Tatyana Marinenko

Tatyana Savelyevna Marinenko, (Russian: Татьяна Савельевна Мариненко; 25 January 1920 – 2 August 1942) was a Soviet partisan and intelligence officer of the NKVD during the Second World War. After she was captured and tortured by the Germans in 1942 she was posthumously declared a Hero of the Soviet Union on 8 May 1965.[1]

Tatyana Savelyevna Marinenko
Татьяна Савельевна Мариненко
Born25 January 1920
Sukhoi Bor, Polotsk District, Vitebsk Region
Died2 August 1942 (aged 22)
Zhartsy, Polotsk District, Vitebsk Region, Soviet Union
Nationality Soviet Union
AwardsHero of the Soviet Union

Early life

Marinenko was born on 25 January 1920 to a Belorussian peasant family in the small village of Sukhoi Bor in what is now Polotsk district, present-day Belarus. After completing secondary school she entered the Polotsk Pedagogical School where she graduated in 1939, not long before the German invasion of the Soviet Union. She worked as a teacher in a secondary school in the village of Zelenka in Polotsk and was a member of the Komsomol.[2]

World War II
Bust of Marinenko in Polotsk

The schoolteacher began working as a partisan reconnaissance scout for the NKVD when the Germans invaded and occupied Polotsk. Under the pseudonym "Василёк" (English: Cornflower) she relayed information about the locations of Axis garrisons and troops to the Red Army until a traitor in her unit informed the Germans of their activities. Marinenko and her 14-year-old brother, who was also a partisan, were shot by the Axis after three days of interrogation and torture along with 28 other villagers who were part of the resistance. She was buried in the village of Zharci, Polotsk.[3][4]

Death and recognition

Marinenko was not awarded the title Hero of the Soviet Union until 1965 on the 20th anniversary of the end of the war, when the Supreme Soviet was awarded the title to partisans and soldiers killed in action whose feats had not been made public until after the war. Her portrait was installed in a museum in Belarus with a plaque describing her as the "Belorussian Zoya" and describing her feat as that of Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya, who was one of the most revered Heroines of the Soviet Union during the Great Patriotic War. A monument to Marinenko (pictured) was installed in Polotsk in addition to multiple schools named in her honor.[5][6][7]

See also

References
  1. Sakaida, Henry (2012). Heroines of the Soviet Union 1941–45. Bloomsbury Publishing. p. 58. ISBN 9781780966922.
  2. "Герой дня. Татьяна Мариненко". polkrf.ru (in Russian). Retrieved 2018-04-13.
  3. Ufarkin, Nikolai. "Мариненко Татьяна Савельевна". www.warheroes.ru (in Russian). Retrieved 2018-04-13.
  4. Беларуская энцыклапедыя. Пашкоў, Генадзь. Minsk. 1996–2004. p. 544. ISBN 985-11-0169-9. OCLC 35890197.CS1 maint: others (link)
  5. "ДОРОГА В БЕССМЕРТИЕ - ТАНЯ". molodguard.ru. Retrieved 2018-04-13.
  6. "Государственное учреждение образования "Зелёнковская детский сад-средняя школа им. Т.С. Мариненко Полоцкого района"". www.polotskroo.by (in Russian). Retrieved 2018-04-13.
  7. "Мариненко Татьяна Савельевна". polotsk.vitebsk-region.gov.by (in Russian). Retrieved 2018-04-13.
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