Kuban Cossacks in the Civil War. Cossacks: between white and red. abdication of Nicholas II
After the February Revolution of 1917, a political situation arose in the Kuban that was different from the all-Russian one. Following the commissioner of the Provisional Government appointed from Petrograd, K. L. Bardizh, and the Kuban Regional Council that emerged on April 16, the Kuban Military Rada at its I Congress proclaimed itself and the military government as the highest command and control bodies of the troops. The "triarchy" thus formed lasted until July 4, when the Rada declared the Council dissolved, after which K. L. Bardizh transferred all power in the region to the military government.
Ahead of the development of events in Petrograd, the II Regional Rada, which met in late September and early October, proclaimed itself the supreme body of not only the troops, but the entire Kuban Territory, adopting its own constitution - "Temporary Provisions on the Supreme Authorities in the Kuban Territory." After the 1st session of the Legislative Rada, which began simultaneously on November 1, and part of the 1st regional congress of nonresidents united, they announced their non-recognition of the power of the Council of People's Commissars and, on an equal footing, formed the Legislative Rada and the regional government. N.S. Ryabovol, the chairman of the government instead of the ataman of the Kuban army A.P. Filimonov - L.L.Bych. On January 8, 1918, the Kuban was proclaimed an independent republic, which is part of Russia on a federal basis.
Putting forward the slogan "fight against dictatorship on the left and right" (that is, against Bolshevism and the threat of restoration of the monarchy), the Kuban government tried to find its own third path in the revolution and civil strife. For 3 years in the Kuban, four atamans (A.P. Filimonov, N.M. Uspensky, N.A. Bukretov, V.N. Ivanis), 5 chairmen of the government (A.P. Filimonov, L.L. Bych, F.S. Sushkov, P.I.Kurgansky, V.N. Ivanis). The composition of the government changed even more often - a total of 9 times. Such a frequent change of government was largely the result of internal contradictions between the Black Sea and the linear Cossacks of the Kuban. The first, economically and politically stronger, stood on federalist (so-called "independent") positions, gravitating towards "nenko-Ukraine". Its most prominent representatives were K. L. Bardizh, N. S. Ryabovol, L. L. Bych. The second political direction, represented by the ataman A.P. Filimonov, traditionally for the Russian-speaking Linians was focused on a single and indivisible Russia.
Meanwhile, held on February 14-18, 1918 in Armavir, the 1st Congress of Soviets of the Kuban region proclaimed Soviet power throughout the region and elected an executive committee headed by Ya. V. Poluyan. On March 14, Yekaterinodar was taken by the Red troops under the command of I. L. Sorokin. The Rada, which left the capital of the region, and its armed forces under the command of V. L. Pokrovsky united with the Volunteer Army of General L. G. Kornilov, which set out on its first Kuban ("Ice") campaign. The bulk of the Kuban Cossacks did not support Kornilov, who died on April 13 near Yekaterinodar. However, the six-month period of Soviet power in the Kuban (from March to August) changed the attitude of the Cossacks towards it. As a result, on August 17, during the second Kuban campaign, the Volunteer Army under the command of General A. I. Denikin occupied Yekaterinodar. At the end of 1918, 2/3 of it consisted of the Kuban Cossacks. However, some of them continued to fight in the ranks of the Taman and North Caucasian Red armies, which retreated from the Kuban.
After returning to Yekaterinodar, the Rada began to address issues of the state structure of the region. On February 23, 1919, at a meeting of the Legislative Council, the 3-strip blue-crimson-green flag of the Kuban was approved, the regional anthem "You, Kuban, you are our Motherland" was performed. The day before, a delegation of the Rada headed by L. L. Bych was sent to Paris for the Versailles Peace Conference. The idea of \u200b\u200bthe Kuban statehood came into conflict with the slogan of General Denikin about a great, united, indivisible Russia. To the Chairman of the Rada, NS Ryabovol, this confrontation cost his life. In June 1919, he was shot dead in Rostov-on-Don by a Denikin officer.
In response to this murder, the Kuban Cossacks began a general desertion from the front, as a result of which no more than 15% of them remained in the Armed Forces of southern Russia. Denikin responded to the Parisian diplomatic demarche of Rada by dispersing and hanging the regimental priest A.I. Kulabukhov. The events of November 1919, called by contemporaries "The Kuban Action", reflected the tragedy of the fate of the Kuban Cossacks, expressed by the phrase "our own among strangers, a stranger among our own." This expression can also be attributed to the Kuban Cossacks who fought on the side of the Reds - I. L. Sorokin and I. A. Kochubei, after the death of the adventurers declared by the Soviet government. Later, at the end of the 30s, their fate was shared by the famous Kuban Bolshevik-Cossacks - Ya. V. and D. V. Poluyan, V. F. Cherny and others.
The capture of Yekaterinodar by units of the Red Army on March 17, 1920, the evacuation of the remnants of the Denikin army from Novorossiysk to the Crimea, and the surrender on May 2-4 near Adler of the 60,000-strong Kuban army did not lead to the restoration of civil peace in the Kuban. In the summer of 1920, an insurrectionary movement of the Cossacks unfolded against the Soviet regime in the Trans-Kuban and Azov plains. On August 14, in the area of \u200b\u200bthe village of Primorsko-Akhtarskaya, a landing of Wrangel troops under the command of General S.G. Ulagai landed, which ended in failure. Nevertheless, the armed struggle of the Kuban Cossacks in the ranks of the white-green movement continued until the mid-20s. Of the 20 thousand Kuban Cossacks who emigrated, more than 10 thousand remained abroad forever.
The Kuban paid dearly for the establishment of Soviet power. From the memorandum of the Regional Council it is known that in the spring-autumn of 1918 alone, 24 thousand people died here. Soviet sources provide an equally frightening picture of white terror. However, in 1918 - early 1920. the region managed to avoid the negative impact of the policy of war communism and decossackization, since from the fall of 1918 to the spring of 1920 the Kuban was in the rear of the Denikin army. Together with the powerful agricultural potential and the presence of ports, this has created, in comparison with other regions of Russia, more favorable conditions for economic development. The same can be said about the state of affairs in the sphere of culture and education. During the Civil War, Yekaterinodar became one of the small literary capitals of Russia. If on the eve of the First World War there were 1915 educational institutions in the Kuban, by 1920 there were 2200 of them. In 1919, the Kuban Polytechnic Institute was opened in Yekaterinodar, and in 1920 - the Kuban State University.
The drama of the confrontation between the forces of the old and the new, which clashed in the Kuban as "ice and fire", is vividly captured in the figurative titles of books about the civil war in the region. These are the memoirs of R. Gulya "The Ice Campaign" and the story of A. Serafimovich "The Iron Stream", dedicated to the heroic campaigns of the Volunteer and Taman armies. The tragedy of the fratricidal war is reflected in the title of A. Vesely's novel "Russia Washed in Blood", which tells, among other things, the events that took place in the Kuban. In a concise and frank form conveys the mood of the Cossacks at various stages of the revolution and civil war, the laconic language of the ditties of that time: "We are not Bolsheviks and not Cadets, we are Cossacks-neutralities" whole "and, finally," Lord Bolsheviks, do not work for nothing, the Cossack cannot be reconciled with the Soviet commissar. "
Candidate of Historical Sciences,associate Professor A. A. Zaitsev
Official website of the Krasnodar Territory Administration
In December 1918, at a meeting of the party activists in Kursk, L.D. Trotsky, the chairman of the Revolutionary Military Council of the republic and the people's commissar for naval affairs, analyzing the results of the year of the civil war, instructed: “Each of you should be clear that the old ruling classes inherited their art, their management skills from their grandfathers and great-grandfathers. What can we oppose to this? How can we compensate for our inexperience? Remember, comrades, only by terror. A consistent and merciless terror! Compliance, softness, history will never forgive us. If until now we have destroyed hundreds and thousands, now the time has come to create an organization whose apparatus, if necessary, can destroy tens of thousands. We have no time, no opportunity to look for our real, active enemies. We are forced to take the path of destruction. "
In confirmation and development of these words, on January 29, 1919, Ya. M. Sverdlov, on behalf of the Central Committee of the RCP (b), sent a circular letter known as "a directive on decossackization to all responsible comrades working in the Cossack regions." The directive read:
“The recent events on various fronts and Cossack regions, our advances deep into the Cossack settlements and the disintegration among the Cossack troops force us to give instructions to party workers about the nature of their work in the indicated regions. It is necessary, taking into account the experience of the Civil War with the Cossacks, to recognize as the only right one the most merciless struggle against all the tops of the Cossacks, through their universal extermination.
1. Carry out a mass terror against the rich Cossacks, exterminating them without exception; to carry out a merciless terror against all Cossacks who took any direct or indirect part in the struggle against Soviet power. It is necessary to take all those measures towards the average Cossacks that provide a guarantee against any attempts on their part to new actions against Soviet power.
2. To confiscate bread and force all surplus to be poured into the indicated points, this applies to both bread and all agricultural products.
3. Take all measures to help the resettling immigrant poor, organizing resettlement where possible.
4. Equalize the newcomers from other cities with the Cossacks in land and in all other respects.
5. to carry out complete disarmament, shoot everyone who has a weapon after the deadline for delivery.
6. To issue weapons only to reliable elements from other cities.
7. Leave the armed detachments in the Cossack villages from now on until complete order is established.
8. All commissars appointed to certain Cossack settlements are encouraged to show maximum firmness and unswervingly follow these instructions.
The Central Committee resolves to pass through the appropriate Soviet institutions the obligation of the People's Commissariat of Land to develop hastily actual measures for the mass resettlement of the poor to the Cossack lands. Central Committee of the RCP (b) ".
There is an opinion that the authorship of the directive on storytelling belongs only to one person - Ya. M. Sverdlov, and neither the Central Committee of the RCP (b) nor the Council of People's Commissars took any part in the adoption of this document. However, analyzing the entire course of the seizure of power by the Bolshevik Party in the period 1917-1918, it becomes obvious that violence and lawlessness were elevated to the rank of state policy. The desire for an unlimited dictatorship has provoked a cynical justification for the inevitability of terror.
