Young Guard is the author of the work. Alexander Fadeev - young guard
A. Fadeev’s novel “The Young Guard” was written immediately after the war in 1946. A huge amount of both fiction and non-fiction literature has been written about the Great Patriotic War.
The further the war moves away from us, the more controversy and discrepancies are caused by new facts that constantly appear about the role of the USSR in it. But be that as it may, the Second World War is a terrible tragedy of the Soviet Union and the Soviet people.
A time when the people, the citizens of the country, showed incomparable courage, unparalleled patriotism and superhuman endurance in the fight against the enemy.
This work refers precisely to those books that, using historical material, reflect the attitude of the younger generation to the Second World War, genocide and apartheid, and fascism in general.
The idea of the novel
The author of the novel himself, as a truly Soviet man and patriot, tried to show the reader his attitude towards fascism. Explain that there is nothing more expensive than the Motherland and its laws; for the sake of the Fatherland, any true citizen will gladly and proudly give his life.
Undoubtedly, Soviet ideology is also present here, but still the novel has enormous educational significance, and the example of the Young Guards went down in the history not only of the Patriotic War, but also of the entire history of the USSR, as a symbol of courage and perseverance.
Theme of the novel
The events of the novel take place in Krasnodon, occupied by German troops. Some residents left their hometown, while others stayed and are actively fighting the enemy. An organized partisan detachment operates in the area. And in the city itself, young people - Komsomol members, yesterday's schoolchildren - are waging their own guerrilla war, not intending to sit idly by.
There are also obvious enemies of the Soviet regime in the city, they work for the fascists and are trying in every possible way to expose former party leaders, military personnel, and are trying to expose connected partisans. The situation in the city is still heating up after numerous arrests and executions of people loyal to Soviet power.
During this difficult time, the Young Guard organization managed to contact the partisan organization through their contact Lyubov Shevtsova, who was specially left in the city to work undercover.
Now the young people had more work: they posted leaflets, issued Information Bureau reports, sentenced and carried out executions against police officers, helped escape Soviet prisoners of war, and took part in military skirmishes with the Nazis. They always acted bravely and did not try to spare themselves.
Unfortunately, it was their youthful recklessness that led to the tragedy. The guys took one careless step and the police, who made every effort to catch them, were on their trail. Although the leader of the partisan movement in the city of Lyutikov gave the order to everyone to immediately leave the city and region, perhaps because of their youthful carelessness the underground fighters did not do this.
Arrests and torture began. The Komsomol members remained very steadfast. Only one of the first arrested, Stakhovich, could not withstand the torture and began to testify. The arrests continued, almost all members of the Young Guard, and a group of adult workers of the underground organization, along with Lyutikov, were captured. Although the torture was truly savage, everyone stood firm, and no one else betrayed their comrades.
All underground workers were executed - thrown alive into an abandoned mine. The names of the heroic Young Guards Oleg Koshevoy, Ulyana Gromova, Ivan Zemnukhov, Sergei Tyulenin, Lyubov Shevtsova, became a symbol of courage and perseverance, a symbol of the greatest love for one’s Motherland, for which one would not be sorry to give one’s life. Many generations of young people learned and were educated by their example.
The city of Krasnodon (a former workers' village) is located in eastern Ukraine, on the border with Russia. He became famous thanks to facts related to the youth partisan detachment, which began its activities during the German occupation. After the liberation of Krasnodon in 1943 and the publication of the story by writer Alexander Alexandrovich Fadeev in 1945, this city gained very wide popularity. This book is called "Young Guard". Its summary will help readers find out the fate of the Komsomol members who defended their Motherland during the Great Patriotic War.
How it all began, or Meet the characters
In July 1942, a group of girls, including Ulyana Gromova, Valya Filatova and Sasha Bondareva (all of them recent graduates of a high school in the mining village of Pervomaiskoe), frolic on the river bank. But they are disturbed by the sounds of bombers flying overhead and the distant boom of artillery. Each of the girls claims that if evacuation begins, she will stay and fight the German invaders. Suddenly explosions shook the ground.
The girls come out of the forest and see a road clogged with military and civilian vehicles. Komsomol members rush to the village. Ulyana meets Lyuba Shevtsova, who reports that Soviet troops are retreating. A decision was made to blow up the plant and hastily evacuate documents and equipment. Some party workers, led by the leader of local partisans Ivan Protsenko, remain in the village, the rest of the residents are also evacuated.
Evacuation and meeting Sergei Tyulenin
This is how the work “The Young Guard” begins. A summary of the first chapters introduces the reader to the main participants in all subsequent events. Here such characters as Komsomol member Viktor Petrov and Oleg Koshevoy appear. There is a description of the evacuation, during which German bombers attack a column of refugees.
Meanwhile, in Krasnodon, hospital staff are trying to place the wounded soldiers who were in the hospital in the homes of local residents. Returning home after building defenses and digging trenches, Sergei Tyulenin, a seventeen-year-old boy who witnessed the Nazi attack on Voroshilovgrad.
When he realized that the Red Army troops were doomed, he collected rifles, revolvers and ammunition, and then buried them in his backyard. The further summary of Fadeev’s novel “The Young Guard” will tell about the invasion of the village by German troops and the actions of the population remaining in Krasnodon.
The invasion of the German occupiers and the reaction of local residents
The Nazis arrive in Krasnodon. Sergei watches their approach. The German general Baron von Wenzel occupies the house of Oleg Koshevoy, where his mother and grandmother remained. Others cut down jasmine and sunflower bushes throughout the village, leaving no cover for a possible enemy. They settle in local dwellings, drink, eat and shout songs. About forty wounded Soviet soldiers who remained in the hospital were brutally shot.
