Liudinovo Underground Komsomol Group

(1941-42), an antifascist organization that operated in the Great Patriotic War (1941-45) in the city of Liudinovo, Orel (now Kaluga) Oblast, during the city’s occupation by the fascist German aggressors.

On Oct. 4, 1941, the Liudinovo raion committee of the ACP (Bolshevik) left several Communists and Komsomol member A. S. Shumavtsov behind in the city for underground operations. Shumavtsov set up an underground Komsomol youth group composed of secondary school seniors, including A. Apat’ev, V. Apat’ev, N. Evteev, A. Liasotskii, R. Firsova, and the sisters Aleksandra, Antonina, and Zinaida Khoteeva. The group’s activity was directed by the command of the Liudinovo Partisan Detachment. The members of the group disseminated leaflets and bulletins of the Soviet Information Bureau in the city, collected intelligence information about the enemy, stole ammunition from the occupation forces, procured medicine for the partisans, and carried out acts of sabotage (they burned down a warehouse with gasoline and an electric power plant on the premises of a locomobile plant, mined highways, and blew up a bridge across the Lompad’ River). After denunciation by a traitor, Gestapo agents arrested almost the entire group on Oct. 29-30, 1942, and brutally killed the Komsomol members after torturing them. N. Evteev and V. Apat’ev, who remained alive, volunteered for the Red Army and died bravely at the front.

On Oct. 12, 1957, by decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, the title of Hero of the Soviet Union was posthumously conferred on the group leader Shumavtsov. A. Apat’ev, Liasotskii, and Aleksandra and Antonina Khoteeva were posthumously awarded the Order of Lenin, and V. Apat’ev and Evteev the Order of the Red Banner. Z. Khoteeva (Mikhalenko) was awarded the Order of the Red Banner, and Firsova (Savkina) and A. Khrychikova (Anan’eva) the Order of the Red Star. A monument to the Komsomol heroes was erected in Liudinovo, and the Komsomol Glory Oblast Museum named in honor of the heroes of the Liudinovo underground group opened in 1970.