Civil War Denikin. Anton Ivanovich Denikin: biography, achievements

08/07/1947. - General Anton Ivanovich Denikin died in the USA

(December 4, 1872–August 7, 1947) - lieutenant general, founder of the Volunteer White Army. Born in the Warsaw province in the family of a major, who had served as a serf. Mother is Polish. He graduated from the Lovichsky real school, military school courses at the Kiev infantry cadet school (1892) and the Nikolaev Academy of the General Staff (1899).

He began his service in the military headquarters of the Warsaw Military District. While being the senior adjutant of the headquarters of the 2nd cavalry corps in March 1904, he filed a report on the transfer to the army and was appointed staff officer for special assignments at the headquarters of the 8th army corps. Awarded with the orders of St. Stanislav and St. Anna 3rd class with swords and bows and 2nd class with swords. He was promoted to the rank of colonel - "for military distinctions". In March 1914 he was promoted to major general.

Threw the slogan: "Everyone to fight Denikin!" All the forces of the Southern and part of the forces of the South-Eastern fronts were concentrated against him. At the same time, by agreement with the Bolsheviks, Makhno destroyed the white rear there with his raid in Ukraine, and troops had to be withdrawn from the front against the Makhnovists. Both the Petliurists and the Poles helped the Bolsheviks, agreeing to a truce and allowing forces to be released to fight Denikin. Having created a threefold superiority over the whites in the main, Oryol-Kursk, direction (62 thousand bayonets and sabers for the Reds against 22 thousand for the Whites), in October the Red Army launched a counteroffensive. Denikin's army suffered heavy losses and was forced to retreat. In the winter of 1919-1920, she left Kharkov, Kyiv, Donbass, Rostov-on-Don.

The military failure undermined the morale of the army and was accompanied by decay in the rear. “Every day is a picture of theft, robbery, violence throughout the territory of the armed forces,” Denikin wrote to his wife. “The Russian people have fallen so low from top to bottom that I don’t know when they will be able to rise from the mud.” The commander-in-chief could not take decisive measures to restore order. Bolshevik propaganda also made its contribution to the disintegration, especially of the peasantry.

In February-March 1920, a defeat followed in the battle for the Kuban, due to the disintegration of the Kuban army, since the Kuban Rada sought to establish the Kuban Army as an independent state, having entered into an alliance with the highlanders. After that, the Kuban Cossack units of the VSYUR completely decomposed, which led to the collapse of the White front, the retreat of the remnants of the White Army to Novorossiysk, and from there on March 26-27, 1920, a withdrawal by sea to the Crimea.

Before this decree of Admiral Kolchak on 01/05/1920, General Denikin was declared the successor of the official Russian power, that is, the Supreme Ruler of Russia, but this could not change anything. Failures, criticism from General Wrangel and other military leaders who lost faith in their Commander-in-Chief, the catastrophic evacuation from Novorossiysk forced Denikin to resign, and by decision of the Military Council on March 22, transfer the post of Commander-in-Chief to General Wrangel.

On April 4, 1920, General Denikin left with his family in an English destroyer for England, from there soon to Belgium, out of protest against the trade negotiations initiated by the British government with the Bolsheviks. In Brussels, Denikin began work on his five-volume work Essays on the Russian Troubles, which he continued in Hungary (1922-1926) and finished in 1926. Then Denikin moved to France and began work on other books: Officers (1928) and "The Old Army" (1929), communicated with the writer, but avoided participation in other white émigré organizations. Often made presentations on political topics, in 1936 he began to publish the newspaper "Volunteer".

At this time, in anticipation of the imminent Russian emigration, the question was discussed: with whom to be when it begins. A small group of Soviet patriots propagated support for the "Russian people", that is, the USSR. The bulk of the white emigration hoped for the "Anti-Comintern" (Berlin-Rome-Tokyo). Denikin, on the other hand, believed that “it is completely unfounded to attribute ideological foundations to the Rome-Berlin axis and the Berlin-Rome-Tokyo triangle”; their goal is the redistribution of the world, because Hitler "trades with Moscow to the fullest." Therefore, Denikin sharply criticized pro-German sentiments; as in the civil war, he remained in favor of an alliance with France. But, on the other hand, he regretted that France made a bet on Poland, and then went for an alliance with the USSR and "threw off National Russia altogether." Therefore, Denikin noted with chagrin the absence of ideological motives in democracies, which also pursue their colonial geopolitical interests, and even the “greatest” democracy, the United States, “has a soft spot for the regimes of Moscow and Barcelona” ... Emphasizing that abroad Russia has in general no friends, Denikin formulated a dual task: it is necessary to overthrow the Soviet government and defend Russian territory, but the participation of emigrants in a foreign invasion of Russia is unacceptable (Russian Question in the Far East, 1939, 2nd ed.).

The more numerous right-wing circles of the ROVS considered such a position to be theoretically correct, but practically impracticable. They called it "chasing two hares", arguing that "the only hare that should now be pursued is the fall of the Bolsheviks throughout Russia."

The beginning of September 1, 1939 found General Denikin in the south of France in the village of Monteuil-aux-Viscounts, where he left Paris to work on his autobiographical book, The Way of a Russian Officer. At the beginning of the German occupation of France in May-June 1940, Denikin tried to leave by car in the direction of the Spanish border, but the Germans were ahead of him. I had to stay near Biarritz under German occupation in difficult material conditions.

In May 1945, Denikin returned to Paris and in November, taking advantage of the invitation of one of his associates, moved to the United States. There he addressed letters to General Eisenhower and American politicians with a call to stop - "second emigration"). In particular, in October 1946, in a letter to Senator Arthur Vanderberg, Denikin wrote: “Now that so much of what is happening behind the Iron Curtain has become clear, when there are already so many living witnesses of the indescribable cruelty that the communist dictatorship treats with a man, it should be clear to US public opinion why these Russian people are most afraid of ... returning to their homeland. Did history know such a phenomenon, so that tens, hundreds of thousands of people who were taken out of their native country, where their whole life flowed, and where, consequently, all their interests were concentrated, where their families and relatives remained, would not only resist the return with all their might, but one possibility of it would drive them to madness, to suicide ... "

The frequent praise of Denikin by the Red patriots, allegedly for his "approval of the victories of the Red Army," distorts the real attitude of the white general to this issue (see below an excerpt from his "Appeal"). In May 1946, in one of his letters to his long-term assistant, Colonel Koltyshev, Anton Ivanovich wrote: “After the brilliant victories of the Red Army, many people had an aberration ... somehow faded, receded into the background, that side of the Bolshevik invasion and occupation of neighboring states, which brought them ruin, terror, Bolshevization and enslavement... You know my point of view. The Soviets bring a terrible disaster to the peoples, striving for world domination. Their impudent, provocative, threatening former allies, raising a wave of hatred, their policy threatens to turn into ashes everything that has been achieved by the patriotic upsurge and the blood of the Russian people ... and therefore, true to our slogan - "Defending Russia", defending the inviolability of Russian territory and the vital interests of the country We do not dare to identify in any way with the Soviet policy – ​​the policy of communist imperialism.”

Anton Ivanovich died of a heart attack on August 7, 1947 at the University of Michigan Hospital and was buried in a cemetery in Detroit. On December 15, 1952, the remains of General Denikin were transferred to the St. Vladimir Orthodox Cemetery in Casville, New Jersey.

As for the family of Anton Ivanovich, in 1918 in Novocherkassk, 45-year-old Denikin married Ksenia Vasilievna Chizh, who came to him from Kiev, where in 1914 they first met. His wife accompanied him all subsequent years, supporting him in all the trials of fate. Their daughter Marina (born 1919) became a French writer under the pseudonym Marina Grey, but, unfortunately, she did not have the necessary knowledge or spiritual and political qualities to act as a historian or politician. She tried to stick out precisely the worst, liberal-February features of her father's worldview for the Western public.

On October 3, 2005, the ashes of General Anton Ivanovich Denikin and his wife, along with the remains of the philosopher and his wife, were transported to Moscow as part of V.V. Putin for a demonstration burial in the Donskoy Monastery. The reburial was carried out with the consent of Denikin's daughter. One of the deputies of the State Duma of the Russian Federation (V.R. Medinsky) rightly called this "a sign of the victors' mercy towards the defeated enemies."

Graves of Denikin and his wife, and his wife
on the territory of the Donskoy Monastery in Moscow

From the "Appeal" of Gen. Denikin (1946)

... Nothing has changed in the main features of the psychology of the Bolsheviks and in their practice of governing the country. Meanwhile, in the psychology of the Russian emigration, unexpected and very abrupt shifts have recently taken place, from non-condemnation of Bolshevism to its unconditional acceptance ... To the deepest regret, our emigre church, under the leadership of Metropolitan Evlogy, overshadowed Smenovekhovism with spiritual authority ...

The first period of the war ... Defense of the Fatherland. Brilliant army victories. The increased prestige of our Motherland... The heroic epic of the Russian people. In our thoughts, in our feelings, we were one with the people.

With the people, but not with the authorities.

Both the "Soviet patriots" and the Smenovekhovites play on this string, glorifying the Soviet government in a friendly chorus, which supposedly "prepared and organized the victory" and therefore "should be recognized by the national authorities ...". But after all, the Soviet government did not set itself the goal of the good of Russia, but of the world revolution, even introducing a corresponding provision into the charter of the Red Army ... The Soviets, just like Hitler, were going to "blow up the world" and for this they created such colossal weapons. Meanwhile, in the presence of a national Russia, with an honest policy and strong alliances, there could not have been a "Hitlerian danger", there would have been no World War II itself.

But now, when the Red Army went beyond the borders of Russian lands, the Bolshevik Janus turned to the world with his true face. And then began a split in the emigrant psychology. For, as Soviet strategy on Russian bayonets brought to the peoples release, Soviet policy translated it into enslavement. It is absurd to apply such terms as "the historical task of Russia", "Slavophilism", "unification of the Slavs" to the enslaving treaties concluded by the Soviets with the communist and communist governments, which they forcibly placed, under the muffled murmur of the peoples. On the contrary, the Soviet occupation discredits the idea of ​​Slavic unity, arousing bitterness, disappointment, even hostility against the USSR, alas, identified with Russia.

Finally, the third stage: the war is over, the struggle for peace is underway. Instead, the Soviets are pursuing a defiant policy that threatens to restore the outside world against them, threatening our homeland with new innumerable disasters of the Third World War, with horrors never before seen. The so far muted hatred of the USSR is growing more and more ...

In my opinion, there was a historical paradox - the whites, who wanted a "united and indivisible Russia," did everything so that vast territories were lost to her. The British, French, Americans and others like them helped the Whites without thanks, pursuing their own interests in separating Ukraine, the Caucasus, the Kola Peninsula, Central Asia, the Far East from Russia and putting these territories under their control. With the victory of the white army, the "allies" would be able to firmly gain a foothold in these territories and expel them neither from Kolchak, nor from Denikin, nor from Yudenich simply would not have had the strength. not paradoxically, they did everything to preserve the unity of the country, which they generally succeeded in doing.

<<Даже такой либеральный деятель, как кн. Г.Н. Трубецкой, высказал Деникину «убеждение, что в Одессе, так же, как и в Париже, дает себя чувствовать настойчивая работа масонов и евреев, которые всячески хотят помешать вмешательству союзников в наши дела и помощи для воссоздания единой и сильной России. То, что прежде казалось мне грубым вымыслом, либо фантазией черносотенников, приписывавших всю нашу смуту работе "жидо-масонов", – с некоторых пор начало представляться мне имеющим несомненно действительную почву».>>

An underestimation of the "Zionist-Masonry" proclaimed by Herzl in 1897. and funded
clans of Rothschilds and Rockefellers and became the cause of the death of the “white movement” in Russia, where the rabid clique of Zionists was led by Lenin and Trotsky. Stalin, who built state capitalism-socialism after the abolition of the NEP, proclaimed by Lenin, failed to completely destroy its members, who lurked mainly in the Caucasus and southern Ukraine among the Jews of the Khazars and Karaims. Moreover, the Jew
Hitler managed to deceive Stalin with his opus "Mein Kampf" worked out by him on the advice
Rothschild. This explains Stalin's confusion in the first days of the war. The Zionist creatures of the western part of the USSR, who do not have their own historical homeland, by the beginning of hostilities, faded to Alma-Ata and Tashkent and sat there.
In our days, not to notice this trash, hiding behind the screen of the Holocaust and tearing
to control the economy of the World is extremely dangerous.

Talent will repaint the army in red and white and destroy it. Even now in Russia, the power of the Jews is pursuing the Russians.

Very important material for me, in the matter of knowing the historical truth and changing my psychological feeling in relation to the past of Russia. Thank you.

