Kolchak victims. white terror
Recently, extraordinary excitement has been recorded in Russian society around the figure of one of the leaders of the White movement, Admiral Alexander Kolchak, in whose honor a memorial plaque was erected in St. Petersburg, and even monuments in Irkutsk and Omsk.
It is noteworthy that admirers of the figure of the admiral commemorate him exclusively as a fearless polar explorer, and especially exalted fans credit him with the terror that Kolchak carried out against the Reds in Siberia.
At the same time, Kolchak’s fans often reproach the Reds for allegedly “dispersing the Constituent Assembly” in January 1918. But if the Bolsheviks simply dispersed the Assembly, then the White Guards after that shot a number of its members who had nothing to do with the Bolsheviks .
On the night of December 22-23, 1918, a Bolshevik uprising took place in Kolchak-controlled Omsk. It may seem incredible, but it was carried out in the heart of white Siberia, filled with White Guards and troops of "allies" (primarily Czechoslovak, Serbian and British).
The rebels planned to simultaneously attack key facilities in Omsk, weapons depots, a prison and prisoner of war camps. After that, they expected to disrupt the railway communication, on which the supply of the White Guard troops at the front depended critically.
The command of the 5th Red Army, which was in close coordination with the underground in Omsk, was to take advantage of these successes and go on the counteroffensive. However, literally on the eve of the rebellion, white counterintelligence managed to arrest the leadership of one of the four city headquarters that led the uprising. The Bolshevik leaders, believing that the whites already knew all their plans, hastened to cancel the order to speak.
Only two of the four headquarters of the uprising managed to notify of this. Despite the expected success, subject to strict party discipline, the rebels turned back at the very last moment.
But the other two districts did not have time to warn. Combat squads, consisting of workers and loaders, together with the propagandized soldiers of the Omsk garrison and the protection of the railway, without any problems captured the outskirts of Omsk - Kulomzino, where the Siberian Cossack hundred and the battalion of Czechoslovak troops were disarmed.
Then the rebels took the strategically important railway bridge across the Irtysh. The Bolsheviks also successfully operated in another Omsk region. Two companies of soldiers who rebelled there seized several facilities, including the city prison.
In addition to the Bolsheviks, there were also previously arrested representatives of the Constituent Assembly Committee, who were part of the anti-Soviet government of KOMUCH, which fought against the Bolsheviks on the Volga in the summer and autumn of 1918.
They were mostly Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries. However, their relationship did not work out with allies in the struggle. And in November - December 1918, representatives of the Constituent Assembly Committee, despite their loyal attitude to the authorities of Admiral Kolchak, were arrested without any charges and transported to the Omsk prison.
The Omsk Bolsheviks, who seized the prison on December 22-23, led the members of the Constituent Assembly out of their cells. They did not want to leave the prison, apparently fearing a provocation, but they were expelled from there by force.
On December 23, 1918, by order of the head of the Omsk garrison, Major General V.V. Brzhezovsky, calls were pasted around the city for the prisoners of the city prison released by the Bolsheviks to return to their cells. The defectors were threatened by a court-martial, which meant an imminent execution. As a result, almost all the Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries, including members of the Constituent Assembly, returned to prison voluntarily and ... were executed.
So, in his report No. 1722 dated December 30, 1918, the prosecutor of the Omsk Court of Justice A.A. Korshunov informs the Minister of Justice of the Kolchak government S.S. Starynkevich: “On December 26, on the opposite bank of the city of the Irtysh River, several corpses of the executed were found, among which were identified those taken from prison for presentation to the military field court - Fomin Nil Valerianovich, a prominent representative of the Socialist-Revolutionaries, a member of the Constituent Assembly, Bruderer and Barsov (also members of the Constituent assembly).
According to the anatomical examination, these people were beaten and tortured before being shot. So, for example, 13 wounds were found on the body of Fomin alone, including saber and bayonet wounds. According to their character, the doctors concluded that the killers tried to cut off his fingers and hands.
According to a further investigation, "from among the persons taken away at the request of the military authorities from the prison, Bruderer, Barsov, Devyatov, Kiriyenko and Mayevsky were brought by the commandant of the city of Omsk, and Sarov was taken by the police of the 5th district of the city of Omsk."
Then he continues: “According to A.A. Korshunov, the documents for the extradition of prisoners from prison were issued by Major General V.D. Ivanov, chairman of the military field court, from where they have not returned. duty adjutant of commandant Cherchenko and lieutenant of the detachment Krasilnikov Bartashevsky.
The first group of people taken from prison - Bachurin, Winter, E. Maevsky (Maisky, aka Gutovsky, then a well-known Menshevik in Russia, editor of the Chelyabinsk newspaper "Power of the People"), Rudenko, Fateev and Zharov - were taken to the military field court. ..
Of all the prisoners in the military field court, only the prisoners of the first group were tried, with the exception of Rudenko, who was not taken there (he was shot dead by the convoy while trying to escape along the road) and was already replaced by Markov, who also escaped from prison.
Of these prisoners, Bachurin, Zharov and Fateev were sentenced to death, Mayevsky - to indefinite hard labor, and in relation to Winter and Markov, the court-martial turned the case to further investigation ... However, all the defendants, except Winter, were shot . Thus, from this group, three were shot according to the verdict, and two - Maisky and Markov - despite it.
According to the prosecutor A.A. Korshunov, the main suspicions in the case of the murder of Mayevsky fell on Lieutenant Cherchenko (adjutant of the commandant Lobov), who “knew Mayevsky well, since he received him after his arrest in Chelyabinsk. In addition, the same Cherchenko arrested Mayevsky on the morning of December 22 after the Bolsheviks released him and took him to the commandant's office.
According to Cherchenko's testimony, he also knew that Mayevsky was the editor of a newspaper that incited readers against the officers, and that during the mutiny some officers ... could disregard the verdict of the court and shoot Mayevsky and Loktev as Bolsheviks.
The last group of persons taken from prison: Fomin, Bruderer, Markovsky, Barsov, Sarov, Loktev, Lissau (all members of the Constituent Assembly) and von Meck (Mark Nikolayevich, a former officer of the Wild Native Division, who allegedly ended up in prison by mistake) was taken to the premises military field court, when the court has already adjourned the session".
Then the following happened: Lieutenant Bartashevsky, who delivered the arrested, ordered the convicts to be taken out of the courtroom in order to return them to prison. The arrested, despite the prohibition of the head of the convoy, continued to communicate with each other.
“Lieutenant Bartashevsky,” it follows from the document, “fearing that the arrested would conspire to escape, and also in view of the small number of convoys, decided to carry out the sentence of the court by taking the arrested to the Irtysh River ... Moreover, in the panic that arose among the escorted, they were shot not only those sentenced to death, but also the rest of those arrested.
This episode clearly characterizes the fighting spirit of the Kolchak military, who were frightened of unarmed people, many of whom were elderly and, with all their desire, could not resist them physically.
In the course of further investigation, the prosecutor of the Omsk Court of Justice A.A. Korshunov managed to find out that, “according to the normal procedure for the proceedings in the military field court, at the end of it, the chairman of the court had to order the convoy to take the convicts back to prison. From the testimony of his clerk, Lieutenant Vedernikov, we can conclude that the chairman did not give such an order to anyone ".
It is worth mentioning in particular the procedure of the court-martial itself. Korshunov points out that “with regard to the trial of the above-mentioned six prisoners, the following circumstance should be noted: in the proceedings of the military field court, first of all, there are no testimonies to the court; then in the same proceedings there are acts of inquiry about only one Markov, while regarding the others tried with there is no material in the proceedings of the court against them five people."
So it is completely incomprehensible by virtue of what order the court began hearing the case, what exactly the defendants were accused of, and what this accusation, which is recorded in the verdict, is based on.
As prosecutor Korshunov writes, “according to Vedernikov, the staff officer for assignments at the headquarters of the head of the garrison, Lieutenant Colonel Sokolov, informed him that he, Vedernikov, had been appointed clerk of the military field court, saying: “The arrested will be brought to you, and you will try them. When Vedernikov objected that it is impossible to judge without an order for trial, Sokolov already strictly repeated: “You were told that the arrested will be brought to you for trial.”
Kolchak himself, in his order No. 81, on December 22, 1918, thanked the participants in the suppression of the speech and announced their reward and, among other things, said: "All those who took part in the riots or were involved in them should be brought to court-martial ..."
In other words, the Supreme Ruler actually sanctioned the massacre of all persons objectionable to the White Guards. This directive allowed people forcibly expelled from prison by the Bolsheviks to be considered involved in the riots, deal with them and at the same time hide from further persecution by the order of Kolchak himself.
By the way, White Guard sources indicate that in those days Kolchak suffered from pneumonia and was bedridden. That did not prevent him from ordering the executions.
Later, at four o'clock in the morning, Captain Rubtsov (the head of the non-commissioned officer school) arrived at the prison with a team of 30 people and demanded verbally the extradition of the prisoners Devyatrov (a well-known Socialist-Revolutionary in Russia at that time, a member of the Constituent Assembly) and Kiriyenko (a major leader of the Mensheviks, the Ural regional commissar , subordinate to the Ural anti-Soviet government). Rubtsov based his demand on the personal order of the Supreme Ruler.
At this time, a party of 44 arrested people arrived at the prison from military control (counterintelligence) under guard. By order of Rubtsov, this party was taken away. He remained in prison until he was informed by an officer that "his order had been carried out."
Further, according to Korshunov, "prisoners Kiriyenko and Devyatov were taken by the head of the non-commissioned officer school Rubtsov under the following circumstances: he ordered his subordinates - Lieutenant Yadryshnikov, Lieutenant Kononov and Ensign Bobykin to take 30 soldiers and go to prison, where they should take 44 Bolsheviks , members of the "Sovdep", detained the night before, and shoot them.
The investigation established that the above-mentioned 44 members of the Bolshevik organization were sent to prison on the night of December 23 by the head of military control at the Headquarters of the Supreme Commander-in-Chief (VGK), Colonel Zlobin, as persons subject to a court-martial (which, again, did not really take place).
They were sent with a package that included the cover paper of the Military Control at the Headquarters of the Supreme High Command (intended for the head of the prison). In response to this, Rubtsov, calling himself the head of the prison, accepted the package (that is, having committed a crime - an actual forgery).
Some time after the removal of 44 prisoners from prison, along with Kiriyenko and Devyatov, officers subordinate to Rubtsov returned and reported that they had carried out his order.
The uncoordinated uprising was crushed by the end of December 23, 1918. Especially bloody events took place in the Kulomzino area. Having held out under artillery and machine-gun fire for almost a day, on the evening of December 23, the remnants of the rebels, armed with small arms, were captured. Even earlier, the uprising in Omsk itself was suppressed.
A huge role in this was played by the troops of the "allies" - the Czechoslovaks and the British. So, the British Colonel John Ward, having heard shooting in the city, took his battalion out into the street and personally took Kolchak's residence under guard, not entrusting this matter to the Serbs guarding him. This largely forced the hesitant soldiers of the Omsk garrison to refrain from speaking.
Only according to official data, then 170 people were sentenced to death by courts-martial, although, according to the British Colonel Ward, there were "thousands" of victims. It was in such an environment that prominent Russian politicians were killed "under the guise", the most famous of which was the Socialist-Revolutionary Nil Fomin.
The supreme ruler Kolchak understood the background of what happened: "... it was an act directed against me, committed by such circles that they began to accuse me of entering into an agreement with socialist groups. I believed that this was done to discredit my power in front of foreigners and in front of those circles that shortly before that expressed their support to me and promised help.
To investigate this story, a special Extraordinary Commission of Inquiry was created, headed by Senator A.K. Viskovaty, whose members managed to find and interrogate almost all ordinary performers. However, in reality, they were never able to get the testimony of any of the top commanders.
Kolchak himself attributed the inability of civilian lawyers to cope with armed criminals in uniform, who were also endowed with power, to the shortcomings of the Russian judicial system. However, there was no punishment for the perpetrators of extrajudicial executions.
Despite the fact that all the threads of organizing massacres led to the commander of the Siberian army, P.P. Ivanov-Rinov, as Kolchak's Ministers of Justice S.S. openly spoke about. Starynkevich and food I.I. Serebrennikov, he escaped with only a transfer from Omsk to the post of commander of the Amur Military District.
According to their version, General Ivanov-Rinov, being dissatisfied with the appearance of Kolchak in Siberia, who pushed him into secondary roles, could take advantage of the situation to simultaneously destroy persons objectionable to him and denigrate the admiral himself.
Be that as it may, Kolchak did not keep him in disgrace for long, and already six months later, in May 1919, Ivanov-Rinov reappeared in Omsk, where he later began responsible work - preparing a counteroffensive against the Red troops and forming the Siberian Cossack Corps.
Subsequently, during the January interrogations of Kolchak by the Investigative Commission of the Political Center, the admiral withdrew responsibility for what happened, citing "ignorance." But when asked about the perpetrators of the murders (Bartashevsky, Rubtsov and Cherchenko), Kolchak was forced to admit that Colonel Kuznetsov, who was conducting the investigation, reported to him that they acted on his behalf.
Be that as it may, they did not bear any responsibility for such a blatant excess of authority. For example, Rubtsov continued for a long time to remain in the position of head of the Omsk non-commissioned officer school and shoot people objectionable and dangerous to the Kolchak regime. Among them in March - April 1919 were the organizers of the December uprising in Omsk A.E. Neibut, A.A. Maslennikov and P.A. Vavilov.
However, almost all the officers involved in the Omsk executions suffered retribution. One of the first to pay was Major General V.V. Brzhezovsky: in September 1919 he was killed in Semipalatinsk by rebellious soldiers.
On February 7, 1920, Kolchak was shot. And General Ivanov-Rinov, 10 years after the Omsk events, returned from emigration to the USSR, and then, according to some reports, he himself fell under repression.
The massacre of members of the Constituent Assembly (that is, a legitimate elected body, which at the beginning of 1918 was to determine the future of the country) from the point of view of the "allies" themselves made it almost impossible for them to further political recognition of the Kolchak government.
