Gerasim Vinokurov Member of the underground organization 'Young Guard'. Country: Ukraine

Biography of Gerasim Vinokurov

Gerasim Tikhonovich Vinokurov was born in 1898 in the village of Shchelkunovka, Bogoroditsky district of the Tula region, in a poor peasant family. He had a difficult and joyless childhood. After becoming an orphan, he worked as a laborer on a landlord's estate. In 1915, he started working as a black laborer in a private bakery in Moscow. When the October Revolution began, Gerasim Tikhonovich unhesitatingly defended its achievements. During the years of the Civil War, Red Army soldier Vinokurov fought in the 2nd Don Division. After being severely wounded, he stayed in the city of Voronezh, where he worked in the organs of the Cheka (secret police).

In 1921, G.T. Vinokurov came to the Donbass region in response to the party's call and worked as a turbine operator at the power station of Mine No. 1 in the settlement of Krasnodon. In 1926, he was accepted into the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (Bolsheviks) by the Lugansk district party committee. He spent several years working in trade unions and was elected secretary of the party organizations of Mines No. 12 and 5. Since 1938, he was a member of the plenum of the Krasnodon district committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine (Bolsheviks).

G.T. Vinokurov enjoyed well-deserved authority and respect. He was demanding of himself and felt a great responsibility for the entrusted task. He played a significant organizational role among the miners, especially during the early days of the Great Patriotic War. When the miners went to the front, housewives replaced them in the mines. On June 26, 1941, in the district newspaper "Socialist Fatherland," Gerasim Tikhonovich talked about the selfless Stakhanovite labor of the female miners and their desire to "not in any way reduce the coal production at the mine, but, on the contrary, increase it even more."

In the summer of 1941, G.T. Vinokurov was mobilized into the labor army in the Zaporozhye region and became a commissar of one of the units. From February 1942, he worked in the Krasnodon district committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine (Bolsheviks) and actively participated in the organization of a combat battalion. In April 1942, by the decision of the party's bureau of the district committee, he became the commissar of the battalion, which included communists and Komsomol members. They guarded institutions and mines, protected the railway line, collected clothing and food for the army, sent bottles with fuel mixture to the front, and apprehended saboteurs and enemy spies.

In January 1943, G.T. Vinokurov was arrested and after brutal torture, executed and thrown into the mine shaft of Mine No. 5. He was buried in a mass grave of heroes in the central square of the city of Krasnodon. Gerasim Tikhonovich Vinokurov was posthumously awarded the Order of the Patriotic War, 1st Class.