Italian resistance during the Second World War. The exhibition “The Contribution of Soviet Partisans to the Italian Resistance. Resistance in the Italian armed forces

26.01.2022

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During the Great Patriotic War, Soviet soldiers defended not only their homeland from the Nazis. Even in those days, when the Nazis were just beginning to be driven out of the Soviet Union, Russian fighters fought against the Nazis in the very heart of Europe. About 5 thousand escaped prisoners of war from the USSR fought side by side with the partisans in Italy. Among them was a native of the Novosibirsk region, Vladimir Yakovlevich Pereladov, the commander of the legendary Russian shock battalion, nicknamed by the Italian comrades "Captain Russo".

For Vladimir Pereladov, a soldier's life was not new: having lost his parents early, he was brought up in the musical team of the Novosibirsk Rifle Regiment. The conditions in which the sons of the regiment grew up in those days were the most Spartan, they did not make any indulgences for teenagers. It is possible that it was the harsh youth that helped develop such qualities as endurance, courage and strong will. In the future, they more than once saved the young man from death.

In the fall of 1941, real hell began for the Bauman division: hurricane artillery fire from the Nazis, battles with enemy tanks. As soon as the Soviet soldiers managed to repulse the tank attack, they began to "iron" the German bombers. During one such raid, Vladimir managed to shoot down a Yu-87 bomber from a carbine, hitting the cockpit.

And yet, no matter how bravely the defenders of the Minsk highway fought, the defense line at 242 kilometers was destroyed, and the Bauman division ceased to exist as a combat unit. Scattered groups of surviving fighters made their way to their own through the thicket. In November, a small detachment of Vladimir Pereladov encountered a larger detachment of fascists in the forest. A fierce battle ensued. The Nazis had to call in aviation to help. It was then that Pereladov received a severe concussion from an air bomb explosion, was captured and ended up in the Dorogobuzh POW camp.

In his memoirs of these terrible days, Pereladov writes: “Once a week, the Germans brought two old horses into the camp, giving them to be eaten by prisoners of war. Two thin nags for several thousand people. No medical care was provided to the wounded soldiers and officers. From hunger and wounds, they died dozens a day. The prisoners spent the night in the open air, and the guards amused themselves by shooting at them from the towers.

In May 1942, prisoners of war were forced to work on the construction of dugouts for the officers of the German troops. When the camp water carrier fell ill, the authorities appointed Vladimir, who knew a little German, to this position. An old nag and a chaise with a wooden barrel were assigned to him. Once, when the horse had moved far enough from the camp, Pereladov managed to get behind the barbed wire, supposedly in order to bring the animal back. He reached the edge of the forest and fled. Alas, Vladimir stumbled upon a detachment of SS men in the forest. He tried in vain to tell them that he had gone looking for a runaway horse (which, indeed, was soon found). But they did not believe him and beat him half to death.

The dying Vladimir was returned to the camp and thrown into a pit - as a warning to the rest, in order to stop any thoughts of escape among the prisoners. But comrades, among whom were doctors-prisoners of war, pulled him out of the next world.

In the summer of 1943, Vladimir Pereladov, among other Russian prisoners, was taken to northern Italy, to build defensive fortifications along the ridge of the Apennine Mountains (“Gotha Line”). The local population, who hated the Germans, treated the Russians who found themselves in Nazi slavery with great participation, brought them food and clothes. More importantly, it was in this region (the provinces of Piedmont, Liguria, Emilia-Romagna, Lombardy, Veneto) that the main forces of the Italian partisans were concentrated. They staged sabotage against the Germans and Mussolini's Blackshirts, organized ambushes on small enemy garrisons and convoys, and rescued prisoners taken to build fortifications. Among those who were helped was Pereladov, who worked in a camp near the town of Sassuolo. In September 1943, Vladimir was finally free; Guirino Dini, an elderly bicycle factory worker, orchestrated his escape.

Exhausted, exhausted by hard work, Vladimir ended up in the house of his savior and his wife Rosa. Their son Claudio, drafted into Mussolini's army and sent to the Eastern Front, died near Stalingrad, and since then Guirino Dini has become a partisan liaison in Sassuolo, and Rosa has been his devoted assistant. Having lost their own son, the elderly couple surrounded the Russian fugitive with touching care, generously sharing their meager food supplies with him until he gained enough strength to again hold a weapon in his hands. “My Italian parents,” that is how Vladimir called the Dini couple.

Italy - officially an ally of Germany - paid tribute to the Nazis in blood: men and young men were sent to the Eastern Front - to die for interests alien to them, and to work in Germany, where their position was not much different from that of a slave. Attempts to resist the treacherous regime of Mussolini were severely punished. The resistance movement became truly popular by the summer of 1943, when the Nazis brutally crushed the uprising in Rome and central Italy.

