Vera Zakharovna Khoruzhaia

Born Sept. 14 (27), 1903, in Bobruisk; died December 1942. Figure in the revolutionary movement in Western Byelorussia; a partisan and a member of the underground during the Great Patriotic War of 1941–45. Hero of the Soviet Union (May 17, 1960, posthumously). Member of the Communist Party from 1921.

The daughter of an office worker, Khoruzhaia graduated from a Gymnasium in Mozyr’ and became a village schoolteacher. She joined the Komsomol in 1920. Khoruzhaia took part in the Civil War of 1918–20. In 1922 and 1923 she studied at the Central Soviet and Party School in Minsk and held a position on the staff of the Central Committee of the Byelorussian Komsomol.

In 1924, Khoruzhaia became secretary of the underground Central Committee of the Komsomol and a member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Western Byelorussia. She also became a member of the Central Committee of the Communist Youth League of Poland. Arrested by the Polish secret police in September 1925, Khoruzhaia was sentenced to eight years in prison. In the autumn of 1932 she took up residence in the USSR, where she engaged in party work in the Byelorussian and Kazakh SSR’s.

In June 1941, Khoruzhaia joined the partisan unit commanded by V. Z. Korzh in Pinsk Oblast. In the fall of the same year she crossed the front line to establish contact with the Central Committee of the CPB (Bolshevik). In August 1942 she led a special group into occupied Vitebsk, where she was betrayed by a provocateur on November 13. After cruel torture she was executed by the fascists. Khoruzhaia was awarded the Order of the Red Banner of Labor and posthumously awarded the Order of the Red Banner.