There are two stories: official history, which is taught at school, and secret history, in which the true causes of events are hidden.

Honore de Balzac

In the spring of 1988, quite unexpectedly, I received a letter from a former prisoner. In December of the same year, we met with him in Tyumen. I saw an elderly short man in thick glasses. He handed me four large common notebooks filled with small calligraphic handwriting. "Here is my Zekov's confession," the old man said with a bitter smile.

Having familiarized myself with the contents of the notebooks, I wrote a documentary story “The Long Night of Hard Labor”. Here, for the attention of readers, I offer only brief excerpts from it.

On June 22, 1941, Mark Ivanovich Klabukov, the former secretary of the Yamalo-Nenets Okrug Committee of the Komsomol, was arrested and instead of the front, where he was so eager, ended up in one of the Omsk concentration camps. In these camps, besides him, the following served their terms: S.P. Korolev - the future Chief Designer of spaceships; A.N. Tupolev - an outstanding chief designer of Tu aircraft; V.Ya. Dvorzhetsky is a famous dramatic actor; general of the medical service K.K. Zentarsky and many other "enemies" of the people.

And now the word to Mark Klabukov himself.

Zeki - heroes of the Great Patriotic War

“As you know, in the army of K.K. Rokossovsky, who survived the horrors of Stalin's torture chambers, was fought by several thousand former prisoners.

They were believed! And they justified the trust of the Motherland ...

In 1943-44, the former convict Rumyantsev, who had once served a sentence in ITK-7, traveled to the Omsk colonies, he was lucky, he got to the front, became an officer, a Hero of the Soviet Union. Rumyantsev urged the convicts to go to the front. Many responded to his call.

Veselchak and joker Alexander Shurko was one of the first to go to the front. In 1946 I met him again in Omsk. The chest of the former recidivist was decorated with two rows of order bars, he was mobilized with the rank of captain of the guard.

... "Major" - that was the name of the convict for some kind of military crime. True, this man, whose name I, unfortunately, did not remember, convinced everyone that an absurd misunderstanding had happened to him. He was convinced that he would definitely be released ...

Everyone immediately fell in love with him, but for some reason they called him “major”. He was smiling, friendly, energetic and at every moment was ready to help anyone who needed his help. And he helped, if not by deed, then with a kind and clever word ... He was offered various positions: a technologist, a foreman, a cultural worker and others, but he stubbornly refused, working on the machine, and in response to the proposals he said: “Comrades, don’t, I’m here I don't want to command anyone."

Every evening, hard workers gathered near the "major" to listen to his various stories about the war ... Sometimes he started wrestling competitions, showing sambo techniques to convicts. Six months later, the "major" was released.

Hundreds of people came out to see him off. He said goodbye to everyone by the hand and quickly left without looking back.

A month later, we received a letter from him, our major (his rank was returned) was going to the front with a military unit entrusted to him. Unfortunately, I do not know how his front-line fate developed.

But besides the major, another combat officer got to us in ITK-1.

Hero of Przemysl

Once, an exhausted man entered the office of the head of the EHF Averin, barely moving his legs.

“Citizen chief,” he began with difficulty, “I am a front-line soldier, wounded three times, awarded two Orders of the Red Banner and the Order of the Red Star. I came here out of stupidity and ... - his voice broke, - as you can see ... "reached" because of front-line wounds. Help me get to the hospital...

But Averin treated him rudely and refused the request. I was indignant, and when he came out, I spoke to the boss in a way that I was strictly forbidden to talk to him:

- Why are you doing this to him? After all, you yourself are a front-line soldier? .. Why should he, having got here innocently, die?

- I did not like him. Smear ... - Averin waved his hand.

- And, in my opinion, he reached the edge and only then decided to go to you for help. His - an order bearer! - you pushed him away, he will surely die, but Manuilov's crossbow lives, and will live, having settled down in self-protection.

And I told Averin about Manuilov, how he, being at the front, in collusion with a friend, shot each other's hands.

I spoke with Averin for a long time and excitedly on this topic, until I ran out of steam. And yet he convinced me. He ordered to find this front-line soldier, helped to place him in the hospital.

I myself accompanied him there. Laid down on the bed. And this is what I heard from him, a former captain of the Red Army.

- I met the war on the border ... Just before the start, our general * at his own peril and risk brought the troops to full combat readiness. Together with the border guards, we pushed the Nazis back from the border and drove them to Przemysl, which we held for almost a week ... And I should have, already in July forty-third, and even in the presence of the "special officer", blurt out that if all the troops were on June 22 brought to combat readiness, then we would not be near Kursk now, but long ago in Berlin ...

Tears welled up in his eyes, and he sobbed muffledly.

I got a glass of honey, brought it to him the next day. Then I went to see him almost every day. He, thank God, recovered ...

And yet, another front-line soldier left the most vivid impressions of himself.

Zek - Hero of the Soviet Union!

I remember the prisoner without his left arm by the name of Petrov. He was a real hero, and not only because he had the title of Hero of the Soviet Union before the trial, but also because of his heroic behavior in conditions of hard labor. That's what they called him - our hero! People went to him for protection, support... He was not afraid of anyone, boldly stood up for the offended and did not humiliate himself before anyone. It was extremely difficult to be like that in prison.

After being wounded, he spent a long time “lying around” in hospitals, where he received a high award and a heroic title, and when he recovered, he returned home to the village.

At home I saw bare walls, a pile of straw in the corner of the room, and old sackcloth.

The mother greeted the heroic son with tears and said that the chairman of the collective farm harasses his wife, persecutes the children, tortured him at work, brought him to such a state that he had to sell and exchange everything so as not to die of hunger.

"Call him here," he said in a low voice to his mother.

Mother went for the chairman, but he came only in the evening, although he was not particularly busy with anything.

“Tell me, do all the families of front-line soldiers live like this,” he asked the chairman, “or only the families of heroes?”

He climbed into the "bubble", began to balk, saying that it was not his business to find out who lives and how.

– Do you believe in God? Petrov asked slowly, rising from the table.

"No," he answered sharply, grasping the doorknob.

“Then turn your face here, you bastard!” Petrov shouted. - I'll shoot you!

And, drawing a pistol from his pocket, he discharged it at the chairman.

They did not take him for more than a month, until the corresponding order came from Moscow. Sentenced to five years in prison. But in the colony, the former intelligence officer did not give up, declaring that he would not sit for a long time.

- At the front, we shot such reptiles! - he said sharply and added: - As an army intelligence officer, Marshal Malinovsky knows me well. Here he will receive my letter - and they will release ...

Petrov was not mistaken. He was released, and with the restoration of the title of Hero of the Soviet Union and the return of all awards received at the front.

