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The village of Kryukovo is an unknown soldier. Where the unknown soldier died. Echelon from the past

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rural settlement of Barantsevo

Monument to the "Unknown Soldier" in the village of Kryukovo, Chekhov District, Moscow Region

A monument to the soldiers who died during the Great Patriotic War, namely the monument to the “Unknown Soldier”, was erected 70 km from Moscow in a southern direction in the village of Kryukovo.
The opening of the monument took place in the fall of 1975. One of the organizers of the opening was the Kryukov Fan Plant, in front of which a monument was erected. The war brought grief to almost every family, so at that time there were many widows and orphaned mothers among the villagers. At the opening, all residents were solemnly dressed and with flowers. Women covered their heads with mourning scarves in a rustic way. Almost everyone had portraits of their sons, husbands, fathers, brothers in their hands. There were no indifferent people in the audience! And then the moment came, the cover was removed from the monument and everyone saw the figure of a soldier, with his head mournfully lowered. Many began to peer into the soldier's face, trying to find native features in him. Later, as you know, some made a decision for themselves, because. they do not know where the graves of their relatives are, to come here when it is especially difficult, like to the grave. War deprives people not only of their lives, but often of their names. Therefore, the monument to the "Unknown Soldier" is a piece of the native in everyone's soul!
Together with the monument, a monument was placed to the soldiers of the Kryukovites who fell in the battles for the independence of the Motherland in 1941-1945, on which the important words “No one is forgotten, nothing is forgotten” are carved.
In our time, in the village of Kryukovo, annually on May 9, a rally and memorial service for the deceased soldiers and all those innocently killed during the Great Patriotic War is held near the monument to the “Unknown Soldier”.

Lapin Gleb, member of the circle "Young museologists"
Our club is in its second year. We study the history of our native land, the features of museums of various profiles, visit museums, make presentations and collect material about the history of the Great Patriotic War in our region.
Kochkurova Elena Nikolaevna
students 2 in class MBOU secondary school No. 3 of Chekhov MO

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In December 1966, on the 25th anniversary of the defeat of the Nazi troops near Moscow, the ashes of the Unknown Soldier were transferred to the Alexander Garden from the 41st kilometer of the Leningrad Highway - the place of bloody battles.

The eternal flame of glory, bursting out from the middle of a bronze military star, was lit from a flame blazing on the Field of Mars in St. Petersburg. “Your name is unknown, your feat is immortal” - inscribed on the granite slab of the tombstone.

On the right, along the Kremlin wall, urns are placed in a row, where the sacred land of the hero cities is kept.

Website of the President

FIGHTS AT THE CROSSROADS OF THE LENINGRAD AND LYALOVSKY HIGHWAYS

In 1967, a local forester, an eyewitness to a fierce battle at the 41st kilometer, told the builders of Zelenograd, who helped build a monument with a T-34 tank, about an unusual episode of the battle in 1941: “German armored vehicles were approaching along the highway from Chashnikov ... Suddenly our tank moved towards them. Having reached the intersection, the driver jumped into the ditch on the move, and a few seconds later the tank was hit. A second tank followed. History repeated itself: the driver jumped, the enemy shot, another tank cluttered the highway. So a kind of barricade of wrecked tanks was formed. The Germans were forced to look for a detour to the left

An excerpt from the memoirs of the commissar of the 219th howitzer regiment Alexei Vasilyevich Penkov (see: Proceedings of the GZIKM, issue 1. Zelenograd, 1945, p. 65-66): the resistance of our neighbor on the left ... and through the village of Matushkino, tank units entered the Moscow-Leningrad highway, semi-surrounding our rifle units and began shelling firing positions with tank guns. Dozens of German dive bombers hung in the air. Communication with the command post of the regiment was broken. Two divisions deployed for all-round defense. They shot at German tanks and infantry with direct fire. Chuprunov, I and the signalmen were 300 meters from the firing positions of the batteries on the church bell tower in the village of B. Rzhavka.

With the onset of darkness, the Nazis calmed down and fell silent. We went to see the battlefield. The picture for the war is familiar, but terrible: half of the compositions of gun crews died, many commanders of fire platoons and guns failed. 9 guns, 7 tractors were destroyed. The last wooden houses and barns on this western outskirts of the village were burning down...

On December 1, in the area of ​​the village of B. Rzhavka, the enemy only occasionally fired mortars. On this day, the situation stabilized ...

HERE AN UNKNOWN SOLDIER DIE

Newspapers in early December 1966 reported that on December 3, Muscovites bowed their heads in front of one of their heroes - the Unknown Soldier, who died in the harsh days of December 1941 on the outskirts of Moscow. In particular, the Izvestia newspaper wrote: “... he was slain for the Fatherland, for his native Moscow. That's all we know about him."

