Kirill Prokofievich Orlovsky is known as one of the leaders of the partisan movement in Belarus during the Great Patriotic War. He was an employee of the NKVD, was awarded the titles of a hero of the Soviet Union and a hero of Socialist Labor. During the war years he accomplished many feats, for example, illegally crossed the state border and 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 a peasant share.
Until 1915 he studied and worked in his native village. During the First World War, Orlovsky was called to the front. In the rank of non-commissioned officer of the tsarist army, Kirill Prokofievich commanded a sapper platoon.
Early career
When the October Revolution took place, almost immediately went over to the side of the Bolsheviks. He fought in the Civil War, opposed military foreign 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 the German troops. For several months he served in the Bobruisk emergency commission to combat sabotage and counter-revolution, then graduated from the Komsomol composition.
Kirill Prokofievich Orlovsky heroically fought against the Polish invaders and German invaders, 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. Mainly engaged in "active intelligence". This is a term that appeared at that time among members of the intelligence department. They designated 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 massive armed resistance to the Polish authorities there. It was planned that these units would become the basis of the mass partisan movement, their activities in the future will 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 military operations were carried out.
Orlovsky spent four months on the Western Front, where he fought against the White Poles. Eight months in Moscow, was engaged in courses for the command staff.
Education
After that, he was recommended to be sent to study at the Communist University of National Minorities of the West, which bore the name of the Polish communist and politician Julian Marklewski. This educational institution, which lasted from 1922 to 1936. It trained Komsomol, party and trade union workers of various nationalities. Among the well-known graduates are the President of Yugoslavia Josip Broz Tito, the Secretary of the Communist Party of the People's Republic of Serbia Jovan Veselinov, and the leader of the Norwegian resistance Arvid Hansen.
In the biography of Kirill Prokofievich Orlovsky, the university played a big role, although it was not easy to start a student life at the age of 30, before that only four classes of the parish school were unlearned. Yesterday's partisans did not fear difficulties, began to engage 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 the Soviet communes and collective farms. His friends recall that he treated the scythe and plow no worse than with a grenade and machine guns.
In 1930, Orlovsky graduated from a communist university, after which he left with his wife in Minsk. All this time he was also an employee of 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 demolitionists, radio operators and paratroopers.
In 1936, he worked on the construction of the Moscow-Volga Canal as the head of the site in the Gulag.
Spanish Civil War
An important page in the biography of Kirill Prokofievich Orlovsky becomes the civil war in Spain. He performed the combat mission on the territory of this state in 1937-1938. The hero of our article led a sabotage-guerrilla group that operated behind the Nazis.
Against the Franco regime, he fought among the forty thousand anti-fascists who came to Spain from 55 countries of the world. Orlovsky served as adviser in international reconnaissance and sabotage groups. Under the pseudonym Streak, in a detachment of twelve people, he overcame several hundred kilometers behind enemy lines. On the way, they blew up bridges, smashed the rear garrisons of the Nazis, derailed the train. Memories have survived that the Spanish partisans respected and loved their commander, highly appreciating his intelligence talent, the ability to make decisions in critical situations.
In 1938, Orlovsky was dismissed from state security for health 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, the former NKVD employee, Kirill Prokofievich Orlovsky, was in western China. He was sent to this country to organize a base of Soviet agents in the light of the anticipated war against Japan. The experience of Kirill Prokofievich Orlovsky during the Great Patriotic War proved to be very helpful.
At a personal request, Orlovsky was recalled to organize a partisan movement in Belarus. He immediately went to the deep rear of the enemy as the leader of an intelligence and sabotage group. He began work in the spring of 1942. He was reinstated in the service of the state security organs. Since then, Orlovsky worked as part of the NKVD Special Group, led by Pavel Sudoplatov.
This is a famous saboteur and Soviet intelligence officer, 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 murder 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 facilities during the defense of Moscow, conducted sabotage activities against the Germans in the Caucasus. In 1953 he was arrested as an accomplice to 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 known thanks to his memoir under the name "Special Operation. Lubyanka and the Kremlin 1930 - 1950", "Intelligence and the Kremlin." He died in 1996 at the age of 89.
Orlovsky in the rear of the enemy organized the partisan detachment "Falcons". It was a small but very effective group. In October 1942, its members parachuted landed in the Baranavichy region in the area of Lake Vygonovsky. Orlovsky, as the commander of an intelligence and sabotage group, was tasked with conducting constant reconnaissance and surveillance, transmitting information about the location of enemy airfields and military units, the construction of defensive structures and warehouses by him. Particularly closely monitored were preparations for a probable chemical war. In addition, the Falcons also directly committed sabotage on highways and railways, and destroyed enemy equipment and manpower.