Sergei Tyulenev and Valya Borsch hid in the attic of their school to spy on the enemy. They observed the German headquarters, which was located directly opposite the school building. That same night, Sergei digs up several Molotov cocktails in his yard and sets the headquarters on fire.
Thus, the book “The Young Guard,” a brief summary of which describes individual events of the Second World War, introduces the reader to heroic characters from the very first pages. Komsomol members who, despite their young age, were not afraid to resist the Nazi invaders.
Return of Oleg Koshevoy and further confrontation
What events will the following summary introduce? "Young Guard" is not only the title of the work. This is the Komsomol underground organization that was formed in Krasnodon. And it all begins with the return of Oleg Koshevoy to the village. He meets Sergei Tyulenin, and together the guys begin to look for contact with the underground in order to convince the partisans that they can be trusted, despite their young age.
The guys decide to collect all the weapons that may still remain in the steppe after the battle and hide them securely. Moreover, they are going to create their own youth organization. Philip Lyutikov, who was the secretary of the district committee, soon attracted many Komsomol members to underground work, among them Oleg Koshevoy and Sergei Tyulenev. This is how the Young Guard was formed. The novel, a brief summary of which tells the reader about the members of this organization, was named after it.
Not everyone turned out to be brave Komsomol members
Further in the novel the battles of the partisan detachment led by Protsenko are described. At first everything goes well, but after a while the fighters find themselves surrounded. A special group is assigned to ensure the detachment's retreat. Stakhovich is in it. What will the summary now introduce the reader to?
"A young novel, which, unfortunately, contains not only images of brave Komsomol members defending their homeland and loved ones from the German occupiers. There were also those who did not find enough courage to fight back. Among them was the Komsomol member Stakhovich, who chickened out and fled to Krasnodon. And there he deceived him, saying that he was sent by the headquarters for the organization. Chairman Fomin becomes the next traitor. In the region, the Nazis executed many of them, burying them alive.
Active activities of the organization
Lyubov Shevtsova, also a member of the Young Guard organization (the summary of the novel has already mentioned her name), shortly before these brutal arrests was sent by the underground organization to undergo special courses. A very bright and pretty girl now easily establishes the necessary contacts for underground workers with the Nazis, and also obtains important information. This is how the most important events of the novel “The Young Guard” begin to unfold.
The book, a brief summary of which only superficially depicts the vicissitudes of the life of young people during the Second World War, tells in great detail about each hero of the Young Guard and his tragic fate. Thanks to the active actions of Komsomol members, leaflets were posted and Ignat Fomin, who had betrayed his fellow villagers, was hanged. Then the prisoners of war of the Soviet Army were released.
The youth organization consisted of several groups. Each was responsible for the tasks assigned to it. Some attacked cars traveling with groups of Nazis, others attacked tank cars. And there was another detachment that operated absolutely everywhere. It was headed by Sergei Tyulenev. Want to know what happened next? We offer you a summary.
"Young Guard" or Careless actions of Komsomol members
So the action of the novel comes to a tragic end. The work “Young Guard” by A. A. Fadeev tells in its final chapters about the careless act of members of the organization, which caused numerous arrests and deaths. Before the New Year, Komsomol members came across a car with gifts for German soldiers. The guys decided to sell them at the market; the underground needed money. So the police got on their trail.
Arrests began. Lyutikov immediately gave the order that all members of the Young Guard leave the city. But not everyone managed to leave. Stakhovich began to betray his comrades under torture by German soldiers. Not only young Komsomol members were arrested, but also adult underground members. Oleg Koshevoy took all the blame for the organization’s actions upon himself and until the very end remained silent about the main leaders, despite the torture to which he was subjected.
The last pages of a wonderful work
How does the work written by A. A. Fadeev (“Young Guard”) end? A chapter-by-chapter summary told the reader about almost all the main events related to the Komsomol organization. And it only remains to add a few words that thanks to the courage and bravery of many Komsomol members, the Germans never found out that the head of the underground was Lyutikov.
The Young Guards were brutally beaten and tortured. Many no longer even felt the blows, but continued to remain silent. And then the half-dead prisoners, exhausted from endless torture, were killed and thrown into a mine. And already on February 15, Soviet tanks appeared on the territory of Krasnodon. Thus ended Fadeev’s famous novel about the courage and bravery of young Komsomol members of this city.
Alexander Fadeev. Why did the famous Soviet writer shoot himself? What secrets does his novel “The Young Guard” keep? And how did Fadeev’s work influence the residents of the city of Krasnodon?
And a cartridge is waiting in the barrel.
In the house of Alexander Fadeev there is the usual midday bustle - the table is being set. The writer's son, eleven-year-old Mikhail, is sent to call his father for dinner. He does not have time to reach his office when suddenly a shot is heard. Unexpectedly for everyone, the famous writer committed suicide.
The next day, newspapers will print only a meager obituary about Fadeev’s death. The cause of suicide will be stated as alcoholism, but few will believe this. Why did Fadeev shoot himself? His death is still shrouded in myth, just like the story of his last novel, The Young Guard.
Winter 1945. The Second World War is going on. Alexander Fadeev lives in Peredelkino, near Moscow. Having barely finished the first chapters of his new work, he hurries to check what he has written on his listeners. So he reads to his neighbors a few pages of The Young Guard, a novel that will become fatal for him.
Playwright Alexander Nilin has just returned from his dacha in Peredelkino. The country's best writers lived in this village for many years. There he once met Alexander Fadeev.