On December 2, 1966, representatives of the Moscow City Council and a group of soldiers and officers of the Taman division arrived at the place of the former burial place on the 41st km of the Leningradskoye Highway around noon. The Taman soldiers cleared the snow around the grave and proceeded to open the grave. At 2:30 pm, the remains of one of the soldiers resting in a mass grave were placed in a coffin, twined with an orange-black ribbon - a symbol of the soldier's Order of Glory, on the lid of the coffin in the heads - a helmet of the 41st year. A coffin with the remains of the Unknown Soldier was placed on the pedestal. All evening, all night and the next morning, changing every two hours, young soldiers with machine guns, veterans of the war, stood in the guard of honor at the coffin.

Cars passing by stopped, people from the surrounding villages, from the village of Kryukovo, from Zelenograd, walked. On December 3, at 11:45 a.m., the coffin was placed on an open car, which moved along the Leningrad highway to Moscow. And everywhere along the way, the funeral procession was accompanied by residents of the Moscow region, lined up along the highway.

In Moscow, at the entrance to the street. Gorky (now Tverskaya), the coffin was transferred from the car to an artillery carriage. An armored personnel carrier with an unfolded combat banner moved on to the sounds of a mourning march of a military brass band. He was accompanied by soldiers of the guard of honor, participants in the war, participants in the defense of Moscow.

The cortege was approaching the Alexander Garden. Here everything is ready for the rally. On the podium among the leaders of the party and government - participants in the battle for Moscow - Marshals of the Soviet Union G.K. Zhukov and K.K. Rokossovsky.

“The Tomb of the Unknown Soldier near the ancient walls of the Moscow Kremlin will become a monument of eternal glory to the heroes who died on the battlefield for their native land; from now on, the ashes of one of those who shielded Moscow with their breasts rest here,” these are the words of Marshal of the Soviet Union K.K. Rokossovsky, said at the rally.

A few months later, on May 8, 1967, on the eve of Victory Day, the monument "Tomb of the Unknown Soldier" was unveiled and the Eternal Flame was lit.

IN NO OTHER COUNTRY

EMAR VILLAGE (Primorsky Territory), September 25, 2014. The head of the presidential administration of the Russian Federation, Sergei Ivanov, supported the proposal to make December 3 the Day of the Unknown Soldier.

“Such a memorable day, if you like, a day of commemoration, could well be done,” he said, responding to a proposal made during a meeting with the winners and participants of the competition among school search teams “Search. Finds. Opening".

Ivanov noted that this is especially relevant for Russia, given that there were no such number of missing soldiers as in the USSR in any country. According to the head of the presidential administration, the majority of Russians will support the establishment of December 3 as the Day of the Unknown Soldier.

THE FEDERAL LAW

ON AMENDMENTS TO ARTICLE 1.1 OF THE FEDERAL LAW "ON THE DAYS OF MILITARY GLORY AND MEMORABLE DATES OF RUSSIA"

To introduce into Article 1.1 of the Federal Law of March 13, 1995 N 32-FZ "On the days of military glory and memorable dates in Russia" ... the following changes:

1) add a new paragraph fourteen of the following content:

President of Russian Federation

Consultant Plus

UNKNOWN SOLDIER

For the first time, this concept itself (as well as a memorial) appeared in France, when on November 11, 1920, an honorary burial of an unknown soldier who died in the First World War was made in Paris near the Arc de Triomphe. And at the same time, the inscription “Un soldat inconnu” appeared on this memorial and the Eternal Flame was solemnly lit.

Then, in England, at Westminster Abbey, a memorial appeared with the inscription "Soldier of the Great War, whose name is known to God." Later, such a memorial appeared in the United States, where the ashes of an unknown soldier were buried at the Arlington Cemetery in Washington. The inscription on the tombstone: "Here lies a famous and honored American soldier, whose name only God knows."

In December 1966, on the eve of the 25th anniversary of the Battle of Moscow, the ashes of an unknown soldier were transferred to the Kremlin wall from a burial place near the 41st kilometer of the Leningradskoye Highway. On the slab lying on the tomb of the Unknown Soldier, an inscription is made: “Your name is unknown. Your feat is immortal "(author of the words - poet Sergei Vladimirovich Mikhalkov).

Used: in the literal sense, as a symbol of all the dead soldiers, whose names have remained unknown.

Encyclopedic Dictionary of winged words and expressions. M., 2003


This piercing song was written by Sergei Ostrovoy and Mark Fradkin in memory of the feat of the Red Army soldiers, who at the cost of their lives held the last frontier in front of Moscow.

On the Leningrad highway at the entrance to Zelenograd rises the Hill of Glory. It was here, near the village of Kryukovo, that the onslaught of the fascist invaders was stopped and a turning point took place: the defense turned into an offensive. Marshal Rokossovsky subsequently called the battles that took place on Zelenograd land "the second Borodino".