I read the memoirs of the civil war by Wrangel, Krasnov, Deninkin himself, I got the impression that it was Denikin who turned out to be the gravedigger of the white movement.
And I also got the impression that Denikin had similar strategic thoughts with Tukhachevsky about "expanding the basis of the war", i.e. striving to seize as many territories as possible to entice the military potential. For Tukhachevsky, this desire ended in defeat near Warsaw, for Denikin, with the defeat of the White Army

The future White General Denikin Anton Ivanovich was born on 12/16/1872 in a village not far from the Polish capital. As a child, Anton dreamed of becoming a military man, so he bathed horses together with lancers and went with a company to the shooting range. At the age of 18 he graduated from a real school. After 2 years he became a graduate of the infantry cadet school in Kyiv. At the age of 27 he graduated from the General Staff Academy in the capital.

As soon as the military conflict with Japan began, the young officer sent a request to be sent to the warring army, where he became the chief of staff of the Ural-Transbaikal division. After the end of the war, Denikin was awarded two military awards and granted the rank of colonel. When returning home after the war, the path to the capital was blocked by a number of anarchist republics. But Denikin and his colleagues formed a detachment of volunteers and with weapons by rail made their way through the turmoil-ridden Siberia.

From 1906 to 1910 Denikin served on the General Staff. From 1910 to 1914, he served as commander of an infantry regiment, and before the First World War, Denikin became a major general.

When the first world conflict began, Anton Ivanovich commanded a brigade, which was later reformed into a division. In the fall of 1916, Denikin was appointed commander of the 8th Army Corps. Being a participant in Brusilov's breakthrough, General Denikin was awarded two Orders of St. George and weapons encrusted with precious stones as a reward for courage and success.

In the spring of 1917, Denikin was already Chief of Staff of the Supreme Commander-in-Chief, and in the summer, instead of Kornilov, he was appointed commander-in-chief of the Western Front.

Anton Ivanovich was very critical of the actions of the provisional government of Russia, which, he believed, contributed to the disintegration of the army. As soon as Denikin found out about the Kornilov rebellion, he immediately sent a letter to the provisional government, where he expressed his agreement with Kornilov's actions. In the summer, Generals Denikin and Markov with other associates were arrested and put in the casemates of Berdichev. In the fall, the prisoners were transferred to the Bykhov prison, where Kornilov and his associates were already languishing. In November, General Dukhonin ordered the release of Kornilov, Denikin and the rest of the prisoners, who immediately went to the Don.

Upon arrival on the Don land, the generals, which included Denikin, began to form the Volunteer Army. As deputy commander, Denikin took part in the "Ice" campaign. After General Kornilov died, Denikin took up the post of commander-in-chief of the Volunteer Army and ordered a retreat back to the Don.

With the beginning of 1919, Denikin headed all the Armed Forces of southern Russia. Having cleared the entire North Caucasus of the Red Guards, Denikin's armies began to advance. After the liberation of Ukraine, the Whites took Orel and Voronezh. After the assault on Tsaritsyn, Denikin decided to march on the capital. But already in the fall, the Reds turned the tide of the Civil War, and Denikin's armies began to retreat south. The army of the White Guards was evacuated from Novorossiysk, and Anton Ivanovich, having surrendered command to Baron Wrangel and greatly experiencing defeat, went into exile. An interesting fact: the white general Denikin never presented orders and medals to his fighters, because he considered it shameful to be awarded in a fratricidal war.

Temporary Acting Supreme Ruler of Russia
Predecessor:	Alexander Vasilievich Kolchak
Successor:
Birth:	December 4 (16), 1872 Wloclawek, Warsaw Governorate, Russian Empire (now in the Kuyavian-Pomeranian Voivodeship, Poland)
Buried:	Donskoy Monastery, Moscow, Russia
Military service
Years of service:
Affiliation:	Russian Empire, White movement
Citizenship:
Type of army:	Russian empire
Occupation:	infantry
	General Staff Lieutenant General
Commanded:	4th Rifle Brigade (September 3, 1914 - September 9, 1916, from April 1915 - division) 8th Army Corps (September 9, 1916 - March 28, 1917) Western Front (May 31 - July 30, 1917) Southwestern Front (August 2-29, 1917) Volunteer Army (April 13, 1918 - January 8, 1919) VSYUR (January 8, 1919 - April 4, 1920) Deputy Supreme Commander-in-Chief of the Russian Army (1919-1920)
Battles:	Russo-Japanese War World War I Russian Civil War
	Foreign awards:

Origin

Childhood and youth

Start of military service

General Staff Academy

In the Russo-Japanese War

Between wars

In World War I

1916 - early 1917

Leader of the White Movement

The period of the biggest victories

The period of the defeat of the VSYUR

In exile

Interwar period

The Second World War

Moving to the USA

Death and funeral

Transfer of remains to Russia

In Soviet historiography

Russian

Received in peacetime

Foreign

In art

In literature

Major writings

Anton Ivanovich Denikin(December 4, 1872, a suburb of Wloclawek, the Kingdom of Poland, the Russian Empire - August 7, 1947, Ann Arbor, Michigan, USA) - Russian military leader, political and public figure, writer, memoirist, publicist and military documentary.

Member of the Russo-Japanese War. One of the most productive generals of the Russian Imperial Army during the First World War. Commander of the 4th Rifle "Iron" Brigade (1914-1916, since 1915 - deployed under his command into a division), 8th Army Corps (1916-1917). Lieutenant General of the General Staff (1916), commander of the Western and Southwestern Fronts (1917). An active participant in the military congresses of 1917, an opponent of the democratization of the army. He expressed support for the Kornilov speech, for which he was arrested by the Provisional Government, a member of the Berdichevsky and Bykhov sittings of generals (1917).

One of the main leaders of the White movement during the Civil War, its leader in the South of Russia (1918-1920). He achieved the greatest military and political results among all the leaders of the White movement. Pioneer, one of the main organizers, and then commander of the Volunteer Army (1918-1919). Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of the South of Russia (1919-1920), Deputy Supreme Ruler and Supreme Commander-in-Chief of the Russian Army, Admiral Kolchak (1919-1920).

Since April 1920 - an emigrant, one of the main political figures of the Russian emigration. The author of the memoirs "Essays on the Russian Troubles" (1921-1926) - a fundamental historical and biographical work about the Civil War in Russia, the memoirs "The Old Army" (1929-1931), the autobiographical story "The Way of the Russian Officer" (published in 1953) and a number of other works.

Biography

Anton Ivanovich Denikin was born on December 4 (16), 1872 in the village of Shpetal Dolny, a suburb of Wloclawek, a county town of the Warsaw province of the Russian Empire, in the family of a retired major of the border guards.

Origin

Father, Ivan Efimovich Denikin (1807-1885), came from serfs in the Saratov province. The landowner gave the young father Denikin as a recruit. After 22 years of military service, he was able to curry favor with an officer, then made a military career and retired in 1869 with the rank of major. As a result, he served in the army for 35 years, participated in the Crimean, Hungarian and Polish campaigns (the suppression of the 1863 uprising).

Mother, Elizaveta Fedorovna (Franciskovna) Vrzhesinskaya (1843-1916), Polish by nationality, from a family of impoverished small landowners.

Denikin's biographer Dmitry Lekhovich noted that, as one of the leaders of the anti-communist struggle, he was, without a doubt, more of a "proletarian origin" than his future opponents - Lenin, Trotsky and many others.

Childhood and youth

On December 25, 1872 (January 7, 1873), at the age of three weeks, he was baptized by his father in Orthodoxy. At the age of four, the gifted boy learned to read fluently; Since childhood, he was fluent in Russian and Polish. The Denikin family lived in poverty and subsisted on their father's pension of 36 rubles a month. Denikin was brought up "in Russianness and Orthodoxy." The father was a deeply religious person, he was always at church services and took his son with him. From childhood, Anton began to serve at the altar, sing on the kliros, ring the bell, and later read the Six Psalms and the Apostle. Sometimes he, along with his mother, who professed Catholicism, went to the church. Lekhovich writes that Anton Denikin in the local modest regimental church perceived Orthodox worship as “his own, dear, close”, and Catholic as an interesting sight. In 1882, at the age of 9, Denikin passed the entrance exam to the first class of the Vloclav Real School. After the death of his father in 1885, the life of the Denikin family became even more difficult, as the pension was reduced to 20 rubles a month, and at the age of 13 Anton began to earn extra money as a tutor, preparing second-graders, for which he had 12 rubles a month. The student Denikin showed particular success in the study of mathematics. At the age of 15, as a diligent student, he was assigned his own student allowance of 20 rubles and was given the right to live in a student apartment of eight students, where he was appointed senior. Later, Denikin lived away from home and studied at the Lovichi real school, located in the neighboring town.

Start of military service

Since childhood, he dreamed of following in his father's footsteps and enlisting in the military. In 1890, after graduating from the Lovichi Real School, he was enrolled as a volunteer in the 1st Infantry Regiment, lived for three months in the barracks in Plock, and in June of the same year was admitted to the Kiev Junker School with a military school course. After completing a two-year course at the school, on August 4 (16), 1892, he was promoted to second lieutenant and assigned to the 2nd field artillery brigade, stationed in the county town of Bela, Sedlec province, 159 miles from Warsaw. He spoke about his stay in Bela as a typical camp for most military units abandoned in the backwoods of the Warsaw, Vilna, and partly Kyiv military districts.

In 1892, 20-year-old Denikin was invited to hunt wild boars. During this hunt, he happened to kill an angry boar, who drove a certain tax inspector Vasily Chizh, who also took part in the hunt and was considered an experienced local hunter, up a tree. After this incident, Denikin was invited to the christening of Vasily Chizh's daughter Xenia, who was born a few weeks ago, and became a friend of this family. Three years later, he gave Xenia a doll for Christmas, whose eyes opened and closed. The girl remembered this gift for a long time. Many years later, in 1918, when Denikin had already headed the Volunteer Army, Ksenia Chizh became his wife.

General Staff Academy

In the summer of 1895, after several years of preparation, he went to St. Petersburg, where he passed the competitive exam for the Academy of the General Staff. At the end of the first year of study, he was expelled from the Academy for failing the exam in the history of military art, but three months later he passed the exam and was again enrolled in the first year of the Academy. The next few years he studied in the capital of the Russian Empire. Here he, among the students of the academy, was invited to a reception at the Winter Palace and saw Nicholas II. In the spring of 1899, upon completion of the course, he was promoted to captain, but on the eve of his graduation, the new head of the Academy of the General Staff, General Nikolai Sukhotin (a friend of the Minister of War Alexei Kuropatkin), arbitrarily changed the lists of graduates assigned to the General Staff, as a result of which the provincial officer Denikin was not among them . He took advantage of the right granted by the charter: he filed a complaint against General Sukhotin "against the Highest Name" (the Sovereign Emperor). Despite the fact that the academic conference assembled by the Minister of War recognized the general’s actions as illegal, they tried to hush up the case, and Denikin was offered to withdraw the complaint and write a petition for mercy instead, which they promised to satisfy and rank the officer in the General Staff. To this he replied: “I do not ask for mercy. I only get what is rightfully mine." As a result, the complaint was rejected, and Denikin was not included in the General Staff "for character!"

He showed a penchant for poetry and journalism. In his childhood, he sent his poems to the editorial office of the Niva magazine and was very upset that they were not published and that they did not answer him from the editorial office, as a result of which Denikin concluded that "poetry is not a serious matter." He later began to write in prose. In 1898, his story was first published in the Scout magazine, and then Denikin was published in the Warsaw Diary. Published under the pseudonym Ivan Nochin and wrote mainly on the topic of army life.

In 1900 he returned to Bela, where he again served in the 2nd Field Artillery Brigade until 1902. Two years after graduating from the Academy of the General Staff, he wrote a letter to Kuropatkin asking him to look into his long-standing situation. Kuropatkin received a letter and during the next audience with Nicholas II "expressed regret that he had acted unfairly, and asked for orders" to enroll Denikin as an officer of the General Staff, which took place in the summer of 1902. After that, according to the historian Ivan Kozlov, a bright future opened up before Denikin. In the first days of January 1902, he left Bela and was accepted into the headquarters of the 2nd Infantry Division, located in Brest-Litovsk, where he was entrusted with the command of a company of the 183rd Pultus Regiment, located in Warsaw, for one year. Denikin's company from time to time was assigned to guard the "Tenth Pavilion" of the Warsaw Fortress, where especially dangerous political criminals were kept, including the future head of the Polish state, Jozef Pilsudski. In October 1903, at the end of the qualifying term of command, he was transferred to adjutant of the 2nd Cavalry Corps located here, where he served until 1904.