Pereladov decided that he could beat the enemy in Italy no worse than in the Smolensk region, and in November 1943 he went with a guide to the mountains to the partisans, having with him a note-call from Guirino Dini. He was accepted into the detachment by the commander of the partisan forces of the province of Modena - Armando (real name - Mario Ricci).

The first task that Pereladov completed as the commander of the partisan group was to blow up the bridge. But soon a much greater success followed: at the beginning of winter, partisans, among whom now fought a brave Russian officer, captured an entire battalion of fascist blackshirts in the village of Farassinoro, obtaining valuable supplies of food and weapons. As for the fate of the captured fascists, those of them who were not seen in the massacres of the civilian population, having disarmed, were released or exchanged for partisans and their supporters, who were languishing in prison.

The successful operation could not but inspire Vladimir and his comrades: in the following months they released several dozen Soviet prisoners of war, from whom they assembled a detachment, which soon became known as the Russian shock battalion. “Not a day passed,” writes Pereladov, “that the partisan detachments of our, and not only our, zone were not replenished with more and more fighters and officers who fled from German captivity. They came not only accompanied by Italian messengers and guides, but also on their own.”

With the onset of the spring of 1944, more and more Italian patriots and fugitive Soviet prisoners of war began to arrive in the detachment. The partisans moved on to major military operations. In the north of Italy, large zones liberated from the Nazis and fascists appeared - "partisan republics". The Russian partisan battalion was involved in the emergence of one of them - the "Republic of Montefiorino". In May 1944, Anatoly Makarovich Tarasov, a native of the city of Udomlya, joined the Russian battalion, who also managed to gain fame among the Italians as a brave fighter.

With the defeat of the fascist garrison in Montefiorino, most of the roads vital for the Nazis turned out to be under the control of the partisans, and they, realizing the danger, went on the offensive. At dawn on July 5, 1944, a fascist punitive detachment from the SS division "Hermann Goering", armed with mountain guns, mortars and heavy machine guns, invaded the partisan zone near the village of Pyandelagotti.

The Russian battalion was supposed to bypass the Germans from the rear, cut them off from vehicles and guns, and then, on a prearranged signal, simultaneously with the Italian comrades, hit the enemy. But the Germans, having crushed the barrier of the Italian partisans, invaded the village, where they committed a real massacre, and the Soviet detachment had to knock out the Nazi bandits from the burning village. Here is how Pereladov himself describes the fight: “This fight could be the last for me. In the rush to get ready, I forgot to take off my red jacket, which I wore, like many partisan commanders, and, therefore, was a highly visible target. I saw a fan of bullets digging into the ground almost at my very feet (we were advancing from the mountain), the next moment I was descending from the mountain already at the “fifth point”. Another line of an SS man, who was sitting in a nearby bush, went over his head.

Having occupied the village, the Soviet fighters saw a terrible picture: the streets were littered with corpses ... Looted goods were lying everywhere, which the Nazis did not have time to drag with them. The captured SS men were shot at the walls of the Catholic Church. Only then, frightened residents began to leave their homes to look at their saviors. Their astonishment and delight knew no bounds when they saw that they were Russians. The German command subsequently spread a rumor that the detachment was destroyed not by partisans, but by an airborne assault of the Soviet Army. A week later, the Nazis announced a reward for Pereladov's head - 300,000 lire.

From that moment on, the Russian battalion began to quickly replenish, and not only at the expense of former Soviet prisoners. Side by side with them fought a platoon of Czechoslovaks, a squad of Yugoslavs, several British, an Austrian Karl and one black American soldier named John.

At the end of July 1944, hard times came for the Resistance fighters: the Nazis launched a massive offensive. The forces turned out to be unequal: the Nazis threw three full-blooded divisions against the 15,000th partisan army of Armando, while the allies broke their word, without going on the offensive against Northern Italy. So the Russian battalion was left almost without food and ammunition.

The partisans took up defensive positions on the outskirts of the village of Toano in order to delay the German column advancing towards Montefiorino. The enemy launched artillery and mortars, and the first dead appeared in the partisan detachments. A group of Nazis broke through the line of defense and the partisans, jumping over the parapet of the trenches, rushed to the counterattack.

“Aleksey Isakov, a native of the North Caucasus, was killed. Almost at close range, he destroyed three fascists, and when he ran out of ammunition, he smashed the head of the fourth with a machine gun, and at that moment an enemy bullet hit him in the face. Thus, a wonderful comrade died, our "Mustache", as we called him for his beautiful mustache of the guards ... In the same counterattack, Karl, our "Austriaco", was seriously wounded. He died three days later. This man was previously in the fascist army. In May 1944, he voluntarily went over to the side of the partisans and participated in many military operations, while showing a model of self-discipline and great courage, ”writes Pereladov in his book Notes of a Russian Garibaldian.

