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1941: Shura Chekalin, Hero of the Soviet Union

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Sixteen-year-old partisan Alexander Chekalin earned his martyrs’ crown as a Hero of the Soviet Union when he was executed by the occupying Third Reich on this date in 1941.

“Shura” (English Wikipedia entry | the predictably better-appointed Russian) joined along with his father a unit of guerrillas in the vicinity of Tula just weeks into the terrible German onslaught.

The city of Tula, a transport hub 200 kilometers south of Moscow, was a key target for the German drive on the Soviet capital in those pivotal months; the Wehrmacht’s eventual inability to take it from determined defenders was crucial to thrwarting the attack on Moscow by protecting her from the southern tong of the intended pincer maneuver.*

Chekalin didn’t live long enough to see any of this come to fruition but in his moment he did what any one man could do: ambushes, mining, and other harassment of the occupation army in the Tula oblast (region) with his comrade irregulars. Our principal was found out by the Germans recuperating from illness in a town called Likhvin — see him defending his house of refuge against hopeless odds in the commemorative USSR stamp below — and then suffered the usual tortures and interrogations before he was publicly strung up on November 6. He hung there for 20 days before the Red Army took the town back and buried him with honors

In 1944, the tiny town of Likhvin was renamed in his honor: to this day, it’s still called Chekalin.

* Tula was recognized as a Hero City of the USSR for the importance of its defence.

On this day..