The terrible death of Sergei Lazo in the furnace of a steam locomotive: truth or myth. Sergei Georgievich Lazo: biography Sergei Lazo revolutionary

Soviet textbooks and books on the history of the civil war gave the official version of the death of Sergei Lazo: the White Guards threw him, along with Vsevolod Sibirtsev and Alexei Lutsky, into the furnace of a steam locomotive, and they burned there for the cause of the revolution. For some reason, the remaining details varied. At the hands of which White Guards the Red commander and his comrades died, where, at what station, how they ended up there - this was no longer of interest to anyone. But in vain. Upon closer examination, the story reveals itself to be very interesting.

From romanticism to Bolshevism

Sergei Lazo was born in 1894 in Bessarabia, and died 26 years later, far away, for the sake of the utopian idea of ​​communism. Coming from a wealthy noble family, he received a decent education at the Physics and Mathematics Department of Moscow State University, but at the beginning of the First World War he was mobilized. In 1916, with the rank of ensign, he was sent to Krasnoyarsk, where he joined the Socialist Revolutionary Party. This was no coincidence: as contemporaries say, from childhood Lazo was distinguished by maximalism and a heightened sense of justice - to the point of romanticism.

In the spring of 1917, the 20-year-old romantic came to Petrograd as a deputy from the Krasnoyarsk council and saw Lenin for the only time in his life. Sergei really liked the leader’s radicalism, and he became a Bolshevik. Returning to Krasnoyarsk, Lazo led a rebellion. In October 1917, the commissioner of the Provisional Government telegraphed from there to St. Petersburg: “The Bolsheviks occupied the treasury, banks and all government institutions. The garrison is in the hands of Ensign Lazo.”

Ataman Semyonov was too tough for him

I wonder how this young ensign commanded his armies? According to Soviet historical science, in 1918, when the party sent Lazo to Transbaikalia, he successfully defeated Ataman Semenov there. In fact, everything was completely different.

Lazo fought with Semenov for six months, but could not defeat him. He pushed him back to Manchuria several times, but then the chieftain again went on the offensive and drove Lazo north. And in the summer of 1918, squeezed between Semyonov and the Czechoslovaks, Lazo fled from Transbaikalia. He could not defeat the chieftain in principle. Semyonov was a significant figure in Dauria and enjoyed the authority and support of the population, but no one knew Lazo there. And the Lazo army had a negative rating because of its... criminal nature. Lazo's detachments were staffed by proletarians, lowlifes and, most importantly, criminals from the Chita prison, whom the Bolsheviks released on the condition that they would go over to the side of the revolution. The "thieves" caused a lot of trouble for Lazo himself, carrying out unauthorized "requisitions" from the population, but he had to put up with this - every person counted.

Bandera and the princess

Two female commissars served in the Lazo detachment. The personality of one of them, Nina Lebedeva, is very remarkable. The adopted daughter of the former governor of Transbaikalia was an adventurer by nature. As a high school student she joined the Socialist Revolutionary Party, participated in left-wing terror, and then went over to the anarchists. Lebedev and commanded the Lazo detachment, which consisted of a criminal element. Small in stature, wearing a leather jacket, with a huge Mauser at her side, she communicated with the gang exclusively through a hairdryer. Former partisans recalled how she walked in front of her disheveled formation and delivered a speech, peppering it with such obscenities that even seasoned criminals shook their heads and clicked their tongues.

The second commissar was her direct opposite. Olga Grabenko, a beautiful, black-browed Ukrainian, according to the recollections of her colleagues, Lazo really liked. He began to court her, and they got married. But the young people were not lucky. The very next day after the wedding, the detachment was surrounded. Sergei and Olga abandoned their army and tried to hide in Yakutsk, but, having learned that a white coup had taken place there, they went to Vladivostok.

It doesn’t matter where to partisan

In Primorye, the White Guards and interventionists were in power, so Lazo arrived in Vladivostok illegally. However, this soon became known, and a large sum was promised for his capture. Ataman Semenov gave money for the head of the old enemy. When the Vladivostok bloodhounds began to step on Lazo’s heels, the Bolsheviks sent him deep into the region to work in partisan detachments. Official history is silent about what exactly Lazo did among the partisans, but the memories of local residents provide an interesting picture.

TV journalist Mikhail Voznesensky told me one of these stories. In the late 1970s, a regional TV group filmed another story about the red commander. TV crews came to Sergeevka, where the old man who saw Lazo lived. We set up the camera: well, grandfather, come on. And grandfather gave it!

