The most terrible and deadly war of all time is the Great Patriotic War! It killed millions of people, including young people who were desperately defending their homeland. One of these heroes, immortally living in the hearts of compatriots, is Leonid Alexandrovich Golikov.
The most ordinary boy Lenya Golikov grew up a happy and carefree representative of his generation. His life was filled with household chores, friendship with the guys from his yard and studying at school. And after the end of the seven-year plan, he got a job at a plywood factory.
And at the age of fifteen, a war began with the Nazi invaders, which suddenly cut short all his plans for life. Very soon, German troops occupied the village in the Novgorod region, where Lenya Golikov grew up. The boy with pain in his heart watched the new orders and the gross outrages that the Nazis were doing on Russian soil. His patriotic ardor did not allow him to simply watch the suffering of his fellow villagers, and he quickly decided to defend his beloved land with all available methods.
After stubborn battles for the village, when it was repulsed by the Nazis, a brave boy without hesitation enrolled in the newly formed partisan detachment. Despite his young age, he was accepted into it on the guarantee of his school mentor, who was in this detachment. It was then that for the first time in his life he felt the whole burden of responsibility for the liberation of the Fatherland from unsolicited invaders and vowed to the last drop of blood to protect his native land and his compatriots.
Another page was inscribed in the heroic chronicle of our Motherland, when in March 1942 Leonid Golikov became a scout in a partisan detachment belonging to the Leningrad brigade. There he became a member of the Komsomol organization.
Fighting the German invaders
Partisans played a huge contribution to the liberation of our country from German troops during the Great Patriotic War. They became a real punishment for the Nazis, because their actions in the rear of the enemy were accompanied by the destruction of manpower and equipment, food and ammunition, and violated the order of interaction between military units established by wartime. The hated enemy was very much afraid of the partisans, who forced them to spend time and resources on neutralizing the threat.
The combat experience of Leni Golikov has on its account and such a case when once he, returning from intelligence, came across five German troops. These Nazis were so passionate about looting in the apiary that they left their weapons away from the place of eating honey and fighting bees. The young partisan, without thinking twice, killed three people, and two were fortunate enough to leave the battlefield.
The heroic intelligence officer during his partisan activities managed to take part in twenty-seven military operations, during which seventy-eight German officers, several bridges and enemy vehicles were destroyed.
Feat of Leni Golikov
And the heroic feat of Leni Golikov, remaining the immortal legacy of the country as the eternal memory of grateful descendants, occurred on August 13, 1942 near the village of Varintsi on the Luga-Pskov highway. While on a combat mission, along with another partisan, Lenya was able to blow up a German car in which an important German military rank was driving (Major General of Engineering Troops Richard von Wirtz). Under him was invaluable documentation, including drawings of enemy mines and other new weapons, which subsequently rendered the Soviet army a great help in the fight against the Nazis.
For heroic actions behind enemy lines related to obtaining strategically important information, Lenya Golikov was awarded the Golden Star medal and awarded the title Hero of the Soviet Union (posthumous). In December 1942, the partisans of the detachment where Golikov fought were surrounded by German troops. For a long time, the partisans held on to the defensive, desperately fighting off numerous enemy attacks. On one of these days, they even managed to break through the German defenses in a fierce battle and break out of the cordon, changing the place of their deployment.
The losses of the detachment were very significant. Only about fifty partisans remained in the combat formation, who also ran out of ammunition and food, and the walkie-talkie was destroyed, which made communication with other partisans impossible. After a long persecution by the Nazis, the twenty-seven surviving partisans were forced to stop on the outskirts of the village of Ostray Luka. Since no German units were found nearby, for the maximum stealth of the detachment, the head of the partisans decided not to set a watch. However, the traitor Stepanov from among the inhabitants of the village conveyed information about the partisans to the elder Pykhov, who, in turn, made known to them a punitive detachment of Germans.
The betrayal of the Motherland by both participants in this atrocity was subject to retribution. Pykhov, who received a substantial reward from the Nazis for timely information about the partisans, was shot as a traitor in early 1944. But Stepanov, who showed remarkable abilities of an opportunist, subsequently began to fight against the Germans as part of a partisan detachment. This happened when the outcome of the war was clearly predetermined. It is amazing how this “hero” of the war returned home, even being able to win rewards for military prowess in defeating the enemy. However, the justice of Soviet justice overtook him in 1948. Stepanov was sentenced to twenty-five years in prison with the full withdrawal of all awards.
Hero's death
After the betrayal of Pykhov and Stepanov in January 1943, the village was surrounded by a detachment of punishers of fifty people. By the way, villagers who ingloriously collaborated with them also participated in this operation to destroy partisans on the side of the fascists. A short battle took place, in which almost all the partisans were destroyed. Only six managed to escape into the forest. In this bloody battle Lenya Golikov also died.
It is interesting that the perpetuation of the memory of Leni Golikov was associated with the story of his photograph, which was considered lost for a long time. So, to reflect the heroic image of a young partisan in 1958, the artist V. Fomin used a photo of his sister Lydia. However, later a photograph of the heroic partisan was found. But the symbol of all domestic teenagers was already immortalized in his convincingly created image. Therefore, many of his images still show off a portrait drawn from a photograph of his sister.
