Tiraspol underground: unique documents published for the first time
Tiraspol and a number of other cities and villages in the central and southern part of Transnistria celebrated the 80th anniversary of liberation from the German-Romanian invaders. The Nazis were expelled from this territory in mid-April 1944 during the Odessa offensive operation.
There is great interest in these events in the republic, but archives of the war years, like those of earlier times, have not been preserved here. Search engines working with documents in the archives of Moldova help shed light on little-known pages of the history of the fight against the Nazis in this territory.
To mark the memorable date, a meeting of history students and teachers was organized in Tiraspol with Chisinau researcher, military historian Alexei Rusanov, who gave a lecture on the underground movement that operated during the Great Patriotic War in the city and adjacent settlements.
He managed to clarify the fate of the Tiraspol underground fighters in the Archive of Socio-Political Organizations (formerly the archive of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the MSSR) and the National Archive of the Republic of Moldova, where materials from the funds of the Extraordinary State Commission for the establishment and investigation of the atrocities of the Nazi invaders and their accomplices, as well as funds from the Romanian special services, are stored . Rusanov first presented most of the discovered materials at the international conference “The Fate of a Soldier: Theory and Practice of Archival Research,” which was held at the end of last year in Moscow.
Mistakes of forty-one
The anti-fascist underground began working in the MSSR immediately after the start of the German-Romanian occupation. According to Rusanov, in August 1941, when units of the Red Army were withdrawing from the Dniester, party organs began preparing for underground partisan work. Its goal was to make the functioning of the occupying forces and administration as difficult as possible. There were people in the region with relevant experience related to the events of the 1920s and 30s (the territory of Bessarabia at that time was occupied by Romania, and an anti-Romanian underground movement worked there).
“In the summer and autumn of 1941, they tried to form an underground that would be controlled from a single center,” says the historian. - People are selected. Because there is a certain rush, the documents are poorly prepared, and the personnel are not selected entirely correctly. So, at first, underground groups were formed from proven, but too well-known people - party and Komsomol leaders, high ranks of the police, and the prosecutor's office.
City of Tiraspol. In the summer of 1941, several underground groups left in the city. They are formed from party members, the groups are led by people of no lower rank than the secretary of the party committee. Or, for example, the villages of Korotnoye and Glinoye - the secretary of the party organization, Comrade Karpov, was appointed head of the underground. Leaving an overexposed person who speaks on the podium at every holiday, whom everyone knows, underground is a bad idea. One of the reasons for the failures of the underground at the initial stage was poor personnel selection,” said Rusanov, noting that by the winter of 1941 the underground was virtually liquidated.
The historian urges not to underestimate the Romanian intelligence services. Siguranza, created in the 1920s, was at its best both in terms of technical equipment and personnel.
“It is common to consider the Romanians to be unlucky Selyuks who poorly understood the situation. This is wrong. Siguranza was one of the most powerful intelligence agencies in the world. The first voice recorders and electronic devices were all used by the Romanians. In particular, former tsarist officers served in Siguranza, who knew the operational situation, were fluent in Russian, and spoke several languages. Let us remember that Mikhail Moruzov, a Russian by birth, founded Sigurantza in 1925 and led it for 15 years. In 1940, the special service went through a series of transformations that weakened it somewhat,” Rusanov noted.
Hatred of the occupiers
Bessarabia was liberated from Romanian occupation and annexed to the USSR just a year before the start of the war; in the summer of 1941, many people with pro-Romanian sentiments lived in the region, says Rusanov. A similar thing was observed on the left bank of the Dniester, although not for long.
“There are documents that tell about the situation in the northern part of Transnistria - Kamensky and Rybnitsa regions. The Moldavian Central Committee actively works with people from the localities; it is interested in the moral and political state of the population. The underground says that some of the residents are waiting for the Romanians in the summer of 1941. This is connected with the famine of the 1920s, and with dispossession, and with the repressions of the 1930s. The same documents say that literally by the winter of 1941, the behavior of the Romanians radically changed the mood of the population. The majority of citizens do not accept the occupation regime. It must be understood that if Bessarabia was incorporated into Romania (a local administration is immediately appointed there, supplies are organized, the situation is calmer there), then on the territory of Transnistria and the lands and further to the south, the administrative entity Transnistria is formed, where both German and Romanian administrations operate.
The local population is robbed by both the Germans and Romanians, and agricultural equipment and food products are exported en masse from here, either to the front or to Romania. The Germans and Romanians did not dissolve the collective farms - the products are sent to the West. The local population is in constant need. Since December 1941, many proactive underground groups have been formed from among active residents that oppose the Romanians,” the researcher reports.
The military organized the work of the underground
In 1942 - early 1943, the Central Committee of the MSSR tried to revive underground work, which was almost completely paralyzed by the Romanian secret services, says Rusanov. Party workers, students, journalists, police officers - everyone who has an idea of local specifics - are at the disposal of the Central Committee. They are put through short courses and, provided with minimal, often outdated information, are thrown to the rear. For many, this becomes a one-way road.
The most effective stage in the underground movement of the region was from the autumn of 1943 to the spring of 1944. The military managed to start serious underground work. This mission was undertaken by the Ukrainian headquarters of the partisan movement, a branch of the central headquarters.
“These are people with a different approach, who have combat and partisan experience. A Moldavian department is being created in the USHPD, which is responsible for coordinating the work. Groups are sent here by the military, intelligence departments of three Ukrainian fronts – the 2nd, 3rd and 4th – operate,” notes Rusanov.