"Yeah... I was a kid then. And I came to our village Lazo. Well, all of us, the boys, came running, sat down on the fence, waiting. The partisans were gathered and called Lazo. He went out onto the porch. Tall, in an overcoat, a hat - in ! Checker - in! And the speech pushed..."

Do you remember what he said, grandfather?

How come I don’t remember? I remember! He said: “Partisans, fuck your mother, they’re good at robbing men!”

Fatal mistake

At the beginning of 1920, when it became known about the fall of Kolchak in Siberia, the Vladivostok Bolsheviks decided to overthrow Kolchak’s governor, General Rozanov. Lazo himself insisted on this. As it became clear later, this was the biggest mistake of Lazo and his associates.

Storming Vladivostok, which was filled with Japanese troops at that time, was akin to suicide. Nevertheless, on January 31, 1920, several hundred partisans occupied the city according to the well-known scheme: station, post office, telegraph. General Rozanov fled by ship to Japan. At first, the interventionists remained only observers. They were calm: according to various estimates, there were 20-30 thousand Japanese in the city, and only a couple of thousand Reds. Under these conditions, Lazo made another fatal mistake: he set out to proclaim Soviet power in Vladivostok. His comrades barely persuaded him not to do this, but then Lazo’s old friends - anarchists and his former commissar Nina Lebedeva - intervened in the course of events...

In February 1920, a detachment of anarchists under the command of Yakov Tryapitsyn and Lebedeva occupied Nikolaevsk-on-Amur. They proclaimed the Far Eastern Soviet Republic, and Tryapitsyn declared himself dictator. Then the red thugs began building communism “in a separate area.” This was expressed in the fact that Tryapitsyn’s fighters (among them were criminals from Lazo’s detachment) carried out a total confiscation of property and executions of the “bourgeoisie,” which included everyone who did not look like a complete ragamuffin.

The frightened inhabitants requested help from the command of the Japanese garrison stationed in Nikolaevsk. In response, Tryapitsyn’s thugs carried out a bloody reign of terror in the city, slaughtering all Japanese, including civilians, and then began the “complete destruction of the enemies of the people.” The interventionists urgently sent troops to Nikolaevsk, but when they approached the city, they discovered only a conflagration. The anarchists burned Nikolaevsk and shot everyone who did not want to retreat with them. The “Nicholas bathhouse” frightened the Japanese so much that without warning they came out against the partisans in all the cities of Primorye and Amur region...

Arrest and disappearance

Lazo knew about the events in Nikolaevsk, but... did nothing to prevent the Japanese from attacking and even take care of his own safety. True, he carried with him false documents in the name of Warrant Officer Kozlenko, but this did not help - they knew him well by sight. This speaks of anything, but not of his talent as a commander and politician. He was and remained a romantic from the revolution, who knew how to make bright speeches that ignited the crowd. No more...

The Japanese offensive took place on the night of April 4-5, 1920. Almost all Bolshevik leaders and partisan commanders were arrested. Lazo was captured right in the building of the former Kolchak counterintelligence office on Poltavskaya, 6 (now Lazo, 6). He went there at night, already aware of the Japanese offensive, to destroy important documents. He was kept there for several days, on Poltavskaya, but on April 9, together with Sibirtsev and Lutsky, he was taken towards Gnily Ugol. Olga Lazo rushed to the Japanese headquarters, but she was told that “Warrant Officer Kozlenko has been transferred to the guardhouse on Begovaya” (building on Fadeev Street). She went there, but Sergei was not there. He disappeared.

The mystery of death

Rumors about the deaths of Lazo, Lutsky and Sibirtsev began to spread only a month later, in May 1920, and already in June they began to talk about it as a fact. Soon concrete information appeared. The Italian captain Clempasco, an employee of the Japan Chronicle (he was not only a journalist, but also an intelligence officer, communicated with Japanese officers, and therefore the information conveyed to him has a high degree of reliability), said that Lazo was shot on Egersheld, and his corpse was burned. This message was reprinted by many newspapers and distributed by world news agencies.

But the Bolsheviks were not satisfied with this version of the death of the Red commander, and they decided to invent a more beautiful one. A year and a half later, in September 1921, a certain locomotive driver “suddenly” showed up, who in May 1920 allegedly saw at the Ussuri station (now Ruzhino) how the Japanese handed over three bags to the Cossacks from Bochkarev’s detachment. From there they pulled out people “who looked like comrades Lazo, Lutsky and Sibirtsev” and tried to push them into the locomotive firebox. They resisted and a fight broke out (?!). Then the Bochkarevites got tired of it, and they shot the prisoners and put them in the furnace already dead.

