Khvoynaya

About the settlement. The urban-type settlement of Khvoynaya developed on the site of the ancient settlement of Troshovo. Khvoynaya Municipal District contains archaeological sites dating back to the Neolithic period. For a time there were two separate settlements — Khvoynaya station and Khvoynaya settlement — each with its own school, hospital, shops and post office. They later merged, and Troshovo became one of Khvoynaya’s streets. During the Great Patriotic War, hospitals were established here in autumn 1941. A mass cemetery in the settlement contains 714 Soviet soldiers who died of wounds. In September 1941, Khvoynaya became the main aviation supply base for besieged Leningrad. The Special Northern Civil Aviation Group arrived, followed by an air regiment commanded by the famous pilot Valentina Grizodubova. Aircraft also used prepared airfields in Pokrom, Narotovo, Ronino, Kashino, Pestovo and Zhily Bor, while a decoy airfield was set up in Yakhnovo. For three months at the front, squadrons based in Khvoynaya urgently delivered fuel, ammunition and weapons to the troops defending Leningrad, brought food into the city and evacuated children. By mid-November of 1941, Khvoynaya also maintained air links with partisan detachments. The settlement became one of the centres of the partisan movement in Nazi-occupied northwestern districts. A headquarters was created in Khvoynaya to coordinate partisan warfare and military support. By the end of 1941, a partisan training camp had been organised in the forest beyond Skuratovsky Bridge, first training radio operators and sabotage groups and later other specialists for operations behind enemy lines. In 1942 alone, the camp trained 41 commanders, 206 sabotage-group commanders, hundreds of radio operators and nurses, and about three thousand rank-and-file fighters. Beyond the Pes River, a partisan printing house and editorial office produced the newspapers Leningrad Partisan, For the Soviet Motherland and several copies of Young Avenger. A memorial stele on the left bank of the Pes beyond Skuratovsky Bridge marks the former partisan base.