Kirill Prokofievich Orlovsky is known as one of the leaders of the partisan movement on the territory of Belarus during the Great Patriotic War. He was an employee of the NKVD, awarded the titles of Hero of the Soviet Union and Hero of Socialist Labor. During the war years, he accomplished many feats, for example, he illegally crossed the state border and the front line at least 70 times.
Childhood and youth
Kirill Prokofievich Orlovsky was born in the small village of Myshkovichi in the Mogilev region. He was born in 1895. The hero of our article grew up in a peasant family, lived poorly, he practically did not have to study. Already at a young age, he experienced all the hardships of the peasant lot.
Until 1915 he studied and worked in his native village. During World War I, Orlovsky was called to the front. In the rank of non-commissioned officer of the royalArmy Kirill Prokofievich commanded a sapper platoon.
Early career
When the October Revolution took place, almost immediately went over to the side of the Bolsheviks. Fought in the Civil War, resisted foreign military intervention. For example, in the summer of 1918, on the instructions of the Bobruisk Bolsheviks, he organized a partisan detachment, which at that time was already operating against German troops. For several months he served in the Bobruisk Extraordinary Commission for Combating Sabotage and Counter-Revolution, then he completed courses for Komsomol members.
Kirill Prokofievich Orlovsky fought heroically against the Polish interventionists and the German occupiers, in particular, opposed the gangs of Bulak-Balakhovich, the troops of Yudenich.
From 1921 to 1925 he led partisan detachments in Western Belarus, which at that time was part of Poland. Mostly engaged in "active intelligence". This is a term that appeared at that time among members of the intelligence agency. They denoted the actions of pro-Soviet partisans on the territory of states neighboring the USSR. Detachments of militants, one of which was commanded by Kirill Prokofievich Orlovsky, operated in Western Belarus and Western Ukraine, organizing mass armed resistance to the Polish authorities there. It was planned that these detachments would become the basis of a mass partisan movement, their activities in the future would lead to the annexation of these regions to the USSR.
"Active intelligence" in Poland was discontinued at the end of 1925. Under the direct supervision of the hero of our article,several dozen combat operations.
Four months Orlovsky spent on the Western Front, where he fought with the White Poles. Eight months in Moscow, he attended courses for command personnel.
Education
After that, he was recommended to be sent to study at the Communist University of the National Minorities of the West, which bore the name of the Polish communist and politician Julian Markhlevsky. This is an educational institution that existed from 1922 to 1936. It trained Komsomol, party and trade union workers of various nationalities. Notable alumni include Yugoslav President Josip Broz Tito, Secretary of the Communist Party of the People's Republic of Serbia Jovan Veselinov, Norwegian resistance figure Arvid Hansen.
In the biography of Kirill Prokofyevich Orlovsky, the university played a big role, although it was not easy to start student life at the age of 30, having studied only four classes of a parochial school before that. Yesterday's partisan did not fear difficulties, he began to study with great zeal and diligence. He was especially fascinated by history, he spent many hours in the library, studying the works of domestic and foreign authors on the history of the partisan movement and wars.
Orlovsky combined his studies at the university with work at Moscow factories, and when the holidays came, he went to help in Soviet communes and collective farms. His acquaintances recall that he handled a scythe and a plow no worse than a grenade and machine guns.
In 1930, Orlovsky graduated from a communist university, after which he left with his wife for Minsk. All this timehe was also a member of the state security agencies. In the GPU, the NKVD of the BSSR and the NKVD of the USSR, he worked in total from 1925 to 1938. Returning from Moscow to Belarus, he received a responsible task. Together with associates Vasily Korzh and Stanislav Vaupshasov, Orlovsky begins to raise partisan cadres in case of war with Germany. Special instructors under his supervision train machine gunners, miners and demolition workers, radio operators and paratroopers.
In 1936, he worked on the construction of the Moscow-Volga canal as a section chief in the Gulag.
Spanish Civil War
An important page in the biography of Kirill Prokofievich Orlovsky is the civil war in Spain. He carried out a combat mission on the territory of this state in 1937-1938. The hero of our article led a sabotage and partisan group that operated behind Nazi lines.
Against the Franco regime, he fought among the forty thousand anti-fascists who came to Spain from 55 countries. Orlovsky served as an adviser in international reconnaissance and sabotage detachments. Under the pseudonym Strick, as part of a detachment of twelve people, he overcame several hundred kilometers behind enemy lines. Along the way, they blew up bridges, smashed the rear garrisons of the Nazis, derailed trains. There are memories that the Spanish partisans respected and loved their commander, highly appreciating his intelligence talent, ability to make decisions in critical situations.