But there were also those in the Omsk camps who could be of great benefit at the front, and instead served long sentences for uncommitted crimes.

Veterinarian Zentar

I learned that Kasyan Kasyanovich Zentarsky, a corps military doctor in the past, who wore three "diamonds" in his buttonholes, long before his arrival in the colony.

And then he arrived: short, frail and not at all like a general. He turned out to be a very knowledgeable doctor, distinguished by great intelligence and responsiveness, he loved order and cleanliness in everything. He was given a separate room in the medical unit for housing, created normal working conditions.

Once he came to our cultural and educational unit (KVCh) and asked for a fresh newspaper. I handed him Izvestia and Omsk Pravda. He began to read ... The newspapers reported on the introduction of shoulder straps in the Red Army and a new uniform.

Suddenly large tears rolled down his sunken cheeks.

– What is the matter with you, Kasyan Kasyanovich? I asked anxiously.

“You see, Mark,” he said slowly, “back in 1937, in the circle of senior officers, I had the imprudence to say that politics is a very flexible matter and there may come a time when Stalin puts on shoulder straps ... For this I am sitting! And how many wounded could he save at the front ...

Instead of the wounded, Zentarsky had to treat the local high authorities and their families. He always took a small tool case with him. Sometimes the warder, in the performance of his official duties, tried to search him. In this case, he quickly turned around and went back, it was already impossible to return him.

“If someone trusts me with their life, health,” he said angrily at the same time, “then you must trust everything to the end and not search me like a bandit.

He could not - innocently condemned! Get used to prison rules. And Zentarsky was rehabilitated only on July 3, 1989.

And, unfortunately, there are many like him. There were some truly great people among them!

In ITK-9, I was told a semi-legendary story related to the stay in the colony of the famous aircraft designer Andrei Nikolaevich Tupolev. Being a foreman, he always felt sorry for the "hard workers", never went to hack work, fraud and deals. The camp authorities disliked him for this and decided to teach him a lesson. Finding fault with some trifle, he was placed in a penal brigade, believing that there he would be brought to a “fun” life. But these people - the "dregs of society", who "dance and sing forever", turned out to be more far-sighted and more merciful than the camp authorities. They met Tupolev cordially, gave him the best place on the bunk with a full set of bedding, provided him with full-fledged rations and forbade him to work physically, saying publicly: "His talent will still serve the Motherland ...".

But once Andrei Nikolaevich still had to work physically.

The planing boat of the first secretary of the Omsk regional party committee did not give out the speed that he was supposed to develop. And then they called Tupolev. He ordered to pull the boat astern to the shore. Went to screw. He examined him carefully. Then he asked for a sledgehammer. And he began to correct the design error of those who designed the propeller of the boat with it. With strong and precise blows, he changed the angle of attack of the propeller blades. The glider was launched, and it began to reach speeds of more than 60 kilometers per hour!

But besides such as Tupolev and Korolev, with whom, unfortunately, I did not have a chance to meet, masters of art also served time.

In ITK-1, I met the talented actor Vatslav Yanovich Dvorzhetsky, who was sentenced to five years for “talking”. He headed the mobile cultural brigade of the regional department of the NKVD.

We became friends with Vaclav Yanovich right away. He turned out to be an amazingly communicative person. Dvorzhetsky often made materials for our wall newspaper, which I edited, and it was fascinating, varied and informative. I usually wrote ditties, couplets, parody songs, then we finalized them with him, and they were performed by artists of his cultural brigade.

We met him again in Omsk in 1955, when he was already working as a leading actor in the Omsk Drama Theatre. In the seventies, the troupe of the Gorky Regional Theater came to us in Tyumen. On the posters pasted around the city, his name was also listed, but, alas, he did not come then. But through the artists, I gave him a postcard - congratulations. He replied. We started chatting…”

But let's go back to the forties-coffin...

His name was Professor

In one of the sections of ITK-1, a short old man dressed in a sheepskin coat and a “Finnish” hat, seemed to be inconspicuous in nothing, except that his glasses betrayed him as a mental worker. He was energetic beyond his years and, unlike the vast majority, he was intelligent in dealing with people. Everyone who lived with him in the section called him "Professor". The thieves used to shout to him: “Hey, professor, bring a drink!” or “Professor, go and have a light somewhere…”. And he fulfilled all their requests.

Once, unable to stand it, I asked the “thieves”:

Why do you call him "Professor"?

So he's a professor by nature! – several convicts answered me at once.

I spoke to the returned orderly, and he confirmed that he really was a professor at Moscow State University and that his name was Pavlov. He arrived in Omsk in the autumn of 1941 with that terrible Moscow stage, from which most of them died on the way, since they were hardly fed. It was rumored that among them were those who were preparing to meet the Nazis in Moscow with bread and salt. The survivors reached the places of detention already a little warm, and finally reached the colony, and only a few of them remained.

Later, in the evenings, ten prisoners gathered at the KVCh, and the professor told us about the defense of Sevastopol, about the Tatar-Mongol invasion of Russia, about the conquest of the northern outskirts of Russia ... He spoke so fluently, as if he were reading a well-written book to us, and about which we didn't know yet.

Pavlov was placed as an orderly in the section where the "morons" lived - the camp "aristocrats", and to ensure the maintenance of the section they gave him a young assistant. Many fed him, he slept on the bed, but, alas, it was not possible to save the professor. In early summer, he fell ill and died in the hospital.

Alas, during the war, the name Kurchatov said little. But we had a prisoner with such a surname!

Leningradets Kurchatov

The guy from Leningrad crashed into my memory. Competent, well-read, with good manners by the name of Kurchatov. Now I can assume that he may have been a relative of Academician Igor Vasilievich Kurchatov.

A kind-hearted guy, he was barely twenty-five years old, he could not adapt to the conditions and orders that prevailed in the colony. They made fun of him constantly. And he rushed to the front.

But, alas, not everyone was eager to give their lives for their Motherland!

Vanya the Fool

He was a simple, literate, healthy country boy. In order not to go to the front, he began to loudly sing obscene songs, ditties and dance ... In a word, he pretended to be crazy.

The head of the medical unit decided to test the simulator and scheduled an operation. Vanya's head was shaved, the nurses put him on a stretcher and took him to the operating room. Doctors with gauze bandages covering their faces gathered around the table where Vanya was placed and began to "confer". “Here we make an incision,” began the “chief surgeon,” the head of the medical unit, “we remove the skull, take out the brains, just be careful not to lose anything, wash them in the pelvis and put them back ...”.

"And if he dies?" someone asked.

