The Great Patriotic War for Soviet citizens was a difficult period of enormous trials and selfless struggle against the fascist occupiers. “If there are a hundred of you, then you will defeat two hundred. If there are a thousand of you, defeat two thousand by the grace of God. God helps those who are persistent in their struggle”, said Mufti Gabdrakhman Rasulev on September 2, 1941 in his call to all Muslims of the USSR to defend their homeland. Despite the atheistic propaganda of the socialist state, muslims of the Soviet Union, like representatives of other faiths, stood up to defend their families and homes.
Considering the influence of a bygone era, it’s impossible to declare with absolute certainty the adherence of the presented heroes to Islam. But absolutely all of them come from Muslim nations, who for centuries have been professing the religion of submission to the Almighty. For example, the Tatar poet and war correspondent Mussa Jalil even had visiting a madrasah at his time. Religious education didn’t prevent him from subsequently becoming the political leader of the Red Army. According to some sources, Mussa Jalil had a reservation from mobilization. The poet decisively rejected the opportunity to remain in the rear, considering that his place was among the fighters for the country's freedom.
On June 26, 1942, the seriously wounded Mussa Jalil was captured by the enemy. Soon he joined the “Idel-Ural” legion, formed by the fascists, which attracted into its ranks prisoners of war of the Red Army who expressed a desire to fight against Bolshevism. The Germans instructed Mussa Jalil to conduct Nazi propaganda among the prisoners. For a long time, in his homeland the poet was considered a traitor and renegade.
Jalil's true goal was to destroy the “Idel-Ural” legion from the inside. Using the trust of the fascists, he became one of the most important members of the underground organization within the legion. Among Mussa Jalil's comrades in resistance were eleven fellow tribesmen, among whom were even colleagues in the literary workshop. For example, the poet and journalist Akhmet Simaev and children's writer Abdulla Alish, and the latter's namesake and one of the underground fighters Abdulla Battal is another heroic warrior along with his brother. Poet Salihjan Battal served as a pilot in the Pacific Fleet Air Force and participated in battles against Nazi Japan.
The first “Idel-Ural” battalion, sent to the combat zone, killed its German officers and almost completely went over to the partisans. The remaining battalions were recognized as unfit for combat and lacking confidence - it turns out that the group of underground fighters, who went down in history as the “Dzhalilovtsy”, managed to fulfill the goals they had set for themselves, but at the cost of their own lives.
“Valiant knight of our Fatherland. Immortal hero of the Caucasus... With his machine gun, Nuradilov destroyed 920 Germans, captured 7 enemy machine guns and captured 12 fascists”, a quote from an article in the front-line newspaper “Red Army” dedicated to the exploits of Khanpasha Nuradilov. The fearless Nokhchi was born in the Dagestan Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic in 1924, but died at the age of 18 on the banks of the Don, defending the approaches to Stalingrad.
Since the beginning of the war Khanpasha Nuradilov showed himself to be a decisive, brave and resourceful soldier. In the first battle near the village of Zakharovka in Ukraine, only one of his crew remained and was wounded, Khanpasha Nuradilov stopped the advance of the German troops, killing more than a hundred fascist invaders with his gun. It’s important to mention that at the same time, the brave young man, by the way, the commander of a machine gun platoon, managed to capture seven enemy soldiers.
In January 1942, during an attack near the village of Tolstoye, Belgorod region, Khanpasha Nuradilov moved forward with his weapon, clearing the way for the infantry. In this battle, he managed to suppress four enemy machine guns, not counting the impressive losses he single-handedly inflicted on enemy personnel. In February, during the battles for the settlement of Shchigry in the Kursk region, already in the rank of sergeant Khanpasha Nuradilov was wounded again. But the warrior remained behind the machine gun and gave a crushing rebuff to the enemy.
A major role in the success of one of the most important operations of the Red Army - the crossing of the Dnieper River in the fall of 1943, was played by the courage of a native of the Tajik SSR, Domullo Azizov. Without waiting for the pier, the warrior jumped out of the landing boat and burst into German trenches, capturing an enemy machine gun. Domullo deployed the Mashinengever and with its help held off the fascist counterattacks until the brothers in arms arrived.
Attack pilot Yusup Akaev, a Kumyk by nationality (one of the indigenous peoples of Dagestan, Chechnya and North Ossetia), distinguished himself in the sky. Over 104 combat missions, the fearless pilot managed to destroy eighteen ships, three steam locomotives, eleven tanks and turn a lot of other Nazi military equipment into burning heaps of scrap metal. Moreover, Yusup Akaev emerged victorious from an unequal air duel with two enemy fighters.
To the question “Whose are you?” air combat master Akhmet Khan Sultan replied: “Father and mother. Is it possible to separate them from each other?” Born into a family of Laks (Dagestan people) and a Crimean Tatar, during the war Akhmet Khan fought as part of a unique team of pilots opposing the German aces. The virtuoso pilot also mastered the control of the British fighter “Hurricane”. In one of the air duels, Akhmet Khan used up all his ammunition, but didn’t lose his head and rammed an enemy bomber in a “Hurricane”. Due to the impact, the plane got stuck in the body of the enemy vehicle, but Akhmet Khan Sultan got out of the cockpit and successfully used a parachute.
Aliya Moldagulova, a native of the Kazakh Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic, graduated from the Central Women's Sniper Training School. However, despite dozens of fascists defeated with a long-range rifle, the Heroine of the Soviet Union wasn’t distinguished by her amazing accuracy.
January 1944. Fight in the Pskov region. After the death of commander Aliya Moldagulova roused the soldiers to attack and was the first to break into the enemy trenches. Even a mine fragment didn’t stop the brave girl, and she entered into hand-to-hand combat, but the next wound turned out to be fatal for 18-year-old Aliya Moldagulova.
It was not only on the battlefields that the Muslim peoples of the Soviet Union distinguished themselves. Mufti Gabdrakhman Rasulev personally contributed 50 thousand rubles for the construction of a tank column. The initiative was taken up in the Turkmen, Uzbek, Kazakh and Tajik Soviet republics. The capitals of Muslim regions received millions of evacuees. At the beginning of the war, the Uzbek blacksmith Shaakhmed Shamakhmudov and his wife Bakhri Akramova took into the care 15 children of different nationalities who had lost their parents.
More than half of thousand Muslims were awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union during the Great Patriotic War. Today, their names are immortalized in the names of streets and cultural sites in Russian cities, and countless memorials and monuments preserve the exploits of heroes for their descendants, whose future was defended by countless armies of valiant liberators in bloody battles. Each of the residents of modern Russia and the Muslim successor states of the USSR can and should touch this eternal memory.
GSV "Russia - Islamic World"
Photo: Russian Ministry of Defense