Under these conditions, the terror unleashed against the Cossacks in the occupied villages acquired such proportions that, on March 16, 1919, the Plenum of the Central Committee of the RCP (b) was forced to recognize the January directive as erroneous. But the flywheel of the extermination machine was started, and it was already impossible to stop it.
The outbreak of state genocide on the part of the Bolsheviks and distrust of yesterday's neighbors - the highlanders, fear of them, pushed part of the Cossacks back onto the path of struggle against Soviet power, but now as part of General Denikin's Volunteer Army.
The outright genocide of the Cossacks that began led the Don to disaster, but in the North Caucasus it ended in complete defeat for the Bolsheviks. The 150,000th XI Army, which Fedko led after the death of Sorokin, was cumbersome to deploy for a decisive blow. From the flank it was covered by the XII Army, occupying the area from Vladikavkaz to Grozny. The Caspian-Caucasian Front was created from these two armies. In the rear, the Reds were uneasy. The Stavropol peasants were increasingly inclined towards the whites after the invasion of food detachments. The mountaineers turned away from the Bolsheviks, even those who supported them during the period of general anarchy. So, inside the Chechens, Kabardians and Ossetians there was a civil war: some wanted to go with the Reds, others with the Whites, and still others - to build an Islamic state. The Kalmyks frankly hated the Bolsheviks after the outrages perpetrated on them. The Terek Cossacks hid after the bloody suppression of the Bicherakhov uprising.
On January 4, 1919, the Volunteer Army inflicted a crushing blow on the XI Red Army in the area of \u200b\u200bthe village of Nevinnomysskaya and, breaking through the front, began to pursue the enemy in two directions - to the Holy Cross and to Mineralnye Vody. The gigantic XI-I army began to fall apart. Ordzhonikidze insisted to retreat to Vladikavkaz. Most of the commanders were against it, believing that the army pressed against the mountains would fall into a trap. Already on January 19, Pyatigorsk was taken by the whites, on January 20, the Georgievsk group of the Reds was defeated.
To repulse the white troops and to guide all military operations in the region, by the decision of the Caucasian Regional Committee of the RCP (b), at the end of December 1918, the Defense Council of the North Caucasus was created, headed by G.K. Ordzhonikidze. At the direction of the Council of People's Commissars of the RSFSR, weapons and ammunition were sent to the North Caucasus to help the XI Army.
But, despite all the measures taken, the Red Army units were unable to withstand the onslaught of the Volunteer Army. The Extraordinary Commissar of the South of Russia GK Ordzhonikidze, in a telegram addressed to VI Lenin on January 24, 1919, reported the state of affairs as follows: “The 11th Army is not there. She completely decomposed. The enemy occupies cities and villages with almost no resistance. At night, the question was to leave the entire Tersk region and go to Astrakhan. "
On January 25, 1919, during the general offensive of the Volunteer Army in the North Caucasus, the Kabardian Cavalry Brigade of two regiments under the command of Captain Zaurbek Dautokov-Serebryakov occupied Nalchik and Baksan in battle. And on January 26, A.G. Shkuro's detachments occupied the Kotlyarevskaya and Prokhladnaya railway stations. At the same time, the White Guard Circassian division and two Cossack Plastun battalions, turning to the right from the village of Novoosetinskaya, reached the Terek near the Kabardian village of Abaevo and joined forces with Shkuro along the railway line to Vladikavkaz. By the beginning of February, the white units of generals Shkuro, Pokrovsky and Ulagai blocked the administrative center of the Tersk region - the city of Vladikavkaz on three sides. On February 10, 1919, Vladikavkaz was taken. Denikin's command forced the XI-th Red Army to retreat across the hungry steppes to Astrakhan. The remnants of the XII Red Army crumbled. Extraordinary Commissar of the South of Russia G.K. Ordzhonikidze fled to Ingushetia with a small detachment, some units under the command of N. Gikalo went to Dagestan, and the bulk, representing already disorderly crowds of refugees, poured into Georgia through winter passes, freezing in the mountains, dying from avalanches and snowfalls, exterminated by yesterday's allies - the mountaineers. The Georgian government, fearing typhus, refused to let them in. The Reds tried to storm through from the Darial Gorge but were met with machine-gun fire. Many died. The remnants surrendered to the Georgians and were interned as prisoners of war.
By the time the Volunteer Army occupied the North Caucasus, of the independent Terek units that survived the defeat of the uprising, only a detachment of Terek Cossacks in Petrovsk, headed by the commander of the Terek Territory troops, Major General I. N. Kosnikov, remained. It consisted of the Grebensky and Gorsko-Mozdok cavalry regiments, a hundred of Kopai Cossacks, the 1st Mozdok and 2nd Grebensky Plastun battalions, a hundred foot Kopai Cossacks, the 1st and 2nd artillery divisions. By February 14, 1919, the detachment consisted of 2,088 people.
One of the first units of Tertsy who joined the Volunteer Army was the Terek officer regiment, formed on November 1, 1918 from the officer's detachment of Colonel B.N.Litvinov, who arrived in the army after the defeat of the Terek uprising (disbanded in March 1919), as well as detachments of colonels V.K.Agoeva, Z. Dautokova-Serebryakova and G.A.Kibirova.
On November 8, 1918, the 1st Terek Cossack Regiment (later poured into the 1st Terek Cossack Division) was formed as part of the Volunteer Army. The broad formation of Terek units began with the establishment of the Volunteer Army in the North Caucasus. The Terek formations in the Civil War were based on the 1st, 2nd, 3rd and 4th Terek Cossack divisions and the 1st, 2nd, 3rd and 4th Terek Plastun brigades, as well as the Terek Cossack cavalry artillery divisions and separate batteries, which were both part of the Troops Tersko-Dagestan Territory, and the Volunteer and Caucasian Volunteer armies. Beginning in February 1919, Terek formations were already conducting independent military operations against the Red Army. This was especially significant for the white forces in the south, in connection with the transfer of the Caucasian Volunteer Army to the Northern Front.
The Terek Plastun separate brigade was formed as part of the Volunteer Army on December 9, 1918 from the newly formed 1st and 2nd Terek Plastun battalions and the Terek Cossack artillery battalion, which included the 1st Terek Cossack and 2nd Terek Plastun batteries.
With the end of the North Caucasian operation of the Volunteer Army, the Armed Forces in the South of Russia established control over most of the territory of the North Caucasus. On January 10, 1919, A.I. Denikin appointed General V.P. Lyakhov, the commander of the III Army Corps, as the chief and commander of the troops of the created Tersko-Dagestan Territory. The newly appointed commander, in order to recreate the Terek Cossack army, was ordered to assemble the Cossack Circle to select the Army Ataman. The Tersk Large Army Circle began its work on February 22, 1919. More than twenty issues were put on the agenda, but in terms of importance, the first row was the question of adopting a new Constitution of the region, which was then adopted on February 27. The next day after the adoption of the Constitution, elections were held for the military chieftain. He was Major General G.A. Vdovenko, a Cossack of the State village. The Big Circle showed support for the Volunteer Army, elected a Small Circle (Commission of Legislative Provisions). At the same time, the Army Circle decided to temporarily deploy the military authorities and the residence of the military chieftain in the city of Pyatigorsk.
The territories liberated from Soviet power returned to the mainstream of peaceful life. The former Tersk region itself was transformed into the Tersko-Dagestan region with the center in Pyatigorsk. The Cossacks of the Sunzha villages, evicted in 1918, were returned back.
The British tried to restrict the advance of the White Guards, keeping the oil fields of Grozny and Dagestan for small "sovereign" formations, such as the Central Caspian government and the Gorsko-Dagestan government. Detachments of the British, even having landed in Petrovsk, began to move to Grozny. Leading the British, the White Guards entered Grozny on February 8 and moved on, occupying the Caspian coast to Derbent.
Confusion reigned in the mountains, which were approached by the White Guard troops. Each nation had its own government, or even several. Thus, the Chechens formed two national governments, which waged bloody wars among themselves for several weeks. The dead were counted in the hundreds. Almost every valley had its own money, often home-made, and rifle cartridges were the generally recognized "convertible" currency. Georgia, Azerbaijan, and even Great Britain tried to act as guarantors of "mountain autonomies". But the commander-in-chief of the Volunteer Army, AI Denikin (whom Soviet propaganda so loved to portray as a puppet of the Entente) resolutely demanded the abolition of all these "autonomies". Having appointed governors from the white officers of these nationalities in the national regions. So, for example, on January 19, 1919, the commander-in-chief of the Terek-Dagestan region, Lieutenant General V.P. Lyakhov, issued an order according to which a colonel, later major general, Tembot Zhanhotovich Bekovich-Cherkassky, was appointed the ruler of Kabarda. His assistants: Captain Zaurbek Dautokov-Serebryakov was appointed for the military part, Colonel Sultanbek Kasayevich Klishbiev was appointed for civil administration.
Relying on the support of the local nobility, General Denikin convened in March 1919 mountain congresses in Kabarda, Ossetia, Ingushetia, Chechnya and Dagestan. These congresses elected Rulers and Councils under them, which had extensive judicial and administrative powers. Sharia law was preserved in criminal and family matters.
At the beginning of 1919, in the Terek-Dagestan Territory, a system of self-government was formed by the region of two centers: the Cossack and the volunteer (both were in Pyatigorsk). As A.I.Denikin later noted, the unresolved issues of a number of issues dating back to pre-revolutionary times, lack of agreement in relations, the influence of the Kuban self-styledists on the Tertsi could not but generate friction between these two authorities. Only thanks to the awareness of the mortal danger in the event of a rupture, the absence of independent tendencies in the mass of the Terek Cossacks, personal relationships between representatives of both branches of government, the state mechanism in the North Caucasus worked throughout 1919 without significant interruptions. Until the end of the white power, the region continued to be under double subordination: the representative of the volunteer government (General Lyakhov was replaced by General of the cavalry I. a meeting in May 1919; the military chieftain ruled on the basis of the Terek constitution.
