Centers for the formation of white forces in the civil war. White movement (white cause)
Alexander Vasilyevich Kolchak (November 4 (16), 1874, St. Petersburg province - February 7, 1920, Irkutsk) - Russian politician, vice admiral of the Russian Imperial Fleet (1916) and admiral of the Siberian Flotilla (1918). Polar explorer and oceanographer, participant in expeditions of 1900-1903 (awarded by the Imperial Russian Geographical Society with the Great Constantine Medal). Participant in the Russian-Japanese, World War I and Civil Wars. Leader and leader of the White movement in the East of Russia. The Supreme Ruler of Russia (1918-1920), was recognized in this position by the leadership of all white regions, “de jure” - by the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, “de facto” - by the Entente states.
After the February Revolution of 1917, Kolchak was the first in the Black Sea Fleet to swear allegiance to the Provisional Government. In the spring of 1917, Headquarters began preparing an amphibious operation to capture Constantinople, but due to the disintegration of the army and navy, this idea had to be abandoned. He received gratitude from the Minister of War Guchkov for his quick and reasonable actions, with which he contributed to maintaining order in the Black Sea Fleet.
However, due to the defeatist propaganda and agitation that penetrated the army and navy after February 1917 under the guise and cover of freedom of speech, both the army and navy began to move towards their collapse. On April 25, 1917, Alexander Vasilyevich spoke at a meeting of officers with a report “The situation of our armed forces and relations with the allies.” Among other things, Kolchak noted: “We are facing the collapse and destruction of our armed force, [for] the old forms of discipline have collapsed, and new ones have not been created.”
Kolchak demanded that home-grown reforms based on “conceit of ignorance” be stopped and that the forms of discipline and organization of internal life already accepted by the Allies be adopted. On April 29, 1917, with the sanction of Kolchak, a delegation of about 300 sailors and Sevastopol workers left Sevastopol with the goal of influencing the Baltic Fleet and the armies of the front, “to wage the war actively with full effort.”
In June 1917, the Sevastopol Council decided to disarm officers suspected of counter-revolution, including taking away Kolchak’s St. George’s weapon - the golden saber awarded to him for Port Arthur. The admiral chose to throw the blade overboard with the words: “The newspapers don’t want us to have weapons, so let him go to sea.” On the same day, Alexander Vasilyevich handed over the affairs to Rear Admiral V.K. Lukin. Three weeks later, the divers lifted the saber from the bottom and handed it to Kolchak, engraving on the blade the inscription: “To the Knight of Honor Admiral Kolchak from the Union of Army and Navy Officers.” At this time, Kolchak, along with the General Staff, Infantry General L.G. Kornilov, was considered as a potential candidate for military dictator.
It is for this reason that in August A.F. Kerensky summoned the admiral to Petrograd, where he forced him to resign, after which, at the invitation of the command of the American fleet, he went to the United States to advise American specialists on the experience of Russian sailors using mine weapons in the Baltic and Black Seas in the First World War. According to Kolchak, there was another, secret, reason for his trip to the USA: “... Admiral Glenon told me in top secret that in America there was a proposal to take active action by the American fleet in the Mediterranean Sea against the Turks and the Dardanelles. Knowing that I was engaged in similar operations, adm. Glenon told me that it would be desirable for me to give all the information on the question of landing operations in the Bosphorus. Regarding this landing operation, he asked me not to tell anyone anything and not even to inform the government about it, since he would ask the government to send me to America, officially to report information on mine affairs and the fight against submarines.”
In San Francisco, Kolchak was offered to stay in the United States, promising him a chair in mine engineering at the best naval college and a rich life in a cottage on the ocean. Kolchak refused and went back to Russia.
Arriving in Japan, Kolchak learned about the October Revolution, the liquidation of the Headquarters of the Supreme Commander-in-Chief and the negotiations begun by the Bolsheviks with the Germans. He agreed to a telegram proposing his candidacy for the Constituent Assembly from the cadets and a group of non-party members in the Black Sea Fleet District, but his response was received late. The admiral left for Tokyo. There he handed the British ambassador a request for admission into the English army “at least as privates.” The ambassador, after consultations with London, handed Kolchak a direction to the Mesopotamian front. On the way there, in Singapore, he was overtaken by a telegram from the Russian envoy to China, Kudashev, inviting him to Manchuria to form Russian military units. Kolchak went to Beijing, after which he began organizing Russian armed forces to protect the Chinese Eastern Railway.
However, due to disagreements with Ataman Semyonov and the manager of the CER, General Horvat, Admiral Kolchak left Manchuria and went to Russia, intending to join the Volunteer Army of Generals Alekseev and Denikin. He left behind a wife and son in Sevastopol.
On October 13, 1918, he arrived in Omsk, from where the next day he sent a letter to General Alekseev (received on the Don in November - after Alekseev’s death), in which he expressed his intention to go to the South of Russia in order to come at his disposal as a subordinate. Meanwhile, a political crisis broke out in Omsk. On November 4, 1918, Kolchak, as a popular figure among officers, was invited to the post of Minister of War and Navy in the Council of Ministers of the so-called “Directory” - the united anti-Bolshevik government located in Omsk, where the majority were Socialist Revolutionaries. On the night of November 18, 1918, a coup took place in Omsk - Cossack officers arrested four Socialist Revolutionary leaders of the Directory, led by its chairman N.D. Avksentiev. In the current situation, the Council of Ministers - the executive body of the Directory - announced the assumption of full supreme power and then decided to hand it over to one person, giving him the title of Supreme Ruler Russian state. Kolchak was elected to this post by secret ballot of members of the Council of Ministers. The admiral announced his consent to the election and with his first order to the army announced that he would assume the title of Supreme Commander-in-Chief.
After coming to power, A.V. Kolchak canceled the order that Jews, as potential spies, were subject to eviction from the 100-verst front-line zone.
Addressing the population, Kolchak stated: “Having accepted the cross of this power in the exceptionally difficult conditions of civil war and complete disorder state life, I declare that I will not follow either the path of reaction or the disastrous path of partisanship.” Next, the Supreme Ruler proclaimed the goals and objectives of the new government. The first, most pressing task was to strengthen and increase the combat capability of the army. The second, inextricably linked with the first, is “victory over Bolshevism.” The third task, the solution of which was recognized as possible only under the condition of victory, was proclaimed “the revival and resurrection of a dying state.” All activities of the new government were declared aimed at ensuring that “the temporary supreme power of the Supreme Ruler and Supreme Commander-in-Chief could transfer the fate of the state into the hands of the people, allowing them to arrange public administration of your own free will."
Kolchak hoped that under the banner of the fight against the Reds he would be able to unite the most diverse political forces and create a new state power. At first, the situation at the fronts was favorable to these plans. In December 1918, the Siberian Army occupied Perm, which had important strategic importance and significant reserves of military equipment.
In March 1919, Kolchak’s troops launched an attack on Samara and Kazan, in April they occupied the entire Urals and approached the Volga. However, due to Kolchak’s incompetence in organizing and managing the ground army (as well as his assistants), the militarily favorable situation soon gave way to a catastrophic one. The dispersion and stretching of forces, the lack of logistics support and the general lack of coordination of actions led to the fact that the Red Army was able to first stop Kolchak’s troops and then launch a counteroffensive. The result was a more than six-month retreat of Kolchak’s armies to the east, which ended with the fall of the Omsk regime.