In the Russo-Japanese War

In January 1904, under Captain Denikin, who served in Warsaw, a horse fell, his leg got stuck in the stirrup, and the fallen horse, having risen, dragged him a hundred meters, and he tore his ligaments and dislocated his toes. The regiment in which Denikin served was not advanced to the war, but on February 14 (27), 1904, the captain obtained personal permission to be seconded to the active army. February 17 (March 2), 1904, still limping, he left for the train to Moscow, from where he had to get to Harbin. On the same train, Admiral Stepan Makarov and General Pavel Rennenkampf were traveling to the Far East. On March 5 (18), 1904, Denikin descended in Harbin.

At the end of February 1904, even before his arrival, he was appointed chief of staff of the 3rd brigade of the Zaamursky district of a separate corps of the border guards, who stood in the rear and clashed with Chinese hunghuz bandits. In September, he received the post of an officer for assignments at the headquarters of the 8th Corps of the Manchurian Army. Then he returned to Harbin and from there on October 28 (November 11), 1904, already with the rank of lieutenant colonel, he was sent to Tsinghechen in the Eastern detachment and accepted the post of chief of staff of the Trans-Baikal Cossack division, General Rennenkampf. He received his first combat experience during the Tsinghechen battle on November 19 (December 2), 1904. One of the hills of the battle area went down in military history under the name "Denikinskaya" for the Japanese offensive repulsed by him with bayonets. In December 1904, he participated in enhanced intelligence. His forces, twice knocking down the advanced units of the Japanese, went out to Jiangchang. At the head of an independent detachment, he threw the Japanese from the Wantselin Pass. In February - March 1905 he participated in the battle of Mukden. Shortly before this battle, on December 18 (31), 1904, he was appointed chief of staff of the Ural-Transbaikal division of General Mishchenko, which specialized in horse raids behind enemy lines. There he showed himself to be an enterprising officer, working with General Mishchenko. A successful raid was carried out in May 1905 during the horse raid of General Mishchenko, in which Denikin took an active part. He himself describes the results of this raid in this way:

On July 26 (August 8), 1905, Denikin's activities received high recognition from the command, and "for the difference in cases against the Japanese" he was promoted to colonel and awarded the Order of St. Stanislav 3rd degree with swords and bows and St. Anna 2nd degree with swords.

After the end of the war and the signing of the Portsmouth Peace, in the conditions of confusion and soldier unrest, he left Harbin in December 1905 and arrived in St. Petersburg in January 1906.

Between wars

From January to December 1906, he was temporarily appointed to the lower post of a staff officer for special assignments at the headquarters of his 2nd Cavalry Corps, based in Warsaw, from which he left for the Russo-Japanese War. In May - September 1906, he commanded a battalion of the 228th Khvalynsky reserve infantry regiment. In 1906, while waiting for his main destination, he took a vacation abroad and visited European countries (Austria-Hungary, France, Italy, Germany, Switzerland) for the first time in his life as a tourist. Upon returning, he asked to expedite his appointment, and he was offered the post of chief of staff of the 8th Siberian division. Having learned about the appointment, he used the right to refuse this offer as a senior officer. As a result, he was offered a more acceptable place in the Kazan military district. In January 1907, he assumed the post of chief of staff of the 57th infantry reserve brigade in the city of Saratov, where he served until January 1910. In Saratov, he lived in a rented apartment in the house of D. N. Bankovskaya at the corner of Nikolskaya and Anichkovskaya streets (now Radishcheva and Rabochaya).

During this period, he wrote a lot for the "Scout" magazine, under the heading "Army Notes", including denouncing the commander of his brigade, who "launched the brigade and completely retired", putting the affairs in the brigade on Denikin. The most notable was the humorous and satirical note "Cricket". He criticized the management methods of the head of the Kazan Military District, General Alexander Sandetsky. Historians Oleg Budnitsky and Oleg Terebov wrote that during this period Denikin opposed bureaucracy, the suppression of initiative, rudeness and arbitrariness in relation to soldiers, for improving the system of selection and training of command personnel and devoted a number of articles to the analysis of the battles of the Russo-Japanese war, drew attention to the German and Austrian threat, in the light of which he pointed out the need for an early reform in the army, wrote about the need for the development of motor transport and military aviation, and in 1910 proposed to convene a congress of officers of the General Staff to discuss the problems of the army.

On June 29 (July 11), 1910, he took command of the 17th Archangelsk Infantry Regiment, based in Zhitomir. On September 1 (14), 1911, his regiment took part in the royal maneuvers near Kiev, and the next day Denikin opened a ceremonial march with his regiment on the occasion of honoring the Sovereign. Marina Denikina noted that her father was unhappy that the parade was not canceled due to the wounding of the Chairman of the Council of Ministers Pyotr Stolypin at the Kyiv Opera. As the writer Vladimir Cherkasov-Georgievsky notes, 1912-1913 in the border district of Denikin passed in a tense situation, and his regiment received a secret order to send detachments to occupy and protect the most important points of the South-Western Railway in the direction of Lvov, where the Arkhangelsk people stood for several weeks.

In the Arkhangelsk regiment, he created a museum of the history of the regiment, which became one of the first museums of military units in the Imperial Army.

On March 23 (April 5), 1914, he was appointed acting general for assignments under the Commander of the Kyiv Military District and moved to Kyiv. In Kyiv, he rented an apartment on Bolshaya Zhitomirskaya Street, 40, where he moved his family (mother and maid). On June 21 (July 3), 1914, on the eve of the outbreak of World War I, he was promoted to the rank of Major General and approved as Quartermaster General of the 8th Army, which was under the command of General Alexei Brusilov.

Commander of the Russian Imperial Army

In World War I

1914

The First World War, which began on July 19 (August 1), 1914, for the 8th Army of Brusilov, in whose headquarters Denikin served, initially developed successfully. The army went on the offensive and already on August 21 (September 3), 1914, took Lvov. On the same day, having learned that the previous commander of the 4th Infantry Brigade had received a new appointment, and wanting to move from a staff to a combat position, Denikin filed a petition to be appointed commander of this brigade, which was immediately granted by Brusilov. In his memoirs, published in 1929, Brusilov wrote that Denikin "showed excellent talents as a military general in the combat field."

Denikin about the 4th Infantry Brigade

Fate linked me to the Iron Brigade. For two years she walked with me across the fields of bloody battles, writing many glorious pages in the annals of the great war. Alas, they are not in the official history. For the Bolshevik censorship, having gained access to all archival and historical materials, dissected them in its own way and carefully etched out all the episodes of the brigade's combat activities associated with my name ....

"The Way of the Russian Officer"

Taking command of the brigade on August 24 (September 6), 1914, he immediately achieved notable success with it. The brigade entered the battle at Grodek, and as a result of this battle, Denikin was awarded the St. George weapon. The Highest award letter indicated that the weapon was awarded “For the fact that you are in battles from 8 to 12 September. In 1914, with outstanding skill and courage, desperate attacks of an enemy superior in strength were beaten off at Grodek, especially persistent on September 11, when the Austrians tried to break through the center of the corps; and on the morning of 12 Sept. themselves went over with the brigade to a decisive offensive.

A little over a month later, when the 8th Army got stuck in a positional war, noticing the weakness of the enemy’s defense, on October 11 (24), 1914, without artillery preparation, he transferred his brigade to attack the enemy and took the village of Gorny Luzhek, where the headquarters of the Archduke Joseph’s group was located, where he hastily evacuated. As a result of the capture of the village, a direction was opened for an attack on the Sambir-Turka highway. "For a bold maneuver" Denikin was awarded the Order of St. George 4th degree.

In November 1914, Denikin’s brigade, in the course of carrying out combat missions in the Carpathians, captured the city and station of Mezolyaborch, with the brigade itself consisting of 4,000 bayonets, “taking 3,730 prisoners, a lot of weapons and military equipment, a large rolling stock with valuable cargo at the railway station, 9 guns” , while losing 164 killed and 1332, taking into account the wounded and disabled. Since the operation itself in the Carpathians, regardless of the success of the Denikin brigade, was unsuccessful, he himself received only congratulatory telegrams from Nicholas II and Brusilov for these actions.

1915

In February 1915, the 4th Rifle Brigade, sent to help the combined detachment of General Kaledin, captured a number of command heights, the center of the enemy’s position and the village of Lutovisko, capturing over 2,000 prisoners and driving the Austrians back across the San River. For this battle, Denikin was awarded the Order of St. George 3rd degree.

At the beginning of 1915, he received an offer to move to the post of division chief, but refused to part with his brigade of "iron" shooters. As a result, the command solved this problem in a different way, deploying Denikin's 4th Rifle Brigade in April 1915 into a division. In 1915, the armies of the Southwestern Front were retreating or were on the defensive. In September 1915, in the conditions of a retreat, he unexpectedly ordered his division to go on the offensive. As a result of the offensive, the division took the city of Lutsk, and also captured 158 officers and 9773 soldiers. General Brusilov wrote in his memoirs that Denikin, “not saying any difficulties”, rushed to Lutsk and took it “in one fell swoop”, and during the battle he drove into the city by car and from there sent Brusilov a telegram about the capture of the city by the 4th rifle division.

For the capture of Lutsk during the battles of September 17 (30) - September 23 (October 6), 1915. On May 11 (24), 1916, he was promoted to lieutenant general with seniority from September 10 (23), 1915. Later, the command, leveling the front, ordered to leave Lutsk. In October, during the Czartoryi operation, Denikin's division, having completed the command task, crossed the Stryi River and took Czartorysk, occupying a bridgehead 18 km wide and 20 km deep on the opposite bank of the river, diverting significant enemy forces. On October 22 (November 4), 1915, an order was received to retreat to their original positions. There was a lull at the front until the spring of 1916.

1916 - early 1917

On March 2 (15), 1916, during a positional war, he was wounded by a shrapnel fragment in his left hand, but remained in the ranks. In May, with his division as part of the 8th Army, he took part in the Brusilovsky (Lutsk) breakthrough of 1916. Denikin's division broke through 6 lines of enemy positions, and on May 23 (June 5), 1916, re-captured the city of Lutsk, for which Denikin was again granted the St. George weapon, studded with diamonds, with the inscription: "For the twofold liberation of Lutsk."

On August 27 (September 9), 1916, he was appointed commander of the 8th corps and, together with the corps, was sent to the Romanian front, where the Romanian army, which spoke after the offensive of the Southwestern Front on the side of Russia and the Entente, was defeated and retreated. Lechovich writes that after several months of fighting at Buzeo, Rymnik and Focshan, Denikin described the Romanian army as follows:

He was awarded the highest military order of Romania - the Order of Mihai the Brave 3rd degree.

February Revolution and Denikin's Political Views

The revolution of February 1917 found Denikin on the Romanian front. The general met the coup sympathetically. As the English historian Peter Kenez writes, he unconditionally believed and even later repeated in his memoirs false rumors about the royal family and Nicholas II, which were cleverly spread at that time by Russian liberal figures corresponding to his political views. Denikin's personal views, as the historian writes, were very close to those of the Cadets and were subsequently put by him as the basis of the army he commanded.

In March 1917, he was summoned to Petrograd by the Minister of War of the new revolutionary government, Alexander Guchkov, from whom he received an offer to become chief of staff under the newly appointed Supreme Commander of the Russian Army, General Mikhail Alekseev. Being released from the oath by Nicholas II, he accepted the offer of the new government. On April 5 (28), 1917, he took office, in which he worked for more than a month and a half, working well with Alekseev. After the dismissal of Alekseev from his post and replacing him with General Brusilov, he refused to be his chief of staff and on May 31 (June 13), 1917 was transferred to the post of commander of the armies of the Western Front. In the spring of 1917, at a military congress in Mogilev, he was marked by sharp criticism of Kerensky's policy aimed at democratizing the army. At a meeting of the Headquarters on July 16 (29), 1917, he advocated the abolition of committees in the army and the withdrawal of politics from the army.

As commander of the Western Front, he provided strategic support for the Southwestern Front during the June 1917 offensive. In August 1917 he was appointed commander of the Southwestern Front. On the way to his new destination in Mogilev, he met with General Kornilov, during a conversation with whom he expressed his support for Kornilov's upcoming political actions.

Arrest and imprisonment in Berdichev and Bykhov prisons

As commander of the Southwestern Front, on August 29 (September 11), 1917, he was arrested and imprisoned in Berdichev for expressing solidarity with General Kornilov with a sharp telegram to the Provisional Government. The arrest was made by the Commissioner of the South-Western Front, Nikolai Jordansky. Together with Denikin, almost the entire leadership of his headquarters was arrested.

