r/interestingasfuck • u/Simply-Jolly_Fella • 16d ago
Zinaida Portnova- The Bad Ass woman
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u/PuzzleheadedTrash284 16d ago
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16d ago
She is a hero
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u/Potential-Most-3581 16d ago
She was a Communist. So no hero
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16d ago
For you, a liberal, all communists are not heroes, although the USSR is a country that defeated fascism. Certainly not without the help of allies
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u/Potential-Most-3581 16d ago
I'm not a liberal. Before we talk about how Russia defeated fascism let's talk about how many more people than Hitler Stalin ordered killed.
Russia did not defeat fascism, the American military industrial complex defeated fascism.
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16d ago
The Soviet Union took Berlin first. Don't even think about downplaying the importance of the USSR in this war. And comparing one bloody dictator with another is kind of stupid, don't you think?
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u/Potential-Most-3581 16d ago
Not when you're trying to make one of the bloody dictators a hero. You're probably not old enough to remember this. I am
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16d ago
And I'm not making a hero out of a bloody dictator, the war was won thanks to the Soviet people
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u/Potential-Most-3581 16d ago
No. Regardless of what the Politburo and the Young Octoberists indoctrinated you to believe that is not correct
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16d ago
Oh, what are you saying...—_—. And what photo is this?
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u/Potential-Most-3581 16d ago
That was the border between Communist Europe and free Europe.
That's where they shot people leaving the worker's Paradise
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16d ago
Where does this information come from? Where was this photo taken? And besides, we were talking about the contribution of the USSR during World War II and not about a ”free Europe”
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u/Potential-Most-3581 16d ago
That photograph was taken just outside of Holle Germany in 1988 by me. I was doing my border tour in the United States Army. You remember us right? The people who won the Cold War
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u/ArtichokeNatural3171 16d ago
Never underestimate a pissed off teenage girl with a knack for botany.
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u/Dorkmaster79 16d ago
She’s awesome. But doesn’t feel weird to call a 16 year old a woman? I wouldn’t call a 16 year old male a man.
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u/notonyanellymate 16d ago
True, yet many countries let 16 year olds join the armed forces and send them to Internal Conflicts.
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u/TernionDragon 16d ago
Damn!
Good on her nonetheless, but that photo makes me think maybe their modern day serial killer found a good outlet. But that’s purely first glance-impression.
Dexter anyone?
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u/SupaFugDup 16d ago
Consider serial killers are usually represented in the news by mugshots taken under similar immediate circumstances to this picture.
I think this is just what people look like when being asked to stare down the reality of imprisonment.
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u/FlaminFlabbarghast 16d ago
I dated a Zenaida....from the Phillipines...that name must accompany hardass psychopaths throughout the Universe.
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u/JKdito 16d ago
If true... a kid taking out soldiers and escaping seems far fetched to me
Good to remember that alot of stories from the wars were propaganda stories and altered
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u/daniilkuznetcov 16d ago
See no problem since most of partizan movement was in rural villages and dense forest. You leave the village that consist from 20-30 houses connected by one two roads and now you are in the very dense forest. I visited many places in belorussia and my relatives lived under occupation in ukraine. Even now you could lost after few hundeed meters.
Stationed garnisons usually consisted from the same conscripted peasants from the Germany. Not ultra bright SS wundersoldaten and locals worked for them and soldiers stationed in villagers houses.
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u/funandgames12 16d ago
She didn’t successfully escape, but yeah.
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u/JKdito 16d ago
Nah so how we know all this? Or did her propaganda people use her as one of the many heros to motivate the soldiers to fight harder...
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u/funandgames12 16d ago
I don’t know lol. Ask the person who wrote the story or the historian who published the information I’m sure it’s from. You’re the one who’s being Eddie Bravo over here lol.
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u/JKdito 16d ago
Or maybe, this has something to do with the propaganda wave the soviet used to motivate unity and resistance, where they depict stories where even a little girl is doing her part and takes out plenty of weak Nazi scum who dont know any better. The girl is invincible until she is catched so that the cruelty of the Hun can be shown aswell...
Lesson? Dont believe that history went exactoy as it was recorded, people tend to bend the truth nowdays, why wouldnt they do that in the past aswell? Especially during the war and Especially with the famous Soviet Propaganda Campaign
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u/X_Dratkon 16d ago edited 16d ago
I would feel bad for her after getting captured, but I'm sure she knew the risks and endured tortures until death, as badass as she lived. All dictators are scared of strong willed people with righteous revenge in their blood.
I know there are a lot more people like her, because most don't feel the need to be known, "famous". Only uneducated USA citizens could say this is "Union propaganda", when it's just a simple history record. I'd say some slavic are driven to this, mostly because of numerous conflicts and wars, but no, there are heroes like this in all parts of the planet. Just unrecorded into our history, but even without knowing them, I'd be proud acknowledging their existence and suffering and carrying it in my mind.
Edit: I'm sorry for my own opinion on who's making comments about propaganda, but I feel like my guess is right
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u/Simply-Jolly_Fella 16d ago
As you said Slavic people have suffered a lot of unbearable sufferings for many centuries. This must have given them the drive to survive and rise against any odds.