These groups worked until the liberation of Tiraspol, and then continued work on the right bank of the Dniester. While working with the files of the Moldavian department of the Ukrainian headquarters of the partisan movement, the researcher came across interesting points.
“Summer of 1944, the northern part of Moldova has already been liberated, Soviet troops are in the northeastern regions of Romania, Bagration is in full swing, the USSR has seized the strategic initiative, the Iasi-Kishinev operation is maturing. The Moldavian department recalls experienced people from the fronts, gathers military personnel, party workers and specialists with experience in guerrilla warfare from all over the country and prepares partisan bases. Employees are being trained, people are being introduced and preparing to work on the long-liberated left bank of the Dniester and in the northern regions of Moldova. 1941 became a good teacher,” Rusanov said.
How the pioneers gave adults a head start
The historian spoke about vivid episodes of the work of the local underground. One of them is the activities of the Kustov-Sharov group, which, according to the conclusion of the Moldavian Central Committee, was the most promising on the left bank. Rusanov traced the history of the group using Romanian documents.
Kustov and Sharov are Red Army officers with combat experience who miraculously escaped from enemy captivity. These surnames were obtained by legalizing themselves - by purchasing Romanian documents (this was not yet possible among the Romanians - archival documents describe cases when relatives ransomed prisoners from a Romanian prison). The third leader of the group is Voznoy, a local resident, a native of Tiraspol.
"The group blows up railway tracks, attacks military units, and sentries. It's very active. The core of the group is made up of officers, well-trained, and they carefully select their people. They are planning an assassination attempt on Antonescu (Romania's conductor from 1940 to 1944 – author's note ), who is supposed to appear in Tiraspol. They contact a group in Grigoriopol and Odessa. When scouts from the 4th Ukrainian Front are deployed here at the end of 1943, they pass on a significant amount of intelligence about the operations of the Romanian provisional administration in Tiraspol.
But their main merit is that in Tiraspol they find a rich sponsor, with whose money they buy out military personnel in German concentration camps - in total, according to Romanian data, about 200 people - and send them to the east. In the winter, from 1943 to 1944, the Germans and Romanians dismantled the group thanks to a series of filtration measures in the city. The entire group was arrested on February 23, 1944. The core of the group was shot.”
Among the underground organizations formed by proactive citizens were children's groups. For example, in the archives there is a case about an elusive group of six girls born in 1927-1928 working in Tiraspol, who were engaged in distributing leaflets and propaganda.
According to Rusanov, the group was active from the spring of 1942 to March 1944. In March 1944, Tiraspol became a front-line city, and the activity of the German and Romanian special services was prohibitive. The enemy is throwing significant forces, up to an infantry regiment, in search of young underground fighters. The best detectives from the governorate of Transnistria take part in filtration activities.
“The girls were untrained underground fighters, but Romanian detectives hunted for them for a long time and without success. The members of the group were so brave and desperate that they posted their leaflets on the buildings of the Romanian commandant’s office. Pieces of paper covered in girlish handwriting were read even in the Tiraspol prison. How this was possible is difficult to say. The Romanians were never able to identify the group; the girls survived the war.
In 1945-46, a thorough check of materials about the work of underground groups began, dozens of fictitious reports were identified, provocateurs and employees of enemy intelligence services were tried. A group of girls from Tiraspol is also being checked. Since a false partisan detachment has been identified in the city, work on the group is being carried out extremely carefully. Information about the work of the underground pioneer organization was completely confirmed. There are MGB documents from 1946 that confirm that such a group was active in Tiraspol. It’s amazing that children managed where strong men and officers failed,” the historian said.
Thrilling detective stories
Many stories of Transnistrian underground fighters described in archival documents are more interesting to read than any detective story, says Rusanov. Here's an example. A native of the Dubossary district, Zakhary Kasyanov, born in 1912, who worked in the district executive committee before the war, left with units of the Red Army to the east. Then, having gone through intelligence school, as part of an organizational combat group (such groups were thrown behind enemy lines - they were supposed to serve as nuclei for the formation of larger partisan detachments and underground groups) in January 1943 he was thrown into the territory of the MSSR.
In the Dubossary area, during filtration activities, Romanian special services detained Kasyanov as a Soviet paratrooper. He was convicted and held in a Tiraspol prison, on the walls of which his autograph was preserved. Kasyanov writes a request for pardon addressed to the Romanian King Mihai I and his mother-queen. He is pardoned and released, he lives under gendarmerie supervision in Dubossary.
“As soon as the Red Army entered, he was detained with such a biography, a military tribunal sentenced him to ten years in prison. He served a year, and then the tribunal of the Odessa Military District acquitted him: it turns out that everything he did on the territory of Transnistria, he did on instructions from the special services. After he was acquitted, he continued to work in special authorities. What struck me in this story was that even when he got to his own people, after serving his sentence, he did not tell anyone that he was working on instructions from military intelligence officers,” says the researcher.
Contribution to victory
Rusanov says that the Moldovan party archives contain more than 1600 files dedicated to the underground in Moldova, a third of them are about underground workers who worked on the territory of the left bank of the Dniester.
“The groups were different, but the bulk of them contributed to the victory. Perhaps this contribution is not colossal, but these are the grains of sand that chipped away the shavings from the huge Romanian and German military machines. And as a result, these machines broke down. The underground operated, the fates of its participants are extremely interesting and often forgotten. For a very long time, these cases were classified as “secret”. Now that the archives are available, we can take a sober look at the events of that time, remember the people who fought the enemy, and pay tribute to them,” the historian concluded.
English version :: Read in English: Tiraspol Underground: Unique Documents Published for the First Time