He read it. At the same time, of course, they drank vodka, war, such red canned food, and Fadeev kept laughing and blushing. But this was a purely author’s reading, when a person does not yet know whether there will be success or not, that is, there was excitement,” says Alexander Nilin.
Fadeev is worried like a schoolboy, although at that time he was already a recognized writer. His first success was brought to him by the novel “Destruction”, after which Stalin himself wanted to meet him personally. The writer's career has since risen sharply.
He rose to the post of chairman of the board of the Union of Writers of the USSR and... stopped writing. It took him 20 years to write his second novel, The Young Guard. Then the family will remember how he often jumped up at night and sat down to write. He wrote and cried, cried over the suffering of his heroes. After publication, all-Union fame and accusations of falsification will fall upon him. But could this lead to suicide?
“Krasnodon does not have any strategic significance, there were no partisans or party members there, and the children did all this at their own peril and risk. And, perhaps, Fadeev was fascinated by such a topic that young people, children, remembered something from their youth. He is also a very early man. He was a delegate to the X Congress, when there was the Kronstadt revolt. And he suppressed this rebellion, he was wounded. There was something close to him there,” says Nilin.
There really is no extreme accuracy in the novel The Young Guard. And this is still a matter of debate. So what is Fadeev accused of? What exactly did he do wrong? What could have pushed him to take the extreme step? The youth organization existed in the Ukrainian city of Krasnodon for four months, from September 1942 to January 1943. Most of the underground fighters were caught and brutally executed.
Elena Mushkina remembers the effect the appearance of the novel had. They read it avidly. She will even dedicate her thesis to him. And Fadeev’s book was typed by her mother, a typist at a major literary magazine.
“The novel was going off the rails, it had to be done in time, the end of the war was already approaching. It was Stalin who kept his hand on the pulse. And my mother typed like crazy,” recalls publicist Elena Mushkina.
Travel to Krasnodon.
Fadeev took up this story after a small note appeared in the newspaper: when the Nazis began to retreat in Ukraine, a Soviet photojournalist ended up in liberated Krasnodon. He witnessed how the dead Young Guard guys were taken out of the mine, where the Nazis threw them while still alive.
“Stalin realized that he couldn’t limit himself to just one. And he called Fadeev and told him: “Find a talented writer and urgently send him on a business trip to Krasnodon,” to which Fadeev said: “I’ll go to Krasnodon myself,” says Elena Mushkina.
For the duration of the war, Fadeev was relieved of his duties as chairman of the Writers' Union. He, along with his other colleagues, works at the front - writes messages for the Sovinformburo. When a writer arrives in Krasnodon, he is accommodated in the house of Elena Kosheva, the mother of one of the Young Guards.
She is considered the most educated in the mining town - she works as a teacher in a kindergarten. This distribution will play a key role in the fate of Fadeev and in the fate of his novel. Elena quickly realizes that her son can become a hero of the country along with Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya.
The Russian Archive of Socio-Political History stores documents. Koshevaya describes her version of events in detail, almost minute by minute. Access to these folders has only recently been made available to journalists.
“I was writing a diploma, and we tried, my mother told him: “Lena is writing a diploma, but she doesn’t know much, she’s a university graduate, maybe Alexander Alexandrovich, you’ll meet her, tell her something?” At first he: “Okay, okay , there’s no time yet.” But I had a diploma, deadlines. And then he refused. So the meeting never happened. And then we were very offended, my mother was very offended by him: “Shame on him, we’ve been working together for so many years!” But then , when all this was revealed...”, says Elena Mushkina.
Monument to the heroes of the Young Guard in Krasnodon.
When everything is revealed, it will become clear why Fadeev avoided communication. He knew back in 1947 that his story was falling apart.
Nikita Petrov discovered this fact in the FSB archives. At one time, he was allowed to access closed files on the Young Guards case. What he managed to find out undermines the very basis of the myth about the underground. So what became an unpleasant discovery and disappointment for Fadeev at one time? What led to depression and then suicide?
“The Soviet regime built such, I would say, reference points for patriotic education. Such examples were needed. And Fadeev in this case was very proud and said that “my novel is built on facts.” And this was his kind of trump card. But this is what began to happen later, it, of course, broke both the framework of the literary narrative and our understanding of what really happened in Krasnodon,” says historian Nikita Petrov.
Based on Fadeev’s novel, the Young Guard members, under conditions of information blockade, secretly listened to the radio and wrote leaflets. The Nazis tore them from the pillars, but the news managed to scatter. And when on November 7, 1942, a red flag began to flutter over the roof of a local school in honor of the October Revolution, it became quite obvious to the enemy that an underground group was operating in the town.
"They did not perform a number of feats that were attributed to the guys. The mine administration, the so-called directorate, in fact, they did not burn it, it was burned by the retreating Soviet troops. The Labor Exchange Administration, where, it would seem, according to the novel, lists of young people who should were sent to Germany to work, they didn’t burn them either, this is also not their merit. And moreover, Oleg Koshevoy’s mother actually made friends with the Germans, and German officers lived in her apartment,” says Nikita Petrov.
But for years it was believed that it was in the Koshevs’ house that the headquarters of the Young Guards was deployed. Here they gathered secretly in the evenings, and Oleg’s grandmother sold pies on the street and, seeing the Nazis, began to sing ditties, thereby signaling the guys to leave. A pack of cigarettes that will be found in the market of one boy will destroy the Young Guard.
The day before, a German convoy carrying New Year's gifts was robbed. The police walk around angry and wary. They were given orders to look for those who would sell stolen goods at the local bazaar. This is how the brother of one of the underground fighters comes across.
