For every company, the best recruitment methods are those that...
The name of Lyalya Ratushnaya is known, if not to everyone, then to the absolute majority of Vinnytsia residents. But if you ask who she is, not everyone will be able to answer. They will say, well, there was such an underground woman during the war, a heroine. Not all of the youngsters will say this...
Born in 1921 in the town of Tyvrov, Vinnytsia region. In 1939, the girl entered Moscow State University at the Faculty of Mechanics and Mathematics. Just before the war, I wrote to my mother: “On June 23, I take my last exam, and I am a free Cossack for the whole summer. Meet me on the 27th.” The war destroyed all her plans. On the very first day, the girl submitted an application with a request to be sent to the front, but she was refused.
On September 6, 1941, L. Ratushnaya joined the Moscow militia - the 8th Krasnopresnenskaya Division, where a regiment of students, graduate students, and university professors was formed. Lyalya was a medical instructor.
In October 1941 she was wounded and captured, but in November she managed to escape. After that, she decided to return to Vinnitsa, where her mother lived. In the first days after returning home, I met Igor Voitsekhovsky, an underground friend from school. Igor recommended Larisa to the underground center.
So in January 1942, Lyalya Ratushnaya became a member of the Vinnitsa underground organization.
The assignments were different; more often she copied the seals and signatures of the heads of fascist institutions. The documents produced with the help of Ratushnaya were impeccable - the fascists believed them. Leaflets and fresh reports from the Sovinformburo began to appear in the city, and secret documents disappeared from the labor exchange.
Knowledge of the German language made it possible for Larisa to go to a Soviet prisoner of war camp. From there, with her help, several people were freed. Released prisoners of war were transported to partisan detachments that were part of the partisan unit named after. Lenin. The guide was also Larisa Ratushnaya.
It was mid-summer 1942. The Gestapo came to the candle making factory (Lala worked there). They spent a long time checking and searching for something. It was her turn. The Gestapo men suspected something. She was put in a cell... Interrogations, beatings, threats. Everything was there. But not a word about friends.
Later Larisa was transferred from prison to the Gnivan concentration camp. In April 1943, underground fighters freed the girl by bribing a German official. And again, conspiracy and underground work. She lives under the name Lukia Stepko.
The Underground Committee instructed her to obtain a printing font. The delivered font helped to equip an underground printing house, which was called “Ukraine”. The Gestapo went off their feet to find a trace of this printing house. It was hidden in a safe place so that it operated until Vinnitsa was completely liberated. During this time, about 70 thousand leaflets were printed and distributed.
Since May 1943, Larisa Ratushnaya has been an intelligence officer and liaison of the Vinnitsa city underground with the Lenin partisan unit. His command regularly received important information about the location of the fascist troops and their weapons.
“He would come before the morning,” the mother later recalled, “he would curl up on the floor and immediately fall asleep. He sleeps lightly. The slightest rustle wakes him up. He hears someone else's steps in the yard - and immediately goes to the attic. And he calms me down: “Don’t worry, mom, everything will be fine.”
On March 18, 1944, two days before the liberation of Vinnitsa, the hand of an unknown traitor cut short the life of the patriot Lyalya Ratushnaya.
For courage and heroism, Lyala (Larissa) Ratushnaya was posthumously awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union. Lyalya was buried near the Eternal Flame in the Kozitsky park in the center of Vinnitsa. A monument to Lyala Ratushnaya was erected in Vinnitsa. The Schoolchildren's Palace, where her museum was created, bears her name. The name of the Heroine was given to one of the streets of Vinnitsa and the ship. The name of L. S. Ratushnaya is engraved on the monument to partisans and underground fighters of Vinnytsia. Ukrainian poet Pyotr Perebeinos dedicated his poem to her.
Based on materials:
http://www.warheroes.ru/hero/hero.asp?Hero_id=2198
Vinnytsya in the rocks of the Great German War: more expenses and great feats: Album / Vinnits. region krajzn. museum. - Kirovograd, 2013.
From the memoirs of the commissar of the partisan detachment named after. Lenin Sadovnik D. D. (Vasiliev) about the underground worker L. S. Ratushnaya
I heard about her [Lyala Ratushnaya] in December 1943 as one of the capable Komsomol girls who prepared documents for Soviet people working underground. After some time, our detachment was also provided with a whole stack of such documents in German.
I personally saw Lyalya on February 14 in the village. Novoselitsa-Litinskaya, where our detachment settled down for rest.
This was her second visit asking for the acceptance of people who were in danger, as well as the transfer of a small amount of weapons.
For us, the situation at that time was extremely difficult, the front was approaching the Bug, staying in the Black Forest became impossible, systematic clearings were carried out, the partisans were forced to leave the forest, and operations on the railway ceased, only the highways Vinnitsa - Litin, Vinnitsa remained. - A bar where raids and ambushes were carried out...