Political disagreements and misunderstandings between representatives of the two authorities, as a rule, ended in the adoption of a compromise solution. Friction between the two centers of power throughout 1919 was created mainly by a small but influential part of the radical independent Terek intelligentsia in the government and the Krug. The most vivid illustration is the position of the Terek faction of the Supreme Cossack circle, which gathered in Yekaterinodar on January 5 (18), 1920 as the supreme power of the Don, Kuban and Terek. The Terek faction retained a loyal attitude towards the government of the South of Russia, proceeding from the position of unacceptability of separatism for the army and the fatefulness of the mountain question. The resolution to break off relations with Denikin was adopted by the Supreme Circle of the Don, Kuban and Terek with a small number of votes from the Terek faction, most of which went home.
On the territory liberated from the Bolsheviks, the work of transport was improved, paralyzed enterprises were opened, and trade revived. In May 1919, the South-Eastern Russian Church Council was held in Stavropol. The Council was attended by bishops, clergy and laity chosen from the Stavropol, Don, Kuban, Vladikavkaz and Sukhum-Black Sea dioceses, as well as members of the All-Russian Local Council who found themselves in the south of the country. At the Council, issues of the spiritual and social structure of this vast territory were discussed, and the Supreme Provisional Church Administration was formed. Its chairman was Archbishop Mitrofan (Simashkevich) of Donskoy, members - Archbishop Dimitriy (Abashidze) of Tauride, Bishop Arseny (Smolensk) of Taganrog, Protopresbyter G.I.Schavelsky, Professor A.P. Rozhdestvensky, Count V. Musin-Pushkin and Professor P. Verkhovsky.
Thus, with the arrival of the white troops in the Terek region, the Cossack military government was restored, headed by the ataman, Major General G.A. Vdovenko. The South-Eastern Union of Cossack Troops, Mountaineers of the Caucasus and Free Peoples of the Steppes continued its work, the basis of which was the idea of \u200b\u200bthe federal principle of the Don, Kuban, Terek, the North Caucasus region, as well as the Astrakhan, Ural and Orenburg troops. The political goal of the Union was to join it as an independent state association to the future Russian Federation.
AI Denikin, in turn, advocated "preserving the unity of the Russian state, subject to the granting of autonomy to individual peoples and original formations (Cossacks), as well as wide decentralization of the entire state administration ... The basis for the decentralization of management was the division of the occupied territory into regions."
Recognizing the fundamental right of autonomy for the Cossack troops, Denikin made a reservation regarding the Terek army, which "in view of the extreme lopsidedness and the need to reconcile the interests of the Cossacks and mountaineers" should have entered the North Caucasus region on the basis of autonomy rights. It was planned to include representatives of the Cossacks and mountain peoples in the new structures of regional power. The mountain peoples were provided with broad self-government within ethnic borders, with an elected administration, non-interference by the state in matters of religion and public education, but without funding these programs from the state budget.
Unlike the Don and the Kuban, on the Terek the "connection with the all-Russian statehood" has not weakened. On June 21, 1919, Gerasim Andreevich Vdovenko, elected by the military ataman, opened the next Big Circle of the Terek Cossack army at the Park Theater of the city of Essentuki. The circle was also attended by the Commander-in-Chief of the Volunteer Army A. I. Denikin. The program of the Terek government said that "only a decisive victory over Bolshevism and the revival of Russia will create the possibility of restoring the power and native army, bled and weakened by the civil struggle."
In view of the ongoing war, the Tertsy were interested in increasing their numbers by attracting their neighbors-allies to the anti-Bolshevik struggle. Thus, the Karanogay people were included in the Terek army, and at the Big Circle the Cossacks expressed their agreement in principle to join the Ossetians and Kabardians "on equal terms" with the Army. The situation with the nonresident population was more complicated. Encouraging the entry of individual representatives of the indigenous peasants into the Cossack estate, the Tertsy were very prejudiced towards the demand of nonresident peasants to solve the land issue, to introduce them into the work of the Circle, as well as into central and local government bodies.
In the Tersk region, liberated from the Bolsheviks, a complete mobilization took place. In addition to the Cossack regiments, units formed from the highlanders were also sent to the front. Wanting to reaffirm their loyalty to Denikin, even yesterday's enemies of the Tertsi, the Chechens and Ingush, responded to the call of the Commander-in-Chief of the Volunteer Army and joined the White Guard ranks with their volunteers.
Already in May 1919, in addition to the Kuban combat units, the Circassian Cavalry Division and the Karachaev Cavalry Brigade operated on the Tsaritsin front. The 2nd Terek Cossack Division, the 1st Terek Plastun Brigade, the Kabardian Cavalry Division, the Ingush Cavalry Brigade, the Dagestan Cavalry Brigade and the Ossetian Cavalry Regiment, who had arrived from Terek and Dagestan, were also transferred here. In Ukraine, the 1st Terek Cossack Division and the Chechen Cavalry Division were involved against Makhno.
The situation in the North Caucasus remained extremely difficult. In June, Ingushetia raised an uprising, but a week later it was suppressed. Kabarda and Ossetia were disturbed by their forays by the Balkars and "Kermenists" (representatives of the Ossetian revolutionary democratic organization). In the mountainous part of Dagestan, Ali-Khadzhi raised an uprising, and in August this "baton" was taken up by the Chechen sheikh Uzun-Khadzhi, who settled in Vedeno. All nationalist and religious demonstrations in the North Caucasus were not only supported, but also provoked by anti-Russian circles in Turkey and Georgia. The constant military danger forced Denikin to keep up to 15 thousand soldiers in this region under the command of General I. G. Erdeli, including two Terek divisions - the 3rd and 4th divisions - and one more Plastun brigade belonged to the North Caucasian group.
Meanwhile, the situation at the front was even more deplorable. So, by December 1919, the Volunteer Army of General Denikin, under the pressure of three times superior enemy forces, lost 50% of its personnel. On December 1, only the wounded were registered in military medical institutions in the south of Russia 42,733 people. A large-scale retreat of the Armed Forces of the South of Russia began. On November 19, units of the red army broke into Kursk, on December 10, Kharkov was left, on December 28 - Tsaritsyn, and already on January 9, 1920, Soviet troops entered Rostov-on-Don.
On January 8, 1920, the Terek Cossacks suffered irreparable losses - units of the First Cavalry Army of Budyonny almost completely destroyed the Terek Plastun brigade. At the same time, the commander of the cavalry corps, General K. K. Mamontov, in spite of the order to attack the enemy, withdrew his corps through Aksai to the left bank of the Don.
In January 1920, the Armed Forces of the South of Russia numbered 81 506 people, of which: Volunteer units - 30 802, Don troops - 37 762, Kuban troops - 8 317, Terek troops - 3 115, Astrakhan troops - 468, Mountain units - 1042. These forces were clearly not enough to deter the Red offensive, but the separatist games of the Cossack leaders continued at this critical moment for all anti-Bolshevik forces.
In Yekaterinodar, on January 18, 1920, the Cossack Supreme Circle gathered, which began to create an independent union state and declared itself the supreme power in the affairs of the Don, Kuban and Terek. Some of the Don delegates and almost all Tertsy called for the continuation of the struggle in unity with the main command. Most of the Kuban, some of the Don and a few Tertsi demanded a complete break with Denikin. Some of the Kuban and Don people were inclined to end the struggle.
According to A. I. Denikin, "only the Tertsy - the ataman, the government and the faction of the Circle - almost fully represented the united front." Reproaches were made against the Kuban that the Kuban units had left the front, proposals were made to separate the eastern divisions ("linemen") from this army and annex them to the Terek. The Terek ataman G. A. Vdovenko spoke with the following words: “The Tertsi have one current. We have written in golden letters "United and indivisible Russia".
At the end of January 1920, a compromise clause was developed, accepted by all parties:
1. South Russian power is established on the basis of an agreement between the main command of the Armed Forces in the South of Russia and the Supreme Circle of the Don, Kuban and Terek, until the convocation of the All-Russian Constituent Assembly.
2. Lieutenant-General AI Denikin is recognized as the first head of the South Russian government ...
3. The law on the succession of power of the head of state is drawn up by the Legislative Chamber on a general basis.
4. Legislative power in the South of Russia is exercised by the Legislative Chamber.
5. The functions of the executive power, except for the head of the South Russian power, are determined by the Council of Ministers ...
6. The Chairman of the Council of Ministers is appointed by the person who heads the South Russian authorities.
7. The person who heads the South Russian government has the right to dissolve the Legislative Chamber and the right of a relative "veto" ...
In agreement with the three factions of the Supreme Circle, a cabinet of ministers was formed, but "the emergence of a new government did not bring any change in the course of events."
The military and political crisis of the White Guard South was growing. The government reform did not save the day any more - the front collapsed. On February 29, 1920, Stavropol was taken by units of the Red Army, on March 17 Yekaterinodar and the village of Nevinnomysskaya fell, on March 22 - Vladikavkaz, on March 23 - Kizlyar, on March 24 - Grozny, on March 27 - Novorossiysk, on March 30 - Port-Petrovsk and on April 7 - Tuapse ... Soviet power was restored almost throughout the entire territory of the North Caucasus, which was confirmed by the decree of March 25, 1920.
Part of the army of the Armed Forces of the South of Russia (about 30 thousand people) was evacuated from Novorossiysk to Crimea. The Terek Cossacks, who left Vladikavkaz (in total, together with the refugees, about 12 thousand people), went along the Georgian Military Highway to Georgia, where they were interned in camps near Poti, in a swampy malaria area. The demoralized Cossack units, trapped on the Black Sea coast of the Caucasus, for the most part surrendered to the Red units.
On April 4, 1920, A. I. Denikin gave the order to appoint as his successor Lieutenant General Baron P. N. Wrangel as Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of the South of Russia.
After the evacuation of the Armed Forces of the South of Russia to the Crimea from the remnants of the Terek and Astrakhan Cossack units in April 1920, the Separate Terek-Astrakhan Cossack Brigade was formed, which, from April 28, as the Terek-Astrakhan Brigade, was part of the 3rd Cavalry Division of the Consolidated Corps. On July 7, after reorganization, the brigade again became separate. In the summer of 1920, she was part of the Special Forces Group that participated in the Kuban landing. From September 4, the brigade operated separately as part of the Russian army and included the 1st Tersk, 1st and 2nd Astrakhan regiments and the Terek-Astrakhan Cossack horse-artillery division and the Separate Terek reserve Cossack hundred.