“He will die ... so what? There will be one less fool ... ”, the“ chief surgeon ”answered indifferently, and, taking a large kitchen knife, a bar, stood at the head of the“ patient ”, began to sharpen it.

And then Vanya's nerves could not stand it, he jumped up from the table and shouted wildly: “Uncles! No need!!! I'm not a fool!..".

And yet, despite all the horrors of the Omsk penal servitude, bright spots remained in my memory.

General Surenyan

I met the end of the war in ITK-9, which was located on the territory of the Omsk Siberian Plant. The plant produced shells, spare parts for tanks and something else for the famous Katyushas.

General Surenyan was appointed director of the plant, who was seriously wounded at the front and therefore assigned to this position.

Surenyan turned out to be a very sincere and simple person. He often came to the workshops, where he easily talked with the prisoners.

The convicts who worked at the machines performed miracles of labor heroism, fulfilling 5 and even 8 norms per shift. Alexandra Stepanenko, a simple, modest village girl who was imprisoned for stealing a handful of grain, became an outstanding record holder and the initiator of the movement of record holders. She performed eight norms per shift for operations for the manufacture of shells. Her civilian replacement competed with her for a long time and stubbornly, but she could not give more than 7.5 norms. Later, Stepanenko was awarded with a cut of crepe de chine, and her rival received the Order of Lenin ... ".

An excerpt from Georgy Sidorov's book "The Leader's Secret Project"

From the archives of the KGB it is known that the total information war with the Soviet Union began in 1943. Here is the official data. Since 1943, information special departments have been organized in the West to change the consciousness of our citizens.
But secret societies, those that built Western civilization, waged such a war against Russia throughout its history. Iosif Vissarionovich knew perfectly well what was going on in the West and what secret societies were always busy with. He also knew one more important detail: the best defense is an attack. Therefore, immediately after coming to power in 1924, Stalin created his own information department on the basis of the Soviet special services to combat Western propaganda. And what is not unimportant, he himself leads it.
It is clear that Stalin did not confine himself to defense alone. The Soviet information department for neutralizing Western propaganda very soon transferred its operations to enemy territory. Since 1926, the whole West knew the truth about what was happening in Soviet Russia.

And in Great Britain, and in Germany, and in America, our Soviet newspapers and magazines were published. They did not call for revolution. The publications simply told what the working people are doing in Russia. Therefore, no one in Europe banned such newspapers and magazines. Stalin was an excellent psychologist. He understood that the information should be given unobtrusively, benevolently and must be true. Information should reflect only what is actually happening.

Whether the truth is good or bad. That is why the common people, both in the British Empire and in America, believed in Russian information. No matter how hard bourgeois propaganda tried to present what was happening in the Soviet Union as a lie, ordinary Western people did not believe it. Most of all, the inhabitants of the colonies did not trust her. But one should not think that only printed publications were used by the Soviet information machine in the West.
There were other means as well. Stalin managed to get even British and American radio to work for the Soviet Union. How? Only truthful information, such that it was impossible to discredit in any way. Scolding the Soviet Union, thus, the bourgeois media voiced those grandiose transformations that took place in Soviet Russia. People did not pay attention to propaganda, behind it they saw the truth of what was happening. When fascism won in Germany, Hitler tried to cut off access to the future Reich for "Soviet propaganda" as soon as possible. But all the same, until 1941, despite the most powerful press of the Goebbel disinformation machine, the Germans did not want to see their enemies in the Russians.

This is what the skillful presentation of information means, and the transfer of military information actions to enemy territory. The West still recalls with a shudder the time when the information department of the Soviet special services was headed by Joseph Vissarionovich himself. It is with the information activities of Joseph Vissarionovich that the collapse of the British Empire is associated in the West. In particular, the loss of such a tasty morsel as India. And Western political scientists and analysts are right: the last chord of the information confrontation between the West and the USSR was our victory in the Great Patriotic War. The whole world saw with its own eyes which society is more progressive: Western or Soviet. Where people have more freedoms and are the true owners of their land.

Because only free people are capable of mass heroism in the war for the Motherland. That is why the victory of the British Empire in the World War, on the contrary, accelerated its disintegration. This, according to all the laws of the historical process, cannot be, usually empires disintegrate after their defeats. But what happened, from the point of view of modern geopolitics, is incredible: first, in 1949, India fell away from Britain, and then a course was outlined to move away from the metropolis and other semi-colonies. With great difficulty, the united kingdom managed to contain the centrifugal forces. According to the British themselves, thanks to the activities of N.S. Khrushchev, who in a short time in the eyes of the world community was able to completely discredit the communist movement.

How he was able to do this, we will tell below. How, in terms of information, did I.V. Stalin manage to outplay the single, well-functioning propaganda machine of the West? It all started with an article by Iosif Vissarionovich about the possibility of the victory of socialism not on a global scale, as K. Marx claimed in his works, but in a single country. Iosif Vissarionovich's article was a response to the Trotskyists to their attempt to prove that if the global world revolution did not work out, then it is time for Russia to move on to the restoration of capitalist relations and the transfer of its property to the true owners of the planet - representatives of God's chosen people. But this article was a blow not only to the appetites of the Trotskyist wing of the Communist Party.

It was also a good sedative for the West. Now the West has ceased to be afraid of Soviet Russia as a hotbed of world revolution. And since 1931, our country's relations with the capitalist camp have improved dramatically. This allowed our Soviet newspapers to publish freely both in the British Empire and in America. The law of the market has already worked here. Demand gave rise to supply. The fact that in the Soviet publications there was no propaganda, no statements about the need for a world revolution on Earth, we have already said. They described in detail our working Soviet everyday life. We talked about plans for the future.

That's all. But from the point of view of psychology, everything was arranged correctly. Ordinary people in the West treated what was done in the Soviet Union with interest, and Russians with great sympathy. As a result, the influence of the Soviet Union both in Europe and in America grew so much that Iosif Vissarionovich was able, through his people, to reach the level of management of some branches of Western industry.

Very soon, new technologies flowed into Soviet Russia from America, Britain, Germany. The West, against its will, began to sell to the Soviet Union machine tools and modern equipment of factories, and even, during the war, its advanced technology. It seemed that this simply could not be. The West organized the war to destroy Soviet Russia, but, contrary to itself, it began to help the Soviet Union, to defeat what it had created - fascist Germany.

As an example, we can cite the fate of the best American fighter of the times of the Second World P-3 "Aircobra". This aircraft was produced in America at the end of 1939. All-metal, relatively light, with an engine behind the pilot, the P-39 had an enviable speed, and, most importantly, maneuverability. The armament of this fighter was simply super-powerful: one 37 mm cannon, two heavy machine guns and four machine guns of 7-62 caliber. But the surprising thing is that after extensive testing, the American military did not like the R-39 fighter. The question is why? This question does not find an explanation in our time. It remains only to assume that Iosif Vissarionovich liked him, or rather, not so much to him as to Soviet aviation specialists. In the United States, it was decided to remove the "unsuccessful" fighter from production.