In a conversation with Lyalya, I noticed to her that we are not having much fun now, big troubles are possible... To this she answered me: “You are not afraid, I am not afraid either, I am ready for anything.”
At that moment, heavy shooting began in the village. The punitive detachment was on our trail. Since this happened at midday and it was not entirely advantageous to engage in battle in the village, we were forced, shooting back, to retreat to the nearest Vonyachi forest.
They took up defensive positions in the forest. As I walked around, I asked the partisans where and how our underground fighter was feeling. They told me that they didn’t find her, she wasn’t there. I started to worry, where is Lyalya? What's wrong with her? Finally she appeared with a basket in her hands, potatoes on top, and took out cartridges from below and said: “Some of the partisans in a hurry forgot the cartridges, it’s a pity to leave them to the enemy, I took them, covered them with potatoes just in case... Take them, they’re still there.” will come in handy."
I looked at her carefully and read in her youthful gray eyes - she will not betray her own, she is truly ready for anything, for any test in the struggle for her youth, for the party, for her Motherland.
We lingered in the forest, towards night the wind picked up and a snow storm began. At a sawmill in the forest, a short military meeting was held to decide on the next maneuver and actions.
It was decided to cross the highway patrolled by tankettes and go to the Zgar forestry of the Zhmerinsky district.
This difficult trek of about 20 km in a snow storm, almost under the noses of the Germans, was successful.
Lyalya was on this difficult and dangerous campaign, she behaved courageously. The cold was intense, they were poorly dressed, and many of the partisans had frostbitten ears. Lyalya, being in this position, was also deeply frozen, but did not utter a single sound of complaint or dissatisfaction about this.
Having rested in the parking lot, on February 16, 1944, Lyalya hurried back to Vinnitsa, because she was needed there, she had to quickly prepare documents and send people with weapons to us. Not only to guide, but to come with them.
When she was asked to wait a day [until] we got rich and dressed her warmer, she refused: “I can’t, I need to hurry, we’ll win soon, then everyone will immediately be warmer.”
And I never had to see this small, lively, courageous girl again. I received the news of her tragic death while wounded in the Pirogov hospital after my release.
Gardener D.
Party archive of the Vinnitsa regional committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine, f. 136, op. 15, no. 118, l. 42. Original.
From the book: Vinnytsia during the rocks of the Great German War of 1941 - 1945: Collection of documents and materials. - Odessa, 1971.
A column of Soviet prisoners of war was being driven through Vinnitsa from the station. On both sides of the column, German guards walked ten to twenty meters from each other.
As soon as the head of the column appeared, Lyalya rushed to the wall of some house and pressed her back against it. “Wack! Vek! - the guards walking ahead shouted, driving away lonely passers-by... Exhausted, overgrown with dirty stubble, wounded and hungry people could barely move their legs. Lyalya's heart sank. After all, just recently she barely got out of the dirty pit of the concentration camp.
A little over six months ago, Moscow University student Lyalya Ratushnaya voluntarily went to the front, was wounded in the first battles and captured. She went through blood and humiliation, saw things that she didn’t want to believe her eyes. I remembered my first unsuccessful escape and my second, more successful one, when I almost froze in the freezing rain because I avoided everyone like a hunted animal.
Now Lyalya looked at the endless stream of pitiful shadows in gray overcoats and again seemed to be reliving what she had already experienced once. The column stretched for a long time. Lyalya was shaking. The March wind penetrated to the bones. Finally the column passed. And Lyalya Ratushnaya headed home.
For the second month now, Lyalya has been walking around Vinnitsa, visiting acquaintances and pre-war friends in the hope of finding a path into the underground. And after today’s meeting with the prisoners, she simply felt unbearable.
Approaching her house, she almost ran into Igor Voitsekhovsky and was very happy. But frankness did not work out. They asked each other ordinary, meaningless questions: how do you live, where do you work, do you have a passport... Lyalya knew that in just a minute, Igor would leave, and she decided:
- Igor, I’m desperate! Help me connect with people who have not accepted...
He looked at her mockingly and said:
- You, Larisa Ratushnaya, seem to be asking the way to Deputy Street. By the way, what time is it? I'm waiting for a friend.
She realized that the conversation was over. It was very disappointing. When she worked as a pioneer leader at school, Igor was then in tenth grade and was the secretary of the Komsomol organization.
“And why did I have to go ahead? What conspirator would deal with such a frivolous person like me? - Lyalya thought.
But a week later Igor himself came to her home. They came out to the snowy bank of the Bug. Igor, having raised the collar of his autumn coat from the wind, hunched over slightly and, while talking, did not turn his face to her.
- The people you are looking for agree to give you a job. Here is a labor exchange form with a stamp. It needs to be copied. You seemed to be great at drawing at school...
-Who are these people? When do you need it? - she perked up.
He ignored the first question.
- When you have time.
- Tomorrow.