Having beaten off the German offensive, the Russian and Italian partisans planned to break through the blockade, but they managed to avoid a real battle thanks to the work of scouts. During the night, the last civilians of Montfiorino left with them. When leaving the encirclement, one person died - Pavel Vasiliev, a fellow countryman of Pereladov, originally from the Novosibirsk region. Pereladov's battalion moved to the province of Bologna, as part of the Sixth Garibaldi Brigade. They already knew about the successes of the Russian detachment and greeted them very cordially.

In October, the commander of all partisan formations in the province of Modena, Mario Ricci (Armando), crossed the front line with a small detachment to establish contact with American troops. Behind him, due to the next offensive of the Germans, the Russian shock battalion was forced to follow. On the night of December 13-14, the fighters crossed the Tuscany Pass in the area of operations of the 5th American Army, destroying the fascist pillbox. The firing came from both the German and American sides. A stray bullet wounded Andrei Prusenko. But there were no more casualties. In the morning, the Russian battalion was met by Italian partisans sent by American troops to clarify the situation after a night skirmish.

“When the detachment went to the place allotted for rest, the partisans suddenly awakened a long-forgotten sense of order. Lieutenant I.M. Suslov sang "Through the valleys and the hills." The whole column picked up the chorus... The locals and the American soldiers even seemed to be looking at us with envy. “Russian soldiers are coming,” one could read on their faces. Some smiled affably, waved their hands, others frowned, seeing how the Russian shock partisan battalion walked bravely and smartly through the streets of the Italian town, ”writes Anatoly Tarasov, an associate of Pereladov, in the book Italy in the Heart.

Brigadier General John Colley gave the Garibaldians a lavish reception. But later the Americans did not want to release the Russian partisans to join the Italians under the command of Armando, because they wanted to recruit them into the American army. But, no matter how they tempted Pereladov with a generous reward, they received nothing but indignation in response.

The school building, where the detachment was located, was soon taken under guard by the Americans, and Pereladov had to stubbornly insist that he be sent at the disposal of the Soviet military mission. First, he was taken to Livorno, but it was not possible to contact the mission from there. The American command decided to take him to Florence, promising to send the entire detachment there. Upon arrival in Florence, the Russian partisans were forcibly disarmed, promising to return the weapons the next day. But the words were not kept: the armed communists aroused too great fears among the Americans.

Passing through Rome, the Russians were sent on buses to Naples. Former partisans were loaded onto a British warship, but they were taken not to the USSR, but to Egypt. Until the end of March 1945, they lived in a military tent camp, and only on the morning of April 1, 1945, after a long journey, they saw the rare lights of a dilapidated Odessa.

Vladimir Pereladov did not see the scarlet flag over the Reichstag. At the time of clarifying the circumstances of his stay in captivity, he, like many former prisoners of war, was sent to prison, but, fortunately, did not stay there for long. After his release, the authorities allowed him to graduate from the institute in the capital, after which the former partisan left for the city of Inta to work on distribution at a coal plant.

The Italians have not forgotten their Russian comrade. In 1956, a delegation of former Italian resistance fighters headed by Armando visited Moscow. The purpose of their trip was primarily a meeting with the "Captain Russo". A summons telegram was sent to Inta, and Pereladov returned to the capital (now forever) to hug his friends.

For military merits, Vladimir Pereladov received the Order of the Red Banner of War and was twice presented to the highest award of Italian partisans - the Garibaldi Star for Valor. He described his amazing adventures on Italian soil in the book Notes of a Russian Garibaldian.

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 ceremony was attended by the Chairman of RIO and the Chairman of the Board of Trustees, the Minister of Education of the Russian Federation Olga Vasilyeva.

The exhibition tells about the participation of Soviet citizens in the Italian Resistance, the exhibition presents photographs from their personal archives, information about the most famous partisan detachments. Massimo Eckli, the author of the exhibition at the RIO House, a philologist, teacher of Italian at the Russian State Library, collected all the information for ten years. As a child, he was struck by his grandfather's story about an unknown Russian soldier buried in the San Zeno di Montaña cemetery near Verona. The grave of the Soviet member of the Italian Resistance was looked after by the inhabitants of the village, near which the cemetery was located. Growing up, Mr. Eckley 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 the book "Soviet partisans in Italy", which tells about the participation of Soviet citizens in the Italian partisan brigades. The photographs and data collected by him are exhibited at the exhibition in the House of RIO. This information allows us to understand that in Italy even now they 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 Russkiy Mir Cultural Association in Turin Anna Roberti, member of the National Association of Italian Partisans (ANPI) Floriano Pigni.

