Italian partisan from the Don. The exhibition "The Contribution of Soviet Partisans to the Italian Resistance In Italian
On June 29, the Russian Federation celebrates the Day of Partisans and Underground Fighters. This memorable date was established in honor of the heroic Soviet partisans and members of the anti-fascist underground, who during the Great Patriotic War opposed the Nazi invaders in the occupied territories of the Soviet Union. But not only Soviet soil was defended from the Nazis by hero-partisans. Many Soviet soldiers during the Second World War fought against fascism outside the Soviet Union, primarily in the countries of Eastern and Western Europe. First of all, these were Soviet prisoners of war who managed to escape from Nazi concentration camps and join the ranks of the anti-fascist underground in those countries on whose territory they were in captivity.
Creation of the Resistance Movement in Italy
One of the most numerous and active partisan movements against fascism unfolded during the Second World War in Italy. In fact, anti-fascist resistance in Italy began in the 1920s, as soon as Benito Mussolini came to power and established a fascist dictatorship. The resistance was attended by communists, socialists, anarchists, and later - and representatives of the left currents in fascism (there were those who were dissatisfied with the alliance of Mussolini with Hitler). However, prior to the outbreak of World War II, anti-fascist resistance in Italy was fragmented and relatively successfully suppressed by the fascist militia and army. The situation changed with the outbreak of the war. The Resistance Movement was created as a result of combining the efforts of individual groups formed by representatives of the Italian political opposition, including the military.
It should be noted that the Italian partisan movement, after the overthrow of Mussolini and the occupation of Italy by the Nazis, received tremendous support from the Italian army. Italian troops, which had gone over to the side of the anti-fascist Italian government, were sent to the front against the Nazi army. Rome was defended by the divisions of the Italian army "Granatieri" and "Ariete", but later they were forced to withdraw. But it was from the warehouses of the Italian army that the partisan movement received most of its own. Representatives of the Communist Party, led by Luigi Longo, held talks with General Giacomo Carboni, who led the Italian military intelligence and at the same time commanded the mechanized corps of the Italian army that defended Rome from the advancing Nazi troops. General Carboni ordered the transfer of two trucks of weapons and ammunition to Luigi Longo, intended for the deployment of a partisan movement against the Nazi occupation. After the Italian troops defending Rome on September 9, 1943, ceased resistance and units of the Wehrmacht and SS entered the Italian capital, the only hope remained for the partisan movement.
On September 9, 1943, the Committee for National Liberation of Italy was created, which began to play the role of the formal leadership of the Italian anti-fascist partisan movement. The National Liberation Committee includes representatives of the Communist, Liberal, Socialist, Christian Democratic, Labor Democratic Parties and the Action Party. The leadership of the committee kept in touch with the command of the armed forces of the countries of the anti-Hitler coalition. In Northern Italy, occupied by Nazi troops, the Committee for the Liberation of Northern Italy was created, to which the partisan formations operating in the region were subordinate. The guerrilla movement consisted of three key military forces. The first, the Garibaldi brigades, was controlled by the Italian communists, the second, the Justice and Freedom organization, was under the control of the Action Party, and the third, the Matteotti brigades, was subordinate to the leadership of the Socialist Party. In addition, a small number of partisan groups operated on the territory of Italy, staffed by monarchists, anarchists and anti-fascists without pronounced political sympathies.
On November 25, 1943, the formation of the Garibaldi Brigades began under the control of the Communists. By April 1945, 575 Garibaldi brigades were operating in Italy, each of which consisted of about 40-50 partisans, united in 4-5 groups of two links of five people. The brigades were directly commanded by the leaders of the Italian Communist Party Luigi Longo and Pietro Secchia. The size of the Garibaldi brigades was approximately half of the total strength of the Italian partisan movement. On the account of the Garibaldi brigades created by the communists only in the period from mid-1944 to March 1945 - at least 6.5 thousand military operations and 5.5 thousand sabotage against the objects of the occupation infrastructure. The total number of fighters and commanders of the Garibaldi brigades by the end of April 1945 was at least 51 thousand people, united in 23 partisan divisions. Most of the divisions of the Garibaldi brigades were stationed in Piedmont, but partisans also operated in Liguria, Veneto, Emilia and Lombardy.
Russian "Garibaldians"
Many Soviet citizens who escaped from prisoner of war camps or otherwise ended up in Italy joined the ranks of the Italian Resistance. When the German POW camps were overcrowded, a significant part of the captured soldiers and officers of the Allied and Red Army troops were convoyed to camps in Italy. The total number of prisoners of war in Italy reached 80 thousand people, of which 20 thousand were military personnel and civilian prisoners of war from the Soviet Union. Soviet prisoners of war were placed in the north of Italy - in the industrial region of Milan, Turin and Genoa. Many of them were used as labor in the construction of fortifications on the Ligurian and Tyrrhenian coasts. Those of the prisoners of war who were lucky enough to escape joined the partisan detachments and underground organizations operating in cities and rural areas. Many Soviet servicemen, having broken through to the territory of active activity of the Italian partisans, joined the Garibaldi brigades. Thus, the Azerbaijani Ali Baba oglu Babaev (born 1910), who was in a prisoner of war camp in Udine, escaped from captivity with the help of the Italian communists and joined the Garibaldi brigades. As an officer of the Red Army, he was appointed to the position of the Chapaev battalion, created as part of the brigades. 
Vladimir Yakovlevich Pereladov (born 1918) served as the commander of an anti-tank battery in the Red Army, was captured. I tried to run three times, but failed. Finally, already on the territory of Italy, luck smiled at the Soviet officer. Pereladov fled with the help of the Italian communists and was taken to the province of Modena, where he joined the local partisans. As part of the Garibaldi brigades, Pereladov was appointed commander of the Russian shock battalion. Three hundred thousand lire was promised by the Italian occupation authorities for the capture of "Captain Russo", as the local residents called Vladimir Yakovlevich. Pereladov's detachment managed to inflict colossal damage to the Nazis - to destroy 350 vehicles with soldiers and cargo, blow up 121 bridges, capture at least 4,500 soldiers and officers of the Hitlerite army and Italian fascist formations. It was the Russian shock battalion that was one of the first to break into the city of Montefiorino, where the famous partisan republic was created. The national hero of Italy was Fyodor Andrianovich Poletaev (1909-1945) - private guard, artilleryman. Like his other comrades - Soviet soldiers who ended up on Italian soil, Poletaev was captured. Only in the summer of 1944, with the help of the Italian communists, he managed to escape from the camp located in the vicinity of Genoa. Escaping from captivity, Poletaev joined the battalion of Nino Franchi, which was part of the "Orest" brigade. Co-workers in the partisan detachment called Fyodor "Poetan". On February 2, 1945, during a battle in the Molniya Valley - Scrivia, Poletaev went on the attack and forced most of the Nazis to abandon their weapons. But one of the German soldiers shot at the brave partisan. Poletaev, wounded in the throat, died. After the war, he was buried in Genoa, and only in 1962 the feat of Fyodor Andrianovich was appreciated at its true worth in his homeland - Poletaev was posthumously awarded the high title of Hero of the Soviet Union.
The number of Soviet partisans who fought in Italy is estimated by modern historians at many thousands. In Tuscany alone, 1,600 Soviet citizens fought against the Nazis and local fascists, about 800 Soviet soldiers and officers fought partisans in the province of Emilia-Romagna, 700 people in Piedmont, 400 people in Liguria, 400 people in Lombardy, 700 people in Veneto. It was the large number of Soviet partisans that prompted the leadership of the Italian Resistance to start forming "Russian" companies and battalions as part of the Garibaldi brigades, although, of course, among the Soviet partisans were not only Russians, but also people of various nationalities of the Soviet Union. In the province of Novara, Fore Mosulishvili (1916-1944), a Soviet soldier, Georgian by nationality, performed his feat. Like many of his peers, with the outbreak of the war he was drafted into the active army, received the rank of sergeant-major, and was taken prisoner in the Baltic States. In Italy, he was lucky enough to escape from a prisoner of war camp. On December 3, 1944, the detachment, which included Mosulishvili, was surrounded. The Nazis blocked the partisans in the premises of the cheese dairy and repeatedly offered the anti-fascists to surrender. In the end, the Germans, seeing that the resistance of the partisans did not stop, promised to save the lives of the partisans if the platoon commander came to them first. However, the platoon commander did not dare to go out first and then at the entrance to the cheese dairy with the words "I am the commander!" Fore Mosulishvili appeared. He shouted “Long live the Soviet Union! Long live Free Italy! " and shot himself in the head (G. Bautdinov “We beat the fascists in Italy” // http://www.konkurs.senat.org/).