In their view, Kolchak was stained to the elbows with the blood of parliamentarians and could no longer claim the role of a unifier of forces who would enjoy the authority, respect and trust of the "allies". It was after this that the hard "watershed" finally passed between the White movement and the "allies", which the White Guards themselves and historians of the White movement later complained about as a "betrayal".
From me:
Mannerheim in Leningrad, for his participation in the BLOCKADE was immortalized with a board. A monument to Kolchak was erected where he destroyed the most people. And after the rehabilitation of Vlasov, will they take up the rehabilitation of Hitler?
Blind Leaders of the Blind Documentary:
How and why did A. V. Kolchak come to Russia - a British officer since December 1917
Not everyone knows about this. It is not customary to talk about this now for the same reason that in the mention of the legendary A.A. Brusilov will never be mentioned that he became a red general. Sometimes in disputes about Kolchak they are asked to show a document with a contract. I don't have it. He is not needed. Kolchak himself told everything, everything was recorded on paper. Everything is confirmed by his telegrams to his mistress Timireva.
A very important important question is what brought the British officer to Russia. Especially in light of the fact that some senators and zealots of Kolchak's memory are in favor of erecting monuments to him :
“There must be places of worship, monuments to the heroes of the Russian Army, who laid down their lives, well-being in the name of Russia, the Tsar and the Fatherland. A monument to Alexander Kolchak should appear in Omsk!”— © Senator Mizulina.
We will show that:
a) Kolchak really entered the service of the British crown;
b) Kolchak ended up in Russia on the orders of his new superiors. (At the same time, he did not aspire to Russia himself. Maybe he even hoped to avoid a visit.)
* * *
From the minutes of the meetings of the Extraordinary Commission of Inquiry.
“... Having considered this question, I came to the conclusion that there was only one thing left for me - to continue the war all the same, as a representative of the former Russian government, which gave a certain obligation to the allies, I held an official position, enjoyed its confidence, it waged this war, and I must continue this war. Then I went to the English envoy in Tokyo, Sir Green, and expressed to him my point of view on the situation, declaring that I did not recognize this government. (remember these words -arctus) and I consider it my duty, as one of the representatives of the former government, to fulfill the promise to the allies; that the obligations that Russia assumed towards the allies are also my obligations as a representative of the Russian command, and that therefore I consider it necessary to fulfill these obligations to the end and wish to participate in the war, even if Russia makes peace under the Bolsheviks. Therefore, I asked him to inform the British government that I ask to be accepted into the British army on any conditions. I do not set any conditions, but only ask you to give me the opportunity to wage an active struggle.
Sir Green listened to me and said:
“I fully understand you, I understand your position; I will report this to my government and ask you to wait for a response from the British government.
Nevertheless, he had the opportunity to remain in the Russian Navy, there are many examples of naval senior officers, and the investigator draws attention to this:
Alekseevsky. At the time when you made such a difficult decision to enter the service of another state, even if it was an allied or former allied state, you should have had the idea that there is a whole group of officers who quite consciously remain in the service of the new government in the Navy, and that among them there are certain large figures ... large officers in the Navy who deliberately went for it, such as Altvater* . How did you treat them?
Kolchak. Altvater's behavior surprised me, because if the question was raised earlier about what political convictions Altfater had, then I would say that he was more of a monarchist. … And even more so I was surprised by his repainting in this form. In general, before it was difficult to say what political convictions an officer had, since such a question simply did not exist before the war. If one of the officers had asked then:
"Which party do you belong to?" - then, probably, he would have answered: "I do not belong to any party and do not engage in politics." (and now let us recall the words noted above about the non-recognition of the Bolshevik government, and carefully read the following -arctus )
Each of us looked in such a way that the government can be anything, but that Russia can exist under any form of government. You understand a monarchist as a person who believes that only this form of government can exist. As I think, we had few such people, and rather Altvater belonged to this type of people. For me personally, there was not even such a question - can Russia exist under a different form of government. Of course, I thought that it could exist.
Alekseevsky. Then among the military, if not expressed, there was still an idea that Russia could exist under any government. Nevertheless, when the new government was created, did it already seem to you that the country could not exist under this form of government?
<…>
Two weeks later, a reply came from the British War Office. I was first informed that the British government was willing to accept my proposal for enlistment in the army and asked me where I would prefer to serve. I replied that in applying to them to accept me for service in the English army, I did not put any conditions on it, and suggested that they use me in any way they found possible. As to why I expressed a desire to join the army and not the Navy, I knew the English Navy well, I knew that the English Navy, of course, did not need our help.
<…>
A.V. Kolchak - A. Timireva :
... Finally, very late, the answer came that the British government offered me to go to Bombay and report to the headquarters of the Indian army, where I would receive instructions about my appointment to the Mesopotamian front.
For me, although I did not ask for it, it was quite acceptable, since it was near the Cheriy Sea, where actions against the Turks took place and where I fought at sea. I therefore gladly accepted the offer, and begged Sir C. Greene to give me the opportunity to travel by boat to Bombay.
A.V. Kolchak - A. Timireva :
Singapore, 16 March. (1918) Met by order of the British government return immediately to China for work in Manchuria and Siberia. It found to use me there in the views of allies and Russia, preferably over Mesopotamia.
... In the end, on the 20th of January, after a long wait, I managed to leave Yokohama by boat for Shanghai, where I arrived at the end of January. In Shanghai, I went to our Consul General Gross and the English Consul, to whom I handed over a paper defining my position, asking his assistance to arrange me on a steamer and deliver me to Bombay to the headquarters of the Mesopotamian army. On his part, an appropriate order was made, but he had to wait a long time for the ship. …
When meeting with the first "whites" in Shanghai who came for weapons, Kolchak refuses to help, referring to his already new status and the obligations associated with it:
Then, back in Shanghai, I first met with one of the representatives of the Semyonov armed detachment. It was the Cossack centurion Zhevchenko, who traveled through Beijing, visited our envoy, then went to Shanghai and Japan with a request for weapons for the Semenov detachment. At the hotel where I was staying, he met with me and said that there had been an uprising against Soviet power in the exclusion zone, that Semyonov was at the head of the rebels, that he had formed a detachment of 2,000 people, and that they had no weapons and uniforms, - and so he was sent to Cathay and Japan to ask for the opportunity and funds to purchase weapons for the detachments.
He asked me how I felt about it. I replied that no matter how I feel about it, but at the moment I am bound by certain obligations and cannot change my decision. He said that it would be very important if I came to Semyonov to talk, since I needed to be in this business. I said:
"I fully sympathize, but I made a commitment, received an invitation from the British government and I'm going to the Mesopotamian front."
From my point of view, I considered it indifferent whether I would work with Semenov, or in Mesopotamia - I would do my duty towards the motherland.
How did Kolchak end up in Russia? What kind of wind "blowed"?
I left Shanghai by boat for Singapore. In Singapore, the commander of the troops, General Ridout, came to greet me, handed me an urgent telegram sent to Singapore from the director of the Intelligence Department of the intelligence department of the military general staff in England.
This telegram read as follows: the British government accepted my proposal, nevertheless, due to the changed situation on the Mesopotamian front (later I found out what the situation was, but earlier I could not foresee this), he considers in view of the request addressed to him by our envoy, Prince. Kudashev, useful for the common allied cause, so that I return to Russia, that I am recommended to go to the Far East to start my activities there, and it is more profitable from their point of view than my stay on the Mesopotamian front, especially since the situation there has completely changed.
Let us pay attention to one more evidence that what Kolchak sought:
« I ask you to accept me into the English army on any terms you like. happened.
I've already made more than half the way. This put me in an extremely difficult situation, primarily financial - after all, we traveled all the time and lived on our own money, not receiving a penny from the British government, so our funds were coming to an end and we could not afford such walks. I then sent another telegram with a request: is this an order or just advice that I can not fulfill. An urgent telegram was received to this with a rather vague answer: the British government insists that it is better for me to go to the Far East, and recommends that I go to Peking at the disposal of our envoy, Prince. Kudashev. Then I saw that the issue had been resolved. After waiting for the first steamer, I left for Shanghai, and from Shanghai by rail to Beijing. This was in March or April 1918.
<…>
That is, Kolchak obeyed the order, and not at the call of the soul went to Russia.
And as for material difficulties, well, really, the question is logical, only strong romantics and enthusiasts can work without a salary.
* Vasily Mikhailovich Altvater - Rear Admiral of the Russian Imperial Fleet, first commander of the RKKF of the RSFSR
About Kolchak and the Kolchakites
As part of the propaganda of the "white" movement and the distortion of history, many artistic works. One of these works is the film "Admiral".
A white officer, an admiral, a patriot, a hero... Such a handsome Khabensky Kolchak cannot be bad. Can't be wrong. Wrong, then, the Bolsheviks.- It is this chain of reasoning that the authors of this article offer us. artistic movie.
But this is not true!
The truth is that the historical Kolchak bears very little resemblance to the artistic one.
1918 In November, Kolchak, with the blessing of the British and French, declared himself dictator of Siberia. The admiral is an irritable little man, about whom one of his colleagues wrote:
"a sick child ... certainly a neurasthenic ... forever under the influence of others," he settled in Omsk and began to call himself "the supreme ruler of Russia."
The former tsarist minister Sazonov, who called Kolchak "Russian Washington", immediately became his official representative in France. He was lavished with praise in London and Paris. Sir Samuel Hoare again declared publicly that Kolchak was a "gentleman." Winston Churchill claimed that Kolchak was "honest", "incorruptible", "intelligent" and "patriot". The New York Times saw him as "a strong and honest man" backed by "a solid and more or less representative government."
Kolchak with foreign allies
The allies, and especially the British, generously supplied Kolchak with ammunition, weapons and money.
“We sent to Siberia,” proudly reported the commander of the British troops in Siberia, General Knox, “hundreds of thousands of rifles, hundreds of millions of cartridges, hundreds of thousands of sets of uniforms and machine-gun belts, etc. Each bullet fired by Russian soldiers at the Bolsheviks during this year , was made in England, by English workers, from English raw materials and delivered to Vladivostok in English holds.
In Russia at that time they sang a song:
English uniform,
French epaulette,
Japanese tobacco,
Ruler of Omsk!
The commander of the American expeditionary forces in Siberia, General Grevs, who can hardly be suspected of sympathy for the Bolsheviks, did not share the allies' enthusiasm for Admiral Kolchak. Every day his intelligence officers supplied him with new information about the reign of terror that Kolchak had established. The admiral's army had 100,000 soldiers, and new thousands of people were recruited into it under threat of execution. Prisons and concentration camps were packed to capacity. Hundreds of Russians who dared to disobey the new dictator hung from trees and telegraph poles along the Siberian railway. Many rested in mass graves, which they were ordered to dig before Kolchak's executioners destroyed them with machine-gun fire. Murders and robberies have become a daily occurrence.
One of Kolchak's assistants, a former tsarist officer named Rozanov, issued the following order:
1. Occupying villages previously occupied by bandits (Soviet partisans), demand the issuance of leaders of the movement, and where leaders cannot be found, but there is enough evidence of their presence, shoot every tenth inhabitant.
2. If, during the passage of troops through the city, the population does not inform the troops of the presence of the enemy, to collect a monetary contribution without any mercy.
3. Villages, the population of which provides armed resistance to our troops, should be burned, and all adult men should be shot; property, houses, carts, etc. confiscate for the needs of the army.
Telling General Graves about the officer who issued this order, General Knox said:
“Well done this Rozanov, by God!”
The bodies of workers and peasants shot by Kolchak
Along with the troops of Kolchak, the country was ravaged by gangs of bandits who received financial support from Japan. Their main leaders were Ataman Grigory Semyonov and Kalmykov.
Colonel Morrow, who commanded American troops in the Trans-Baikal sector, reported that in one in the village occupied by the Semyonovites, all men, women and children were villainously killed. Some were shot "like rabbits" when they tried to flee their homes. Others were burned alive.
"Soldiers Semenov and Kalmykov, says General Graves, using the patronage of the Japanese troops, they roamed the country like wild animals, robbing and killing civilians ... Anyone who asked questions about these brutal murders was told that the dead were Bolsheviks, and, apparently, such an explanation satisfied everyone.
General Grevs did not hide the disgust that the atrocities of the anti-Soviet troops in Siberia aroused in him, which earned him a hostile attitude from the White Guard, British, French and Japanese commands.
The American ambassador to Japan, Morris, during his stay in Siberia informed General Greves that he had received a telegram from the State Department about the need to support Kolchak in connection with American policy in Siberia.
"You see, General, Morris said, you will have to support Kolchak.
Grevs replied that the military department had not given him any instructions about supporting Kolchak.
“It's not in the military, it's in the State Department,” Morris said.
“The State Department doesn't know me,” Graves answered.
Kolchak's agents began harassing Grevs in order to undermine his prestige and force him to be recalled from Siberia. Rumors and fictions began to spread that Grevs had "become a Bolshevik", and that his troops were helping the "communists". This propaganda was also anti-Semitic in nature. Here is a typical example:
“American soldiers are infected with Bolshevism. For the most part, they are Jews from the New York East Side, who constantly start riots.
The English Colonel John Ward, a member of parliament who was a political adviser under Kolchak, publicly stated that when he visited the headquarters of the American Expeditionary Force, he discovered that "out of sixty liaison officers and translators, more than fifty were Russian Jews."
The same kind of rumors were spread by some of Grevs' compatriots.
"American Consul in Vladivostok, Graves recalls, day after day, without any comment, telegraphed to the State Department the slanderous, false, obscene articles about American troops that appeared in the Vladivostok newspapers. These articles, as well as the slanders of the American troops that were spreading in the United States, were based on the accusation of Bolshevism. The actions of the American soldiers did not give rise to such an accusation ... but it was repeated by Kolchak's supporters (including Consul General Harris) in relation to everyone who did not support Kolchak.