The partisan movement in Belarus unfolded strongly in a short time. By the middle of 1943, Orlovsky's group had 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 and officers, led by Commissioner Baranavichy Wilhelm Kube, who controlled several western districts in Belarus at once. As a result, SS Obergruppenführer Zacharius, Hauptcommissioner Friedrich Fentz, as well as ten more officers and more than thirty soldiers were killed.
The partisan detachment itself cost no losses, but in a protracted battle Orlovsky was seriously wounded. Because of him, his arms had to be amputated, and the partisan commander lost his hearing. The guerrilla doctor carried out the amputation in the field, usually with a saw, without using anesthesia. Orlovsky was cut off the right arm on the shoulder, on the left he lost four fingers, the auditory nerve was damaged by about sixty percent.
Despite such a serious injury, he returned to duty. He again began commanding the squad at the end of May. In late August, the scout was recalled to Moscow, and already in September it became known that he was awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union. Kirill Prokofievich Orlovsky returned to his family. He was allocated a three-room apartment in the capital and a personal pension, but the hero did not please the privileges and privileges.
Work on the collective farm
Kirill Prokofievich decides to go to work as the chairman of the collective farm in the native burned village of Myshkovichi in the Kirov region, which the Germans practically destroyed. An important role in this was played by his attitude to the land, which was raised 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 asking him to send him to one of the collective farms that were most badly destroyed by the war. He promised to revive him and make him a millionaire collective farm.
In mid-1944, Orlovsky was elected chairman of the Dawn collective farm in Kirovsk in the Mogilev region. The hero of our article 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 district, was almost destroyed by the Nazis, looted and destroyed. Orlovsky was faced with many difficulties in this post, for the solution of which he undertook immediately. He set himself the goal of not only creating an efficient collective farm, but also making it exemplary. He introduced a rule for all employees, which was based on four “no.” It was impossible to steal, idle, let the words down the drain and get drunk.
Eyewitnesses recalled how in the first days of his work, the new chairman gathered the remaining local residents, starting to comb through the forests located in the district. They caught feral and wounded horses, which they nursed with herbs, so that with their help they could begin to prepare wood for new buildings, transport harvested crops, and plow the land. Almost everything had to be rebuilt on the bare ashes.
Among the foremost
About the farm "Dawn" became known after a couple of years. His fame spread far beyond the region and the entire Mogilev region. Peasants from other villages began to actively enter it. By that time, livestock farms had already been set up in Myshkovichy, there was money at the box office, and enough grain in the barns. Orlovsky did not rejoice ahead of time, he was always severe in summarizing the work. He was tough with parasites and drunks. In addition to monetary fines, they also lost their personal plots, and some even ended up in the dock. By the 1960s, this policy led to an amazing result - people on the collective farm completely stopped stealing. Moreover, they were able to understand that by honest labor they can earn much more than by stealing. In addition, those who tried to work received a generous payment according to the Orlovsky workdays 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 farmers of Dawn, who 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 shown.
Historical for the economy, "Dawn" was January 20, 1957. On this day, a long-term collective farm development plan was considered. The approved option involved the construction of the country's first collective farm sanatorium, which appeared next to ancient linden alleys. Everyone could earn a ticket if he worked hard. After that, for two weeks he used medical care free of charge, he was fed, provided a 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 value 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, which was practically destroyed during the war, became a successful diversified economy, 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 farming, 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 inclusively. In the period from 1956 to 1961 he was a candidate member of the CPSU Central Committee.
Contemporaries claimed that this was a man of incredible disability, whose words never differed from the deed. Orlovsky died in early 1968 at the age of 72. He was buried in the native village of Myshkovichi in the Mogilev region.
Shortly before his death, in an interview, he told reporters that he was not happy with how recently they began to write about scouts. Writers are increasingly taking a detective path, tickling their souls with action-packed situations. Although in reality the essence of the work of scouts is completely different. According to Orlovsky, it consisted in the romantic purity of the heart of the Chekist, in the spiritual wealth of these natures, in the sanctity of the goals of the ideas for which they fought. A scout, by the definition of the hero of our article, is a person who is spared the petty perception of life and filth. He is devoid of ambition and selfishness, above everyday difficulties. This is a resilient, integral and purposeful person. Orlovsky himself was drawn to such an 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 medal "Hammer and Sickle" and "Golden Star".
Memory
In memory of Kirill Prokofievich Orlovsky, streets in Bobruisk, Mogilev, Lyakhovichi, Brest and Kletsk are named today. His name is a school, collective farm and sanatorium in Kirovsk, agroforestry college in Bobruisk.
In his small homeland, a bronze bust was installed on the hero of the Soviet Union, a memorial museum is operating.
In 1964, the drama by Aleksey Saltykov "The Chairperson" was released on Soviet screens. The film was about the front-line soldier Yegor Trubnikov, who after the war returns to the ruined village to restore the economy. The role of the protagonist, whose prototype was Orlovsky, was played by Mikhail Ulyanov.