It is noteworthy that among the partisans who came out with weapons in their hands against the fascist dictatorship of Mussolini, and then against the Nazi troops who occupied Italy, there were also Russians who lived on Italian soil before the war. First of all, we are talking about white emigrants who, despite completely different political positions, found the courage to stand on the side of the communist Soviet Union against fascism.
Hero of the Soviet Union Petty Officer Christopher Nikolaevich Mosulishvili.
Comrade Chervonny
When the Civil War in Russia began, young Alexei Nikolaevich Fleischer (1902-1968) was a cadet - as befits a nobleman, a hereditary military man, whose father served in the Russian army with the rank of lieutenant colonel. Fleischers, Danes by origin, settled in the Russian Empire and received the nobility, after which many of them served the Russian Empire in the military field for two centuries. Young cadet Aleksey Fleischer, along with his other classmates, was evacuated by the Wrangelites from the Crimea. So he ended up in Europe - a seventeen-year-old youth, who yesterday was going to devote himself to military service for the glory of the Russian state. Like many other emigrants, Alexei Fleischer had to try himself in different professions in a foreign land. Initially settling in Bulgaria, he got a job as a molder in a brick factory, worked as a miner, then moved to Luxembourg, where he worked in a tannery. The lieutenant colonel's son, who was also to wear officer's shoulder straps, became an ordinary European proletarian. Having moved from Luxembourg to France, Fleischer got a job as an excavator driver, then - a cable car driver, was the driver of an Italian diplomat in Nice. Before the war, Aleksey Fleischer lived in Belgrade, where he worked as a driver for a Greek diplomatic mission. In 1941, when Italian troops invaded Yugoslavia, Alexei Fleischer, as a man of Russian origin, was detained and sent into exile in Italy at the beginning of 1942. There, under the supervision of the police, he was settled in one of the small villages, but soon managed to obtain a residence permit in Rome - albeit under the supervision of the Italian special services. In October 1942, Alexei Fleischer got a job as head waiter at the Siam (Thailand) embassy. Thailand fought on the side of Japan in World War II, so it had a diplomatic mission in Italy, and the staff of the Siamese embassy did not arouse any special suspicions among the special services.
After the Anglo-American troops landed on the Italian coast, the Siam embassy was evacuated to the north of Italy - to the zone of Nazi occupation. Alexei Fleischer remained to guard the empty building of the embassy in Rome. He turned it into the headquarters of the Italian anti-fascists, which was visited by many prominent figures of the local underground. Through the Italian underground, Fleischer got in touch with Soviet prisoners of war who were in Italy. The backbone of the partisan movement was made up of fugitives from prisoner of war camps, who acted with the active support of immigrants from Russia living in Rome and other Italian cities. Aleksey Fleischer, a nobleman and a White émigré, received the military nickname "Chervonny" from the Soviet partisans. Lieutenant Alexei Kolyaskin, who took part in the Italian partisan movement, recalled that Fleischer, "an honest and courageous man, helped his compatriots escape into the wild and supplied them with everything they needed, including weapons" (Quoted from: Prokhorov Yu. I. Cossacks for Russia // Siberian Cossack Journal (Novosibirsk). - 1996. - No. 3). Fleischer was directly assisted by other Russian émigrés, who formed a whole underground group. An important role in the Russian underground was played by Prince Sergei Obolensky, who operated under the cover of the "Committee for the Protection of Russian Prisoners of War." Prince Alexander Sumbatov arranged for Alexei Fleischer as head waiter at the Thai embassy. In addition to the princes Obolensky and Sumbatov, the Russian émigré underground organization included Ilya Tolstoy, artist Alexei Isupov, bricklayer Kuzma Zaitsev, Vera Dolgina, priests Dorofey Beschastny and Ilya Markov.
In October 1943, members of the Roman underground learned that a significant number of Soviet prisoners of war were in the vicinity of Rome, at the disposal of Hitler's troops. It was decided to launch active work to help fugitive prisoners of war, which consisted of sheltering the fugitives and transporting them to active partisan detachments, as well as providing food, clothing and weapons to the escaped Soviet prisoners of war. In July 1943, the Germans delivered 120 Soviet prisoners of war to the vicinity of Rome, where they were first used in the construction of facilities, and then distributed between industrial enterprises and construction sites in cities nearby to Rome. Seventy prisoners of war worked at the dismantling of the aircraft plant in Monterotondo, fifty people worked at the car repair plant in Bracciano. Then, in October 1943, the command of the Italian partisan forces operating in the Lazio region, it was decided to organize the escape of Soviet prisoners of war held in the vicinity of Rome. The direct organization of the escape was entrusted to a Roman group of Russian émigrés led by Alexei Fleischer. On October 24, 1943, Aleksey Fleischer, accompanied by two anti-fascists - Italians, went to Monterotondo, from where 14 prisoners of war fled on the same day. Among the first to escape from the camp was Lieutenant Alexei Kolyaskin, who later joined the partisans and took an active part in the armed anti-fascist struggle in Italy. In total, the Fleischer group rescued 186 Soviet soldiers and officers who were held captive in Italy. Many of them were sent to partisan detachments. 
Guerrilla units on the outskirts of Rome
In the region of Dzhenzano and Palestrina, a Russian partisan detachment was created, staffed by fugitive prisoners of war. It was commanded by Lieutenant Alexey Kolyaskin. Two Russian partisan detachments operated in the Monterotondo area. The command of both detachments was carried out by Anatoly Mikhailovich Tarasenko - an amazing person, a Siberian. Before the war, Tarasenko lived in the Irkutsk region, in the Tanguy region, where he was engaged in a completely peaceful business - trade. It is unlikely that the Irkutsk seller Anatoly could imagine his future as the commander of a partisan detachment in a distant Italian land even in a dream. In the summer of 1941, Anatoly's brother Vladimir Tarasenko was killed in the battles near Leningrad. Anatoly went to the front, served in the artillery, was wounded. In June 1942 Lance corporal Tarasenko, having received a shell shock, was taken prisoner. At first he was in a prisoner of war camp on the territory of Estonia, and in September 1943 he was convoyed, along with other comrades in misfortune, to Italy. There he escaped from the camp, joining the partisans. Another Russian partisan detachment was formed in the area of Ottavia and Monte Mario. In Rome, there was a separate underground Youth Squad. It was headed by Petr Stepanovich Konopelko.
Like Tarasenko, Pyotr Stepanovich Konopelko was a Siberian. He was in a POW camp guarded by Italian soldiers. Together with Soviet soldiers, captured French, Belgian and Czech soldiers were held here. Together with his comrade Anatoly Kurnosov, Konopelko tried to escape from the camp, but was caught. Kurnosov and Konopelko were placed in a Roman prison, and then transported back to a prisoner of war camp. There, a certain D "Amiko, a local resident who was a member of an underground anti-fascist group, contacted them. His wife was Russian by nationality, and D" Amiko himself lived for some time in Leningrad. Soon Konopelko and Kurnosov fled from the POW camp. They hid at Fleischer's - on the territory of the former Thai embassy. Petr Konopelko was appointed commander of the "Youth Detachment". Konopelko moved around Rome, posing as the deaf-mute Italian Giovanni Beneditto. He supervised the transfer of escaped Soviet prisoners of war to mountain areas - to partisan detachments operating there, or hid the fugitives in the abandoned Thai embassy. Soon, new members of the underground appeared on the territory of the embassy - sisters Tamara and Lyudmila Georgievsky, Pyotr Mezheritsky, Nikolai Khvatov. The Germans took the Georgievsky sisters to work from their native Gorlovka, but the girls managed to escape and join the partisan detachment as messengers. Fleischer himself sometimes donned the uniform of a German officer and moved around Rome for reconnaissance purposes. He did not arouse suspicion among the Nazi patrols, since he spoke excellent German. Italian patriots, professor, doctor of medicine Oscaro di Fonzo, captain Andreano Tanni, doctor Loris Gasperi, cabinetmaker Luigi de Zorzi and many other wonderful people of all ages and professions, stood shoulder to shoulder with the Soviet underground workers operating in Rome. Luigi de Zorzi was Fleischer's direct assistant and carried out the most important assignments of the underground organization.