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 its former ally to withdraw from the war. Having occupied the central and northern regions of the country, the 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 Committee of National Liberation was created to coordinate the activities of all political forces in the fight against fascism. The partisan movement included the Garibaldi brigades, controlled by the communists, the Justice and Freedom group, which focuses on the Action Party, the Matteotti brigades under the auspices of the Socialist Party and the Fiamme Verdi, the units of the Catholic Resistance. In addition, partisan 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.

The 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 labor camp prisoners 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 work 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 to partisan detachments.

Together with Italian patriots, natives of the Soviet republics took part in the fighting in Tuscany, Emilia Romagna, Piedmont, Veneto, Liguria and other areas. Fedor Poletaev, Fore Mosulishvili, Nikolai Buyanov and Daniil Avdeev were awarded the highest award of the Italian Republic - the Gold Medal "For Military Valor". Seven more 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 women's partisan detachment of the same name. - 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 dedicated to a little-known page in the history of Italy, the participation of Soviet partisans in the Italian Resistance, opened at the House of the Russian Historical Society. The opening of the exposition was attended by the Chairman of RIO Sergey Naryshkin and the Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the History of the Fatherland Foundation, the Minister of Education of the Russian Federation Olga Vasilyeva.

On June 29, the Russian Federation celebrates the Day of Partisans and Underground Workers. 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 the Soviet land was defended from the Nazis by partisan heroes. 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 in whose territory they were held captive.

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 as early as the 1920s, as soon as Benito Mussolini came to power and established a fascist dictatorship. Communists, socialists, anarchists, and later representatives of the left movements in fascism took part in the resistance (there were also those who were dissatisfied with Mussolini's alliance with Hitler). However, before 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 start of the war. The Resistance Movement was created as a result of the combined efforts of individual groups formed by representatives of the Italian political opposition, including military personnel.

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, who had gone over to the side of the anti-fascist government of Italy, 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 weapons. Representatives of the Communist Party, led by Luigi Longo, held talks with General Giacomo Carboni, who led the military intelligence of Italy and at the same time commanded the mechanized corps of the Italian army, which defended Rome from the advancing Nazi troops. General Carboni ordered to transfer to Luigi Longo two trucks of weapons and ammunition intended for the deployment of a partisan movement against the Nazi invaders. After the September 9, 1943, the Italian troops defending Rome ceased resistance and units of the Wehrmacht and the SS entered the Italian capital, the only hope remained for the partisan movement.

On September 9, 1943, the Italian National Liberation Committee was created, which began to play the role of formal leadership of the Italian anti-fascist partisan movement. The Committee of National Liberation included representatives of the Communist, Liberal, Socialist, Christian Democratic, Labor Democratic parties and the Party of Action. The leadership of the committee maintained contact 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 partisan movement included three key armed forces. The first - the Garibaldi brigades - was controlled by the Italian communists, the second - the organization "Justice and Freedom" - 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 few partisan groups operated in Italy, staffed by monarchists, anarchists and anti-fascists without pronounced political sympathies.

On November 25, 1943, under the control of the communists, the formation of the Garibaldi brigades began. By April 1945, 575 Garibaldian brigades were operating in Italy, each of which numbered approximately 40-50 partisans, united in 4-5 groups of two links of five people. The direct command of the brigades was carried out by the leaders of the Italian Communist Party, Luigi Longo and Pietro Secchia. The size of the Garibaldi brigades was about half of the total strength of the Italian partisan movement. In the period from mid-1944 to March 1945 alone, the Garibaldi brigades created by the communists accounted for 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 joined the ranks of the Italian Resistance, who escaped from prisoner-of-war camps or found themselves in Italy in some other way. When the German prisoner of war camps were overcrowded, a significant part of the soldiers and officers of the Allied troops and the Red Army who were in captivity were transferred to camps in Italy. The total number of prisoners of war in Italy reached 80 thousand people, of which 20 thousand people were military personnel and civilian prisoners of war from the Soviet Union. Soviet prisoners of war were placed in northern 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 partisan detachments and underground organizations operating in cities and rural areas. Many Soviet servicemen, breaking into the territory of active Italian partisans, joined the Garibaldi brigades. Thus, Azerbaijani Ali Baba ogly Babaev (born 1910), who was in a prisoner of war camp in Udine, escaped from captivity with the help of 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 in the Red Army as the commander of an anti-tank battery, was taken prisoner. Tried to escape three times, but failed. Finally, already in Italy, luck smiled at the Soviet officer. Pereladov fled with the help of the Italian communists and was transferred 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 occupation authorities of Italy for the capture of "Captain Russo", as the locals called Vladimir Yakovlevich. Pereladov's detachment managed to inflict colossal damage on the Nazis - destroy 350 vehicles with soldiers and cargo, blow up 121 bridges, capture at least 4,500 soldiers and officers of the Nazi 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 Fedor 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, did he manage to escape from the camp located in the vicinity of Genoa. Having escaped from captivity, Poletaev joined the battalion of Nino Franchi, which was part of the Orest brigade. Colleagues in the partisan detachment called Fedor "Poetan". On February 2, 1945, during the battle in the valley of Lightning Valle - Scrivia, Poletaev went on the attack and forced most of the Nazis to drop their weapons. But one of the German soldiers fired at the brave partisan. Wounded in the throat Poletaev died. After the war, he was buried in Genoa, and only in 1962, the feat of Fedor 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 of people. 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 begin the formation of "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, accomplished his feat. Like many of his peers, with the outbreak of war, he was drafted into the army, received a senior rank, and was taken prisoner in the Baltic states. In Italy, he was lucky enough to escape from a POW camp. On December 3, 1944, the detachment, in which Mosulishvili was also, was surrounded. The Nazis blocked the partisans in the premises of the cheese factory 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 out to them first. However, the platoon commander did not dare to go out first and then at the entrance to the cheese factory 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 (Bautdinov G. “We beat the Nazis in Italy” // http://www.konkurs.senat.org/).