It must be said that Kolchak himself was well aware of the fact of a desperate personnel shortage, which ultimately led to the tragedy of his army in 1919. In particular, in a conversation with General Inostrantsev, Kolchak openly stated this sad circumstance: “You will soon see for yourself how poor we are in people, why we have to endure even in high positions, not excluding the posts of ministers, people who are far from corresponding to the places they occupy , but - this is because there is no one to replace them...”
The same opinions prevailed in the active army. For example, General Shchepikhin said: “... it’s incomprehensible to the mind, it’s like surprise how long-suffering our passion-bearer is, an ordinary officer and soldier. What kind of experiments were not carried out with him, what kind of tricks our “strategic boys” - Kostya (Sakharov) and Mitka (Lebedev) - did not throw out with his passive participation - and the cup of patience has not yet overflowed...”
In May, the retreat of Kolchak’s troops began, and by August they were forced to leave Ufa, Yekaterinburg and Chelyabinsk.
Units of the armies controlled by Kolchak in Siberia carried out punitive operations in the areas where the partisans operated; detachments of the Czechoslovak Corps were also used in these operations. Admiral Kolchak’s attitude towards the Bolsheviks, whom he called “a gang of robbers”, “enemies of the people”, was extremely negative.
On November 30, 1918, Kolchak's government passed a decree, signed by the Supreme Ruler of Russia, which provided for the death penalty for those guilty of "obstructing" the exercise of power by Kolchak or the Council of Ministers.
Member of the Central Committee of the Socialist Revolutionaries D.F. Rakov was arrested on the night of the coup in Omsk on November 18, 1918, which put Kolchak in power. Until March 21, 1919, he was imprisoned in several prisons in Omsk under the threat of execution. A description of his time in prison, sent to one of Rakov’s comrades, was published in 1920 in the form of a brochure entitled “In the dungeons of Kolchak. Voice from Siberia."
The political leaders of the Czechoslovak corps B. Pavlo and V. Girsa in an official memorandum to the allies in November 1919 stated: “The unbearable condition in which our army is, forces you to turn to the allied powers with a request for advice on how the Czechoslovak army could provide its own security and free return to their homeland, the issue of which is resolved with the consent of all the Allied powers. Our army agreed to guard the highway and communication routes in the area designated for it and performed this task quite conscientiously. At the moment, the presence of our troops on the highway and its protection is becoming impossible simply because of aimlessness, as well as due to the most elementary requirements of justice and humanity. While guarding the railway and maintaining order in the country, our army is forced to maintain the state of complete arbitrariness and lawlessness that has reigned here. Under the protection of Czechoslovakian bayonets, local Russian military authorities allow themselves to take actions that would horrify the entire civilized world. The burning of villages, the beating of hundreds of peaceful Russian citizens, the execution without trial of representatives of democracy on simple suspicion of political unreliability are common occurrences, and responsibility for everything before the court of the peoples of the whole world falls on you: why do we, having military force, did not oppose this lawlessness.”
According to G.K. Hins, with the publication of this memorandum, Czech representatives were looking for justification for their flight from Siberia and evasion of support for the retreating Kolchak troops, and also sought rapprochement with the left. Simultaneously with the release of the Czech memorandum in Irkutsk, the demoted Czech general Gaida attempted an anti-Kolchak coup in Vladivostok on November 17, 1919.
In the Yekaterinburg province, one of the 12 provinces under Kolchak’s control, at least 25 thousand people were shot, and about 10% of the two million population were subjected to corporal punishment. They flogged both men, women and children.
During the suppression of the Bolshevik armed uprising on December 22, 1918, according to official data in Omsk, 49 people were shot by the verdict of a military court, 13 people were sentenced to hard labor and prison, 3 were acquitted and 133 people were killed during the suppression of the uprising. In the village of Kulomzino (a suburb of Omsk) there were more victims, namely: 117 people were shot by court verdict, 24 were acquitted, 144 were killed during the suppression of the rebellion.
More than 625 people were shot during the suppression of the uprising in Kustanai in April 1919, several villages were burned out. Kolchak addressed the following order to the suppressors of the uprising: “On behalf of the service, I thank Major General Volkov and all the gentlemen officers, soldiers and Cossacks who took part in the suppression of the uprising. The most distinguished ones will be nominated for awards.”
On the night of July 30, 1919, an uprising broke out in the Krasnoyarsk military town, in which the 3rd regiment of the 2nd separate brigade and the majority of the soldiers of the 31st regiment of the 8th division took part, up to 3 thousand people in total. Having captured the military town, the rebels launched an attack on Krasnoyarsk, but were defeated, losing up to 700 people killed. The admiral sent a telegram to General Rozanov, who led the suppression of the uprising: “I thank you, all the commanders, officers, riflemen and Cossacks for the job well done.”
After the defeat in the fall of 1918, Bolshevik detachments settled in the taiga, mainly north of Krasnoyarsk and in the Minusinsk region, and, replenished with deserters, began to attack the communications of the White Army. In the spring of 1919, they were surrounded and partly destroyed, partly driven even deeper into the taiga, and partly fled to China.
The peasantry of Siberia, as well as throughout Russia, who did not want to fight in either the Red or White armies, avoiding mobilization, fled to the forests, organizing “green” gangs. This picture was also observed in the rear of Kolchak’s army. But until September - October 1919, these detachments were small in number and did not pose a particular problem for the authorities.
But when the front collapsed in the fall of 1919, the collapse of the army and mass desertion began. Deserters began en masse to join the newly activated Bolshevik detachments, causing their numbers to grow to tens of thousands of people.
As A.L. Litvin notes about the period of Kolchak’s rule, “it is difficult to talk about support for his policies in Siberia and the Urals, if out of approximately 400 thousand Red partisans of that time, 150 thousand acted against him, and among them 4-5% there were wealthy peasants, or, as they were called then, kulaks.”
In 1914-1917, about a third of Russia's gold reserves were sent for temporary storage to England and Canada, and about half were exported to Kazan. Part of the gold reserves of the Russian Empire, stored in Kazan (more than 500 tons), was captured on August 7, 1918 by troops People's Army under the command of the General Staff Colonel V.O. Kappel and sent to Samara, where the KOMUCH government was established. From Samara, gold was transported to Ufa for some time, and at the end of November 1918, the gold reserves of the Russian Empire were moved to Omsk and came into the possession of the Kolchak government. The gold was deposited in a local branch of the State Bank. In May 1919, it was established that in total there was gold worth 650 million rubles (505 tons) in Omsk.
Having at his disposal most of Russia's gold reserves, Kolchak did not allow his government to spend gold, even to stabilize the financial system and fight inflation (which was facilitated by the rampant issue of “kerenoks” and tsarist rubles by the Bolsheviks). Kolchak spent 68 million rubles on the purchase of weapons and uniforms for his army. Loans were obtained from foreign banks secured by 128 million rubles: proceeds from the placement were returned to Russia.