She sat all night over the seal. And the next day, Igor Voitsekhovsky, with a small package in his pocket that Lyalya gave him, hurried to Deputatskaya Street.
Here, next to Kotsyubinsky’s house, behind a small front garden there was a library building named after N.K. Krupskaya. It was headed by Ivan Vasilyevich Bevz, who was left by the regional party committee for underground work.
Ivan Vasilyevich greeted Igor, as always, with a soft smile. Having said hello, Igor undressed, sat down at the table, and both bent over the form with the seal Lyalya had forged. They examined it for a long time, meticulously, comparing it with the original.
- And you know, for the first time and for such a period of time it’s not bad. Such a document cannot be called “iron”, but if necessary, it can be presented to patrols or policemen at night.
“I knew that she was stubborn,” said Igor, “I was only embarrassed by her ardor; it can be so difficult in the underground.”
Ivan Vasilyevich laughed.
- Tell you what, give her some leaflets. If she has excess energy, let her work at night. And ask what tools and materials are needed so that we can properly set up this business. So that any stamp can be quickly made. We will need certificates of exemption from theft to Germany, passes, documents for prisoners... maybe even requirements and invoices for receiving food. A lot of documents will be required. Let him draw, draw, give the dimensions of the tools. And we will make...
A library employee appeared on the threshold, looked into the office and immediately closed the door again.
“It’s time for you,” said Ivan Vasilyevich, “go through this door...
Under the guise of some forms, the underground managed to print a large batch of leaflets in the printing house of the pro-fascist newspaper “Vinnitski Visti”. Igor brought some of them to Lyala.
She put a jar of glue, a brush, and a pack of leaflets into her bag and carefully, trying not to wake up her mother and aunt, left the house. It will be dawn soon. As always in spring, before dawn there was a particularly pungent smell of birch sap, melted snow and the faintest hint of wet earth. Lyalya ran through the deserted streets.
She stopped, straightened her stocking, looked around and in one motion stuck the piece of paper on the lamppost near the store. Immediately, as if the wind carried her further down the street. Lyalya chose places that were crowded during the day. She experienced an eerie and joyful feeling when she pasted leaflets on the poster board near the cinema, on the doors of the store, on the stone pillar at the entrance to the park...
She came running home joyful, radiant, feeling strong and needed for the first time during the months of occupation.
A few days later they brought her a stack of passports, into which she had to paste other photographs and put the appropriate stamps. As soon as she got a job, Lyalya locked herself in her room, covered the window with a blanket and worked, forgetting to eat, without straightening up. Someone else, having received these documents, freed prisoners from concentration camps, hired the right people on the railroad, and handed over passes to the partisans. It personified a carefully hidden laboratory where any document could be ordered (through Igor).
The underground fighters themselves knew very little about how much trouble they were causing the fascists. After all, from Vinnitsa the Germans wanted to make a “Kleiner Berlin” - a small Berlin. For Hitler, a headquarters was hastily built on the Eastern Front a few kilometers from Vinnitsa.
But, according to the Nazis themselves, in the area of the Werewolf facility they registered 1,340 acts of resistance by Soviet people! Not a single day did they live in peace; not a single day did Soviet Vinnitsa feel like little Berlin.
Hundreds of underground workers were shot, tortured in concentration camps and prisons, entire groups died, about which we know very little. But every year more and more documents of their heroic struggle are found.
The underground members were divided into fives; for the purpose of secrecy, there was no direct communication between the fives. But Lyalya, due to her profession as an underground passport officer, knew many people by name. She was increasingly used as a liaison. Together with Vaso Osikishvili, she established work among prisoners of war.
They were brought to work in the city without strict security. A dozen prisoners - one sentry. They cleared away the ruins and cleared the roads. It was almost impossible to escape here. Noticing the absence of one, the guard would raise the alarm, a block or an entire area would be cordoned off within a few minutes. And where in the city can a prisoner without documents, in tattered concentration camp uniforms, go? But it was possible to escape from the sight of the sentry for a few minutes.
Vaso took advantage of this. Standing to the side, this was not the first time he had a conversation with a prisoner of war - also a Georgian. Vaso gave instructions, listened to his comrade’s report on the work done in the camp and was dissatisfied. In his opinion, his comrade has already lost many days, and has still done so little. Any day he could be transferred to work in another place, and the connection would be severed. Vaso got angry.
- Take off your clothes! - he said. - Take off your clothes! Well, what are you looking at? Wear mine! I'll wear yours. I'll go to camp myself!
This desperate decision, by the way, was based on a subtle calculation. For a German, all Georgians, or most of them, look the same. The sentry did not notice the change. He took the dark, ragged man out of the camp and led the dark, ragged man into the camp (among others). Comrade Vaso left in his clothes, with his documents, to the address indicated by Vaso.
Within three days, Osikishvili prepared a group in the camp, arranged an escape, and Lyalya Ratushnaya escorted all those who fled to the partisan detachment.