The attitude of the Cossacks to Baron Wrangel was ambivalent. On the one hand, he contributed to the dispersal of the Kuban Regional Rada in 1919, on the other hand, his toughness and adherence to order appealed to the Cossacks. The Cossacks' attitude towards him was not spoiled by the fact that Wrangel put the Don general Sidorin on trial for telegraphing to the army chieftain Bogaevsky about his decision to "withdraw the Don army from the Crimea and the subordination in which it is now located."
The situation with the Kuban Cossacks was more complicated. The military ataman Bukretov was opposed to the evacuation of the Cossack units trapped on the Black Sea coast to the Crimea. Wrangel was not immediately able to send the ataman to the Caucasus to organize the evacuation, and the remnants of those who did not surrender to the Reds (about 17 thousand people), only on May 4 were able to board the ships. Bukretov handed over the ataman power to the chairman of the Kuban government Ivanis, and together with the "self-styled" deputies of the Rada, taking with him part of the military treasury, fled to Georgia. The Kuban Rada, which gathered in Feodosia, recognized Bukretov and Ivanis as traitors, and elected the military chieftain of the military general Ulagai, but he refused power.
The small Terek group, headed by the ataman Vdovenko, was traditionally hostile to separatist movements and, therefore, had nothing in common with the ambitious Cossack leaders.
The lack of unity in the political Cossack camp and Wrangel's uncompromising attitude towards the "self-styled" allowed the commander-in-chief of the Russian army to conclude the treaty with the military atamans, which he considered necessary for the state structure of Russia. Gathering together Bogaevsky, Ivanis, Vdovenko and Lyakhov, Wrangel gave them 24 hours to think about it, and thus, “On July 22, an agreement was solemnly signed ... with the atamans and governments of the Don, Kuban, Terek and Astrakhan ... in the development of the agreement of 2 (15 ) April this year ...
1. The state formations of the Don, Kuban, Terek and Astrakhan are provided with complete independence in their internal structure and management.
2. The Council of Heads of Directorates under the Government and the Commander-in-Chief shall include, with a decisive vote on all issues, the chairmen of the governments of the state entities of the Don, Kuban, Terek and Astrakhan or their substitute members of their governments.
3. The commander-in-chief is assigned full authority over all the armed forces of state entities ... both in operational terms and on fundamental issues of army organization.
4. All necessary for supply ... food and other means are provided ... on a special allocation.
5. Management of railway tracks and main telegraph lines is given to the authority of the Commander-in-Chief.
6. Agreement and negotiations with foreign governments, both in the field of political and commercial policy, shall be carried out by the Ruler and the Commander-in-Chief. If these negotiations concern the interests of one of the state entities ..., the Ruler and the Commander-in-Chief preliminarily enters into an agreement with the subject ataman.
7. Establish a common customs line and a single indirect taxation ...
8. A single monetary system is established on the territory of the contracting parties ...
9. Upon the liberation of the territory of state formations ... this agreement has to be submitted for approval by the large military circles and regional Rada, but it accepts force immediately upon its signing.
10. This agreement is established until the complete end of the Civil War. "
The unsuccessful landing of the Kuban assault force led by General Ulagay in the Kuban in August 1920, and the choking September offensive on the Kakhovsky bridgehead, forced Baron Wrangel to lock himself up within the Crimean peninsula and begin preparations for defense and evacuation.
By the beginning of the offensive on November 7, 1920, the Red Army numbered 133 thousand bayonets and checkers, the Russian army had 37 thousand bayonets and checkers. The superior forces of the Soviet troops broke the defenses, and on November 12, Baron Wrangel issued an order to leave the Crimea. The evacuation organized by the Commander-in-Chief of the Russian Army was completed on November 16, 1920 and made it possible to save about 150 thousand military and civilians, including about 30 thousand Cossacks.
The territory of Russia was abandoned by the remnants of the last provisional state government and the last legitimate governments of the Cossack troops of the Russian Empire, including Tersky.
After the evacuation of the Russian army from the Crimea in Chataldzha, the Terek-Astrakhan regiment was formed as part of the Don corps. After the transformation of the army into the Russian General Military Union (ROVS), the regiment until the 1930s was a cropped unit. So by the fall of 1925, there were 427 people in the regiment, including 211 officers.
The Cossacks became the main mass base of the White movement. They also raised uprisings against Soviet power and liberated the territories, which were then used by the White Guard armies for their deployment. Without the Cossack resistance, the White movement could not have taken place at all.
Nevertheless, both during, and especially after the end of the civil war, White Guard memoirists, especially from among the major military leaders (A.I. Denikin, P.N. Wrangel, A.S. Lukomsky, etc.), as well as civilian political advisers whites, played their own game and, ultimately, contributed to the defeat of the White cause.
Conflict between leaders and external orientations
In May 1918, German troops entered the territory of the Don Cossacks region. This immediately served as an impetus for the uprising of the Don Cossacks against the power of the Bolsheviks. With the help of weapons delivered by the Germans (that was, however, the captured weapons of the tsarist army), the Don Cossacks expelled the Bolsheviks from their area and proclaimed their Cossack statehood. At its head, in the post of military chieftain, was Major General P.N. Krasnov.
The "Great Don Army", as the new state was nicknamed, announced that its independence was only temporary, until the restoration of the united Russian state. However, it was understood that the Don should enter the new Russia as an autonomous territory, with many institutions of its own statehood.
Krasnov has always been and remains a monarchist, a supporter of the unity of the Russian Empire. However, in this situation, as he later wrote, he was obliged to take into account the mood of the Cossacks. They were not at all eager to liberate Russia, but wanted to calmly settle down on their land. Krasnov understood that the Bolsheviks would not give this to the Cossacks, that there was a struggle ahead, but he considered it impossible to impose these goals on all Cossacks until they themselves understand this. Therefore, Krasnov intended to assign the main role in the struggle against the Bolsheviks for all of Russia to volunteer formations. He began to create, for the future "campaign against Moscow", volunteer armies under his own leadership. At the same time, the monarchical ideology of these armies was not hidden at all.
In the situation when German troops occupied part of the Don and all of neighboring Ukraine, Krasnov based his policy on cooperation with Germany. He even sent an embassy to Kaiser Wilhelm II. The cooperation was not burdensome for Don. Germany at that time took practically nothing from him. But in exchange for his loyalty, Krasnov received from the Germans a rather large consignment of weapons. He honestly handed over a third of it to General Denikin's Volunteer Army. At the same time, earlier, during the World War, Krasnov regularly performed his duty in battles with the Germans.
For General Denikin and his entourage, the very fact of Krasnov's cooperation with the Germans was unacceptable. Denikin did not want to notice the obvious: that only this cooperation ensures the rear and supplies of his own army. Denikin has invariably declared his loyalty to the Entente. And most importantly, he wanted, on behalf of "one, indivisible Russia", to become the leader of all Russian anti-Bolshevik forces. On this basis, he invariably demanded political submission from Krasnov.
The disagreements between the two leaders led to the fact that they began to act in divergent directions. In the summer of 1918, instead of helping the Don and further marching to Moscow (or joining with the white armies of the Volga region and the Urals), Denikin went south to liberate the North Caucasus from the Bolsheviks.
After the defeat of Germany and the arrival of the Entente ships in the southern Russian ports, and in the face of a new offensive by the Reds, Denikin, with the help of British and French emissaries, managed to "persuade" Krasnov. In January 1919, he was forced to issue an order on the subordination of the Don Cossack troops to the “commander-in-chief of the armed forces in southern Russia,” that is, Denikin. True, this did not save Krasnov himself from resignation, into which he was sent in February by the Don Army Circle (parliament).
Conflict between dictatorship and democracy
Unlike the Don, the Cossack Kuban immediately recognized Denikin's military supremacy. But she stubbornly defended her political independence. In the Kuban, in contrast to the Don, on the contrary, left-wing, democratic sentiments were strong. In addition, the Kuban sympathized with the kindred independent Ukraine. The Kuban Rada immediately adopted a manifesto, which expressed the desire to build a new Russia on the basis of a federation. The federation was unacceptable to Denikin. He believed that it contradicted the principle of "one indivisible Russia" he professed.
During the summer and autumn of 1919, there were constant consultations between representatives of the High Command and the Cossack regions on the subject of delineating civilian power. Representatives of Denikin (leaders of the liberal party of the Cadets) tried to force the Cossacks to abandon most of the attributes of their independence, sought to centralize and concentrate power in the hands of the political bodies of the High Command. The Cossacks just as stubbornly defended their right to the newly acquired autonomy.
The conflict between the High Command and the Kuban Rada resulted in its dispersal in November 1919, and several members of the Rada were hanged by a court-martial sentence. This did not lead to the desired consolidation, as Denikin had hoped. On the contrary, the Kuban Cossacks began to desert in large numbers from the army.
Regional consciousness
The mass of Cossacks bravely and selflessly fought for the liberation of their lands. All eyewitnesses have always recognized this. But the same Cossacks were not so willing to go to war with the Bolsheviks outside their regions. Especially many complaints were made against the Kuban people, whose area from the end of 1918 was in the deep rear of the white armies.
The source of such behavior of the Cossacks was not some kind of thoughtlessness or fatal peacefulness of the Cossacks in relation to the Bolsheviks (who on January 25, 1919 issued a decree on the extermination of all Cossacks). The goals of the White movement, declared by its leaders, only partially coincided with the political aspirations of the Cossacks. The Cossacks appreciated the newly acquired freedom, and they were not at all happy about the return to the orders of the Russian Empire.
The White Guards accused the Cossacks of unwillingness to fight for "a single indivisible Russia" and of undermining the political unity of the White movement (by which they understood the unconditional subordination of the Cossacks to the White leadership). But, obviously, the whites themselves should take into account the political aspirations of the mass support of their own cause.
January marks the hundredth anniversary of the adoption by the organizational bureau (Orgburo) of the RCP (b) of the so-called "Circular Letter of the Central Committee on the attitude towards the Cossacks" ("To all responsible comrades working in the Cossack regions").