“We were brought up on the images of heroes, we raised patriotism in us and we in our children. That’s where it went from there. But when I graduated from school and entered the history department, my dad said: “Are you sure that everything was as in the novel?” “Well, of course, I was sure. He says: “Look at the documents.” That’s how it went,” says historian Nina Petrova.
Still from the film "Young Guard"
Myths of the Young Guard.
Nina Petrova is from those places herself. Her father is the party organizer of the mine, Konstantin Petrov, the same one who made Alexei Stakhanov famous by convincing him to set a record for coal mining. Subsequently, Konstantin became a major party official. He knew firsthand how Soviet propaganda worked and how it crippled people’s lives.
His daughter has been collecting documents about the Young Guard from archives for many years. She is well aware of the details of the biggest Soviet myth. How was he born? And why did Fadeev fall for him so easily?
“This issue of indignation in general began a long time ago, as soon as the novel appeared, we have documents, the first letters appeared, people there simply rebelled, they organized actions of rejection of this material,” says Nina Petrova.
Fadeev, who proudly sent the first copies to Krasnodon, is stunned: Moscow accepts the novel with delight, and the families of the Young Guards, whom he glorified throughout the country, grumble. A doubt crept in that something was wrong here.
But he was already spinning. He is awarded the Stalin Prize. Director Sergei Gerasimov begins filming the film. The capital's theaters stage performances based on the novel one after another. Some heroes are awarded posthumously. It would seem a success. But in moments of depression, which will wash over the writer shortly before death, in helpless despair he will remember something else.
“After all this hell, all the parents of the dead Young Guards were somehow united in their grief. They were all touched by this grief - the execution of their children. And the parents were not aware of the matter, they were semi-literate, it was some kind of village, you know, and then they didn’t know. It was a conspiracy among the kids. No one from the parents delved into the details, and they were worried together,” explains Elena Mushkina.
“Firstly, they began to have drama, discord - why is your son on the list, it’s not just a work of art, but at the end, if you remember, he lists the list of those killed, and that’s why your son is on this list too why is there a lot about him in the novel, although I know that he didn’t do anything? And why is my son, my daughter, why aren’t they? And here the question began: was Fadeev not even trying to justify himself, but to explain what it was? precisely a work of art, and that therefore he has the right to some changes. But, you know, change is different,” says Elena Mushkina.
Fadeev changed the story, but indicated the real names of the Young Guards. Only a traitor passes under a fictitious name. In the novel he is named Stakhovich, but based on certain biographical facts, readers and relatives quickly guess Viktor Tretyakevich in him.
When the investigation becomes aware that it was he, and not Oleg Koshevoy, who was the leader of the underground organization, it will be too late. The life of his family has already been crippled forever, and passersby literally spit in the faces of Victor’s parents.
“Of course, it is not right for a writer, having collected people’s opinions, to then claim that the novel is based on facts, but in the end, when Fadeev prepared the canonical version of the novel in 1951, he never spoke about facts again. He was very worried, by the way speaking, he initially clung to the original version of the novel, but in a conversation he explained to Ehrenburg that Stalin demanded this, and in this case he obediently carried out his will. This, by the way, ruined Fadeev himself,” says Nikita Petrov.
The scandal surrounding Stalin's favorite.
Natalya Ivanova works in the very magazine where Fadeev was published. He is friends with his family. The son of a famous writer avoids communicating with the press. In literary circles they know what it cost Mikhail to forget that terrible day when his father passed away. As a journalist, Natalya is also aware of the scandal that erupted around Stalin’s favorite.
“As it turns out, at that moment Stalin didn’t read The Young Guard, he didn’t have time. And Fadeev was awarded the Stalin Prize. Stalin watched the movie, and after he watched the film, the first version, he really didn’t like the fact that The role of the party is not reflected there in any way, that Komsomol members act there on their own.
Almost the next week after this viewing, a large article appeared in the Pravda newspaper, and this was 1949, which severely criticized the film and the novel precisely because of the lack of a guiding, inspiring, organizing role of the Communist Party in the underground of the city of Krasnodon,” - says Natalya Ivanova.
Fadeev takes on the second edition of the novel. In conversations with friends, he admits: “I’m remaking the Young Guard into the old one.” Gerasimov has to finish filming the film. It turns out that the writer added so many scenes with party members that the film turned out to be a two-part film. Episodes with the traitor are shortened, and his name is re-voiced.
By that time, researchers believe that another Young Guard member surrendered to the underground. The low-profile role of Stakhovich is played by actor Yevgeny Morgunov, who would later become the star of Gaidaev’s films. And he will be the only young artist who will not receive an award for this film.
Film critic Kirill Razlogov notes that Gerasimov’s propaganda based on Fadeev’s novel still has artistic value. The State Film Fund is now trying to restore the first version of the film.
“In 1948, a picture was released that already corresponded to the second version of the novel and corresponded to what Stalin demanded. Since then there was a period of little film, there were almost no films, and it is natural that a picture on such a theme would be a national and national sensation, which it became But, in addition, it was a meeting of very young, very talented people, some were older, like Sergei Bondarchuk, and Nona Mordyukova, Slava Tikhonov, this generation came straight from VGIK,” says Kirill Razlogov.
The scene of the massacre of the Young Guard is the most terrible in the film. It was filmed at the same place where everything happened, just a couple of years after the execution. Thousands of people, friends and relatives of the victims, came to the mine. When the actor who played the role of Oleg Koshevoy delivered his monologue, the parents lost consciousness. For a long time it was believed that the organization consisted of about a hundred people. Most were caught and died.