This story has been told a thousand times, but its author has never been named. Apparently, it didn’t exist, because this thriller was clearly invented to order and therefore does not stand up to any criticism. Firstly, a hefty man like Lazo was, plus two more of his associates, there was no way the three of them could fit through or fit into the firebox of a steam locomotive made in the 1910s. Secondly, the writers did not bother to agree on which station all this took place. The nameless driver indicated the Ruzhino station, but then the Muravyevo-Amurskaya (now Lazo) station appeared from somewhere in the historical literature. And why did the Japanese need to hand over Lazo and his friends to the Bochkarevites and then take them hundreds of kilometers to places that were infested with partisans? No one explained this - the Bolsheviks were not interested in details.

Subsequently, another historical incident arose: in the 1970s, a steam locomotive was installed in Ussuriysk, in the furnace of which Lazo was allegedly burned. They did it in such a hurry that on the pedestal there ended up... an American locomotive from the 1930s.

P.S. There is a methodological justification for the birth of the myth about Sergei Lazo. The legend of his death fit well into the scheme of the civil war drawn by Soviet historians: the best of heroes always die, and the more terrible the death of a hero, the more instructive his example is for posterity.

SECRETS OF THE RED DON QUIXOTE
Vladimir 25.09.2016 06:07:28

Why is the article anonymous?

You can come up with anything: for example, that Novodvorskaya is actually the result of a secret operation carried out at a Harbin clinic to transplant Arkady Raikin’s brain into a female body. Now the body is worn out and Raikin’s brain is being prepared for transplantation into Shenderovich’s body - they are waiting for him to die (in fact, they are preparing for surgery.

This is absolutely true - one grandmother in line at the opera house told me about it.

Sergey Lazo
Oleg 07.03.2017 08:29:31

The article is a complete lie from beginning to end, in the spirit of the liberal vision of history. S. Lazo and Ya Tryapitsyn - it turns out that they are entirely criminals with their hands up to their elbows in blood, and the interventionists (Japanese and Americans) and the White Guards - who burned villages in the spirit of genocide in the Far East of Russia along with the inhabitants - are entirely lambs of God.

Sergei Lazo was born on March 7, 1894 in the village of Piatra, Republic of Moldova. The boy was born into a wealthy noble family. In the fall of 1912, after graduating from high school, the young man entered the St. Petersburg Institute of Technology, but returned home two years later. Due to his mother’s illness, he lived for some time in the village and in Chisinau. In the fall of 1914, he entered the Faculty of Physics and Mathematics of the Moscow State University named after Mikhail Lomonosov and at the same time the historical and philosophical department of the Moscow City People's University named after Alfons Shanyavsky.

In July 1916, Lazo was mobilized into the army. After graduating from the Alekseevsky Infantry School in Moscow, he was promoted to officer. In December 1916, he was assigned to the 15th Siberian Reserve Rifle Regiment in Krasnoyarsk. It was there that he became close to political exiles and, together with them, began to conduct propaganda against the war among the soldiers. Soon he joined the Socialist Revolutionary Party of the left faction.

In the spring of 1917, Lazo arrived in St. Petersburg as a deputy from the Krasnoyarsk council. Then for the only time in his life the young man saw Lenin live. Sergei Georgievich really liked the radicalism of the leader, and it was then that he decided to become a Bolshevik.

On the night of October 29, Lazo raised a combat alert for the Bolshevik military units of the garrison, which quickly occupied all government institutions, and the highest officials were almost immediately imprisoned.

Two months later, a performance of cadets, Cossacks, officers and students took place in Irkutsk. The “Left Bloc” sent detachments of Red Guards led by Vladimir Kaminsky, Sergei Lazo and Boris Shumyatsky to help the Bolsheviks in Irkutsk. At the end of December 1917, fierce fighting took place in Irkutsk. A combined detachment of soldiers and Red Guards under the command of Lazo, after many hours of fighting, captured the Tikhvin Church and launched an offensive along Amurskaya Street, trying to break through to the White House, but by the evening the red units were driven out of the city by a counterattack of the cadets. The commander himself and his soldiers were captured. In the following days, Soviet power in Irkutsk was restored, Lazo was released and appointed military commandant and head of the Irkutsk garrison.

From the beginning of 1918, Lazo was appointed a member of Centrosibiria. From February to August of the same year he was commander of the troops of the Trans-Baikal Front. In the fall of 1918, after the fall of Bolshevik power in eastern Russia, he went underground and began organizing a partisan movement directed against the Provisional Siberian Government, and then against the Supreme Ruler, Admiral Alexander Kolchak. During the same period, Lazo acted as a member of the underground Far Eastern Regional Committee of the Bolshevik Workers' and Peasants' Party in Vladivostok. Since the spring of 1919, he commanded the partisan detachments of Primorye. At the end of 1919, Sergei Georgievich became the head of the Military Revolutionary Headquarters for preparing the uprising in Primorye.