It is noteworthy that among the partisans who took up arms against the fascist dictatorship of Mussolini, and then against the Nazi troops that 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 take the side of the communist Soviet Union against fascism.

- Hero of the Soviet Union foreman Christopher Nikolaevich Mosulishvili.

Comrade Chervonny

When the Civil War began in Russia, young Aleksey Nikolaevich Fleisher (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. The 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. The young cadet Alexei Fleischer, along with his other classmates, was evacuated by the Wrangelites from the Crimea. So he ended up in Europe - a seventeen-year-old boy who, just yesterday, was going to devote himself to military service for the glory of the Russian state. Like many other emigrants, Alexei Fleisher had to try himself in various professions in a foreign land. Initially settling in Bulgaria, he got a job as a molder at a brick factory, worked as a miner, then moved to Luxembourg, where he worked at a leather factory. The son of a lieutenant colonel, who also had to wear officer's shoulder straps, became an ordinary European proletarian. After moving from Luxembourg to France, Fleischer got a job as an excavator driver, then as a cable car driver, and was the driver of an Italian diplomat in Nice. Before the war, Alexey Fleischer lived in Belgrade, where he worked as a driver for the Greek diplomatic mission. In 1941, when Italian troops invaded Yugoslavia, Aleksey Fleischer, as a person of Russian origin, was detained and sent in early 1942 into exile in Italy. There, under the supervision of the police, he was settled in one of the small villages, but soon managed to obtain permission to live in Rome - albeit also under the supervision of the Italian secret services. In October 1942, Alexey Fleisher got a job as a head waiter at the embassy of Siam (Thailand). Thailand acted in the Second World War on the side of Japan, therefore it had a diplomatic mission in Italy, and the employees of the Siamese embassy did not arouse any special suspicions from 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, where many prominent figures of the local underground visited. Through the Italian underground, Fleischer got in touch with Soviet prisoners of war who were in Italy. The backbone of the partisan movement was precisely the fugitives from the prisoner of war camps, who acted with the active support of immigrants from Russia living in Rome and other Italian cities. Aleksey Fleisher, a nobleman and white émigré, received the combat 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 to freedom 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 emigrants, who formed a whole underground group. An important role in the Russian underground was played by Prince Sergei Obolensky, who acted under the guise of the "Committee for the Protection of Russian Prisoners of War." Prince Alexander Sumbatov got Alexei Fleischer a maître d' at the Thai embassy. In addition to princes Obolensky and Sumbatov, the Russian emigrant 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 in the vicinity of Rome, at the location of the Nazi troops, there was a significant number of Soviet prisoners of war. It was decided to launch active work to help fugitive prisoners of war, which consisted in sheltering the fugitives and transferring them to active partisan detachments, as well as providing food, clothing and weapons for the fleeing Soviet prisoners of war. In July 1943, the Germans delivered 120 Soviet prisoners of war to the outskirts of Rome, where they were first used in the construction of facilities, and then distributed among industrial enterprises and construction sites in cities adjacent to Rome. Seventy prisoners of war worked at the dismantling of the aircraft factory in Monterotondo, fifty people worked at the car repair factory in Bracciano. Then, in October 1943, the command of the Italian partisan forces operating in the Lazio region 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 the Roman group of Russian emigrants under the leadership of Alexei Fleisher. On October 24, 1943, Alexei Fleischer, accompanied by two anti-fascist Italians, went to Monterotondo, from where 14 prisoners of war escaped on the same day. Among the first to escape from the camp was Lieutenant Aleksey 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 transferred to partisan detachments.