In 1938, Orlovsky was fired from thestate security for he alth reasons. At that time he was 43 years old. After that, he worked as vice-rector for economic affairs at the Chkalov Agricultural Institute, located in Orenburg. At the same time, he studied at this university, receiving a second education.
The Great Patriotic War
When the Nazis attacked the Soviet Union, already a former NKVD officer Kirill Prokofievich Orlovsky was in Western China. He was sent to this country to organize a base for Soviet agents in the light of the expected war against Japan. The experience of Kirill Prokofievich Orlovsky during the Great Patriotic War turned out to be very useful.
At his personal request, Orlovsky was recalled to organize a partisan movement in Belarus. He immediately went deep behind enemy lines as the leader of a reconnaissance and sabotage group. He began work in the spring of 1942. He was reinstated in the service in the state security organs. Since then, Orlovsky worked as part of the Special Group of the NKVD, led by Pavel Sudoplatov.
This is a famous saboteur and Soviet intelligence agent, who became famous for the liquidation of one of the leaders of the Ukrainian nationalist movement in the Dutch Rotterdam, was the organizer of the assassination of Leon Trotsky in Mexico. During the Great Patriotic War, Pavel Sudoplatov served in different directions. In addition to organizing partisan detachments in Belarus, he mined strategically important objects during the defense of Moscow, conducted sabotage activities against the Germans onCaucasus. In 1953, he was arrested as an accomplice of Beria, accused of participating in a conspiracy. After that, Sudoplatov feigned mental insanity, spent several years in a special psychiatric hospital. The court sentenced him to fifteen years in prison. He completely served his sentence, in 1992 he was rehabilitated. He became famous thanks to his memoirs en titled "Special operation. Lubyanka and the Kremlin 1930 - 1950", "Intelligence and the Kremlin". Died in 1996 at the age of 89.
Orlovsky behind enemy lines organized a partisan detachment "Falcons". It was a small but very effective group. In October 1942, its members landed by parachute in the Baranovichi region in the area of Lake Vygonovsky. Orlovsky, as the commander of a reconnaissance and sabotage group, was tasked with conducting constant reconnaissance and surveillance, transmitting information about the location of enemy airfields and military units, and the construction of defensive structures and warehouses by him. Especially closely it was necessary to follow the preparations for a probable chemical war. In addition, the "Falcons" also directly committed sabotage on highways and railways, destroyed enemy equipment and manpower.
The partisan movement in Belarus has developed strongly in a short time. By the middle of 1943, the Orlovsky group had already turned into a powerful and numerous detachment, in which there were more than two hundred fighters. They coped with the tasks more than successfully. For example, in February, a small group of Orlovsky partisans destroyed a large group of Nazi officials andofficers, headed by Baranovichi commissar Wilhelm Kube, who ruled several western districts in Belarus at once. As a result, SS Obergruppenführer Zacharius, Hauptkommissar Friedrich Fentz, as well as ten more officers and more than thirty soldiers were killed.
The partisan detachment itself had no losses, but Orlovsky was seriously wounded in a protracted battle. Because of him, his hands had to be amputated, and besides, the partisan commander lost his hearing. The amputation was carried out by a partisan doctor in the field, usually with a saw, without using anesthesia. Orlovsky's right arm was cut off at the shoulder, four fingers were cut off on the left, and the auditory nerve was damaged by about sixty percent.
Despite such a serious injury, he returned to duty. He resumed command of the detachment at the end of May. At the end of August, the intelligence officer was recalled to Moscow, and already in September it became known that he had been awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union. Kirill Prokofievich Orlovsky returned to his family. He was given a three-room apartment in the capital and a personal pension, but the benefits and privileges did little to please the hero.
Work on the collective farm
Kirill Prokofyevich decides to go to work as the chairman of a collective farm in his native burned village of Myshkovichi, Kirovsky District, which the Germans practically destroyed. An important role in this was played by his attitude to the land, which was brought up by his parents from birth. Having lost the opportunity to work in the state security organs and fight at the front, Orlovsky wrote a letter to Stalin, in which he askedto send him to one of the collective farms most severely destroyed by the war. He promised to revive it and make it a millionaire collective farm.