At the very height of the slanderous campaign, a messenger from General Ivanov-Rynov, who commanded the Kolchak units in Eastern Siberia, appeared at the headquarters of General Grevs. He informed Grevs that if he pledged to give Kolchak's army $20,000 a month, General Ivanov-Rynov would see to it that the agitation against Grevs and his troops ceased.
This Ivanov-Rynov, even among the generals of Kolchak, stood out as a monster and a sadist. In Eastern Siberia, his soldiers exterminated the entire male population in the villages, where, according to their suspicions, "Bolsheviks" were hiding. Women were raped and beaten with ramrods. Killed indiscriminately - the elderly, women, children.
Kolchak's victims in Novosibirsk, 1919
Excavations of the grave in which the victims of the Kolchak repressions of March 1919 were buried, Tomsk, 1920
Tomsk residents carry the bodies of the spread participants of the anti-Kolchak uprising
The funeral of the Red Guard brutally murdered by Kolchak
Novosobornaya Square on the day of the reburial of the victims of Kolchak on January 22, 1920
One young American officer sent to investigate the atrocities of Ivanov-Rynov was so shocked that, after finishing his report to Grevs, he exclaimed:
“For God's sake, General, don't send me on such orders again! Just a little more - and I would have tore off my uniform and would begin to save these unfortunate ones.
When Ivanov-Rynov faced the threat of popular indignation, the English commissioner, Sir Charles Elliot, hurried to Greves to express his concern for the fate of the Kolchak general.
– As for me, - General Grevs answered him fiercely, - let them bring this Ivanov-Rynov here and hang him on that telephone pole in front of my headquarters - not a single American will lift a finger to save him!
Ask yourself why during the Civil War the Red Army was able to defeat the well-armed and sponsored by the Western Powers White Army and troops 14 !! states that invaded Soviet Russia during the intervention?
But because the MOST of the Russian people, seeing the cruelty, baseness and venality of such “Kolchaks”, supported the Red Army.
Kolchak. He is such a douche...
Such a touching series was filmed with public money about one of the main executioners of the Russian people during the civil war of the last century, which simply brings tears to the eyes. And to the same touching, heartfelt, they tell us about this guardian of the Russian land. And trips through Baikal are held with memorial and prayer services. Well, just grace descends on the soul.
But for some reason, the inhabitants of the territories of Russia, where Kolchak and his comrades were heroic, have a different opinion. They remember how entire villages of Kolchak threw people still alive into the mines, and not only that.
By the way, why is the tsar father being honored in such a way on a par with priests and white officers? Didn't they blackmail the king from the throne? Didn't they plunge our country into bloodshed, betraying their people, their king? Didn't the priests joyfully restore the patriarchate immediately after their betrayal of the sovereign? Didn't the landowners and generals want power for themselves without the control of the emperor? Weren't they the ones who started organizing the civil war after the successful February coup organized by them? Didn't they hang the Russian peasant and shoot all over the country. It was only Wrangel, horrified by the death of the Russian people, who left the Crimea himself, all the others preferred to cut the Russian peasant until they themselves were reassured forever.
Yes, and remembering the Polovtsian princes by the names Gzak and Konchak, cited in the Tale of Igor's Campaign, the conclusion involuntarily suggests itself that Kolchak is related to them. Maybe that's why you shouldn't be surprised by the following?
By the way, it makes no sense to judge the dead, neither white nor red. But mistakes cannot be repeated. Only the living can make mistakes. Therefore, the lessons of history need to be known by heart.
In the spring of 1919, the first campaign of the Entente countries and the United States of America began against the Soviet Republic. The campaign was combined: it was carried out by the combined forces of the internal counter-revolution and the interventionists. The imperialists did not hope for their own troops - their soldiers did not want to fight against the workers and working peasants of Soviet Russia. Therefore, they relied on the unification of all the forces of the internal counter-revolution, recognizing the main arbiter of all affairs in Russia, Tsarist Admiral Kolchak A.V.
American, British and French millionaires took over the bulk of the supply of arms, ammunition, and uniforms to Kolchak. In the first half of 1919 alone, the United States sent more than 250,000 rifles and millions of cartridges to Kolchak. In total, in 1919, Kolchak received from the USA, England, France and Japan 700 thousand rifles, 3650 machine guns, 530 guns, 30 aircraft, 2 million pairs of boots, thousands of uniforms, equipment and underwear.
With the help of his foreign masters, by the spring of 1919, Kolchak managed to arm, clothe and shoe an army of almost 400,000.
Kolchak's offensive was supported from the North Caucasus and the south by Denikin's army, intending to link up with Kolchak's army in the Saratov region in order to jointly move on Moscow.
The White Poles advanced from the west along with the Petliura and White Guard troops. In the north and Turkestan, mixed detachments of Anglo-American and French interventionists and the army of the White Guard General Miller operated. From the northwest, supported by the White Finns and the English fleet, Yudenich advanced. Thus, all the forces of the counter-revolution and the interventionists went over to the offensive. Soviet Russia found itself again in the ring of advancing enemy hordes. Several fronts were created in the country. The main one was the Eastern Front. Here the fate of the country of the Soviets was decided.
On March 4, 1919, Kolchak launched an offensive against the Red Army along the entire Eastern Front for 2 thousand kilometers. He put up 145 thousand bayonets and sabers. The backbone of his army was the Siberian kulaks, the urban bourgeoisie and the prosperous Cossacks. In the rear of Kolchak there were about 150 thousand interventionist troops. They guarded the railways, helped to deal with the population.
The Entente kept Kolchak's army under its direct control. At the headquarters of the White Guards there were constantly military missions of the Entente powers. The French General Janin was appointed commander-in-chief of all interventionist troops operating in Eastern Russia and Siberia. The English General Knox was in charge of supplying Kolchak's army and forming new units for it.
The interventionists helped Kolchak develop an operational plan for the offensive and determined the main direction of the strike.
On the Perm-Glazov sector, the most powerful Siberian army of Kolchak operated under the command of General Gaida. The same army was to develop the offensive in the direction of Vyatka, Sarapul and unite with the troops of the interventionists operating in the North.
victims of Kolchak and Kolchak's thugs
victims of the atrocities of Kolchak in Siberia. 1919
peasant hanged by Kolchak
From everywhere, from the territory of Udmurtia liberated from the enemy, information was received about the atrocities and arbitrariness of the White Guards. So, for example, at the Peskovsky plant, 45 people of Soviet workers, poor peasant workers, were tortured. They were subjected to the most cruel tortures: their ears, noses, lips were cut out, their bodies were pierced in many places with bayonets (Doc. Nos. 33, 36).
Women, old people and children were subjected to violence, flogging and torture. Property, livestock, harness were taken away. The horses that the Soviet government gave to the poor to maintain their economy were taken away by the Kolchak people and given to the former owners (doc. No. 47).
A young teacher in the village of Zura, Pyotr Smirnov, was brutally cut down with a White Guard saber because he met a White Guard in good clothes (Doc. No. 56).
In the village of Syam-Mozhge, the Kolchakites dealt with a 70-year-old old woman because she sympathized with the Soviet government (doc. No. 66).
In the village of N. Multan, Malmyzhsky district, on the square in front of the people's house, the corpse of the young communist Vlasov was buried in 1918. The Kolchakites drove the working peasants to the square, forced them to dig up the corpse and publicly mocked him: they beat him on the head with a log, squeezed his chest and, finally, putting a noose around his neck, tied the tarantass to the front and dragged it along the village street for a long time (doc. No. 66 ).
In the workers' settlements and cities, in the huts of the poor peasants of Udmurtia, a terrible groan arose from the atrocities and butchery of Kolchak. For example, during the two months of the bandits' stay in Votkinsk, 800 corpses were found in Ustinov Log alone, not counting those single victims in private apartments who were taken away to no one knows where. Kolchak plundered and ruined the national economy of Udmurtia. It was reported from the Sarapulsky district that “after Kolchak, literally nothing was left anywhere ... After the Kolchak robberies in the county, the presence of horses decreased by 47 percent and cows by 85 percent ... In the Malmyzhsky county, in the Vikharev volost alone, the Kolchakists took 1,100 horses, 500 cows from the peasants , 2000 carts, 1300 sets of harness, thousands of poods of grain and dozens of households were completely plundered.
“After the capture of Yalutorovsk by the Whites (June 18, 1918), the former authorities were restored in it. A brutal persecution of all those who collaborated with the Soviets began. Arrests and executions became a mass phenomenon. The Whites killed a member of the Soviet of Demushkin, shot ten former prisoners of war (Czechs and Hungarians) who refused to serve them. According to the memoirs of Fyodor Plotnikov, a participant in the Civil War and a prisoner of the Kolchak torture chambers from April to July 1919, a table with chains and various devices for torture was installed in the basement of the prison. The tortured people were taken outside the Jewish cemetery (now the territory of the sanatorium orphanage), where they were shot. All this happened from June 1918. In May 1919, the Eastern Front of the Red Army went on the offensive. On August 7, 1919, Tyumen was liberated. Feeling the approach of the Reds, the Kolchakites perpetrated atrocious reprisals against their prisoners. On one of the August days of 1919, two large groups of prisoners were taken out of the prison. One group - 96 people - was shot in a birch forest (now the territory of a furniture factory), another, in the amount of 197 people, was hacked to death with swords across the Tobol River near Lake Gingiryai ... ".
From the certificate of the deputy director of the Yalutorovsk museum complex N.M. Shestakova:
“I consider myself obliged to say that my grandfather Yakov Alekseevich Ushakov, a veteran of the First World War, a Cavalier of St. George, was hacked to death by Kolchak drafts beyond Tobol. My grandmother was left with three young sons. My father was only 6 years old at that time ... And how many women throughout Russia did the Kolchakites make widows, and children - orphans, how many old people were left without son's care?
Therefore, the logical result (please note no torture, no bullying, just execution):
“We entered the cell to Kolchak and found him dressed - in a fur coat and a hat,” writes I.N. Bursak. It looked like he was expecting something. Chudnovsky read out to him the decision of the Revolutionary Committee. Kolchak exclaimed:
- How! Without trial?
Chudnovsky replied:
- Yes, Admiral, just like you and your henchmen shot thousands of our comrades.
Having risen to the second floor, we entered the cell to Pepelyaev. This one was also dressed. When Chudnovsky read out to him the decision of the revolutionary committee, Pepelyaev fell to his knees and, wallowing at his feet, begged not to be shot. He assured that, together with his brother, General Pepelyaev, he had long decided to rebel against Kolchak and go over to the side of the Red Army. I ordered him to get up and said: “You can’t die with dignity…
They again went down to Kolchak's cell, took him away and went to the office. The formalities are over.
By 4 o'clock in the morning we arrived at the bank of the Ushakovka River, a tributary of the Angara. Kolchak behaved calmly all the time, and Pepelyaev - this huge carcass - was in a fever.
Full moon, bright frosty night. Kolchak and Pepelyaev are standing on a hillock. Kolchak refuses my offer to blindfold. The platoon is lined up, rifles at the ready. Chudnovsky whispers to me:
- It's time.
I give the command:
- Platoon, on the enemies of the revolution - pl!
Both fall. We put the corpses on the sledge-sledge, bring them to the river and lower them into the hole. So the "supreme ruler of all Rus'" Admiral Kolchak goes on his last voyage ... ".
(“The defeat of Kolchak”, military publishing house of the Ministry of Defense of the USSR, M., 1969, pp. 279-280, circulation 50,000 copies).
In the Ekaterinburg province, one of the 12 provinces under Kolchak's control, at least 25 thousand people were shot under Kolchak, about 10% of the two million population were flogged. They flogged both men and women and children.
M. G. Aleksandrov, commissar of the Red Guard detachment in Tomsk. He was arrested by Kolchak, imprisoned in Tomsk prison. In mid-June 1919, he recalled, 11 workers were taken out of the cell at night. Nobody slept.
“The silence was broken by weak groans that came from the courtyard of the prison, prayers and curses were heard ... but after a while everything was quiet. In the morning, the criminals told us that the Cossacks who had been taken out were chopped with sabers and stabbed with bayonets in the back exercise yard, and then they loaded the carts and took them away somewhere.
Aleksandrov said that he was then sent to the Alexander Central near Irkutsk, and out of more than a thousand prisoners there, the Red Army released only 368 people in January 1920. In 1921–1923 Alexandrov worked in the county Cheka of the Tomsk region. RGASPI, f. 71, op. 15, d. 71, l. 83-102.
American General W. Graves recalled:
“The soldiers of Semenov and Kalmykov, being under the protection of Japanese troops, flooded the country like wild animals, killed and robbed the people, while the Japanese, if they wished, could stop these killings at any time. If at that time they asked what all these cruel murders were for, they usually received in response that the dead were Bolsheviks, and such an explanation, obviously, satisfied everyone. Events in Eastern Siberia were usually presented in the most gloomy colors, and human life there was not worth a penny.
Terrible murders were committed in Eastern Siberia, but they were not committed by the Bolsheviks, as was commonly thought. I won’t be mistaken if I say that in Eastern Siberia, for every person killed by the Bolsheviks, there were a hundred people killed by anti-Bolshevik elements.”
Graves doubted that it was possible to point to any country in the world during the last fifty years where murder could be carried out with such ease and with the least fear of responsibility, as in Siberia during the reign of Admiral Kolchak. Concluding his memoirs, Graves noted that the interventionists and the White Guards were doomed to defeat, since "the number of Bolsheviks in Siberia by the time of Kolchak had increased many times over in comparison with their number at the time of our arrival"
There is a board for Mannerheim in St. Petersburg, now there will be Kolchak ... Next - Hitler?
The opening of the memorial plaque to Admiral Alexander Kolchak, who led the White movement in the Civil War, will take place on September 24 ... The memorial plaque will be installed on the bay window of the building where Kolchak lived ... The text of the inscription is approved:
"In this house from 1906 to 1912 lived an outstanding Russian officer, scientist and researcher Alexander Vasilyevich Kolchak."
