The Feat of a Chekist

In the last days of November, 1941, the Nazi invaders approached Moscow, threatening to capture it.

During these difficult days, Soviet people stood up to defend the capital, performing unprecedented acts of bravery, including behind enemy lines. The heroism of Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya, a saboteur in the intelligence department of the Western Front headquarters, who died a martyr’s death and became the first woman during the Great Patriotic War to be awarded the title Hero of the Soviet Union, is widely known. However, much less well-known is that during those same days, a similar feat was performed by Chekist Senior Lieutenant Sergei Ivanovich Solntsev, chief of intelligence and commissar of the partisan detachment in the Ruzsky District.

Sergei Ivanovich Solntsev was born on March 5, 1906, in the town of Ramenskoye, near Moscow. His father and mother worked at the Ramenskoye textile factory. When the boy was one year old, his father died. The responsibility for raising him fell to his mother.

After the revolution, the factory, renamed “Red Banner,” became a second home for Sergei. Here he joined the party and rose through the ranks from a spinner to deputy director.

In 1937, Sergei Solntsev was sent to work for the state security agency. He became an officer in the NKVD Directorate for Moscow and the Moscow Region, deputy head of the Istra district department, and met the outbreak of the Great Patriotic War as head of the NKVD district department in the city of Ruza.

On October 25, 1941, at 6:00 a.m., the Germans, supported by tanks, began an assault on Ruza. This is how the battle was described in the Combat Log of the 69th Infantry Regiment of the 10th Panzer Division of the 40th Motorized Corps of the Wehrmacht: “Ruza is stubbornly defended.” As tanks enter the battle and pound Russian machine-gun emplacements and field positions, the enemy responds with artillery, anti-tank, and anti-aircraft fire. … Anti-tank grenades are already exploding between the houses on the city outskirts… “Let’s move on! Fire! Take cover! Here! Fire! Further! Shoot more! Over here!” – these are the cries of this morning.

Individual groups have already reached the first houses. Hand grenades explode. Soldiers dash between the houses. The crackle of machine guns. More hand grenades. Plaster flies off the wall of a house… A tank squeezes between two houses, its barrel swivels and lowers. Three Russians jump out from behind a bush. A sheaf of machine-gun fire! The battle rages for two hours. Ruza is captured, the opposite outskirts have been reached. This city is like a small nest. Who knows what of its great past? Who knows that in September 1812, Prince Eugene entered Ruza with four infantry divisions and 12 cavalry divisions, and that Napoleon fell ill with the flu here on September 9 of that same year? Who has time to look at the church or stroll along the monastery walls? We’re busy setting up positions…

Around 10:00 AM, when the remaining units of the regiment, securing the crossing of the Moskva River, arrive in Ruza, a complete calm reigns in the town. Dead Russians, abandoned vehicles, and grenade craters are reminders of the war here and there… The foul weather affects the mood. A foggy morning gives way to a gloomy and damp day. The soft snow that fell yesterday is melting again. It drips from the trees and roofs.”

However, this calm is only apparent. Even before the German troops approached Ruza, the district party committee decided to establish an underground organization and a partisan base there. A suitable location was found in the northeast of the district, near Lake Glubokoe, surrounded by forests and swamps. Solntsev was appointed commissar of the partisan detachment and chief of intelligence.

“Sergei Ivanovich created a wide network of intelligence agents and informants in the occupied territory, ensuring that the partisans were always aware of the invaders’ plans,” says military historian and retired Lieutenant Colonel Dmitry Govorov from Ramenskoye. “Solntsev personally trained his personnel in the basics of covert work, and the information obtained by the fighters, thanks to a network of liaisons, was consistently transmitted to the headquarters of our 5th Army.”

On November 3, Solntsev personally delivered important information about the enemy to Zvenigorod across the front lines, along with a report to Senior Major of State Security Mikhail Ivanovich Zhuravlev, head of the NKVD Directorate for Moscow and the Moscow Region, about a partisan detachment under the command of Border Guard Captain Gaidukov that had begun operating in the Ruza District on October 25.

