Dyachenko, Antonina Nikolaevna

Antonina Nikolaevna Dyachenko was born on November 2, 1925 in the village of Krasnodon of the Sorokinsky district of the Lugansk district of the Ukrainian SSR of the USSR (now the settlement of the Krasnodon district of the Lugansk region of Ukraine ) in the family of railway worker Nikolai Ivanovich and housewife Aleksandra Fadeevny Dyachenko. Ukrainian

From 1933 she studied at the Krasnodonskaya junior high school, which after the unification of the villages of Sorokino and Krasnodon into the city of Krasnodon was transformed into secondary school No. 22 named after Taras Shevchenko. At school, Antonina was an excellent student and one of the best students in the class. In her free time, she paid a lot of attention to needlework and reading adventure books.

Being a keen nature, Antonina, together with her best friend Zhenya Kiykova, dreamed of becoming either a sea captain or a pilot. Both girls sang well, and Tonya still played the guitar perfectly. The friends were engaged in a choir club, participated in school amateur performances, performed with concerts in a local club, as well as in a neighboring military aviation unit.

In 1940, Antonina was admitted to the Komsomol . On this occasion, the girl cut off her long braids to look more like a Komsomol in the times of the Civil War .

Having graduated from the eighth grade in 1941, Antonina Dyachenko and Zhenya Kiykova decided to enter the textile technical school. The girls went to Gomel and submitted to the school all the necessary documents for enrollment. However, the war made its corrective plans for friends. Summer Antonina spent at the farm , helping to harvest, and in the autumn returned for the school desk. A ninth grade pupil, A. N. Dyachenko, was soon appointed Pioneer leader to the sixth grade. Antonina took the Komsomol commission very seriously. Under her leadership, the pioneers of the sixth class cared for the wounded in the hospital, prepared gifts for the front, wrote letters of support to the soldiers of the Red Army . Antonina taught girls to sew pouches and knit mittens and socks, collected scrap metal with boys, cleared railway tracks from snow. The sixth class initiated the manufacture and distribution of various campaign materials in the city. Biology teacher at Krasnodon secondary school No. 22, former chairman of the pioneer squad of this classZ. N. Trushalova subsequently recalled:

In all the photographs in our class, in our school museum and in the “Young Guard” museum of our city, Tonya is captured with dark braids. I saw her so little. She came to our squad with a short haircut and in a hat with earflaps with an asterisk. Medium height, slim, with beautiful brown eyes under the glasses, she conquered us. Tonya reminded us so much of the Red Army girls, which thousands were then at the front. It seemed to us that in her appearance she tried to be like them. It was possible to blush in front of her for her academic performance, we knew that she was one of the best students in the 9th grade ... Tonya was an example and an authority for us. The boys of our class are almost her peers, they respected and listened to her very much as a teacher

- From the memoirs of Z. N. Trushchalova, published on the website of the Young Guard

July 20, 1942 Krasnodon was occupied by German troops. Soon in different parts of the city, youth anti-fascist groups began to form, consisting of the city's Komsomol activists. Antonina Dyachenko, already in the first days of the occupation, joined the underground group organized by Nikolai Sumsky . In October 1942, the Sumsky group merged with the Young Guard. Members of the group were able to assemble a radio receiver from radio components, which they used to listen to programs from Moscow . According to the Sovinformburo reports, the underground workers wrote leaflets, the distribution of which among others was also carried out by Dyachenko. Several times, Antonina risked her life and carried a suitcase with leaflets into the mine, where her mother worked during the occupation. Under the guise of gathering ears of corn in the field, she carried out sabotage on the telephone and telegraph lines of the Germans, set fire to ricks with bread, which the occupation authorities were preparing to send to Germany . The girl also conducted a large propaganda and explanatory work among the residents of Krasnodon.

On the night of January 12, 1943, Antonina Dyachenko was arrested.

On January 14, a group of heavily beaten Young Guard, including Dyachenko, was indicatively driven off along the main street of the village to the city prison.

On January 16, after brutal torture, Antonina, together with her comrades, was shot. Her body executioners dropped into the hole of the mine number 5.

After the Krasnodon was liberated by the Red Army, the bodies of the Young Guard were lifted from the mine.

Antonina Dyachenko and Evgeny Kiykova, inseparable friends, at the request of their relatives, were buried in a coffin in a mass grave of the Young Guard in the central square of the city.

• Medal "To Partisan of the Patriotic War of 1 degree" (09/10/1943, posthumously)

• Antonina Dyachenko // Molodogvardeytsy: Biographical essays on members of the Krasnodon party-Komsomol underground / Comp. R. M. Aptekar, A. G. Nikitenko. - Donetsk: Donbass, 1981. - 125 p.
• Young guard. Documents and memories of the heroic struggle of the underground of Krasnodon in the days of time, the fascist occupation (July 1942-fevr. 1943.). Ed. 5th, pererabot. and add . - Donetsk: Donbass, 1977. - 360 p.

• Dyachenko Antonina Nikolaevna on the site "Young Guard" (Neopr.) .
• The Young Guard is a city of Krasnodon (Unsolved) (inaccessible link) . Circulation date August 24, 2013. Archived August 26, 2013.
• Antonina Dyachenko on the website of the Krasnodon Regional Order of Friendship of Peoples of the Museum “Young Guard” (Unidentified) (not available link) . The appeal date is August 24, 2013. Archived January 12, 2014.