I will not argue about his outstanding scientific achievements. But I read in the memoirs of General Denikin that Kolchak demanded (under pressure from Mackinder) that Denikin enter into an agreement with Petlyura (giving Ukraine to him) in order to defeat the Bolsheviks. For Denikin, the homeland turned out to be more important.
Kolchak was recruited by British intelligence when he was a captain of the 1st rank and commander of a mine division in the Baltic Fleet. It happened at the turn of 1915-1916. This was already a betrayal of the Tsar and the Fatherland, to whom he swore allegiance and kissed the cross!
Have you ever thought about why the fleets of the Entente in 1918 calmly entered the Russian sector of the Baltic Sea?! After all, he was mined! In addition, in the confusion of the two revolutions of 1917, no one removed the minefields. Yes, because Kolchak's entry ticket for joining the British intelligence service was the surrender of all information about the location of minefields and barriers in the Russian sector of the Baltic Sea! After all, it was he who carried out this mining and he had all the maps of minefields and obstacles in his hands!
In emigre and foreign Sovietological literature, the regime and actions of Kolchak are clearly romanticized. S.P. Melgunov saw in the tragedy of Kolchak not only his personal drama of the collapse of hopes and broken illusions, but also the tragedy of the country, the time for the revival of which "has not yet come." He believed that Kolchak's death marked the end of the state-organized anti-Bolshevik struggle in Siberia. Many Sovietologists call Kolchak a "sufferer" for Russia. R. Pipes writes about Kolchak as follows: “... his political and social orientation was deeply liberal. Kolchak made solemn commitments to respect the will of the Russian people, expressed through free elections. He also pursued a progressive social policy and enjoyed the strong support of the peasants and workers.
Among Soviet historians and publicists, a more liberal assessment of what happened and the leaders of the White movement has recently appeared, a desire to move away from denigrating the activities of the Whites, not to believe that they all sought only the restoration of pre-revolutionary Russia. The authors saw in the white regimes an alternative to the path paved by the Bolsheviks. And in Kolchak - an unmercenary who did not have any personal wealth, the pride of the Russian fleet, a man whose one year of participation in the anti-Soviet struggle, according to Soviet historians, crossed out all his previous merits. Despite the desire of individual historians to note a certain "democratism" of the Kolchak government at certain stages of his reign, they are unanimous in assessing the identity of the punitive processes, the terror carried out by both the Reds and the Whites. In April 2002, a memorial plaque was opened in the building of the Naval Corps in St. Petersburg in honor of its graduate, Kolchak. However, in November 2001, the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation refused to rehabilitate Kolchak, because he "did not stop the terror against the civilian population carried out by his counterintelligence."
Approximately the same are the assessments in Soviet and foreign historiography of the role of General Denikin and the regime he created in the vast territory of southern Russia in 1919.
Anton Ivanovich Denikin (1872–1947) from an officer's family, graduated from the Academy of the General Staff, participant in the First World War, in 1917 - commander of the troops of the Western and Southwestern fronts, lieutenant general. From January 1919 - Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of the South of Russia. The regime he established in the North Caucasus, Don, Ukraine, part of Russia is characterized in the Soviet encyclopedia of the civil war as "the military dictatorship of the bourgeois-landlord counter-revolution." Denikin himself called the policy pursued by him the tactics of "non-predecision", which, in his opinion, was supposed to unite all anti-Bolshevik forces. Such a position, he wrote, gave "the opportunity to maintain a bad peace and go along the same path, albeit in turn, looking suspiciously at each other, fighting and melting in the heart - one republic, the other - the monarchy" .
In the 1920s, Soviet historians wrote about Denikin in a slightly different way, characterizing him as a politician who sought to find "some middle line between extreme reaction and 'liberalism', and in his views 'approached right-wing Octoberism'." Later, his regime began to be viewed more straightforwardly: Denikin's rule was an unrestricted dictatorship. The first publication of "Essays on Russian Troubles" in Denikin's homeland caused new assessments of both his work and military-political activities. L. M. Spirin, in the preface to one of the journal editions of Essays, called Denikin a nobleman with a “semi-Cadet, semi-monarchist attitude”, a man devoted to Russia. Analyzing Denikin's work, Spirin summarized that he pursued a policy that set the ultimate goal of overthrowing Bolshevik domination with the help of the army, "dictatorship in the person of the commander in chief", restoring the forces of the "state and social world", creating conditions "for the construction of land by the conciliar will of the people", " establishing order”, “defending the faith”, creating a society in which there will be “no class privileges, but “unity with the people”” .
Kolchak and Denikin were professional military men who loved the country in their own way and were ready to serve it the way they represented its present and future. Why, then, was the experience of their regimes, especially for the peasants, so difficult that they rebelled en masse, and in Siberia, where there were no landlords and the peasants were not threatened with their return? It is now known that out of about 400,000 Reds who operated behind White lines during the Civil War, 150,000 were in Siberia, and among them there were about 4-5% of those who were then called prosperous, or kulaks. In this regard, White's loss on the "internal front" was obvious. Both whites and reds at that time simultaneously built similar state formations, where the implementation of a given idea prevailed over the value of human life, despite many declarative statements by the authorities.
G.K. Gins, managing director of the Kolchak government, in 1921 in Harbin published the book Siberia, Allies and Kolchak. He testified that the admiral hated the "Kerensky" and out of hatred for her "tolerated the opposite extreme: excessive" military ", that Kolchak told him more than once that "the civil war must be merciless" ". Hins cited as evidence of the excesses of the military authorities a memorandum from the head of the Ural Territory, engineer Postnikov, who retired in April 1919. Postnikov refused to fulfill his duties and listed 13 points why he did it. The engineer wrote: “I can’t lead a hungry land, held in a hidden calm with bayonets ... The dictatorship of military power ... illegal actions, reprisals without trial, even flogging of women, death of those arrested “during the escape”, arrests on denunciations, betrayal of civil cases to military authorities, persecution by slander ... - the head of the region can only be a witness to what is happening. I don’t know of a single case of bringing to justice the military, guilty of the above, and civilians are imprisoned for one slander.” Postnikov painted a difficult picture: “There is typhus in the provinces, especially in Irbit. There are horrors in the camps of the Red Army: 178 out of 1600 died in a week ... Apparently, they are all doomed to extinction.
During interrogation, Kolchak refused everything connected with the White Terror, pleading ignorance. He heard “for the first time” that in the Omsk counterintelligence one of the communists was severely tortured, pulled on the rack, etc., demanding a confession that he was a member of the party committee; did not know that hostages were shot for the murder of any of the ranks, that villages were burned when weapons were found among the peasants. He allowed only a few cases. He was told that in one village the noses and ears of the peasants were cut off. Kolchak admitted that this is possible, "this is usually done in war and in the struggle this is done."
“Having hung several hundred people on the gates of Kustanai, shooting a little, we spread to the village ... - the commander of the dragoon squadron, the Kappel corps, headquarters captain Frolov, narrated, - the villages of Zharovka and Kargalinsk were cut into walnut, where for sympathy with Bolshevism it was necessary to shoot all the men from 18 -ti up to 55 years of age, after which let the “rooster”. After making sure that there was ashes left of Kargalinsk, we went to church ... It was Passion Thursday. On the second day of Easter, Captain Kasimov's squadron entered the rich village of Borovoye. There was a festive mood in the streets. The men hung out white flags and left with bread and salt. Having constipated several women, having shot two or three dozen men on a denunciation, Kasimov was going to leave Borovoe, but his “excessive softness” was corrected by the adjutants of the detachment chief, lieutenants Umov and Zybin. By their order, gunfire was opened in the village and part of the village was set on fire ... These two lieutenants became famous for their exceptional cruelty, and the Kustanai district will not soon forget their names.
“A year ago,” Budberg wrote in his diary on August 4, 1919, “the population saw us as deliverers from the heavy captivity of the commissars, and now they hate us just as much as they hated the commissars, if not more; and, what is even worse than hatred, it no longer trusts us, it does not expect anything good from us ... The boys think, - he continued, - that if they killed and tortured several hundred and thousands of Bolsheviks and muzzled a certain number of commissars, then they did a great deed , dealt a decisive blow to Bolshevism and brought the restoration of the old order of things closer ... The boys do not understand that if they rape, flog, rob, torture and kill indiscriminately and with restraint, then by doing so they plant such hatred for the authorities they represent that the Bolsheviks can only rejoice at the presence such diligent, valuable and beneficial employees for them. Life failed, ideals destroyed, Budberg concluded; it is impossible to live like this, such power must be overthrown, violence, bullying, humiliation must be fought.
Recently, they began to write again about Kolchak's Izhevsk division, the main contingent of which was workers. This division was one of the most combat-ready, and she was allowed to fight under the red banner and the Varshavyanka. It was them that Trotsky ordered to destroy everyone indiscriminately: after all, from the point of view of the Bolsheviks, it looked “absurd” - the workers' division was fighting against the power of the proletariat party. Instead of Soviet historians condemning the actions of the Izhevsk workers who joined the ranks of Kolchak's army, notes of sympathy for them have now appeared in the historical literature. Let's try to briefly answer one question: did this division participate in punitive actions, was it, by virtue of "its class consciousness", more loyal to the population than other Kolchakites? This can be seen in the next episode. On the night of July 1-2, 1919, partisans attacked the guard of the division near the railway bridge, wounding two soldiers. The commander of the Izhevsk division, General V. M. Molchanov (1886–1975), ordered: “When attacking the guards and damaging the railway. e. to carry out round-robin arrests of the entire male population over the age of 17. If there is a delay in the extradition of the intruders, shoot everyone without mercy as accomplices-hiders ... Immediately open fire from all guns and destroy the barracks part of the village as retribution for the attack on the night of July 2 on the guard of unknown persons hiding in the barracks. The Izhevsk residents opened fire from cannons, killing the working families of the Kusinsky factory living in the barracks. No wonder the people of Izhevsk were called varnak (convicts, robbers).
The established system of unbridled terror was one of the most characteristic signs and foundations of military dictatorships. The class origin of the performers did not matter. There are many particular examples of ruthlessness or, conversely, some kind of mercy.
"Execution" was one of the most popular words in the vocabulary of the Civil War. This word was immortalized by General Kornilov, who introduced the death penalty and military field courts at the front in the summer of 1917; many generals used it as a talisman, establishing discipline in entrusted units or robbing the population. Trotsky addressed him pathetically more than once, believing that it was impossible to create an army without repression ...
Both the Leninist Council of People's Commissars and the Kolchak government initially declared themselves temporary until the decision of the Constituent Assembly, and then quickly usurped executive and legislative functions. Both of them claimed to become all-Russian and unite their supporters. The difference in the conduct of the punitive policy consisted in the proclamation by the Bolsheviks of a "revolutionary sense of justice", and by the Kolchakists - a "legal system". But, perhaps, in recognizing arbitrariness and rejecting legal jurisprudence, the Bolsheviks were more frank and did not mask their actions. Both the Reds and the Whites used the experience of the tsarist police, the Okhrana and the gendarmerie in the formation and activities of the punitive bodies, with the only difference being that the former refused the services of former policemen and tried them, the latter recruited them into the service. Although, due to the low salary (a policeman received 425 rubles, a typist in the Kolchak department - 675 rubles), the former policemen were not eager to join the militia of the supreme ruler because of the dangerous service. In a review of the activities of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the government of V.N. Pepelyaev (October 1919), it was noted that persons with police experience “in most cases avoid serving in the police, because it is currently extremely dangerous and does not represent those material benefits that can be obtained even with the most primitive labor.
Two weeks after coming to power, on December 3, 1918, Kolchak signed a decree on the widespread introduction of the death penalty. Execution or hanging was declared for "an encroachment on the life, health, freedom or general immunity of the supreme ruler or forcibly depriving him or the council of ministers of power", for "an attempt to overthrow or change the current state system." Guilty of insulting the supreme ruler in words, in a letter or in print, was punished by imprisonment.
A few days after the November coup, a council of the supreme ruler was formed, in which the cadet A. N. Hattenberger took the post of minister of the interior. On his proposal to fellow party member V.N. Pepelyaev (1884–1920) to choose a place of service, he chose the department of police and state protection. He was characterized by "blind hatred of the Bolsheviks ... This hatred could only compete with his contempt for the masses, whom he considered possible to easily dispose of with the help of violence." At the beginning of 1919, Pepelyaev became the Minister of the Interior. Under him, special detachments began to be formed under the Ministry of Internal Affairs in each province up to 1200 people, state guards were formed to prevent and suppress state crimes. The minister liquidated all organizations of national self-government in Siberia, suggesting that those who wish to do this should be flogged.
Army commanders, commanders of individual detachments, governors often acted independently. On April 5, 1919, the commander of the Western Army, General M. V. Khanzhin (1871–1961), ordered all peasants to hand over their weapons, otherwise the guilty would be shot and their property and houses burned; On April 22, 1919, the commandant of Kustanay offered to flog the women who sheltered the Bolsheviks to death. In March 1919, the governor of the Yenisei province, Troitsky, proposed to toughen punitive practices, not to abide by laws, and to be guided by expediency. In July 1919, the head of a special department of the police department was presented with lists of Soviet workers in Simbirsk (53 people), subject to execution if the city was occupied. Simbirsk Kolchak failed to capture, and in Bugulma - out of 54 people arrested, more than half were shot. Lawlessness in relation to the population was intensified by the actions of detachments not controlled by the government, which secretly encouraged their punitive functions. During interrogation, Kolchak said that spontaneously created military detachments appropriated the functions of the police and created counterintelligence themselves. Then "arbitrary arrests and murders became commonplace." Kolchak was under the impression that such counterintelligence "was modeled on those that existed in Siberia under Soviet rule." To combat lawlessness, the Siberian authorities "according to revolutionary tradition" appointed commissars-plenipotentiaries under the commanders of the fronts. But they were powerless before such autocratic generals as R. Gaida (1892-1948), who carried out mass executions of prisoners of war. Or General S. N. Rozanov (1869-1937). The Kolchak minister Sukin wrote about him: “Carrying out his punitive tasks, Rozanov acted with terror, revealing extreme personal cruelty ... executions and executions were merciless. Along the Siberian highway, in those places where the rebels interrupted the railroad track with their attacks, he hung the corpses of executed instigators on telegraph poles for admonition. Passing trains watched this picture, to which everyone treated with philosophical indifference. Entire villages were burned to the ground."