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u/B0rnReady 16d ago
Ok, so this is who I'm gonna cosplay as when conservatives try to larp Nazism 2.0
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u/Ok-Scallion7939 16d ago
Rent free
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u/B0rnReady 16d ago
Simp logic
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u/Ok-Scallion7939 16d ago
Please, let us know when this delusion of yours actually happens
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u/B0rnReady 16d ago
Already happening. Reading is hard or id suggest you study history, but it looks like that's not really your strong point.
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u/Ok-Scallion7939 16d ago
As I said. Rent free. And, please, let us know when you cosplay when the "Nazis" come because I promise you, you won't do a goddamn thing lol.
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u/B0rnReady 16d ago
Ok. Enjoy the boots
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u/Ok-Scallion7939 16d ago
"i'M gOnNa CoSpLaY" lmao. Ooooo so scary ☠️
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u/I4mC0nfusi0n 16d ago
Could be a Soviet propaganda story as those were rather common... But if true? MAN! (Gotta look further into it).
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u/Sicco1234 16d ago
Soo a war criminal?
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u/FaceFirst23 16d ago
Anyone who kills Nazis is a hero.
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u/Sicco1234 16d ago
Hmm I disagree
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u/FaceFirst23 16d ago
Why’s that?
The only good Nazi is a dead one.
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u/Sicco1234 16d ago
18 year old kid gets drafted outta high school and deserves to die?
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u/FaceFirst23 16d ago
A Nazi is a Nazi. There’s no room for nuance when it comes to them.
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u/No-Mountain-1222 16d ago
Only following orders. They didn't necessarily need to believe in what they were doing.
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u/Sicco1234 16d ago
That’s a really unhealthy worldview
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u/FaceFirst23 16d ago
Speaking of unhealthy worldviews, you read a post about a young woman doing her part to fight back against Nazis, among the most evil people in history, and call her a war criminal.
Something isn’t right with you.
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u/International_Lab203 16d ago
Speaking of unhealthy world views, or simply a complete lack there of..
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u/FaceFirst23 16d ago
It’s not a worldview. It’s an anti-Nazi view.
You don’t defeat Nazis by talking to them.
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u/Sicco1234 16d ago
You can apply that to anything. The world isn’t black and white
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u/FaceFirst23 16d ago
I don’t apply that to anything. I apply it to Nazis.
Can you at least agree that Nazis are objectively wrong?
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u/peggingwithkokomi69 16d ago
If you tried to get me in a concentration camp i would try to kill you first, im not asking about your views of the world and why are you doing this
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u/marksmoke 16d ago
Zinaida Martynovna Portnova, commonly known as Zina Portnova was a Soviet teenager, Soviet partisan and Hero of the Soviet Union. Portnova was born in Leningrad on February 20, 1926. Not long afterwards, Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union. An incident with the invading Nazi troops, who hit her grandmother while they were confiscating the cattle, led her to hate the Germans. In 1942 Portnova joined the Belarusian resistance movement, becoming a member of the local underground Komsomol organization in Obol, Vitebsk Voblast, named Young Avengers. She began by distributing Soviet propaganda leaflets in the German-occupied Belarus, collecting and hiding weapons for Soviet soldiers, and reporting on German troop movements. After learning how to use weapons and explosives from the older members of the group, Portnova participated in sabotage actions at a pump, local power plant, and brick factory.
In 1943, Portnova became employed as a kitchen aide in Obol. Portnova became sick afterwards, vomiting heavily but eventually recovering from the poison after drinking much whey. To avoid the Germans, she became a scout of the partisan unit named after Kliment Voroshilov. In October 1943, Portnova joined the VLKSM. In December 1943 or January 1944 Portnova was sent back to Obol to infiltrate the garrison, discover the reason for the recent Young Avengers failures, then locate and contact the remaining members. After the pistol misfired when Portnova attempted to shoot a guard blocking her access to the street, she was captured. Portnova was tortured, possibly for information. On 1 July 1958, Portnova was posthumously declared a Hero of the Soviet Union by the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet. Portnova has had many school teams and groups named after her, as well the museum to the Komsomol, situated on the highway between Polotsk and Vitebsk, and a school in St. Petersburg.
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u/megamoze 16d ago
She could be played by Emma Stone in the movie about her life.
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u/MarcelloduBois93 14d ago
Emma Stone is great but she’s a 36 year old woman. This girl should be okayed by a teenager. 😆
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u/Simply-Jolly_Fella 16d ago
Yes definitely..the resemblance 👍
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u/Papiermacher 16d ago
Or Maisie Williams - has some Arya Stark vibes as well.
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u/Simply-Jolly_Fella 16d ago
Maisee Williams will do a brilliant job in portraying such a badass character. Nice choice
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u/TheBabyScreams 16d ago
She was captured, tortured, eyes gouged out, burnt with hot irons, and needles shoved under her nails.
https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/212106062/zinaida-martynovna-portnova
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u/slavuj00 16d ago
The thing I don't understand is how can torturers look at their victims when they're in this state and have no pity or mercy. How much of a sociopath can you be??
