The full text of Lyubov Kosmodemyanskaya's book The Story of Zoya and Shura is now posted online. The book is a biography of two Heroes of the Soviet Union, Zoya Kosmodemayenskaya and her brother Alexander Kosmodemyansky (“Shura”), as written by their mother. This non-copyrighted book was originally published in 1953 by Foreign Languages Press (Moscow). All 286 pages of text and photos are now available through our website. It's taken me quite a while — probably a bit too long — to transcribe the whole book and given the length of time involved, I wish that I could say that the transcription is flawless. I have spent quite a bit of time cleaning up typos and OCR in the text, but I am sure there are some minor errors here and there that will come to my attention as time goes on.
After the Marxists Internet Archive returns to normal operations, this text will also be added to the Archive's Soviet History section.
Excerpts from The Story of Zoya and Shura by Lyubov Kosmodemyanskaya
It was no easy time: the enemy was closing in on Moscow.
One day Zoya and I were walking along the street, and on the wall of a house we noticed a big placard from which the determined face of a soldier looked at us severely. The keen piercing eyes were looking straight at us, the words printed underneath rang in our ears as if they had been spoken aloud in an urgent voice, "What have you done for the front?"
Zoya turned away.
"I can't pass that placard calmly," she said bitterly.
"But you are still young, and you have been to the labour front—that's also work for the country, for the Army."
"Not enough," answered Zoya doggedly.
For some minutes we walked along in silence, and suddenly Zoya said in quite a different voice, cheerfully and with an air of finality, "I am lucky. Everything I want comes true."
"What are you thinking about?" I wanted to ask, and did not. But my heart was heavy with foreboding.
from Death of a Hero
On April 20 I found a letter in the letter box. Shura's field post office number was on the envelope, but the address was not in his handwriting. I stood holding the letter for a long time, afraid to unseal it. Then I tore open the envelope and read the first lines. The room went dark before my eyes. I drew a deep breath, started reading again, and again could not read on. Then I gritted my teeth as hard as I could and read to the end.
"April 14, 1945
"Dear Lyubov Timofeyevna,
"It is hard for me to write to you. But I beg you to summon all your courage and strength. Your son, Senior Lieutenant of the Guards Alexander Anatolyevich Kosmodemyansky, died the death of a hero in battle with the German invaders. He gave up his young life for the freedom and independence of our Motherland.
"I will say only one thing. Your son is a hero, and you may be proud of him. He defended his Country honourably, and has proved himself worthy of his sister.
[...]
"In the fighting for Königsberg on April 6, Alexander Kosmodemyansky's self-propelled gun mount was the first to force a canal thirty metres wide and open fire at the enemy, destroying an artillery battery, blowing up an ammunition dump and killing nearly sixty Hitlerite soldiers and officers.
"On April 8 he was the first to break into the fort of Konigin Luisen, where 350 prisoners were captured together with nine tanks in good condition, 200 lorries and a petrol dump. In the course of the fighting Alexander Kosmodernyansky was promoted from commander of a self-propelled gun mount to battery commander. In spite of his youth he commanded the battery successfully and carried out all battle tasks in exemplary fashion.
"He was killed yesterday in the fighting for the locality of Vierbrudenkrug, west of Königsberg, which was already in our hands. Your son was one of the first to break into Vierbrudenkrug, wiping out nearly forty Hitlerites and crushing four antitank guns. An exploding enemy shell cut short the life of our dear comrade, Alexander Anatolyevich Kosmodemyansky.
"War and death are inseparable, but it is so much more difficult to be reconciled with death on the eve our Victory.
"Be courageous. With sincere respect and sympathy, "Lieutenant-Colonel of the Guards Legeza. "
from They Must Be Happy
I love to come here, to walk along the dear familiar corridors of my children's school, which now bears Zoya's name. I look into the classrooms. I go up onto the third floor and approach the doors where there is an inscription: "Heroes of the Soviet Union Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya and Shura Kosmodemyansky studied in this classroom."
I enter this room, where the portraits of my children look down at me from the walls. There is the second desk in the middle row—Zoya used to sit there. Now another girl sits at this desk, and she has Zoya's clear eyes. And there that desk at the back of the next row—that was Shura's place. The girl who sits there now looks up at me. She is wearing a brown frock with a white collar and black apron, and she has such a grave thoughtful face.
[...]
Here is a young woman with a kind, pleasant face coming down the corridor to meet me. She is Katya Andreyeva. She has done what she intended to do; she has become a schoolmistress teaching at her old school, the school where she studied together with Zoya and Shura.
My children's classmates are now engineers, doctors, teachers. They continue the work for the sake of which their comrades gave up their lives.
I walk along the familiar corridor. The door of the library is open. Shelf alter shelf along the walls is full of books, a great number of books.
"Before the war we had twenty thousand volumes. Now we have forty thousand," says Katya to me.
I go outside. The school is surrounded with green trees. There they are, the trees the children planted. And I seem to hear Zoya's voice:
"My linden is the third one—remember, Mummy."