In November-December 1941, two Nazi groups, one of which had previously operated in the Volokolamsk direction, and the other in the Klinsky direction, broke through to the area of ​​​​the village of Kryukovo. The battle was taken by the soldiers of the 8th Guards Division named after I.V. Panfilov, the Second Guards Cavalry Corps, General L.M. Dovator, and the First Guards Tank Brigade, General M.E. Katukov. They fought for every house and every street...

When the enemy occupied the villages of Peshki and Nikolskoye and approached the village of Lyalovo, the command post of the Soviet 16th Army was moved to the Kryukovo station.
On November 30, in the afternoon, Soviet troops launched attacks along the entire defense front of the 16th Army. Particularly fierce fighting took place in the area of ​​​​the villages of Kryukovo and Peshki. The village of Kryukovo changed hands 8 times. The enemy made Kryukovo his stronghold. The enemy turned the stone buildings into pillboxes, between the buildings in ambushes were dug into the ground German tanks. The Nazis sought to break through the defenses of the Soviet troops at all costs and reach Moscow.

In early December, the troops of the 16th Army, Lieutenant General K.K. Rokossovsky stopped the advance of German troops and went on the defensive. In the area of ​​the Kryukovo station, the fighting did not stop for a minute. The 354th Infantry Division defended the Leningrad Highway and the northern outskirts of Kryukovo.

The fierce battle began at 10 am on December 7th. Shell fragments covered the entire Kryukov land. At the Kryukovo station, Soviet troops lost thousands of soldiers and officers, but by the evening of December 8, the enemy was broken. The best parts of the enemy were defeated and put to flight. Thanks to the mass heroism of the Soviet soldiers, the German fascist groups were unable to break through to Moscow.

On June 24, 1974, at the 40th kilometer from the center of the capital along the Leningradskoye highway at the entrance to Zelenograd, a monument to the Defenders of Moscow was opened. On a roadside mound erected on a mass grave where more than 760 people rest, a gray obelisk rises. Three closed forty-meter bayonets symbolize the resilience of three military units - rifle, tank and cavalry. At the foot of the obelisk are three marble steles. One of them is inscribed:

"1941. Here, the defenders of Moscow, who died in the battle for their homeland, remained forever immortal.

I remember well that first day when the terrible news of the beginning of the war came to our village.

Somewhere around 11-12 o'clock there were frequent and alarming fire alarms. Someone was pounding furiously on a metal rail that hung on the firehouse in the center of the village. All of us, adults and children, rushed to the disturbing call. But the fire was nowhere to be seen. And then the villagers learned about the fire that engulfed our entire great country.

A loudspeaker taken from the Mishins was brought to the club. The whole village was broadcast about the beginning of the war, the surprise attack by Nazi Germany, about the barbaric bombardments of our peaceful cities and villages.

At that distant time I was only 9 years old, but my memory retained the smallest details. In the very first days, our fathers and elder brothers went to the front. We escorted them to the Kryukovo station, not hiding grief, foreboding the possible loss of the dearest, closest.

The war was felt immediately. Strengthened airfield security. Military patrols went through the village every evening. Yes, and our chairman appointed additional watchmen from among the collective farmers for the night. The strictest blackout was observed. The glass in the windows was glued crosswise with paper tapes: during the bombing, the glass cracked, but did not crumble.

At night, the residents' documents were checked. Somewhere in August, refugees began to appear in our places. Every day there were more and more of them.

I remember a lot of them were from the Smolensk region. People were walking. And only in some places there were carts. There were sick and wounded among the refugees. The people of our village helped as much as they could. We, the village boys, loved to go to the highway crossroads. There, near the oak, we settled down and watched the road for hours. And along it to the west, towards the front, our troops were moving: pawn columns of infantry, vehicles, tanks, guns of all systems.

The approach of the front was felt in everything. The movement of troops was carried out for the most part at night. At school we were constantly reminded of vigilance, given information about the events around the village, about the Nazi air raids on the station of the Oktyabrskaya railway.

Disturbing events approached menacingly and inevitably. At the end of October, it became unsafe to be at the school, and at the end of the first quarter, classes stopped.

One day, on a November day, our fighter plane appeared in the sky above the village, but for some reason it began to fire at the houses with a machine gun. Either our pilot mixed up the front line, or the Nazis used our plane. I do not know, but the results of this shelling were sad. Anastasia Pakhomova, a pregnant woman, was killed. She was standing at the window and the bullet hit her in the stomach. There are seven orphans left in the family. It was the first civilian casualty of the war in our village. The front was getting closer. Winter was also coming. It came early in 1941. In the forest, in the area of ​​the modern cinema "Electron", we prepared firewood for the winter. At this time, a fascist plane took off from behind Rzhavok, followed by two of our fighters. They drove the Nazis towards Kryukovo. But he still managed to throw the bombs. In the area of ​​​​the airfield, a huge black-fiery flame shot up over the forest. The planes went over the horizon. The bombed fuel and lubricants warehouse continued to burn for a long time.