The month spent in the Berdichev prison, according to Denikin, was difficult for him, every day he expected the massacre of revolutionary soldiers who could break into the cell. On September 27 (October 10), 1917, it was decided to transfer the arrested generals from Berdichev to Bykhov to the arrested a group of generals led by Kornilov. During transportation to the station, writes Denikin, he and other generals almost became a victim of lynching by a crowd of soldiers, from which they were largely saved by an officer of the Junker battalion of the 2nd Zhytomyr school of warrant officers, Viktor Betling, who had previously served in the Arkhangelsk regiment, which Denikin commanded before the war. Subsequently, in 1919, Betling was accepted into the White Army of Denikin and appointed by him as the commander of the Special Officer Company at the Headquarters of the Commander-in-Chief of the All-Union Socialist Republic.

After the transfer, together with Kornilov, he was kept in the Bykhov prison. The investigation into the case of the Kornilov speech became more complicated and delayed due to the lack of convincing evidence of the betrayal of the generals, the sentencing was delayed. In such conditions of Bykhov's imprisonment, Denikin and other generals met the October Revolution of the Bolsheviks.

After the fall of the Provisional Government, the new Bolshevik government temporarily forgot about the prisoners, and on November 19 (December 2), 1917, Supreme Commander Dukhonin, having learned about the approach of echelons with Bolshevik troops led by Ensign Krylenko, who threatened them with murder, and relying on the one brought from Petrograd Captain Chunikhin, an order with the seal of the Higher Investigation Commission and forged signatures of the commission members, military investigators R. R. von Raupach and N. P. Ukraintsev, released the generals from Bykhov prison.

Escape to the Don and participation in the creation of the Volunteer Army

After his release, in order to be unrecognized, he shaved off his beard and with a certificate in the name of "assistant head of the dressing detachment Alexander Dombrovsky" made his way to Novocherkassk, where he took part in the creation of the Volunteer Army. He was the author of the Constitution of the supreme power on the Don, which he outlined in December 1917 at a meeting of the generals, which proposed the transfer of civil power in the army to Alekseev, the military to Kornilov, and the administration of the Don region to Kaledin. This proposal was approved, signed by the Don and volunteer leadership and formed the basis for organizing the management of the Volunteer Army. Based on this, the researcher of Denikin's biography, Doctor of Historical Sciences Georgy Ippolitov, concluded that Denikin was involved in the formation of the first anti-Bolshevik government in Russia, which lasted one month, until Kaledin's suicide.

In Novocherkassk, he began to form units of the new army, taking on military functions and abandoning economic ones. Initially, like other generals, he worked conspiratorially, wore civilian clothes and, as the pioneer Roman Gul wrote, was "more like the leader of a bourgeois party than a military general." He had at his disposal 1,500 men and 200 rounds of ammunition for one rifle. Ippolitov writes that weapons, the funds for which were chronically lacking, were often bartered from the Cossacks in exchange for alcohol or stolen from the warehouses of decaying Cossack units. Over time, 5 guns appeared in the army. In total, by January 1918, Denikin managed to form an army of 4,000 fighters. The average age of a volunteer was small, and the young officers called the 46-year-old Denikin "grandfather Anton."

In January 1918, the still-forming units of Denikin entered into the first battles on the Cherkasy front with detachments under the command of Vladimir Antonov-Ovseenko, sent by the Council of People's Commissars to fight Kaledin. Denikin's fighters suffered heavy losses, but achieved tactical success and held back the offensive of the Soviet troops. In fact, Denikin, as one of the main and most active organizers of volunteer units, was often perceived at this stage as an army commander. He also temporarily performed the functions of commander during periods of Kornilov's absence. Alekseev, speaking to the Don Cossack government in January, said that the Volunteer Army was commanded by Kornilov and Denikin.

During the formation of the army, changes took place in the personal life of the general - on December 25, 1917 (January 7, 1918), he married with his first marriage. Ksenia Chizh, whom the general had courted in recent years, came to him on the Don, and they, without attracting much attention, got married in one of the churches of Novocherkassk. Eight days lasted their honeymoon, which they spent in the village of Slavyanskaya. After that, he returned to the location of the army, first going to Yekaterinodar for General Alekseev, and then returning to Novocherkassk. All this time, for the outside world, he continued to exist secretly under the false name of Dombrovsky.

On January 30 (February 12), 1918, he was appointed commander of the 1st Infantry (Volunteer) Division. After the volunteers suppressed the workers' uprising in Rostov, the army headquarters moved there. Together with the Volunteer Army, on the night of February 8 (21) to February 9 (22), 1918, he took part in the 1st (Ice) Kuban campaign, during which he became deputy commander of the Volunteer Army, General Kornilov. Denikin himself recalled it this way:

He was one of those who convinced Kornilov at the council of the army in the village of Olginskaya on February 12 (25), 1918 to decide to move the army within the Kuban region. On March 17 (30), 1918, he also contributed to Alekseev's persuasion of the Kuban Rada about the need for its detachment to join the Volunteer Army. At the council that decided to storm Yekaterinodar, Denikin was supposed to take the post of its governor-general after taking the city.

The assault on Yekaterinodar, which lasted from April 28 (10) to March 31 (April 13), 1918, developed unsuccessfully for the volunteers. The army suffered heavy losses, ammunition was running out, and the defenders were outnumbered. On the morning of March 31 (April 13), 1918, Kornilov died as a result of a shell that hit the headquarters building. By succession from Kornilov and his own consent, as well as as a result of the order issued by Alekseev, Denikin led the Volunteer Army, after which he ordered to stop the assault and prepare for retreat.

Leader of the White Movement

Beginning of command of the Volunteer Army

Denikin led the remnants of the Volunteer Army to the village of Zhuravskaya. Experiencing constant persecution and the threat of encirclement, the army maneuvered, avoiding the railways. Further from the village of Zhuravskaya, he led troops to the east and went to the village of Uspenskaya. Here the news was received about the uprising of the Don Cossacks against the Soviet regime. He gave the order to move in a forced march towards Rostov and Novocherkassk. With a fight, his troops took the Belaya Glina railway station. On May 15 (28), 1918, at the height of the Cossack anti-Bolshevik uprising, the volunteers approached Rostov (occupied by the Germans at that time) and settled down in the villages of Mechetinskaya and Yegorlykskaya for rest and reorganization. The number of the army, together with the wounded, was about 5,000 people.

The author of the essay about the general, Yuri Gordeev, writes that at that moment it was difficult for Denikin to count on his leadership in the anti-Bolshevik struggle. The Cossack units of General Popov (the main force of the Don uprising) numbered more than 10 thousand people. In the negotiations that began, the Cossacks demanded the advance of the volunteers on Tsaritsyn when the Cossacks advanced on Voronezh, but Denikin and Alekseev decided that they would first repeat the campaign against the Kuban to clear the area from the Bolsheviks. Thus, the question of a unified command was excluded, since the armies dispersed in different directions. Denikin, at a meeting in the village of Manychskaya, demanded the transfer of the 3,000-strong detachment of Colonel Mikhail Drozdovsky, who had come to the Don from the former Romanian front, from the Don to the Volunteer Army, and this detachment was transferred.

Organization of the Second Kuban campaign

Having received the necessary rest and reformed, and also strengthened by the Drozdovsky detachment, the Volunteer Army on the night of 9 (22) to 10 (23) June 1918, consisting of 8-9 thousand fighters under the command of Denikin, began the 2nd Kuban campaign, which ended with the defeat of almost 100 -thousands of the Kuban group of red troops and the capture of 4 (17) August 1918, the capital of the Kuban Cossacks, Ekaterinodar.

He placed his headquarters in Ekaterinodar, and the Cossack troops of the Kuban entered into his subordination. The army under his control by that time amounted to 12 thousand people, and it was significantly replenished by a 5,000-strong detachment of Kuban Cossacks under the command of General Andrei Shkuro. The main direction of Denikin's policy during his stay in Yekaterinodar was the solution of the issue of creating a united front of anti-Bolshevik forces in the South of Russia, and the main problem was relations with the Don army. As the success of the volunteers in the Kuban and the Caucasus unfolded, his positions in the dialogue with the Don forces were increasingly strengthened. At the same time, he played a political game to replace the Don ataman Pyotr Krasnov (until November 1918, oriented towards Germany) with the allied-oriented Afrikan Bogaevsky.

He spoke negatively about the Ukrainian hetman Pavlo Skoropadsky and the Ukrainian state created by him with the participation of the Germans, which complicated relations with the German command and reduced the influx of volunteers to Denikin from the German-controlled territories of Ukraine and Crimea.

After the death of General Alekseev on September 25 (October 8), 1918, he took the post of commander-in-chief of the Volunteer Army, uniting military and civilian power in his hands. During the second half of 1918, the Volunteer Army under the general control of Denikin managed to defeat the troops of the North Caucasian Soviet Republic and occupy the entire western part of the North Caucasus.

In the autumn of 1918 - in the winter of 1919, despite opposition from Great Britain, the troops of General Denikin recaptured Sochi, Adler, Gagra, the entire coastal territory captured by Georgia in the spring of 1918. By February 10, 1919, the VSYUR troops forced the Georgian army to retreat across the Bzyb River. These battles of Denikin during the Sochi conflict made it possible to de facto preserve Sochi for Russia.

Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of the South of Russia

On December 22, 1918 (January 4, 1919), the troops of the Southern Red Front went on the offensive, which caused the collapse of the front of the Don Army. Under these conditions, Denikin had a convenient opportunity to subjugate the Cossack troops of the Don. December 26, 1918 (January 8, 1919) Denikin signed an agreement with Krasnov, according to which the Volunteer Army merged with the Don Army. With the participation of the Don Cossacks, Denikin also managed these days to remove General Pyotr Krasnov from the leadership and replace him with Afrikan Bogaevsky, and the remnants of the Don army headed by Bogaevsky were directly reassigned to Denikin. This reorganization marked the beginning of the creation of the Armed Forces of the South of Russia (VSYUR). The AFSR also included the Caucasian (later Kuban) Army and the Black Sea Fleet.

Denikin headed the All-Russian Union of Socialist Youth, choosing as his deputy and chief of staff a longtime ally, with whom he went through Bykhov's imprisonment and both Kuban campaigns of the Volunteer Army, Lieutenant General Ivan Romanovsky. , Peter Wrangel. Soon he transferred his Headquarters of the Commander-in-Chief of the All-Union Socialist League to Taganrog.

By the beginning of 1919, Denikin was perceived by Russia's allies in the Entente as the main leader of the anti-Bolshevik forces in the South of Russia. He managed to get a large amount of weapons, ammunition, and equipment from them as military assistance through the Black Sea ports.

Doctor of Historical Sciences Vladimir Kulakov divides Denikin's activities as commander-in-chief of the All-Union Socialist League into two periods: the period of the largest victories (January - October 1919), which brought Denikin fame both in Russia and in Europe and the USA, and the period of the defeat of the All-Union Socialist League (November 1919 - April 1920), which ended with the resignation of Denikin.

The period of the biggest victories

According to Gordeev, Denikin had an army of 85,000 men in the spring of 1919; according to Soviet data, Denikin's army by February 2 (15), 1919, amounted to 113 thousand people. Doctor of Historical Sciences Vladimir Fedyuk writes that 25-30 thousand officers served under Denikin during this period.

In the reports of the Entente in March 1919, conclusions were drawn about the unpopularity and poor morale of Denikin's troops, as well as their lack of their own resources to continue the struggle. The situation was complicated by the departure of the allies from Odessa and its fall in April 1919 with the retreat of the Timanovskiy brigade to Romania and its subsequent transfer to Novorossiysk, as well as the occupation of Sevastopol by the Bolsheviks on April 6. At the same time, the Crimean-Azov Volunteer Army entrenched itself on the isthmus of the Kerch Peninsula, which partially removed the threat of the Red invasion of the Kuban. In the Kamennougolny region, the main forces of the Volunteer Army fought defensive battles against the superior forces of the Southern Front.

In these contradictory conditions, Denikin prepared the spring-summer offensive operations of the Armed Forces of South Russia, which achieved great success. Kulakov writes that, according to the analysis of documents and materials, “at that time the general showed his best military organizational qualities, non-standard strategic and operational-tactical thinking, showed the art of flexible maneuver and the correct choice of the direction of the main attack.” As factors of Denikin's success, his experience in combat operations of the First World War, as well as his understanding that the strategy of the Civil War differs from the classical scheme of warfare, are cited.

In addition to military operations, he paid much attention to propaganda work. He organized an information agency that developed and used various extraordinary methods of propaganda. Aviation was used to distribute leaflets over the positions of the Reds. In parallel with this, Denikin's agents distributed leaflets in the rear garrisons and quarters of Red spare parts with various misinformation in the form of texts of "orders-appeals" of the Chairman of the Revolutionary Military Council of the Republic. A successful propaganda move is considered to be the distribution of leaflets among the Vyoshensky Cossack rebels with information that the Council of People's Commissars signed a secret letter on the wholesale extermination of the Cossacks, which persuaded the rebels to Denikin's side. At the same time, Denikin supported the morale of the volunteers with his own sincere faith in the success of the work being done and personal closeness to the army.