The document was adopted on January 24, 1919. This controversial document was in effect for less than two months, until March 16, 1919, when it was suspended. In modern bourgeois propaganda, this "circular letter" is widely used to whip up anti-Soviet sentiments in the historical regions where the Cossacks live, primarily on the Don. Therefore, it is important to know why this document was adopted, what its effect was expressed, and why its effect was canceled.
Bourgeois anti-communist propaganda is doing its utmost to portray the "circular letter" as a kind of directive that set in motion the "genocide of the Cossacks" on an ethnic basis. In publications on this topic, propagandists compete in the Solzhenitsyn style - who will name the greater number of Cossacks "shot by the Bolsheviks." True, it is not clear - if the Bolsheviks carried out the "genocide" of the Cossacks, then where did the people who call themselves Cossacks come from today? And why, if there was a "genocide", then the Bolsheviks who won the civil war did not shoot the ancestors of these people?
The appeal "To all responsible comrades ..." was accepted by the Orgburo, led by Y. Sverdlov, which gives rise to some publicists to assert that he was the author of the document. However, by 1919 Sverdlov held a number of posts and signed many documents. The topic of dealing with the Cossacks has never been his topic. In fact, the authors of the "circular letter" remained unknown. There are versions that the text of the document could have been developed in the People's Commissariat for Military and Naval Affairs. However, most historians are inclined to believe that it was prepared in the Don Bureau (Donburo) of the RCP (b) and was admitted to the Orgburo on the basis of the Donets' report. The Orgburo itself consisted of three people - Sverdlov, M. Vladimirsky and N. Krestinsky.
In modern publications they like to quote the first paragraph of the letter: “To carry out mass terror against the rich Cossacks, exterminating them without exception; to carry out a merciless mass terror against all Cossacks in general who took any direct or indirect part in the struggle against Soviet power. It is necessary to apply to the middle Cossacks all those measures that provide a guarantee against any attempts on their part to new actions against Soviet power. "
Thus, the document deals with the struggle against the rich and the Cossacks who fought against the Soviets. Quoting this point, anti-Soviet propagandists immediately begin to assert with foam at the mouth: you see, you see, this is an order to kill Cossacks ... The fact that the document says about the destruction of "rich Cossacks", and not the middle or the poor, are trying not to turn attention, chattering the essence.
The document said that to the middle Cossacks "it is necessary to apply all those measures that provide a guarantee against any attempts on their part to new actions." The measures are not specified, and it is clear that the measures were intended to be different. But modern liars do not even notice this, repeating: "... terror, terror ...". Some scribblers understand that there are not enough arguments and falsify the document by adding the “same” particle to the text. It turns out: "it is necessary to apply all the same measures to the average Cossacks ...". So they are trying to convince that the Soviet government did not make a difference between the rich and average Cossacks. Fortunately, there are publicly available photocopies of the circular letter that expose the forgery.
The existence of poor Cossacks, who supported the Soviet power and fought for it with arms in their hands, and, accordingly, did not belong either to the enemies - rich Cossacks, or to the wavering average Cossacks, modern scribblers do not remember at all. Some strange picture of "genocide" turns out ...
But everything falls into place, if we remember who today, at the beginning of the XXI century, calls himself “Cossacks” and draws an informational picture in this topic.
Take, for example, a man who today holds the post of “ataman of the military Cossack society“ The Great Don Host ”" - Viktor Goncharov. ... And we will find out that he is also the deputy governor of the Rostov region.
Or let's take the “ataman of the Kuban Cossack army” - Nikolai Doludu. And then we find out that he is also the deputy governor of the Krasnodar Territory. And so - along the entire vertical of power in the modern "Cossacks". Its leaders are simultaneously officials, big businessmen, deputies from United Russia ...
Now it is clear why they perceive the 1919 directive on the extermination of the rich Cossacks - enemies of Soviet power - as a call to "destroy the Cossacks." Because today they themselves are “rich Cossacks”. The cat smells whose meat it has eaten. The only pity is that they are trying to involve ordinary members of Cossack societies who are not “rich Cossacks” into the anti-Soviet bacchanalia.
Let's move on to what the consequences and results of the "circular letter" were and why it was necessary to cancel it. At the beginning of 1919, the Red Army occupied only the northern part of the Don region (Upper Don). The rest of the Don continued to remain in the hands of the Whites (for this reason, the Bolsheviks could not stage a "genocide" against the Cossacks, even if they had such an intention). How many Cossacks were shot as a result of the terror? A member of the Donkom of the RCP (b) S. Syrtsov (the future "right deviator", himself shot in 1937) reported: “Mass executions were carried out in the area. There are no exact numbers (over 300). The mood of the Cossack population from the very beginning was suppressed, but oppositional. The planned conspiracy was revealed, the participants were shot. The Eighth Army's opposition to the terror was hampered.
Thus, the number of those executed was about 300 people. He is clearly not attracted to "genocide". It is another matter that the January directive of the Orgburo, which relied on terror, actually gave way to excesses on the ground. The northern part of the Don region was occupied by Red Army units, which consisted mainly of Red Army peasants who did not feel friendliness to the Cossacks. I still remember the events of 1905, when the Cossack units, loyal to the tsar, mercilessly suppressed peasant uprisings. We saw the Red Army and the cruelty of the White Cossacks in relation to the peasant population on the Don during the civil war. The reciprocal hatred of the peasants for the Cossacks gave rise to abuse and led to unnecessary repression of the Cossack population. But, as we see from Syrtsov's report, even then the leadership of the 8th Army prevented the use of unnecessary measures of terror. The clause of the directive on terror "in relation to all the Cossacks in general who took ... participation in the struggle against Soviet power" was generally absurd and impracticable, since in 1918 a significant number of Cossacks who had previously fought on the side of the Whites went over to the Red Army - sometimes they crossed over with whole regiments ...
Nevertheless, excesses on the ground, coupled with the White Guard agitation, which frightened the Cossacks with the coming "horrors of Bolshevism", led to the fact that on March 11, 1919, an anti-Soviet rebellion broke out in the north of the Don.
The situation was analyzed in Moscow by the Soviet government. On March 16, a plenum of the Central Committee of the RCP (b) was held with the participation of V.I. Lenin and I.V. Stalin. The plenum decided that the resolution of the Orgburo was "unfulfillable for the Don Cossacks" and suspended the "application of measures against the Cossacks", in fact, canceled the action of the "circular letter". The kink has been eliminated.
Today bourgeois propaganda in every possible way exaggerates the consequences of the "circular letter" (lasting less than two months), attributing "cruelty" to the Bolsheviks, but does not want to notice the real atrocities of the White Guards, the reaction to which was, among other things, that directive. Meanwhile, it is the actions of the whites - both in relation to the Cossacks who supported Soviet power, and in relation to the peasant population ("nonresident") - that fall under the definition of genocide.
In 1918, during the reign of the white general Krasnov on the Don, a real policy of "decossackization" was carried out, when the Cossacks accused of sympathizing with the Soviets were expelled from the Cossack estate. The exception meant expulsion from the territory of the Cossack region. According to historians, more than 30 thousand Cossacks were subjected to such expulsion, according to the "stanitsa verdicts".
The peasant population, which did not submit to the whites, was also subject to expulsion. Let's turn to the documents of the White Guards themselves. On August 29, 1918, General Krasnov wrote an order on the situation in the white "1st Don Plastun Division" recruited from the peasants. Revolutionary agitation was discovered in the division. In response to this, the white general ordered "the families of all the listed guilty persons to immediately be sent out of the great Don army, and the property of the latter to be confiscated." "In the event of a repetition of these sad phenomena, I will disband the peasant units with all further consequences for them, that is, the eviction of families from the army," the general threatened.
Krasnov repeated similar threats about the expulsion of the non-Cossack population on November 6, 1918, against the residents of the Taganrog District, who thwarted the mobilization into the White Army. “I warn the residents of the Taganrog District that if they do not recover from Bolshevism by the time they are recruited and don’t give the army a healthy and honest contingent of recruits, then all those families in which there are villainous soldiers or who evade the supply of recruits will be deprived of the right to land: the land and property they have will be taken away for the army, the land and property will be transferred to the defenders of the Don, and they themselves will be expelled from the army as beggars. Let these wretched sons of our homeland not bother me then with requests for mercy to their aged parents, wives and small children. There should be no place for tares among the rich Don fields ... ", - said the White Guard leader.
Why does not modern bourgeois propaganda write about "genocide" in this case?
In the case where the masses rose up to open resistance, the White Guards went through with fire and sword. The villagers of Stepanovka revolted, shooting one Cossack and capturing a white officer. "For the killed Cossack I order 10 residents to be hanged in the village of Stepanovka ... For the capture of an officer, burn the entire village," wrote the order on November 10 (October 28, old style), the chief of staff of the White Army, General Denisov.
"I prohibit arresting workers, but ordering them to be shot or hanged", "I order all arrested workers to be hanged on the main street and not filmed for three days," General Denisov wrote in his orders on November 23 (November 10, old style).
Fleeing from the massacres of the White Guards, tens of thousands of people in the summer of 1918 fled along with the retreating Red detachments. “With the 1st Don Rifle Division, thousands of refugees were moving east towards Tsaritsyn. With the release of the Martyno-Orlovsky detachment, the number of refugees increased to eighty thousand. This huge mass of people moved on foot, on carts, in railway trains. People brought their meager property with them, drove cattle. It was hot, vegetation was drying, clouds of acrid dust hung over the roads. In the area between Zimovniki and Kotelnikovsky there is no good fresh water, the lakes and rivers here, with rare exceptions, are bitter-salty. People and animals suffered from excruciating heat and thirst, suffocated from dust, exhausted from hunger. The weak could not stand it, fell and died either from hunger and thirst, or from widespread infectious diseases. It was scary to watch how the exhausted people, together with the animals, fell to the dirty puddles teeming with all kinds of rot, near which the dying lay ... To remain in place meant to die of hunger, waterlessness, heat and disease, or to be exterminated by the White Guards, "the red commander wrote in his memoirs , a native of the Don peasants, Semyon Budyonny.