Professor Oscaro di Fonzo organized an underground hospital for the treatment of partisans, housed in the small Catholic church of San Giuseppe. Another point of dislocation of the underground was the basement of the bar that belonged to Aldo Farabullini and his wife Idrana Montagna. In Ottavia, one of the closest suburbs of Rome, a safe house also appeared, which was used by the Fleischeraites. She was supported by the Sabatino Leoni family. The wife of the landlord, Maddalena Rufo, was nicknamed "Mother Angelina". This woman was distinguished by an enviable composure. She managed to hide the underground even when, by decision of the German commandant's office, several Nazi officers were housed on the second floor of the house. The underground workers lived on the first floor, and the Nazis lived on the second. And it was the merit of the owners of the house that the paths of the inhabitants of the dwelling did not cross and the stay of the underground workers was kept secret until the departure of the German officers to the next place of deployment. The peasant population of the surrounding villages provided great assistance to the Soviet underground fighters, who provided the partisans' needs for food and shelter. Eight Italians, who sheltered escaped Soviet prisoners of war and later accommodated underground fighters, after the end of World War II were awarded the high state award of the USSR - the Order of the Patriotic War.
Did not give up and did not give up
Soviet partisans and underground fighters operating in the vicinity of Rome were engaged in a usual business for partisans of all countries and times - they destroyed the enemy's manpower, attacking patrols and individual soldiers and officers, blew up communications, damaged the property and transport of the Nazis. Naturally, the Gestapo knocked off its feet in search of unknown saboteurs who caused serious damage to the Nazi formations stationed in the Rome district. On suspicion of assisting the partisans, Hitler's punishers arrested many local residents. Among them was 19-year-old Maria Pizzi, a resident of Monterotondo. In her house, the partisans always found shelter and help. Of course, this could not last long - in the end, a traitor from among the local collaborators "handed over" Maria Pizzi to the Nazis. The girl was arrested. However, even under severe torture, Maria did not report anything about the activities of the Soviet partisans. In the summer of 1944, two months after her release, Maria Pizzi died - in the dungeons of the Gestapo she contracted tuberculosis. The informers also surrendered Mario Pinchi, a Palestinian resident who helped the Soviet partisans. At the end of March 1944, the brave anti-fascist was arrested. Together with Mario, the Germans captured his sisters and brothers. Five representatives of the Pinchi family were taken to a cheese dairy, where they were brutally murdered along with six other arrested Palestinians. The bodies of the killed anti-fascists were displayed and hung for 24 hours in the central square of Palestrina. The lawyer Aldo Finzi, who had previously worked in the Roman underground, but then moved to his mansion in Palestrina, was also extradited to the Germans. In February 1944, the Germans set up their headquarters in the mansion of the lawyer Finzi. For the underground, this was a wonderful gift, since the lawyer was able to find out almost all the plans of action of the German unit, information about which he passed on to the command of the local partisan detachment. However, the informers soon handed over Finzi's lawyer to Hitler's Gestapo. Aldo Finzi was arrested and brutally murdered on March 24, 1944 in the Ardeatina caves.
Often the partisans went, literally, on the verge of death. So, one evening Anatoly Tarasenko himself arrived in Monterotondo - the commander of partisan detachments, a prominent figure in the anti-fascist movement. He was supposed to meet with Francesco de Zuccori, the secretary of the local organization of the Italian Communist Party. Tarasenko spent the night at the house of a local resident Domenico de Battisti, but when he was about to leave in the morning, he found that a German army unit was camped next to the house. Amelia de Battisti, the wife of the owner of the house, quickly helped Tarasenko change into her husband's clothes, after which she gave her three-year-old son in her arms. Disguised as an Italian - the owner of the house, Tarasenko went out into the yard. The child kept repeating "papa" in Italian, which convinced the Nazis that they were the master of the house and the father of the family. So the partisan commander managed to avoid death and escape from the territory occupied by Nazi soldiers.
However, fate was not always so supportive of the Soviet partisans. So, on the night of January 28-29, 1944, Soviet partisans arrived in Palestrina, among whom were Vasily Skorokhodov (pictured), Nikolai Demyaschenko and Anatoly Kurepin. They were met by local Italian anti-fascists - communists Enrico Gianneti, Francesco Zbardella, Lucio and Iñazio Lena. Soviet partisans were housed in one of the houses, equipped with machine guns and hand grenades. The partisans were tasked with controlling the Galicano - Poli highway. In Palestrina, the Soviet partisans managed to live for more than a month before they clashed with the Nazis. On the morning of March 9, 1944, Vasily Skorokhodov, Anatoly Kurepin and Nikolai Demyaschenko were walking along the road to Galicano. Their movement from behind was covered by Pyotr Ilinykh and Alexander Skorokhodov. Near the village of Fontanaone, the partisans tried to stop a fascist patrol to check documents. Vasily Skorokhodov opened fire with a pistol, killing a fascist officer and two more patrolmen. However, other fascists who returned fire managed to mortally wound Vasily Skorokhodov and Nikolai Demyaschenko. Anatoly Kurepin was killed, and Pyotr Ilinykh and Alexander Skorokhodov, firing back, were able to escape. However, comrades were already in a hurry to help the partisans. In a shootout, they managed to recapture the bodies of three dead heroes from the Nazis and carry them off the road. 41-year-old Vasily Skorokhodov, 37-year-old Nikolai Demyaschenko and 24-year-old Anatoly Kurepin forever found peace on Italian soil - their graves are still in a small cemetery in the city of Palestrina, 38 kilometers from the Italian capital.
Murder in the Ardeatine Caves
The spring of 1944 was accompanied by very stubborn attempts by the Nazi occupiers to crack down on the partisan movement in the vicinity of the Italian capital. On March 23, 1944, in the afternoon, a unit of the 11th company of the 3rd battalion of the SS "Bozen" police regiment, stationed in Rome, moved along Rue Rasella. Suddenly there was an explosion of terrible power. As a result of the partisan action, the anti-fascists managed to destroy thirty-three Nazis, 67 policemen were wounded. The attack was the work of partisans from the Fighting Patriotic Group, led by Rosario Bentivegna. The daring attack of the partisans on the German unit was reported to Berlin - to Adolf Hitler himself. The enraged Fuhrer ordered the most brutal methods to take revenge on the partisans, to intimidate the local population. The German command received a terrible order - to blow up all residential quarters in the area of Razella Street, and shoot twenty Italians for each killed German. Even the veteran field marshal Albert Kesselring, who commanded Hitler's troops in Italy, the order of Adolf Hitler seemed excessively cruel. Kesselring did not blow up residential areas, and for each SS man who died, he decided to shoot only ten Italians. The direct executor of the order for the execution of the Italians was SS Obersturmbannfuehrer Herbert Kappler, the head of the Roman Gestapo, assisted by Rome's police chief Pietro Caruso. In the shortest possible time, a list of 280 people was formed. It included inmates of the Roman prison serving long sentences, as well as those arrested for subversive activities.
Nevertheless, it was required to recruit 50 more people - so that for each of the 33 killed German policemen it turns out to be ten Italians. Therefore, Kappler also arrested ordinary residents of the Italian capital. As modern historians note, the inhabitants of Rome, captured by the Gestapo and doomed to death, represented a real social cross-section of the entire Italian society of that time. Among them were representatives of aristocratic families, and proletarians, and intellectuals - philosophers, doctors, lawyers, and inhabitants of the Jewish quarters of Rome. The age of those arrested was also very different - from 14 to 74 years. All those arrested were placed in a prison on rue Tasso, which was run by the Nazis. Meanwhile, the command of the Italian Resistance learned about the plans of the impending terrible reprisals. It was decided to prepare an attack on the prison and release by force all those arrested. However, when the British and American staff officers who were in contact with the leadership of the National Liberation Committee learned about the plan, they opposed it as being overly tough. In the opinion of the Americans and the British, the attack on the prison could have caused even more brutal repression by the Nazis. As a result, the release of the prisoners of the prison on Tasso Street was thwarted. The Nazis took 335 people to the Ardeatinskie caves. The arrested were divided into groups of five people each, after which they were put on their knees, their hands tied behind their backs, and shot. Then the corpses of the patriots were dumped in the Ardeatinsky caves, after which the Nazis blew up the caves with corpuscles.
Only in May 1944, the relatives of the victims, secretly making their way to the caves, brought fresh flowers there. But only after the liberation of the Italian capital on June 4, 1944, the caves were cleared. The corpses of the heroes of the Italian Resistance were identified, after which they were buried with honors. Among the antifascists who died in the Ardeatinskiye caves was a Soviet man buried under the name "Alessio Kulishkin" - as the Italian partisans called Alexei Kubyshkin, a twenty-three-year-old young man born in the small Ural town of Berezovsky. However, in fact, it was not Kubyshkin who died in the Ardeatinsky caves, but an unknown Soviet partisan. Alexei Kubyshkin and his comrade Nikolai Ostapenko, with the help of an anti-fascist Italian prison guard Angelo Sperri, were transferred to a construction detachment and soon escaped from prison. After the war, Alexey Kubyshkin returned to his native Urals.