In January 1920, the Far Eastern Committee of the RCP (b) appointed head of the joint operational headquarters of the military-revolutionary organization. Since March of the same year, he joined the Revolutionary Military Council of Primorye and the Far Eastern Bureau of the Central Committee of the RCP (b). At the same time he was a member of the military council of the Primorsky zemstvo government.

By decision of the IV Far Eastern Regional Party Conference, held from March 16 to 19, 1920 in Nikolsk-Ussuriysky, Sergei Lazo was appointed commander of the armed forces of the Far East. The military leader led the formation of the Primorsky Revolutionary Army, created by the end of March 1920 and numbering 25 thousand bayonets and sabers, 32 machine guns and 76 artillery pieces.

After news of Kolchak's fall in Siberia, the Bolsheviks of Vladivostok decided to overthrow his governor, General Sergei Rozanov. Lazo himself insisted on this. However, it later turned out that this was a fatal mistake. Storming Vladivostok, at that time filled with Japanese troops, was a very difficult task, but the partisan detachment still managed to occupy the city. Rozanov fled to Japan by ship. The interventionists, who numbered about 20-30 thousand people, initially only acted as observers. Under these conditions, Lazo wanted to proclaim Soviet power in Vladivostok. The commander’s soldiers began to execute executions of the “bourgeoisie” who turned to the Japanese garrison for help.

The Japanese performance took place on the night of April 4-5, 1920. As a result, almost all the Bolshevik leaders and many partisans were arrested. Sergei Lazo was arrested in the building of Kolchak’s former counterintelligence office, located on Poltavskaya Street.

Sergei Lazo, after long torture on April 20, 1920, was burned alive in a locomotive firebox, and his comrades, Alexei Lutsky and Vsevolod Sibirtsev, were first shot and then burned in bags. This happened at the Muraravevo-Amurskaya station, now the Lazo station of the Far Eastern Railway. There is another version of Lazo’s death, put forward by one of the Primorye local historians, according to which Lazo, under the name of warrant officer Kozlenko, was shot by the White Guard Cossacks on Egersheld and then burned there.

Memory of Sergei Lazo

Streets in many cities and towns of the country are named after Sergei Lazo:

In Russia:

In Tambov, a street was named in honor of Sergei Lazo
After the death of Lazo, the Muravyov-Amursky station of the Ussuri Railway, where he died, was renamed the Lazo station.
In Samara there is Sergei Lazo Street. Also in the city of Kinel in the Samara region there is Lazo Street. In the city of Syzran there is also Lazo Street.
In the Primorsky Territory there is the Lazovsky district, the regional center is the village of Lazo, in the Dalnerechensky urban district - the village of Lazo.
In the Khabarovsk Territory - the Lazo district.
In Ulan-Ude there is a village within the city called Lazo.
In the Amur region there is a village called Lazo.
In Vladivostok, in the park next to the Primorsky Drama Theater, a monument to Sergei Lazo was erected on the pedestal of the destroyed monument to Admiral Zavoiko.
In the Verkhnebureinsky district of the Khabarovsk Territory, in the rural settlement of Alonka (the station of the same name on the BAM), a bust of Sergei Lazo was erected near school No. 19. This is due to the fact that this facility was designed and built by the Moldavian SSR.
In the city of Ussuriysk, Primorsky Territory, on October 25, 1972, on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the end of the Civil War in the Far East, a locomotive-monument El-629 was erected, in the firebox of which revolutionaries were burned.
In the city of Chita, a monument to Sergei Lazo was erected, at the intersection of Lazo and Yaroslavsky streets.
In the city of Spassk-Dalniy, Primorsky Territory, there is a microdistrict named after Sergei Lazo.
Large landing ship of Project 1171 "Sergey Lazo" (1975-1994) as part of the Pacific Fleet.
In Stavropol, S. Lazo street
In Balakovo there is Sergei Lazo Street
In Tomsk there is an alley and Sergei Lazo street
In Kolomna there is Lazo Street
In Simferopol there is Sergei Lazo Street
In Krasnoyarsk there is Sergei Lazo Street
In Nelidovo there is Sergei Lazo Street
In St. Petersburg there is Lazo Street

In Moldavia:

The Bessarabian village of Piatra, where he was born, was also renamed Lazo after the region was annexed to the USSR, and after Moldova gained independence in 1991, it was again renamed Piatra. Lazo streets in several Moldovan cities, except Chisinau, and the Lazovsky district of the former Moldavian SSR were also renamed after the collapse of the USSR.
From 1944 to 1991, the Moldovan city of Singerei was called Lazovsk.
In Chisinau, a monument to Sergei Lazo was erected at the intersection of Decebal and Sarmizegetusa streets.
During the Soviet years, the Kotovsky and Lazo Museum functioned in Chisinau, but was liquidated in the 1990s.
The Chisinau Polytechnic Institute bore the name Lazo.