Isn't this real genocide? ..
The rule of the White Guards in the Don and Kuban, in the Urals and in Siberia in 1918-1919 demonstrated who is who in the civil war: it convincingly showed that whites, proteges of capitalists and landowners, are enemies of a working person, be he a Cossack or a peasant.
On February 29, 1920, the first All-Russian Congress of Labor Cossacks opened in Moscow. The congress adopted a resolution in which it emphasized the need to strengthen the unity of workers, peasants and labor Cossacks. Those Cossacks who, under duress or out of darkness, fought on the side of the whites, were offered amnesty in case of surrender. Lenin spoke at the congress, who said that the difficulties of the civil war "rallied the workers and forced the peasants and the working Cossacks" to follow the "truth of the Bolsheviks."
In 1920, the white generals were finally defeated. The end of the civil war opened the way for the masses in the South of Russia, including the Cossack population, to build a new society.
In the evening of August 4, in the Elanskaya stanitsa of the Sholokhovsky district of the Rostov region, the solemn opening of the memorial complex "Don Cossacks in the fight against the Bolsheviks" took place. Through the efforts of many Cossacks, primarily Vladimir Petrovich Melikhov, the memorial immortalized the memory of the seven main administrative and military leaders of the Quiet Don during the Civil War. Six of these leaders are represented by bronze bas-reliefs: E. A. Voloshinov, V. M. Chernetsov, A. M. Kaledin, A. M. Nazarov, S. V. Denisov and I. A. Polyakov, the seventh is immortalized in a four-meter bronze statue with the ataman feather in his hands - General Pyotr Krasnov, ataman of the Great Don Army.
"PLEASE THINK, COMRADES, TO WHOM ARE YOU GIVING A MONUMENT?"
In order to realize that the opening of the memorial complex in the village of Elanskaya has nothing to do with the "opening of the monument to Hitler," as some local residents have hastened to say, you just need to understand one simple thing. Although it is the leaders of the Don army that are represented in the memorial (and in this capacity, the monument is one of the first), first of all, the memorial is erected in memory of the tragedy of the entire Don Cossacks. And the same memorials must be erected on the lands of all the Cossack troops who were in Russia on the eve of the Civil War. Because, alas, the Cossacks did not leave any tangible memory for themselves. And they did not leave, not because they themselves wished to disappear without a trace, but because they were greatly "helped" to do this. Who exactly?
In Soviet, and even in Russian historiography, one can find the point of view that the Cossacks themselves alienated the Bolsheviks, who tried with all their might to integrate them into a new life. The reason for this, they say, was the backwardness of the Cossacks and their stubborn unwillingness to break with the "exploiters". Therefore, therefore, if they did receive it, then they deserved it. Let's see how fair this point of view is and what exactly the Russian Cossacks were like on the eve of the revolution.
Who the Cossacks were and what did they do to them
The total number of the Cossacks in 1917 was at least 4.4 million people (according to some sources, 6 7 million). At the same time, there were several more than 300 thousand Cossacks in the ranks. The total population of the Russian Empire on the eve of the revolution was estimated at 166 million people, and the Imperial Army - at 10-12 million people. Of the total number of Cossacks, the Don army numbered more than 2.5 million Cossacks, the Kuban - 1.4 million, the Terskoe - 250 thousand. The total number of the Amur, Ussuri, Siberian and Trans-Baikal Cossack troops was slightly less than 1 million. The Ural Cossacks numbered more than 150 thousand people, of whom not a trace remained after the Civil War, which makes the fate of this army unique even by the standards of revolutionary Russia.
The Cossacks were one of the most closed classes of the Russian Empire. It was impossible to become a Cossack, they could only be born - since 1811, by a special royal decree it was forbidden to leave the Cossacks and enroll in the Cossacks. The village and district Krugs and Atamans enjoyed considerable independence in spending funds: they built schools, gymnasiums, military schools, assigned pensions to war invalids and families of the victims, built bridges, repaired roads, and so on. Each Cossack was obliged to serve 20 years, of which 4 years in cadre units, 7 years - in the reserve of the 1st stage. After that, he could be involved in the system only in the event of a major war. This means that, starting at the age of 21, from the age of 32, he could calmly deal with his family and household.
The Cossacks, along with the peasantry and the clergy, were one of the most conservative estates in the Russian Empire. At the same time, they were well organized, polls armed and excellently trained to wield weapons. Of course, any government was obliged to reckon with them and, whenever possible, tried to win them over to its side.
Soviet power was no exception. On December 7, 1917, the Second Congress of Soviets issued an Appeal to the Labor Cossacks. I wonder how the Bolsheviks tried to attract the Cossacks? The Cossacks were a conservative, self-organizing and military force. The Bolsheviks, on the other hand, advocated the demolition of everything old, for the "dictatorship of the proletariat", which was in no way compatible with the original Cossack way of life, and for the complete disarmament of everyone except themselves and those who would agree to fight for them. It would seem that the Cossacks had no points of contact with the Bolsheviks and could not have.
But no, such a point was still found. It was called exactly the same as the current ideological "national democrats", almost no different from the ideological Bolsheviks, even their nationality - "Down with work!" In the sense - "Down with government service!" And the Cossack youth, especially the front-line soldiers, bought into it.
Indeed, the service of the Cossacks to the state was difficult, even in material terms. For example, for each young Cossack his kuren (that is, a large patriarchal family) had to buy a horse, a pike, a saber, a rifle, a dagger, two revolvers, two sets of summer and winter uniforms, and so on. And in peacetime, not to mention the military, the Cossack did not dare to leave for more than three days without the permission of the village chieftain. In addition to the obligation to go to war, each Cossack had to regularly attend military training sessions, in terms of their severity and intensity, incomparable with those that the Soviet "partisans" went through.
And Lenin offered the Cossacks three populist points, which the "old regime" had nothing to cover:
1) Compulsory military service was canceled for the Cossacks;
2) All responsibilities for the uniforms and armament of Cossack employees were assumed by the Soviet treasury;
3) All Cossacks were allowed freedom of movement around the country, military fees were canceled.
The real content of these points, as the Bolsheviks headed by Lenin understood them "about themselves," was completely different, and the Cossacks soon had to be convinced of this by their bitter experience:
1) Those who did not go to the Red Army to fight far from their native places, were decoded and resettled to Central Russia or Siberia;
2) In order to receive weapons and equipment from the treasury, the Cossacks had to hand them over there first, for concealing weapons - execution;
3) You could walk and drive anywhere, but only during the day, even in your own village: a curfew, for its violation - execution.
Both then and now the communists and their supporters argued and assert that the main thing in terms of motivating repression against the Cossacks was the material-class moment: since most of the Cossacks were wealthy, they fell under the punishing sword of decossackization.
This is not entirely true. The main target of the repression was precisely the traditional way of life. In fairness, it should be said that the class hatred imposed by the Bolsheviks was not at all reduced to the principle of "plunder the loot", although it included it as one of the main ideological components. Conservative communities, more or less loyal to old Russia, were exterminated regardless of their well-being: simply because of their conservatism and loyalty.
"MUST BE DESTROYED BY THE CROSSING"
The hypothesis that the Soviet government originally planned the destruction of the Cossacks as a class precisely because of the special way of life is confirmed, first of all, by the Soviet documents themselves. For example, the decision of the Don Bureau of the RCP (b) "On basic principles in relation to the Cossacks", dated April 1919:
"1. The existence of the Don Cossacks, with their economic way of life, remnants of economic privileges, firmly entrenched reactionary traditions, memories of political privileges, remnants of the patriarchal system, with the dominant everyday and political influence of richer old people and a closely-knit group of officers and bureaucrats, stands before the proletarian power by the constant threat of counterrevolutionary actions.
These performances are all the more dangerous because the military organization of the Cossacks was an integral part of even their everyday peaceful life. In general, training in the art of war, which makes every Cossack from 18 years old to the age of complete physical old age, a skilled warrior, gives the counter-revolution a ready-made cadre of soldiers (up to 300 thousand people) who can very quickly mobilize (examples of all former uprisings) and arm themselves (hidden with the greatest cunning weapon).
The position of Soviet power, the threat of a successful offensive against which foreign imperialism is far from being eliminated, the presence of this cadre of manpower for counter-revolution threatens the greatest danger.
All this poses an urgent task to the question of the complete, rapid and decisive destruction of the Cossacks as a special household economic group, the destruction of its economic foundations, the physical destruction of the Cossack bureaucracy and officers, in general, all the tops of the Cossacks, actively counter-revolutionary, dispersing and neutralizing the rank-and-file Cossacks and the formal liquidation of the Cossacks. ...
2. The practical implementation of this task at the moment must be in accordance with the strategic position of the front, so as not to cause immediate internal actions of complications for the front and so that imprudent demonstrative repressions do not stop the decay among the Cossacks still remaining in the enemy's ranks.
The use of repression and mass terror should be in the nature of a well-founded punishment for the behavior of individuals, farmsteads, villages (attempted uprisings, opposition to Soviet power, espionage, etc.).
In relation to the southern, the most counter-revolutionary, Cossacks, economic terror must be carried out (economic exsanguination of the Cossacks). Measures of this order should be:
1. Land dispossession of the multi-land Cherkasy Cossacks, land disposition of the most counter-revolutionary groups in other districts.
2. Abolition of military ownership of land (destruction of military, yurt lands), allotment of this land to land-poor local peasants and settlers, observing, if possible, forms of collective land use.
3. Confiscation of fishing property from the Cossacks across the Don (the possession of which was one of the existing privileges of the Cossacks) and its transfer to fishing cooperatives and peasant fishermen.
