"Superdiversant of Stalin" Fyodor Krylovich: what kind of guy he was

Sergey Kron - especially for Novye Izvestia

On the night of July 30, 1943, at the Osipovichi railway station, not far from Mogilev, the largest sabotage in the entire history of that war was committed. Two explosions destroyed not only several Hitlerite echelons with food, fodder, aviation fuel, ammunition and the latest Tiger tanks, but also for a long time one of the largest railway junctions in Belarus was put out of action.

According to a legend that has survived to this day, I.V. Stalin. The supreme commander ordered L.P. Beria find heroes and reward. However, the Belarusian electrician Fyodor Krylovich, who planted hour mines under the fuel tanks, did not receive even a medal for his feat.

Fyodor Krylovich was born in 1916 in Minsk in the family of a railway worker. Childhood and adolescence passed in Osipovichi, where he barely finished the seven-year period. But Fyodor managed to enter the Vitebsk Electrotechnical College. However, studies soon had to be abandoned due to material difficulties. Fyodor was drafted into the army in 1937, he became a sergeant, fought on Khalkhin Gol, took part in the Finnish war. He returned to Osipovichi in the summer of 1940.

Former partisan Leonid Vereshchagin remembered Krylovich well before the war and said that they loved him in Osipovichi. Tall, broad-shouldered, he was an unusually agile, sociable, courageous and determined guy. Many strove to imitate him. They say that the girls did not give Krylovich a pass, he loved spree and even had drives to the police. By the way, in the detachment he had a nickname Hero. Fyodor Krylovich was known as a very independent person, he did not always act according to instructions, but based on the real situation, he showed himself to be quite headstrong.

Be that as it may, on June 22, 1941, Fyodor came to the military registration and enlistment office to sign up as a volunteer for the front. But he was refused, since the railway workers were not taken into the army - there was a reservation. It was also not possible to leave with comrades to the east: German tanks, bypassing Osipovichi, through the Berezina went to the bridge and cut off the refugees' way to Mogilev. And on June 30, the enemies entered Osipovichi. This junction station became an important base for the Wehrmacht during the occupation. Here were located military depots, formed or unloaded many military echelons, marching towards Russia.

The Germans quickly established their "new order" in Osipovichi, declaring the city as German property. The invaders introduced compulsory labor service, identified all the railway workers who remained in the city and made them work for themselves. But they began with mass shootings of communists, Komsomol members and Jews ... It is no secret that an organized partisan movement and deep underground in the first months of the war in Belarus did not work out. Resistance groups arose spontaneously, formed mainly from local patriots, and in the forests - from encircled people and refugees. At the Osipovichi railway junction, such a group was headed by the locomotive depot driver Mark Shvedov. The station electrician Fyodor Krylovich also entered it. To fight the Germans, he created a sabotage group of 11 people and 5 distributors of leaflets and reports of the Sovinformburo. Krylovich himself at that time was 27 years old, the rest are mostly young people of pre-conscription age.

At first, the guys had a hard time. They had no weapons, mines, no one assigned them specific combat missions. And no one taught them the skills of underground work. Therefore, from the first days, the invaders had to harm, as they say, on a small scale: they undermined the railway tracks, set fire to cargo, poured sand into the axle boxes of the cars, damaged the cylinders of the locomotives, dragged the fuel from the station. And, of course, leaflets were posted all over the city.

And only in the summer of 1943, Pavel Volozhin, secretary of the Mogilev Underground Komsomol Regional Committee, received from the Chekists who were in the Brave partisan detachment two magnetic mines of English production. They were given in exchange for the promise of local underground workers to supply intelligence information about the arriving echelons from the Osipovichi station, which Moscow and the headquarters of the Belarusian partisan movement so needed. The mines were urgently sent to the disposal of Fyodor Krylovich, who worked for the Germans at the railway junction. Now one can only speculate, but the commander of the sabotage group, apparently, decided not to expose his guys to mortal danger and commit sabotage himself.

On the night of July 30, 1943, the electrician Krylovich took over duty at the Osipovichi station. Mines lay at the bottom of a portable toolbox. It was getting dark when a train with liquid fuel arrived at the station. Soon he was to leave in a southerly direction, towards Kursk. At this time, an electrician on duty was called from the tracks: the semaphore in the Mogilev car park went out of order. Accompanied by a German guard, Krylovich went to the semaphore. When the guide was distracted, Fyodor set a magnetic mine on a tank with gasoline at the head of the train along which they walked. He managed to put the second mine on the same tank in the tail of the train.

Fyodor was sure that the freight train would explode on its way. However, the dispatcher received an urgent order from the German command to transfer the train to a siding, Valentina Mironenko said in her historical essay.