Fighter P-39 Hamilton Air Force Base, California, July 1943.

But then the Soviet defense industry intervened. And at the request of the Soviet Union, the conveyor of the R-39 fighter at the American aircraft factory was not stopped. In fact, from August 1941, the American aircraft factory began to work for the Soviet Union. As a result, out of 9500 Aircobras produced in America, 6300 appeared on the Soviet-German front. This turned out to be just in time, because the Soviet aviation industry in 1941-1942 was just beginning to gain momentum in the production of new domestic fighters.

A snapshot of Soviet and American pilots against the background of the first American aircraft accepted by the USSR under Lend-Lease

According to the three times Hero of the Soviet Union Alexander Pokryshkin, in his wonderful book “In the Sky of War”, the greatest air battle over the Kuban, which lasted the entire summer of 1942, was mainly won not by Soviet fighters, which were very few at the front, but by American ones. It was they who broke the back of the German Luftwaffe over the Kuban. Such famous Soviet aces as Alexander Pokryshkin, his wingman twice Hero of the Soviet Union Andrei Trud, twice Heroes of the Soviet Union Clubs, Rechkalov, Kryukov and others flew on the Air Cobras. At the end of the war, taking into account all the shortcomings of the R-39 aircraft, the American plant produced the R-63 Kingcobra fighter - the king cobra. It was a high-altitude high-speed fighter.

Fighter pilots of the 16th Guards Aviation Regiment, Majors A.I. Pokryshkin and D.B. Glinka

Its armament, in addition to the 37 mm cannon, also consisted of four large-caliber machine guns. But Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin did not send these newest Soviet-American aircraft against the Germans to the front. He took them to the reserve of the main command. The question is why? The answer, as always, is simple: Iosif Vissarionovich knew perfectly well that the Americans and the British were hatching a plan to destroy the Soviet Union at the hands of Hitler and his allies. In addition, Stalin was informed about the Rankin plan. According to this plan, which was refined in November 1943, the German troops were to surrender to the Allies, the Americans and the British.

And with the support of the Anglo-Saxon troops, regrouping, launch a new offensive against our homeland. Iosif Vissarionovich made it clear to the West that he knew their plan and that the Soviet Union would have time to prepare for such a turn of affairs. In addition, he hinted that neither in England nor in America, ordinary people would understand their governments. It is for this reason that the West did not succeed with the Rankin plan. But when the Americans had an atomic bomb in their hands, Iosif Vissarionovich realized that it was necessary to prepare for a new war.

Now, with the use of superweapons. Understanding that the Americans have the means of delivering their main trump card in the new war - atomic bombs, powerful strategic bombers, besides high-altitude ones, it was necessary to oppose something to such aircraft. And the generalissimo opposed. The so-called strategic reserve aircraft of the main command: Soviet high-altitude MIG-3s, British Spitfires and, of course, the US-Soviet R-69 kingcobras, which were the most massive and powerful in this cohort of fighters.

When, in 1946, at a secret council about the atomic bombing of the Soviet Union, American strategists discussed the plan of attack, they had to think about their own high-altitude fighters. And the desire to bomb the Soviet Union with atomic bombs immediately disappeared. Because the Western hawks realized that their vaunted B-17s and B-19s would be shot down as soon as they crossed the border of the Soviet Union.

This is just one example of the information work that the Stalinist administration did with the West: just think, to force the enemy to give up their best aircraft! Then, with the same plane, cover your sky. This can only happen in fairy tales. But the fact is that the case with the "R-39" and "R-63" is not the only one. We will not give other similar examples. This is outside the scope of this book.

P-63 "Kingcobra" fighters (Bell P-63A-10-BE "Kingcorba") at the Buffalo airfield (Buffalo, New York) before being sent to the USSR.

Any war is a serious matter, however, military operations are not complete without entertaining, curious and interesting cases. Everyone to be original and even perform feats. And almost all entertaining and curious cases occur due to human stupidity or resourcefulness. Below are some interesting facts about WWII.

Eisenhower memoirs

Eisenhower wrote that those created by the Germans were a powerful obstacle to the rapid advance of the American army. Once he had a chance to talk with Marshal Zhukov. The latter shared Soviet practice, saying that the infantry attacked right across the field, on mines. And the losses of soldiers were equated to those that could have been if the Germans defended this area with artillery and machine guns.

This story by Zhukov shocked Eisenhower. If any American or European general thought this way, he could be demoted immediately. We do not undertake to judge whether he acted correctly or not, in any case, only he could know what motivated such decisions. However, this tactic is rightfully included in the interesting facts of the Second World War of 1941-1945.

Taking the foothold

There were curious cases not only with infantrymen. Interesting facts about the Second World War are replete with incidents involving pilots. One day, a squadron of attack aircraft received an order to drop bombs on a bridgehead occupied by the Germans. The enemy anti-aircraft guns fired so densely that they could disable all the aircraft even before approaching the target. The commander took pity on his subordinates and violated the order. On his instructions, the attack aircraft dropped bombs into the forest, which was located near the bridgehead, and returned safely.

Of course, the German units did not receive any damage and continued to defend stubbornly. The next morning a miracle happened. Our troops were able to take the bridgehead almost without a fight. It turned out that the headquarters of the enemy troops was located in that forest, and the pilots completely destroyed it. The authorities were looking for those who distinguished themselves to present the award, but the one who did this was never found. The pilots were silent, as it was reported that they had bombed the enemy's bridgehead in accordance with the order.

Ram

It was rich in exploits. Interesting facts include the heroic behavior of individual pilots. For example, pilot Boris Kovzan once returned from a combat mission. Suddenly he was attacked by six German aces. The pilot shot all the ammunition and was wounded in the head. Then he reported on the radio that he was leaving the car and opened the hatch. At the last moment, he noticed that an enemy aircraft was rushing towards him. Boris leveled his car and aimed it at the ram. Both planes exploded.

Kovzan was saved by the fact that he opened the hatch in front of the ram. The unconscious pilot fell out of the cockpit, the automated parachute opened, and Boris landed safely on the ground, where he was picked up and sent to the hospital. Kovzan was twice awarded the honorary title "Hero of the Soviet Union".

camels

Interesting facts from the history of the Second World War include cases of taming wild camels by the military. In 1942, the 28th reserve army was formed in Astrakhan. There was not enough draft power for the guns. For this reason, the military was forced to catch wild camels in the vicinity of Astrakhan and tame them.