4. The imposition of contributions to individual pages.
5. Conducting an emergency tax in such a way that its main burden, along with the big bourgeoisie, falls on the Cossacks ... "
Even shorter, this can be formulated in the words of another April document of the Donburo: “the very existence of the Cossacks with their way of life, privileges and survivals, and, most importantly, the ability to wage an armed struggle, poses a threat to Soviet power. and resettlement outside the Don "
The true motivation for such cruel actions against the Cossacks can be better understood from the following thought expressed by Trotsky: "Cossacks are the only part of the Russian nation capable of self-organization. For this reason, they must be destroyed without exception." Hence, the emotionality that is indecent for a politician becomes clear, which Trotsky expressed about the fate of the Cossacks: “This is a kind of zoological environment, and nothing more. throughout the Don and on all of them to instill fear and almost religious horror. The old Cossacks must be burned in the flames of the social revolution ... Let their last remnants, like gospel pigs, be thrown into the Black Sea ... "For reprisals against passionate subethnos of the Russian of the people, as you can see from here, you can "pull by the ears" even the Gospel, which is hated by all Bolsheviks, and especially "ethnic" ones, just to set various parts of the Russian people against each other ...
So, in 1918, the Bolsheviks launched a form of terror against the Cossacks, which was "legally" formalized by the directive of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee of January 24, 1919 "On the extermination of the Cossacks" (!) - a case that had no precedent in Russian history, when entire sub-ethnic groups of the Russian people were subject to extermination in the legislative order: they had to, as Trotsky put it, "arrange Carthage." After such directives, it would be somehow strange to expect from simple Don, Kuban and Terek Cossacks loyalty to "a united and indivisible Russia", in Soviet guise, actively exterminating them.
At first, the Cossacks were suppressed by force, destroying not only everyone who raised arms against Soviet power, but also all suspicious ones in general, even just by chance.
"... I propose the following to be unswervingly executed: to exert all efforts to eliminate the disturbances that have arisen as soon as possible by concentrating maximum forces to suppress the uprising and by applying the most severe measures in relation to the instigating farmsteads:
A) burning of rebellious farmsteads;
b) merciless executions of all persons without exception who took direct or indirect participation in the uprising;
c) executions, after 5 or 10 people, of the adult male population of the insurgent farmsteads;
d) mass taking of hostages from neighboring farmsteads to the insurgents;
e) a wide notification of the population of the farmsteads of the villages, etc., that all the villages and farmsteads noticed in helping the insurgents will be mercilessly exterminated by the entire adult male population and be burned at the first opportunity to find help; exemplary implementation of punitive measures with a broad notification of the population. "
"The Revolutionary Military Council of the 8th Army orders in the shortest possible time to suppress the uprising of the traitors who took advantage of the confidence of the Red troops and raised a mutiny in the rear. The traitors of the Don once again discovered in themselves the age-old enemies of the working people. All the Cossacks who raised weapons in the rear of the Red troops must be completely destroyed, all those who have anything to do with the uprising and anti-Soviet agitation must be destroyed, without stopping at the percent destruction of the population of the villages, burn down the farms and villages that have raised weapons against us in the rear. There is no pity for the traitors. All units acting against the insurgents , ordered to pass with fire and sword the area embraced by the rebellion, so that other villages would not have a thought that through a treacherous uprising it is possible to return Krasnov's general-tsarist regime. "
But enough to quote Soviet documents. The above quotes are more than enough to understand their general direction. Let's move on to the fate of individual Cossack troops who died in the Civil War, most of which, as the realities of recent decades have shown, were never destined to be reborn.
Being limited by the volume of publication, we cannot tell about all the disappeared Cossack troops, for example, about the Astrakhan, Ussuriysk or Semirechye Cossacks, or about the Euphrates army that has not been fully equipped. Therefore, we will confine ourselves to only the most numerous Cossack troops, who to the greatest extent influenced the course of Russian history at the beginning of the middle of the 20th century.
DON, KUBAN AND TERSK COSSACKS
For the first time, the Don Cossacks took the side of the Bolsheviks in late 1917 - early 1918 "out of interest" and out of a desire to end the war. Their hopes were immediately grossly disappointed. Already in the reply to the Don Circle from the commander of the Northern detachment Yu. V. Sablin, dated February 12, 1918, it was asserted that "the Cossacks as such should be destroyed with their class and privilege, this is mandatory." The Don people were not going to endure the first attempt at "decossackization" for a long time, and on March 21, 1918, an anti-communist uprising broke out in the village of Suvorovskaya, which soon engulfed the entire Don. At the beginning of May 1918, the Don Salvation Circle was assembled, which elected General P. N. Krasnov as Ataman and began to liberate the Don from the Bolsheviks and to build his own statehood - "until the restoration of the national state on an all-Russian scale."
The Donets gave in to the promises of the Bolsheviks for the second time in late 1918 - early 1919, when the authority of Krasnov and the Don Army Circle staggered under the blows of the Red troops at the front and volunteers with "allies" in the rear. Cossacks, under the influence of the red propaganda corrupting the Don army, and without waiting for the arrival of the "allies" promised by Denikin, abandoned the front, hoping to "make peace with the Bolsheviks" according to the principle proposed by the latter: "You are on your own, and we are on our own." The spring of 1919 showed how much the Cossacks were deceived in their naive expectations.
For the third and last time during the Civil War, the Don Cossacks en masse went over to the side of the Reds already in 1920 - during the absolutely shameful for the volunteer command of the Novorossiysk evacuation and especially during the surrender of the Kuban army on the Black Sea coast, when 2 Don and 4 Kuban corps, abandoned volunteers. Most of those who surrendered went to the Reds not out of love for them - they hated the Reds for a long time and stubbornly - but only because they hated the Whites even more after this surrender. As the Don of the Gundorovsky regiment, who had escaped from the Red captivity, told in June 1920, “The brothers they have ours is our passion. There are Donets, there are also Kuban residents ... Black Sea. "The pipes," they say, "so that someday we will once again begin to serve whites. Why did they leave us to fend for themselves in Novorossiysk? Gentlemen generals showed themselves there. Enough to amuse their excellencies, waking them up from us. "These, who were captured by the Reds by the sea, are the most feisty. They are ferocious for a reason. They say so, your generals."
The tragic fate of the Kuban Cossack army, the second largest after the Donskoy, was, among other circumstances, due to the unfortunate intrigue of politicians from the Kuban Rada with "independence". This "independence" reached its climax in the fall of 1919, when members of the Rada concluded an agreement with the Caucasian mountaineers, according to which the Kuban troops were placed at the disposal of the mountain government. At the moment when the fate of the entire White Struggle was being decided on the Moscow direction, it was impossible to call such a treaty otherwise than treason. The massacre of the "self-styled", which was perpetrated by General Wrangel, who had arrived in the Kuban, finally undermined the spirit of many Kuban Cossacks, who naively believed that "Rada stands up for us." The Kubans began to abandon the front en masse, hoping to reach an agreement with the Bolsheviks at home. Needless to say, after the evacuation of volunteers from Novorossiysk, the Red Army and the Polish front were at best waiting for the Kuban people, at worst and most often - the northern and Siberian camps. The remnants of the Kuban Cossacks who were aware of their identity were finished off in the late 1920s and early 1930s: collectivization, Holodomor, "black boards", unsuccessful uprisings suppressed by punishers - all of this in the works of Soviet agitprop, such as the film "Kuban Cossacks" find no mentions.
The Terek Cossack army, the smallest of the three Cossack troops of the South of Russia, was forced to leave the historical stage very first. By the time of the October Revolution, the Terek Cossacks had less than 40 thousand people in the ranks. Ataman of the Terek army, Mikhail Alexandrovich Karaulov, with his authority and military-administrative abilities, forced the mountaineers to reckon with the Terek army, which had long been hostile to the Terek Cossacks and surrounded it from all sides. But on December 12, 1917, ataman Karaulov was killed at the Prokhladnaya station by revolutionary soldiers, and the mountaineers with the Terek Cossacks immediately began to cut and shoot each other. The Tertsi spent almost the entire Civil War mainly on their own land, bleeding to death under the onslaught of the many times superior forces of the mountaineers and the Bolsheviks who supported them. Only a few managed to evacuate from Novorossiysk and, subsequently, from the Crimea, led by the last Ataman of the Terek army, G.A.Vdovenko. Most of the surviving Terek Cossacks were subjected to "decossackization", and their lands and property were given to the Chechens.
ORENBURG AND URAL COSSACKS
In Orenburg and in the Urals, the Cossacks were much more polarized in their political views than in the Kuban and Don. True, in the opposite way. If a significant part of the Orenburg Cossack army, with the exception of the military school, the higher authorities and many officers, almost immediately went over to the side of the Reds, then the Urals almost without exception took the side of the Whites.
There are several reasons for this: in particular, the Orenburg Cossack army was relatively "young" and it had a huge percentage of front-line youth who succumbed to the Bolshevik propaganda and went under the command of the main Orenburg "Chervon Cossacks" brothers Kashirins. True, after the repressions began on the lands of the Orenburg army, many senior Cossacks and even front-line soldiers went over to the whites.
The Ural Cossack army, on the contrary, had a long tradition, having existed since at least the 15th century. In addition, most of the Ural army was made up of Old Believers Cossacks, who were horrified by the inverted pentagrams on the tunics and caps of the Red Army soldiers (throughout the Civil War, red stars were worn in this way - in the later Soviet period, only the order remained an ominous reminder of this "antichrist seal" Battle Red Banner).
