Source: A History of the USSR: Part Three
pp. 411-412
Published: Foreign Languages Press: Moscow, 1948
Transciption/HTML Markup: Mike Bessler for greeklish.org, March 2008
Public Domain: 2008. You may freely copy, distribute, display and perform this work; as well as make derivative and commercial works. Please credit “gammacloud.org” as your source.
An extremely important part in the war against the Hitler robbers was played by the patriotic Soviet partisans who operated in all the Soviet regions that were temporarily occupied by the Germans. In the radio address he delivered on July 3, 1941, Comrade Stalin called upon all the Soviet people in the occupied regions to make conditions "unbearable for the enemy and all his accomplices." "They must be hounded and annihilated at every step, and all their measures must be frustrated," he said (J. Stalin, On the Great Patriotic War of the Soviet Union, Moscow, 1946, p. 15).
Thousands and hundreds of thousands of Soviet patriots responded to Comrade Stalin's call. Men and women of all ages and professions withdrew to the forests where they joined the partisan units. The Soviet people will never forget the name ofone of the first women-partisans, the Moscow high-school girl, Zoya Kosmodemyans. In 1941 Zoya voluntarily joined a partisan unit and bravely fought against the Hitlerites. During one of the partisan operations she was taken prisoner. She was subjected to frightful torture, but nothing could break the heroic spirit of this patriotic Soviet girl. Failing to compel the young heroine to give them any information, the Hitlerites decided to hang her in public. As the noose was being put round her neck she turned to the peasants who had been driven to the scene of the execution and made a passionate appeal to them to exterminate, the fascists. "Don't be afraid," she said. "Stalin is with us. Stalin will come!"