THE YOUNG GUARD

Molodaya Gvardiya (Young Guard)

is a Komsomol

organization that was founded in September 1942 in Krasnodon,

becoming part of the history of the Great Patriotic War. January 16,

1943, was a particularly significant day for the small town of

Krasnodon, when 49 members of the underground organization

Molodaya Gvardiya and 22 members of the partisan movement were

executed in the shaft of Mine No. 5. This was just the beginning of the

tragic events, as similar executions took place on January 17 and

January 31. Only thirteen members of the Young Guard survived, and

only ten of them lived to see the end of the war. Their efforts helped to

make the Young Guard as famous as the literary version in Alexander

Fadeyev's novel, published in 1946.

The creation of the Young Guard

In July 1942, the Nazis occupied Krasnodon. Despite this, leaflets appeared in

the city, and a bathhouse that had been prepared for the Germans was set on

fire. All of this was done by a single person. Sergey Tyulenin was a 17-year-old

boy. In addition, he gathered young people to fight against the enemy. The

date of the underground organization's foundation was September 30, 1942,

when the headquarters and the plan of action for the underground fighters

were established[2]. The Young Guard (frame from the film) The creation of the

Young Guard is one of the key events in the history of the Soviet Union and a

symbol of youth resistance to fascism. It took place during the Great Patriotic

War. A group of young people, Komsomol activists, joined this special

organization to resist the Nazi occupation and help their homeland defend

itself. The Young Guard's heroic actions involved risking their lives to sabotage

enemy facilities, conduct reconnaissance, gather information, and provide

assistance to the partisan forces.

Composition of the underground organization

Viktor Tretyakevich (September 9, 1924 - January 15, 1943) was one of the

leaders and organizers of the underground organization "Young Guard". From the

very first days of the war, he actively fought in a partisan unit in the Voroshilovgrad

region. In September 1942, after his unit was defeated, Viktor arrived in the Nazi-

occupied city of Krasnodon and became the head of a string orchestra at the No.

1-bis mine club. There, he came into contact with other activists and patriots, such

as

Oleg Koshev, Sergei Tyulenin, and Ivan Zemnukhov, uniting their disparate

underground groups, such as Zvezda, Serp, Molot, and Serp i Molot, to form the

Molodaya Gvardiya. Viktor became the commissar of this underground

organization, and in addition to his organizational work, he actively participated in

combat operations against the Nazi invaders. Initially, Viktor Tretyakevich was

mistakenly considered a traitor.

The feat of the Young Guard

The Young Guard patch During the four months of its existence, the Young Guard

managed to create and distribute more than five thousand anti-fascist leaflets, which

accurately described the situation on the front. Young people, together with experienced

underground fighters, called on their fellow countrymen to stand up to the fascist occupiers,

and even carried out sabotage actions in the city's electromechanical workshops[6]. On the

eve of the 25th anniversary of the Great October Socialist Revolution, on November 7,

1942, the Molodaya Gvardiya members raised eight red flags on the tallest buildings in

Krasnodon and the surrounding villages. They also prevented the forced transportation of

people to work in Germany. In their leaflets, they warned people about the possibility of

"eternal slavery" and urged them to hide from the occupiers. On December 3, the Day of

the Constitution of the USSR, the Molodaya Gvardiya activists carried out a sabotage

action by setting fire to the "black exchange."

The discovery of the Young Guard

On the threshold of 1943, young fighters carried out a spectacular attack on a convoy

of German trucks carrying New Year's gifts for the Wehrmacht. On January 1, 1943,

Evgeny Moshkov and Viktor Tretyakevich decided to sell some of the stolen goods at

the local market, but they were arrested. On January 2, Ivan Zemnukhov came to the

aid of Moshkov and Tretyakevich, but he was also detained. From January 5 to

January 11, 1943, the police actively carried out mass arrests of members of the

underground organization. There is still a debate about whether the group was

completely exposed due to the betrayal of one or more of its members and their

relatives.

It is also unclear whether betrayal was the main reason for the group's disclosure. Until 1959,

it was believed that Viktor Tretyakevich, the commissioner of the Young Guard, had betrayed

the Young Guards to the Gestapo, as Mikhail Kuleshov, a former investigator of the

occupation police, stated during the 1943 trial, where he pointed out that Viktor could not

stand the torture[7]. However, during the trial of Vasily Podtyny, who was found guilty of

treason, the new circumstances of the death of the Young Guards became clear. Vasily

Podtynny was the deputy head of the city police in Krasnodon in 1942-1943 and was hiding

under an assumed name for 16 years. A special state commission established after the trial

determined that Viktor Tretyakevich was a victim of deception, and the real traitor was

Gennady Pocheptsov[8]. In an interview in late 1990, one of the surviving members of the

Young Guard, Vasily Levashov, stated that the Germans had accidentally discovered traces

of the Young Guard group.