And the Vinnitsa underground grew. Some went into the forests, others just appeared in the city and groped for connections. There was an influx of new people into the organization all the time.
But there was also danger in this. Often, wittingly or unwittingly, one had to neglect secrecy.
On July 16, 1942, Butenko and Voitsekhovsky were arrested. The next day they came for Lyalya. But they didn’t find her at home. Her mother, Natalya Stepanovna, says that when she saw a car and a soldier drive up to the house, she grabbed her daughter’s briefcase and shoved it far into the stove, right up to the chimney.
This decided a lot. There was a “camping workshop” in an old student’s briefcase. All the tools for forging seals, colored ink, ink were kept there, there were always three to five different forms, sometimes with the signatures of big bosses prepared by Lyalya...
Lyalya was arrested two hours later. She did not know what they would charge her with and was at a loss. At the Gestapo she was placed opposite Hauptmann. He, after a long, painful pause, said:
- Tell me!
Lyalya looked at him calmly and, without thinking, answered at that very second:
- Ask!
Hauptmann, seeing that his psychological pause had absolutely no effect, jumped up angrily:
- Tell us about your underground work, about your accomplices.
What should she be afraid of now? There was nothing scarier than this room. Here, many could only dream of death. Lyalya also jerked up from her chair and shouted:
-Are you crazy?! What accomplices? I don't understand!
She nervously walked to the window, turned, walked to the door... Hauptmann looked in amazement at her, walking in front of his nose, and his face was filled with blood.
- Sit down! - he barked.
She was pushed painfully in the side and forced to sit down.
-You don’t know how to behave in the Gestapo?
- How do I know this?
Finally, Hauptmann took out from the table... her own passport. Lyalya instantly understood everything. She knew about the arrest of Butenko and Voitsekhovsky. Namely, it was to them that she handed over a stack of passports that she had corrected for escaped prisoners of war. I checked the stamps and signatures against my own passport and... accidentally gave it away with the others. “So, during the arrest, one of them found my passport. If only this were all they had against me!”
- Ah, Mr. Hauptmann, forgive me! Three days ago I lost my passport and still haven’t reported it. I kept thinking that I would find him...
And arrests continued in the city. Interrogations were conducted around the clock. Ratushnaya was also called several times. She was brutally tortured. But every time, not forgetting to straighten her hair over her blue face, she was sincerely perplexed and indignant: “What do you want from me? Take a fine for losing your passport!” She was confronted with Igor and Vanya Butenko. Vanya Butenko, as Lyalya learned later, stated during interrogation that he found her passport on the street.
Lyalya was thrown into prison. Then, a few months later, having gone through all the horrors of the fascist dungeons and breaking free, she told her mother about everything. This story left deep, never-healing scars in the mother’s heart. And today, talking about those days, Natalya Stepanovna worries just as she worried a quarter of a century ago...
Lyalya Ratushnaya was transferred to a concentration camp in Gnivan. The prisoners there were doomed to slowly die from cold and hunger. In one of her letters to her mother, Lyalya told how the warden decided to force the women to wash the floor in the barracks. As a result, the small space between the bunks turned into a skating rink. So until spring there was ice in the corners.
Natalya Stepanovna went to Gnivan, brought parcels to her daughter, and for a bribe the guards allowed her to hand over a note. Lyalya tried as much as possible not to upset her mother. But in one of her letters there are these words:
“In Willy Bredel’s novel The Trial, the hero says: “Glory to everything that gives courage.” In this sense, we can say: glory to the Gnivan concentration camp!”
On the eve of May 1, 1943, for a large bribe, the guard Lyalya managed to be rescued from the concentration camp. Returning to Vinnitsa, she herself worried about making “iron” documents for herself and, together with her surviving comrades, feverishly set about restoring the destroyed underground center.
So, due to her sociable nature, circumstances, her involuntary awareness (by falsifying documents, she often knew for whom they were intended), Lyalya became connected. She either appeared in the forest in the Lenin partisan detachment, or organized a meeting of the leaders of disparate underground groups.
Ivan Vasilievich Bevz died in the dungeons of the Gestapo, Vanya Butenko and Igor Voitsekhovsky died, and dozens of others, known to Lyalya only by their first and last names, died. But the underground was active.
... In the morning, people walk through the city towards the bazaar with cans and knapsacks. A young woman is walking in the crowd with a five-liter can behind her and a large basket in front of her. The can and basket are tied with a rag. The woman stopped to adjust the rag on her shoulder, looked around and turned into an alley, pressing closer to the fences, and quickly walked somewhere to another street.
On Frunze Street she stopped at house number 8 and asked a woman standing on the porch:
- Tell me, does the woodworker Taras live here? They told me: Frunze, 8.
- Here. Only the street is now named after Mazepa.