In total, 350 "ships of the desert" were used for the needs of the 28th Army. Most of them died in battles. Surviving animals were gradually transferred to economic units, and then transferred to zoos. One camel named Yashka went with the fighters all the way to Berlin.

Hitler

Interesting facts about the Second World War include the story of Hitler. But not about the one who was in Berlin, but about his namesake, a Jew. Semyon Hitler was a machine gunner and bravely proved himself in battle. The archives preserved the award sheet, where it is written that Hitler was presented to the medal "For Military Merit". However, a mistake was made in another award list for the medal "For Courage". Instead of Hitler they wrote Gitlev. Whether this was done by accident or on purpose is unknown.

Tractor

Unknown facts about the war tell about the case when they tried to convert tractors into tanks. During the fighting near Odessa, there was an acute shortage of equipment. The command ordered to sheathe 20 tractors with armor sheets and install dummies of guns on them. The emphasis was on the psychological effect. The attack took place at night, and in the dark, tractors with headlights on and dummies of guns caused panic in the ranks of the Romanian units besieging Odessa. The soldiers nicknamed these vehicles NI-1, which means "To be frightened."

The feat of Dmitry Ovcharenko

What other interesting facts of the Second World War are known? The heroic deeds of Soviet soldiers do not occupy the last place in them. In 1941, private Dmitry Ovcharenko was awarded the honorary title "Hero of the USSR". On July 13, a soldier was carrying ammunition to his company on a cart. Suddenly he was surrounded by a German detachment of 50 people.

Ovcharenko hesitated, and the Germans took away his rifle. But the fighter did not lose his head and grabbed an ax from the cart, with which he cut off the head of a German officer who was standing nearby. Then he grabbed three grenades from the cart and threw them at the soldiers, who managed to relax and move away a little. 20 people died on the spot, the rest fled in horror. Ovcharenko caught up with another officer and cut off his head too.

Leonid Gaidai

What else was unusual about the Great Patriotic War? Interesting facts include a story that happened to a famous film director. He was drafted into the army in 1942. He did not get to the front, as he was sent to Mongolia to go round horses for military needs. Once a military commissar arrived to them, recruiting volunteers to go to the army. He asked: "Who is in the cavalry?" The director replied: "I am." The military commissar asked a number of similar questions about the infantry, fleet, intelligence - Gaidai was called everywhere. The boss got angry and said, "Don't rush, I'll announce the whole list first." A few years later, Gaidai used this dialogue in his comedy film Operation Y and Shurik's Other Adventures.

And finally, a few other interesting cases:

70 years after the end of the Great Patriotic War, we still do not know much about the mass heroism of partisan children. Shocking stories about a teenager who single-handedly attacked a fascist battalion, a partisan girl who survived two executions, and others. The exploits of the pioneers of heroes on the Great Patriotic War cannot be forgotten in the generations of today's youth. This is our story today:

Automatic burst "flashed" the sentry, which guarded the entrance to the German headquarters. The shooter burst inside and riddled everyone who was inside - the battalion commander, his deputies and ran out into the street. Several soldiers in Nazi uniforms ran towards him, firing on the move. One bullet hit him in the stomach, the second - in the head, the machine gun fell out of his hands. The shooter fell face down into the grass. The Germans turned the body over and could not believe their eyes - in front of them lay a child, apparently about ten years old.

Hero of the Soviet Union, former commander of the partisan detachment Pyotr Evseevich Braiko spoke about this case in an interview with the Zvezda TV channel. The 97-year-old veteran of the Great Patriotic War had not told anyone about Alexei's exploits before. And he shared this tragic story with us, making an effort on himself - it was hard for him to remember the death, albeit heroic, of children in the war, even after 70 years.

“Lesha was only 12 years old, such a beautiful, energetic, quick-witted boy...”, the veteran sighs.

Lesha was not supposed to die in this battle, if only because he was not supposed to participate in it.

“We had a rule - first teach a teenager how to handle weapons, then teach the strategy of guerrilla combat ... Lesha didn’t know any of this, he was with us in the detachment for only about two weeks, we didn’t even have time to find out his last name,” recalls Peter Braiko.

Pyotr Evseevich says that it was in the summer, on the territory occupied by the Germans in Belarus, in the area of ​​​​the settlement of Zhikhov. The reconnaissance group of the partisan detachment "Putivl" noticed a battalion of German infantry, which, after the march, stopped to rest.

“Our commissar Rudnev says: “We must liquidate the battalion!”, well, Lesha, apparently, heard this, and since he was a novice, he decided to attack 300 Germans alone. We, as a rule, did not send children alone, we took care of them. And then they just didn’t notice how he disappeared,” says the war veteran.

Hearing the shooting, the partisan detachment immediately rushed in pursuit of the Germans, who, seeing the superior enemy, decided to retreat. This did not save them, the entire battalion was destroyed. After that, the body of Alexei was discovered.

“The commissar loved him very much, he cried, not embarrassed by people ... Lesha ... he is a real hero ... he died in battle,” says the Hero of the Soviet Union with difficulty holding back tears. 12-year-old Alexey shot, according to the former commander of the partisan detachment, at least 12 fascists. They buried him with honors.

“We have never buried anyone like this before or after that - with the whole detachment, with a guard of honor, with salutes ...”, - says the war veteran.

The story of this teenager, by the standards of the Great Patriotic War, is typical - the mother, father, sister and brother were shot by the Germans. Lesha, without hesitation, went to the partisan detachment - to avenge the dead.

“Children can and should be used if the circumstances are such that it is impossible otherwise. You see, what's the matter, when we took teenagers, we did not send them on assignments for a long time, we invited them to meetings, yes, yes! They listened to the tasks that the senior partisans received, then listened to their report on how the task was completed or not completed ... They memorized the actions of adults, they thus learned military affairs, ”says the veteran.

It is difficult to establish the legitimacy of the actions of the commanders of partisan detachments, in which the children were liaisons, scouts, demolition workers, and even fighters. Even military historians today, 70 years after the Great Victory, cannot accurately name at least one document that would give it a legal right.

“Yes, Stalin called on all citizens of the USSR to stand up to fight the enemy. But, as you know, no one was taken into the regular army under the age of 18 even during the war years. Everything was different with the partisan detachments - they were all in the occupied territory, and "de jure" Soviet laws did not apply there. In other words, no one allowed it to be allowed, but no one forbade it either, ”says Dmitry Surzhik, Candidate of Historical Sciences.

Pyotr Evseevich says that there were a lot of children and teenagers aged 12-14 in the partisan detachments.