Fyodor Krylovich, as it became known, tried to warn other underground workers about the situation and the alleged explosion at the station. And, apparently, he succeeded...

Krylovich had already returned home when the first explosion sounded. The night sky lit up with flames from burning barrels of gasoline. After 25 minutes, it exploded again. A giant pillar of fire shot up over the station. The flames spread to the echelon with brand new "Tigers" and armored vehicles. Everything seemed to be on fire - the trains, the earth, even the sky, and the detonating shells were torn and torn. The raging fire engulfed almost all station facilities.

According to local residents, explosions and fires continued throughout the next day. The Germans could not understand why the station was blown up. From all the barrels, the soldiers fired into the air, thinking that this was a raid by Russian bombers...

To neutralize unexploded shells and bombs, the next day the Germans were forced to call in sappers from Minsk and Mogilev.

"Sparks" of the night fire flew to Berlin, the consequences of the sabotage were examined at a special meeting of the German General Staff. The heads of many senior officers of the Wehrmacht flew off, having at least the slightest relation to the Mogilev events. The investigation found them guilty of not saving the echelons with equipment and ammunition, which were so necessary for the German army, and slapped the partisans.

Krylovich's sabotage had another unexpected result. When the carriages with ammunition began to explode, not only the station guards fled in panic, but also those who were guarding the local concentration camp. His numerous prisoners were at large and soon joined the ranks of the Mogilev "people's avengers".

The commander of the Brave partisan detachment, Alexander Rabtsevich, who was informed about the sabotage at the station, hastened to radio to Moscow: “Destroyed 25 cars with gasoline, 8 tanks with aviation oil, 65 cars with ammunition, 5 Tiger tanks, 3 L-10 tanks, 7 armored vehicles (all 15 vehicles were on railway platforms), 12 wagons with food, 5 steam locomotives, a coal supply crane, a coal warehouse. Other plant structures were damaged. Nine houses were burnt down in the vicinity”.

According to some sources, about 50 German soldiers and officers died, dozens were injured and maimed. The local population was not affected.

Former officer of the German General Staff Eike Middeldorf a few years after the end of the war wrote in his memoirs: “The German command had high hopes for the Tigers in Operation Citadel. It several times postponed the start of the offensive near Kursk precisely because of the insufficient staffing of the assault units with these combat vehicles".

And in Osipovichi, the vaunted German tanks burned like matchboxes!

In fact, according to Colonel Middeldorf, the explosions at Osipovichi station , among other things, destroyed not 5, but 11 heavy Tiger tanks, which were on their way to replenish either the 505th German tank battalion or the 13th company of the motorized division “Great Germany".

If for the 13th company of "Great Germany" (staff - 14 "Tigers"), then it means that because of Krylovich it had to be taken on August 4, 1943 from under Orel to the rear, for replenishment!

And if the tanks were intended for the 505th battalion (staff - 45 "Tigers"), then, if he received these 11 vehicles, how much easier it would be for the Germans those heavy battles near Kromy, which they fought 3rd, 4th and 5th August 1943, holding back the troops of the Central Front...

So, the destruction of 11 "Tigers" is much more help to the Soviet front than it seems at first glance.

Hitler really had high hopes for the new Tiger and Panther tanks and the Ferdinand self-propelled guns. With their help, he hoped to again seize the initiative from the Red Army.

The appearance of new German tanks caused concern among the Soviet command. In the summer of 1943, about a month before the start of the Battle of the Kursk Bulge, in many partisan detachments there appeared specialists, abandoned from the mainland, who were interested only in military echelons carrying Tigers. The Soviet fighters did not have experience in fighting new tanks, so each such tank, destroyed on the distant approaches to Kursk, was a significant contribution to the Victory. And the fighters who managed to knock out the "Tiger" Stalin promised to generously reward.

After the explosions, Fyodor Krylovich with other underground fighters - N. Pototsky, A. Piskun, V. Rugalev, A. Vyshinsky, V. Timofeyeva - left the city for the forest to join the partisans. In the 1st Bobruisk partisan brigade, commanded by V.I. Liventsev, he was entrusted to lead the sabotage group. Many daring and successful military operations were carried out. So, for example, on September 7, 1943, on the instructions of Krylovich, partisans blew up the generator of a railway power station; on the night of September 16, at the Osipovichi railway station, a checkpoint was destroyed in the car fleet; On November 5, partisans blew up a transformer kiosk at a car repair station in Osipovichi.

Krylovich himself was repeatedly wounded and contused. In 1944, the partisans joined forces with the Soviet Army and Fyodor Krylovich was discharged for health reasons. And after a while he returned to the railway station, where he continued to work as an electrician.

