoya suffered from schizophrenia
Schizophrenia
Schizophrenia is a mental disorder characterized by a disintegration of thought processes and of emotional responsiveness. It most commonly manifests itself as auditory hallucinations, paranoid or bizarre delusions, or disorganized speech and thinking, and it is accompanied by significant social...
, was a fanatical Stalinist, and so on. Kozhemyaka attributed materials to the same Elena Sinyavskaya (now a Doctor of Historical Science). In her response (in the newspaper Patriot from 26 February 2006 Sinyavskaya stated she had no connections to the material except that a few quotes were from her monograph. The real author of the internet publication seems to have been an obscure "psychoanalytic
Psychoanalysis
Psychoanalysis is a psychological theory developed in the late 19th and early 20th centuries by Austrian neurologist Sigmund Freud. Psychoanalysis has expanded, been criticized and developed in different directions, mostly by some of Freud's former students, such as Alfred Adler and Carl Gustav...
writer", Alexander Menyaylov.
Another important development was the publication by the newspaper Glasnost of the previously unknown protocols of the official commission of residents of Petrischevo village and Gribtsovsky selsovet on 25 January 1942 (two months after Zoya's execution). The protocol stated that Kosmodemyanskaya was caught while trying to destroy a stable containing more than 300 German horses. It also quite graphically described her torture and execution.
A slightly different story was told by the notes of Pyotr Lidov published in Parlamentskaya Gazeta in 1999. Apparently, Lidov for years meticulously collected all the available information on Kosmodemyanskaya. The notes supported the version that Kosmodemyanskaya and Vasily Klubkov were caught while asleep on the outskirts of Petrischevo. The Germans were called by Petrischevo resident Semyon Sviridov. Lidov's notes also included an interview with a German noncommissioned officer taken prisoner by the Red Army. The interview described the negative effect on the morale
Morale
Morale, also known as esprit de corps when discussing the morale of a group, is an intangible term used to describe the capacity of people to maintain belief in an institution or a goal, or even in oneself and others...
of the German soldiers who witnessed the burning of the houses.
Marius Broekmeyer in his 2004 book claims that she was reported to the Germans by angry neighbors because she had burned their stables and killed their horses while trying to destroy supplies before the Germans could get to them.
Klubkov's betrayal version
Some details of Zoya's assignment and arrest were classified for about sixty years because treachery might have been involved. The criminal case number 16440 was declassified in 2002. The case was then reviewed by RussiaRussia
Russia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...
's Chief Military Prosecutor Office, and it was decided that Vasily Klubkov, who betrayed Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya, was not eligible for rehabilitation. According to criminal case 16440, three Soviet combatants: Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya, Vasily Klubkov, and their commander Boris Krainov had to perform acts of sabotage in Reichskommissariat Ostland
Reichskommissariat Ostland
Reichskommissariat Ostland, literally "Reich Commissariat Eastland", was the civilian occupation regime established by Nazi Germany in the Baltic states and much of Belarus during World War II. It was also known as Reichskommissariat Baltenland initially...
. They had been given the task of setting fire to houses in the village of Petrishchevo, where German troops were quartered. Krainov was to operate in the central part of the village, Kosmodemyanskaya in the southern and Klubkov in the northern parts. Krainov was the first to carry out his task and returned to the base. Zoya performed her task too, as was evidenced by three columns of flame in the southern part of Petrischevo seen from the base. Only the northern part was not set on fire. According to Klubkov, he was captured by two German soldiers and taken to their headquarters. A German officer threatened to kill him, and Klubkov gave him the names of Kosmodemyanskaya and Krainov. After this, Kosmodemyanskaya was captured by the Germans.
Canonization proposal
On September 13, 2008, during the celebration of the 85th anniversary since her birth, a proposal was made that the Russian Orthodox Church should canonize Zoya. In the absence of any evidence that Kosmodemyanskaya chose death rather than renouncing her faithApostasy
Apostasy , 'a defection or revolt', from ἀπό, apo, 'away, apart', στάσις, stasis, 'stand, 'standing') is the formal disaffiliation from or abandonment or renunciation of a religion by a person. One who commits apostasy is known as an apostate. These terms have a pejorative implication in everyday...
or even that she was a believing Christian
Christian
A Christian is a person who adheres to Christianity, an Abrahamic, monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth as recorded in the Canonical gospels and the letters of the New Testament...
, the Russian Orthodox Church
Russian Orthodox Church
The Russian Orthodox Church or, alternatively, the Moscow Patriarchate The ROC is often said to be the largest of the Eastern Orthodox churches in the world; including all the autocephalous churches under its umbrella, its adherents number over 150 million worldwide—about half of the 300 million...
has not yet taken any action on this proposal..
External links
- Martyrdom of village priest Pyotr Kosmodemyansky (in Russian)
- Zoya's Story, a short biography, some tributes and excerpts from the book "Story of Zoya and Shura"
- Photo of dead Zoya
- Biography (in Russian), on the website dedicated to the Heroes of the Soviet Union/Russia
- Short Biographical Article (in English), From Northstar Compass
- Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya From The Voice of Russia March, 1942
- Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya (1923-1941) Information (in English), photos, music