Partisan detachments on the outskirts of Rome

In the area of Genzano and Palestrina, a Russian partisan detachment was created, staffed by fugitive prisoners of war. They were commanded by Lieutenant Alexei 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 district, where he was engaged in a completely peaceful business - trade. It is unlikely that the Irkutsk salesman Anatoly could imagine his future as a commander of a partisan detachment on distant Italian soil even in a dream. In the summer of 1941, Anatoly's brother Vladimir Tarasenko died in the battles near Leningrad. Anatoly went to the front, served in the artillery, was wounded. In June 1942, 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 transferred, along with other comrades in misfortune, to Italy. There he fled from the camp, joining the partisans. Another Russian partisan detachment was formed in the area of Ottavia and Monte Mario. A separate underground "Youth Detachment" operated in Rome. 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 kept here. Together with comrade Anatoly Kurnosov, Konopelko tried to escape from the camp, but was caught. Kurnosov and Konopelko were placed in the Roman prison, and then transferred back to the POW camp. There, a certain D "Amiko, a local resident who was a member of an underground anti-fascist group, got in touch with 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-and-dumb Italian Giovanni Beneditto. He led the transfer of escaped Soviet prisoners of war to the mountainous regions - to the partisan detachments operating there, or hid the fugitives in the abandoned Thai embassy. Soon, new underground workers 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 dressed in 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. Shoulder to shoulder with the Soviet underground, operating in Rome, stood Italian patriots - Professor, Doctor of Medicine Oscaro di Fonzo, Captain Adreano Tanny, doctor Loris Gasperi, cabinet maker Luigi de Zorzi and many other wonderful people of various ages and professions. 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 a small Catholic church of San Giuseppe. Another point of deployment of the underground was the basement of a bar owned by Aldo Farabullini and his wife Idrana Montagna. In Ottavia, one of the closest suburbs of Rome, a safe house also appeared, used by the Fleischerites. She was supported by the Sabatino Leoni family. The landlord's wife, Maddalena Rufo, was nicknamed "Mother Angelina". This woman was distinguished by an enviable composure. She managed to hide the underground workers even when several Nazi officers were placed on the second floor of the house by the decision of the German commandant's office. The underground lived on the first floor, and the Nazis lived on the second. And it is precisely 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 was kept secret until the departure of the German officers to the next place of deployment. Great assistance to the Soviet underground was provided by the peasant population of the surrounding villages, who provided the needs of the partisans for food and shelter. Eight Italians who hosted escaped Soviet prisoners of war and later hosted underground fighters were awarded the highest state award of the USSR, the Order of the Patriotic War, after the end of World War II.

Didn't give up and didn't give up

Soviet partisans and underground workers operating in the vicinity of Rome were engaged in the 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, spoiled the property and transport of the Nazis. Naturally, the Gestapo was knocked off its feet in search of unknown saboteurs who inflicted serious damage on the Nazi formations stationed in the district of Rome. On suspicion of assisting the partisans, the Nazi punishers arrested many local residents. Among them was 19-year-old Maria Pizzi, a resident of Monterotondo. Partisans always found shelter and help in her house. Of course, this could not go on for long - in the end, a traitor from among the local collaborators "surrendered" 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 - she contracted tuberculosis in the dungeons of the Gestapo. The scammers also handed over Mario Pinci, a resident of Palestrina 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 members of the Pinchi family were taken to a cheese factory, where they were brutally murdered along with six other arrested Palestinians. The bodies of the murdered anti-fascists were put on display and hung for 24 hours in the central square of Palestrina. The lawyer Aldo Finzi, who had previously acted as part of 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 worker, this was a wonderful gift, since the lawyer got the opportunity to find out almost all the action plans of the German unit, information about which he passed on to the command of the local partisan detachment. However, the scammers soon betrayed Finzi's lawyer to the Nazi Gestapo. Aldo Finzi was arrested and brutally murdered on March 24, 1944 in the Ardeatino caves.

Often the partisans walked, literally, to a hair's breadth from 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 to meet with Francesco de Zuccori, secretary of the local organization of the Italian Communist Party. Tarasenko spent the night in the house of a local resident Domenico de Battisti, but when he was about to leave in the morning, he discovered that a German army unit had camped near 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 into her arms. Under the guise of an Italian - the owner of the house, Tarasenko went out into the yard. The child kept repeating “dad” in Italian, which convinced the Nazis that they were the owner of the house and the father of the family. So the partisan commander managed to avoid death and escape from the territory occupied by the Nazi soldiers.

