Golikov, Leonid Alexandrovič

Leonid And. Golikov – guerrilla scout

(1926 – 1943)


Hero of the Soviet union - "pioněr"

He was born in 1926 in the small village and into the beginning of the war could take only seven classes of primary school. Because his father was sick, started soon after reaching fifteen years of work as a laborer in a small factory in Starorusovu. Left home against the wishes of his mother, when he reached the age of sixteen. Left his native village and went to the partisans, where in march 1942 became rozvědčíkem.

"Leňa", as he was called, underwent training as a scout and in April took part in the operation of the guerrillas against the ubikacím occupiers in the village Aprosovo, in which I, personally, shot and killed fourteen Germans and captured the staff documents. The other eighteen "fritz at best" felled in the fighting at the village Sosnice. Had a share in the destruction of two of the railway and the twelve road bridges, for which he received a medal courage and after he killed the general and took possession of the important documents, he was awarded the Order of the Red banner. It happened 13. August 1942 the road from the Pskova to Lugy. Already from the previous day's Leňa patrol at a small bridge on the road along with two other partisans, when in the direction from the Pskova appeared a speeding car. Guerrillas showered the vehicle with grenades and after crossing the bridge stopped right in front of the position of the young intelligence officer. Leňa dose machine passed two of the Germans - the chauffeur and the officer, who ran out of the car and started shooting. The third, which tried to escape into the woods, knocked off one of the partisans shot from a rifle. As it turns out, the officer was general of the artillery Richard Wirtz, who was carrying important documents from the headquarters in Königsberg to his unit in Luz. In the trunk, which he had brought with him were the blueprints of a new type of min, and map with their scheduled deployment to minefields.

Leňa became an experienced guerrilla scout and has participated in many similar events. In one of them, 24. January 1943 in the village Ostraja Luke in the Pskov region fell with his group into an ambush and was in the fight mortally wounded. For extraordinary heroism, he was 13. march 1944 posthumously awarded the Golden star of the Hero of USSR for him after the war took over his younger sister Lidija.

Leňa Golikov after his death, became a communist icon. Should serve as a model for soviet children, and his paintings hung in almost all schools. Despite the fact that he had often filling in for his sick father on the field and in the result he had in the school a considerable absence, was published as a model pupil and a pioneer. However, it never was, the stubborn boy he was rather trespassing and several times had to repeat a year. Also his portrait, painted to order of the party in 1958, was not true. The model for the figure of Leni Golikova on it with a German machine gun stood his sister Lidija Golikova. About it until the fall of the Soviet union knew, except the author, and the model is only a few people.

In 1964 he was in Novgorod unveiled the monument, which realistically shows its form according to the only surviving photograph, taken shortly after the granting of the medal "For courage". Despite these ideological myths and outright lies, was Leňa Golikov real hero, because he did not hesitate in a difficult time for your country to sacrifice your life..