In the middle of 1919, information agencies were created in Kolchak's armies with the task of helping to "lift the spirit" of the troops and the population, and an uncompromising attitude towards the Bolsheviks. As the military failures, Kolchak's generals became more and more cruel. On October 12, 1919, General K. V. Sakharov (1881–1941), commander of the Western Army, issued an order requiring the execution of every tenth hostage or resident, and in the event of a massive armed uprising against the army, the execution of all residents and burning the village to the ground. Kolchak's informants-propagandists presented acts of repression as measures necessary to establish "law and order." In fact, this was an excuse for the same arbitrariness and lawlessness of the authorities, the same that the Reds did. The terror regime provoked retaliatory actions by peasants who became partisans and destabilized the regime.
The memoirs of participants and eyewitnesses of the civil war in Siberia testified to the criminal terrorist activities of many Kolchak generals, especially atamans G. M. Semenov and I. M. Kalmykov. American General V. Graves recalled: “The soldiers of Semenov and Kalmykov, being under the protection of Japanese troops, flooded the country like wild animals, killed and robbed the people, while the Japanese, if they wished, could stop these killings at any time. If at that time they asked what all these cruel murders were for, they usually received in response that the dead were Bolsheviks, and such an explanation, obviously, satisfied everyone. Events in Eastern Siberia were usually presented in the most gloomy colors, and human life there was not worth a penny.
Terrible murders were committed in Eastern Siberia, but they were not committed by the Bolsheviks, as was commonly thought. I will not be mistaken if I say that in Eastern Siberia, for every person killed by the Bolsheviks, there were a hundred people killed by anti-Bolshevik elements. Graves doubted that it was possible to point to any country in the world during the last fifty years where murder could be carried out with such ease and with the least fear of responsibility, as in Siberia during the reign of Admiral Kolchak. Concluding his memoirs, Graves noted that the interventionists and the White Guards were doomed to defeat, since "the number of Bolsheviks in Siberia by the time of Kolchak had increased many times over in comparison with their number at the time of our arrival."
In the memoirs of those who survived the years of the civil war, detachments of various atamans who preferred to act on behalf of regular armies left a particularly bad memory. In the Urals, Siberia and the Far East, these were B. V. Annenkov (1890–1927), at the end of 1919 the commander of a separate Semirechensk army of Kolchak; A. I. Dutov (1879–1921), commander of the Orenburg army; G. M. Semenov (1890–1946), at the end of 1919 - commander-in-chief of all rear troops of Kolchak's army; and other, smaller chieftains, despite the general ranks bestowed on them by Kolchak: I. M. Kalmykov (? -1920), I. N. Krasilnikov (1880-?).
Investigative case No. 37751 against Ataman Boris Annenkov was started by the Chekists in May 1926. He was at that time 36 years old. He said about himself that from the nobility, he graduated from the Odessa Cadet Corps and the Moscow Alexander Military School. He did not recognize the October Revolution, the Cossack centurion at the front, decided not to comply with the Soviet decree on demobilization, and appeared in Omsk at the head of a "partisan" detachment in 1918. In Kolchak's army, he commanded a brigade, became a major general. After the defeat of the Semirechye army with 4 thousand fighters, he left for China.
The four-volume investigative file accusing Annenkov and his former chief of staff N. A. Denisov contains thousands of testimonies of plundered peasants, relatives of those who died at the hands of bandits, who acted under the motto: “We have no prohibitions! God and Ataman Annenkov are with us, cut right and left!”
The indictment told about the many facts of the atrocities of Annenkov and his gang. At the beginning of September 1918, the peasants of the Slavgorod district cleared the city from the guards of the Siberian regionals. Annenkov's "hussars" were sent to pacify. On September 11, the massacre began in the city: up to 500 people were tortured and killed that day. The hopes of the delegates of the peasant congress that “no one would dare to touch the people's deputies did not come true. Annenkov ordered all the arrested delegates of the peasant congress (87 people) to be chopped up in the square opposite the people's house and buried here in a pit. The village of Black Dol, where the headquarters of the rebels was located, was burned to the ground. Peasants, their wives and children were shot, beaten and hung on poles. Young girls from the city and nearby villages were brought to Annenkov's train, which was standing at the station of Slavgorod, raped, then taken out of the cars and shot. Blokhin, a participant in the Slavgorod peasant uprising, testified: the Annenkovites executed terribly - they pulled out their eyes, tongues, removed the stripes on their backs, buried the living in the ground, tied them to horse tails. In Semipalatinsk, the ataman threatened to shoot every fifth person if he was not paid an indemnity.
Annenkov and Denisov were tried in Semipalatinsk, where they were shot on August 12, 1927 by a court verdict.
The Orenburg Cossack ataman Dutov was a colonel, a participant in the First World War. He supported the Samara Komuch. But his repressive orders were not gentle. On August 4, 1918, he established the death penalty for the slightest resistance to the authorities and even for evading military service. On April 3, 1919, already commanding a separate Orenburg army, Dutov ordered decisively to shoot and take hostages for the slightest unreliability. Dutov received emergency powers from the Komuchevites to restore "order" in the region, even before Kolchak came to power. He immediately recognized the supreme command of the admiral and subordinated his army, his will and the execution of orders to him.
Ataman Semenov was tried in 1946. He was arrested by Smersh counterintelligence officers in Mukden on August 26, 1945, when Soviet troops entered the city. At the very first interrogation, Grigory Semenov declared that he was a Cossack, born in 1890, a captain in the tsarist army and a lieutenant general in the Kolchak army, since January 1920 - Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Eastern Siberia, that he had been an opponent of Soviet power all his adult life.
Back in the autumn of 1917, he wanted to arrest Lenin and the leadership of the Petrograd Soviet in Petrograd with the help of two cadet schools and behead the revolutionary movement. He met with M. A. Muravyov, the head of the defense of Petrograd, the commander of the troops participating in the suppression of the Kerensky-Krasnov rebellion, and suggested that a company of junkers occupy the building of the Tauride Palace, arrest all members of the Council and immediately shoot them in order to put the city garrison before a fait accompli . But Muravyov, Semyonov later wrote, "did not have enough determination to play the role of the Russian Bonaparte, for which he unconditionally prepared himself from the very beginning of the revolution."
Semyonov admitted that during the years of the Civil War he waged a merciless struggle against the Bolsheviks and all those who sympathized with them. “I sent punitive detachments to the regions of Transbaikalia to crack down on the population who supported the Bolsheviks, and destroyed the partisans,” he said. Semyonov reported on numerous cases of executions of those who were for the Soviets. During interrogation on August 13, 1945, Semenov's associate, former Major General L.F. Vlasevsky, said: “The White Cossack formations of Ataman Semenov brought many misfortunes to the population. They shot people suspected of something, burned villages, robbed residents who were seen in any actions or even disloyal attitude towards Semenov's troops. The divisions of Baron Ungern and General Tirbach, who had their own counterintelligence services, especially distinguished themselves in this. But the greatest atrocities were nevertheless committed by the punitive detachments of the military foremen Kazanov and Filshin, the centurion Chistokhin and others who were subordinate to Semenov's headquarters. In one of the letters of the former Siberian partisans, received by the court over Semenov, it was noted: “We recall the nightmarish revelry of the White Guard-Semenov and interventionist gangs, the Chita, Makoveevsky, Daur dungeons organized by them, where thousands of ours died at the hands of these executioners without trial or investigation. the best people. We also cannot forget the Tatar Pad, where they brought in whole echelons of suicide bombers from among the Red Guards and Red partisans, shot them with machine guns, and accidentally destroyed the survivors in the most brutal way. Former partisans demanded from the court the most severe sentence for Semyonov on behalf of "orphans, fathers, mothers, wives who died at the hands of these executioners."
At the trial, Semyonov found it difficult to answer the question of where, when and how many people were executed on his orders.
“Prosecutor: What specific measures did you take against the population?
Semenov: Coercive measures.
Prosecutor: Were executions used?
Semenov: They were used.
Prosecutor: Hanged?
Semyonov: They shot.
Prosecutor: Were they shot a lot?
Semyonov: I cannot now say how many were shot, since I was not always directly present at the executions.
Prosecutor: A lot or a little?
Semyonov: Yes, a lot.
Prosecutor: Did you use other forms of repression?
Semyonov: They burned the villages if the population resisted us.”
It turned out that Semyonov personally endorsed the death sentences and supervised torture in the dungeons, where up to 6.5 thousand people were tortured. Both former partisans and the Semenovites themselves spoke about the executions and torture of peasants, captured Red Army soldiers, Bolsheviks and Jews.
During interrogation on August 16, 1946, Semyonov stated that in Chita in 1920 he had captured two wagonloads of gold worth 44 million rubles. Of these, 22 million were received by the Japanese, 11 million were spent on the needs of the army, and part was captured by the Chinese.
On August 26–30, 1946, under the chairmanship of V. V. Ulrikh, Semenov and his associates were tried: A. P. Baksheev, deputy chieftain, creator of punitive squads in the villages; L. F. Vlasevsky - head of the office, head of the Semenov counterintelligence; B. N. Shepunov - punitive officer; I. A. Mikhailov - Minister of Finance in the Kolchak government; K. V. Rodzaevsky - the head of the Russian fascist union; N. A. Ukhtomsky - a journalist who praised the activities of the ataman; L.P. Okhotin - punitive officer. The court sentenced Semyonov to death by hanging; Rodzaevsky, Baksheev, Vlasevsky, Shepunov and Mikhailov - to be shot; Ukhtomsky and Okhotin - to hard labor. Then, on August 30, the sentence was carried out.
They were different people who, by the will of fate, found themselves on the same sentence list. Son of Narodnaya Volya Mikhailov. “I did not sympathize with the Soviet government,” he said during interrogation, “I consider it the spokesman for the interests of only one working class, and not all working people.” Prince Ukhtomsky, son of the chairman of the Simbirsk zemstvo council, lawyer and journalist. In exile, he listened to lectures by Bulgakov and Berdyaev, interviewed Kerensky, Prince Lvov, and others. And the head of the Russian fascist union, Rodzaevsky, who called for the establishment of a “new order” in Russia, the extermination and deportation of Jews, etc. Semenov at one time supported him and even on March 23, 1933, he sent a letter to Hitler: “I express the hope that the hour is not far off when the nationalists of Germany and Russia will stretch out their hands to each other ... I send you and your government ... my heartfelt bow and best wishes ... "Therefore, attempts to somehow rehabilitate Semenov, to expose him as a tragic figure in Russian history can be accepted only in terms of understanding the civil war itself as a national tragedy. Semenov was one of the many executioners of his people, whose punitive actions cannot be justified by any "best intentions." He was cruel in carrying out his plans and imposing by force the moral principles and ideology that seemed true to him. “We waited for Kolchak as the day of Christ, but we waited as the most predatory beast,” Perm workers wrote on November 15, 1919. Kolchak declared himself a supporter of democracy. But the prime minister of his government, P.V. Vologodsky, wrote in his diary that at that time the military ruled, who "did not take into account the government and did such things that our hairs on our heads stood on end." Indeed, the order of the Kolchak government allowed the military to pass sentences on the death penalty themselves, which activated the punishers. This multiplied extrajudicial reprisals, lynching. The investigation, the prosecutor's office and the courts were too politicized to make objective decisions.
The repressive policy pursued by the government of General Denikin was of the same type as that pursued by Kolchak and other military dictatorships. The police, on the territory subordinated to Denikin, were called state guards. Its number reached by September 1919 almost 78 thousand people. (Note that Denikin's active army then had about 110 thousand bayonets and sabers.) Denikin, like Kolchak, denied his participation in any repressive measures in every possible way in his books. “We - both I and the military leaders,” he wrote, “issued orders to combat violence, robberies, robbing prisoners, etc. But these laws and orders sometimes met with stubborn resistance from the environment, which did not accept their spirit, their crying need ". He accused counterintelligence, covering the territory of the south of the country with a dense network, of being "sometimes centers of provocation and organized robbery."
First, confirmation of what Denikin wrote about. “Having occupied Odessa, the volunteers first of all set about brutal reprisals against the Bolsheviks. Each officer considered himself entitled to arrest whomever he wanted and deal with him at his own discretion. There were many self-proclaimed intelligence agencies who were engaged in extortion, looting, bribes, etc. This is the testimony of one of her former bosses. An eyewitness, a Novorossiysk journalist, continues: what happened in the dungeons of the city's counterintelligence was reminiscent of "the darkest times of the Middle Ages." Denikin's orders were not carried out. The cruelties were such that even the front-line soldiers "blushed". “I remember that one officer from the Shkuro detachment, from the so-called“ wolf hundred ”, which was distinguished by monstrous ferocity, told me the details of the victory over the Makhno gangs, which seemed to have seized Mariupol, even choked when he called the number of executed, already unarmed opponents: four thousand! » Counterintelligence developed its activities to boundless, wild arbitrariness, witnesses of those days said.
Other Denikin authorities acted in the same spirit. Yekaterinoslav governor Shchetinin ordered to shoot the arrested peasants from machine guns. Kutepov ordered to hang on lanterns along the central street of Rostov in December 1919 prisoners in the city's prisons. Terrible legends circulated about the robberies of the Cossacks in the occupied Tsaritsyn and Tambov.
The main principle of the supporters of the white and red terror is intimidation by the method of rapid action. Don General S. V. Denisov (1878–1957) frankly expressed it: “It was difficult for the authorities ... There was no need to pardon ... Every order - if not a punishment, then a warning about it ... Persons caught collaborating with the Bolsheviks should have been without any mercy exterminate. Temporarily it was necessary to confess the rule: “It is better to punish ten innocent people than to acquit one guilty person.” Only firmness and cruelty could give the necessary and quick results. The whites found the moral justification for their cruelty in the red terror, the reds in the white. The principle of tribal blood feud absorbed common sense, was encouraged and promoted by the authorities. The first thing that Denikin's men did when they entered Kharkov was to dug up the graves of those shot by the Chekists. The corpses were put on display and became the basis for the execution and lynching of Soviet employees.