“They were the most reliable performers, they knew that the task entrusted to them must be done well. They did not know how to fool, stir up, cunning, deceive. And we gave them the most diverse tasks ... For example, it was necessary to eliminate the road ... since all the roads were guarded by the Nazis, if a company was sent, it could not cope, and one teenager could quietly pass the posts, quietly get close. In the first years of the war, the Germans did not pay attention to them. And they blew up... it all depended on what we taught them. We armed them with the lightest, most reliable weapons - pistols, light machine guns, trophy ones, but I think, having checked this on the facts, our weapons were the best, ”recalls Petr Braiko.

The feat of the Belarusian partisan Alexei, who died at the age of 12 in the first battle, remained unknown for 70 years. The last military honors that his comrades gave him turned out to be truly the last - they could not find his grave later. And the exploits of only a few dozen underage daredevils forever entered the history of the Great Patriotic War - they were called pioneer heroes. Most of them received this title posthumously.

Nadezhda Bogdanova: return from the "other world"

The body of 11-year-old Nadia Bogdanova was thrown into a ditch by the police. A few hours before that, they first beat her, then poured water over her and put her out on the street, then they burned a star on her back, - nothing helped, - the girl never told anything about the partisan detachment. She was caught immediately after the explosion of the bridge, in a knapsack - crumbs of explosives ...

In the morning, local residents pulled her out of the ditch - the Germans ordered to bury her so that the smell of the decomposing body would not bother them. It was then that it was discovered that the girl was still alive, they hid her, secretly went out, the long-awaited Victory Day came, but only after another 15 years, comrades from her partisan detachment, led by Mikhail Ivanovich Dyachkov, found out that, in spite of everything, their favorite scout Nadia survived.

In 1943, the Germans executed Nadia for the second time - the first time it happened in 1941, when the young partisan was only 9 years old. On November 7, she hung a red flag on the building of the railway station in Vitebsk, she was caught, and shot together with the Red Army, only the girl fell earlier than the others - she lost consciousness from fright - and this saved her. She remained lying under the corpses, then woke up, crawled, and by some miracle reached the partisans.

Nadya Bogdanova accomplished her second feat when, in reconnaissance near the village of Balbeki, the Germans wounded her commander Ferapont Slesarev. The girl found the courage to steal a cart from under the very nose of the policemen, and took her comrade to the detachment.

About her exploits, as well as about the exploits of Alexei from the partisan detachment "Putivl", no one would have ever known if it were not for journalists. After the war, on the radio, then already married woman Nadezhda Alexandrovna Kravtsova (this was her husband's surname), heard the voice of Ferapont Slesarenko, who said that she died the death of the brave, and that she would never be forgotten. Only then did Nadezhda Alexandrovna decide to show up and talk about her miraculous return from the “other world”.

In 1945, another intelligence officer of the same partisan detachment "Avenger" Yevgeny Kovalev returned from the "other world". He had never heard of the scout Nadia, but he still remembers his commander, Mikhail Dyachkov, very well.

"A ticket to life" - from a partisan camp to a concentration camp

Yevgeny Filippovich Kovalev began to cooperate with the partisans at the age of 14. The tasks were simple - memorize and then tell what I saw on the Smolensk-Vitebsk road.

“I knew the commander of the partisan detachment Dyachenko before the war, he was a foreman on a collective farm, a party member. And then the war began, one night he comes to the hut. I lived with my brother in the village of Smolizovka. The task was to go to the Golynki railway station, “remember who, where, and how much” and then tell him,” says Evgeny Filippovich Kovalev, a former scout of the Avenger partisan detachment. Zhenya Kovalev coped with the first task, then new ones began to arrive.

“Every day they reported that the highway was busy Smolensk-Vitebsk, and we lived nearby. There were policemen, but the boys did not pay attention to us. I knew two - Bolt and Savchenko, they were dispossessed before the war and sent to Solovki ... just before the war they returned, they were Latvians. Almost all the policemen worked for the partisans, but these did not. But they didn't bother us. In the farm, no one was on duty at night at all - why? The police guarded bridges and other objects, so it was not scary that someone would notice something, but everyone helped the partisans - both old and small, everyone, ”recalls the former partisan. Yevgeny Filippovich says that Mikhail Dyachkov did not ask for a partisan detachment - "you can't expose the rear."

14-year-old Zhenya Kovalev performed his last assignment with his friend Petya Lisichkin in 1943. The Germans took them right on the road, excuses about the lost cow did not help. Followed by interrogations and beatings. They beat me with sticks, rubber and wooden sticks, but it was impossible to tell the truth - if you tell, you will immediately sign your own sentence.

“What are you? Immediately - death! Either the Germans will shoot you if you say everything - they don't need you anymore, or you betrayed ours! Therefore, they show the truth in the cinema - I got into the Gestapo - endure to the last! ”, Evgeny Filippovich recalls.

They did not begin to shoot the juvenile reconnaissance partisan - there was no evidence of his guilt, but the fact that he was a partisan was obvious to all local policemen. So they sent a 14-year-old patriot of the USSR for correction - to the Auschwitz concentration camp.

“When we were released, when I returned home, Dyachkov again worked as a foreman. We had a conversation! He asked me: “How were you tortured?” Then he praised him for his endurance, saying that if he had betrayed him, the Germans would have burned the whole village, ”says a former juvenile prisoner of the Auschwitz death camp. At the same time, Vasily Adamovich Savchenko was in the same concentration camp with Yevgeny Kovalev.

“My father was burned at 18:15”

In the post-war period, Vasily Adamovich opened his mailbox, as usual in the morning, and an envelope fell out on the floor. The elderly man picked it up, saw the German marks on the envelope and immediately opened it. In broken Russian it read: "According to the archives of the Auschwitz concentration camp, your father Adam Adamovich Savchenko was burned in the crematorium at 18:15."

“How scrupulous, you bastards! At 6:15 pm... My mother also died in Auschwitz, but I still don't know when and how. I survived, although I got into it when I was only nine years old. I got, of course, not by chance, ”recalls Vasily Savchenko.

The Savchenko family was sent to Belarus shortly before the start of World War II. Vasily's father was a party member, a participant in the First World War, and an invalid. His family was settled in a large house of a dispossessed peasant.

“When the war started, we immediately fled to the forest - in the village they would immediately betray us, we knew that. In the forest, a partisan detachment "named after Chapaev" was formed, then he became part of the "Suvorov brigade." Those who could fight set up their camp, and we - in the neighborhood, nearby - children, women and the elderly. My mother, like all other women, washed, cooked, did what she could. We had a cow, and we lived in dugouts for almost a year,” Vasily Savchenko recalls today.

