The Legend of Tanya

Pavel Lidov, Tanya. January 26, 1942

Translated by James von Geldern

The legend of the partisan teenager, Zoya Kosmodemianskaia, who was tortured and hanged by the Germans early in the war, was stamped into the memories and devotional life of wartime Russia--and for decades beyond-in tale, poem, drama, radio play, photo, statue, and movie. In depicting the sufferings of the martyr Zoya, known as "Tanya," Lev Arnshtam's film Zoya (1944) copies virtually every detail of the following newspaper account.

Original Source: Pravda, 26 January 1942.

In the early days of December 1941 in Petrishchevo, near the city of Vereia, the Germans executed an eighteen year old Moscow Komsomol girl who called herself Tatiana.

Moscow's was in its gravest danger then. The vacation districts around Golitsyno and Skhodnya became battle fields, and Moscow sent a corps of daring volunteers across enemy lines to help partisan detachments take the fight to the enemy rear.

That was when someone in Petrishchevo cut the Germans' field communication lines. The stables of the local military unit and seventeen horses in it were destroyed soon after. A partisan was captured the next evening.

From talking with soldiers, the Petrishchevo collective farmers discovered how the partisan had been captured. The partisan had infiltrated an important military base. The partisan wore a cap, a fur coat, quilted cotton snow-pants and shouldered a bag. Approaching the target, the partisan holstered a pistol, took a gasoline-filled bottle from a bag, poured the gas out and bent down to strike a match.

At that moment, a sentry sneaked up and seized the partisan's arms from behind. The partisan managed to shove back the German and draw the revolver, but didn't get off a shot. The soldier knocked the weapon away and raised an alarm.

The partisan was taken to a hut where the officers lived, and where they discovered that it was a young girl, tall and slender, with big dark eyes and dark hair cut short and combed back.

The owners of the house were sent into the kitchen, but they still heard how the officers questioned Tatiana and she answered without pause "No," "I don't know," "I won't tell you," "No;" how straps whistled through the air, how they lashed her body. In a few minutes a tender young officer leapt into the kitchen, put his head in his hands and sat with eyes and ears shut tight till the interrogation ended.

The owners of the house counted two hundred blows, but Tatiana did not utter a sound. After the beating she still answered: "No," "I won't tell you," only her voice was more muffled than before.

After the interrogation, Tatiana was taken to Vasilii Aleksandrovich Kulik's hut. By now she no longer wore her boots, hat or warm clothing. The convoy brought her dressed only in her undershirt and shorts, and she walked barefoot through the snow.

As they led her into the dimly lit house, the owners saw a huge black and blue mark on her brow and abrasions on her hands and feet. The girl's hands were tied behind her back with a rope. Her lips were bitten, bloody and swollen. She had probably bitten them while the Germans tried to beat a confession from her.

She sat down on a bench. A German stood guard by the door. There was another soldier with him. From their berth on the stove,1

Vasilii and Praskovya Kulik watched the prisoner. She sat calmly and motionlessly, and asked for something to drink. Vasilii Kulik came down from the stove and approached the water bucket, but the sentry pushed him away.

"You also want trouble?" he asked maliciously.

The soldiers quartered in the hut stood around the girl and made loud fun of her. Some poked her with their fists, other held lit matches up to her chin, and someone scraped a file across her back.

The soldiers had their fun and went back to their quarters to sleep. The sentry put his rifle on his shoulder and ordered Tatiana to get up and go outside. He walked along the street right behind her, with his bayonet practically jabbing her back. Then he yelled "Zu r ck!" and marched the girl in the other direction. Barefoot, wearing nothing but her underclothes, she walked on the snow until her tormentor himself shuddered and decided it was time to get back under the warm roof.

The sentry guarded Tatiana from ten in the evening until two in the morning, and from every half hour to an hour he would take her back out on the street for fifteen to twenty minutes. Finally, the monster was relieved. A new sentry took his post. The poor girl was allowed to lie down on a bench.

Catching the proper moment, Praskovya Kulik struck up a conversation with Tatiana. "Who are you?" she asked.

What's it to you?

Where are you from?

Moscow.

Are your parents alive?

The girl did not answer. She lay motionless till morn without a word more, without even a moan, although her feet were frostbitten and could not have caused her anything but pain.