However, fate was not always so favorable to the Soviet partisans. So, on the night of January 28-29, 1944, Soviet partisans arrived in Palestrina, among whom were Vasily Skorokhodov (pictured), Nikolai Demyashchenko and Anatoly Kurepin. They were met by local Italian anti-fascists - communists Enrico Gianneti, Francesco Zbardella, Lucio and Ignazio Lena. Soviet partisans were placed 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 Demyashchenko were walking along the road to Galicano. Their movement was covered from behind by Peter Ilinykh and Alexander Skorokhodov. Near the village of Fontanaone, to check documents, the partisans tried to stop the fascist patrol. 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 Demyashchenko. Anatoly Kurepin was killed, and Pyotr Ilyinykh 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 Demyashchenko and 24-year-old Anatoly Kurepin have found peace forever on Italian soil - their graves are still located in a small cemetery in the city of Palestrina, which is 38 kilometers from the Italian capital.

Murder in the Ardeatian Caves

The spring of 1944 was accompanied by very stubborn attempts by the Nazi invaders to crack down on the partisan movement in the vicinity of the Italian capital. March 23, 1944, in the afternoon, a unit of the 11th company of the 3rd battalion of the SS police regiment "Bozen", stationed in Rome, moved along Rasella Street. Suddenly there was an explosion of terrible force. As a result of the partisan action, the anti-fascists managed to destroy thirty-three Nazis, 67 policemen were injured. The attack was the work of partisans from the Combat Patriotic Group led by Rosario Bentivegna. About the daring partisan attack on the German unit was reported to Berlin - to Adolf Hitler himself. The enraged Fuhrer ordered the most cruel methods to take revenge on the partisans, to carry out actions of intimidation of the local population. The German command received a terrible order - to blow up all residential areas in the area of Rasella Street, and for every German killed, twenty Italians were to be shot. Even the experienced Field Marshal Albert Kesselring, who commanded the Nazi troops in Italy, Adolf Hitler's order seemed excessively cruel. Kesselring did not blow up residential areas, and for each dead SS man he decided to shoot only ten Italians. The direct executor of the order to execute the Italians was SS Obersturmbannführer Herbert Kappler, head of the Roman Gestapo, who was assisted by the police chief of Rome, Pietro Caruso. In the shortest possible time, a list of 280 people was formed. It included prisoners of the Roman prison who were serving long sentences, as well as those arrested for subversive activities.

Nevertheless, it was necessary to recruit another 50 people - so that for each of the 33 killed German policemen, ten Italians were obtained. 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 Tasso Street, which was run by the Nazis. Meanwhile, the command of the Italian Resistance learned about the plans for the upcoming terrible massacre. It was decided to prepare an attack on the prison and release all those arrested by force. 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 excessively harsh. According to the Americans and the British, the attack on the prison could have provoked even more brutal reprisals from the Nazis. As a result, the release of prisoners from the prison on Tasso Street was thwarted. The Nazis took 335 people to the Ardeatian 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 heavy sabers.

Only in May 1944 did the relatives of the victims, secretly making their way to the caves, bring 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 anti-fascists who died in the Ardeatinsky caves was a Soviet man buried under the name "Alessio Kulishkin" - that's how the Italian partisans called Alexei Kubyshkin, a young twenty-three-year-old guy - a native of the small Ural city of Berezovsky. However, in fact, it was not Kubyshkin who died in the Ardeatinsky caves, but an unknown Soviet partisan. Aleksey Kubyshkin and his comrade Nikolai Ostapenko, with the help of the Italian prison guard Angelo Sperry, who sympathized with the anti-fascists, were transferred to a construction squad and soon escaped from prison. After the war, Alexei Kubyshkin returned to his native Ural.

The head of the Roman police, Pietro Caruso, who directly organized the murder of arrested anti-fascists in the Ardeatino caves, was sentenced to death after the war. At the same time, the guards barely managed to recapture the policeman from the crowd of indignant Romans who were eager to lynch the punisher and drown him in the Tiber. Herbert Kappler, who led 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. From that time on, the regime of detention was greatly facilitated for him, in particular, they provided his wife with unhindered access to prison. In August 1977, Kappler's wife took Kappler out of prison in a suitcase (the ex-Gestapo man, dying of cancer, then weighed 47 kilograms). A few months later, in February 1978, Kappler died. 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, until his death remaining a staunch opponent 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 Ardeatian caves, Erich Priebke, was extradited to Italy in our time and died at the age of 100 in 2013, while under house arrest. Up until the mid-1990s. Erich Priebke, like many other Nazi war criminals, was hiding in Latin America - in Argentina.