In the middle of 1944, Orlovsky was elected chairman of the Rassvet collective farm in Kirovsk in the Mogilev region. The hero of our article himself later recalled that it was a difficult time, full of serious trials that fell to his lot. This village, like thousands of others in the area, was practically destroyed by the Nazis, looted and destroyed. Orlovsky faced many difficulties in this post, which he took up immediately. He set himself the goal of not only creating a workable collective farm, but also making it exemplary. He introduced a rule for all employees, which was based on four "not". It was impossible to steal, loaf, let words go to the wind and get drunk.
Eyewitnesses recalled how, in the first days of his work, the new chairman gathered the remaining local residents, starting to comb the forests located in the district. They caught wild and injured horses, which they nursed with herbs, so that later with their help they could begin to prepare wood for new buildings, transport the harvested crops, and plow the land. Almost everything had to be rebuilt on bare ashes.
Among the leaders
About the collective farm "Rassvet" became known after a couple of years. The fame of him spread far beyond the district and the entire Mogilev region. Peasants from other villages began to actively join it. By that time, Myshkovichi had already createdlivestock farms, there was money in the cash register, and enough grain in the barns. Orlovsky was not happy ahead of time, he was always stern in summing up the results of his work. He de alt harshly with parasites and drunkards. In addition to monetary fines, they also lost their household plots, and some even ended up in the dock. By the 1960s, this policy led to an amazing result - people on the collective farm stopped stealing altogether. Moreover, they were able to understand that by honest work they can earn much more than by stealing. In addition, those who tried to work were generously paid according to the Orlovsky workday system.
Being an assertive person by nature, Orlovsky sought support from officials of the highest rank. He was a member of many Kremlin offices. He ensured that the collective farmers of "Dawn", which gave the country more products than most other farms, could use not only the traditional payment in the form of potatoes, grain and vegetables, but also real money, without which it was impossible to solve many everyday problems. The cost of a workday was determined at a joint meeting, it directly depended on the results demonstrated.
January 20, 1957 became historical for the Rassvet farm. On this day, a long-term plan for the development of the collective farm was considered. The approved version involved the construction of the first collective farm sanatorium in the country, which appeared next to the old linden alleys. Anyone could earn a ticket if they worked hard. After that, for two weeks he used for freemedical care, fed him, provided him with good rest.
The next important stage in the development of the economy and the village itself was the construction of a secondary school. Orlovsky paid twenty percent of its cost from his own savings. A year later, a children's music school was built in Myshkovichi themselves. The first in Belarus, organized at the collective farm.
Under the leadership of Orlovsky, the collective farm, practically destroyed in the war, became a successful diversified farm, the first millionaire collective farm in the post-war country.
At the end of life
It is noteworthy that the hero of our article was engaged not only in the economy, but also in politics and social activities. Kirill Prokofievich Orlovsky - Deputy of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR from the third to the seventh convocation inclusive. In the period from 1956 to 1961 he was a candidate member of the Central Committee of the CPSU.
Contemporaries claimed that he was a man of incredible ability to work, whose words never disagreed with the deed. Orlovsky died in early 1968 at the age of 72. He was buried in his native village of Myshkovichi in the Mogilev region.
Shortly before his death, in an interview, he told reporters that he was not happy with the way they began to write about intelligence officers lately. Writers are increasingly taking the detective path, tickling the soul with action-packed situations. Although in reality the essence of the work of scouts is completely different. She, according to Orlovsky, consisted in the romantic purity of the heart of the Chekist, in the spiritual we alth of these natures, in the holiness of the goals of ideas, for the sake ofwhom they fought. A scout, by definition of the hero of our article, is a person freed from a petty perception of life and filth. He is devoid of ambition and selfishness, above everyday difficulties. This is a resilient, whole and purposeful person. Orlovsky himself was drawn to this image throughout his life.
Awards
Kirill Prokofievich Orlovsky received many awards during his career. In addition to the title of Hero of the Soviet Union, these are five more Orders of Lenin, the Order of the Red Banner of Labor, the Hammer and Sickle and the Gold Star medals.
Memory
Streets in Bobruisk, Mogilev, Lyakhovichi, Brest and Kletsk are named today in memory of Kirill Prokofievich Orlovsky. A school, a collective farm and a sanatorium in Kirovsk, an agroforestry college in Bobruisk bear his name.
In his small homeland, a bronze bust of the hero of the Soviet Union was installed, a memorial museum operates.
In 1964, Alexei S altykov's drama "Chairman" was released on Soviet screens. The film tells about the front-line soldier Yegor Trubnikov, who, after the war, returns to the destroyed village to restore the economy. The role of the protagonist, whose prototype was Orlovsky, was played by Mikhail Ulyanov.