Although the balance of forces in the spring of 1919 is estimated as 1:3.3 in bayonets and sabers, not in favor of the whites with relative equality in artillery, the moral and psychological advantage was on the side of the whites, which allowed them to attack against a superior enemy and minimize the disadvantage factor material and human resources.

During the late spring and early summer of 1919, Denikin's troops managed to seize the strategic initiative. He concentrated against the Southern Front, according to the Soviet command, 8-9 infantry and 2 cavalry divisions with a total number of 31-32 thousand people. Having defeated the Bolsheviks on the Don and Manych in May - June, Denikin's troops launched a successful offensive inland. His armies were able to capture the Kamennougolny region - the fuel and metallurgical base of southern Russia, enter the territory of Ukraine, and also occupy the vast fertile regions of the North Caucasus. The front of his armies was located in an arc curved to the north from the Black Sea east of Kherson to the northern part of the Caspian Sea.

Widespread fame within Soviet Russia came to Denikin in connection with the offensive of his armies in June 1919, when volunteer troops took Kharkov (June 24 (July 7), 1919), Yekaterinoslav (June 27 (July 7), 1919), Tsaritsyn ( June 30 (July 12), 1919). The mention of his name in the Soviet press became widespread, and he himself was subjected to fierce criticism in it. Denikin in the middle of 1919 instilled serious fear in the Soviet side. In July 1919, Vladimir Lenin wrote an appeal with the title "Everything to fight against Denikin!", which became a letter from the Central Committee of the RCP (b) to the party organizations, in which Denikin's offensive was called "the most critical moment of the socialist revolution."

At the same time, Denikin, at the height of his successes, on June 12 (25), 1919, officially recognized the power of Admiral Kolchak as the supreme ruler of Russia and the supreme commander in chief. continuity and succession of the high command".

On July 3 (16), 1919, he delivered the Moscow Directive to his troops, providing for the ultimate goal of capturing Moscow - the "heart of Russia" (and at the same time the capital of the Bolshevik state). The troops of the Armed Forces of South Russia under the general leadership of Denikin began their March on Moscow.

In the middle of 1919 he achieved great military successes in Ukraine. At the end of the summer of 1919, the cities of Poltava (July 3 (16), 1919), Nikolaev, Kherson, Odessa (August 10 (23), 1919), Kiev (August 18 (31), 1919) were taken by his armies. During the capture of Kyiv, volunteers came into contact with units of the UNR and the Galician army. Denikin, who did not recognize the legitimacy of Ukraine and the Ukrainian troops, demanded the disarmament of the UNR forces and their return to their homes for subsequent mobilization. The impossibility of finding a compromise led to the start of hostilities between the VSYUR and the Ukrainian forces, which, although they developed successfully for the VSYUR, however, led to the need to fight on two fronts at the same time. In November 1919, the Petliura and Galician troops suffered a complete defeat on the Right-Bank Ukraine, the UNR army lost a significant part of the controlled territories, and a peace treaty and a military alliance were concluded with the Galicians, as a result of which the Galician army came under the control of Denikin and became part of the All-Union Socialist Republic.

September and the first half of October 1919 were the time of the greatest success of Denikin's forces in the central direction. In August - September 1919, in a large-scale oncoming battle near Kharkov and Tsaritsyn, a heavy defeat to the armies of the Southern Front of the Reds (commander - Vladimir Egoriev), Denikin, pursuing the defeated red units, began to rapidly move towards Moscow. On September 7 (20), 1919, they took Kursk, September 23 (October 6), 1919 - Voronezh, September 27 (October 10), 1919 - Chernigov, September 30 (October 13), 1919 - Oryol and intended to take Tula. The southern front of the Bolsheviks was collapsing. The Bolsheviks were close to disaster and were preparing to go underground. An underground Moscow Party Committee was created, government agencies began evacuating to Vologda.

If on May 5 (18), 1919, the Volunteer Army in the Kamennougolny region numbered 9,600 fighters in its ranks, then after the capture of Kharkov, by June 20 (July 3), 1919, it amounted to 26 thousand people, and by July 20 (August 2), 1919 - 40 thousand people. The entire strength of the VSYUR, subordinate to Denikin, from May to October increased gradually from 64 to 150 thousand people. Under the control of Denikin were the territories of 16-18 provinces and regions with a total area of ​​810 thousand square meters. miles with a population of 42 million.

The period of the defeat of the VSYUR

But since mid-October 1919, the position of the armies of the South of Russia has noticeably worsened. The rear was destroyed by the raid of the rebel army of Nestor Makhno across Ukraine, who broke through the White front in the Uman region at the end of September, besides, troops had to be withdrawn from the front against him, and the Bolsheviks concluded an unspoken truce with the Poles and Petliurists, freeing up forces to fight Denikin. Due to the transition from a volunteer to a mobilization basis for recruiting the army, the quality of Denikin's armed forces fell, mobilization did not give the desired result, a large number of those liable for military service preferred to remain in the rear under various pretexts, and not in active units. Peasant support weakened. Having created a quantitative and qualitative superiority over the forces of Denikin in the main, Oryol-Kursk, direction (62 thousand bayonets and sabers for the Reds versus 22 thousand for the Whites), in October the Red Army went on the counteroffensive: fierce battles that marched with varying success, south of Orel, small By the end of October, the troops of the Southern Front of the Reds (from September 28 (October 11), 1919 - commander Alexander Yegorov) defeated the units of the Volunteer Army, and then began to push them along the entire front line. In the winter of 1919-1920, the VSYUR troops left Kharkov, Kyiv, Donbass, Rostov-on-Don.

On November 24 (December 7), 1919, in a conversation with the Pepelev brothers, the supreme ruler and supreme commander of the Russian army A. V. Kolchak for the first time announced his abdication in favor of A. I. Denikin, and in early December 1919, the admiral raised this issue before his government. On December 9 (22), 1919, the Council of Ministers of the Russian government adopted the following resolution: “In order to ensure the continuity and succession of all-Russian power, the Council of Ministers decided: to assign the duties of the Supreme Ruler in the event of a serious illness or death of the Supreme Ruler, as well as in the event of his refusal from the title of Supreme Ruler The ruler or his long-term absence on the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces in the South of Russia, Lieutenant General Denikin.

On December 22, 1919 (January 4, 1920), Kolchak issued his last decree in Nizhneudinsk, by which, “in view of my predetermining the issue of transferring the supreme all-Russian power to the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces in the South of Russia, Lieutenant General Denikin, pending receipt of his instructions, in order to preserve on our Russian Eastern Outskirts, a stronghold of statehood on the basis of inseparable unity with all of Russia”, provided “the fullness of military and civil power throughout the Russian Eastern Outskirts, united by the Russian supreme power”, Lieutenant General Grigory Semyonov. Despite the fact that Kolchak never transferred the supreme all-Russian power to Denikin, and accordingly, the title “Supreme Ruler” itself was never transferred, Denikin wrote in his memoirs that in the situation of heavy defeats of the Armed Forces of the South of Russia and the political crisis, he considered absolutely unacceptable "accepting the corresponding name and functions" and refused to accept the title of Supreme Ruler, motivating his decision by the "lack of official information about events in the East."

After the retreat of the remnants of the Volunteer Army to the Cossack regions by the beginning of 1920, already possessing the title of Supreme Ruler received from Kolchak, Denikin tried to form the so-called South Russian model of statehood, based on the unification of the state principles of volunteer, Don and Kuban leaderships. To do this, he abolished the Special Meeting and created instead the South Russian government from representatives of all parties, which he headed, remaining as commander-in-chief of the All-Russian Union of Youth. The issue of the need for a broad coalition with representatives of the Cossack leadership lost relevance by March 1920, when the army retreated to Novorossiysk, having lost control over the Cossack regions.

He made an attempt to delay the retreat of his troops on the line of the Don and Manych rivers, as well as on the Perekop Isthmus, and ordered in the first days of January 1920 to take up defense on these lines. He expected to wait until spring, get new help from the Entente, and repeat the offensive into central Russia. Trying in the second half of January to break through the stabilized front, the red cavalry armies suffered heavy losses near Bataysk and on the Manych and Sal rivers from the strike group of the Don Army of General Vladimir Sidorin. Inspired by this success, on February 8 (21), 1920, Denikin ordered his troops to go on the offensive. On February 20 (March 5), 1920, volunteer troops took Rostov-on-Don for several days. But the new offensive of the troops of the Caucasian Front of the Reds on February 26 (March 11), 1920 caused fierce battles near Bataysk and Stavropol, and near the village of Yegorlykskaya there was an oncoming equestrian battle between the army of Semyon Budyonny and the group of Alexander Pavlov, as a result of which Pavlov’s equestrian group was defeated, and the troops Denikin began a general retreat along the entire front to the south for more than 400 km.

On March 4 (17), 1920, he issued a directive to the troops to cross to the left bank of the Kuban River and take up defense along it, but the decomposed troops did not comply with these orders and began a panicked retreat. The Don army, which was ordered to take up defense on the Taman Peninsula, instead, mixed with volunteers, retreated to Novorossiysk. The Kuban army also left their positions and rolled back to Tuapse. The disorderly accumulation of troops near Novorossiysk and the delay in the start of the evacuation became the cause of the Novorossiysk catastrophe, which is often blamed on Denikin. In total, about 35-40 thousand soldiers and officers were transported from the Novorossiysk region by sea to the Crimea on March 26-27 (8) - (9) April 1920. The general himself, with his chief of staff Romanovsky, was one of the last to board the destroyer Captain Saken in Novorossiysk.

Resignation from the post of Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Russia

In the Crimea, on March 27 (April 9), 1920, he placed his Headquarters in Feodosia in the building of the Astoria Hotel. During the week, he carried out the reorganization of the army and measures to restore the combat capability of the troops. At the same time, in the army itself, with the exception of non-ferrous units and most of the Kuban, dissatisfaction with Denikin was growing. The opposition generals expressed particular dissatisfaction. Under these conditions, the Military Council of the Armed Forces of Russia in Sevastopol adopted a recommendatory decision on the advisability of transferring command from Denikin to Wrangel. Feeling responsible for military failures and following the laws of officer honor, he wrote a letter to the chairman of the Military Council, Abram Dragomirov, in which he said that he planned to resign and convened a meeting of the council in order to elect a successor to himself. On April 4 (17), 1920, he appointed Lieutenant-General Pyotr Wrangel as Commander-in-Chief of the All-Union Socialist Republic, and on the same evening, together with the former chief of staff Romanovsky, who also resigned, left the Crimea on an English destroyer and left for England with an intermediate stop in Constantinople, leaving forever limits of Russia.

On April 5 (18), 1920, in Constantinople, in the immediate vicinity of Denikin, his chief of staff Ivan Romanovsky was killed, which was a severe blow for Denikin. On the same evening, with his family and the children of General Kornilov, he transferred to an English hospital ship, and on April 6 (19), 1920, on the Marlborough dreadnought, he left for England, in his own words, with a feeling of "inescapable sorrow."

In the summer of 1920, Alexander Guchkov turned to Denikin with a request to "complete a patriotic feat and endow Baron Wrangel with a special solemn act ... successive all-Russian power," but he refused to sign such a document.

Denikin's policy in the controlled territories

In the territories controlled by the Armed Forces of the South of Russia, all power belonged to Denikin as commander in chief. Under him, there was a Special Conference, which performed the functions of executive and legislative power. Possessing essentially dictatorial power and being a supporter of a constitutional monarchy, Denikin did not consider himself entitled (until the convocation of the Constituent Assembly) to predetermine the future state structure of Russia. He tried to rally the widest possible sections of the population around the White movement under the slogans "Fight against Bolshevism to the end", "Great, United and Indivisible Russia", "Political freedoms", "Law and order". This position was the object of criticism both from the right, from the monarchists, and from the left, from the liberal socialist camp. The call to recreate a united and indivisible Russia met with resistance from the Cossack state formations of the Don and Kuban, who sought autonomy and a federal structure for the future Russia, and could not be supported.

zhan nationalist parties of Ukraine, Transcaucasia, Baltic states.

The implementation of Denikin's power was imperfect. Although formally the power belonged to the military, who, relying on the army, formed the policy of the White South, in practice Denikin failed to establish a firm order either in the controlled territories or in the army.