In our house, somewhere in the middle of November, there was a first-aid post.

The wounded were brought in every day. There were especially many of them at the end of November. These days the fights were already in Pawns and Spoons. But once an ambulance was fired upon near the village of Chashnikovo. The Nazis were approaching the village.

At the end of November regular bombing began. They bombed mainly the Leningrad highway and the village of Rzhavki, where the columns of our retreating troops were passing. From the village it was clearly visible how German planes in groups of 10-15 aircraft flew several times every day towards Moscow. Our anti-aircraft gunners fired from the side of Slobodka. The windows trembled in the houses. War has come to our village.

But, despite the fact that at that time there was such an alarming situation, our soldiers who were in the house (for some reason, they had small stars sewn on the sleeves of their overcoats) said that we would definitely defeat the Germans and defeat them. And that was when they retreated. The soldiers were young, fit, well-dressed and well-shod. They then said that this success with the Germans was temporary. What that part was, I don't know.

At the end of November we moved to the shelter. Our trench, which we prepared in the summer, was flooded with water. I had to push the Chudakov family. Seventeen of us gathered in a small trench - adults and children.

On the morning of November 30, 1941, a kind of unsettling calm came in the village and in the entire district. At about one o'clock in the afternoon, a German "frame" appeared over the Turkish Fields: a reconnaissance spotter. Just at that time, Dovator's cavalry was moving across the field, near Slobodka, towards the Kryukovsky forestry. Explosions of shrapnel appeared above the cavalry columns. We were sitting in a trench, and Boris Chudakov was upstairs. It was he who told us what was happening around.

After the German artillery preparation, it suddenly became quiet, and somewhere around two in the afternoon we heard in broken Russian: “Russ, get out ...” Everyone in the trench fell silent. The Germans began to knock on the entrance cover. We got out of the trench. I noticed that several houses were on fire. The Germans were advancing in chains from the side of Slobodka.

We were waiting for the Germans from the side of the Leningrad highway, but they appeared from the side of Alabushevo. The Germans did not even use the Alabushevsky road, but with tanks they paved the way through the forest and reached the southwestern outskirts of the village. Separate short skirmishes of our fighters could not stop the German advance. Our people left the village and retreated behind the Kryukovskoye Highway.

After the capture of the village, the combat activity of both the Germans and ours decreased. There was some calm. But, approximately, from December 2, the fighting resumed with even greater force. The initiative was shown already more by our troops. Our aviation began to operate actively, the attacks of our troops on the village became more frequent.

For nine days fierce fighting went on in and around the village. And all these days we, for the most part, sat in our shelter.

I would like to briefly talk about some episodes of our life, about the heroic deeds of our individual soldiers, about the atrocities of the Nazis in the countryside.

Terekhova Elena Ivanovna was in the trench with her two sons, Viktor and Nikolai. Nikolai was already 17 years old, and he was dressed in the tunic of his older brother - a military pilot, senior lieutenant. Seeing this, the Germans shouted: “Russ soldier! .. Russ soldier! ..” Our mothers managed to defend Nikolai from immediate execution. But the Germans still took him and the other guys away. We thought that everything: the guys were gone. But they returned and said that they had collected our wounded soldiers throughout the village and taken them to the fire shed, where they froze to death.

I saw two U-2 planes appear over our village. They flew at low altitude. The pilots, apparently, did not know that the Nazis were in the village. The Germans opened heavy fire on the planes, and they both caught fire. One of them immediately fell, and the other was dragged across the highway.

Starting around December 3, heavy fighting began for the village. There were several attacks per day.

During one of the attacks, the Germans dragged their wounded man to our trench and wanted to bandage him. One of them looked out of the trench and shouted “Russ!” so frightened that everyone immediately jumped out of the trench, leaving us with a wounded man. He lay, looking around, and then jumped up, grabbed a rifle and, leaning on it, instantly jumped out.

On the 4th or 5th of December, our tank, white with red stars on the turret, drove out from the modern Komponent plant, from the rear, from the forest. Moving along the street, he fired from a cannon and a machine gun at enemy equipment and houses where the Germans settled. Several vehicles were destroyed, as well as a large-caliber long-range gun. According to the residents, the Germans had just brought it in and started setting it up for firing, but never fired a single shot. The tank, having driven along the entire village, went out onto the highway, turned towards Kryukovo, and here it hit a mine. There he stood with a loaded gun for a long time, until the village guys unloaded the gun, firing it towards the chicken coop. After that, the tank was quickly removed.