On October 31, 1919, the gold reserves, under heavy security, were loaded into 40 wagons, with accompanying personnel in another 12 wagons. Trans-Siberian Railway stretching from Novo-Nikolaevsk (now Novosibirsk) to Irkutsk was controlled by the Czechs, whose main task was their own evacuation from Russia. Only on December 27, 1919, the headquarters train and the train with gold arrived at the Nizhneudinsk station, where representatives of the Entente forced Admiral Kolchak to sign an order to renounce the rights of the Supreme Ruler of Russia and transfer the train with the gold reserve to the control of the Czechoslovak Corps. On January 15, 1920, the Czech command handed Kolchak over to the Socialist Revolutionary Political Center, which within a few days handed the admiral over to the Bolsheviks. On February 7, the Czechoslovaks handed over 409 million rubles in gold to the Bolsheviks in exchange for guarantees of the unhindered evacuation of the corps from Russia. People's Commissariat Finance of the RSFSR in June 1921 compiled a certificate from which it follows that during the reign of Admiral Kolchak, Russia's gold reserves decreased by 235.6 million rubles, or 182 tons. Another 35 million rubles from the gold reserves disappeared after it was transferred to the Bolsheviks, during transportation from Irkutsk to Kazan.
January 4, 1920 in Nizhneudinsk Admiral A.V. Kolchak signed his last Decree, in which he announced his intention to transfer the powers of the “Supreme All-Russian Power” to A.I. Denikin. Until the receipt of instructions from A.I. Denikin, “the entirety of military and civil power throughout the entire territory of the Russian Eastern Outskirts” was granted to Lieutenant General G.M. Semyonov.
On January 5, 1920, a coup took place in Irkutsk, the city was captured by the Socialist-Revolutionary-Menshevik Political Center. On January 15, A.V. Kolchak, who left Nizhneudinsk on a Czechoslovak train, in a carriage flying the flags of Great Britain, France, the USA, Japan and Czechoslovakia, arrived on the outskirts of Irkutsk. The Czechoslovak command, at the request of the Socialist Revolutionary Political Center, with the sanction of the French General Janin, handed over Kolchak to his representatives. On January 21, the Political Center transferred power in Irkutsk to the Bolshevik Revolutionary Committee. From January 21 to February 6, 1920, Kolchak was interrogated by the Extraordinary Commission of Inquiry.
On the night of February 6-7, 1920, Admiral A.V. Kolchak and Chairman of the Council of Ministers of Russia V.N. The Pepelyaevs were shot on the banks of the Ushakovka River without trial, by order of the Irkutsk Military Revolutionary Committee. The resolution of the Irkutsk Military Revolutionary Committee on the execution of the Supreme Ruler Admiral Kolchak and Chairman of the Council of Ministers Pepelyaev was signed by A. Shiryamov, the chairman of the committee and its members A. Snoskarev, M. Levenson and the committee manager Oborin. The text of the resolution on the execution of A.V. Kolchak and V.N. Pepelyaev was first published in the article former chairman Irkutsk Military Revolutionary Committee A. Shiryamov. In 1991 L.G. Kolotilo made the assumption that the decision on the execution was drawn up after the execution, as an exculpatory document, because it was dated February 7, and S. Chudnovsky and I. N. Bursak arrived at the pre-Gubchek prison at two o'clock in the morning on February 7, allegedly already with the text of the decision, and before that they made up a firing squad of communists. In the work of V.I. Shishkin in 1998, it is shown that the original of the resolution available in the GARF is dated the sixth of February, and not the seventh, as indicated in the article of A. Shiryamov, who compiled this resolution. However, the same source contains the text of a telegram from the Chairman of the Sibrevkom and member of the Revolutionary Military Council of the 5th Army I.N. Smirnov, which says that the decision to shoot Kolchak was made at a meeting on February 7th. In addition, Kolchak’s interrogation continued all day on February 6th. The confusion in dates in the documents casts doubt on the drawing up of the execution order before it was carried out.
By official version, the execution was carried out out of fear that General Kappel’s units breaking through to Irkutsk had the goal of freeing Kolchak. However, as can be seen from the research of V.I. Shishkin, there was no danger of Kolchak’s release, and his execution was just an act of political retribution and intimidation. According to the most common version, the execution took place on the banks of the Ushakovka River near Znamensky convent. The execution was led by Samuil Gdalyevich Chudnovsky. According to legend, while sitting on the ice awaiting execution, the admiral sang the romance “Burn, burn, my star...”. There is a version that Kolchak himself commanded his execution. After the execution, the bodies of the dead were thrown into the hole.
The White movement in Russia is an organized military-political movement that was formed during the Civil War in 1917-1922. Goals of the white movement civil war.
The white movement united political regimes, distinguished by the commonality of socio-political and economic programs, as well as recognition of the principle of individual power (military dictatorship) on a national and regional scale.
The White movement arose in the context of opposition to the policies of the Provisional Government and the Soviets (the Soviet “vertical”) in the summer of 1917.
In preparation for the speech of the Supreme Commander-in-Chief, Infantry General L.G. Kornilov, both military (“Union of Army and Navy Officers”, “Union of Military Duty”, “Union of Cossack Troops”) and political (“Republican Center”, “Bureau of Legislative Chambers”, “Society for the Economic Revival of Russia”) structures took part.
Even in the Soviet Union, a myth arose that the White movement was monarchical: “The White army, the black baron are again preparing the royal throne for us.” In post-Soviet times, this myth was significantly supplemented by the fact that whites began to be considered bearers of Russian state patriotism.
They say that the whites saved Russia, and the “bloody reds” destroyed it. Although in reality the whites were ordinary mercenaries of Russian pro-Western capital and global capital. The Russian pro-Western, liberal-bourgeois elite of society (Februaryists), having overthrown the tsar and destroyed the autocracy, dreamed of making “sweet Europe” out of Russia, turning it into a peripheral part of European civilization.
However, it didn’t work out. Westerners did not know Russia and the Russian people at all. The Russian Troubles began, aggravated by the destructive, stupid actions of the pro-Western Provisional Government.
The February Westernizers were quickly left with nothing and lost power, which was taken by the Bolsheviks in the center, and by nationalists and Cossacks on the outskirts. But they did not want to resign themselves and live quietly in Paris or Venice. In addition, there was an external order: the masters of the West wanted to destroy Russian civilization and the Russian superethnos, their main conceptual and geopolitical enemy, once and for all.
Therefore, the hasty creation of nationalist and white governments and armies began, which transferred the already ongoing Civil War (the peasant war began immediately after February, as well as the criminal revolution) to a new, more serious level. As a result, the whites acted as mercenaries of the masters of the West.
The mythical picture about the lieutenants and cornets who stood up to defend the Motherland, “for the faith, the Tsar and the Fatherland” and, in a moment free from fighting, sang “God Save the Tsar!” with tears in their eyes, is completely false.
It is not for nothing that one of the most prominent and talented white generals, Lieutenant General Ya. A. Slashchov-Krymsky, leaving White army and going over to the side of the Reds, he wrote an article: “Slogans of Russian patriotism in the service of France.”