In art

In 1968, the biographical film of the same name “Sergei Lazo” was shot. Regimantas Adomaitis plays the role of Sergei Lazo.
In 1980, the premiere of composer David Gershfeld’s opera “Sergei Lazo” took place, in which Maria Biesu performed one of the main roles.
In 1985, the three-part feature film “The Life and Immortality of Sergei Lazo”, directed by Vasile Pascaru, was shot at the Moldova-Film film studio. The film tells about the life path of Sergei Lazo from the moment of baptism until the last minute of his life. The role of Sergei Lazo was played by Gediminas Storpirshtis.
In the USSR, the IZOGIZ publishing house published a postcard with the image of S. Lazo.
In 1948, a USSR postage stamp dedicated to Lazo was issued.
The song “Waltz” by the rock group “Adaptation” mentions one of the versions of the death of Sergei Lazo.
The death of Sergei Lazo is mentioned in the song “Birds” by the rock group “Mongol Shuudan”: “I saw Lazo beating against the coals in the stove.”
Victor Pelevin’s story “The Yellow Arrow” mentions “a faceted bottle of expensive Lazo cognac with a flaming locomotive firebox on the label.”

Family of Sergei Lazo

Father - Georgy Ivanovich Lazo (1865-1903). In 1887, during the period of repressions by the tsarist government against revolutionary-minded students, he was expelled from St. Petersburg University and moved to permanent residence in Bessarabia.

Mother - Elena Stepanovna. Received higher agronomic education in Odessa and Paris. She devoted a lot of time to socially useful work among local peasants. In Chisinau she organized a hostel for female workers. Lazo's house had a large library, which was freely used by children. Parents did not fence their children off from communication with peasants and their children, instilled in them work skills, discipline, strengthened them physically, and instilled in them honesty and respect for working people.

Wife - Olga Andreevna Grabenko (1898-1971), historian, candidate of historical sciences. Teacher at the Frunze Military Academy. She was buried at the Novodevichy cemetery.

Daughter - Ada Sergeevna Lazo (1919, Vladivostok-1993, Moscow). Philologist, editor of Detgiz. In 1940 she married Vladimir Vasilyevich Lebedev (1891-1967).

In Soviet times, the name of such a hero as Sergei Lazo was very popular. His biography was an example of dedication to the formation of Soviet power. What was especially noteworthy was that Lazo was a nobleman from a wealthy family. And a beautiful legend was written about his death. But what was Sergei Georgievich Lazo really like? The biography presented below is an attempt to answer this question.

In Soviet books and textbooks on the history of the civil war, the version of the death of S. Lazo was as follows: the White Guards threw him into the furnace of a steam locomotive, where he, along with Alexei Lutsky and Vsevolod Sibirtsev, burned for the cause of the revolution (this locomotive is shown in the photo above). Details, however, varied. No one was interested anymore at the hands of which White Guards they died, at what station it happened and how they ended up there. But in vain. When this issue is examined carefully, a very interesting story emerges. But first things first.

Origin of Lazo, joining the ranks of the Socialist Revolutionaries

Sergei Lazo was born in Bessarabia in 1894, and he died at the age of 26 far from his homeland for the idea of ​​communism. Sergei came from a wealthy family of nobles. Lazo Sergei Georgievich studied at Moscow State University in physics and mathematics, and during the First World War he was mobilized. With the rank of ensign in 1916, Lazo ended up in Krasnoyarsk, where he joined the Socialist Revolutionaries. This choice was not accidental: as contemporaries noted, from childhood Sergei was distinguished by a heightened sense of justice and maximalism, reaching the point of romanticism.

Meeting with Lenin, rebellion in Krasnoyarsk

The 20-year-old romantic arrived in Petrograd in the spring of 1917 as a deputy from the Krasnoyarsk council. Then for the only time in his life he saw Lenin live. Sergei really liked the radicalism of the leader, and he decided to become a Bolshevik. Upon returning to Krasnoyarsk, Sergei Lazo led a rebellion that took place in October 1917.