In an attempt to resolve the labor issue, progressive labor legislation was adopted with an 8-hour working day and labor protection measures, which, due to the complete collapse of industrial production and the unscrupulous actions of the owners, who used their temporary return to power in enterprises as a convenient opportunity to save their property and to transfer capital abroad, has not found practical implementation. At the same time, any workers' demonstrations and strikes were considered purely political and were suppressed by force, and the independence of trade unions was not recognized.

Denikin's government did not have time to fully implement the land reform he had developed, which was supposed to be based on the strengthening of small and medium-sized farms at the expense of state and landlord lands. In modern Russian and Ukrainian historiography, in contrast to earlier Soviet historiography, it is not customary to call Denikin's agrarian legislation focused on protecting the interests of landlord landownership. At the same time, the Denikin government failed to completely prevent the spontaneous return of landownership with all its negative consequences for the implementation of land reforms.

In national policy, Denikin adhered to the concept of "one and indivisible Russia", which did not allow discussion of any autonomy or self-determination of the territories that were part of the former Russian Empire within the pre-war borders. The principles of national policy in relation to the territory and population of Ukraine were reflected in Denikin's "Appeal to the population of Little Russia" and did not allow the right of the Ukrainian people to self-determination. Cossack autonomy was also not allowed - Denikin carried out repressive measures against attempts to create their own federal state by the Kuban, Don and Terek Cossacks: he liquidated the Kuban Rada and reshuffled the Government of the Cossack regions. A special policy was pursued with regard to the Jewish population. In view of the fact that among the leaders of the Bolshevik structures a significant part were Jews, it was customary among the Volunteer Army to consider any Jews as potential accomplices of the Bolshevik regime. Denikin was forced to issue an order banning Jews from joining the Volunteer Army as officers. Although Denikin did not issue a similar order regarding the soldiers, the artificially inflated requirements for Jewish recruits accepted into the army led to the fact that the question of the participation of Jews in the All-Russian Union of Socialist Rights "decided by itself." Denikin himself repeatedly appealed to his commanders "not to turn one nationality against another", but the weakness of his local power was such that he could not prevent pogroms, especially under conditions when the propaganda agency of Denikin's government OSVAG itself was conducting anti-Jewish agitation - for example, in its propaganda it equated Bolshevism with the Jewish population and called for a "crusade" against the Jews.

In his foreign policy, he was guided by the recognition of the state formation under his control by the Entente countries. With the consolidation of his power at the end of 1918 and the formation of the All-Russian Union of Socialist Youth in January 1919, Denikin managed to enlist the support of the Entente and receive its military assistance throughout 1919. During his reign, Denikin did not set the task of international recognition of his government by the Entente, these issues were already resolved by his successor Wrangel in 1920.

He was negative about the idea of ​​forming a coalition legislative government of anti-Bolshevik forces in the South of Russia, was skeptical about the state abilities of his Don and Kuban allies, believing that the territory subordinate to him "could give a representative body intellectually no higher than the provincial zemstvo assembly."

From the middle of 1919, a major conflict emerged between Denikin and Wrangel, one of the commanders of the Volunteer Army who had risen by that time. The contradictions were not of a political nature: the reasons for the disagreement were the difference in the vision of the two generals on the issue of choosing allies and the further strategy for the forces of the White movement in the South of Russia, which quickly turned into mutual accusations and diametrically opposed assessments of the same events. The starting point of the conflict is called the ignoring by Denikin in April 1919 of the secret report of Wrangel, in which he proposed to make the Tsaritsyn direction of the offensive of the White armies a priority. Denikin later issued the Moscow offensive directive, which, after its failure, was publicly criticized by Wrangel. By the end of 1919, an open confrontation flared up between the generals, Wrangel probed the ground to replace General Denikin, but in January 1920 he resigned, left the territory of the All-Union Socialist League and left for Constantinople, staying there until the spring of 1920. The conflict between Denikin and Wrangel contributed to a split in the white camp, and it also continued in exile.

The repressive policy of the Denikin government is estimated to be similar to the policy of Kolchak and other military dictatorships, or is called tougher than that of other white entities, which is explained by the greater ferocity of the Red Terror in the South in comparison with Siberia or other regions. Denikin himself transferred the responsibility for organizing the White Terror in the South of Russia to the initiative of his counterintelligence, arguing that it became "sometimes centers of provocation and organized robbery." In August 1918, he ordered that, by order of the military governor, those guilty of establishing Soviet power be brought to the military field courts of the military unit of the Volunteer Army. In the middle of 1919, the repressive legislation was tightened by the adoption of the “Law in relation to participants in the establishment of Soviet power in the Russian state, as well as those who deliberately contributed to its spread and consolidation”, according to which persons who were clearly involved in the establishment of Soviet power were subject to death penalty, complicit provided for “indefinite penal servitude", or "hard labor from 4 to 20 years", or "correctional detainees from 2 to 6 years", for minor violations - imprisonment from a month to 1 year 4 months or "fine penalty" from 300 to 20 thousand rubles . In addition, "fear of possible coercion" was excluded by Denikin from the "exemption from liability" section, since, according to his resolution, it is "hard to detect for the court." At the same time, Denikin, with his own propaganda goals, set the task of studying and documenting the results of the Red Terror. On April 4, 1919, by his order, a Special Investigative Commission was created to investigate the atrocities of the Bolsheviks.

In exile

Interwar period

Retirement from politics and a period of active literary activity

Heading with his family from Constantinople to England, Denikin made stops in Malta and Gibraltar. In the Atlantic Ocean, the ship was caught in a severe storm. Arriving in Southampton, on April 17, 1920, he left for London, where he was met by representatives of the British War Office, as well as by General Holman and a group of Russian leaders, including the former leader of the Cadets Pavel Milyukov and diplomat Yevgeny Sablin, who presented Denikin with a thank you note and a greeting a telegram from Paris sent to the Russian embassy in London in the name of Denikin with the signatures of Prince Georgy Lvov, Sergei Sazonov, Vasily Maklakov and Boris Savinkov. The London press (in particular, The Times and the Daily Herald) noted Denikin's arrival with respectful articles addressed to the general.

Stayed in England for several months, first living in London and then in Pevensey and Eastbourne (East Sussex). In the autumn of 1920, a telegram from Lord Curzon to Chicherin was published in England, in which he noted that it was his influence that helped convince Denikin to leave the post of commander-in-chief of the All-Union Socialist Revolutionary Federation and transfer it to Wrangel. Denikin in The Times categorically denied Curzon's statement about any influence of the lord on his leaving the post of commander-in-chief of the All-Union Socialist Republic, explaining the abandonment by purely personal reasons and the demand of the moment, and also refused Lord Curzon's offer to participate in the conclusion of a truce with the Bolsheviks and said that:

In protest against the desire of the British government to make peace with Soviet Russia, in August 1920 he left England and moved to Belgium, where he settled with his family in Brussels and began writing his fundamental documentary research on the Civil War - Essays on Russian Troubles. On Christmas Eve in December 1920, General Denikin wrote to his colleague, the former head of the British mission in the South of Russia, General Briggs:

Gordeev writes that during this period Denikin decided to abandon further armed struggle in favor of the struggle "by word and pen." The researcher speaks positively about this choice and notes that thanks to him, the history of Russia in the late 19th - early 20th centuries "received a remarkable chronicler."

In June 1922 he moved from Belgium to Hungary, where he lived and worked until the middle of 1925. During the three years of his life in Hungary, he changed his place of residence three times. First, the general settled in Sopron, then spent several months in Budapest, and after that he again settled in a provincial town near Lake Balaton. Here work was completed on the last volumes of the Essays, which were published in Paris and Berlin, as well as, with abridgements, were translated and published in English, French and German. The publication of this work somewhat corrected Denikin's financial situation and gave him the opportunity to look for a more convenient place to live. At this time, Denikin's longtime friend, General Alexei Chapron du Larre, married in Belgium the daughter of General Kornilov and invited the general to return to Brussels by letter, which was the reason for the move. He stayed in Brussels from the middle of 1925 until the spring of 1926.

In the spring of 1926 he settled in Paris, which was the center of Russian emigration. Here he took up not only literary, but also social activities. In 1928, he wrote the essay "Officers", the main part of the work on which took place in Capbreton, where Denikin often talked with the writer Ivan Shmelev. Further, Denikin began work on the autobiographical story "My Life". At the same time, he often traveled to Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia to lecture on Russian history. In 1931 he completed the work "The Old Army", which was a military-historical study of the Russian Imperial Army before and during the First World War.

Political activity in exile

With the advent of the Nazis to power in Germany, he condemned Hitler's policies. Unlike a number of emigrant figures who planned to participate in hostilities against the Red Army on the side of foreign states unfriendly to the USSR, he advocated the need to support the Red Army against any foreign aggressor, with the subsequent awakening of the Russian spirit in the ranks of this army, which, according to the general's plan, and must overthrow Bolshevism in Russia and at the same time keep the army itself in Russia.

In general, Denikin retained authority among the Russian emigration, however, part of the white emigration and subsequent waves of Russian emigration were critical of Denikin. Among them was Peter Wrangel, the successor to the post of commander-in-chief of the All-Union Socialist League, writer Ivan Solonevich, philosopher Ivan Ilyin and others. For military-strategic miscalculations during the Civil War, Denikin was criticized by such prominent emigration figures as military specialist and historian General Nikolai Golovin, Colonel Arseny Zaitsov and others. Difficult relations associated with a divergence of views on the further continuation of the White struggle, Denikin had with the Russian All-Military Union (ROVS), a military émigré organization of former members of the White movement.

In September 1932, a group of former servicemen of the Volunteer Army close to Denikin created the Union of Volunteers organization. The newly created organization disturbed the leadership of the ROVS, who claimed leadership in organizing military unions in an emigrant environment. Denikin supported the creation of the "Union of Volunteers" and believed that the ROVS in the early 1930s. was in crisis. According to some reports, he headed the "Union".

From 1936 to 1938, with the participation of the "Union of Volunteers" in Paris, he published the newspaper "Volunteer", on the pages of which he published his articles. In total, three issues were published in February of each year, and they were timed to coincide with the anniversary of the First Kuban (Ice) Campaign.

At the end of 1938, he was a witness in the case of Nadezhda Plevitskaya about the kidnapping of the head of the EMRO, General Yevgeny Miller, and the disappearance of General Nikolai Skoblin (Plevitskaya's husband). His appearance at the trial in the French newspaper press on 10 December 1938 was regarded as a sensation. He gave evidence in which he expressed distrust of Skoblin and Plevitskaya, and also expressed confidence in the involvement of both in the abduction of Miller.

On the eve of World War II, Denikin gave a lecture in Paris entitled "World Events and the Russian Question", which was subsequently published in 1939 as a separate pamphlet.

The Second World War

The outbreak of World War II (September 1, 1939) found General Denikin in the south of France in the village of Monteuil-aux-Viscounts, where he left Paris to work on his work The Way of the Russian Officer. According to the author's intention, this work was supposed to be both an introduction and a supplement to the Essays on Russian Troubles. The invasion of German troops into France in May 1940 forced Denikin to make a decision to hastily leave Bourg-la-Reine (near Paris) and, in the car of one of his associates, Colonel Glotov, drive to the south of France to the Spanish border. In Mimizan, north of Biarritz, the car with Denikin was overtaken by German motorized units. He was imprisoned by the Germans in a concentration camp, where the Goebbels department offered him assistance in literary work. He refused to cooperate, was released and settled under the control of the German commandant's office and the Gestapo in the villa of friends in the village of Mimizan in the vicinity of Bordeaux. Many of the books, pamphlets and articles written by Denikin in the 1930s ended up on the list of banned literature in territory controlled by the Third Reich and were seized.

He refused to register with the German commandant's office as a stateless person (who were Russian emigrants), arguing that he was a citizen of the Russian Empire, and no one took this citizenship from him.

In 1942, the German authorities again offered cooperation to Denikin and moved to Berlin, this time demanding, according to Ippolitov's interpretation, that he lead the anti-communist forces from among Russian emigrants under the auspices of the Third Reich, but received a decisive refusal from the general.

Gordeev, referring to the information received in archival documents, cites information that in 1943 Denikin sent a carload of medicines to the Red Army at his own expense, which puzzled Stalin and the Soviet leadership. It was decided to accept the medicines, but not to disclose the name of the author of their dispatch.

Remaining a staunch opponent of the Soviet system, he urged emigrants not to support Germany in the war with the USSR (the slogan "Defending Russia and overthrowing Bolshevism"), repeatedly calling all representatives of the emigration cooperating with the Germans "obscurantists", "defeatists" and "Hitler's admirers".