Three of his brothers served in the partisan detachment - Vladimir, Eugene and Adam. Several times they took him with them - on a mission.

“I remember that at the mill it was necessary to arrange for us to grind flour at night. I went. Then we still had to go to the village of Lesiny to the headman, he worked for us. Everything was kept secret. For example, he said: “There won’t be a market on Thursday, but on Friday,” I told him,” Savchenko says.

In 1943, the partisans began to "smoke out" from the forests. The partisan detachment left through the swamp, they did not take only women, the elderly and children, and also Father Vasily - he had a wound on his side, which he received during the First World War.

Only after the war, Vasily Savchenko found out that all his brothers had died in battle. And he himself, along with all the civilian assistants of the Chapaev partisan detachment, ended up in the Auschwitz concentration camp.

Vasily Adamovich Savchenko, like Yevgeny Filippovich Kovalev, and the nameless Alexei did not become pioneer heroes, their names will never be carved on marble. But they, like tens of thousands of other young defenders of their Motherland, did everything they could 70 years ago. In 2009, the United Nations declared February 12 as International Day Against the Use of Child Soldiers.

In September 1941, in the village of Zaskorki, located in the dense forests near Polotsk, a village gathering took place, at which the Old Believer Mikhail Zuev was elected headman.
In the 1930s, he was imprisoned twice (5 and 3 years respectively) for anti-Soviet activities. In 1940 he returned from the camp to his village. His two sons were also arrested by the NKVD and disappeared in the camps.

The village of Zaskorki, where Zuev lived, was located in a forested, swampy area, away from the roads, and German units never entered it during the entire war. The population was mainly from the Old Believers.
After the election of Zuev as a headman by the villagers, he himself went to Polotsk to the Germans to formalize his appointment. In November 1941, a group of people consisting of 7 armed men did not appear in the village.
The leader of the group announced to Zuev that they were Soviet partisans. Allegedly, Zuev recognized one resident of Polotsk, who was known as an employee of the NKVD.
Zuev placed the new arrivals in one hut, set the table, put out a bottle of moonshine, and he went to consult with the locals what to do with the newcomers. The council decided to kill all the partisans, which was done. Having obtained weapons, the locals felt more confident.

Until December 1941, the locals met all partisans with rifle fire. So Zuev would have sat out in his village if the ammunition had not come to an end, which forced him to turn to the Polotsk commandant for help on the 20th of December 1941.
He listened to Zuev and replied that he himself could not resolve this issue and should consult with his superiors, which is why he asked Zuev to come to him again, in a week.
Zuev's second meeting with the commandant took place after the New Year, when he was introduced to a German general in command of the rear of the army.
The general was well acquainted with Russian affairs and knew that the Old Believers were ardent opponents of Soviet power and were firmly soldered to each other, so he agreed to supply Zuev with weapons (except for automatic ones), but explained that he was doing this against the will of his superiors. A few days later, Zuev received 50 captured Soviet-style rifles, and several boxes of cartridges for them.

Having received weapons, Zuev proceeded to arm additional people. Neighboring villages sent walkers to him with a request to take them under their protection. Zuev agreed, and thus began to expand his possessions.
At the beginning of 1942, he carried out a sortie to remote villages, drove out the partisans who settled there, and included these villages in his "Old Believer Republic".
By the spring of 1942, Zuev managed to buy 4 captured Soviet machine guns for food from the Hungarian auxiliary units. The discipline in his units was ironclad. Even for small offenses they were severely punished and put in the cellar for bread and water, and also flogged; for big ones they shot.
The verdict on major cases was passed by an assembly consisting of elders and respected people. The execution sentence should have been passed by at least 2/3 of the people, members of the assembly. The partisans began to bypass the Zuev area.

In May 1942, an Estonian police battalion, subordinate to the SS, approached his village. The battalion commander told Zuev that they were looking for partisans and therefore would have to live in his village for some time. Zuev replied to the Estonian officer that there were no partisans in the area. And, therefore, the police have nothing to do here.
While the matter was limited to words, the Estonian insisted, but as soon as Zuev's own detachment approached the house and Mikhail Evseevich resolutely declared that he would use force if the police did not leave. The Estonians obeyed and left.
The German commandant of Polotsk, Colonel von Nikisch, to whom Zuev appeared the next day with a report on the incident, asked Zuev to take the report back, promising that if the SS, which was subordinate to the police forces, made a claim, then he, the commandant, would try to settle the matter. The commandant began to appreciate Zuev more and more, especially since the latter regularly supplied Polotsk with firewood, hay, milk and game.
The partisans, having heard about Zuev's clash with the Germans, offered him assistance, but he categorically refused. The commandant of Polotsk sent an officer to Zuev, offering him to come to Polotsk for negotiations.
Zuev did not agree to this proposal either. He declared that he was ready to pay the Germans the prescribed food tax if they left his district alone and did not interfere in his affairs. The Germans quickly agreed and did not look at Zuev again.

When the next detachment of Soviet partisans, carelessly advancing in the darkness, began to approach the village of Gendiki, Zuev with his shock detachment silently followed them and set up an ambush.
Before the partisans had time to figure something out, they began to shoot at point-blank range from machine guns. The "Zuevtsy" did not take prisoners, everything was over in just a few minutes.
Rifles, machine guns, hand grenades, pistols and one light machine gun became the spoils of the victor. Zuev had no losses. This operation made it possible to snatch permission from the Germans for another 50 rifles, for several machine guns and pistols, as well as for a light machine gun.
The confrontation between Zuev and the partisans was in the nature of a real civil war. Over time, the "Zuevites" got mortars and a team of submachine gunners.
In 1943-1944, for distinction in the fight against partisans, Zuev was awarded two distinctions for Eastern volunteers "For Merit" of the 2nd class. in bronze and one (spring 1944) 2nd class. in silver.

When the Germans left Polotsk, Zuev with his people went to the West. After almost a month's campaign, Zuev led everyone first to Poland, and then to East Prussia. Together with Zuev, about 2 thousand peasants left. After spending some time in Germany, Zuev went to Vlasov and, in the end, ended up in his 2nd division, where he received the rank of lieutenant.
Further, according to some sources, he left France in 1949 for Brazil, according to others, he surrendered to the British in April 1944, and after that his trail is lost.
About 1000 more "Zuevtsy" - Old Believers in 1946 left Hamburg for South America. A third of them then, with the support of Attorney General Robert Kennedy, left for New Jersey in 1960.