A brief message was also sent to Ramenskoye: “…Greetings again, my dear Marusya and my son Zhenya. I was passing through Zvenigorod on official business and am sending you 1,400 rubles for expenses. Alive and well. I wish the same for you. Don’t be sad. As they say, fate has forced us apart again. Everything in the apartment and department had to be left behind in Ruza during the retreat on October 24. I’m living in the forest now, where—see you later, I’ll tell you about it…”

During this short period, Solntsev personally conducted eighteen reconnaissance missions and, using his network of agents, obtained and transmitted intelligence on the enemy to the 5th Army headquarters. His report from November 19th states:

“On November 9, 1941, a detachment of 26 men advanced on the road between Golosovo and Redkino, burned one food wagon, and killed 4-6 people. Twice, the enemy telephone lines connecting headquarters with German units were cut. There were no casualties.

On November 11, 1941, reconnaissance was conducted on enemy troop and supply train movements along the Golosovo-Redkino road. A supply train was fired upon, 7-10 men were killed, and two medical supply wagons were burned. The lines connecting headquarters with enemy units were cut. One cavalry horse with saddle was captured.

November 13, 1941. A prisoner was taken on the same road; he turned out to be Fritz Helbich, a soldier from the 187th Infantry Regiment, 87th Infantry Division. He was handed over to the headquarters of the 144th Rifle Division (survey form attached).

On November 15, 1941, the combined forces of the detachment, numbering 80 men, together with 21 Red Army soldiers, conducted a raid on the Golosovo-Redkino road. Seventeen to twenty enemy soldiers were killed, twelve rifles (German), six revolvers, a cart with various warm clothing looted from the population, and the documents of the dead German were taken (attached).

One member of the detachment was wounded, and three Red Army soldiers were killed.

In addition to combat operations, the detachment conducted reconnaissance missions and located the headquarters of German units in the city. Ruza, located in a restaurant in the village of Nikolskoye. Troop concentrations and dispositions were reported in the villages of Gorbovo, Redkino, Golosovo, Nikolskoye, Oreshki, Strygino, Annino, and Korchmanovo. All information was transmitted to the 144th Infantry Division. As a result of accurate reconnaissance and artillery fire, the troop concentrations in the villages of Golosovo and Gorbovo were broken up. These villages were occupied by our troops on November 16, 1941.

Over the past three days, nine guides have been assigned from the detachment to transport groups traveling behind enemy lines on special missions.

In the occupied villages of the district, the population is being subjected to wholesale looting, with everything, including food and warm clothing, being confiscated. Looted items were found in soldiers’ knapsacks in a recaptured wagon: worn socks, children’s underwear, boots, women’s underwear, blankets, children’s harmonicas, a mirror, and other small items, including pencils and children’s paints.

The entire male population is being herded into building fortifications, which German troops are constructing in the town of Ruza and on the Borodino field.

In addition to looting, the Germans commit brutal reprisals against the civilian population: in the village of Nikolskoye, they began to take away a cow from citizen Ukolova. Her six-year-old son, Shurik, asked a German officer, “Uncle, where are you taking our Milka?” For this question, the officer chopped off his ear with a blade. To protect her son, his mother rushed to Shurik’s side, and with a second blow, four fingers on her left hand were severed.

Around November 7, 1941, the forester Chepelev and his 16-year-old son were brutally murdered for their ties to the partisans, refusing to reveal the location and existence of the partisan detachment during interrogation. Despite the death of her husband and son, Chepelev’s wife told the partisans the location of five loaves of bread she had baked for them, without uttering a single word of reproach. It would be appreciated if she received financial assistance for her demonstrated patriotism and devotion to the Motherland.

The local population views the German invaders with malice and hatred. When partisans visited the village of Petrovo, liberated from German troops, one of the residents, in whose house the partisans were staying overnight, declared that he was ready to feed 50 partisans or Red Army soldiers all winter and help in any way he could, just so long as he never saw the Germans again.

November 19, 1941.”