Nina Petrova recently discovered the first list of Young Guards, which was compiled immediately after the liberation of Krasnodon. There are 52 names here. Fadeev is unlikely to have seen this document. This would be contrary to party propaganda and would reduce the scale of the tragedy. By the way, Kosheva’s surname is listed along with everyone else.
“I want to say that Koshevaya is very interesting. Nikolaevna told Fadeev a lot, she was a bright, colorful woman, he was carried away by her, came there twice, stayed in the apartment twice. She shared what she knew. And what did she know? For participation in the underground She was introduced to the young organization, awarded, and the grandmother was also awarded the corresponding government award.
Why was grandma introduced? The motivation was that she was an active member of the Young Guard, and that she notified the underground organization of impending arrests. She didn't do anything, she didn't notify anyone. And the first to leave the underground organization were Oleg Koshevoy, Valeria Borts, the Ivantsovs, and the rest escaped as best they could,” says Nina Petrova.
Unknown facts.
Documents of captain of the Soviet Army Vladimir Tretyakevich, brother of Victor, the same one whom Fadeev identified as a traitor in the novel. At first, Vladimir tries to justify Victor, collecting signatures and stories in his favor. But in the end, many, under pressure from party officials, will retract their words. Vladimir himself will have to do the same under the threat of a tribunal.
Years later, in the mid-60s, the chief researcher at the Institute of History, Georgy Kumanev, as part of a special commission from Moscow, went to Krasnodon. He will find there temporary Komsomol tickets signed by Tretyakevich, and from the local KGB officers he will learn the real story of his death.
“Everyone who was arrested in Krasnodon or in its area was taken to the pit of the mine. The deepest abyss. Their hands were tied behind them with barbed wire or just wire. Among them was a German officer who decided to see what it was there.
He approached this cliff and began to look there. Viktor Tretyakevich noticed this, rushed at him with his hands bandaged behind him and pushed him there. But he, falling, managed to grab onto some kind of hook, or something sticking out.
They ran and pulled him out, and Tretyakevich was the first to be pushed there, and a trolley with stones, coal and other things was overturned on him,” says Georgy Kumanev, head of the Center for Military History of Russia at the Institute of Russian History of the Russian Academy of Sciences.
Did Fadeev know about this? When he reworks the novel, he will only add episodes with party workers. The main line will not change. All attempts by the residents of Krasnodon to break through to the author, to convey why he is wrong, will not be crowned with success.
The Kosheva will slam the door in front of each visitor with the words: “Don’t disturb, the writer is working!” But shortly before his death, he will answer several letters from the parents of the Young Guard, as if dotting the i’s before his departure.
“In the first edition of the novel, Fadeev wrote that Lida Androsova’s diary got to the Germans, and it was from this diary that they were able to find the entire organization. And when her mother read it, she wrote a letter to which he did not even respond.
She, illiterate, wrote a letter: “You didn’t even ask us about our daughter. We were so happy that such a writer came to us, but what we read, maybe someone told you something bad about us. And The diary was kept in the Kizikova family."
He replied: “Yes, I know that the Germans did not have the diary, because it is now on my table, I used it when I was working on the novel, and I will return it to you. But I deliberately decided to exaggerate and I came up with this idea so that your daughter’s bright role in this organization would be more visible,” says Elena Mushkina.
The writer will later be told how a group of comrades from Moscow came to Krasnodon to calm the rebellious city. People in civilian clothes entered houses and advised residents to adhere to Fadeev’s interpretation of events. Those who did not have the novel were given their own copies. By the time a full-scale investigation begins, former Young Guard members and relatives of the victims will begin to testify as if it were written.
“That is, they begin to believe in this or it is more convenient for them to believe in what the author attributed to them. But that was not so bad. If we look at those who dealt with the young guys based on the materials of the criminal case, we will see that, in general, - as an organization, this is how Fadeev described it, none of this happened.
Yes, there were young people, they listened to the radio, someone distributed leaflets, someone wrote something, someone finally robbed a car with Christmas gifts, which is actually why the story began to unfold. But the police gave this story a slightly different meaning,” says historian Nikita Petrov.
Was there a "Young Guard"?
The police gave it a different sound to embellish their work. It’s one thing to catch a lone thief, another thing to uncover the conspirators fighting against the Hitler regime. Fadeev was informed in 1947 that doubts were emerging about the existence of the Young Guard organization.
This happens after the Minister of State Security Abakumov is reported on the testimony of the arrested policemen. They don’t understand why they are being tortured. They only remember executed young people who were caught in company with a thief of New Year's gifts and one blond guy who turned gray from their beatings.
He was found during a routine search of a house on the outskirts of Krasnodon, dressed in a woman’s dress. He immediately said that he was an underground worker, but they remembered him because he did not turn away during the execution. The policeman didn’t even forget his last name - Koshevoy.
“19 people were arrested, including two Germans, and this process must be done without fail. But Abakumov already had one clear idea. What became clear both during the investigation and in the process of collecting materials? Firstly, a number of feats that were attributed to the guys , they didn’t do it. That is, it turned out that in general these facts could not be heard at all in an open trial.
But Abakumov made a very important note. He left all these facts outside the investigation and there will be no talk about this at the open trial. That is, no contradictions with the novel will be made public,” says Nikita Petrov.
Abakumov’s note, which he sends to Stalin, worries Fadeev. But it had no consequences for the writer’s career. So what was really behind his suicide?