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In 1942-43, the "Soviet Republic of Rossono" existed on the territory of the Idritsky district of the Kalinin region. Its leaders - the Socialist-Revolutionaries Liebig and Gryaznov, the anarchist Martynovsky - proclaimed a simple ideology: for Russian socialism without Nazis and Stalinists. At the end of 1943, Rossono, along with almost all of its population, was destroyed by Latvian and Ukrainian punishers.

It all started with the fact that "as an experiment" in the North-West, the Germans, through restitution, began to return the lands to the former tsarist landlords to their descendants, primarily of German nationality.
So, 8 landowners arrived on the Pskov lands. One of them - A.Bek got the opportunity to create a latifundium on the basis of the state farm "Gary" in the Dnovsky district (5.7 thousand hectares). This territory housed 14 villages, more than 1000 peasant farms, which ended up in the position of farm laborers of the landowner. In the Porkhov district, on the lands of the Iskra state farm, Baron Schauer arranged an estate.
The descendants of the landowners who had lands here before the Revolution, Baron Wrangel von Gübental (a distant relative of the White Guard General Wrangel) and the landowner Ryk, were supposed to arrive in the Idritsky district.
If the local peasants were still ready to pay taxes to the Germans and put up with a partial land reform, then absolutely not to work for the tsarist landlords. The population of the occupied territories did not want even remote signs of tsarist power.
The movement of dissatisfied local peasants was led by the land surveyor Nikolai (Karl) Liebig (Libik), a Latvian by nationality, and the head of the police of the city of Idritsa, Stepan Gryaznov.
It is known that Liebig was sentenced in 1923 to three years of exile as an active Social Revolutionary. Gryaznov received three years in the camp for anti-Soviet agitation in 1932, his file also indicated that he was a member of the Socialist-Revolutionary Party. After serving their sentences, both, as was then customary, were banned from living in large cities. So they ended up in the provincial Idritsky region.
Later, the anarchist Martynovsky also became the third in the leadership of Rossono. Almost nothing is known about his past. He called himself an anarchist, worked as an art teacher in Kalinin (now Tver), had terms for embezzlement and under the famous 58th article.

Liebig and Gryaznov in April 1942 decided to make a coup in Idritsa in order to take power in this city (it was a regional center with a population of about 8 thousand people).
They had an active movement of about a few dozen Russian policemen and the same number of sympathizers. They also received consent to help from a local partisan detachment of about 40-50 bayonets. But Idritsy was of great strategic importance - the city was located on the Moscow-Riga railway - and a large and experienced German detachment was stationed here.
In general, they failed to take the city, and then Liebig and Gryaznov took their people away from Idritsa to a wooded and swampy area in which about twenty small villages were scattered (the villages of Zabelye, Brashkin Bor, Goryushino, Vorotilki, Klyuchki, Chernovo, Kuzmino, Rudany , Nazarovka, etc.)
On these lands, the Republic of Rossono was founded (Rossono - by the same name of the city, regional center, now - Rossony in the Vitebsk region of Belarus). Its full name was "The Free Soviet Republic of Rossono without the Germans, Stalin and the Communists."

First of all, Liebig-Gryaznov carried out a land reform in this area. Each member of a peasant family was entitled to 2.5 hectares of land, so large families could have 15-25 hectares of land (including pastures).
The tax in kind was 20% of the harvested crop. The forest and reservoirs were declared community property. For the benefit of the community, each person over the age of 14 had to work 2 days (6 hours each) per week (clearing roads, repairing schools and office buildings, etc.)
Each village was ruled by the Council, the number of members of which was determined at the rate of 1 deputy from 10 adult citizens of the republic. Liebig was elected Chairman of the Soviets, Gryaznov was elected Chairman of the General Economic Department (analogous to the Cabinet of Ministers).
The ideology of Liebig-Gryaznov was "a mixture of socialism, Russian nationalism and decrepit utopianism." They both hoped that Hitler and Stalin would wear each other down in a bloody war, and sooner or later both would come to the conclusion that the occupied territories would have to be given self-government.

By the beginning of 1943, the Liebig-Gryaznov detachments numbered up to 1 thousand fighters, in total, the territories under their control lived up to 15 thousand people.
In the winter of 1942/43, the fighters of the Republic of Rossono began to raid the towns in this area, and once they even managed to capture and rob a 4-car quartermaster train of the Germans, carrying food and consumer goods for the front (from clothes and dishes to soap and tobacco). An agreement was reached with the partisans subordinate to Moscow that they did not touch each other.
In early 1943, the Germans decided to end the Rossono Republic. During the operation "Winter Magic", directed both against the Soviet partisans and against Rossono, carried out in February-March 1943, 10 police battalions took part, eight of which were Latvian (273rd, 276th, 282nd) as well as the 2nd Lithuanian and 50th Ukrainian.
During the operation, 15,000 local residents were destroyed and burned alive, 2,000 were taken to work in Germany, more than 1,000 children were placed in the Salaspils death camp in Latvia. 158 settlements were looted and burned.
During the battles with the Latvian-Lithuanian-Ukrainian punishers, both Liebig and Gryaznov were killed. From 1 thousand fighters, 250-300 people remained, who were forced to go deep into the forests.
The management of the remnants of the Republic of Rossono was taken over by the anarchist Martynovsky. Only 5-7 villages remained under his control. Martynovsky made the main mistake - he began operations against the Soviet partisans, who, by the way, did not support her during the cleansing by the punishers of Rossono. Martynovsky reasoned that he could not cope with the Germans, and it was easier to create an economic base on the basis of Soviet partisan villages.

All that remains is the only recollection of the actions of Martynovsky's detachments: "And this is a gang of false partisans of Martynovsky. He taught his bandits:" Dress up in any clothes, take on any guise, rub yourself into trust in God or in the devil, but identify the special groups of the NKVD, the communists. Burn, kill. Kill and burn. We are wolves, and our business is to scour the world in search of meat!
Martynovsky's bandits began to act from Luga and killed innocent people everywhere. Terrible stories about their atrocities. And on November 5, 1943, they went on the trail of a special group.
They managed to surround Rumyantsev's group and the scouts Kremnev and Dundukova. Rumyantsev and Kremnev were killed in a firefight, and the wounded Nina Dundukova fell into their clutches. She fired the last bullet at Martynovsky, wounding him." Martynovsky's further fate is not known.
As a result of the war, the Idritsky region suffered heavy losses, becoming an arena for the struggle of many forces at once (the Germans, the Red Army, the Rossono Republic and "wild partisans" who did not obey anyone).
430 villages disappeared forever in the region. The area was depopulated for many years, and neither in the best Soviet times, nor today has it reached the population that it had before the war.
The total population of the Idritsa and Sebezh regions before the war was about 92 thousand people. When the Germans were expelled, 9 thousand people remained here.