The head of the Roman police Pietro Caruso, who directly organized the murder of the arrested anti-fascists in the Ardeatina caves, was sentenced to death after the war. At the same time, the guards barely managed to repulse the policeman from the crowd of indignant Romans who were eager to lynch the punisher and drown him in the Tiber. Herbert Kappler, who was in charge of the Roman Gestapo, was arrested after the war and sentenced by an Italian tribunal to life imprisonment. In 1975, 68-year-old Kappler, who was held in an Italian prison, was diagnosed with cancer. Since that time, his detention regime has been greatly facilitated, in particular, his wife has been given unhindered access to the prison. In August 1977, Kappler's wife took Kappler out of prison in a suitcase (the ex-Gestapo soldier who was dying of cancer then weighed 47 kilograms). Several months later, in February 1978, Kappler passed away. Field Marshal Albert Kesselring was more fortunate. In 1947 he was sentenced to death by an English tribunal, but later the sentence was commuted to life imprisonment, and in 1952 the field marshal was released for health reasons. He died only in 1960, at the age of 74, remaining until his death a staunch enemy of the Soviet Union and adhering to the idea of the need for a new "crusade" of the West against the Soviet state. The last participant in the execution in the Ardeatine Caves, Erich Priebke, was already extradited to Italy in our time and died at the age of 100 in 2013 while under house arrest. Until the mid-1990s. Erich Priebke, like many other Nazi war criminals, was hiding in Latin America - on the territory of Argentina.
The long-awaited liberation of Italy
In the early summer of 1944, the activities of Soviet partisans in the vicinity of Rome intensified. The leadership of the Italian Resistance instructed Alexei Fleischer to create a joint forces of Soviet partisans, which were formed on the basis of the detachments of Kolyaskin and Tarasenko. The bulk of the Soviet partisans concentrated in the Monterotondo area, where on June 6, 1944, they entered into battle with Nazi units retreating from Monterotondo. The partisans attacked the convoy of German cars with machine-gun fire and. Two tanks were disabled, more than one hundred German soldiers were killed and 250 taken prisoner. The city of Monterotondo was liberated by a detachment of Soviet partisans who hoisted a tricolor Italian flag over the city government building. After the liberation of Monterotondo, the partisans returned to Rome. At a meeting of the detachments, it was decided to make a combat red banner that would demonstrate the national and ideological affiliation of the brave warriors. However, in the belligerent Rome, there was no matter on the red banner.
Therefore, resourceful partisans used the national flag of Thailand to make the banner. A white elephant was repulsed from the red cloth of the Siamese flag, and a hammer and sickle and a star were sewn in its place. It was this red banner of "Thai origin" that was one of the first to hover over the liberated Italian capital. After the liberation of Rome, many Soviet partisans continued to fight in other regions of Italy.
When representatives of the Soviet government arrived in Rome, Alexei Nikolaevich Fleischer handed them 180 Soviet citizens freed from captivity. Most of the former prisoners of war, returning to the Soviet Union, asked to join the army and continued to smash the Nazis for another year in Eastern Europe. Aleksey Nikolaevich Fleischer himself returned to the Soviet Union after the war and settled in Tashkent. He worked as a cartographer, then retired - in general, he led the lifestyle of the most ordinary Soviet person, in which nothing reminded of a glorious military past and an interesting but complex biography.
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On March 20, 2019, an exhibition was opened dedicated to a little-known page in the history of Italy - the participation of Soviet partisans in the Italian Resistance.
The opening of the exposition was attended by the Chairman of the RIO and the Chairman of the Board of Trustees, Minister of Education of the Russian Federation Olga Vasilyeva.
The exhibition tells about the participation of Soviet citizens in the Italian Resistance, the exposition presents photographs from their personal archives, information about the most famous partisan detachments. All information has been collected for ten years by Massimo Eckli - the author of the exhibition at the RIO House, philologist, teacher of the Italian language at the Russian State Library. As a child, he was struck by the story of his grandfather about an unknown Russian soldier buried in the San Zeno di Montagna cemetery near Verona. The grave of a Soviet member of the Italian Resistance was looked after by the inhabitants of the village, near which the cemetery was located. Growing up, Mr. Ackley did not forget the story that struck him and began to study this topic. As a result of his many years of work, it was possible to return the names of many buried heroes, who were considered missing in their homeland. In addition, he published a book "Soviet Partisans in Italy", which tells about the participation of Soviet citizens in Italian partisan brigades. The photographs and data collected by him are exhibited at an exhibition in the RIO House. This information makes it possible to understand that in Italy they still remember the exploits of the Soviet partisans in the name of the liberation of the republic.
The opening ceremony was also attended by First Class Counselor of the Italian Embassy in Russia Walter Ferrara, Director of the Italian Institute of Culture in Moscow Olga Strada, Honorary President of the Cultural Association "Russian World" of the city of Turin Anna Roberti, member of the National Association of Italian Partisans (ANPI) Floriano Pigny.
Italian Resistance (Resistenza italiana)
The Italian Resistance during the Second World War (Resistenza italiana) was an association of disparate armed groups formed on the basis of political parties banned by the fascist regime. In the summer of 1943, after the landing of Anglo-American troops on the southern coast of Italy, Benito Mussolini was removed from power, but Nazi Germany did not allow her former ally to leave the war. Having occupied the central and northern regions of the country, German troops organized a puppet Italian Social Republic in the occupied territory.
On September 9, 1943, on the initiative of the Italian Communist Party, the National Liberation Committee was created to coordinate the activities of all political forces in the fight against fascism. The guerrilla movement included the Garibaldi Brigades, controlled by the Communists, the Justice and Freedom group, which focuses on the Party of Action, the Matteotti brigades under the auspices of the Socialist Party and Fiamme Verdi, the Catholic Resistance units. In addition, guerrilla groups operated in Italy, staffed by monarchists, anarchists and anti-fascists without expressed political sympathies. Among the partisans were about five thousand former Soviet prisoners of war, 429 of them died a heroic death in battles on Italian soil.
Contribution of Soviet partisans to the Italian Resistance
After the prisoner of war camps in Germany were overcrowded, the Nazi leadership decided to redirect a significant part of the prisoners of the labor camps to Italy. Of the 80 thousand prisoners from all over Europe, about 20 thousand were Red Army soldiers and deported citizens of the USSR. The first Soviet prisoners of war arrived in Northern Italy in January - April 1942. They were used in fortification works along the coast of the Ligurian and Tyrrhenian Seas, as well as in the construction of air defense facilities in Milan, Turin and Genoa. Many of them, having escaped from captivity, made their way into partisan detachments.
Together with Italian patriots, the natives of the Soviet republics took part in hostilities in Tuscany, Emilia Romania, Piedmont, Veneto, Liguria and other regions. Fedor Poletaev, Fore Mosulishvili, Nikolay Buyanov and Daniil Avdeev were awarded the highest award of the Italian Republic - the Gold Medal "For Military Valor". Another seven of their comrades were awarded Silver and Bronze medals.
In addition, on this day in the House of RIO the monument "Motherland", dedicated to the eponymous female partisan detachment. - the only female unit that fought in France in the ranks of the Resistance during the Second World War.
On March 20, 2019, an exhibition was opened at the House of the Russian Historical Society, dedicated to a little-known page in the history of Italy - the participation of Soviet partisans in the Italian Resistance. The opening of the exposition was attended by RIO Chairman Sergei Naryshkin and Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the Fatherland History Foundation, Minister of Education of the Russian Federation Olga Vasilyeva.
Results of the Second World War. Conclusions of the defeated Specialists German Military
Guerrilla warfare in Italy
Guerrilla warfare in Italy
Even before Italy's withdrawal from the alliance with Germany, in circles close to Marshal Badoglio, some serious measures were taken to organize partisan warfare. Soon after Italy withdrew from the Axis on September 8, 1943, and the new head of government, Badoglio, called on the people to a partisan struggle, a partisan movement developed in certain regions of the country.
The backbone of the partisan detachments were Italian soldiers who deserted to the mountains or escaped from captivity. Subsequently, they were joined by a large number of civilian men and women. Initially, the leadership of the partisans tended to unite local detachments into very fragile “brigades”. A clearer organization took shape only in the last years of the war. The main command of the partisans was at the Allied headquarters in Italy. Allied liaison officers were assigned to the larger formations of the partisans.
The partisans provided themselves with food and clothing, confiscating them from the population. Later, supplies were delivered to them by the allies by air, as well as by submarines approaching unguarded sections of the coast. In contrast to the partisans in the Balkans, they were sufficiently provided with food. They did not experience a shortage of weapons, ammunition and explosives.