This is the whole essence of the White movement - service to the masters of the West under the guise of the slogan of saving “one and indivisible Russia.” Hence the complete moral decay of the white elite, which understood or at the subconscious level felt its treacherous role towards the people.
White movement, taking over from the West and Japan financial assistance and military - in the form of direct intervention (invasion) of Western and Eastern occupiers, quickly lost even the external forms of the patriotic movement.
Thus, the anti-Soviet counter-revolution appeared as a pro-Western force leading to the loss of the integrity and independence of Russia, the complete destruction of Russian civilization and superethnos. Even the great Russian scientist D.I. Mendeleev, when starting to create “Russian studies,” set a minimum condition for this idea: “to survive and continue the independent growth” of Russia. This is precisely the minimal, unchangeable and fundamental task of Russian statehood.
It is clear that the Russian people instantly saw through the vile essence of the White movement. This predetermined the loss of broad popular support and the defeat of the White Army. Even the majority of the officers of the former imperial army, who received a largely pro-Western liberal upbringing and education, but remained Russian at heart, realized this and supported the Reds, since they really advocated the restoration of Russian statehood and a great Russia.
Half of the generals and officers of the General Staff, the flower of the imperial army, began to serve in the Red Army. Tsarist generals and officers went to serve in the Red Army almost exclusively not for ideological, but for patriotic reasons.
The Bolsheviks had a project and program for the development of Russia as an independent power, and not a periphery of European (Western) civilization. General M.D. Bonch-Bruevich later wrote: “More by instinct than by reason, I was drawn to the Bolsheviks, seeing in them the only force capable of saving Russia from collapse and complete destruction.”
General A.A. perfectly showed the essence of the views of Russian generals and officers who joined the Red Army. Brusilov. In the appeal “To all former officers, wherever they are,” which she addressed large group former generals of the Russian army led by Brusilov on May 30, 1920, when a threatening situation arose on the Polish front, it was said:
“At this critical historical moment in our people’s life, we, your old comrades in arms, appeal to your feelings of love and devotion to your homeland and appeal to you with an urgent request to forget all insults, no matter who and wherever inflicted them, and voluntarily go with full selflessness and willingness to join the Red Army and serve there not out of fear, but out of conscience, so that with our honest service, not sparing our lives, we can defend our dear Russia at all costs and prevent it from being plundered, because in the latter case it could be lost irretrievably , and then our descendants will rightly curse us and correctly blame us for the fact that, due to selfish feelings of class struggle, we did not use our military knowledge and experience, forgot our native Russian people and ruined our mother Russia.”
Even the anti-Soviet historian M. Nazarov in his book “The Mission of Russian Emigration” noted: “The orientation of the White movement towards the Entente made many fear that if the Whites win, the foreign forces behind them will subordinate Russia to their interests.” The Red Army was increasingly perceived as a force restoring statehood and sovereignty of Russia.
It is obvious that the anti-Russian and anti-state essence of the pro-Western bourgeois-liberal (in the future white) project had matured and appeared even before the start of the Troubles. The alliance with the West during the Civil War only finally revealed this essence. It was the pro-Western bourgeois-liberal forces (Februaryists) who crushed the Russian autocracy in February, which led to the collapse of the project and the Romanov empire.
Westerners dreamed of leading Russia along the Western path of development; for them, England and France were the ideal of a state, socio-economic structure. The top of Russia is the rotten aristocracy along with the great princes, the nobility, the generals with part of the senior officers, industrialists and bankers, the bourgeoisie and capitalists, the leaders of the majority political parties and movements, the liberal intelligentsia dreamed of being part of the “enlightened West.”
Westerners were for the “market” and “democracy”, the full power of the “masters of money”, the owners. But their interests did not correspond to the national interests of Russia, the code-matrix of Russian civilization and people. This fundamental fault caused the Russian Troubles. In Russia, unrest begins when people's (national) interests are violated in the most vile way, which is what happened in 1917.
The essence of the pro-Western bourgeois-liberal (white) project, its anti-Russianism and anti-stateness are perfectly reflected in “Vekhi” and “From the Depths”, and by the writer V.V. Rozanov, and eyewitnesses of the “cursed days” - I. Bunin and M. Prishvin .
So, in Bunin’s “Cursed Days” on every page we see one passion - the expectation of the arrival of the Germans with their Ordnung and gallows. And if not the Germans, then at least any foreigners - as long as they occupied Russia as quickly as possible, drove the “cattle” who had raised their heads back into the mines and into corvée. “The newspapers talk about the beginning of the German offensive.
Everyone says: “Oh, if only!”... Yesterday we were at B. Quite a lot of people gathered - and all with one voice: the Germans, thank God, are advancing, took Smolensk and Bologoe... Rumors about some Polish legions, which also supposedly they are coming to save us... The Germans allegedly do not go, as they usually do in war, fighting, conquering, but “they are simply driving along railway"- occupy St. Petersburg...
After yesterday evening's news that St. Petersburg had already been taken by the Germans, the newspapers were very disappointed... It was as if a German corps had entered St. Petersburg. Tomorrow there will be a decree on the denationalization of banks... I saw V.V. Heatedly reviled the allies: they are entering into negotiations with the Bolsheviks instead of going to occupy Russia..."
And further: “Rumors and rumors. St. Petersburg was taken by the Finns... Hindenburg is marching either on Odessa or on Moscow... We are still waiting for help from someone, from a miracle, from nature! Now we go every day to Nikolaevsky Boulevard to see if, God forbid, the French battleship, which for some reason looms in the roadstead and which still seems to be easier, has gone away.”
This is shown very strongly in M. A. Bulgakov’s play “Days of the Turbins,” written based on the novel “The White Guard.” The Turbin brothers and their friends are presented to us as bearers of Russian officer honor, as the type of people from whom we should take an example. But if we look at it in fairness, we see how “ white guard“- officers and cadets, shoot from rifles and machine guns at certain “gray people” and serve the Germans and their puppet hetman.
What are they protecting? Here’s what: “And blows from lieutenant stacks in the faces, and shrapnel rapid fire on rebellious villages, backs slashed by the ramrods of Hetman Serdyuks, and receipts on pieces of paper in the handwriting of majors and lieutenants of the German army: “Give the Russian pig 25 marks for the pig bought from her.” . Good-natured, contemptuous laughter at those who came with such a receipt to the German headquarters in the City.”
And the “gray” people who were shot at by white officers, defending the hetman and the Germans and at the same time dreaming of an invasion of Russia by the French and Senegalese, are Russian soldiers and peasants, brought by the former “elite” - the masters - to the Civil War. And these officers are examples of honor and patriotism? Obviously not. Generals Brusilov and Bonch-Bruevich, Colonel Shaposhnikov, non-commissioned officers Rokossovsky and Chapaev are examples to follow and educate the younger generation in the spirit of love for the Motherland.
Thus, the Whites were ready to rely either on the Germans, like Ataman Krasnov, or on the French, British and Americans, like Denikin and Kolchak. And at this time, the Reds were feverishly recreating the Russian (Soviet) statehood and army in order to repel the interventionists and their local slaves.