After the retreat of the Germans, the villagers told about the fearless act of a group of our fighters, who shouted “Hurrah!” attacked the Germans from the rear, from the side of the pond. The forces, of course, were unequal. Most of the group died, the rest managed to break through.

Eleven corpses of our fighters were found there in the spring. 11 rifles lay nearby. As the residents clarified, the Germans took these fighters naked and undressed around the village, and then they shot them.

In the very center of the village we had a vast square. During the fighting, hand-to-hand fighting took place in this place twice.

There were several German officers in the Kalachevs' house, who, quite tipsy, were playing cards. Having chosen the moment, our soldiers entered the house, disarmed the officers and took them away from Kryukovskoe Highway.

Our machine gunners fought heroically and died at the threshing shed. They repelled German attacks from Slobodka. Immediately at the "Galinoy Pond" a young Leningrader held the defense. From his "maxim" he destroyed dozens of Nazis, He was buried with honors after the liberation of the village. From the documents found on him, we learned his address and even wrote a letter home.

For a long time there was a spruce near school N842, all shot through during the fighting. At this spruce, our machine gunner heroically died at a combat post. Apparently, he greatly annoyed the Germans, and the Nazis fired more than a dozen mines and shells at him. Around his position were a mass of craters. The spruce was like a monument to that. But she didn't survive...

Almost every night over the village and over the forest (currently the Komponent plant) we heard the familiar chirring of our U-2s. They bombed the German artillery positions. There, after the retreat of the Germans, we saw a lot of ammunition boxes, broken wagons and various equipment, large bomb craters.

At night, when I had to get out, I watched red and green trails cut through the sky. We fired in the direction of Slobodka, as it seemed to me, from the rear of the Germans.

Next to the fire station was the house of Romanova M.V. Even during her lifetime, Aunt Masha told how, in one of the attacks, our wounded soldier did not have time to move away with his own. The Germans captured him and interrogated him. Apparently, having achieved nothing from him, they stripped him almost to the naked and carried him out into the street, putting him at the porch. Aunt Masha brought out his clothes, but the Germans forbade her to dress the unfortunate man, threatening to shoot him. So he froze at the porch.

Where school i 842 now stands, there were trenches of our soldiers. This place was the highest, and from here our whole village was viewed very well. From this position, the soldiers kept the village under fire and did not allow the Germans to move freely along the street.

I remember that my brother Nikolai and I came to our house and asked the Germans to get drunk. They pointed to a basin of snow that stood in the oven, and it was 50 meters to the well.

On the Chashnikovskaya glade, the Germans left the car, which was full of all sorts of military goods. There the Fedotenkov guys found the banner of some fascist unit. Of course, no one thought about the fate of this honorary trophy. And they used the cloth for practical needs - they sewed two shirts for little children.

I would like to say a few words about my asylum. Our dugout was small, about 3 × 3 and a vestibule of 1.5 meters. Our soldiers built the dugout even before the arrival of the Germans. They built it firmly and soundly, in two rolls of thick birch logs. The entrance is along earthen steps directly into the vestibule, which was closed from above with a thick shield. In the dugout on the sides of the entrance there were earthen elevations, where we were mainly located. Mom brought a feather bed here to keep us warm. There was no stove, but we did not feel the cold. In the middle, at the far end, were boxes that served as a table for us. There was a fire burning constantly, day and night. Here, perhaps, and all our equipment. All the kids were placed away from the entrance. We had a baby girl Lyudmila. And the Chudakovs also had a small child. But we considered ourselves adults.

They rarely went outside, only when necessary. Water was dragged from the pond - 100 meters from our dugout. Everything that was going on outside, we determined by the sounds. And when the shelling, and when they went on the attack, and when the bombing, Shells and mines were constantly torn around and around, some were exploding even above us. Thank God, our ceiling withstood, only each time the oil lamp went out.

Sometimes we had to leave our shelter. One day Nicholas and I went to our house. The Germans collapsed on the straw right on the floor. The stove was burning hot, and there were a lot of books nearby. Long logs stick out of the oven. As they burned, they advanced them deep into the furnace. That's how they heated it. And once they still managed to break through the back wall with these logs, and burned our house completely.

Someone suggested to us that packages of dry kvass were left in the store. Mom and I decided to go and get something. They just came out - and on us from a machine gun. Ours were shooting. We dug into the snow. So they crawled back 200 meters.

I am sometimes asked: “What did you eat?” But I don't remember anymore. We didn't have anything. And for some reason I don’t remember such a moment that I ate something. But I remember how I drank water. This is how we lived all these days. And they were waiting for something. And what? Nobody knew. But still they waited.