At first, the activities of the Italian partisans were not effective, but in the spring of 1944 they gained great importance, especially in Tuscany. Following the new call of Badoglio, made by him jointly with the British Field Marshal Alexander, the partisans brought the total number of their detachments in the summer of 1944 to about 100 thousand people. The sharp increase in the number could not but affect the effectiveness of the guerrilla's combat operations. However, for some reason in winter, the number of partisan raids dropped sharply. But in the spring of 1945, the partisans numbered about a quarter of a million people in their ranks. Now they moved on to solving problems that were of very great practical importance. It was only possible to hinder their actions by decisive measures of a military and political nature.
The Italian partisans fought especially cunningly and used the most shameless methods. In no other theater of operations were there, for example, cases of water poisoning in wells. Meanwhile, the partisans everywhere met with significant support from the population of the country.
As elsewhere, the German command was forced to resort to the usual countermeasures in such cases; this is explained by the essence of the partisan struggle and the struggle of the troops for their existence in especially difficult conditions. Field armies were supposed to fight partisans in the immediate vicinity of the front, as well as in the last sectors of the coastal defense, and in other cases this task was assigned to the senior police chief and the head of the SS service. According to the norms of the Hague Convention on the Waging of Land War, the Italian partisans were also outlawed.
It is still impossible to say anything definitively formulated about the essence of modern guerrilla warfare. This question is in historical development and has its own regularity, regardless of whether we regret it or not. There is no doubt that the guerrillas will never adhere to the norms of international law, because this is contrary to the essence of modern guerrilla warfare. Therefore, it is imperative to provide the soldier with broader powers and not to limit them, as provided for by the 4th Geneva Convention of 1949. However, even in this way it is impossible to find a satisfactory solution to this problem.
Even if we manage to achieve some definite results while studying this issue, we still have to do a lot in order to finally bring complete clarity to the legal norms of guerrilla warfare on an international scale. The ambiguity here can only add to the confusion. At the same time, one should first of all be remembered: the lack of clarity in the legal relation of this, although regrettable, but completely inevitable, a new type of popular struggle especially greatly increases the suffering of the civilian population. In case of war, the population will be crushed by two warring groups: partisans, on the one hand, and regular troops, on the other. We will all find ourselves in the position of an ostrich seeking salvation under its wing, if we do not jointly take the most serious measures to limit the forms of guerrilla warfare, and not on the basis of some abstract theory, but on the specific experience of the past war.
LITERATURE
Balhuis J. J., Onderdruking en verzet. Nederland in oorlogstjd, Bd. 1-3, Amsterdam. Meulenhoff, 1948-1952.
Fjord F., Norwegens totaler Kriegseinsatz. Europa Verlag, Zurich, 1944.
Michel H., Histoire de la Resistance 1940–1944. Presses Universitaires de France, 1950.
Rendu1ic L., Gekampf, gesiegt, geschlagen, Welsermuhe, Vowinckel, Heidelberg, 1952.
Strobel G. W., Die polnische Widerstandsbewegung seit 1939, Zeitrschrift "Osteuropa", 1952. H. 3.
Abetz O., Das offene Problem, Greven Verlag, Koln.
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RUSSIAN GUARANTEES IN ITALY DURING THE SECOND WORLD WAR
The purpose of my modest article is not to remind once again about the events that everyone knows well, having catastrophic proportions, but to revise them from a different point of view, namely the partisan one. Very little or absolutely nothing is known about partisan movements in the Rome-Berlin connection. There are 2 superstitions that must be recalled and must be uprooted forever; in the first case, they think of the partisan as a citizen who fights for the Motherland; in the second case, the victorious countries think that their army was the strongest, but about the partisan struggle they do not give the authority that it should have. Indeed, many SS POWs were foreigners, most of them from the Red Army and thus they were Soviet citizens. They were not immediately assigned to their final location, so they were sent to the distribution camps.
From there, some ended up in death camps, some could escape and go to the Italian partisan detachments, for example, the 63rd Garibaldi Brigade was renamed the 63rd Bolero Garibaldi Brigade, in which many Soviet citizens took part, such as Anatoly Makarovich Tarasov, who participated in the Garibaldi battalion "Matteotti" together with Alexander Kopilkov and Anton Melnichuk. Within this battalion, the three created the "Stalin" battalion, which included 1,500 Soviet citizens.
Fyodor Andrianovich Poletaev, who followed a different path, but with the same fate, was also taken into German captivity, deported to Germany, then to Italy, and was liberated by communist partisan detachments of the inhabitants of Genoa. After his release, he joined the Oreste Brigade of the Divisions Pinon Chicero, took part in many battles, died in Cantalupo in the Scrivia Valley and was buried in Genoa. For his heroism and courage, he was awarded the "Hero of the USSR" and "Order of Lenin" awards from the USSR, and from Italy he received a gold medal for military valor and a Garibaldi star posthumously.
These examples written above are the most famous; many Soviet citizens, like Avdeev and Poletaev, died on the battlefield, others like Tarasov (also awarded the Order of Lenin) returned to the USSR, sent into exile in Siberia and released under pressure from the National Association of Italian Partisans, or shot, or died in gulags.
All these people took part in the Second World War and wrote history with their sweat and their blood.
Documents about the sad events that took place in Italy during the Second World War were uncovered in the Palazzo Cesi in Rome in 1994, in the "closet of shame". Until now, the court has not yet decided what punishment to give to the perpetrators. "The shooting over the bridge at Casalecchio sul Renault" is one of these sad events carried out by the commander of the SS 16 panzergranadier division, Manfred Schmitt, and subordinate Paul Roche on 10/10/44.
The verdict of the military tribunal of Verona remained unpublished due to the absence of the defendant, who at that time became a US spy and disappeared without a trace.
Massimo Eckli and Elena Aleksandrovna Mikhailova.
New book by Mikhail Talalay
Mikhail Talalay. Russian participants in the Italian War of 1943-1945: partisans, Cossacks, legionnaires.
- M .: Staraya Basmannaya, 2015 .-- 418 p.
Ivan Tolstoy talks to the author of the book as part of the Above Barriers program on Radio Liberty on 12.04.2016.
http://www.svoboda.org/content/transcript/27673276.html
Ivan Tolstoy: Our program today is dedicated to a forgotten page in the history of World War II. Historian Mikhail Talalay reconstructed distant events in his research. His book, published by the Moscow publishing house Staraya Basmannaya, is called Russian Participants in the Italian War of 1943-1945: Partisans, Cossacks, Legionnaires. We are talking with the author. What do you mean by the words Italian War?
Mikhail Talalay: Yes, indeed, this is my own expression that I came up with, implemented for this book. It seemed convenient to me. The name should be aphoristic and expressive. Therefore - "Russian people and the Italian war." But there is a chronology - the war of 1943-1945. What happened during these years? For almost two years - from June 1943 to May 1945 - Italy served as a theater of operations. It is clear that this war was a fragment of the Second World War, but until now it does not have its own definite name, its sections were so different - both chronological and territorial. You can even talk about several wars.
The formal opening of a military theater in Italy can be considered June 11, 1943, when the Anglo-American allies captured the islands of Lampedusa and Pantileria south of Sicily. These islands, moreover, are closer to Africa than to Sicily, which we clearly see today, during the influx of migrants. On July 10, it was the turn of Sicily itself, where 150 thousand soldiers of the allied armies landed overnight. Therefore, the date June 11, 1943 can be considered the starting point of the Italian war. What did the allies call her? Very simple, technically - the Italian campaign. And at that moment the military struggle was very clear and distinct. Great Britain, the United States and other allies struck a direct blow at the enemy - fascist Italy. But then various events began to take place, which complicated the military picture on the Apennine Peninsula. After the fall or capture, occupation of Sicily, on the night of July 24-25, 1943, at a meeting of the Grand Fascist Council, the then head of Italy, Benito Mussolini, after the vote, was unexpectedly deposed and even arrested. King Victor Emmanuel III of Italy appointed Marshal Pietro Badoglio, a famous participant in the First World War, as the chief of the new government. Further events began to develop dramatically.