The fight against Ataman Semenov

According to the version of Soviet textbooks, in 1918, when the party sent Lazo to Transbaikalia, he successfully defeated Ataman Semenov there. However, in reality everything was different. Sergei Lazo, a romantic revolutionary, fought with the ataman for six months, but could not defeat him. Several times he pushed Semenov back to Manchuria, but the chieftain again advanced and drove Lazo north. And in the summer of 1918, Sergei Lazo found himself squeezed between the Czechoslovaks and Semyonov. He had to flee from Transbaikalia. In principle, Lazo could not defeat Ataman, since Semenov was a significant figure in Dauria, enjoyed support and authority among the population, and no one knew Sergei Georgievich there. In addition, Sergei’s army enjoyed a bad reputation due to its criminal orientation. It is known that his detachments were staffed by lowlifes and criminals, whom the Bolsheviks agreed to release if they supported the revolution. These soldiers, who carried out “requisitions” from the local population, caused a lot of trouble for Sergei Georgievich. However, he had to put up with it, because every person counted.

Two female commissioners

Two female commissars served in the Lazo detachment. The personality of Nina Lebedeva is especially noteworthy. She was the adopted daughter of the former head of Transbaikalia and an adventurer by nature. While still a high school student, she joined the ranks of the Socialist Revolutionaries, took part in leftist terror, after which she defected to the anarchists. It was she who commanded Sergei Lazo’s detachment, which consisted of criminal elements. She sprinkled her speech with such obscene expressions that even seasoned criminals shook their heads.

Her direct opposite was the second commissar, Olga Grabenko. She was a black-browed, beautiful girl who Sergei really liked. He began courting her and they soon got married. In 1919, their daughter, Ada Sergeevna, was born, who subsequently prepared a book about Sergei Lazo, “Lazo S. Diaries and Letters.”

Encirclement, flight to Vladivostok

However, the young people were not lucky. The day after the wedding, Sergei’s detachment was surrounded. Olga and Sergei abandoned the army and tried to hide in Yakutsk. However, a “white” coup took place in this city, so they had to go to Vladivostok.

Interventionists and White Guards were in power in Primorye, so Lazo arrived in Vladivostok illegally. They soon found out about this and promised a large reward for his capture. Ataman Semenov gave money for the head of his opponent. When the bloodhounds picked up Sergei's trail, the Bolsheviks sent him deep into Primorye to work in partisan detachments.

Lazo's fatal mistake

At the beginning of 1920, after news of the fall of Kolchak in Siberia, the Bolsheviks of Vladivostok decided to overthrow his governor, General Rozanov. Lazo himself insisted on this. However, it later turned out that this was his fatal mistake.

Storming Vladivostok, at that time filled with Japanese troops, meant nothing less than suicide. However, on January 31, 1920, the partisans occupied the city. Rozanov fled to Japan by ship. The interventionists were at first only observers. There were about 20-30 thousand Japanese in the city, and only a few thousand Bolsheviks, so it was necessary to act carefully. Under these conditions, Lazo intended to proclaim it in Vladivostok. The fighters, among whom were criminals, began to carry out executions of the “bourgeoisie” (which included everyone who did not look like complete ragamuffins) and confiscation of property. The inhabitants turned to the Japanese garrison for help.

Japanese performance, arrest of Lazo

The Japanese performance took place on the night of April 4-5, 1920. Almost everyone and the partisan commanders were arrested. Sergei Lazo was captured in the building of Kolchak’s former counterintelligence office, located on the street. Poltavskoy, 6 (now Lazo, 6). He went there at night in order to destroy documents. On April 9, he, along with Lutsky and Sibirtsev, was taken towards the Rotten Corner. Olga Lazo rushed to the Japanese headquarters, but she was informed that her husband was in the guardhouse on Begovaya. Olga Andreevna Lazo went there. Sergei Lazo, however, disappeared.

Only a month later, rumors began to spread about the deaths of Sergei Lazo, Sibirtsev and Lutsky. And in June 1920 they began to talk about this as a fact. The first information has appeared. Klempasko, an Italian captain, said that Sergei was shot on Egersheld and his corpse was burned. This message appeared in many newspapers and was distributed by news agencies around the world. However, the Bolsheviks were not satisfied with this version of Lazo’s death, and they decided to come up with a more beautiful one.

Eyewitness testimony

In September 1921, a locomotive driver suddenly showed up, allegedly having seen in May 1920 how the Japanese handed over three bags to the Cossacks from Bochkarev’s detachment. They pulled Lazo, Sibirtsev and Lutsky out of the bags and tried to put them in the locomotive firebox. They resisted, and the Bochkarevites shot the prisoners and put them already dead in the firebox.