On December 9, early in the morning, we again hear: “Russ, get out! ..” Well, everyone is behind us, they were seriously scared. Our entrance opens, and our village mischief-makers roll with laughter: “What, are you scared? Get out, there are no more Fritz and ours are full. Got out. Silence all around. Only isolated muffled shots are heard from the direction of Alabushevo. Half of the village burned down, destroyed.

Let's go to our grandmother, Baba Nastya. Her house, thank God, survived. Come in. Cold. Everything in the house is destroyed. The windows are covered with straw. But the walls survived. We will start all over again.

Thanks to our soldiers. Even before the arrival of the Germans, our mother was advised to bury a chest with her dowry and a chest with flour and grain in the ground. How useful this is now!

In the spring they planted potatoes, twelve acres. Before it had time to bloom, someone dug it all up. For us it was a real tragedy. This is where our chest came in handy. Little by little, my mother pulled out her most cherished things from him, went somewhere beyond Klin and exchanged them for food.

The war has left us. The village began to come to life. The collective farm was revived. And we began to live no worse than the pre-war period.

Larin B.V., local historian

The memorial "Bayonets" - a monument to the defenders of Moscow, well known to Zelenograd residents, located at the end of the 40th kilometer of the Leningrad highway - seems to have always stood at the entrance to Zelenograd. But the old-timers of the city, the inhabitants of Kryukovo and the surrounding villages remember how this place used to be. Why did a mass grave appear here, why did a large-scale memorial replace the once modest burial mound, and is it so unique?

fotokto.ru/id105650

1942: mass graves

In the winter of 1941, the most bloody battles took place at the Kryukovo station and on the 40th kilometer of the Leningrad Highway - two strategic lines of defense of the capital passed here. In December, the Germans left the last of the occupied villages, Matushkino, and people began to return to their homes. On the battlefields, covered with snow, there were bodies of dead soldiers. Most of them were not buried during that fierce winter.

With the onset of spring, the question of burials arose - the harvest was approaching, the land had to be freed for agricultural cultivation. The inhabitants of the villages of Matushkino, Rzhavki, Kamenka, Kryukovo took on this mournful work. Bodies of the dead, melted from under the snow, were collected throughout the district. Teenagers put them on sleds and took them to common mass graves arranged nearby - in the forest, at the end of the field, on the outskirts, in the middle of the village. Here, women took out “medallions of death” from their tunics and laid the dead in rows in the grave, separating them from each other with overcoats.

Alexandra Vasilyeva, head of the Zelenograd local history association "Countrymen", in the past - a witness of the battles for Moscow, recalls: "I am an old-timer, I was born in Kryukovo in 1937, near the station. During the period of terrible battles from December 1 to December 8, 1941, when Kryukovo was liberated, we were sitting in a pit in the very epicenter of hostilities. And then I participated in the funeral of the first dead on Kryukovskaya Square, I was four years old then. I remember that behind the Filaret Church in Zelenograd there is one grave of a soldier who, during the fighting, died wounded in the territory of the garden of the teacher Sosnovskaya, and she buried him there, according to the old Russian tradition.

For this painful but necessary work, the collective farm paid the people with bread. So many mass graves appeared in the villages and the nearest district. Modest obelisks were installed on them - symbols of soldiers' eternal rest. In some places, the names of the Red Army soldiers were also inscribed, but over time, the inscriptions were erased, the planks rotted and all the mass graves became nameless.

After the withdrawal of troops in the Solnechnogorsk and Khimki districts, representatives of the village councils began to draw up acts on the burial places of Soviet soldiers. These acts are the first documents that legally and historically confirm the location of mass graves. In the Solnechnogorsk district military commissariat, such acts have been preserved, but in Khimki - no.

1953: first obelisk

In the early 50s, the USSR Government issued a decree on the reburial of Soviet soldiers and the approach of mass graves to public places - to settlements and roads. The remains of the soldiers began to be taken from the mass graves near Matushkino - from the grave in Slobodka, from the burial in the center, as well as on the northern edge of the village - to the 40th kilometer of the Leningrad highway.

The place was not chosen by chance. In 1941, there was a platform for an anti-aircraft installation, and a huge crater from an exploding shell formed nearby. It was deepened, expanded, and it became the last shelter of the fallen soldiers. To carry out the burial work, a special commission was created, which included a doctor, and from the villagers - Ivan Ivanovich Chudakov. The number of buried soldiers was determined by the skulls and tibias. In the inventories, according to the memoirs of old-timers, the number 390 or 380 appeared.

In place of the new mass grave, a large stainless steel obelisk, made at the Energomash plant in Khimki, was installed on a brick foundation. “In 1952, a monument was opened over the mass grave, we all solemnly walked from Kryukovo four kilometers there with flowers. And there on the obelisk were the names of the soldiers buried under it, ”says Alexandra Vasilyeva. In some other memoirs and archival photographs, the date of opening of the monument is 1953.