Let's remember, for example, one episode. On the night of August 23-24, near Rome, one of the pillars of the fascist regime, pilot Ettore Muti, was killed during arrest. Why am I emphasizing this fact? This date is considered by many historians to be the starting point of the civil war in Italy. This term is also not settled. Some deny it, others willingly and very fruitfully use it. But, nevertheless, military conflicts began to take the shape of a civil war that lasted until April 1945. September 8, 1943 - this date is very well known in Italy, here they say "before September 8" or "after September 8", understanding what they mean - the new head of government, Pietro Badoglio, suddenly announced on the radio about the armistice and the termination by Italy military action. However, no peace will come. On the contrary, more and more war was flaring up in the country. Germany moved to decisive countermeasures and its vendetta (we will use the Italian word) was not long in coming - both the northern and central parts of the country, including Rome, were quickly occupied by the Germans. With the corresponding repressions and mass deportations. They disarmed about 600,000 Italian soldiers, most of whom ended up in German concentration camps. So, the Germans are now fighting on the territory of Italy. They also summoned Mussolini from exile. This is Skorzeny's famous kidnapping. And, despite the apathy and lack of will of the former Duce (although, say, for Northern Italy he began to retain his title of leader and leader), they established a new, in fact, puppet republic, which was called the Italian Social Republic. It began to be called the Republic of Salo, after the capital in northern Italy, where Mussolini's residence was. Well, the capital is, let's say, administrative, nominal. At the same time, there was also the Kingdom of Italy, which was called the Kingdom of the South. After September 8, the king and Pietro Badoglio, the head of government, fled from Rome (shameful enough, this, in the future, served as the basis for the fall of the monarchy in Italy) to Apulia, to the south, to the city of Bari, where, under the auspices of the allies who arrived there, they established their the structures, too, in fact, are nominal, since, of course, the British and Americans commanded everything. And this Kingdom of the South on October 13 declared war on Germany. That is, Italy, a few months after the landing of the allies in Sicily, declared war on its former ally. And, of course, this caused the greatest anger and irritation in Berlin. Italian historiography officially considers this date the beginning of the War of Liberation - there is such an official term Guerra di Liberazzione. However, there is some doubtful moment in this term, because Mussolini, the head of the Italian Social Republic, also believed that he was fighting for the liberation of the Apennine Peninsula from the Anglo-American invaders and their henchmen, the traitor monarchists. At that moment, by the way, Mussolini began to express himself as an ardent Republican. So, in the fall of 1943, the country finally split into two warring parts, and at that moment in the northern half of the country, where the Germans actually commanded (and, nominally, there was the rule of Mussolini and his Social Republic), the Resistance movement began to flare up. Very heterogeneous, but united by the desire to end Mussolini and Hitler. It differed from the movements of the same name in other countries, for example, in France, in Belgium, where the enemy was exclusively a foreign invader. In Italy, the enemy was also the fascists of the Republic of Salo.
Thus, we see on the Apennine peninsula a whole series, a whole series of wars. And it began to flare up, as it was defined mainly by historians of the leftist trend, an anti-fascist people's war or a guerrilla war. And in this way I combined different military conflicts of different states, nations and within the Italian nation itself into one concept - the Italian war of 1943-45.
I must admit that of all my books on Russian-Italian relations, this one was the saddest and most dramatic. It was necessary, of course, because it was necessary to highlight this fragment of ties, relations, history between our two countries. In general, on the whole, Russian-Italian historical ties are a very blessed topic. Both nations consider themselves close to each other in character, experience mutual interest and attraction. The flow of holidaymakers and tourists who want to see the famous beauty of the Apennines and enjoy their climate does not dry up here. However, there were also military conflicts. The Italians themselves, as far as I calculated, came three times with weapons in their hands to our lands. First - as participants in the Napoleonic invasion, then - in the Crimean War, and then - together with Nazi Germany. The Russian contingents were here twice. Under the command of Suvorov as part of the Russian-Austrian anti-French coalition and during World War II. If the campaigns of Suvorov and the navigation of Ushakov, who operated in the Naples region, received a lot of attention, books were written, films were released, then much less was given to the presence and participation of Russian people in Italy during World War II. And this episode, very dramatic and bloody, I put in the center of my new book. Moreover, I decided to give a general panorama - not only a story about the partisans, but also about those who were on the other side of the front.
Judge for yourself. Statistics data. There were about 5 thousand Soviet partisans (here they were simply called Russians, therefore the title of my book - "Russian People and the Italian War"). Everyone agrees with this figure. Maybe more - probably some more names will be found, even unnamed, most likely already, in our case, missing, but still 5 thousand. On the other front line there were more than 30 thousand of them. They were Krasnovtsy, Cossacks, and Eastern legionnaires. And here the figure, I think, is probably much higher, because only about the Cossacks they say that there were about 30-40 thousand of them, plus we will add more than 10 thousand eastern legionnaires to them. Thus, we can talk about 30-40 thousand or more Russian people who ended up with Hitler and Mussolini. Many of the collaborators who came here, forced, in some cases, fled to the partisans, deserted their side or sabotaged their duties. Therefore, the situation was chaotic. The story of the partisans is more or less clear. Although in Soviet times, the prehistory was obscured, glossed over, the plots associated with their appearance remained undescribed and simply forgotten and silenced. How did these thousands and thousands of Russians and Soviet people end up in Italy? This is due to the already well-studied and described moment of captivity and the corresponding punishments of the Soviet state. Therefore, there was no mention of captivity and forced work for the Italian fascists or for the German Nazis. Most of the stories about the Russian partisans began with the fact that he was hijacked, was taken away and began to fight the partisans. Therefore, it was necessary to reconstruct this part, the original part, how these people got there, what they were doing here, in what conditions, the mechanisms of their movement from the German or fascist camp to the camp to the partisans. In my book, I began to use another term that is little known in our historiography, but it is very accurate. This is "Nazi fascism". In 1943, in fact, there was a fusion of Italian fascism and German Nazism. It began back in the 1920s, the rapprochement of these two, in fact, different ideologies, but starting in 1943, a definitive military-political and, in part, already an ideological alliance took shape. I will not delve into the difference between fascism and Nazism now, this is a very interesting topic, but I will immediately turn to the very term “Nazi fascism”. The fight was with this two-headed hydra.
I will note that in the Italian Resistance there were not only Russians among the foreigners, there were British, New Zealanders, Americans, but Russian participation had its own specific characteristics. Firstly, it was the most massive participation - more than 5 thousand people. Secondly, it was a very bright participation. The Russian partisans were the most reckless and courageous part of the Italian mixed detachments. The Italians themselves, the former partisans with whom I met, said that these people, as fighters, as wars, were a cut above us. They fought desperately. It is possible that there is also some eastern disregard for death, separation from the homeland, and, of course, the fact that the Russian partisans were among those who had already passed the crucible of war had an effect. These were former soldiers and officers of the Red Army, who already had training, who knew the behavior of the German rival and, thus, in many cases they were promoted to the fore, even becoming commanders of mixed partisan detachments. The second point is their ideological conviction. If among the Italian partisans there were often all sorts of vacillations (I repeat that at that time the war took on the character of a civil one and some kind of definition was needed), both Catholics and socialists, not only communists, leftist partisans, who were called Garibaldians, went to the Resistance.
Thus, there was no general idea other than that the Germans should be expelled from Italy and Mussolini should leave. While the former Red Army men already had a clear-cut, ideological, political, struggle against Nazism and fascism. Another interesting point. The Russian partisans were among those who did not intend to leave the belligerent Apennines, while there were very well-established paths for the allies, they were taken through the mountains, through the Alps to neutral Switzerland, where the allies, captured and liberated by the underground partisans, were waiting the end of the war. Most Russians refused this path. I know of only the rarest episodes when they agreed to sit out in neutral Switzerland. On the contrary, the known case of commander Daniil Avdeev, who left for Switzerland, but asked to be returned back to the partisan camp, where he continued to fight, where he became the commander of a detachment with the characteristic name "Stalin", and died in a shootout with the Germans. Received a number of awards. Quite a well-known personality, to whom a lot of research and, even, an entire Italian book have been devoted.
Ivan Tolstoy: Please tell us about these so different categories of Russians who took part in this war.
Mikhail Talalay: I had to deal with the Cossacks and the Cossack camp, the Cossack army before the partisans. Because this page was completely unwritten. If we managed to learn a lot about the partisans, then the Cossack history in northern Italy for the time being remained just a blank spot. And therefore, the historian's enthusiasm and my instinct prompted me to pay personal attention to this story, a dramatic story, but associated with prominent names such as Peter Krasnov and other Cossack leaders. Skins, for example, found in the fall of 1944 in Italy. And finally, the third category is the eastern legionnaires. This is a very special part of the Italian war of those years, which I had to deal with thanks to my cooperation with the current Azerbaijani embassy in Rome. It so happened that while dealing with different kinds of stories of those years, I identified a number of plots connected with Azerbaijanis, with the so-called legionnaires, although there were not only them. The history of the formation of these eastern legions is now well described. One of the stories that initially captured my attention was the death of a large detachment of Azerbaijani soldiers, who already at the last moment tried to escape from the Germans, but they were overtaken by punishers and destroyed. There was a mass execution, a bloody massacre, more than 100 people were killed at once, who went to Switzerland, there was a mass execution. Mass grave, which I opened, about which I spoke. And plus a few more interesting stories, namely Azerbaijani, because there were a lot of them here, including the Azerbaijani hero Mehdi Huseyn-zade, nicknamed Mikhailo, who fought in the northeast of Italy, in the Trieste zone, and received the title of Hero of the Soviet Union, too former legionnaire. These and other Caucasian stories later formed into a whole book, which I published in Italian - "From the Caucasus to the Apennines." It was published three years ago and, while working on this book, I managed to learn in detail about the formation of Azerbaijani legions and, of course, neighboring Caucasian, Georgian, Turkestan and others. It was such a chaotic, amorphous mass, incomprehensible to the Italians. The Italians called them all, en masse - "Russian Mongols". It was difficult for them to distinguish a huge number of these peoples and nationalities, therefore, of course, it is very wrong, so archaic - the Mongols, Genghis Khan - all this mass that poured in German form, I emphasize, to the north of the Apennines, as a shield to the growing partisan movement, was baptized by the Italians as "Russian Mongols".