This story has been retold many times, without ever naming its author. Apparently he was not there. This story does not stand up to criticism. First of all, Sergei Lazo and his two comrades could not fit into the firebox of the locomotive. The design of the cars of the 1910s simply did not allow this. In addition, it is unknown at which station this event occurred. The driver pointed to the station. Ruzhino, and later art. appeared in the literature. Muravyevo-Amurskaya. And why did the Japanese need to hand over Lazo and his friends to the Bochkarevites and take them many kilometers to places infested with partisans? Nobody explained this - the Bolsheviks were not interested in details.

Memory

In 1968, the biographical film “Sergei Lazo” was released. In 1985, a mini-series directed by Vasile Pascaru, “The Life and Immortality of Sergei Lazo,” appeared. It tells about the life path of this hero. Many streets and other geographical features were named after him, and several monuments were erected.

Citizenship:

Russian empire
RSFSR

Date of death:

Sergei Georgievich Lazo(February 23 (March 7), village of Pyatra, Orhei district, Bessarabia province, Russian Empire - May, Muravyovo-Amurskaya station) - Russian revolutionary, one of the Soviet leaders in Siberia and the Far East, participant in the Civil War. Left Social Revolutionary, since the spring of 1918 - Bolshevik.

Biography

Born on February 23 (March 7), 1894 in the village of Piatra, Orhei district, Bessarabia province (now Orhei district of the Republic of Moldova) into a noble family.

The soldiers of the 4th company of the 15th Siberian Rifle Regiment at their meeting decided to remove from their duties the company commander, Second Lieutenant Smirnov, who had declared allegiance to the oath, and elected warrant officer Sergei Lazo as their commander, simultaneously electing him as a delegate to the Krasnoyarsk Council of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies. On the night of March 2-3, elections to the Council were held in almost all companies.

In June, the Krasnoyarsk Soviet sent Sergei Lazo as its delegate to Petrograd to the First All-Russian Congress of Soviets of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies. It was at this congress that the demarche of Lenin and the Bolsheviks took place, who were in the minority, making up only 13.5% of the delegates to the Congress. Lenin's speech made a great impression on Lazo; he really liked the radicalism of the Bolshevik leader. Returning to Krasnoyarsk, Lazo organized a Red Guard detachment there.

On June 27, 1917, the provincial executive committee of the Krasnoyarsk Council of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies was formed.

Autumn-winter 1917. Krasnoyarsk. Omsk. Irkutsk

To resist the cadets, the Bolsheviks sent Red Guard detachments, among which was Sergei Lazo. The Red Guards suppressed the performance of the cadets.

In December 1917, a riot of cadets, Cossacks, officers and students took place in Irkutsk. To resist political opponents, the left bloc sent detachments of Red Guards there. The leaders of the Red Guard detachments sent to help the Bolsheviks in Irkutsk were: V.K. Kaminsky, S.G. Lazo, B.Z. Shumyatsky.

On December 26, the fiercest fighting took place in Irkutsk. A combined detachment of soldiers and Red Guards under the command of S. G. Lazo, after many hours of fighting, captured the Tikhvin Church and launched an offensive along Amurskaya Street, trying to break through to the White House, but by the evening a counterattack by the cadets drove the red units out of the city, S. G. Lazo and the soldiers taken prisoner, and the pontoon bridge across the Angara was opened. On December 29, a truce was declared, but in the following days the Reds seized power in Irkutsk. Lazo was appointed military commandant of the city and head of the garrison of Irkutsk.

Civil War (1918-1920)

One of the organizers of the coup in Vladivostok on January 31, 1920, as a result of which the power of the Kolchak governor - the chief commander of the Amur region, Lieutenant General S. N. Rozanov was overthrown and the Provisional Government of the Far East, controlled by the Bolsheviks, was formed - the Primorsky Regional Zemstvo Council.

The success of the uprising largely depended on the position of the officers of the ensign school on Russian Island. Lazo arrived to them on behalf of the leadership of the rebels and addressed them with a speech:

“Who are you, Russian people, Russian youth? Who are you for?! So I came to you alone, unarmed, you can take me hostage... you can kill me... This wonderful Russian city is the last one on your road! You have nowhere to retreat: then a foreign country... a foreign land... and a foreign sun... No, we did not sell the Russian soul in foreign taverns, we did not exchange it for overseas gold and guns... We are not hired, we defend our land with our own hands, we defend our land with our own breasts , we will fight with our lives for our homeland against foreign invasion! We will die for this Russian land on which I now stand, but we will not give it to anyone!”