Soon, the division of the results of a successful sabotage in Osipovichi began, noted in his study the famous Belarusian writer and historian Anatoly Taras. In his opinion, there was something to share, besides, the right moment came - victory in the Battle of the Kursk Bulge.

It goes without saying that no one was going to present the outstanding feat of Fyodor Krylovich from the very beginning as an act of a lone fighter. Osipovic superdiversion (as it was, by the way, dubbed in Moscow and Berlin) - it was necessary to include it in the plans and achievements of the NKVD. Two main departments competed here. The central headquarters of the partisan movement headed by the first secretary of the CPB Central Committee Panteleimon Ponomarenko and the Belarusian headquarters of the partisan movement subordinate to him under the leadership of the second secretary of the CPB Central Committee Petr Kalinin. They were supposed to personify the party-Soviet leadership in the occupied territory. As the newspapers of that time wrote, relying on local activists, Ponomarenko and Kalinin “raised the civilian population to fight”.

The USSR People's Commissariat of State Security headed by Lavrentiy Beria and the People's Commissariat of State Security of the BSSR (chief - Lavrenty Tsanava) relied on sabotage and reconnaissance groups of KGB professionals. In the USSR, they were also called partisans, although in fact they were special-purpose fighters.

In addition, underground Komsomol organizations and army DRGs also operated behind enemy lines. All of them reported to Moscow: secretaries of the underground district committees of the party and the Komsomol, commanders of special detachments of the NKGB, sabotage and reconnaissance groups of the General Staff of the Red Army. According to Anatoly Taras, as a result of the grumpy division of the results of the operation “for history,” the following scheme was proposed: a) Krylovich received mines from the Chekists; b) through the mediation of the Komsomol; c) under the general party-Soviet leadership. This wording, in principle, suited everyone. Accordingly, at the beginning of 1944, three leading comrades from different partisan departments - A.M. Rabtsevich, V.I. Liventsev and N.F. Korolev. By the decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR dated January 1, 1944, 15 more people received the title of Hero.

By the way, Stalin was never reported about Fyodor Krylovich.

Krylovich returned from the war sick and repeatedly shell-shocked - like all demolition men, with a single medal "Partisan of the Patriotic War" of the 2nd degree, which was awarded locally on behalf of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR to all adult participants in the partisan movement.

And yet there were people who considered Fyodor Andreevich Krylovich a real hero. The then secretary of the Central Committee of the LKSMB, Kirill Mazurov, fought for his worthy reward. It was on his initiative that Fyodor Krylovich could have received the Hero's Star even before the end of the war, but, according to historians, some high-ranking official in Moscow put the documents on the shelf.

In December 1948, Krylovich was awarded the Order of Lenin. But this award on the occasion of the 30th anniversary of the formation of the Byelorussian SSR, in the opinion of the former partisans, was not a "worthy" award for the feats of Fyodor Andreyevich Krylovich. Namely, this is how the then authorities tried to present it.

They say that Fyodor was terribly worried and, according to the recollections of his colleagues, the "super-saboteur" was forced to drown out the mental pain in a known Russian way. The rewarding insult was intensified by a family tragedy. Fyodor's brother Alexei Krylovich was a partisan of the brigade named after Frunze, led a reconnaissance platoon, and then a company. He died heroically in battle in January 1944. Sister Sophia was the liaison officer of the brigade. Frunze. On behalf of the partisans, she made her way to Dzerzhinsk and Minsk, transferred the necessary intelligence, medicines, dressings, ammunition, and weapons to the brigade. The Germans, with the help of traitors, hunted down the brave underground worker, and in January 1944 she died.

Fyodor Krylovich died in 1959 in poverty and oblivion. He did not wait for the recognition of military merits. He was only 43 years old.

The operation "Rail War" declared by Stalin, including on the territory of Belarus as a whole, in 1943 reduced the throughput of the railway for the Germans by 40%. During the entire period of the occupation, partisans and underground fighters of the Osipovichi district derailed 371 enemy trains, smashed and damaged 339 steam locomotives, 2,190 cars, 463 platforms, 143 tanks, destroyed and disabled 274 vehicles, 17 tanks, 10 armored vehicles, 119 steam locomotives and burned 2,235 tons of fuel.

The patriots defeated 13 garrisons and destroyed 17 kilometers of railroad tracks, destroyed 5306 rails, blew up 253 bridges on highways and dirt roads, 21 railway bridges, and cut 68 kilometers of telephone and telegraph communications. At the end of 1943, Belarusian partisans controlled almost 60% of the occupied territory of Belarus.