The woman entered the yard. Near the barn, a man was hammering together a small door for a doghouse.
- Hello! Are you Taras the carpenter?
- Yes, I am Taras the carpenter, a valuable worker! - He raised his face and smiled welcomingly.
- A neighbor sent me to you.
- Uncle Sasha?
- He's the one. I asked you to give me a can of cottage cheese.
The carpenter - Taras Kuzmin - looked around, took the can and seriously asked:
- Didn’t you see your tail behind you?
- No. It seemed to go unnoticed.
Taras took the door from the doghouse, lifted the plywood casing (the door turned out to be double, a primitive typesetting cash register was prepared under the casing) and poured typographical font into it from the can.
- Thanks for the cottage cheese! - Taras smiled goodbye. - Come get some pies.
Lyalya grabbed her wallet and went. Now - really to the market.
So Lyalya transferred the main part of the font for the underground printing house “Ukraine”, which operated successfully until liberation.
The connections and acquaintances acquired both in prison, and in the old underground, and in the newly revived center, sometimes made Lyalya an indispensable liaison. She did not keep any records, but was a kind of information bureau for the underground.
In the last days of the occupation, Lyalya Ratushnaya did not spend the night at home. She would sometimes pop in for a minute during the day, and then only after making sure that there was nothing suspicious in the house or around.
New people in the underground center - Teterevsky, Azarashvili, Kochetov - loaded her with work. I had to be especially careful. And Soviet guns were already thundering under the city.
On March 18, she came to the medical library. The cleaning girl who lived here next to the library often let Lyalya in for the night, and they warmed themselves next to each other on a narrow bed.
The girl was happy about Lyalina’s arrival. Shells were exploding in the city, and there were street battles in Zamosc. She's the only one scared.
- The Krauts have escaped! - the girl spoke loudly, glad that she had someone to say this to.
- And I’m going to die of hunger now. “I won’t live to see our people arrive,” Lyalya joked.
- There is no bread! - the girl shrugged. - And from the beetroot, a little bit of potato...
- So we are rich! Now let's make borscht. Can you find salt?
At this time there was a knock on the door. The girl ran out into the corridor.
-Who's there? - Lyalya asked her.
“What kind of person are you asking for?” said the girl, entering the room.
Lyalya went out into the corridor. And at that time the girl heard two shots. Something fell. The front door slammed...
The girl rushed to the door and saw Lyalya lying on the threshold. There is no trace of the person who asked her.
Lyalya did not wait for ours to arrive. The next day she was buried with full military honors. The partisans who entered Vinnitsa with the Red Army carried her in their arms. It was spring, the sun was shining, harsh; with faces black from the wind, the partisans threw dream grass, snowdrops, which were still under the snow preparing the arrival of spring, and red twigs with fluffy earrings on Lyalya Ratushnaya’s grave.
The partisans were no strangers to burying their comrades. It seemed that granite blocks should have formed in their chests instead of hearts. But at the grave of Lyalya Ratushnaya, their black faces were especially stern. It's hard to bury a friend. It’s even harder to bury a brave, smart, experienced friend with a pure soul. It is even harder to bury him when there is spring and the jubilant joy of liberation all around. But it is especially difficult to know that there are still enemies walking the earth who could not allow this friend to live to see the bright day of liberation. She could give a true assessment to some of those who, after the war, began to dress in clothes that were not theirs...
... In the fall of 1966, in the city of Bar, Vinnitsa region, traitors whose hands were stained with the blood of patriots were tried. It is quite possible that among them was the one who shot at Lyalya Ratushnaya on March 18, 1944.
Heroines. Vol. 2. (Essays on women - Heroes of the Soviet Union). M., Politizdat, 1969.
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Larisa Stepanovna Ratushnaya(Lalya Ratushnaya) (January 9, 1921, Tyvrov, Vinnitsa region - March 18, 1944, Vinnitsa) - Soviet underground worker, Hero of the Soviet Union (1965, posthumously).
BiographyShe graduated from high school in 1938, and in 1939 she became a student at Moscow State University. Due to the attack by German troops, she was forced to interrupt her studies and complete nursing courses. In September 1941 - at the front, medical instructor of the Krasnopresnenskaya division of the people's militia.
In October 1941 she was captured. She escaped from captivity and walked to her hometown for about a month. In January 1942 she joined the Vinnitsa underground. She took an active part in the work of the underground resistance. She was engaged in campaigning among prisoners of war and fabricating false documents. Her ability to forge German seals and documents saved many people from death and deportation to Germany and allowed the underground to effectively conduct their activities.
On July 17, 1942, during one of the difficult moments in the life of the Vinnitsa underground (a series of arrests and executions), she was captured by the Germans. She was in the Gestapo, endured harsh interrogations and was sent to a concentration camp for the second time. He managed to free himself by bribing a Vinnytsia German official in April 1943.