« Supreme ruler“Russia, Admiral A.V. Kolchak, whom representatives of the modern liberal public of Russia so loved (apparently, they saw “one of their own”), was a real “condottiere”, a mercenary of the West, installed by the masters of Great Britain and the USA.
He wrote about the Russian people literally as an extreme Russophobe during perestroika: “a maddened, wild (and devoid of semblance) people, unable to escape the psychology of slaves.” Under Kolchak’s rule in Siberia, such cruelties were committed against these people that peasant uprisings in the rear of the white army became almost the main factor in the defeat of the whites. In addition, Kolchak was a prominent February revolutionary, and with his fate the royal throne was destroyed.
In today's Russia they tried to make A.I. Denikin a national hero. They note that he did not help Hitler and wanted the victory of the Red Army in the Great Patriotic War. But this is in his declining years. And during the Troubles, Denikin de facto served the masters of the West.
As the remarkable Russian writer and researcher V.V. Kozhinov noted during the Revolution and Civil War in Russia: “Anton Ivanovich Denikin was unconditionally subordinate to the West.” Biographer of A.I. Denikin D. Lekhovich defined the views of the leader of the White movement as well as the hopes that “the Cadet Party will be able to lead Russia to constitutional monarchy British type,” so that “the idea of loyalty to the allies [the Entente] acquired the character of a creed.”
It is impossible to separate the White movement and foreign intervention, as anti-Soviet researchers and supporters of the Whites often do. They are inextricably linked.
Without the intervention of Western powers and Japan, the Russian Civil War would not have taken on such proportions. The Bolsheviks are much faster even without such big casualties would suppress pockets of resistance by whites, separatist nationalists, Basmachi and gangs. Without Western supplies of weapons and materials, the white and national armies would not have been able to expand their activities.
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On December 16, 1872, one of the main leaders of the White movement during the Civil War, Anton Denikin, was born. We decided to remember the other most famous white generals
2013-12-15 19:30
Anton Denikin
Anton Ivanovich Denikin was one of the main leaders of the White movement during the Civil War, its leader in the south of Russia. He achieved the greatest military and political results among all the leaders of the White movement. One of the main organizers and then commander of the Volunteer Army. Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of the South of Russia, Deputy Supreme Ruler and Supreme Commander-in-Chief of the Russian Army, Admiral Kolchak.
After the death of Kolchak, all-Russian power was supposed to pass to Denikin, but on April 4, 1920, he transferred command to General Wrangel and on the same day he left with his family for Europe. Denikin lived in England, Belgium, Hungary, and France, where he was engaged in literary activities. While remaining a staunch opponent of the Soviet system, he nevertheless refused German offers of cooperation. Soviet influence in Europe forced Denikin to move to the United States in 1945, where he continued to work on the autobiographical story “The Path of a Russian Officer,” but never finished it. General Anton Ivanovich Denikin died of a heart attack on August 8, 1947 at the University of Michigan Hospital in Ann Arbor and was buried in a cemetery in Detroit. In 2005, the ashes of General Denikin and his wife were transported to Moscow for burial in the Holy Don Monastery.
Alexander Kolchak
The leader of the White movement during the Civil War, Supreme Ruler of Russia Alexander Kolchak was born on November 16, 1874 in St. Petersburg.
In November 1919, under the pressure of the Red Army, Kolchak left Omsk. In December, Kolchak’s train was blocked in Nizhneudinsk by the Czechoslovaks. On January 4, 1920, he transferred the entirety of the already mythical power to Denikin, and the command of the armed forces in the east to Semyonov. Kolchak's safety was guaranteed by the allied command. But after the transfer of power in Irkutsk to the Bolshevik Revolutionary Committee, Kolchak was also at his disposal. Upon learning of Kolchak's capture, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin gave orders to shoot him. Alexander Kolchak was shot along with the Chairman of the Council of Ministers Pepelyaev on the banks of the Ushakovka River. The corpses of those shot were lowered into an ice hole on the Angara.
Lavr Kornilov
Lavr Kornilov - Russian military leader, participant in the Civil War, one of the organizers and Commander-in-Chief of the Volunteer Army, leader of the White movement in the South of Russia.
On April 13, 1918, he was killed during the assault on Yekaterinodar by an enemy grenade. The coffin with Kornilov's body was secretly buried during the retreat through the German colony of Gnachbau. The grave was razed to the ground. Later, organized excavations discovered only the coffin with the body of Colonel Nezhentsev. In Kornilov’s dug up grave, only a piece of a pine coffin was found.
Peter Krasnov
Pyotr Nikolaevich Krasnov - Russian General imperial army, Ataman of the All-Great Don Army, military and political figure, writer and publicist. During World War II, he served as head of the Main Directorate of Cossack Troops of the Imperial Ministry of Eastern Occupied Territories. In June 1917, he was appointed head of the 1st Kuban Cossack Division, in September - commander of the 3rd Cavalry Corps, and promoted to lieutenant general. He was arrested during the Kornilov speech upon arrival in Pskov by the commissar of the Northern Front, but was then released. On May 16, 1918, Krasnov was elected ataman Don Cossacks. Having relied on Germany, relying on its support and not obeying A.I. To Denikin, who was still focused on the “allies,” he launched a fight against the Bolsheviks at the head of the Don Army.
Military Collegium Supreme Court The USSR announced the decision to execute Krasnov P.N., Krasnov S.N., Shkuro, Sultan-Girey Klych, von Pannwitz - for the fact that “through the White Guard detachments they formed, they waged an armed struggle against Soviet Union and carried out active espionage, sabotage and terrorist activities against the USSR". On January 16, 1947, Krasnov and others were hanged in Lefortovo prison.
Peter Wrangel
Pyotr Nikolaevich Wrangel - Russian military commander from the main leaders of the White movement during the Civil War. Commander-in-Chief of the Russian Army in Crimea and Poland. Lieutenant General of the General Staff. Knight of St. George. He received the nickname “Black Baron” for his traditional everyday dress - a black Cossack Circassian coat with gazyrs.
On April 25, 1928, he died suddenly in Brussels after suddenly contracting tuberculosis. According to his family, he was poisoned by the brother of his servant, who was a Bolshevik agent. He was buried in Brussels. Subsequently, Wrangel's ashes were transferred to Belgrade, where they were solemnly reburied on October 6, 1929 in the Russian Church of the Holy Trinity.
Nikolai Yudenich
Nikolai Yudenich - Russian military leader, infantry general - during the Civil War he led the forces operating against Soviet power in a northwestern direction.
He died in 1962 from pulmonary tuberculosis. He was buried first in the Lower Church in Cannes, but subsequently his coffin was transferred to Nice to the Cocade cemetery. On October 20, 2008, in the church fence near the altar of the Church of the Holy Cross Church in the village of Opole, Kingisepp district, Leningrad region, as a tribute to the memory of the fallen ranks of General Yudenich’s army, a monument to the soldiers of the North-Western Army was erected.
Mikhail Alekseev
Mikhail Alekseev was an active participant in the White movement during the Civil War. One of the creators, Supreme Leader of the Volunteer Army.