On July 30, 1919, Denikin signed a resolution of a special meeting under the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of the South of Russia on the activities of judicial-investigative commissions. On the basis of this decree, Soviet workers were sentenced to death and confiscation of property, sympathizers of the commissars - to various terms of hard labor. The attitude towards prisoners of war was cruel, with whom both sides dealt mercilessly. Later, Denikin admitted that violence and robbery were inherent in the Reds, Whites, and Greens. They “filled the cup of people’s suffering with new tears and blood, confusing in their minds all the “colors” of the military-political spectrum and more than once erasing the lines that separated the image of the savior from the enemy” . He wrote this later, after the end of the civil war, the comprehension of what he had done and his own defeat. And then, when thousands of armies were subordinate to the general, he had no doubts about the importance of a cruel punitive policy as a tool for achieving power. Although in his memoirs Denikin recognized “Russian liberalism”, “without any party dogmatism”, as his worldview, this did not prevent him from standing up for “one and indivisible Russia”, being merciless towards those in whom he saw a threat to the empire - separatists and nationalists. Hence his conflicts with representatives of independent Ukraine, Kuban autonomists, etc.
Denikin recalled that counterintelligence followed the troops. Counterintelligence departments were created not only by military units, but also by governors. Counterintelligence, according to him, were "hotbeds of provocation and organized robbery." He reported on the huge role of propaganda - the Information Agency (Osvaga), created at the end of 1918. Its main figures were the Cadets N. E. Paramonov, K. N. Sokolov and others. Osvag set the task of “continuously eradicating the evil seeds sown by Bolshevik teachings in the immature minds of the broad masses” and destroying “the citadel built by the Bolsheviks in the brains of the population.”
Oswag published newspapers and magazines, and by the fall of 1919 he had more than 10,000 full-time employees and hundreds of local branches. Propaganda department employees also kept surveillance on "everyone", up to Denikin, compiled secret dossiers on individuals and parties.
Osvag's reports are characteristic documents. Called to glorify the white army, the employees of the department had to not forget the realities. On May 8, 1919, during the period of Denikin's successes, Osvag reported that "the masses are completely indifferent to the future state-building, striving only to end the civil war and to equalize all sections of the population with regard to their rights." The report noted that the relationship between residents and military units is "tensely hostile." Soldiers take away horses, cattle, wagons, get drunk and run amok. May 10: "The success of our agitation is largely harmed by the bad behavior of military officials," who rob and brutally crack down on the population. It was supposed to notify about the investigation of illegal actions, to pay compensation to the robbed, etc. May 20: robbery leads to the fact that the peasants of the regions where the Volunteer Army was, “who are not at all sympathetic to the“ commune ”, still wait for the Bolsheviks as a lesser evil, in compared with volunteers "Cossacks"".
First of all, for propaganda purposes, on April 4, 1919, a “Special Commission to Investigate the Atrocities of the Bolsheviks” was created, which was tasked with “revealing the destructive activities of organized Bolshevism in the face of the entire cultural world.” The commission was headed by Denikin, and after his resignation - by Wrangel. The publication of the documents was intended not so much for the average Russian, but rather to create anti-Bolshevik public opinion in the Entente countries and in emigration circles.
The punitive policy of the Whites was not much different from the similar actions of the Reds. Cadet H.N. Astrov, who was most directly involved in the development of the domestic policy of the Denikin government, admitted: “Violence, flogging, robbery, drunkenness, vile behavior of local authorities, impunity for obvious criminals and traitors, miserable, mediocre people, cowards and libertines in the localities, people who brought with them to the localities the old vices, the old inability, laziness and self-confidence. Those historians are right who admit that the foundations of the future state structure of the country, its internal policy, developed, for example, by Denikin's jurists, had almost no practical significance.
Denikin's biographer D. V. Lekhovich wrote that one of the reasons for the failure of the white movement in southern Russia was that the general failed to prevent cruelty and violence. But the Reds carried out the same terror and managed to win. Perhaps the point is in the goals and consistency of the policy, and not in the methods of its implementation, which often looked identical. General V.Z. Mai-Maevsky explained to Wrangel that officers and soldiers should not be ascetics, that is, they could rob the population. To the bewilderment of the baron: what difference will there be between us and the Bolsheviks under these conditions? - the general replied: "Well, the Bolsheviks are winning."
All Denikin's armies did not escape active participation in the robberies of the population, participation in Jewish pogroms, summary executions. A vivid evidence of this is the diary of A. A. von Lampe, a participant in the Denikin epic. On July 20, 1919, he recorded that whites from the Volunteer Army raped peasant girls and robbed peasants. November 13, 1919: “... Several Bolshevik nests were liquidated, stocks of weapons were found, 150 communists were caught and liquidated by the verdict of a court-martial.” On December 15, Lampe reported on the order of the commander of the Kiev group of white troops, who publicly refused to thank "the Tertsy, who were in September in the area of Bila Tserkva - Fastov, who covered themselves with indelible shame with their pogroms, robberies, violence and showed themselves to be vile cowards ... 2) to the Volgan detachment ... who disgraced himself by violating the solemnly given word to me to stop systematic robberies and violence against civilians ... 3) the Ossetian regiment, which turned into a gang of single robbers ... ". About the same - in private letters: “Denikin's gangs are terribly atrocities against the inhabitants who remained in the rear, and especially against the workers and peasants. First, they beat them with ramrods or cut off parts of a person’s body, such as: an ear, a nose, gouge out their eyes, or cut a cross on their back or chest” (Kursk, August 14, 1919). “I never imagined that Denikin’s army was engaged in robberies. Not only soldiers were robbed, but also officers. If I could imagine how white winners behave, I would undoubtedly hide underwear and clothes, otherwise there was nothing left ”(Orel, November 17, 1919).
During the reign of Denikin, Black-Hundred-monarchist organizations with pogrom programs became widespread. Based on numerous facts about Jewish pogroms, it has been calculated that under Denikin there were at least 226 of them. Historians wrote about the anti-Semitic policy of the general, although he himself later did not admit this. Keane wrote that under Denikin, Jews were not allowed into the army and public service; Fedyuk - about anti-Semitism as a persistent element of the ideology of the Russian White Guards; N. I. Shtif named the facts of pogroms in Ukraine. “Where the foot of the Volunteer Army set foot, everywhere the peaceful Jewish population became the subject of brutal reprisals, unheard-of violence and bullying ... Jews died in thousands, victims of the Volunteer Army, gray-bearded “communists”, caught in the synagogue behind Talmud tomes, “communists” - babies in cradles along with their mothers and grandmothers. The percentage of tortured deep old men, women and children is striking in any list. Among the reasons for the anti-Semitic sentiments of the white officers, the authors name the presence of Jews among the Bolshevik leadership and betrayal of the allies in the First World War.
The Frenchman Bernal Lekash was one of the defenders of the craftsman Schwarzbard, who in 1926 killed S. Petlyura in Paris out of revenge for numerous Jewish pogroms in Ukraine in 1918–1920. In order to collect testimonies of the victims, in August - October 1926, Lekash traveled around a number of cities and towns in Ukraine and, upon his return, published a book that was published with a foreword by R. Rolland. According to Lekash, during the years of the civil war in Ukraine, 1295 Jewish pogroms were committed, and all of them (we add the pogroms in Belarus and Russia, committed by both whites and reds) resulted in 306 thousand dead.
Lekash did not explain the reasons for what happened. He cited the testimony of witnesses, photographs of the dead, funerals, documents. In Uman, bandits who succeeded each other in March, April and May 1919 robbed, raped, and killed. “The pogrom on May 13 and 15 takes on an unprecedented scale,” he wrote from the words of eyewitnesses. - Shooting continuously, in houses and on the streets. The Furers have eleven family members: first they kill the old people; women were thrown to the ground and their heads were crushed with stones, the genitals of children and men were cut off. Of the eleven people, nine were killed. The next day, 28 Jews and Jewesses are caught and taken to the commandant's office. There they are beaten and taken to the square, already covered with corpses and covered in blood. In turn, they are shot not without denying themselves the pleasure of “playing catch” with their heads. Later, during the search and dismantling of corpses, they can only be identified by their clothes. Why such cruelty, callousness? It is impossible to give a logical answer. Therefore, probably, Rolland wrote in the introduction to the book: “The most terrible thing - the only terrible thing - are thousands of unknown people who tortured, tortured unfortunate victims, brought them to the highest degree of suffering. These people… Who knows how many of them meet us, collide with us in everyday life…”
The 20th century was a time of national catastrophe for the Jews, only 6 million Jews became victims of fascism. The Holocaust (the extermination of the people, the Jews only because they are Jews) gradually matured. The past has shown that public opinion defended the individual (the French officer, the Jew Dreyfus; in Russia, M. Beilis, accused of various "Jewish sins"), but did not defend the mass extermination of people, which was the Russian-style Holocaust that occurred during the years of the Civil War.
March 27, 1920 Denikin on the destroyer "Captain Saken" left Novorossiysk. By that time, the regime he had created had suffered a military and political defeat. Shortly before his departure, he signed an order to transfer command of the essentially defeated army to General Pyotr Wrangel. Baron, General P. N. Wrangel (1878–1928), was a participant in the Russian-Japanese and world wars, commanded the armies of Denikin. He became the commander-in-chief of the armed forces of the South of Russia at a time when only the territory of Crimea remained at his disposal. The baron understood that the Crimean province alone could not defeat the other 49. But, while in the Crimea, he prepared large-scale programs to attract the population to his side: agrarian, labor, national.
In later published memoirs, Wrangel told how in January 1918 he was arrested and almost shot in Yalta by revolutionary sailors. Then he offered his services to Denikin and began to command a cavalry division. He wrote about the looting of the Cossacks Shkuro and V. L. Pokrovsky (1889–1922). And he tried to justify the cruelty of the conditions of war. Because “it was difficult, almost impossible to eradicate in the Cossacks, completely robbed and ruined by the Reds, the desire to take away the stolen goods and return everything lost ... The Reds mercilessly shot our prisoners, finished off the wounded, took hostages, raped, robbed and burned the villages. Our units, for their part, did not give the enemy mercy. They didn’t take prisoners… Having a lack of everything… the units involuntarily looked at the spoils of war as if they were their own property. Fighting it… was almost impossible.” He also wrote about what he wanted, but he could never prevent the execution of wounded and captured Red Army soldiers.
Wrangel, having become a new military dictator, decided, taking into account the failures of Denikin, to pursue "left politics with right hands." Under him, the influence of the Cadets on the development of domestic policy decreased, and the influence of former tsarist dignitaries increased. The government of the South of Russia (Prime Minister - A. V. Krivoshein) in declarations proposed to the peoples of Russia "to determine the form of government by free will"; peasants - the Land Law, according to which part of the landowners' lands (on estates over 600 acres) could become the property of the peasantry with the purchase of land at 5 times the value of the crop with an installment plan of 25 years; workers were guaranteed state protection of their interests from the owners of enterprises. The political goal was defined as follows: "The liberation of the Russian people from the yoke of the communists, vagabonds and convicts who completely ruined holy Rus'."
One of the main reasons for the collapse of Denikin's armies, Wrangel considered the lack of responsibility for the implementation of laws. Therefore, he strengthened prosecutorial supervision and created special military-judicial commissions at military units. Cases of murders, robberies, robberies, thefts, unauthorized and illegal requisitions were subject to their consideration. For criminal and state crimes, execution or imprisonment was supposed. In his memoirs, Wrangel tried to show himself as a champion of law and order. However, the reality was often different. And the task of forcibly suppressing dissidents, subjugating the authorities with the help of terror remained unchanged. As well as the harsh measures proposed by the confronting parties. On April 29, 1920, Wrangel ordered to "ruthlessly shoot all the commissars and communists taken prisoner." Trotsky, in response, proposed issuing an order "on the wholesale extermination of all persons of the Wrangel command staff, captured with weapons in their hands." Frunze, then commander of the troops of the Southern Front, found this measure inexpedient, since among the Wrangel commanders there are many defectors from among the Reds, and they easily surrender without the threat of execution.
A. A. Valentinov, an eyewitness and participant in the Crimean epic of Wrangel, published a diary in 1922. He wrote down on June 2, 1920, that because of the robberies, the population called Dobrarmia - "robbery". Entry August 24: “After dinner, I learned curious details from the biography of Prince. M. - adjutant gene. D. is famous for the fact that last year he managed to hang 168 Jews within two hours. He takes revenge for his relatives, who were all slaughtered or shot on the orders of some Jewish commissar. A vivid example for reasoning on the topic of the need for a civil war. The former chairman of the Taurida provincial zemstvo council, V. Obolensky, came to the conclusion that under Wrangel, “mass arrests were still made not only of the guilty, but also of the innocent, as before, simplified military justice carried out its massacre on the guilty and the innocent.” He said that the former police general E. K. Klimovich, invited by Krivosheev, was full of malice, hatred and personal vindictiveness, and for Obolensky there was no doubt that “everything will remain the same” in police work in Crimea. In his story, indignation at the cruelties of that time. “One morning,” he recalled, “children going to schools and gymnasiums saw the terrible dead hanging on the lanterns of Simferopol with their tongues hanging out ... This Simferopol had not yet seen during the entire time of the civil war. Even the Bolsheviks did their bloody deeds without such evidence. It turned out that it was General Kutepov who ordered this method to terrorize the Simferopol Bolsheviks. Obolensky emphasized that Wrangel always took the side of the military in carrying out a punitive policy. He was echoed by the journalist G. Rakovsky, close to Wrangel: “Prisons in the Crimea, as before, and now, were overcrowded by two-thirds of those accused of political crimes. In large part, these were servicemen arrested for careless expressions and a critical attitude towards the high command. For months, in horrendous conditions, without interrogation and often without charge, the political languished in prisons, awaiting a decision on their fate... me Wrangel ... If you read only the orders of Wrangel, then you can really think that justice and truth reigned in the Crimean courts. But it was only on paper... The main role in the Crimea... was played by courts-martial... People were shot and shot... Even more of them were shot without trial. General Kutepov directly said that “there is nothing to start a judicial rigmarole, shoot and ... that’s all” .