As a result, the school of warrant officers declared its neutrality in relation to the uprising, which made the fall of Rozanov's power inevitable.

Arrest and death

In the latest edition of the History of the Russian Far East, this version of Lazo’s death is described as a legend. Also, “refutations” often appear in the press and on the Internet, according to which the steam locomotive E a is supposedly installed in Ussuriysk as a monument. According to these “statements”, Lazo could not have been burned in that locomotive because such a series would appear only 21 years after his death (E a ​​locomotives were supplied from the USA to the USSR during the Second World War under Lend-Lease). However, in Ussuriysk it is not the “Lend-Lease” E a that is installed, but a steam locomotive from the Civil War - E L, and these are two similar (especially for non-specialists) varieties of E series locomotives, on which in the 1990s, during the next “cosmetic” painting, a painter mistakenly wrote the series “E a”. E l steam locomotives were built by American factories in 1916-1917, a total of 475 locomotives were built. Further along the sea, these locomotives were sent to Vladivostok, from where they were already distributed throughout the country. At the end of 1922, there were 277 E-series steam locomotives on the roads of Siberia, the bulk of which were the El variety. Thus, if Lazo was burned in a steam locomotive, then it is most likely that this locomotive was precisely E l (locomotives more powerful than E were not available in Siberia at that time).

Memory

During the years of Soviet power, streets in many cities and towns in the USSR were named after Sergei Lazo. A massive renaming of streets took place in 1967 in connection with the 50th anniversary of Soviet power and in order to perpetuate the memory of veterans of the October Socialist Revolution and Civil War. Streets and squares named in honor of Sergei Lazo still bear this name in dozens of cities in the territory of the former

Birthday March 07, 1894

Russian revolutionary, one of the Soviet leaders in Siberia and the Far East, participant in the Civil War

Biography

Born on February 23 (March 7), 1894 in the village of Piatra, Orhei district, Bessarabia province (now Orhei district of the Republic of Moldova) into a noble family.

He studied at the St. Petersburg Institute of Technology, then at the Faculty of Physics and Mathematics of the Imperial Moscow University, and participated in the work of revolutionary student circles.

In July 1916, he was mobilized into the Imperial Army, graduated from the Alekseevsky Infantry School in Moscow and was promoted to officer (ensign, then second lieutenant). In December 1916, he was assigned to the 15th Siberian Reserve Rifle Regiment in Krasnoyarsk. There he became close to political exiles and, together with them, began to conduct defeatist propaganda among the soldiers. He joined the Socialist Revolutionary Party and joined the left faction.

During the February Revolution, Lazo arrested the governor of the Yenisei province Ya. G. Gololobov and local senior officials. In March 1917 - member of the regimental committee, chairman of the soldiers' section of the Council. In the spring of 1917, he came to Petrograd as a deputy from the Krasnoyarsk Soviet and saw V. I. Ulyanov-Lenin for the only time in his life. Lazo really liked the radicalism of the Bolshevik leader. Returning to Krasnoyarsk, he organized a Red Guard detachment there. In October 1917 - delegate to the First All-Siberian Congress of Soviets. In October 1917, he took power in Krasnoyarsk into his own hands. The Commissioner of the Provisional Government telegraphed in those days to Petrograd: “The Bolsheviks occupied the treasury, banks and all government institutions. The garrison is in the hands of Ensign Lazo.”

Participated in the suppression of the uprising of cadets in Omsk and cadets, Cossacks, officers and students in December 1917 in Irkutsk. After this, he was appointed head of the garrison and military commandant of Irkutsk.

From the beginning of 1918 - a member of Centrosiberia, in February-August 1918 - commander of the troops of the Trans-Baikal Front. Under the command of Lazo, the red troops defeated the detachment of Ataman G. M. Semenov. At the same time, Lazo switched from the Socialist Revolutionary Party to the Bolshevik party.

In the fall of 1918, after the fall of Bolshevik power in eastern Russia, he went underground and began organizing a partisan movement directed against the Provisional Siberian Government, and then the Supreme Ruler Admiral A.V. Kolchak. Since the fall of 1918 - a member of the underground Far Eastern Regional Committee of the RCP (b) in Vladivostok. From the spring of 1919 he commanded the partisan detachments of Primorye. Since December 1919 - head of the Military Revolutionary Headquarters for the preparation of the uprising in Primorye.

One of the organizers of the coup in Vladivostok on January 31, 1920, as a result of which the power of the Kolchak governor - the chief commander of the Amur region, Lieutenant General S. N. Rozanov was overthrown and the Provisional Government of the Far East, controlled by the Bolsheviks, was formed - the Primorsky Regional Zemstvo Council.