He died on October 8, 1918 from pneumonia and after a two-day farewell to thousands of people he was buried in the Kuban Military Cathedral Cossack army in Ekaterinodar. Among the wreaths laid on his grave, one attracted the attention of the public with its genuine touchingness. It was written on it: “They didn’t see, but they knew and loved.” During the retreat of the white troops at the beginning of 1920, his ashes were taken to Serbia by relatives and colleagues and reburied in Belgrade. During the years of communist rule, in order to avoid the destruction of the grave of the founder and leader of the “White Cause,” the slab on his grave was replaced with another, on which only two words were laconically written: “Mikhail the Warrior.”
In the post-Soviet period in Russia, a reassessment of the events and results of the Civil War began. The attitude towards the leaders of the White movement began to change to the exact opposite - now films are being made about them, in which they appear as fearless knights without fear or reproach.
At the same time, many know very little about the fate of the most famous leaders of the White Army. Not all of them managed to maintain honor and dignity after defeat in the Civil War. Some were destined for an inglorious end and indelible shame.
Alexander Kolchak
On November 5, 1918, Admiral Kolchak was appointed Minister of War and Navy of the so-called Ufa Directory, one of the anti-Bolshevik governments created during the Civil War.
On November 18, 1918, a coup took place, as a result of which the Directory was abolished, and Kolchak himself was given the title of Supreme Ruler of Russia.
From the autumn of 1918 to the summer of 1919, Kolchak managed to successfully conduct military operations against the Bolsheviks. At the same time, in the territory controlled by his troops, methods of terror were practiced against political opponents.
A series of military failures in the second half of 1919 led to the loss of all previously captured territories. Kolchak’s repressive methods provoked a wave of uprisings in the rear of the White Army, and often at the head of these uprisings were not the Bolsheviks, but the Socialist Revolutionaries and Mensheviks.
Kolchak planned to get to Irkutsk, where he was going to continue his resistance, but on December 27, 1919, power in the city passed to the Political Center, which included the Bolsheviks, Mensheviks and Socialist Revolutionaries.
On January 4, 1920, Kolchak signed his last decree - on the transfer of supreme power to General Denikin. Under the guarantee of representatives of the Entente, who promised to take Kolchak to safe place, the former Supreme Ruler arrived in Irkutsk on January 15.
Here he was handed over to the Political Center and placed in a local prison. On January 21, interrogations of Kolchak began by the Extraordinary Commission of Inquiry. After the final transfer of power in Irkutsk to the Bolsheviks, the admiral’s fate was sealed.
On the night of February 6-7, 1920, 45-year-old Kolchak was shot by decision of the Irkutsk Military Revolutionary Committee of the Bolsheviks.
General Staff Lieutenant General V.O. Kappel. Winter 1919 Photo: Commons.wikimedia.org
Vladimir Kappel
General Kappel gained fame thanks to the popular film “Chapaev” in the USSR, which depicted the so-called “psychic attack” - when chains of Kappel’s men moved towards the enemy without firing a single shot.
The “psychic attack” had rather mundane reasons - parts of the White Guards were seriously suffering from a shortage of ammunition, and such tactics were a forced decision.
In June 1918, General Kappel organized a detachment of volunteers, which was subsequently deployed into the Separate Rifle Brigade of the People's Army of Komuch. The Committee of Members of the All-Russian Constituent Assembly (Komuch) became the first anti-Bolshevik government of Russia, and Kappel’s unit became one of the most reliable in his army.
An interesting fact is that the symbol of Komuch was the red banner, and the “Internationale” was used as the anthem. So the general, who became one of the symbols of the White movement, began the Civil War under the red banner.
After the anti-Bolshevik forces in eastern Russia were united under general management Admiral Kolchak, General Kappel headed the 1st Volga Corps, later called “Kappel Corps”.
Kappel remained faithful to Kolchak to the end. After the arrest of the latter, the general, who by that time had received command of the entire collapsing Eastern Front, made a desperate attempt to save Kolchak.
In severe frost conditions, Kappel led his troops to Irkutsk. Moving along the bed of the Kan River, the general fell into a wormwood. Kappel received frostbite, which developed into gangrene. After the amputation of his foot, he continued to lead the troops.
On January 21, 1920, Kappel transferred command of the troops to General Wojciechowski. Severe pneumonia was added to the gangrene. The already dying Kappel insisted on continuing the march to Irkutsk.
36-year-old Vladimir Kappel died on January 26, 1920 at the Utai crossing, near the Tulun station near the city of Nizhneudinsk. His troops were defeated by the Reds on the outskirts of Irkutsk.
Lavr Kornilov in 1917. Photo: Commons.wikimedia.org
Lavr Kornilov
After the failure of his speech, Kornilov was arrested, and the general and his associates spent the period from September 1 to November 1917 under arrest in Mogilev and Bykhov.
The October Revolution in Petrograd led to the fact that opponents of the Bolsheviks decided to release the previously arrested generals.
Once free, Kornilov went to the Don, where he began creating a Volunteer Army for the war with the Bolsheviks. In fact, Kornilov became not only one of the organizers of the White movement, but one of those who unleashed the Civil War in Russia.
Kornilov acted with extremely harsh methods. Participants in the so-called First Kuban “Ice” Campaign recalled: “All the Bolsheviks captured by us with weapons in their hands were shot on the spot: alone, in dozens, hundreds. It was a war of extermination.
The Kornilovites used intimidation tactics against the civilian population: in Lavr Kornilov’s appeal, residents were warned that any “hostile action” towards volunteers and Cossack detachments operating with them would be punishable by executions and burning of villages.
Kornilov’s participation in the Civil War was short-lived - on March 31, 1918, the 47-year-old general was killed during the storming of Yekaterinodar.
General Nikolai Nikolaevich Yudenich. 1910s Photo from the photo album of Alexander Pogost. Photo: Commons.wikimedia.org
Nikolai Yudenich
General Yudenich, who successfully operated in the Caucasian theater of military operations during the First World War, returned to Petrograd in the summer of 1917. He remained in the city after the October Revolution, going illegal.
Only at the beginning of 1919 did he go to Helsingfors (now Helsinki), where at the end of 1918 the “Russian Committee” was organized - another anti-Bolshevik government.
Yudenich was proclaimed the head of the White movement in North-West Russia with dictatorial powers.
By the summer of 1919, Yudenich, having received funding and confirmation of her powers from Kolchak, created the so-called North-Western Army, which was tasked with capturing Petrograd.
In the fall of 1919, the Northwestern Army launched a campaign against Petrograd. By mid-October, Yudenich's troops reached the Pulkovo Heights, where they were stopped by the reserves of the Red Army.
The White front was broken through and a rapid retreat began. The fate of Yudenich's army was tragic - the units pressed to the border with Estonia were forced to cross into the territory of this state, where they were interned and placed in camps. Thousands of military and civilians died in these camps.
Yudenich himself, having announced the dissolution of the army, went to London through Stockholm and Copenhagen. Then the general moved to France, where he settled.
Unlike many of his associates, Yudenich withdrew from political life in exile.
Living in Nice, he headed the Society of Devotees of Russian History.