Actually, the Bolsheviks did not particularly hide the fact that their goal on the territory of the Ural Cossack army, as elsewhere, was precisely the genocide of the Cossacks, the destruction of all combat-ready Cossacks capable of raising weapons against them. The novel by D. A. Furmanov "Chapaev" is very indicative in this regard: "Chapaev, so sensitive and flexible in all his actions, who caught everything so quickly and applied to everything, understood here, in the steppes, that the Cossacks had to be fought with the wrong weapons, with which they recently fought against the Kolchak peasants mobilized forcibly.You cannot take the Cossacks for fear, you cannot confuse them with the seized territory, the Cossack territory is the whole wide steppe, along which he will ride up and down, in which everywhere he will find greetings from the Cossack population, will living in your rear will be elusive and infinitely harmful, - seriously, truly dangerous. Cossack troops should not be driven, one should not wait for decay to occur, not to take away one by one, this is a very important matter and necessary, but not the main thing. And the main thing is to crush manpower, destroy the Cossack regiments. If from the prisoners of Kolchak it was possible to fill the thinned ranks of their regiments, then from the captured Cossacks this set is impossible Note: here - that the Cossack, then the enemy is irreconcilable. In any case, he will not become a friend and helper soon! Destruction of a living enemy force - this is the task that Chapaev set for himself. "
So after such a "general disposition" of the Chapayev division, the indignation of Furmanov and his heroes at the "cruelties" of the Ural Cossacks is, at least, inconsistent. The war between the Ural Cossacks and the Chapayevites was uncompromising - for mutual extermination. True, after the surrender of Uralsk, the ataman of the Ural Cossack army, 33-year-old Lieutenant General Vladimir Sergeevich Tolstov, managed to develop a plan for a special operation, during which the Urals with negligible losses were able to destroy the headquarters of the Chapaevsk division and kill Chapaev himself (in total, more than 2,500 Red Army soldiers were killed and taken prisoner ), but the typhus epidemic in the ranks of the Ural Cossacks and a sharp increase in the number of the 4th Turkestan army forced them to leave their land forever and retreat to Guryev, on the coast of the Caspian Sea. Approximately 90 percent of the personnel of the Ural army died not in battles, but from typhus brought in by the captured Red Army soldiers, which the Cossacks had nothing to treat: in almost all regiments, which had 500 people on the payroll, 40-60 Cossacks remained in the ranks.
On January 5, 1920, General Tolstov with his headquarters, refugees and the remnants of the last two regiments of the Ural army (a total of 15,000 people) left Guryev and made the hardest 700-kilometer journey along the Hungry Steppe to Fort Alexandrovsky - in his own words, "from red paws into an unknown distance. " The Urals suffered especially heavy losses during the ascent to the Mangyshlak plateau and on the plateau itself, through which even the local Kirghiz considered it impossible to pass in winter. The Urals passed, but at the cost of enormous sacrifices: according to the testimony of one of the Kappel cavalrymen, who traveled this way together with the Ural army, "the chain of corpses stretched continuously for thirty miles ...". 13,000 people froze on the road or were killed by the "Red Kyrgyz" who robbed and killed stragglers. Fortunately, some of the Cossacks entered Fort Aleksandrovsky earlier than others and sent help to the Kappelites and the Urals who were with them. Tolstov himself then left Fort-Aleksandrovsky on April 5, 1920 and went to Krasnovodsk with only 214 Cossacks.
On May 22, when he crossed the border with Persia, there were already 162 Cossacks with him. From Persia, Tolstov moved to France, and from there in 1942 he moved to Australia. Together with him were the last 60 Cossacks loyal to him. General Tolstov died in Sydney, in 1956, at the age of 72. Together with him, the history of the once great and glorious Ural Cossack army ended forever.
SIBERIAN, ZABAIKALSKY AND AMUR COSSACKS
The fates of the Siberian and Transbaikal Cossack troops differ in the contribution that the Cossacks of each of these troops made to the Civil War - and are strikingly similar in what fate awaited the Cossacks of both troops after the war ended.
The Cossacks of the Trans-Baikal army, two regiments of which (1st Argun and 2nd Chita) at the beginning of 1918 were infected with Bolshevism, spent the entire Civil War in battles at home. The Siberian Cossacks, being indifferent to the propaganda of Bolshevism, remained just as indifferent to the cause of saving the Motherland from it. Almost the entire Siberian army in the Civil War suffered from an even more serious illness than Bolshevism itself - the so-called "Cossack pragmatism" and the belief that it was possible to come to an agreement with the Bolsheviks. This was facilitated by the fact that the Siberian Cossacks had never seen real Bolshevism at home until the fall of Kolchak's power. In addition, the former policeman Ivanov Rinov, known throughout Siberia for his "Derzhimordovism", turned out to be the elected ataman of the Siberian army. Therefore, the participation of the Siberian Cossack army in the battles against the Reds was limited, by and large, to one single major episode - a raid on the enemy's rear in early autumn 1919. Due to the mediocrity and indiscipline of Ivanov-Rinov, this raid, which could save the entire front of the Kolchak army, did not bring significant results. By 1921, a significant part of the Siberian, Trans-Baikal and Amur Cossacks ended up in exile, crossing the Chinese border.
Unlike the European White emigrants, the Siberian and especially the Trans-Baikal and Amur Cossacks who ended up in China did not stop fighting against Soviet power during the 1920s. Almost every month, several dozen or even hundreds of Cossacks broke through the border and raided border towns and villages. The purpose of the raids was by no means ordinary workers and peasants, but local party workers, high-ranking officials and security officers. The Cossacks had a well-established network of agents in the Soviet Far East, which indicated them targets for attacks and punishment of traitors who returned from abroad.
The beginning of the end of the Trans-Baikal and Amur Cossack troops came in 1928, when an uprising took place in the Chinese province of Xinjiang under Marxist slogans against the power of Chiang Kai-shek. According to the "template" already used by the communists in Finland and Transcaucasia, "internationalist warriors" rushed to North China. In addition, it was 1928 1929 that was marked by an increase in the activity of White Cossacks on the eastern line of the CER - the Transbaikalians fought their way to their home, swam across the Ussuri and Amur, cut out entire detachments and border posts ...
Therefore, the Soviet government considered September-October 1929 a convenient time to return at least part of the CER to its state for 1917. At the same time, of course, it is cruel to get even - not only with the Cossacks, but in general with all the Russian refugees. Regardless of whether they took part in the struggle against Soviet power or not. Regardless of even gender and age. Exactly how this was done, those who survived and were able to write to the cities of China, not touched by the massacre, told:
"... On the 30th, the dead were brought to us - the priest, his son and the Kruglik family of 6 people (husband, wife and four children).
They were killed and burned in oil, and one carter was also killed with them, he left his wife and three children here. The form of those killed is terrible, the priest can be recognized, the face is preserved. Kruglik's wife had a face and one breast, which is why they recognized the woman, and everything burned out in the children. There is no smell from them because they are fried with the skin; for the priest they made a coffin, for the woman and the son of the priest another, and the rest six people they put in one coffin. "
In one village, red partisans and a detachment of Komsomol members who were with them killed men and women, and threw children alive in the river or smashed their heads on stones.
In another village, women and children were herded into a channel and shot in the water, and those who remained on the shore were finished off with stakes or thrown into open fires.
Only in the villages of Argunskoye, Komary and on the Damysovo farm, about 120 people were killed.
In the village of Katsinor, the Reds killed all the men and many women.
At the last raid on Usl-Ovrovsk on October 11, p. The inhabitants in despair fired back from the red partisans from shotguns and old Berdan guns, the Reds surrounded the village and opened fire on it from machine guns and from guns standing on the river. Argun of the Soviet gunboat. As a result of this raid, at least 200 Russian and Chinese civilians were killed.
What to add to this? That the murdered priest Fr. Modest Gorbunov was previously tortured that he was tied by the hair to a horse, which dragged his body along the ground. That women and girls, before being tortured or killed, were raped by red partisans and Komsomol members.
Let's add also the fact that, according to the Red partisans themselves (some of those who fled from Three Rivers personally heard these words), they were sent by the Soviet government with the order to exterminate all Russian immigrants living in Three Rivers, without exception, and destroy all their property. In those places where the red partisans have visited, they have precisely fulfilled this order of the satanic power and it is not their fault if some victims managed to escape and convey to us exactly everything that they saw and heard in these terrible days ... "(" Bread of Heaven " , 1929, No. 13, Harbin).
This is how most of the Transbaikal and Amur Cossack troops who left for North China ended up. For the "victory" over unarmed women and children in the "conflict on the Chinese Eastern Railway", the Red Army men and the GPU punishers received military orders and award weapons. And so far, not a single memorial sign, not a single memorial plaque has been erected in memory of the fallen refugees. Only the fiery messages that the First Hierarch of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia (ROCOR) Metropolitan Anthony (Khrapovitsky) wrote in their defense to Christians around the world, and the poem by the poetess of the Transbaikal Cossack Army Marianna Kolosova "The Cossacks were shot" remained a monument to them:
Apparently you fell asleep, human pity ?!
Why you are silent, I do not understand in any way.
I know you weren't in Three Rivers these days.
There was cruelty - your eternal enemy.
Ah, the helpless farm did not expect trouble ...
People, do not be silent - the stones will scream!
There they shot from a machine gun in the morning
Lovely, chubby, lively Cossacks ...
At the Throne of God, whose foot is holy,
Mercy for the righteous, thunder for sinners,
With a silent complaint, the Cossacks will rise ...
And the Lord will look into children's eyes.
The youngest will say: "We from the machine gun
They shot this morning at dawn. "
And someone will throw up his woeful hands
On a high white cloudy mountain
A pale boy will come out and quietly ask:
"Cossack brothers, who offended you?"
Human pity will ring in the question,
Light streams from dreary eyes.
Come closer, look into his eyes -
And they will know right away. How can you not find out ?!
"You were the Cossack troops, the bright Ataman
On days when children were not allowed to shoot. "
And the Cossacks will cry bitterly
At the Throne of God, whose foot is holy.
Lord, you see, crying with them
Martyr-Tsarevich, Ataman Cossack!
REVIVATE THE BEST
On the eve of the catastrophe of 1917, the strongest and most valuable estates of the Russian people were the peasantry, clergy, merchants and Cossacks. It was these estates that the Bolsheviks tried to destroy in the first place. To do this, they had to set different parts of the Russian people against each other. They did not hide this - for example, in relation to the peasants, it was voiced by Ya. M. Sverdlov in May 1918: "Only if we can split the village into two irreconcilable hostile camps, if we can kindle the same civil war there, which ... went in the cities ... we will do what we could do for the cities in relation to the village. " Of all the estates, the Bolsheviks managed to split the Cossacks the least, but the general split of the Russian people achieved by them made this circumstance not so important. And this split continues, to a large extent, to this day.
In order to heal him, monuments are erected. Monuments are needed not to those who died. We need them ourselves - for historical memory and the correct ideological assessment of people and events. Nobody knows if the Russian Cossacks will be reborn. It was destroyed very thoroughly for almost the entire first half of the 20th century. But if there are no monuments, there will be no historical memory. And in this case, the Cossacks will definitely never be reborn again.
Http://www.specnaz.ru/article/?1137