As for the partisans, one of the central chapters of my book ... As you understand, this is a large mosaic, therefore there are several centers, but, nevertheless, one of the cores of my narration is the history of the Roman underground. The story is unique. There was a whole group of White émigrés, young enough at that time, who "after September 8" (we will use this Italian image), finding themselves in Rome already under the fifth German, decided to somehow help the struggle of the Soviet Union. Among them, the brightest and most famous name is Aleksey Fleischer. He then returned to the Soviet Union, had a very difficult fate, and in the 50s, when the repressions against the repatriates began to subside, he tried to publish his own, remembering, copied with Sergei Smirnov, a famous writer and researcher of the white spots of the Great Patriotic War, so some then fragments of his memoirs were published to one degree or another. Nevertheless, it was possible to find and publish his new memoirs, which give a lot of new, interesting things about the work of the Roman underground. Aleksey Fleischer was joined by such people as Vasily Sumbatov - a poet, a White Guard, an enemy of the Soviet regime, who, nevertheless, at that moment also decided to put his fate (because all of them, of course, risked their lives) to fight against "Nazi fascism" ... Other names and very curious destinies are known. For example, Kuzma Zaitsev, who was from the peasants, from the merchants, was also an enemy of the Soviet regime, but also at that moment decided to be with his comrades in the Roman underground. By the way, he flatly refused to return to the Soviet Union and then left for Latin America. Lyudmila Benvenutto, a very interesting person, is Italian by her father, Russian by her mother, who was brought up in the Soviet Union. But at the end of the 30s, when a campaign began to clean up citizens of possibly enemy countries, including Italy, she was expelled overnight, along with other Italians who did not even know Italian, from the USSR to Italy, and also became a participant underground. This underground was interesting because it operated and collaborated with the Vatican, with students of the famous Jesuit college "Russicum". And, despite the confused relationship of the Vatican with "Nazi fascism", there were also several people in its midst who were very active in the underground. The most famous name is Dorofey Beschastny. This man has a very sad fate. After his return to his homeland, through the camps and imprisonment, he began to conduct a very fierce anti-clerical campaign. He, of course, was used, substituted, let's say, in jargon. But in the 60s, unexpectedly for his underground comrades-in-arms, he began to expose the Vatican, and they themselves began to repulse him, but in Soviet conditions this was impossible - the Vatican was one of the main enemies of the Soviet government, therefore the help of the Vatican, which really was and existed quite actively - both food, and clothing, and, as they say now, logistics, it was vilified in every possible way by Dorofey Beschastny. And the same Fleischer reproaches his former comrade-in-arms for his, in fact, lies. What was the Roman underground doing? We must take into account the peculiarities of Rome. It was declared an open city. This meant that the warring parties were called upon not to fight on the territory of Rome in order to preserve its historical and cultural heritage. There were few or no terrorist acts, acts of retaliation against the occupiers. The most famous of them ended in a new tragedy, when the Germans shot more than 300 hostages. Therefore, on the territory of the "Eternal City" itself, such an armed struggle did not exist.
And, returning to Dorofey Beschastny, he simply composed his military actions that he destroyed the Germans in dark corners, shot them - these were all inventions, shall we say, of a confused person. What were the White émigré members of the Roman underground doing? They were looking for places of concentration of the former Red Army soldiers who had become prisoners of war near Rome, then, through the Italians-anti-fascists, they arranged the flight of the former prisoners of war. And this flight took place through Rome. They were brought to Rome by different secret paths, it was a real underground, here they were looked after, put in order and dispersed to other places, already places of battles, open partisan actions. As a result of such activities, more than a hundred people were released and sent to the partisans. Such a bright and very interesting page. After the Anglo-American allies entered Rome, most of these people were gathered, Russian and Soviet partisans, and a very interesting episode took place - a reception at the Vatican by Pope Pius of 12 Russian soldiers who, with a Russian detachment, with the banner of the Soviet Union, marched through the whole of Rome and were favorably received by the then Pope Pius 12. As for the new names, I would name, first of all, the name of Lev Ginzburg. The fact is that it was forgotten by Soviet historiography for various reasons. Lev Ginzburg was born in Russia, in Odessa, and as a boy he was taken by his parents to Europe after the civil war and revolution. First to Berlin, then to Turin, where he developed as, first of all, a writer and translator. A talented man, he put his pen to translations of Russian classics and called himself "the workhorse of literature." Translated Tolstoy, Gogol. He was an anti-fascist and paid for it - he was first exiled into exile in a remote mountainous central region, in Abruzzo, where he continued his anti-fascist activities. Lev Ginzburg was ruined by his passion, because, without waiting for the final fall of fascism in Rome, he secretly makes his way from exile to the "Eternal City", again begins to issue leaflets, he is arrested in a printing house and he died in dungeons, during torture by the Nazis. Before his death, he said wonderful, heartfelt words to his cellmate: "After the end of the war, you and I must learn not to hate the Germans." That is, he warned in advance not to resort to revenge against the German people.
Lev Ginzburg, of course, is one of the heroic names well known in Italy, and it was important for me to tell the Russian reader about him as well. We now know more about his son, the wonderful, brilliant historian Carlo Ginzburg. But if this name is so brilliant, great, then in a number of searches I managed to find people less famous, but, nevertheless, who, with their fates, created a general panorama of Russian participation in the Italian Resistance. In particular, I would like to name the name of Alexander Ulitin. This is a unique case, because it is still alive. Of course, he is aged, already in a rather serious condition, I communicate with his children. But this Russian partisan is still alive, he lives in the north of Italy, he also fought in the partisan Garibaldi detachments, came to the west as a skeleton, during the mopping-up of the civilian population he was exiled to Poland, then to France, hiding under various fake, false names. then he was sent as a forced laborer to the north of Italy, fled to the partisans, took part in hostilities and (this is a fairly frequent partisan story) fell in love with a local liaison girl. That is why he did not return to the Soviet Union, although he wanted to, like the overwhelming majority of Soviet partisans. But his wife did not allow him, because there was already a child, and he stayed. With difficulties, because the Italians themselves no longer wanted him and tried to send him to the USSR. But he stayed and lived his life happily in northern Italy.
A few more interesting figures that I managed to illuminate. This includes partisan Nuri Aliyev. One of the Azerbaijani stories. I studied for a long time and in detail, I approached this story from different sides. Nuri Aliyev first met me in the registers of the Milan Orthodox Church - he was baptized and married on the same day - not as Nuri, but as a servant of God Alexander - with an Italian Catholic, also a partisan liaison. And after this wedding, the young, married, tried to return to the Soviet Union together. But this couple was separated, only Nuri returned. And his traces disappeared. His wife, who remained in Italy, Gina, made great efforts to find her husband. I met this woman on the eve of her death, she had already passed away, who literally begged to find his husband - she suffered because she thought that her husband was shot because he had an Italian wife, because that he was trying to return to Italy. Such rumors reached her. And, in the end, I managed to find traces of Nuri Aliyev and inform his wife just before his death. The fact is that earlier it was impossible to find him, because he did not stay in Azerbaijan anymore. After a ten-year imprisonment, he left for Russia and, I will not delve into this story, he had a new family there, he took an adopted daughter there, and already this adopted daughter came to me, sent me the missing fragment of the fate of the Soviet partisan Nuri Aliyev, who married Italian and even wanted to stay in Italy. But thanks to her insistence, which ended up in the Soviet Union.