General Ya. A. Slashchov (1885–1929), one of the leaders of the Volunteer Army, became famous for his particular cruelty during the military dictatorship of Wrangel. From December 1919 he commanded an army corps defending the Crimea. I set my mode there. “One can, of course, imagine what a heavy atmosphere of lack of rights and tyranny was shrouded in Crimea at that time. Slashchov reveled in his power ... in the literal sense of the word, mocked the unfortunate and downtrodden population of the peninsula. There were no guarantees of personal integrity. Slashchov's jurisdiction ... was reduced to executions. Grief was the one to whom the Slashchov counterintelligence drew attention, ”wrote Rakovsky.
After the defeat, Slashchov fled to Turkey. There, on the orders of Wrangel, a commission was created to investigate the case of Slashchov-Krymsky. He was tried for helping the Bolsheviks with his policy of terror. The highest ranks of the White Army, included in the commission, decided to demote Slashchov to the rank and file and dismiss him from the army. In 1921 Slashchov returned to Russia. This was facilitated by the representative of the Cheka, Ya. P. Tenenbaum, who persuaded the general to return. The decision to return to Russia a group of Wrangel officers was discussed at a meeting of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the RCP (b) in early October 1921. Lenin abstained from voting. Trotsky communicated his opinion to Lenin in a note: “The Commander-in-Chief considers Slashchov a nonentity. I'm not sure if this review is correct. But it is indisputable that with us Slashchov will only be "restless uselessness" .
Upon his return, Slashchov wrote a memoir in which he stated: "I look at the death penalty as a frightening of the living, so as not to interfere with work." He accused counterintelligence of lawlessness, robberies and murders, but he said about himself that he had never confirmed a single secret death sentence with his signature. May be. But he signed orders for executions all the time. D. Furmanov, who helped Slashchov write his memoirs and edited them, noted in the preface how, according to the orders of the general, 18 people were shot in Voznesensk, and 61 in Nikolaev. In Sevastopol, on March 22, 1920, the case of the "ten" "about the alleged uprising" was heard in court. The military field court acquitted five. Upon learning of this, Slashchov rushed to the city, took the acquitted with him at night and shot them in Dzhankoy. Responding to a request about this, he said: “Ten scoundrels were shot by the verdict of a court-martial ... I have just returned from the front and I think that it is only because we have only Crimea left in Russia that I shoot the scoundrels in question a little” . Furmanov believed that Slashchov the executioner was the living embodiment of the old army, "the sharpest, most genuine."
Returning to Moscow, Slashchov publicly repented, was amnestied and began working at the Higher Tactical Shooting School of the Red Army. He asked the GPU authorities to ensure security for himself and his family. In response, F. E. Dzerzhinsky wrote: “We cannot give currencies or valuables to provide for his family. Also, we cannot issue him a letter of inviolability of the person. General Slashchov is well known to the population for his atrocities. And we don’t need to keep him under guard.” On January 11, 1929, Slashchov was killed in his Moscow apartment by a student of the “Shot” course L. L. Kolenberg, saying that he committed the murder in revenge for his brother, who was executed on the orders of Slashchov in the Crimea, and Jewish pogroms.
In the former party archive of the Crimean OK CPSU, many documents are stored - evidence of the atrocities and terror of the White Guards. Here are some of them: on the night of March 17, 1919, 25 political prisoners were shot in Simferopol; On April 2, 1919, in Sevastopol, counterintelligence killed 10–15 people daily; in April 1920 there were about 500 prisoners in the Simferopol prison alone, and so on.
It is unlikely that the punitive actions of Kolchak, Denikin and Wrangel differed from similar actions of generals Yudenich near Petrograd or Miller in the north of the country. There are many similarities in every terror. As I. A. Bunin wrote in a diary entry on April 17, 1919: “Revolutions are not made with white gloves ... Why be indignant that counter-revolutions are made with iron gloves”, and especially cursed the punitive policy of the Bolsheviks. The similarity was primarily in the fact that all military dictators were military generals. H. N. Yudenich (1862–1933) - General of Infantry, participant in the Russian-Japanese and World Wars, in 1917 - Commander-in-Chief of the Caucasian Front. On June 10, 1919, he was appointed by Kolchak as the commander-in-chief of the white troops in the north-west of Russia, in 1920 he emigrated. E. K. Miller (1867–1937) - lieutenant general, participant in the war with Germany, in May 1919 Kolchak appointed commander-in-chief of the white troops of the Northern Region, since February 1920 - an emigrant.
There were governments under dictator generals. In October 1919, the Minister of Justice of the Yudenich government, Lieutenant Colonel E. Kedrin, drew up a report on the establishment of the State Commission for Combating Bolshevism. He considered it necessary to investigate not individual "crimes", but "cover the destructive activities of the Bolsheviks as a whole." According to the minister, everyone should be punished, since "experience has shown that leaving the most insignificant participants in a crime without reprisals leads to the need to eventually deal with them as the main culprits of another homogeneous crime." The report proposed to study Bolshevism as a "social disease", and then develop practical measures "for a real fight against Bolshevism, not only within Russia, but throughout the entire world." This report remained a cabinet idea, indicating that the Yudenich government considered the Bolsheviks to be its main opponent. Realities were more severe and cruel.
In May 1919, detachments of General S.N. Bulak-Balakhovich (1883–1940) appeared in Pskov, and right there in the city people began to be hanged nationwide, and not only Bolsheviks. V. Gorn, an eyewitness, wrote: “People were hanged all the time when the “whites” were in control of the Pskov region. For a long time, this procedure was ordered by Balakhovich himself, reaching in mockery of the doomed victim almost to sadism. He forced the executioner to make a noose for himself and hang himself, and when a person began to suffer greatly in the noose and dangle his legs, he ordered the soldiers to pull him down by his legs. Gorn reported that such terrible customs were in Yamburg and other places where Yudenich's troops were stationed. He admitted that in the field of domestic policy the northwestern government was "completely powerless", that it was not possible to punish a single executioner officer. N. N. Ivanov saw one of the reasons for the defeat of Yudenich in the robbery of the population.
General Miller was no less cruel. It was he who signed on June 26, 1919, the order on Bolshevik hostages who were shot for an attempt on the life of an officer, knowing that there were not so many Bolsheviks among the several hundred arrested. It was he who introduced overtime work at enterprises, severely punishing "sabotage". By order of the general, from August 30, 1919, not only Bolshevik propagandists, but also members of their families were arrested, property and land plots were confiscated. By order of Miller, a hard labor prison for political criminals was created in Johanga, unsuitable for human habitation. Soon, out of 1,200 prisoners, 23 were shot for disobedience, 310 died of scurvy and typhus, eight months later there were no more than a hundred healthy prisoners left. A member of the government under Miller, B. F. Sokolov, later in his memoirs came to the disappointing conclusion that military dictatorships led by generals, and not by strategically minded politicians, could not win the civil war in Russia. “The example of the Bolsheviks,” he wrote, “showed that a Russian general is good when his role is limited to execution. They can only be, but no more than, the right hand of a dictator - the last one can be by no means only a Russian general.
All white dictator-generals had an anti-Bolshevik program, they all spoke under the same motto: "With the Russian people, but against the Bolshevik regime." And they were defeated by a stronger dictatorship, which managed to achieve more in the organization of the army, and in an equally merciless attitude towards the population, and in the political perspective of intoxicating the masses, which more clearly defined the mentality rejection by society of obsolete social relations. Politicians took advantage of this desire for something new more effectively than the generals. The Soviet and all anti-Bolshevik governments during the years of the Civil War were characterized by a tendency to administer, to resolve complex issues by force, everywhere the level of legal protection of citizens was very low. The leaders of the white movement, more than the representatives of the reds at that time, spoke about the creation of a state of law, but these statements, as a rule, remained declarative. The law enforcement practice of white governments was unsuccessful. At first, the arrival of whites aroused sympathy among the population, but soon the attitude towards them became hostile and hostile. This was primarily the result of the punitive policies of the white governments and the military.
The film "Admiral" went with us with a bang! The name of Admiral Kolchak in the media sounded loud and noisy. He is a handsome man, he is a talent, and an innovator, and a war hero, and an enviable lover ... Yes, there was a polar explorer admiral, there was an admiral - an innovator in the mine business, but there was also a failed commander of the Black Sea Fleet, an admiral - a punisher in the expanses of Siberia, a shameful hireling The Entente and the puppet in their hands. But the creators of the books, the film and the multi-part television movie are silent about this, as if they don’t know. Why did Kolchak turn from an enemy of the Bolsheviks into almost a hero of Russia?
In the spring of 1917, Vice-Admiral Alexander Kolchak, commander of the Black Sea Fleet, threw off his tsarist-era shoulder straps and put on a new uniform that had just been established by the Russian Provisional Government. But this did not save him from the decision of the Sevastopol Soviet of Deputies to remove him from office. On June 6 of the same year, he was out of work, in July he left for America, from there to Japan.
Kolchak in the service of Britain
There he decided on the issue of admission to the service in the British Navy and in early January 1918 he went to the Mesopotamian front. But already from Singapore he was returned by the Intelligence Department of the British General Staff, he was sent to the exclusion zone of the Chinese Eastern Railway. The administration of the road was located there, the failed government of autonomous Siberia, the Cossacks of atamans Semyonov and Kalmykov, numerous White Guard officer detachments, who did not obey anyone and did not recognize anyone, fled there.
Kolchak was introduced to the board of the CER, appointed head of the security guards, and his task was to unite the disparate military formations and rush into Russia "occupied" by the Bolsheviks. As before, he sewed on the shoulder straps of the admiral, but he walked in boots, riding breeches and an army-cut jacket.
Nothing worked for Alexander Vasilievich, he did not complete the task. In early July 1918, with his beloved Anna Timiryova, he left for Japan, allegedly for negotiations with the Chief of the Japanese General Staff on joint actions. Kolchak lived in a small town, "corrected his health" in a resort town. But not for long.
Kolchak's life in Siberia
He was found by the English General A. Knox, who headed the Russian Department of the British War Office. Their meeting ended with Kolchak agreeing, with the help of England, to "recreate the Russian army in Siberia." The general happily reported to London: "... there is no doubt that Kolchak is the best Russian for the implementation of our goals in the Far East." Pay attention, reader, not to the goals of the Russian state, not to its people, but to their goals, English ones! Entente!
In mid-September, Kolchak, accompanied by General A. Knox and the French ambassador Regno, arrived in Vladivostok. By that time, Soviet power from the Volga to the Pacific Ocean had been overthrown by the Czechoslovak corps and local White Guard formations.
On October 14, Alexander Kolchak arrived in Omsk, he was immediately introduced into the government of P.V. Vologodsky as a military and naval minister.
On November 8, accompanied by an English battalion under the command of Colonel J. Ward, he went to the front, visited Yekaterinburg, near Ufa. On November 17, Kolchak returned to Omsk, and on the night of November 18, the military overthrew the power of the Directory, while, as the Socialist-Revolutionary D. Rakov wrote in his Parisian memoirs, a terrible orgy broke out on the banks of the Irtysh - the deputies were beaten with rifle butts, stabbed with bayonets, chopped with checkers.
Kolchak supreme ruler of Russia
Alexander Kolchak was proclaimed the Supreme Ruler of Russia and the Supreme Commander-in-Chief, on the same day he was awarded the rank of Admiral. For a year and a half, this is the fourth time he changed his uniform!
Having overthrown the Soviet power, the white army unleashed unprecedented terror and mockery of the population. The people did not know the courts.
White dictatorship and obscurantism
The White Guards executed hundreds of people in Barnaul, they shot 50 people in the village of Karabinka in the Biysk district, 24 peasants in the village of Shadrino, 13 front-line soldiers in the village of Kornilovo ... , which could turn the victim's body into a piece of broken meat in a few blows.
Lieutenant Goldovich and Ataman Bessmertny, who were operating in Kamensky Uyezd, forced their victims to kneel before being shot to sing their own funeral, and girls and women were raped. The obstinate and recalcitrant were buried alive in the ground. Lieutenant Noskovsky was known for being able to kill several people with one shot.
Drunken “their nobles” took the leaders of the first Soviet government M.K. Tsaplin, I.V. Prisyagin, M.K. Their bodies were never found, most likely they were chopped up with checkers and thrown from the railway bridge to the Ob. 
The brutal and senseless reprisals against people increased manifold with the coming to power of Kolchak, with the establishment of a military dictatorship by him. Only for the first half of 1919:
- more than 25 thousand people were shot in the Yekaterinburg province,
- in the Yenisei province, on the orders of General S.N. Rozanov, about 10 thousand people were shot,
- 14 thousand people were flogged with whips, 12 thousand peasant farms were burned and plundered.
- in two days - July 31 and August 1, 1919 - over 300 people were shot in the city of Kamen, even earlier - 48 people in the arrest house of the same city.
They created the police, but to establish order over what?
At the beginning of 1919, the government of Admiral Kolchak decided to create special police units in the provinces and regions of Siberia. The companies of the Altai detachment, together with the companies of the Blue Lancers regiment and the 3rd Barnaul regiment, scoured the entire province with punitive functions. They spared neither women nor the elderly, they knew neither pity nor compassion.