Denikin in Paris, 1938. Photo: Commons.wikimedia.org
Anton Denikin
General Anton Denikin, who was one of General Kornilov's comrades in the coup attempt in the summer of 1917, was among those who were arrested and then released after the Bolsheviks came to power.
Together with Kornilov, he went to the Don, where he became one of the founders of the Volunteer Army.
By the time of Kornilov’s death during the storming of Yekaterinodar, Denikin was his deputy and took command of the Volunteer Army.
In January 1919, during the reorganization of the White forces, Denikin became the commander of the Armed Forces of the South of Russia - recognized by the Western allies as “number two” in the White movement after General Kolchak.
Denikin's greatest successes occurred in the summer of 1919. After a series of victories in July, he signed the “Moscow Directive” - a plan to take the Russian capital.
Having captured large territories of southern and central Russia, as well as Ukraine, Denikin’s troops approached Tula in October 1919. The Bolsheviks were seriously considering plans to abandon Moscow.
However, the defeat in the Oryol-Kromsky battle, where Budyonny’s cavalry loudly declared itself, led to an equally rapid retreat of the Whites.
In January 1920, Denikin received from Kolchak the rights of the Supreme Ruler of Russia. At the same time, things were going catastrophically at the front. The offensive, launched in February 1920, ended in failure; the Whites were thrown back to the Crimea.
The allies and generals demanded that Denikin transfer power to a successor, for whom he was chosen Peter Wrangel.
On April 4, 1920, Denikin transferred all powers to Wrangel, and on the same day he left Russia forever on an English destroyer.
In exile, Denikin withdrew from active politics and took up literature. He wrote books on the history of the Russian army in pre-revolutionary times, as well as on the history of the Civil War.
In the 1930s, Denikin, unlike many other leaders of the white emigration, advocated the need to support the Red Army against any foreign aggressor, followed by the awakening of the Russian spirit in the ranks of this army, which, according to the general’s plan, should overthrow Bolshevism in Russia.
Second World War found Denikin on French territory. After Germany's attack on the USSR, he received offers of cooperation from the Nazis several times, but invariably refused. The general called former like-minded people who entered into an alliance with Hitler “obscurantists” and “Hitler admirers.”
After the end of the war, Denikin left for the United States, fearing that he might be extradited to the Soviet Union. However, the USSR government, knowing about Denikin’s position during the war, did not put forward any demands for his extradition to the allies.
Anton Denikin died on August 7, 1947 in the USA at the age of 74. In October 2005, on the initiative Russian President Vladimir Putin the remains of Denikin and his wife were reburied in the Donskoy Monastery in Moscow.
Peter Wrangel. Photo: Public Domain
Peter Wrangel
Baron Pyotr Wrangel, known as the “Black Baron” because of his wearing a black Cossack Circassian cap with gazyrs, became the last leader of the White movement in Russia during the Civil War.
At the end of 1917, Wrangel, who left, lived in Yalta, where he was arrested by the Bolsheviks. Soon the baron was released, since the Bolsheviks did not find any crime in his actions. After the occupation of Crimea by the German army, Wrangel left for Kyiv, where he collaborated with the government of Hetman Skoropadsky. Only after this did the baron decide to join the Volunteer Army, which he joined in August 1918.
Successfully commanding the white cavalry, Wrangel became one of the most influential military leaders, and came into conflict with Denikin, not agreeing with him on plans for further actions.
The conflict ended with Wrangel being removed from command and dismissed, after which he left for Constantinople. But in the spring of 1920, the allies, dissatisfied with the course of hostilities, achieved the resignation of Denikin and his replacement with Wrangel.
The baron's plans were extensive. He was going to create an “alternative Russia” in Crimea, which was supposed to win the competitive struggle against the Bolsheviks. But neither militarily nor economically these projects were viable. In November 1920, together with the remnants of the defeated White Army, Wrangel left Russia.
The “Black Baron” counted on the continuation of the armed struggle. In 1924, he created the Russian All-Military Union (ROVS), which united the majority of participants in the White movement in exile. Numbering tens of thousands of members, the EMRO was a serious force.
Wrangel failed to implement his plans to continue the Civil War - on April 25, 1928, in Brussels, he died suddenly from tuberculosis.
Ataman of the VVD, cavalry general P.N. Krasnov. Photo: Commons.wikimedia.org
Peter Krasnov
After the October Revolution, Pyotr Krasnov, who was the commander of the 3rd Cavalry Corps, on the orders of Alexander Kerensky, moved troops from Petrograd. On the approaches to the capital, the corps was stopped, and Krasnov himself was arrested. But then the Bolsheviks not only released Krasnov, but also left him at the head of the corps.
After the demobilization of the corps, he left for the Don, where he continued the anti-Bolshevik struggle, agreeing to lead the Cossack uprising after they captured and held Novocherkassk. On May 16, 1918, Krasnov was elected ataman of the Don Cossacks. Having entered into cooperation with the Germans, Krasnov proclaimed the All-Great Don Army as an independent state.
However, after the final defeat of Germany in the First World War, Krasnov had to urgently change his political line. Krasnov agreed to the annexation of the Don Army to the Volunteer Army, and recognized the supremacy of Denikin.
Denikin, however, remained distrustful of Krasnov, and forced him to resign in February 1919. After this, Krasnov went to Yudenich, and after the latter’s defeat he went into exile.
In exile, Krasnov collaborated with the EMRO and was one of the founders of the Brotherhood of Russian Truth, an organization engaged in underground work in Soviet Russia.
On June 22, 1941, Pyotr Krasnov issued an appeal that said: “I ask you to tell all the Cossacks that this war is not against Russia, but against the communists, Jews and their minions trading in Russian blood. May God help German weapons and Hitler! Let them do what the Russians and Emperor Alexander I did for Prussia in 1813.”
In 1943, Krasnov became head of the Main Directorate of Cossack Troops of the Imperial Ministry of the Eastern Occupied Territories of Germany.
In May 1945, Krasnov, along with other collaborators, was captured by the British and extradited to the Soviet Union.
The military collegium of the Supreme Court of the USSR Pyotr Krasnov was sentenced to death penalty. Together with his accomplices, the 77-year-old Hitler henchman was hanged in Lefortovo prison on January 16, 1947.
Photo by A. G. Shkuro, taken by the USSR MGB after the arrest. Photo: Commons.wikimedia.org
Andrey Shkuro
At birth, General Shkuro had a less euphonious surname - Shkura.
Shkuro earned notoriety, oddly enough, during the First World War, when he commanded the Kuban cavalry detachment. His raids were sometimes not coordinated with the command, and the soldiers were seen in unseemly acts. This is what Baron Wrangel recalled about that period: “Colonel Shkuro’s detachment, led by its commander, operating in the area of the XVIII Corps, which included my Ussuri division, for the most part hung around in the rear, drank and robbed, until, finally, at the insistence of the corps commander Krymov, he was recalled from the corps area.”
During the Civil War, Shkuro began with a partisan detachment in the Kislovodsk region, which grew into a large unit that joined Denikin’s army in the summer of 1918.