Colonel Helmuth Otto Ludwig Weidling, Chief of Artillery of the 40th Corps, was appointed commandant of Ruza. Solntsev was tasked with eliminating him. However, on November 15, the second phase of the German offensive on Moscow began, and the 2nd Panzer Division of the 40th Corps received orders to “clear the heights east of Volokolamsk and occupy the starting areas for the attack on Day X.” On the morning of November 16, German tanks attacked the positions of the 1075th Rifle Regiment of the 316th Rifle Division north of the Dubosekovo siding. According to Colonel Ilya Vasilyevich Kaprov, commander of the 1075th Regiment, after 40-50 minutes of fighting, the Soviet defenses were broken, and the regiment was essentially routed.

However, thanks to the stubborn resistance of Panfilov’s men, the Germans’ plans were thwarted. On November 18, the 2nd Panzer Division remained 25 kilometers from its intended target. Although Weidling’s assassination failed, it proved to be merely a “deferred penalty” for him: in April 1945, he was appointed the last commandant of Berlin, signed the surrender of the German forces on May 2, and surrendered along with the remnants of the garrison. Weidling was sentenced to 25 years for war crimes and died in Vladimir Central Prison.

The events of the autumn of 1941 unfolded rapidly. On November 20, near the village of Andreyevskoye, the partisans were suddenly attacked by a large German punitive detachment. As their ammunition ran low, the wounded Commissar Solntsev ordered his soldiers to retreat into the forest, while he remained to cover their retreat. He was captured by rangers from the 187th Reconnaissance Battalion of the 87th Infantry Division.

The Germans subjected him to inhuman torture and, having achieved nothing, executed the courageous Chekist. “We will respond to the atrocities of the fascists with furious popular vengeance” was the title of an article published on January 20, 1942, in the 5th Army newspaper. It published a report signed by partisan G.Zagudayev, Red Army soldier A.Parshikov, and a group of residents of the Pankovsky village council in the Ruzsky district. Half a kilometer east of the village of Terekhovo, they discovered the mutilated Solntsev, hanged from a roadside tree.

“TO THE PEOPLE’S COMMISSAR OF INTERNAL AFFAIRS OF THE USSR, COMRADE L.P. BERIA

On November 20, 1941, the German occupiers brutally executed the head of the Ruzsky District Department of the NKVD, State Security Lieutenant Sergei Ivanovich Solntsev, born in 1906; he had served in the security services since 1937.

After the Germans occupied the Ruzsky District (October 1941), Solntsev served as the commissar of a partisan detachment and directed reconnaissance and intelligence work in the district. The information about the enemy obtained by Solntsev’s reconnaissance group was widely used by the Red Army command.

Based on this information, units of the 144th Division destroyed the headquarters of a German unit in the village of Vishenki. In the village of Gorbovo, our air force and artillery killed 230 soldiers and officers and destroyed 150 horses, many carts, an artillery mount, and two machine gun nests. In the village of Bogaevo, 130 soldiers and officers, along with 65 horses, were killed. During its operation, the reconnaissance group conducted 18 deep reconnaissance missions behind enemy lines.

After the Germans routed the partisan detachment’s headquarters, Comrade Solntsev was caught in a dugout near Deep Lake with a group of partisans. In the ensuing firefight, he was wounded and captured by the Germans. Despite the brutal torture he endured at the hands of the Germans, who severed two fingers on his right hand, pierced his foot with a bayonet, burned his fingernails and toenails, scalped his skull, and then hung him by a belt, Comrade Solntsev preserved the military and state secrets he knew, dying a hero’s death.

I petition for the posthumous nomination of Sergei Ivanovich Solntsev for the title of Hero of the Soviet Union.

Head of the NKVD Directorate for the Moscow Region

St. Major of State Security Zhuravlev.”

The courageous Chekist was buried in early 1942 in a mass grave on the central square of Ruza, and on March 11 of that year, he was posthumously awarded the title Hero of the Soviet Union. An obelisk was erected at the site of his final battle, bearing the inscription: “Here on November 20, 1941, Hero of the Soviet Union, Chief of the Ruza District NKVD Department, Senior Lieutenant of State Security Sergei Ivanovich Solntsev, was brutally tortured.”

In the village of Dementyevo in the Ramensky District, on the grounds of a now-defunct pioneer camp, a bust of the Hero was erected. In September 2025, it was ceremoniously moved to Solntseva Street in Ramenskoye and installed near house number 6, where Sergei Ivanovich Solntsev was born and raised.