At the same time, when in the fall of 1943 one of the eastern battalions of the Wehrmacht was quartered in Mimizan, where Denikin lived, he softened his attitude towards ordinary military personnel from former Soviet citizens. He believed that their defection to the side of the enemy was explained by the inhuman conditions of detention in Nazi concentration camps and the national self-consciousness of the Soviet man, mutilated by the Bolshevik ideology. Denikin expressed his views on the Russian liberation movement in two unpublished essays “General Vlasov and the Vlasovites” and “The World War. Russia and Abroad".

In June 1945, after the surrender of Germany, Denikin returned to Paris.

Moving to the USA

The Soviet influence in Europe, which increased after the Second World War, forced the general to leave France. The USSR was aware of Denikin's patriotic position during World War II, and Stalin did not raise the issue of forcibly deporting Denikin to the Soviet state before the governments of the countries of the anti-Hitler coalition. But Denikin himself did not have accurate information on this subject and experienced a certain discomfort and fear for his life. In addition, Denikin felt that, under direct or indirect Soviet control, he was limited in his ability to express his views in the press.

It turned out to be difficult to obtain an American visa under the quota for Russian emigrants, and Denikin and his wife, as they were born on the territory of modern Poland, were able to apply for an American emigration visa through the Polish embassy. Leaving their daughter Marina in Paris, on November 21, 1945, they left for Dieppe, from there they got to London via Newhaven. On December 8, 1945, the Denikin family stepped off the ship's ladder in New York.

In the USA he continued to work on the book "My Life". In January 1946, he appealed to General Dwight Eisenhower with an appeal to stop the forced extradition to the USSR of former Soviet citizens who joined German military formations during the war years. He gave public presentations: in January he gave a lecture in New York on "The World War and Russian military emigration", on February 5 he spoke to an audience of 700 people at a conference in the Manhattan Center. In the spring of 1946 he frequented the New York Public Library on 42nd Street.

In the summer of 1946, he issued a memorandum "The Russian Question" addressed to the governments of Great Britain and the United States, in which, while allowing a military clash between the leading powers of the West and Soviet Russia in order to overthrow the rule of the Communists, he warned them against intentions to carry out the dismemberment of Russia in this case.

Before his death, at the invitation of acquaintances, he went on vacation to a farm near Lake Michigan, where on June 20, 1947 he suffered his first heart attack, after which he was placed in a hospital in the city of Ann Arbor, the closest to the farm.

Death and funeral

He died of a heart attack on August 7, 1947 at the University of Michigan Hospital in Ann Arbor and was buried in the cemetery in Detroit. The American authorities buried him as the commander-in-chief of the allied army with military honors. On December 15, 1952, by decision of the White Cossack community of the United States, the remains of General Denikin were transferred to the Orthodox Cossack St. Vladimir cemetery in the town of Kesville, in the Jackson area, in the state of New Jersey.

Transfer of remains to Russia

On October 3, 2005, the ashes of General Anton Ivanovich Denikin and his wife Ksenia Vasilievna (1892-1973), together with the remains of the Russian philosopher Ivan Aleksandrovich Ilyin (1883-1954) and his wife Natalia Nikolaevna (1882-1963), were transported to Moscow for burial in the Donskoy monastery. The reburial was carried out in accordance with the instructions of the President of Russia Vladimir Putin and the Government of the Russian Federation with the consent of Denikin's daughter Marina Antonovna Denikina-Grey (1919-2005) and was organized by the Russian Cultural Foundation.

Ratings

Are common

One of the main Soviet and Russian researchers of Denikin's biography, Doctor of Historical Sciences Georgy Ippolitov, called Denikin a bright, dialectically contradictory and tragic figure in Russian history.

Russian emigrant sociologist, political scientist and historian Nikolai Timashev noted that Denikin went down in history primarily as the head of the Armed Forces of the South of Russia, and his troops of all the forces of the White movement approached Moscow as close as possible during the Civil War. Such estimates are shared by other authors.

Frequent assessments of Denikin as a consistent Russian patriot who remained faithful to Russia throughout his life. Often, researchers and biographers highly appreciate the moral qualities of Denikin. Denikin is presented by many authors as an implacable enemy of the Soviet government, while his position during the Second World War, when he supported the Red Army in its confrontation with the Wehrmacht, is called patriotic.

Historian and writer, researcher of Denikin's military biography Vladimir Cherkasov-Georgievsky portrayed a psychological portrait of Denikin, where he presented him as a typical liberal military intellectual, a special kind of Church Orthodox person with a "republican" accent, characterized by impulsiveness, eclecticism, hodgepodge, lack of a solid monolith . Such people are "unprejudicedly" indecisive, and it was they, in the author's opinion, who gave rise to Kerensky's and Februaryalism in Russia. In Denikin, the "intelligently commonplace" tried to get along "with genuine Orthodox asceticism."

The American historian Peter Kenez wrote that throughout his life Denikin always clearly identified himself with Orthodoxy and belonging to Russian civilization and culture, and during the Civil War he was one of the most uncompromising defenders of the unity of Russia, fighting against the separation of national outskirts from it.

The historian Igor Khodakov, discussing the reasons for the defeat of the White movement, wrote that the thoughts of Denikin, as a Russian idealist intellectual, were completely incomprehensible to ordinary workers and peasants, the American historian Peter Kenez drew attention to a similar problem. According to the historian Lyudmila Antonova, Denikin is a phenomenon of Russian history and culture, his thoughts and political views are the achievement of Russian civilization and "represent a positive potential for today's Russia."

Doctor of Historical Sciences Vladimir Fedyuk writes that in 1918 Denikin could not become a charismatic leader due to the fact that, unlike the Bolsheviks, who created a new statehood on the principle of a real great power, he continued to remain in the positions of a declarative great power. Ioffe writes that Denikin, by political convictions, was a representative of Russian liberalism, he remained true to such convictions to the end, and it was they who played "not the best role" with the general in the Civil War. The assessment of Denikin's political convictions as liberal is also characteristic of many other contemporary authors.

The current state of the study of Denikin is assessed in Russian historiography as continuing to contain many unresolved debatable issues, and, according to Panov, bear the imprint of the political situation.

In the 1920s, Soviet historians characterized Denikin as a politician who sought to find "some kind of middle line between extreme reaction and 'liberalism' and, in his views, 'approached right-wing Octobrism'", and Denikin's later reign in Soviet historiography began to be seen as "unrestricted dictatorship". Researcher of Denikin's journalism, candidate of historical sciences Denis Panov writes that in the 1930s-1950s, Soviet historiography developed clichés in assessing Denikin (as well as other figures of the White movement): "counter-revolutionary rabble", "White Guard rump", "lackeys of imperialism" and others. “In some historical works (by A. Kabeshev, F. Kuznetsov), white generals turn into “cartoon characters”, they are reduced “to the role of evil robbers from a children's fairy tale,” Panov writes.

The Soviet historiographic reality in the study of Denikin's military and political activities during the Civil War was the presentation of Denikin as the creator of "Denikinism", characterized as a military dictatorship of a general, a counter-revolutionary, reactionary regime. Characteristic was the erroneous statement about the monarchist-restoration nature of Denikin's policy, his connection with the imperialist forces of the Entente, which carried out a campaign against Soviet Russia. Denikin's democratic slogans to convene a Constituent Assembly were presented as a cover for monarchist goals. On the whole, in Soviet historical science there has been a accusatory bias in the coverage of events and phenomena associated with Denikin.

According to Antonova, in modern science, many assessments of Denikin by Soviet historiography are predominantly perceived as biased. Ippolitov writes that no serious success was achieved in the study of this problem in Soviet science, because "in the absence of creative freedom, it was not possible to investigate the problems of the White movement, including the activities of General Denikin." Panov writes about Soviet assessments as "far from objectivity and impartiality."

In Ukrainian historiography after 1991

Modern Ukrainian historiography studies Denikin mainly in the context of the presence of the armed forces under his control on the territory of Ukraine and presents him as the creator of the military dictatorship regime in Ukraine. His criticism is widespread for his pronounced anti-Ukrainian position, which was reflected in Denikin’s address “To the population of Little Russia”, published in the summer of 1919, according to which the name Ukraine was prohibited, replaced by the South of Russia, Ukrainian institutions were closed, the Ukrainian movement was announced as “traitorous”. Also, the regime created by Denikin on the territory of Ukraine is accused of anti-Semitism, Jewish pogroms and punitive expeditions against the peasantry.

Frequent in Ukrainian historiography are assessments of the reasons for the defeat of the White movement, led by Denikin, as a result of his rejection of cooperation with national movements, primarily Ukrainian. Denikin's success in Ukraine in 1919 is explained by the activity of Ukrainian partisan movements, which contributed to the weakening of the Bolsheviks in Ukraine, as the reasons for the defeat, considerable attention is paid to the failure to take into account local features and Denikin's disregard for the right of the Ukrainian people to self-determination, which pushed the broad peasant masses of Ukraine away from Denikin's political programs.

Awards

Russian

Received in peacetime

• Medal "In memory of the reign of Emperor Alexander III" (1896, silver on the Alexander ribbon)
• Order of St. Stanislaus 3rd class (1902)
• Order of St. Vladimir, 4th degree (12/06/1909)
• Medal "In Commemoration of the 100th Anniversary of the Patriotic War of 1812" (1910)
• Medal "In memory of the 300th anniversary of the reign of the Romanov dynasty" (1913)

Combat

• Order of Saint Anne 3rd class with swords and bows (1904)
• Order of St. Stanislaus 2nd class with swords (1904)
• Order of Saint Anna 2nd class with swords (1905)
• Medal "In memory of the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-1905" (light bronze)
• Order of St. Vladimir, 3rd degree (04/18/1914)
• Swords to the Order of St. Vladimir 3rd degree (11/19/1914)
• Order of St. George 4th degree (04/24/1915)
• Order of St. George 3rd degree (11/03/1915)
• St. George's weapon (11/10/1915)
• St. George's weapon, decorated with diamonds, with the inscription "For the two-time liberation of Lutsk" (09/22/1916)
• Sign of the 1st Kuban (Ice) campaign No. 3 (1918)

Foreign

• Order of Michael the Brave 3rd class (Romania, 1917)
• Military Cross 1914-1918 (France, 1917)
• Honorary Knight Commander of the Order of the Bath (UK, 1919)

Memory

• In July 1919, the 83rd Samursky Infantry Regiment applied to Denikin to "grant" his name to the name of the regiment.
• In Saratov, in the house where Denikin lived in 1907-1910, there is a shop called "Denikin's House". In the same place in Saratov on December 17, 2012, in honor of the 140th anniversary of the birth of Denikin, a memorial plaque was erected to him at the Volga Institute of Management named after Stolypin on the initiative of the director of the institute and the former governor of the Saratov region Dmitry Ayatskov.
• In March 2006, a memorial plaque dedicated to the last days of Anton Denikin's stay in Russia was installed on the wall of the Astoria Hotel in Feodosia.
• In May 2009, at the personal expense of Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, a memorial to white soldiers was built in the Donskoy Monastery. A marble tombstone was erected on Denikin's grave, which became part of this memorial, and the area adjacent to the tombstone was landscaped. In the spring and summer of 2009, the name of General Denikin was in the center of attention of the socio-political media in connection with Putin's quoting of Denikin's memoirs regarding his attitude to Ukraine.
• According to some authors, a hill that bears the name of Denikin has survived to the present in Manchuria. The hill received this name during the Russo-Japanese War for the merits of Denikin during its capture.

In art

To the cinema

• 1967 - "Iron Stream" - actor Leonid Gallis.
• 1977 - "Walking through the torments" - actor Yuri Gorobets.
• 2005 - "Death of the Empire" - Fyodor Bondarchuk.
• 2007 - "Nine Lives of Nestor Makhno" - Alexei Bezsmertny.

In literature

• Tolstoy A.N."The Road to Calvary".
• Sholokhov M. A. Quiet Don.
• Solzhenitsyn A.I."Red Wheel".
• Bondar Alexander"Black Avengers"
• Karpenko Vladimir, Karpenko Sergey. Exodus. - M., 1984.
• Karpenko Vladimir, Karpenko Sergey. Wrangel in the Crimea. - M.: Spas, 1995. - 623 p.