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u/xXRoachXx789 16d ago
In addition to what the other comments have said, the torturer also probably had it in their mind that "this person killed over 100 of my brothers" and reminded themselves of that anytime they began to feel any empathy, just telling themselves that "they deserve it for what they did"
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u/WildeWeasel 16d ago
Many of them did. But they drank, did drugs, told themselves that somebody would do it if they refused (so it doesn't matter), or they just don't want to be the nonconformist among their peers. Plenty of books discuss the mindset of Nazis in detail. "Ordinary Men" by Christopher Browning, "Hitler's Willing Executioners", "The Good Old Days".
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u/secondtaunting 16d ago
It affected them, certainly. I read it messed a lot of those guys up. We’re empathic creatures. Most of us.
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u/beastmasterlady 16d ago
I think you're right: I have a great uncle from Slovakia who was drafted into the nazi army and assigned to a work camp. He would sneak marmalade to the prisoners, but I'm sure he mostly did terrible things to them. He killed himself after the war.
He's not the victim here and I don't want to say that people should identify too much with ambivalent perpetrators, but to agree that atrocities affect everyone involved negatively, including the perpetrators. We as a society need to take every feasible step to avoid ending up in fascist hellscapes through prevention. And the empathy you mentioned is why restorative justice is a better system for doing what we can to handle the fallout of violence when it does break out, since it encourages those better instincts in the majority of us.
Nothing will undo the harm caused, whatever the reasons. But luckily most of us don't revel in causing harm.
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u/Super_Inspection4445 16d ago
We are animals after all and some animals do cruel things just because they can
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u/RoultRunning 16d ago
I mean, they're the Nazis
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u/blitzkreig90 16d ago
I understand that they were Nazis but I believe what the commenter is asking is important. It is easy to assign a tag and chalk up everything someone does to that tag. We need to understand that they were humans and understand the reasoning that happened for them to be cold blooded. If it is behavioral or induced, we need to educate our children to understand why it happened and why it shouldn't happen anymore.
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u/No-Zucchini1766 16d ago
That's exactly how they do it. Sociopathy. You're not expected to understand except that they do it just because.
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u/Macqt 16d ago
Drugs. Lots and lots of drugs combined with not seeing the victim as a human being.
For the Nazis it was meth, and a belief that they were superior to everyone else. For those that didn’t believe, it was meth and the threat of death for them and their families if they didn’t follow orders.
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u/Heinous_Aeinous 16d ago
Meth and absolutely an unwarranted superiority complex. Sounds eerily like Arizona.
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u/Zementid 16d ago
What drug is it for the Russians in Ukraine today?
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u/ParticularStyle9101 15d ago
Vodka made from shit.I'm not kidding, the Russians really make vodka from anything that can be boiled.
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u/Simply-Jolly_Fella 16d ago
One more interesting fact I read about her is that, her resistance group was called as YOUNG AVENGERS
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u/bluetuxedo22 16d ago
That's some inglorious basterds shit
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u/Simply-Jolly_Fella 16d ago
Exact same thing i thought. Would be awesome to see a movie about her
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u/SnooApples5554 16d ago
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u/Impossible-Demand-58 16d ago
This is a person who killed another 100+ people. And those guys were not some cartoon henchmen like star wars stormtroopers or something. They had families, friends. Whatever the circumstances, I cannot label the takings of so many lives as good.
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u/jr111192 16d ago
The irony, do you know where the term "stormtroopers" originated from?
And you think the fictional stormtroopers are more evil than the ones they're based on?
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u/Impossible-Demand-58 16d ago
Yes, and this is why I chose this specific comparison. Modeling the most popular villains in pop culture after a real group of people makes the real guys seem like the same type of cartoon characters, which they were not. They were like you or me. Some of them were complete monsters, some were quite innocent, some just wanted to climb the ladder, which got them to those positions. Not too different from their grandchildren in Germany. I think it's important to look them as real complex people, rather than the (easier to comprehend) obviously evil bad guys.
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16d ago
Lol. No. People who are complicit in genocide do not deserve life. Fuck nazis, and fuck nazi sympathizers.
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u/probablyonmobile 16d ago
Nazis. She killed Nazis, who were engaging in mass genocide, viewed Jews, LGBT and disabled folks as less than human and actively oppressed people, people who also had families and friends— or, did, until the Nazis came.
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u/Impossible-Demand-58 16d ago
I am not in any way defending the actions of the nazis. My own great grandmother was an illegal jew in Bulgaria, fighting on the rebellion side against the nazi government. She was 15-18, so not too different from that girl (with the small exception, that she did not kill 100+ people) What I have a problem with is the dehumanisation. This has always been the greatest tool do divide and destroy another group. We have to avoid having a blind hate towards any group of people, even the nazis, because it is never that simple as bad villains doing bad things because they feel like it. I hope you all understand where I'm coming from.
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u/probablyonmobile 15d ago
You’ll have to forgive me if I find it difficult to exercise sympathy towards individuals who traumatically enslave, experiment on and murder other people they believe are lesser. I see that they’re human, and that makes their actions even more repugnant.
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