“A work of art does not have as its task the exact embodiment of any realities. This is the task of historians, the task of scientists who can really change their points of view under the influence of new archival documents and republish their works with references to the fact that they previously thought so, now they think so. If you subject the novel “War and Peace” or the novel “Young Guard” to such processing, you get quite a lot of absurdities,” says Kirill Razlogov.
Fadeev also understood that without him no one would have known about the organization. And perhaps this thought consoled him in difficult times. There were many such underground groups throughout the country, some of them consisted of up to a thousand people, and all of them died.
“Then he drank shamelessly, and this greatly influenced him. But to say that it seems to be difficult, he was forced to rewrite this historical novel twice, and he went and was unable to withstand all these wishes to redo everything and so on, all this writing of his, he shot himself. Apparently, there were some other reasons, but I named one reason,” says Georgy Kumanev.
Another reason could indeed be alcoholism. Fadeev always drank, had a weakness for alcohol, and then he simply began to disappear into the local shalman, as the pub was called in Peredelkino. But still, the writer’s friends did not agree, which ruined his addiction to alcohol. Three months before his death, he did not drink at all. So what was happening to him?
“He loved a wide lifestyle, he could wander from Peredelkin in such a state, a drunken state, to Vnukov, and, in general, this sometimes lasted three weeks. According to legend, Stalin once asked Fadeev, and Fadeev was not there for the next once. And he asked what was happening to him. They told him that he had this kind of illness, he was on a drinking binge. Stalin asked: “How long has this been going on?” - “Three weeks, Joseph Vissarionovich.” ask comrade Fadeev to let this last two weeks, no more?” says Natalya Ivanova.
Why did the writer Fadeev shoot himself?
Fedor Razzakov is getting ready to work. Before starting to write the biography of his next hero, he listens to the music of that era. What he managed to find out about Fadeev is enough for a book. The life of the author of The Young Guard, despite the laurels and favor of the leader of the peoples, is a continuous drama. Having become a high-flying bird, he could no longer write. Even before the fatal shot was fired, he committed literary suicide.
“For Stalin, apparently, this duality in Fadeev’s character caused such irony, but, in general, he treated him with respect, otherwise he would not have kept him in the secretarial post for so long. This is a rather responsible position, because simply So Stalin would not have appointed him to such a responsible position, because he represented not only Soviet writers within the country, he also began to travel abroad after the war,” says writer Fyodor Razzakov.
Stalin's location means a lot to Fadeev. When the Secretary General died in 1953, it would become a personal tragedy for the writer. Afterwards, at the 20th Party Congress, the cult of personality of the leader will be exposed. It’s as if the ground will disappear from under Fadeev’s feet. The ideals he had believed in all his life would crumble. In three months, he himself will be gone.
“Now such things are called a project. So I believe that Comrade Stalin had the best ideological project to make Fadeev the writer’s minister. Not a single person in this post was loved so much, although he may have brought more harm than subsequent ministers.
But subsequent ministers were not such interesting people. Fadeev himself is much more interesting than what he wrote. Someone might have been expelled, and he was in favor, and then he could give him money. Everyone understood that he was fulfilling some kind of higher will,” says Alexander Nilin.
At the same 20th Party Congress, which will take place in February 1956, Fadeev will also be openly accused from the rostrum of repressing writers. By this time, many of them, arrested in 1937, will have already been rehabilitated. Soon, in his absence, the Minister of Writers will be removed from his post as Chairman of the Board of the Union of Writers of the USSR.
“He was removed precisely for this, because he was a man who expressed this time. Not Stalin’s alter ego, this is too loudly said, but, nevertheless, when Khrushchev came to power, who could not replace the entire composition of that time, but in literature, it seemed to him that here he would displace Fadeev, and something would change, and he, in general, missed the mark, and this ruined Fadeev. Suddenly, in this new time, he did not see a use for himself,” says Nilin.
Fadeev no longer has influence. His idol was gone. His colleagues turn away from him, and, in fact, his whole life goes downhill. Writers who only yesterday were loyal to Stalin are beginning to publicly condemn the former leader of the peoples. They re-publish their books, erasing his name. Directors hastily re-edit their films, cutting out all the footage of the Generalissimo.
“The majority renounced Stalin. Fadeev was not one of this number, he would never have considered himself one of them, so they started hitting him, from the point of view of knocking the foundation out from under him. Some kind of compromising story had to be invented, to knock out Fadeev.
And therefore, in my opinion, this whole story with the trip there, raising this case, with betrayal and so on - because this is the only thing that could be seriously presented to Fadeev in his novel - is that he unfairly slandered an honest man Tretyakevich ", says Fedor Razzakov.
Death message.
He leaves for Peredelkino. Stops communicating with friends. At the same time, his mother dies. Once Fadeev admits that he loved and feared two people - his mother and Stalin.
“This is all exactly what led him to suicide. People who meant something to him left, and the general environment left with them. There was no family life as such at that time either, because the actress Angelina Stepanova, he wrote wonderful things about her, a good wife and so on, but she did not become his friend or comrade.
Then he had a mistress, whom he fell in love with deeply, but she lived with Kataev and did not want to leave him. That is, there were no people or any events that could have delayed him in this life at that time, in 1956, in the month of May, when he decided to commit suicide,” says Razzakov.
On top of everything else, he felt that he had disappeared as a writer. The novel “Ferrous Metallurgy,” which he began writing at the request of the party during Stalin’s lifetime, did not go well at all, and then turned out to be of no use to anyone.
“He never finished it. Suddenly, after Stalin’s death, it became clear that this was all fake, in modern terms, that these were all some kind of exaggerated and completely incomprehensible achievements. And, in the end, in 1956 he left a suicide note , which, in general, reveals everything to us,” says Nikita Petrov.