The mass grave and the area around it were looked after by the residents of the village of Matushkino. When the construction of Zelenograd began, Panfilov veterans came to the obelisk, solemn rallies were held here with the laying of wreaths and flowers. Zelenograd schoolchildren often visited the monument, groups of sightseers from Moscow came.

1960s: new burials in a mass grave

During the construction of Zelenograd, during earthworks of the zero cycle, workers often found the remains of soldiers lying in trenches, destroyed dugouts and trenches. One of these finds happened in October 1963. According to the site at school 842, on a fine autumn day, biology teacher Ustyuzhanina went on an excursion with the children, during which the remains of Soviet soldiers were discovered. Among them, schoolchildren found a "medallion of death" in the name of Sadyk Zarypov.

The students wrote a letter to the address indicated in the medallion with a message to relatives about the burial place of a person close to them. What was the amazement of the guys when Sadyk Zarypov himself sent an answer to their letter, explaining that he was alive and well, and the medallion fell out in his trench during the bombing. Memories of this are stored in the school museum of military glory.

Colonel Vladimir Kokurov, the first city military commissar of Zelenograd, spoke about the continuation of the story of the terrible find: “In the spring of 1966, when our country was preparing to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the defeat of the Germans near Moscow, a district policeman from the village of Alabushevo came to see me. He said that during the fighting in early December 1941, not far from Alabushevo, at the edge of the forest, a group of our soldiers stumbled upon a German ambush. As a result of the sudden attack of the Germans, all our soldiers in the amount of 11 people died. Then the counteroffensive of our troops began, the troops went forward to the west, and the dead soldiers were covered with snow and lay like that until the spring of 1942. When the snow melted, the residents of Alabushevo buried the dead in a mass grave.”

The narrator himself, the district police officer, also participated in this burial as a teenager. On behalf of the residents of Alabushevo, he asked that the dead from this mass grave be reburied elsewhere, since the Scientific Center's car depot was to be built on the site of the grave. And the decision to re-burial was made.

One day the grave was opened - there really were the remains of 11 dead soldiers, including one junior commander and one woman. Soldiers' overcoats, two sheepskin coats, earflaps, insignia of the Red Army, asterisks, newspapers in pockets were well preserved on the dead. No documents or tokens were found.

The remains of the dead were placed in 11 coffins, and a mourning ceremony of farewell was held at school 842, thousands of people visited it to pay their last respects to the nameless heroes. Then the remains of the dead with full military honors were buried in a mass grave on the 40th kilometer of the Leningrad highway. Later, a museum of military glory was founded at the school, reflecting this event.

1966: reburial of the ashes of the Unknown Soldier near the walls of the Kremlin

On the eve of the 25th anniversary of the defeat of the Nazi troops near Moscow in November 1966, the Central Committee of the CPSU and the Council of Ministers of the USSR decided to build in Moscow a monument "Tomb of the Unknown Soldier" with the Eternal Flame of Glory. The place for the monument was chosen in the Alexander Garden near the Kremlin wall, near the corner of the Arsenal tower.

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“The question arose of which mass grave of the Moscow region to take the remains of the deceased soldier,” recalled the city military commissar Kokurov. “And then they remembered our recent reburial.” It was decided to take the ashes of the Unknown Soldier from among those recently reburied in Zelenograd.

On December 2, 1966, a government commission, representatives of the Moscow Council and a group of soldiers and officers of the Taman division arrived from Moscow to the 40th kilometer of the Leningradskoye Highway to carry out the exhumation. “The Taman soldiers cleared the snow around the grave and proceeded to open the grave,” recalls Tatyana Vizbul, director of the Zelenograd Museum of Local History. - At 2:30 pm, the remains of one of the soldiers resting in a mass grave were placed in a coffin, twined with an orange-black ribbon - a symbol of the soldier's Order of Glory. On the lid of the coffin in the heads is a helmet of the model of the 41st year. A coffin with the remains of the Unknown Soldier was placed on the pedestal. All evening, all night and the next morning, changing every two hours, young soldiers with machine guns and veterans of the war stood guard of honor at the coffin.

And on the morning of December 3, a funeral procession in cars moved along the Leningradskoye Highway towards Moscow. "The last path of the Unknown Soldier passed through the land where the enemy's foot had not set foot," Izvestia wrote on December 4, 1966. Along the way, she was escorted by residents of the Moscow region, who lined up along the highway. In Moscow, at the entrance to Gorky Street (now Tverskaya), the coffin was transferred from the car to an artillery carriage. An armored personnel carrier with an unfolded combat banner moved on to the sounds of a funeral march, accompanied by soldiers of the guard of honor and participants in the war.

“Among the crowd of thousands accompanying the Unknown Soldier, I, a student of the Moscow State Historical and Archival Institute, also stood, and with difficulty held back a lump in my throat, which could just about turn into a stream of tears,” says Tatyana Vizbul.