On March 18, 1944, on the eve of the liberation of the city by Soviet troops, she was killed, probably by a traitor from among the underground. She could not see the victory for which she selflessly fought. Larisa Ratushnaya was buried with military honors in Vinnitsa.
Memory
One of the streets in the city of Vinnitsa and secondary school No. 6 were named in honor of Ratushnaya. A book was written about the work of the Vinnitsa underground. On the banks of the Southern Bug", based on real events (the author of the book is Dmitry Medvedev). The name of Ratushnaya is also borne by a motor ship of the Moskvich type, plying along the Southern Bug within the city of Vinnitsa.
downloadThis abstract is based on an article from Russian Wikipedia. Synchronization completed 07/14/11 04:20:46
Similar abstracts: Lyalya, Town Hall Pharmacy, Town Hall Square, Lyalya Black, New Lyalya, Lyalya Altin, Lyalya Bezhetskaya, Lyalya-Tulpan, Kuznetsova Lyalya.
Categories: Personalities in alphabetical order, Knights of the Order of Lenin, Heroes of the Soviet Union,
21:55:00 Lyalya Ratushnaya
The name of Lyalya Ratushnaya is known, if not to everyone, then to the absolute majority of Vinnytsia residents. But if you ask who she is, not everyone will be able to answer. They will say, well, there was such an underground woman during the war, a heroine. Not all of the youngsters will say this...
Born in 1921 in the town of Tyvrov, Vinnytsia region. In 1939, the girl entered Moscow State University at the Faculty of Mechanics and Mathematics. Just before the war, I wrote to my mother: “On June 23, I take my last exam, and I am a free Cossack for the whole summer. Meet me on the 27th.” The war destroyed all her plans. On the very first day, the girl submitted an application with a request to be sent to the front, but she was refused.
On September 6, 1941, L. Ratushnaya joined the Moscow militia - the 8th Krasnopresnenskaya Division, where a regiment of students, graduate students, and university professors was formed. Lyalya was a medical instructor.
In October 1941 she was wounded and captured, but in November she managed to escape. After that, she decided to return to Vinnitsa, where her mother lived. In the first days after returning home, I met Igor Voitsekhovsky, an underground friend from school. Igor recommended Larisa to the underground center.
So in January 1942, Lyalya Ratushnaya became a member of the Vinnitsa underground organization.
The assignments were different; more often she copied the seals and signatures of the heads of fascist institutions. The documents produced with the help of Ratushnaya were impeccable - the fascists believed them. Leaflets and fresh reports from the Sovinformburo began to appear in the city, and secret documents disappeared from the labor exchange.
Knowledge of the German language made it possible for Larisa to go to a Soviet prisoner of war camp. From there, with her help, several people were freed. Released prisoners of war were transported to partisan detachments that were part of the partisan unit named after. Lenin. The guide was also Larisa Ratushnaya.
It was mid-summer 1942. The Gestapo came to the candle making factory (Lala worked there). They spent a long time checking and searching for something. It was her turn. The Gestapo men suspected something. She was put in a cell... Interrogations, beatings, threats. Everything was there. But not a word about friends.
Later Larisa was transferred from prison to the Gnivan concentration camp. In April 1943, underground fighters freed the girl by bribing a German official. And again, conspiracy and underground work. She lives under the name Lukia Stepko.
The Underground Committee instructed her to obtain a printing font. The delivered font helped to equip an underground printing house, which was called “Ukraine”. The Gestapo went off their feet to find a trace of this printing house. It was hidden in a safe place so that it operated until Vinnitsa was completely liberated. During this time, about 70 thousand leaflets were printed and distributed.
Since May 1943, Larisa Ratushnaya has been an intelligence officer and liaison of the Vinnitsa city underground with the Lenin partisan unit. His command regularly received important information about the location of the fascist troops and their weapons.
“He would come before the morning,” the mother later recalled, “he would curl up on the floor and immediately fall asleep. He sleeps lightly. The slightest rustle wakes him up. He hears someone else's steps in the yard - and immediately goes to the attic. And he calms me down: “Don’t worry, mom, everything will be fine.”
On March 18, 1944, two days before the liberation of Vinnitsa, the hand of an unknown traitor cut short the life of the patriot Lyalya Ratushnaya.
For courage and heroism, Lyala (Larissa) Ratushnaya was posthumously awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union. Lyalya was buried near the Eternal Flame in the Kozitsky park in the center of Vinnitsa. A monument to Lyala Ratushnaya was erected in Vinnitsa. The Schoolchildren's Palace, where her museum was created, bears her name. The name of the Heroine was given to one of the streets of Vinnitsa and the ship. The name of L. S. Ratushnaya is engraved on the monument to partisans and underground fighters of Vinnytsia. Ukrainian poet Pyotr Perebeinos dedicated his poem to her.