Shkuro’s habits have not changed: successfully operating in raids, his so-called “Wolf Hundred” also became famous for total robberies and unmotivated reprisals, in comparison with which the exploits of the Makhnovists and Petliurists pale.
Shkuro's decline began in October 1919, when his cavalry was defeated by Budyonny. Mass desertion began, which is why only a few hundred people remained under Shkuro’s command.
After Wrangel came to power, Shkuro was dismissed from the army, and already in May 1920 he found himself in exile.
Abroad, Shkuro did odd jobs, was a rider in a circus, and an extra in silent films.
After the German attack on the USSR, Shkuro, together with Krasnov, advocated cooperation with Hitler. In 1944, by special decree of Himmler, Shkuro was appointed head of the Cossack Troops Reserve at the General Staff of the SS Troops, enlisted in the service as SS Gruppenführer and Lieutenant General of the SS Troops with the right to wear a German general's uniform and receive pay for this rank.
Shkuro was involved in preparing reserves for the Cossack corps, which carried out punitive actions against Yugoslav partisans.
In May 1945, Shkuro, along with other Cossack collaborators, was arrested by the British and handed over to the Soviet Union.
Being involved in the same case with Pyotr Krasnov, the 60-year-old veteran of raids and robberies shared his fate - Andrei Shkuro was hanged in Lefortovo prison on January 16, 1947.
Anton Denikin
Anton Ivanovich Denikin was one of the main leaders of the White movement during the Civil War, its leader in the south of Russia. He achieved the greatest military and political results among all the leaders of the White movement. One of the main organizers, and then commander of the Volunteer Army. Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of the South of Russia, Deputy Supreme Ruler and Supreme Commander-in-Chief of the Russian Army, Admiral Kolchak.
After the death of Kolchak, all-Russian power was supposed to pass to Denikin, but on April 4, 1920, he transferred command to General Wrangel and on the same day he left with his family for Europe. Denikin lived in England, Belgium, Hungary, and France, where he was engaged in literary activities. While remaining a staunch opponent of the Soviet system, he nevertheless refused German offers of cooperation. Soviet influence in Europe forced Denikin to move to the United States in 1945, where he continued to work on the autobiographical story “The Path of a Russian Officer,” but never finished it. General Anton Ivanovich Denikin died of a heart attack on August 8, 1947 at the University of Michigan Hospital in Ann Arbor and was buried in a cemetery in Detroit. In 2005, the ashes of General Denikin and his wife were transported to Moscow for burial in the Holy Don Monastery.
Alexander Kolchak
The leader of the White movement during the Civil War, Supreme Ruler of Russia Alexander Kolchak was born on November 16, 1874 in St. Petersburg. In November 1919, under the pressure of the Red Army, Kolchak left Omsk. In December, Kolchak’s train was blocked in Nizhneudinsk by the Czechoslovaks. On January 4, 1920, he transferred the entirety of the already mythical power to Denikin, and the command of the armed forces in the east to Semyonov. Kolchak's safety was guaranteed by the allied command. But after the transfer of power in Irkutsk to the Bolshevik Revolutionary Committee, Kolchak was also at his disposal. Upon learning of Kolchak's capture, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin gave orders to shoot him. Alexander Kolchak was shot along with the Chairman of the Council of Ministers Pepelyaev on the banks of the Ushakovka River. The corpses of those shot were lowered into an ice hole on the Angara.
Lavr Kornilov
Lavr Kornilov - Russian military leader, participant in the Civil War, one of the organizers and Commander-in-Chief of the Volunteer Army, leader of the White movement in the South of Russia.
On April 13, 1918, he was killed during the assault on Yekaterinodar by an enemy grenade. The coffin with Kornilov's body was secretly buried during the retreat through the German colony of Gnachbau. The grave was razed to the ground. Later, organized excavations discovered only the coffin with the body of Colonel Nezhentsev. In Kornilov’s dug up grave, only a piece of a pine coffin was found.
Peter Krasnov
Pyotr Nikolaevich Krasnov - general of the Russian Imperial Army, ataman of the All-Great Don Army, military and political figure, writer and publicist. During World War II, he served as head of the Main Directorate of Cossack Troops of the Imperial Ministry of Eastern Occupied Territories. In June 1917, he was appointed head of the 1st Kuban Cossack Division, in September - commander of the 3rd Cavalry Corps, promoted to lieutenant general. He was arrested during the Kornilov speech upon arrival in Pskov by the commissar of the Northern Front, but was then released. On May 16, 1918, Krasnov was elected ataman of the Don Cossacks. Having relied on Germany, relying on its support and not obeying A.I. To Denikin, who was still focused on the “allies,” he launched a fight against the Bolsheviks at the head of the Don Army.
The Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the USSR announced the decision to execute Krasnov P.N., Krasnov S.N., Shkuro, Sultan-Girey Klych, von Pannwitz - for the fact that “they waged an armed struggle against the Soviet Union through the White Guard detachments they formed and carried out active espionage, sabotage and terrorist activities against the USSR.” On January 16, 1947, Krasnov and others were hanged in Lefortovo prison.
Peter Wrangel
Pyotr Nikolaevich Wrangel was a Russian military commander from the main leaders of the White movement during the Civil War. Commander-in-Chief of the Russian Army in Crimea and Poland. Lieutenant General of the General Staff. Knight of St. George. He received the nickname “Black Baron” for his traditional everyday dress - a black Cossack Circassian coat with gazyrs.
On April 25, 1928, he died suddenly in Brussels after suddenly contracting tuberculosis. According to his family, he was poisoned by the brother of his servant, who was a Bolshevik agent. He was buried in Brussels. Subsequently, Wrangel's ashes were transferred to Belgrade, where they were solemnly reburied on October 6, 1929 in the Russian Church of the Holy Trinity.
Nikolai Yudenich
Nikolai Yudenich - a Russian military leader, an infantry general - during the Civil War he led the forces operating against Soviet power in the northwestern direction.
He died in 1962 from pulmonary tuberculosis. He was buried first in the Lower Church in Cannes, but subsequently his coffin was transferred to Nice to the Cocade cemetery. On October 20, 2008, in the church fence near the altar of the Church of the Holy Cross Church in the village of Opole, Kingisepp district, Leningrad region, as a tribute to the memory of the fallen ranks of General Yudenich’s army, a monument to the soldiers of the North-Western Army was erected.
Mikhail Alekseev
Mikhail Alekseev was an active participant in the White movement during the Civil War. One of the creators, Supreme Leader of the Volunteer Army.
He died on October 8, 1918 from pneumonia and after a two-day farewell to thousands of people, he was buried in the Military Cathedral of the Kuban Cossack Army in Yekaterinodar. Among the wreaths laid on his grave, one attracted the attention of the public with its genuine touchingness. It was written on it: “They didn’t see, but they knew and loved.” During the retreat of the white troops at the beginning of 1920, his ashes were taken to Serbia by relatives and colleagues and reburied in Belgrade. During the years of communist rule, in order to avoid the destruction of the grave of the founder and leader of the “White Cause,” the slab on his grave was replaced with another, on which only two words were laconically written: “Mikhail the Warrior.”