It is interesting that Nuri Aliyev, who, I think, was originally a legionnaire, although I have no exact information, he was first called "Mongol" by the Italians. These "Mongols", the eastern legionaries who passed to the partisans, they became Russians. The Russian is the one who is in the Resistance, the "Mongols" are those who are with the Germans. I happened to find in the Italian archives all sorts of documents about the activities of former Eastern legionnaires and how the Italians perceived them. The document of one Baku resident began in a very characteristic way. He wrote in broken Italian, but understandable enough, like this: "I am Russian, but I am Azerbaijani." Such was the situation with nationalities at that time.
Here I want to recall one more episode about partisans. Naturally, the participation of Soviet partisans was well studied here, in Italy, mainly, of course, by leftist historians, communists, and in the Soviet Union itself. Perhaps the most striking name is Fyodor Poletaev, hero of the Soviet Union, hero of Italy, he was buried in Genoa, who died in the mountains of Liguria. And, thanks to his heroic death, a whole partisan detachment was saved. And it would seem that it is already difficult to add something here, because books and films are being published about Fyodor Poletaev, this is perhaps the central image of Russian participation in the Italian Resistance. But here, too, interesting nuances are revealed that have not been mentioned before, for obvious reasons. And it turns out that Fedor Poletaev, it seems, in all likelihood, was killed not by the Germans, as it is written in most publications about him, but by his own compatriots, the same "Mongols" about whom I spoke earlier. His comrades-in-arms wrote about this. I came across a document, a small publication back in 1946, where a former Italian partisan said that in the detachment, which Fyodor Poletaev courageously rushed at, there were, along with the Germans, "Russian Mongols." In domestic publications it has always been written like this - there were Germans. And, in principle, as a historian, I can understand - since in the German form, it means that he is German. But still, a lot changes if there was a Caucasian in this German uniform. And it is believed that now this is still an oral opinion that Fyodor Poletaev, being an ardent man, heard Russian speech in the ranks of the German detachment, because the "Mongols" - Caucasians, Turkestanis, immigrants from Soviet Asia - spoke Russian among themselves (therefore - " Russian Mongols "), and, having heard this Russian speech, he, in a rage, in indignation, rushed against this detachment, probably urging them to lay down their arms. It was already the end of the war and in other cases it worked - the partisans were trying to convince the "Russian Mongols" to leave the Germans. But this time someone shot and Fyodor Poletaev died a heroic death.
If we return to the Cossack stories, the most interesting are the testimonies of the writer Boris Shiryaev, whose work I have been doing a lot in recent years. Boris Shiryaev is a first-class writer, therefore the texts that he left us, and which I again offered to the Russian public, they previously existed in very hard-to-reach emigrant periodicals, this is really a first-hand testimony that gives a very vivid and picturesque panorama of Cossack life. Boris Shiryaev intended to write an epic novel about the Cossack camp, but he did not succeed, and he composed the so-called "Diary of Esaul Petrov" - a fictional character, but helped Shiryaev on behalf of this Esaul retell the events of autumn and winter at the turn of 1944-45. In particular, an interesting circumstance - this esaul Petrov talks about Shiryaev himself. There it is encrypted with one initial "Sh.", But it is clear that we are talking about the writer himself, whose stay in the Cossack camp is another grotesque detail of this whole story. Shiryaev taught literature to the Cossacks. Just imagine, during the war years, when the Germans sent Cossacks as a living armed shield against the Red partisans ... With them there was a circus, and they brought some camels with them, and they staged dramatic performances and Cossack dances in front of the stunned local population. And, along with such a phantasmagoria and bloody episodes of clashes with Italian partisans, there were courses on Russian literature, which were read by Boris Nikolayevich Shiryaev. By that time, he had formed his own definite view of Russian and Soviet literature, in which he singled out a healthy folk principle - Tolstoy, Pushkin, Leskov, whom he adored, and what, in his opinion, decomposed, harmed the Russian spirit - Belinsky, Chernyshevsky. And then he threw a bridge to the Silver Age, which he considered harmful to the Russian spirit. But, from among the positive, he also chose Soviet writers, the same Sholokhov, about whom he taught the Cossacks, dressed in German uniforms. So, "The Diary of Esaul Petrov" with comments (for the first time, historical comments are given that describe different heroes of the Cossack camp) entered my new book.
Ivan Tolstoy: Who wrote on the same topic before you? What studies and memoirs are there?
Mikhail Talalay: Already in the 70s, a book appeared that is considered a classic, this is a study of the Italian former partisan Mauro Galleni. The book was first published in Italian and translated into Russian. Mauro Galleni, a member of the Italian Communist Party, was a scrupulous historian, but it is clear that his ideological engagement gave Russian, Soviet participation in the Resistance very, let's say, characteristic features - many episodes and destinies were taken outside the scope of this book. The same thing happened in our national historiography. As a publicist, Sergei Smirnov published a lot.
Of the historians, first of all, I would name my teacher, who led my dissertation at the Academy of Sciences, Nelly Pavlovna Kamolova, who had already died, and who collected, published such collections as "Resistance Movement and Political Struggle in Italy", "Resistance Movement in Western Europe ”, such a book as“ European Anti-Fascist Resistance ”in the collection“ Totalitarianism in Europe of the 20th century ”. These books, I must say, honest and responsible books, nevertheless, reflected only one, "left" part of that history, ideologically "left", the participation of communist partisan units, and, naturally, before my book no one tried to recreate a complete panorama of the presence Russian people in the warring Apennines. I think, for obvious reasons, only a part was given, along one front line. It is important, as you understand, to give an unbiased picture of this whole complex picture, showing the Russian people who came to the Apennine land, and here I recall the words of an Italian historian who studies the partisan movement. He said: "Yes, they came to our land together with our enemy, but many of them then began to fight against him." And this is one of the reasons why it was necessary to describe the appearance here of Cossacks, legionnaires, and another type of collaborators. At the same time, one should not exaggerate, of course, many of this category, for various reasons, remained to the end with the occupiers, and then with all their might, by hook or by crook, tried to avoid forced repatriation. And the last chapters of my book are devoted to it - about how, who and when returned to the Soviet Union. It is also a long and rather painful, dramatic story.
Ivan Tolstoy: Have you met any of the characters in your book?
Mikhail Talalay: While working on this book, I had to get into communication with hundreds of people. These are my colleagues who have already studied, were on the approach to this or that topic, and I had to bring together these or those studies, make up this complex mosaic, and I am grateful to these colleagues of mine. But, of course, I had a chance to take information first-hand. One of the heroines of my book is Magdalena Hirsch. I met with this interesting woman, already deceased, she herself is from Tallinn, from Estonia, but she calmly called herself Russian - that is how she was called in Italy. She married in the mid-30s to a young Italian officer, moved to Italy, and her husband was one of those who went to the partisans, refused to fight after September 8 with Mussolini, and went into an illegal position with the Germans. And with him his wife. She wrote her memoirs in Italian, we translated them into Russian, where Magdalena Hirsch describes their participation in the Resistance in the central part of Italy, in the Florence region, in the Livorno region, where they hid from the Germans and black shirts and participated in the Italian Resistance. I had a chance to communicate with the children of Alexander Ulitin, now a living partisan. And his children, already Italians, do not speak Russian, provided me with materials and diaries of their father, a member of the Italian Resistance. The adopted daughter of the Azerbaijani partisan Tatyana Alieva, she took the name of her adoptive father, and also provided me with many materials, photographs, stories about the fate of her father. And, perhaps, first of all, I should mention the name of Aleksey Kolyaskin from Tula, the grandson of the partisan Aleksey Kolyaskin, one of those whom Aleksey Fleischer took from German captivity to Rome, and who then went to the Italian partisans. Alexey Kolyaskin gave me the unpublished memoirs of his grandfather. Only partially did they come out. The first pages are especially sad when it tells about the initial defeat of the Red Army, about the capture of Alexei Kolyaskin, about bullying in captivity, sending to Italy - these parts have never been published. And, of course, a story about Rome, about Alexei Fleischer is given in great detail. Therefore, it is intertwined with my own reconstruction of the Russian underground. And then about his return through the filtration camps back to the Soviet Union. And the diary of Alexei Kolyaskin completes my book. The memoirs of two other partisans who fought in Italy were published in Soviet times. These are Tarasov and Pereladov. Both of their memoirs were published, oddly enough, under the same title - "Notes of a Russian Garibaldian", they are widely quoted. Alexey Kolyaskin's notes were published for the first time. Perhaps they would have been published earlier, but their author died prematurely. He was 58 years old when he came to Leningrad, to his homeland, in 1970, at the time of the 25th anniversary of the celebration of the victory. During the speech, the veteran became agitated and on May 9, 1970, he died right during his speech. He was only 58 years old. I think that is why these "Notes" did not see the light of day earlier. Now they have left a very significant final supplement to my book "Russian Participants in the Italian War of 1943-1945: Partisans, Cossacks, Legionnaires."