It is difficult to overestimate the role played by underground fighters and partisans during the Great Patriotic War. Their actions and operations most often remained little known, and their victories were not always made public. This was often truly anonymous heroic work behind enemy lines. For us, even now, many of the exploits of our compatriots remain, unfortunately, unknown.
The Vinnitsa regional archive preserves information about the activities of the Vinnitsa resistance: underground cells under the leadership of Bevz, Levents, Teterevsky, Azarashvili sent 800 people to the partisans, handed over 570 rifles, 3 machine guns, 82 machine guns, released 1000 prisoners of war from concentration camps (f. 139, op. 5, art. 2, pp. 74, 80).
Larisa Stepanovna Ratushnaya, the heroine of our story, was also a participant in the Vinnitsa underground.
She was born on January 9, 1921 in the village (now an urban settlement) of Tyvrov, Vinnytsia region. Lyalya (that was her name in the family) received her secondary education in Vinnitsa. There she studied in the house of children's and youth creativity on the Sverdlovsk massif. During her school years she was awarded the “Voroshilov Shooter” badge. Lyalya loved to read. Her favorite book was the heroic novel “The Gadfly,” popular among Soviet youth of that time, by the American writer Ethel Lilian Voynich, which, as we remember, tells about the activities of the underground revolutionary organization “Young Italy” in the first half of the 19th century.
In May 1938, Larisa graduated from high school and got a job as a pioneer leader. A year later I entered Lomonosov Moscow State University, Faculty of Mechanics and Mathematics. During my student years I was interested in astronomy, history and literature.
The summer session of 1941 was going well for Lyalya Ratushnaya; she was going home to her mother for the holidays: “On June 23, I take the last exam, and I am a free Cossack for the whole summer. Meet me on the 27th...” However, instead of her, another letter arrived home in Vinnitsa: “Dear mom! All I had to do was pass physics, and I would be home. But I am a Komsomol member, and my place is at the front. I can shoot from a rifle, and from a machine gun too. If I have to descend by parachute, I can do that too. I can be useful at the front, but I still have time to finish my studies. When we beat Hitler, I’ll finish my studies.”
In the forefront of Komsomol youth, Larisa came to the military registration and enlistment office with the desire to defend the Motherland, but, like many of her peers, she found herself among the mobilized students guarding the university building. This was not enough for the Town Hall - it regularly donated blood for wounded soldiers and took part in the construction of defensive lines and anti-tank ditches. Later she entered nursing courses and in September 1941, finally went to the front as a medical instructor in the regiment of the 8th Krasnopresnenskaya militia division. The regiment was formed from volunteers - students, graduate students and university professors.
In her first battle, near Naro-Fominsk, L. Ratushnaya was captured.
Hero of the Soviet Union Larisa Stepanovna Ratushnaya
After a number of unsuccessful attempts, Lyalya managed to escape from captivity in November 1941. It took about two months to reach occupied Vinnitsa on foot. Residents of the villages and hamlets through which Larisa walked helped her survive the cold winter nights and did not allow her to die of hunger.
In her hometown, she managed to contact the underground movement through her schoolmate Igor Voitsekhovsky. Since Larisa was an excellent draftsman, she was assigned to forge and copy forms, seals, passports, and IDs. Coping well with the assigned tasks, Lyalya quickly became an indispensable member of the Vinnitsa underground organization, which was part of the Lenin partisan unit. The network of underground resistance organizations was led by the former head of the Krupskaya library, Ivan Vasilyevich Bevz. The documents, written by Ratushnaya’s hand, even withstood the thorough checks of Hitler’s specialists. Even experts could not distinguish the forged signatures.
The labors of the underground worker were not in vain - thanks to the documents executed by Ratushnaya’s hand, more than a dozen prisoners were freed, and they saved many people from inevitable death. And secret data began to disappear from fascist headquarters...
Soon Lyala Ratushnaya was assigned to carry out reconnaissance and propaganda among prisoners of war. Using her natural acting and outstanding communication skills, as well as her knowledge of the German language, Lyalya carried the necessary documents into prisoner of war camps, organized sabotage, and transferred stamps, leaflets and weapons to partisan cells. Among the partisans they called her Zvezdochka.
However, the life of the Vinnitsa underground fighters soon became much more complicated - the occupiers planned to turn Vinnitsa and the region into the so-called “Kleine Berlin”. Eight kilometers from Vinnitsa, between the villages of Strizhavka and Kolo-Mikhailovka, they launched the accelerated construction of Hitler’s Werewolf headquarters, which was a large-scale underground complex of several floors, only one of which was on the surface. The headquarters was supposed to include not only military, but also living quarters for senior officers and their families, and for Hitler personally.
Hitler among the officers. "Werewolf", July 1942
A special regime was established in the city. Local police and SS units carried out multiple raids, combing Vinnitsa and nearby villages, arresting and shooting anyone who seemed even the slightest bit suspicious.