Nobody knows whether she slept that night and what she thought about as she lay surrounded by enemies.

That morning soldiers began to build a gallows in the middle of the village.

Praskovya tried to speak with her again. "Was that you yesterday?"

Me ... Did the Germans catch fire?

No.

A shame. What did burn?

Their horses. They say some weapons burned too ...

Officers came at ten. The senior officer asked Tatiana in Russian: "Tell me, who are you?"

Tatiana did not answer.

Tell me, where is Stalin.

"Stalin is at his post," answered Tatiana.

The owners of the house did not hear how the interrogation continued--they were ordered out of the room and allowed back only when the interrogation was over.

Some of Tatiana's things were brought over from headquarters: her jacket, pants, socks. Her hat, fur coat and boots had disappeared--the junior officers had already split them among themselves. There was also her travel bag holding the gasoline bottle, matches, pistol cartridges, sugar and salt.

Tatiana was dressed, and her hosts helped her pull socks onto her frost-blackened feet. The gasoline bottle and a board with "Partisan" written on it were hung on Tatiana's chest. This was how she was led out onto the square where the gallows stood.

The place of execution was surrounded by ten horse soldiers with sabers bared. More than a hundred German soldiers and a few officers stood around them. Local residents were ordered to attend the execution, but only a few came, and some of those quietly went back home after standing a few minutes, so as not to witness the horrible spectacle.

Two macaroni boxes were stacked under a noose hanging from the crossbeam. Tatiana was lifted onto the boxes and the noose was placed around her neck. One of the officers focused his "Kodak" on the gallows: Germans love to photograph executions. The commandant signaled the soldiers acting as hangman to wait.

Tatiana used the opportunity to turn to the collective farmers and yell in a loud and pure voice: "Hey comrades. What are you looking so sad? Be brave, continue the struggle, beat the Germans, burn them, poison them!"

The German standing next to her waved his arm as if he wanted to hit her or shut her mouth, but she knocked his hand away and continued: "I'm not afraid to die, comrades. It's a great joy to die for your country ..."

The photographer shot the gallows from far away and close up, and then got in position for a side shot. The hangmen glanced restlessly at the commandant, who yelled to the photographer: "Hurry up!"

Then Tatiana turned toward the commandant and addressed him and the German soldiers: "You can hang me now, but I'm not alone. There are two hundred million of us, you can't hang us all. My vengeance will be taken for me. Soldiers! Before it's too late, give yourselves up, victory will be ours anyway! My vengeance will be had for me ..."

The Russians standing on the square were crying. Some turned their back so they wouldn't see what must happen next.

The hangman pulled on the rope, and the noose tightened around Tanya's neck. But she pulled the noose back with her hands, stood up on her toes and yelled with all her strength: " Farewell, comrades! Don't fear, keep up the struggle! Stalin is with us! Stalin will come!.."

The hangman kicked the bottom box with the steel toe of his boot, and it scraped along the slippery packed snow. The top box dropped down and struck the earth with a hollow thud. The crowd lurched back. There was a short wail that died out and echoed against the edge of the forest.

She died a prisoner of the enemy on a Fascist rack, without betraying her sufferings by a single sound, without betraying her comrades. She accepted the death of a martyr like a heroine, like the daughter of a great people that cannot be broken. May her memory live eternal!

... On New Year's Eve drunken Fascists surrounded the gallows, pulled the clothes off the hanged girl and vilely outraged her body. She hung in the middle of the village one more day, stabbed and cut by daggers. On the evening of January 1 the Fascists ordered the gallows sawed down. The village elder called his people together, and they hacked a pit in frozen ground away from the village.

Tanya was buried without honors, outside the village under a weeping birch tree, and a blizzard covered the grave with snow. Those for whom Tania had opened the westward road with her breast on a dark December night soon arrived.

When they halt for shelter, fighting men will come bow to the earth before her ashes and to say a heartfelt Russian thank-you. To the father and mother who bore her into the world and raised her a heroine; to the teachers who educated her; to the comrades who forged her spirit.

Her undying glory will reach all corners of the Soviet land, millions of people will think about a distant snowy grave with love, and Stalin's thoughts will go to the graveside of his faithful daughter.

Western Front, January 26

Source: James von Geldern and Richard Stites, eds., Mass Culture in Soviet Russia (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1995), pp. 341-345.