It turns out there are several reasons for his depression. And he decides to take a desperate step, even realizing that he is leaving behind his little son who adored him, who will remember that he has never seen his father drunk. He apparently tried to stay in front of him. The child did not understand why the newspapers wrote about his father’s alcoholism. He had no idea about his suicide letter. But Fadeev still tried to explain his action to those around him.
“Indeed, he had not drunk for several months before, and I think that this was an attempt to discredit Fadeev, of course. But the letter that he left, it was hidden, I think, solely out of short-sightedness and, dare I say, the narrow-mindedness of our authorities. Therefore that the letter is absolutely in the spirit of the 20th Congress, in the spirit of Khrushchev’s changes, that our literature was ruined by the wrong instructions of the party.
Returning to Fadeev’s contradictions, if he really understood and realized all this, in fact, he killed himself because he thought, and he was right in this, that he was such a switchman, to put it mildly, of this power, that he was used in all of this that he actually ruined himself as a writer completely in vain,” says Natalya Ivanova.
In his suicide letter there are no such murderous words that would reflect his condition. It is even more strange that the note was made public only 35 years later.
“He couldn’t have had remorse. There could have been grief that he had reached a dead end, that there was neither one nor the other, and there seemed to be no strength and no new ideas - yes, I believe that. And that he repented... Firstly , and to whom was he guilty? That he endorsed the lists? But wouldn’t he have been arrested? Well, it was supposed that it was another organization that endorsed it, really a logical dead end,” - says Alexander Nilin.
Quote from Fadeev’s suicide letter, which was made public only in 1990: “My life as a writer is losing all meaning. And with great joy, as a deliverance from this vile existence, where meanness, lies, slander fall upon you, I am leaving this life The last hope was to at least say this to the people who rule the state, but for the past three years, despite my requests, they cannot even accept me.”
“And this will always worry. The books will be forgotten, but this story will always be interesting, why, how, what he thought. How my friend had a physical education teacher at school, and he asked him: “Listen, why did Fadeev shoot himself?” The guy was from a literary family, he says: “Well, I don’t know.” “What about his apartment there, was it normal?” He didn’t imagine any big difficulties, there was no apartment at all. There was. He was restless at that moment. There was an apartment, and there was a dacha, but he couldn’t find any place for himself in this situation,” says Nilin.
The story of Alexander Fadeev is similar to the American dream. A talented boy who came to conquer the capital from the Far East. He achieved fame, wealth and friendship with those in power. But one day he had to pay for it. Fadeev became a victim of the system he canonized. And as soon as he turned out to be objectionable, this system destroyed him as a writer and as a person.
Young Guard (novel)
Immediately after the end of the war, Fadeev began writing a work of fiction about the Krasnodon underground, shocked by the feat of very young boys and girls, high school students and recent graduates of the local school.
In mid-February 1943, after the liberation of Donetsk Krasnodon by Soviet troops, several dozen corpses of teenagers tortured by the Nazis, who were members of the underground organization “Young Guard” during the occupation, were recovered from the pit of the N5 mine located near the city. And a few months later, Pravda published an article by Alexander Fadeev “Immortality”, on the basis of which the novel “The Young Guard” was written a little later.
The writer in Krasnodon collected material, examined documents, and talked with eyewitnesses. The novel was written very quickly. The book was first published in 1946.
Second edition of the novel
Fadeev was sharply criticized for not clearly depicting the “leading and directing” role of the Communist Party in the novel. Serious ideological accusations were brought against the work in the newspaper Pravda, the organ of the CPSU Central Committee, and, presumably, from Stalin himself.
The writer’s biography cites the words of Stalin, said, according to one of the legends, to Fadeev personally:
Not only did you write a helpless book, you also wrote an ideologically harmful book. You portrayed the Young Guards as almost Makhnovists. But could an organization exist and effectively fight the enemy in occupied territory without party leadership? Judging by your book, it could.
Fadeev sat down to rewrite the novel, adding new communist characters, and in 1951 the second edition of the novel “The Young Guard” was published.
The meaning of the book
The book was considered necessary for the patriotic education of the younger generation and was included in the school curriculum, making it mandatory reading. Until the late 1980s, The Young Guard was perceived as an ideologically approved history of the organization. The heroes of Fadeev's novel were posthumously awarded orders, streets in different cities were named in their honor, rallies and gatherings of pioneers were held, they swore by their names and demanded cruel punishment for the guilty traitors.
Not all the events described by the author actually happened. Several people who are the prototypes of characters described as traitors were accused of treason in real life, maintained their innocence, and were exonerated. .
Fadeev tried to explain:
I was not writing a true history of the Young Guard, but a novel that not only allows, but even presupposes artistic fiction.
Investigations based on the novel
After the collapse of the Soviet Union, research into the underground movement in Krasnodon continued:
In 1993, a press conference of a special commission to study the history of the Young Guard was held in Lugansk. As Izvestia wrote then (05/12/1993), after two years of work, the commission gave its assessment of the versions that had excited the public for almost half a century. The researchers' conclusions boiled down to several fundamental points. In July-August 1942, after the Nazis captured the Luhansk region, many underground youth groups spontaneously arose in the mining town of Krasnodon and its surrounding villages. They, according to the recollections of contemporaries, were called “Star”, “Sickle”, “Hammer”, etc. However, there is no need to talk about any party leadership of them. In October 1942, Viktor Tretyakevich united them into the “Young Guard”. It was he, and not Oleg Koshevoy, according to the commission’s findings, who became the commissioner of the underground organization. There were almost twice as many “Young Guard” participants as was later recognized by the competent authorities. The guys fought like a guerrilla, taking risks, suffering heavy losses, and this, as was noted at the press conference, ultimately led to the failure of the organization.