In small Strizhavka alone, 227 people were detained, and in Vinnitsa, the Nazi occupiers created two prisoner of war camps, in which over 12 thousand people died. During mass raids, the invaders shot about 25 thousand townspeople, most of whom were Jews, and sent 13,400 young boys and girls to work in Germany. The Nazis also exterminated over 700 patients of the Vinnitsa psychoneurological hospital, and the premises of the hospital were turned into an officers' club. In total, during the years of occupation of the city, the Nazis destroyed more than 42 thousand civilians.
Occupation Nazi power in action. Vinnitsa, 1942
Nevertheless, Hitler's reports recorded 1,340 partisan actions near the Werwolf facility during its existence.
In 1942, Vinnytsia underground fighters organized and carried out a number of successful operations, thanks to which 26 prisoners were released, water supply stations were disabled, food warehouses and a working mill were destroyed, an SS officer was killed and Gebiets Commissioner Nolting was wounded.
July 1942 became especially difficult for the Vinnytsia underground movement - the occupiers took a number of punitive measures, followed by a series of operations to identify resistance among the local population.
Lyalya Ratushnaya was also among those arrested. She was taken to the Gestapo straight from her place of work - from a candle making factory. Even after many interrogations, the Nazis failed to learn anything from the courageous girl. She was sent to a concentration camp in the city of Gnivan. Sometimes, in exchange for bribes, the sentries handed over notes to the prisoner to freedom. Ratushnaya addressed one of them to her mother: “In Willy Bredel’s novel “The Test,” the hero says: “Glory to everything that gives courage.” In this sense, we can say: glory to the Gnivan concentration camp!”
Later, other underground members of this cell were arrested: I. Bevz, V. Butenko, I. Voitsekhovsky and others.
D. N. Medvedev in the book “On the Banks of the Southern Bug” published the text of Bevz’s note, found in the post-war years among materials about the Vinnitsa resistance movement: “Dear comrade, who replaced me in this cell! If you find this note, pass it to the cells. Maybe it will reach one of my friends to whom I want to send my farewell greetings. Don't lose heart, friends. We are winning, and we don’t mind dying for it. You, comrade, will also have a hard time. It’s hard to sit in solitary confinement; you need nerves of steel. But the devil is not so scary... If you see stains on the walls, don’t be scared. This is not blood, but ordinary paint. They painted the walls like that for you and me. That’s how it is with everything: you’ll figure it out and it won’t be so scary. The paper is running out. Hugs to you all, my friends. With communist greetings - Bevz.”
Hero of the Soviet Union Ivan Vasilievich Bevz
Despite heavy losses, the Vinnitsa underground workers continued to work. In April 1943, Lyalya Ratushnaya was released from Gnivan after paying a considerable bribe to a German official.
The responsible task again fell on Larisa’s shoulders - to become a link in the fragments of underground groups. For secrecy, the girl took the pseudonym Lukia Stepko. Under her leadership, it was possible to carry out a number of operations to transport weapons, transfer liberated prisoners of war to partisan detachments, equip and launch the secret printing house “Ukraine”, which operated successfully until the liberation of Vinnitsa and printed about 70 thousand leaflets with appeals to the population and reports of the Soviet Information Bureau.
Lyalya did not live only two days before the liberation of her native Vinnitsa. She was killed by a traitor on March 18, 1944 at the door of the Vinnitsa Medical Library, where she came to spend the night.
The young heroine was buried in Vinnitsa with military honors...
During the Great Patriotic War, the number of residents of Vinnitsa dropped from 100 thousand to 27 thousand people, out of 50 industrial enterprises only 10 survived, and 1880 residential buildings were completely destroyed. Through the heroic efforts of Vinnytsia residents and envoys from other regions of the vast country, by the end of 1948 the city's industry was almost completely restored.
Grave of L. S. Ratushnaya at the Vinnytsia Memorial of Glory
By the Decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR on May 8, 1965, Larisa Ratushnaya was posthumously awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union - for outstanding services, courage and heroism shown in the fight against the German occupiers during the Great Patriotic War.
Vinnitsa remembered the feat of Lyalya Ratushnaya - the Palace of Pioneers and Schoolchildren and secondary school No. 6 were named in her honor.
In 1979, a bronze bust of the heroine was installed in front of the Palace of Pioneers...
Monument to Lyala Ratushnaya in Vinnitsa. Sculptor V. I. Smarovoz, architect E. A. Ustinov
One of the streets in Vinnitsa is named in honor of the underground worker. A boat sailing along the Southern Bug River bears the name Lyalya Ratushnaya.
We certainly note that hundreds of Vinnitsa underground fighters were awarded state awards of the USSR. The title of Hero of the Soviet Union was posthumously awarded to the leader of the local underground, I.V. Bevzu. In total, during the war years, 118 natives of the Vinnitsa region were awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union.
And now does Vinnitsa remember the heroes of the Great Patriotic War?