The long-awaited liberation of Italy

At the beginning of the 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 united force 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 the Nazi units retreating from Monterotondo. The partisans attacked a column of German vehicles and tanks with machine-gun fire. Two tanks were put out of action, more than a hundred German troops were killed and 250 were taken prisoner. The city of Monterotondo was liberated by a detachment of Soviet partisans who hoisted a tricolor Italian flag over the building of the city government. After the liberation of Monterotondo, the partisans returned to Rome. At a meeting of detachments, it was decided to make a red combat banner, which would demonstrate the national and ideological affiliation of the brave warriors. However, in the warring Rome, there was no matter for the red banner.

Therefore, resourceful partisans used the national flag of Thailand to make the banner. From the red cloth of the Siamese flag, a white elephant was repulsed, and instead of it, a hammer and sickle and a star were sewn. It was this red banner of “Thai origin” that was one of the first to fly over the liberated Italian capital. Many Soviet partisans, after the liberation of Rome, continued to fight in other regions of Italy.

When representatives of the Soviet government arrived in Rome, Aleksey Nikolaevich Fleisher handed over to them 180 Soviet citizens released 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 already in Eastern Europe. Alexey 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 life of the most ordinary Soviet person, in which nothing reminded of a glorious military past and an interesting but complex biography.

Original taken from rt_russian in "Captain Russo": The story of a Russian officer who became a partisan in Italy during World War II

Upon learning of the Nazi attack on the Soviet Union, Vladimir, who had just completed the 4th year of the Krzhizhanovsky Moscow Planning Institute, immediately signed up for the militia. He and his classmates ended up in the 19th regiment of the Bauman division, which was recruited mainly from the intelligentsia and students. The 19th regiment defended 242 km of the Minsk highway (Smolensk region): they built fortifications and "washed their hands to bloody calluses."

For Vladimir Pereladov, a soldier's life was not new: having lost his parents early, he was brought up in the musical team of the Novosibirsk Rifle Regiment. The conditions in which the sons of the regiment grew up in those days were the most Spartan, they did not make any indulgences for teenagers. It is possible that it was the harsh youth that helped develop such qualities as endurance, courage and strong will. In the future, they more than once saved the young man from death.

Exhausted, exhausted by hard work, Vladimir ended up in the house of his savior and his wife Rosa. Their son Claudio, drafted into Mussolini's army and sent to the Eastern Front, died near Stalingrad, and since then Guirino Dini has become a partisan liaison in Sassuolo, and Rosa has been his devoted assistant. Having lost their own son, the elderly couple surrounded the Russian fugitive with touching care, generously sharing their meager food supplies with him until he gained enough strength to again hold a weapon in his hands. "My Italian parents," - so Vladimir called the Dini couple.

RUSSIAN PARTISANS 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 had catastrophic proportions, but to review 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 need to be reminded 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 only their army was the strongest, and about guerrilla warfare they do not give such authority as it should be. Indeed, many SS POWs were foreigners, most of them from the Red Army and thus they were Soviet citizens. They were not immediately distributed to their final destination, so they were sent to distribution camps.
From there, some ended up in the death camps, some could escape and go to the Italian partisan detachments, for example, the 63rd Garibaldian brigade was renamed the “63rd Bolero Garibaldi brigade”, in which many Soviet citizens took part, such as Anatoly Makarovich Tarasov, who participated in the Garibaldian Battalion "Matteotti" together with Alexander Kopilkov and Anton Melnichuk. Within this battalion, these three created the "Stalin" battalion, which included 1,500 Soviet citizens.
Fedor Andrianovich Poletaev, who followed a different path, but with the same fate, was also captured by the Germans, deported to Germany, then to Italy and liberated by communist partisan detachments of the inhabitants of Genoa. After his release, he entered the Oreste Brigade of Divisions Pinon Chikero, 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 the "Order of Lenin" by the USSR, and by Italy he received a gold medal for military prowess and a Garibaldian 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 were shot, or died in the gulags.
All these people took part in the Second World War and wrote history with their sweat and blood.
Documents about the sad events that took place in Italy during the Second World War were found in the Palazzo Cesi in Rome in 1994, in the “closet of shame”. So far, the court has not yet decided what punishment to give to the perpetrators. "Shooting over the bridge in Casalecchio sul Reno" is one of these sad events performed by the commander of the SS 16 panzergranadier division Manfred Schmit and subordinate Paul Roche on 10/10/44.
The court decision of the military tribunal of Verona remained unannounced due to the absence of the defendant, who at that time became a US spy and disappeared without a trace.

Massimo Eccley and Elena Alexandrovna Mikhailova.