Kolchak. He is such a doucheKolchak's victims in Novosibirsk, 1919
Excavations of the grave in which the victims of the Kolchak repressions of March 1919 were buried, Tomsk, 1920
Tomsk residents carry the bodies of the spread participants of the anti-Kolchak uprising
The funeral of the Red Guard brutally murdered by Kolchak
Novosobornaya Square on the day of the reburial of the victims of Kolchak on January 22, 1920
One young American officer sent to investigate the atrocities of Ivanov-Rynov was so shocked that, after finishing his report to Grevs, he exclaimed:
“For God's sake, General, don't send me on such orders again! Just a little more - and I would have tore off my uniform and would begin to save these unfortunate ones.
When Ivanov-Rynov faced the threat of popular indignation, the English commissioner, Sir Charles Elliot, hurried to Greves to express his concern for the fate of the Kolchak general.
For me, - General Grevs answered him fiercely, - let them bring this Ivanov-Rynov here and hang him on that telephone pole in front of my headquarters - not a single American will lift a finger to save him!
Ask yourself why during the Civil War the Red Army was able to defeat the well-armed and sponsored by the Western Powers White Army and troops 14 !! states that invaded Soviet Russia during the intervention?
But because the MOST of the Russian people, seeing the cruelty, baseness and venality of such “Kolchaks”, supported the Red Army.
victims of Kolchak and Kolchak's thugs
Such a touching series was filmed with public money about one of the main executioners of the Russian people during the civil war of the last century, which simply brings tears to the eyes. And to the same touching, heartfelt, they tell us about this guardian of the Russian land. And trips through Baikal are held with memorial and prayer services. Well, just grace descends on the soul.
But for some reason, the inhabitants of the territories of Russia, where Kolchak and his comrades were heroic, have a different opinion. They remember how entire villages of Kolchak threw people still alive into the mines, and not only that.
By the way, why is the tsar father being honored in such a way on a par with priests and white officers? Didn't they blackmail the king from the throne? Didn't they plunge our country into bloodshed, betraying their people, their king? Didn't the priests joyfully restore the patriarchate immediately after their betrayal of the sovereign? Didn't the landowners and generals want power for themselves without the control of the emperor? Weren't they the ones who started organizing the civil war after the successful February coup organized by them? Didn't they hang the Russian peasant and shoot all over the country. It was only Wrangel, horrified by the death of the Russian people, who left the Crimea himself, all the others preferred to cut the Russian peasant until they themselves were reassured forever.
Yes, and remembering the Polovtsian princes by the names Gzak and Konchak, cited in the Tale of Igor's Campaign, the conclusion involuntarily suggests itself that Kolchak is related to them. Maybe that's why you shouldn't be surprised by the following?
By the way, it makes no sense to judge the dead, neither white nor red. But mistakes cannot be repeated. Only the living can make mistakes. Therefore, the lessons of history need to be known by heart.
In the spring of 1919, the first campaign of the Entente countries and the United States of America began against the Soviet Republic. The campaign was combined: it was carried out by the combined forces of the internal counter-revolution and the interventionists. The imperialists did not hope for their own troops - their soldiers did not want to fight against the workers and working peasants of Soviet Russia. Therefore, they relied on the unification of all the forces of the internal counter-revolution, recognizing the main arbiter of all affairs in Russia, Tsarist Admiral Kolchak A.V.
American, British and French millionaires took over the bulk of the supply of arms, ammunition, and uniforms to Kolchak. In the first half of 1919 alone, the United States sent more than 250,000 rifles and millions of cartridges to Kolchak. In total, in 1919, Kolchak received from the USA, England, France and Japan 700 thousand rifles, 3650 machine guns, 530 guns, 30 aircraft, 2 million pairs of boots, thousands of uniforms, equipment and underwear.
With the help of his foreign masters, by the spring of 1919, Kolchak managed to arm, clothe and shoe an army of almost 400,000.
Kolchak's offensive was supported from the North Caucasus and the south by Denikin's army, intending to link up with Kolchak's army in the Saratov region in order to jointly move on Moscow.
The White Poles advanced from the west along with the Petliura and White Guard troops. In the north and Turkestan, mixed detachments of Anglo-American and French interventionists and the army of the White Guard General Miller operated. From the northwest, supported by the White Finns and the English fleet, Yudenich advanced. Thus, all the forces of the counter-revolution and the interventionists went over to the offensive. Soviet Russia found itself again in the ring of advancing enemy hordes. Several fronts were created in the country. The main one was the Eastern Front. Here the fate of the country of the Soviets was decided.
On March 4, 1919, Kolchak launched an offensive against the Red Army along the entire Eastern Front for 2 thousand kilometers. He put up 145 thousand bayonets and sabers. The backbone of his army was the Siberian kulaks, the urban bourgeoisie and the prosperous Cossacks. In the rear of Kolchak there were about 150 thousand interventionist troops. They guarded the railways, helped to deal with the population.
The Entente kept Kolchak's army under its direct control. At the headquarters of the White Guards there were constantly military missions of the Entente powers. The French General Janin was appointed commander-in-chief of all interventionist troops operating in Eastern Russia and Siberia. The English General Knox was in charge of supplying Kolchak's army and forming new units for it.
The interventionists helped Kolchak develop an operational plan for the offensive and determined the main direction of the strike.
On the Perm-Glazov sector, the most powerful Siberian army of Kolchak operated under the command of General Gaida. The same army was to develop the offensive in the direction of Vyatka, Sarapul and unite with the troops of the interventionists operating in the North.
victims of the atrocities of Kolchak in Siberia. 1919
peasant hanged by Kolchak
From everywhere, from the territory of Udmurtia liberated from the enemy, information was received about the atrocities and arbitrariness of the White Guards. So, for example, at the Peskovsky plant, 45 people of Soviet workers, poor peasant workers, were tortured. They were subjected to the most cruel tortures: their ears, noses, lips were cut out, their bodies were pierced in many places with bayonets (Doc. Nos. 33, 36).
Women, old people and children were subjected to violence, flogging and torture. Property, livestock, harness were taken away. The horses that the Soviet government gave to the poor to maintain their economy were taken away by the Kolchak people and given to the former owners (doc. No. 47).
A young teacher in the village of Zura, Pyotr Smirnov, was brutally cut down with a White Guard saber because he met a White Guard in good clothes (Doc. No. 56).
In the village of Syam-Mozhge, the Kolchakites dealt with a 70-year-old old woman because she sympathized with the Soviet government (doc. No. 66).
In the village of N. Multan, Malmyzhsky district, on the square in front of the people's house, the corpse of the young communist Vlasov was buried in 1918. The Kolchakites drove the working peasants to the square, forced them to dig up the corpse and publicly mocked him: they beat him on the head with a log, squeezed his chest and, finally, putting a noose around his neck, tied the tarantass to the front and dragged it along the village street for a long time (doc. No. 66 ).
In the workers' settlements and cities, in the huts of the poor peasants of Udmurtia, a terrible groan arose from the atrocities and butchery of Kolchak. For example, during the two months of the bandits' stay in Votkinsk, 800 corpses were found in Ustinov Log alone, not counting those single victims in private apartments who were taken away to no one knows where. Kolchak plundered and ruined the national economy of Udmurtia. It was reported from the Sarapulsky district that “after Kolchak, literally nothing was left anywhere ... After the Kolchak robberies in the county, the presence of horses decreased by 47 percent and cows by 85 percent ... In the Malmyzhsky county, in the Vikharev volost alone, the Kolchakists took 1,100 horses, 500 cows from the peasants , 2000 carts, 1300 sets of harness, thousands of poods of grain and dozens of households were completely plundered.
“After the capture of Yalutorovsk by the Whites (June 18, 1918), the former authorities were restored in it. A brutal persecution of all those who collaborated with the Soviets began. Arrests and executions became a mass phenomenon. The Whites killed a member of the Soviet of Demushkin, shot ten former prisoners of war (Czechs and Hungarians) who refused to serve them. According to the memoirs of Fyodor Plotnikov, a participant in the Civil War and a prisoner of the Kolchak torture chambers from April to July 1919, a table with chains and various devices for torture was installed in the basement of the prison. The tortured people were taken outside the Jewish cemetery (now the territory of the sanatorium orphanage), where they were shot. All this happened from June 1918. In May 1919, the Eastern Front of the Red Army went on the offensive. On August 7, 1919, Tyumen was liberated. Feeling the approach of the Reds, the Kolchakites perpetrated atrocious reprisals against their prisoners. On one of the August days of 1919, two large groups of prisoners were taken out of the prison. One group - 96 people - was shot in a birch forest (now the territory of a furniture factory), another, in the amount of 197 people, was hacked to death with swords across the Tobol River near Lake Gingiryai ... ".
From the certificate of the deputy director of the Yalutorovsk museum complex N.M. Shestakova:
“I consider myself obliged to say that my grandfather Yakov Alekseevich Ushakov, a veteran of the First World War, a Cavalier of St. George, was hacked to death by Kolchak drafts beyond Tobol. My grandmother was left with three young sons. My father was only 6 years old at that time ... And how many women throughout Russia did the Kolchakites make widows, and children - orphans, how many old people were left without son's care?
Therefore, the logical result (please note no torture, no bullying, just execution):
“We entered the cell to Kolchak and found him dressed - in a fur coat and a hat,” writes I.N. Bursak. It looked like he was expecting something. Chudnovsky read out to him the decision of the Revolutionary Committee. Kolchak exclaimed:
- How! Without trial?
Chudnovsky replied:
- Yes, Admiral, just like you and your henchmen shot thousands of our comrades.
Having risen to the second floor, we entered the cell to Pepelyaev. This one was also dressed. When Chudnovsky read out to him the decision of the revolutionary committee, Pepelyaev fell to his knees and, wallowing at his feet, begged not to be shot. He assured that, together with his brother, General Pepelyaev, he had long decided to rebel against Kolchak and go over to the side of the Red Army. I ordered him to get up and said: “You can’t die with dignity…
They again went down to Kolchak's cell, took him away and went to the office. The formalities are over.
By 4 o'clock in the morning we arrived at the bank of the Ushakovka River, a tributary of the Angara. Kolchak behaved calmly all the time, and Pepelyaev - this huge carcass - was in a fever.
Full moon, bright frosty night. Kolchak and Pepelyaev are standing on a hillock. Kolchak refuses my offer to blindfold. The platoon is lined up, rifles at the ready. Chudnovsky whispers to me:
- It's time.
I give the command:
- Platoon, on the enemies of the revolution - pl!
Both fall. We put the corpses on the sledge-sledge, bring them to the river and lower them into the hole. So the "supreme ruler of all Rus'" Admiral Kolchak goes on his last voyage ... ".
(“The defeat of Kolchak”, military publishing house of the Ministry of Defense of the USSR, M., 1969, pp. 279-280, circulation 50,000 copies).
In the Ekaterinburg province, one of the 12 provinces under Kolchak's control, at least 25 thousand people were shot under Kolchak, about 10% of the two million population were flogged. They flogged both men and women and children.
M. G. Aleksandrov, commissar of the Red Guard detachment in Tomsk. He was arrested by Kolchak, imprisoned in Tomsk prison. In mid-June 1919, he recalled, 11 workers were taken out of the cell at night. Nobody slept.
“The silence was broken by weak groans that came from the courtyard of the prison, prayers and curses were heard ... but after a while everything was quiet. In the morning, the criminals told us that the Cossacks who had been taken out were chopped with sabers and stabbed with bayonets in the back exercise yard, and then they loaded the carts and took them away somewhere.
Aleksandrov said that he was then sent to the Alexander Central near Irkutsk, and out of more than a thousand prisoners there, the Red Army released only 368 people in January 1920. In 1921-1923. Alexandrov worked in the county Cheka of the Tomsk region. RGASPI, f. 71, op. 15, d. 71, l. 83-102.
American General W. Graves recalled:
“The soldiers of Semenov and Kalmykov, being under the protection of Japanese troops, flooded the country like wild animals, killed and robbed the people, while the Japanese, if they wished, could stop these killings at any time. If at that time they asked what all these cruel murders were for, they usually received in response that the dead were Bolsheviks, and such an explanation, obviously, satisfied everyone. Events in Eastern Siberia were usually presented in the most gloomy colors, and human life there was not worth a penny.
Terrible murders were committed in Eastern Siberia, but they were not committed by the Bolsheviks, as was commonly thought. I won’t be mistaken if I say that in Eastern Siberia, for every person killed by the Bolsheviks, there were a hundred people killed by anti-Bolshevik elements.”
Graves doubted that it was possible to point to any country in the world during the last fifty years where murder could be carried out with such ease and with the least fear of responsibility, as in Siberia during the reign of Admiral Kolchak. Concluding his memoirs, Graves noted that the interventionists and the White Guards were doomed to defeat, since "the number of Bolsheviks in Siberia by the time of Kolchak had increased many times over in comparison with their number at the time of our arrival"
There is a board for Mannerheim in St. Petersburg, now there will be Kolchak ... Next - Hitler?
The opening of the memorial plaque to Admiral Alexander Kolchak, who led the White movement in the Civil War, will take place on September 24 ... The memorial plaque will be installed on the bay window of the building where Kolchak lived ... The text of the inscription is approved:
"In this house from 1906 to 1912 lived an outstanding Russian officer, scientist and researcher Alexander Vasilyevich Kolchak."
I will not argue about his outstanding scientific achievements. But I read in the memoirs of General Denikin that Kolchak demanded (under pressure from Mackinder) that Denikin enter into an agreement with Petlyura (giving Ukraine to him) in order to defeat the Bolsheviks. For Denikin, the homeland turned out to be more important.
Kolchak was recruited by British intelligence when he was a captain of the 1st rank and commander of a mine division in the Baltic Fleet. It happened at the turn of 1915-1916. This was already a betrayal of the Tsar and the Fatherland, to whom he swore allegiance and kissed the cross!
Have you ever thought about why the fleets of the Entente in 1918 calmly entered the Russian sector of the Baltic Sea?! After all, he was mined! In addition, in the confusion of the two revolutions of 1917, no one removed the minefields. Yes, because Kolchak's entry ticket for joining the British intelligence service was the surrender of all information about the location of minefields and barriers in the Russian sector of the Baltic Sea! After all, it was he who carried out this mining and he had all the maps of minefields and obstacles in his hands!