The coffin with the remains of the Unknown Soldier was taken to the Alexander Garden, to the Kremlin wall and, under a volley of artillery salute, was lowered into the grave. A white marble plaque was installed next to the grave with a temporary inscription: "Here a monument-tomb of the Unknown Soldier will be erected and the eternal flame of Glory will be lit." The monument itself was unveiled on May 8, 1967.

1974: "Bayonets" memorial

The design of a majestic monument instead of a modest obelisk at the 40th kilometer of Leningradka began in the mid-1960s, when Igor Pokrovsky became the chief architect of the city. To create a memorial complex, he invited the sculptor Evgenia Shteiman-Derevyanko and the muralist Alexei Shteiman.

“It was not easy, since all large orders, then, now, were received by academicians or at least honored artists close to the Ministry of Culture or power,” recalled their daughter, artist Elena Derevianko-Sherstyuk (newspaper Panfilovsky Prospekt 1998 of the year). - My parents were not marked by either one or the other. The fact that Zelenograd was a city within a city probably played a role. […] Although I was a schoolgirl at that time, I remember well that everyone worked collectively: architects I.A. Pokrovsky, Yu.A. Sverdlovsky and my parents are the executors of the artistic decision.”

The memorial got its name because of the central obelisk - a stylized image of three bayonets. The complex includes the Hill of Glory (a mound with a mass grave), the obelisk "Bayonets" itself (three closed bayonets, symbolizing rifle, tank and cavalry units) and a triptych bas-relief (three pointed ledges on the slope of the mound - a warrior in a helmet, a laurel branch and the inscription "1941. Here the defenders of Moscow, who died in the battle for their homeland, remained immortal forever").

The memorial complex was created for almost ten years. Both architectural concepts and numerous sketches, of which there were almost hundreds, were subject to discussion. For several years, work was going on “on paper”. The sculptors went to the site and made sketches in the album, mentally trying on how the memorial would fit into the area.

Drawing by the chief architect of Zelenograd Igor Pokrovsky

“Times were hard. Ideology prevailed in all areas - from the national economy to art. It was necessary to consider all possible angles of the bas-relief, so that even the sun's shadow could not make changes to the composition, creating a non-standard situation, - says Derevyanko-Sherstyuk, a participant in such trips as a child. - Later, we also watched the construction […] They say that the earth was taken to the mound from all construction sites in Zelenograd. This is also symbolic. The land where the battles took place, where the onslaught of the Nazi troops rushing towards Moscow was stopped, became an organic part of the memorial.”

On the anniversary of the Victory Parade, June 24, 1974, the memorial was solemnly opened: a 42-meter obelisk on a 27-meter artificial mound, closed bayonets - no pompous materials, solemnity and modesty. “And then ... Oddly enough, silence,” recalls the daughter of the sculptors. - I think it was the revenge of the top of the Union of Artists of the USSR for the order, which passed "by". The sculptors A. Shteiman and E. Derevyanko remained unknown, as did the soldier they sculpted for the monument. But there were not so many monumental monuments in the country: in Brest, on Mamaev Kurgan, in Novosibirsk. That's probably all."

A curious story about how the "Bayonets" were accepted into the "bayonets" by the state commission, which did not want to sign the acceptance document - the bayonets, they say, were cut down, they do not have the proper sharpness - told Leonid Gerashchenko, then chief engineer of the Directorate of precision mechanics enterprises under construction.

“For about five hours there was a dispute between the artists and the commission in the office of the head of the Zelenogradstroy department, S. Dementyev. Some say - leave it as it is, others - build up bayonets. When everyone was hoarse to the point of dumbness, I. Kogan, head of the SMU at the Southern Industrial Zone, stepped forward and said: “Do you think I am big or small?”. Everyone looked at each other. He was small in stature. And he continues: “Well, not a single fool in my whole life wanted to pull me out. They accepted it the way it is." The people "thumped". And having laughed, she signed the act of acceptance of the commission. Nobody wanted to draw bayonets.”

According to the journalist Alexander Mil, who collected these memoirs, next to the "Bayonets", the architects initially planned to make a central entrance to the city. According to their plan, a square with high-rise buildings and a round building of a branch of the Moscow Defense Museum was to appear here. But... it didn't happen.

The memorial "Bayonets" has become the largest and most significant landmark of Zelenograd - its image is placed on the coat of arms of the city. During the celebration of the Victory, veterans of the 7th, 8th Guards, 354th Rifle Divisions, the 1st Guards Tank Brigade and other units and formations that participated in the hostilities of the 16th Army in the winter of 1941 come to him. Festive processions are organized to him, wreaths are laid at the memorial. Soldiers of nearby military garrisons take the military oath here.