115

Not later than February 9, 1943

INSCRIPTIONS ON A CELL WALL IN KRASNODON

Captured Gukov V. S. 6.1.43.
Bondareva, Minayeva, Gromova and Samoshina.
Murdered by nazis 15/1/43, 9 p.m.
Death to the German invaders!

NOTE FROM MARIA DYMCHENKO

p Dear sisters,

p No hope of returning home. Due to be shot, pity on the kiddies. Look after my children. It’ll be tough for them without a mother and father. I haven’t lost hope and I know the Soviet authorities will bring them up as they did me. Our men will soon be back. We shall fight to the end....

p Long to live. Look after yourselves, 

p January 14, 1943

Maria

NOTE LEFT BY KLAVA KOVALYOVA

p Dear Mummy,

p If dad survives let him get...  [115•*  for me-as the saying goes: "An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.”

p I won’t be coming home, hide my diary.

p Greetings 

p January 14, 1943

Klava

116

IVAN ZEMNUKHOV’S INSCRIPTION

p Not later than January 15, 1943  [116•* 

p Dear Mum and Dad,

p It all has to be endured somehow. Love from your loving son,

Zemnukhov

LYUBOV SHEVTSOVA’S NOTES

p January 1943

p Greetings dear Mama and Mikhailovna,

p Now you know where I am, Mum. . .. Please pardon me for all I’ve done, perhaps I’ll see you for the last time but I don’t suppose I’ll ever see dad again.

p Mama, please give my regards to Auntie Masha and all the others. Don’t take it too much to heart, for the time being good-bye.

Yours,
Lyubasha

p Not later than February 9, 1943  [116•** 

Farewell, Mama, your daughter Lyuba is going into the damp earth.

LYUBOV SHEVTSOVA’S INSCRIPTIONS

p February 7, 1943

p I’m thinking of you at this moment, Mama, 

p Your Lyubasha 

p Please forgive me. They’ve taken me forever.

Shevtsova

117

Even before the occupation of Krasnodon, the Lugansk Regional Party Committee set about organising a Bolshevik underground. Philip Lyutikov, Party member since 1924, was put in charge of the Krasnodon organisation. On July 20, 1942, the nazis marched into Karsnodon and mass arrests began. Many of the resistance lighters were rounded up and shot, but the nazis failed to smash the underground completely. Lyutikov and other Communists did what they could to patch up contacts with the remaining Y.C.L. members in the town. Y.C.L. underground groups began to spring up. Organisation in the centre of the town was run by Ivan Zemnukhov and Oleg Koshevoi, one of the outlying districts by Sergei Tyulenin, the settlement Pervomaika by Anatoly Popov, Ulyana Gromova and Maya Peglivanova, the Krasnodon settlement by Nikolai Sumskoi and Antonina Yeliseyenko, the village of Novo-Alexandrovka by Klava Kovalyova and the village of Sheverevka by Stepan Safonov.

Ivan Zemnukhov, Hero of the Soviet Union

p At the end of September 1942, the first organised meeting of the young underground fighters took place at which they set up an H.A. under the name The Young Guard,  [117•*  at the suggestion of Sergei Tyulenin. In early October, after the unification of all the underground groups, Shevtsova and Gromova joined Turkenich, Tretyakevich, Zemnukhov, Koshevoi, Tyulenin and Levashov at the H.Q. Oleg Koshevoi was made secretary of the underground Y.C.L. organisation, Victor Tretyakevich was put in charge of organisational work and Ivan Turkenich was put in charge of operations. By the end of October the Krasnodon underground organisation numbered over 100 members broken down into groups of five.

The Young Guard brought the local people news from the front and behind Soviet lines. During the occupation they produced more than 30 kinds of leaflets in a total of 5,000-odd copies. They sabotaged farm supplies deliveries to the Germans, blew up stores and ruined mine equipment. They organised the escape of 20 p.o.w.s from the Pervomaisk hospital and more than 70 from the camp in Volchansk village. On December 5, on Soviet Constitution Day, they burned down 118 the German Labour Exchange, thus rescuing several thousand Soviet people from being shipped to work in Germany. The Young Guard was preparing for an armed uprising the moment Soviet Army units drew near.

Lyubov Shevtsova, Hero of the Soviet Union

p Their downfall came unexpectedly. On the morning of January 1, 1943, the police arrested Moshkov and Tretyakevich. As soon as he put in an appearance at the police station to clear his companions, Zemnukhov, too, was taken in custody.

p The daring Y.C.L. members were given away by Gennady Pocheptsov who was egged on by his step-father. When he learned of the arrest of the three this cowardly traitor, wanting to curry favour with the Germans, supplied the names of many of the other Young Guards.

p First to be rounded up were the entire 18 members of the Pervomaika underground. Simultaneously, arrests began in the town. Four cells of the town police station were filled to overflowing. Terrible torture commenced. Worst to suffer was Victor Tretyakevich who had been named in Pocheptsov’s testimony as the ringleader of the organisation. The brave young girls and boys were strung up by their necks from window frames, their fingers were squeezed in doors, they were flogged with cudgels and whipped with cord, needles were driven under their finger and toe nails. The office of Solikovsky who conducted the interrogation looked more like a slaughter-house with all the blood covering the floor and walls. But nothing brought the Young Guards to their knees.

p On the night of January 15, 1943, the first thirteen were hurled down the pit of No. 5 mine. They included Victor Tretyakevich, Ivan Zemnukhov, Ulyana Gromova and Anatoly Popov. January 16 was to have been Anatoly Popov’s nineteenth birthday. On the 15th, when he had recovered consciousness after a round of torture, he wrote a letter in blood to his mother, which he succeeded in getting through via a policeman. For the next few days the police carted groups of underground fighters to the mine, shot them and bundled their bodies down the 250 foot pit-shaft of No. 5 mine. After Krasnodon’s liberation, more than 70 unrecognisable corpses were retrieved from the mine.

p Some of the Young Guards were shot in the park of the town of Rovenka. They included Oleg Koshevoi and Lyubov Shevtsova. The 119 latter was arrested on January 8 in Lugansk where she had gone to contact the partisans. The nazis tortured her for more than a month trying to get information about the whereabouts of the wireless set and a code table which she was going to use to contact the partisan H.Q. On February 9, 1943, two days before the flight from the town of Rovenka, having forced nothing out of the young scout, the local S.S. chief, Drevitz, shot Lyuba through the head.

By decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the U.S.S.R. of September 13, 1943, the leaders of the Young Guard-Ulyana Gromova, Ivan Zemnukhov, Oleg Koshevoi, Sergei Tyulenin and Lyubov Shevtsova were posthumously awarded the titles of Hero of the Soviet Union.