1942: Vasily Klubkov, Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya’s betrayer

ExecutedToday.com ^ | April 16, 2013 | Headsman

[CheshireTheCat]

We’ve touched in these pages — one of our earliest posts, in fact — on Soviet war heroine Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya, a teenager executed by the advancing German army in November 1941 for conducting partisan attacks behind enemy lines.

Zoya’s story became known after the Red Army recaptured village of Petrishchevo, where she was hanged. A January 27, 1942 Pravda article recounted the gallows defiance of the young guerrilla, whom villagers knew only by her nom de guerre, “Tanya”. She had withstood German torture, refused to give them any information, and at her hanging incited her countrymen and -women to resist the invaders. She’s still to this day a beloved national martyr in Russia, which is why she’s also an Ace in our execution playing cards.

The young woman on the gallows, and in the ghastly post-mortem pictures with her left breast mutilated swiftly became propaganda grist for Moscow.

Zoya’s instant Joan of Arc-like legend invited investigation of the precise circumstances of her capture and death … and this in turn meant extremely dangerous scrutiny for any Soviet citizen in her environs whose behavior in those last days could be held to be in any way sub-heroic....

[Boogieman]

‘whom villagers knew only by her nom de guerre, “Tanya”.’

Ahhh... so that’s where Patty Hearst’s alias came from, eh?

[tlozo]

There is a hint of Soviet aggrandisement about the story; after all, the Soviet Union loved its myths and martyrs. Sure enough, in the 1990s, following the collapse of the Soviet Union, the myth of the teenage heroine began to be questioned – were there ever German troops stationed in Petrischevo; was Zoya killed by Germans or by Soviets resentful at her burning their buildings and dwellings? Was it even Zoya’s body or that of another missing partisan?