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- Young Poland (organization)
- Young music (choir)
See what “The Young Guard (novel)” is in other dictionaries:
Young Guard (underground organization)- This term has other meanings, see Young Guard. “Young Guard” is an anti-fascist Komsomol underground organization of young boys and girls, operating during the Great Patriotic War, mainly in the city... ... Wikipedia
Young Guard (underground organization in Donbass)
Young Guard (Komsomol organization)- Ivan Turkenich commander of the “Young Guard” (photo 1943) “Young Guard” is an underground anti-fascist Komsomol organization that operated during the Great Patriotic War, mainly in the city of Krasnodon, Lugansk (Voroshilovgrad) ... ... Wikipedia
Young Guard (youth organization)- Ivan Turkenich commander of the “Young Guard” (photo 1943) “Young Guard” is an underground anti-fascist Komsomol organization that operated during the Great Patriotic War, mainly in the city of Krasnodon, Lugansk (Voroshilovgrad) ... ... Wikipedia
Young Guard (organization)- Ivan Turkenich commander of the “Young Guard” (photo 1943) “Young Guard” is an underground anti-fascist Komsomol organization that operated during the Great Patriotic War, mainly in the city of Krasnodon, Lugansk (Voroshilovgrad) ... ... Wikipedia
Alexander Fadeev is a wonderful Soviet writer who is remembered by us thanks to the novel “The Young Guard”. Fadeev was not only a successful writer, but also an influential functionary - the head of the Union of Writers of the USSR and a member of the CPSU Central Committee. But the dizzying career was interrupted by a shot from a revolver on May 13, 1956 at a dacha in Peredelkino.
The official cause of suicide will be alcoholism. The writer has been spending more and more time on drinking bouts lately. True, Fadeev’s close friends claimed that two weeks before the tragedy he was at his wit’s end.
During his life, Fadeev rose to the post of chairman of the Union of Writers of the USSR. For several years he nurtured the idea of writing the novel “The Young Guard.” He not only wrote, but sincerely worried about the fate of each of his heroes. The total circulation of the novel was close to 25 million books.
Two versions of "Young Guard"
The idea of writing a novel came to Fadeev after reading an article in a newspaper that described the exploits of young underground fighters in Krasnodon. He was struck by the information about the dead guys - Young Guards who were taken out of the mine (the Nazis threw them there while they were still alive).
In the fall of 1943, the writer decides to go to Krasnodon himself to personally collect all the facts about the organization. The material collected there formed the basis of the novel “The Young Guard”. The book was published in 1946 and was heavily criticized for its poor portrayal of the Communist Party's "leading and guiding" role.
Fadeev was sharply criticized for not clearly depicting the “leading and directing” role of the Communist Party in the novel. Serious ideological accusations were brought against the work in the newspaper Pravda. In 1951, Alexander Fadeev will present the final version of the novel, which Stalin himself approved.
However, in addition to the “leading role of the party,” there were other inaccuracies in the novel “The Young Guard”. For example, the commissioner of the organization was named Oleg Koshevoy, who in fact was an ordinary member of the organization. The reason for this was the fact that on his trip to Krasnodon the writer stayed with Koshevoy’s mother, and she became one of the main sources in collecting material. The name of the real commissioner became known after Fadeev’s death. In 1959, a special commission created after the trial of V. Podtynny, who served in the Krasnodon police in 1942-1943, established that the commissar of the underground was Viktor Tretyakevich, who until that moment was generally considered a traitor.
The fatal XX Congress of the CPSU
The turning point in the career of the writer and functionary was the 20th Congress of the CPSU, which took place in February 1956. At the congress, the personality cult of Stalin was condemned - a man who would be almost a god for Fadeev. The writer himself got it from the delegates. Michael Sholokhov, author of "Quiet Don" spoke with harsh criticism of his activities in the Writers' Union, accusing him of bullying and oppressing writers M. M. Zoshchenko, A. A. Akhmatova, A. P. Platonov, B. L. Pasternak, L. N. Gumileva, N.A. Zabolotsky.
In addition, Alexander Fadeev was one of the co-authors of the article “About one anti-patriotic group of theater critics” in the Pravda newspaper. After this article, the fight against cosmopolitanism began. In 1949, he took part in the persecution of Boris Eikhenbaum, as well as other employees of Leningrad University in the press.
After open accusations against Sholokhov, Fadeev lost his membership in the CPSU Central Committee. It was the end of a career.
Many years later, the main character of the 20th Congress, Nikita Khrushchev, would give his version of Fadeev’s suicide: “Remaining an intelligent man with a subtle soul, after Stalin was exposed... he could not forgive himself for his apostasy from the truth... He had outlived his usefulness and was also afraid to meet face to face with those writers whom he helped Stalin drive into camps, and some later returned home..."
Fadeev himself left a suicide letter with the following content: “I see no way to continue living, since the art to which I gave my life has been ruined by the self-confident and ignorant leadership of the party and now cannot be corrected.<…>My life, as a writer, loses all meaning, and with great joy, as a deliverance from this vile existence, where meanness, lies and slander fall upon you, I am leaving this life. The last hope was to at least tell this to the people who rule the state, but for the past 3 years, despite my requests, they cannot even accept me. I ask you to bury me next to my mother.”
Interestingly, the note was seized by intelligence officers and made public only in 1990.