Major writings

• Denikin A.I. Russian-Chinese question: Military-political essay. - Warsaw: Type. Warsaw educational district, 1908. - 56 p.
• Denikin A.I. Reconnaissance team: A manual for training in the infantry. - St. Petersburg: V. Berezovsky, 1909. - 40 p.
• Denikin A.I. Essays on Russian Troubles: - T. I−V .. - Paris; Berlin: Ed. Povolotsky; Word; Bronze Horseman, 1921−1926.; M.: "Nauka", 1991.; Iris-press, 2006. - (White Russia). - ISBN 5-8112-1890-7.
• General A. I. Denikine. La décomposition de l'armée et du pouvoir, fevrier-septembre 1917. - Paris: J. Povolozky, 1921. - 342 p.
• General A. I. Denikin. The Russian turmoil; memoirs: military, social, and political. - London: Hutchinson & Co, 1922. - 344 p.
• Denikin A. I. Essays on Russian Troubles. T. 1. Issue. 1 and 2. Volume II. Paris, b / g. 345 p.
• Denikin A.I. Campaign and death of General Kornilov. M.-L., State. ed., 1928. 106 p. 5,000 copies
• Denikin A.I. Campaign to Moscow. (Essays on Russian Troubles). M., "Federation", . 314 p. 10,000 copies
• Denikin A.I. Officers. Essays. - Paris: Spring, 1928. - 141 p.
• Denikin A.I. Old army. - Paris: Spring, 1929, 1931. - T. I-II.
• Denikin A.I. Russian question in the Far East. - Paris: Imp Basile, 1, villa Chauvelot, 1932. - 35 p.
• Denikin A.I. Brest-Litovsk. - Paris. - 1933: Petropolis. - 52 p.
• Denikin A.I. International position, Russia and emigration. - Paris, 1934. - 20 p.
• Denikin A.I. Who saved the Soviet government from destruction?. - Paris, 1939. - 18 p.
• Denikin A.I. World events and the Russian question. - Ed. Union of Volunteers. - Paris, 1939. - 85 p.
• Denikin A.I. The path of the Russian officer. - New York: Ed. them. A. Chekhov, 1953. - 382 p. (posthumous edition of Denikin's unfinished autobiographical work "My Life"); M.: Sovremennik, 1991. - 299 p. - ISBN 5-270-01484-X.

Unpublished for 2012 are the manuscripts of Denikin's books “The Second World War. Russia and Emigration” and “Slander on the White Movement”, which was Denikin’s response to the criticism of General N. N. Golovin in the book “Russian Counter-Revolution. 1917-1920"

Anton Ivanovich Denikin is a well-known Russian military figure, one of the leaders of the "white" movement during the Civil War. At the end of the war, he wrote memoirs, thanks to which historians were able to interpret many of the events of the war.

The future military leader was born in the Warsaw province in a peasant family. His father was a serf, and his mother was the daughter of a small landowner. My father was recruited by a landowner and retired with the rank of major - during his military career he participated in the Crimean War, the Polish and Hungarian campaigns. Dmitry Lekhovich is considered the most famous biographer of Anton Denikin - thanks to him, many unknown facts from the life of a military leader became the property of historical science.

Denikin was brought up in a poor family, quickly mastered the letter, fluent in Polish and Russian. He was brought up in the Orthodox faith. At the age of 9 he entered the Vloclav real school. While studying, he was engaged in tutoring, taught children of elementary grades.

The military career of his father became the main factor in choosing a profession for Anton Denikin. In 1890, the future military man graduated from the Lovichsky School and entered the Kiev Infantry School. In 1899 he graduated from the Imperial Nikolaev Academy, but was not included in the General Staff - the lists were changed by General Nikolai Sukhotin, the new head of the Academy. Justice was restored only after 3 years. For several years, Denikin served on the territory of Poland in a company that guarded the Warsaw Fortress - the most dangerous criminals were located here.

As early as the end of the 19th century, Denikin's political views and ideals were formed. The military man showed his literary and journalistic talents - he published his articles and notes under the name Ivan Nochin. Denikin considered the main ideals to be a constitutional monarchy and statehood, which must be defended at the cost of one's life. The publicist advocated radical reforms that would transform Russia. Any changes in the country must take place peacefully. Denikin's notes were published in the Scout magazine, the most popular military publication of the early 20th century.

Denikin distinguished himself during the Russo-Japanese War and was promoted to the rank of colonel. For courage and valor he was awarded the orders of St. Anna and St. Stanislaus. After the war, he wrote a series of articles that he devoted to the analysis of the hostilities in which he personally participated. Denikin saw the approaching threat from Germany, so he considered it necessary to start a military reform. The worst he considered was the bureaucracy, which hinders the progress of the army. He called the transformation of aviation and transport for the needs of the army the priority tasks of the reform.

At the beginning of the First World War, he immediately expressed his desire to go to the front. He served in the headquarters of the Brusilov army. In the offensive operation at Grodek in 1914, he showed valor and leadership qualities, for which he was awarded the St. George weapon. He commanded a brigade of the Iron Riflemen. During 1914-1915, under the leadership of Denikin, the brigade carried out a number of successful operations. In 1916 he participated in the Brusilov breakthrough. For merits in the battles of the First World War, Denikin received the orders of Michael the Brave and St. George.

The February revolution brought a change of power in the country. Denikin was released from the oath to the emperor and, at the suggestion of the new government that was formed during the revolution, became chief of staff under General Mikhail Alekseev. He condemned the policy of the Provisional Government, and decided to support the speech of General Kornilov. Denikin met the October Revolution in prison, where he ended up with Kornilov. After the fall of the Provisional Government, a situation developed when the new government did not care about the prisoners, so Denikin managed to be released and go to Novocherkassk.

At this time, the main forces of the “whites” began to form - Denikin took part in the creation of the Volunteer Army and wrote the Constitution of power on the Don. According to studies, Denikin participated in the creation and functioning of the first government, which opposed the forces of the Bolsheviks.

At the beginning of 1918, Denikin's detachments entered into battle with the Antonov-Ovsienko fighters. The "Whites" did not win a complete victory, but were able to hold back the enemy's advance. At the first stage of the Civil War, Denikin was one of the most active participants in the hostilities and was considered one of the commanders of the Don army. In the spring of 1918, Denikin became commander-in-chief of the army after the death of Kornilov - becoming commander-in-chief, he decided not to storm Yekaterinodar. Denikin's actions made it possible to save the main forces of the army. In 1919, he recognized the supremacy of Alexander Kolchak - Denikin did not want to split the White Army, so recognizing Kolchak as the only commander-in-chief of the "whites" was a step that allowed the army to rally. A year later, Denikin became supreme commander.

Anton Ivanovich approved the plan of attack on Moscow - the "Moscow directive" was the result of successful military operations in the summer of 1919. The offensive was not successful - Denikin did not take into account the specifics of the civil war. The offensive led to a division of forces - scattered troops were an easy target for the "reds". Denikin's main problem is the lack of a clear program that would attract the support of the population to his side. The military leader decided not to start solving economic problems until the Bolsheviks were expelled - such uncertainty alienated the masses from him. In addition, the discipline of the White Army fell: the phenomena of corruption and degeneration of morality became frequent. "Whites", especially on the territory of Ukraine, committed pogroms, traded in banditry.

The unsuccessful campaign against Moscow forced Denikin to retreat quickly. 1920 - was the time of the collapse of the "white" troops. "Whites" were forced to flee the country, many were captured. Denikin transferred power to Wrangel and emigrated.

For 6 years, the Denikin family moved - Constantinople, London, Brussels, Paris. For some time the family lived in Hungary. The period of emigration became the time of writing books, of which the most famous are Essays on Russian Troubles, The Old Army, and Officers.

In 1940, France capitulated in World War II, after which the Denikins moved to the southern French city of Mimizan. During these years, Denikin opposes Nazism, rejoices at the victories of the Red Army on the fronts, but does not believe in the possibility of positive changes in the USSR. After the war, Denikin leaves for the United States, fearing the possibility of deportation to the USSR - the publicist claims that the power of the Soviets is a threat. According to Denikin, the USSR provokes aggression in the world only to achieve its ambitious goals. In the USA, Denikin writes his memoirs. He died in 1947, was buried in the USA - in this country, in New York, the works of the military leader are kept.

Biography of General Denikin

Anton Ivanovich Denikin (born December 4 (16), 1872 - death August 7, 1947) Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of the South of Russia during the Civil War. Russian lieutenant general. Political and public figure, writer.

Childhood and youth

Anton Ivanovich Denikin was born in the family of a retired major of the border guard Ivan Efimovich Denikin, a former serf in the Saratov province, who was given by the landowner as a soldier, who took part in three military campaigns. Ivan Efimovich rose to the rank of officer - an army warrant officer, then became a Russian border guard (guard) in the Kingdom of Poland, retired in 62. There, a retired major had a son, Anton. At the age of 12, he was left without a father, and his mother Elizaveta Fedorovna, with great difficulty, was able to give him an education in the full scope of a real school.

Start of military service

Upon graduation, Anton Denikin first entered a volunteer regiment, and in the fall of 1890, entered the Kiev Infantry Cadet School, which he graduated 2 years later. He began his officer service with the rank of second lieutenant of an artillery brigade near Warsaw. 1895 - Denikin enters the Academy of the General Staff, but studies there surprisingly poorly, being the last in the graduation who had the right to enroll in the corps of officers of the General Staff.

Russo-Japanese War

After graduating from the academy, he commanded a company, a battalion, served in the headquarters of the infantry and cavalry divisions. At the beginning of the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-1905. Denikin asked to be transferred to the Far East. For differences in battles with the Japanese, he was promoted to colonel ahead of schedule and appointed chief of staff of the Ural-Transbaikal Cossack division.

When the Russo-Japanese War ended, Colonel Denikin served as chief of staff of the reserve brigade, commander of the 17th Arkhangelsk Infantry Regiment, stationed in the city of Zhytomyr.

World War I

World War I 1914-1918 met in the position of quartermaster general, that is, the head of the operational service, under the commander of the 8th army, General A.A. Brusilov. Soon, at his own request, he transferred from the headquarters to the active units, having received under the command of the 4th rifle brigade, better known in the Russian army under the name of the Iron Brigade. The brigade received this name for the heroism shown in the last Russian-Turkish war during the liberation of Bulgaria from Ottoman rule.

During the offensive in Galicia, the Denikin brigade of "iron shooters" repeatedly distinguished itself in cases against the Austro-Hungarians and made its way into the snowy Carpathians. Until the spring of 1915, stubborn and bloody battles were fought there, for which Major General A.I. Denikin was awarded the honorary St. George's arms and the military order of St. George 4th and 3rd degrees. These front-line awards could best testify to his abilities as a military leader.

During the fighting in the Carpathians, the front-line neighbor of Denikin's "iron shooters" was a division under the command of General L.G. Kornilov, his future colleague in the White movement in the South of Russia.

Colonel Denikin in full dress uniform

The rank of Lieutenant General A.I. Denikin was given for capturing the strategically important city of Lutsk with "iron shooters" who broke through six lines of enemy defense during the offensive operation. Near Czartorysk, his division was able to defeat the German 1st East Prussian Infantry Division and capture the Crown Prince's selected 1st Grenadier Regiment. In total, about 6,000 Germans were captured, 9 guns and 40 machine guns were taken as trophies.

During the famous offensive of the Southwestern Front, which went down in military history under the name of the Brusilov breakthrough, Denikin's division again broke into the city of Lutsk. On the approaches to it, the attacking Russian riflemen were opposed by the German "Steel Division".

“A particularly brutal battle took place at the Zaturtsev ... where the Brunswick Steel 20th Infantry Division was crushed by our Iron 4th Infantry Division of General Denikin,” wrote one of the historians about these battles.

September 1916 - General Anton Ivanovich Denikin was appointed commander of the 8th Army Corps, which at the end of the year was transferred to the Romanian Front as part of the 9th Army.

By that time, the general had already gained fame as a talented military leader. One of his contemporary wrote: “There was not a single operation that he would not have won brilliantly, there was not a single battle that he would not have won ... There was no case that General Denikin said that his troops were tired, or that he asked for help he was a reserve ... He was always calm during the fighting and was always personally where the situation required his presence, he was loved by both officers and soldiers ... "

After the February Revolution

The general met the February Revolution on the Romanian front. When General M.V. Alekseev was appointed Supreme Commander of Russia, Denikin, on the recommendation of the new Minister of War Guchkov and the decision of the Provisional Government, became Chief of Staff of the Headquarters of the Supreme Commander (April - May 1917)

Then Lieutenant General A.I. Denikin successively served as commander in chief of the Western and Southwestern fronts. After the failure of the July offensive, he openly accused the Provisional Government and its Prime Minister Kerensky of the collapse of the Russian army. Becoming an active participant in the unsuccessful Kornilov rebellion, Denikin, along with generals and officers loyal to Kornilov, were arrested and imprisoned in the city of Bykhov.

Leader of the White Movement

Creation of the Volunteer Army

After his release, he arrived in the capital of the Don Cossacks, the city of Novocherkassk, where, together with Generals Alekseev and Kornilov, he began to form the White Guard Volunteer Army. 1917, December - was elected a member of the Don Civil Council (Don Government), which, according to Denikin, was to become "the first all-Russian anti-Bolshevik government."

At first, Lieutenant General A.I. Denikin was appointed head of the Volunteer Division, but after the reorganization of the White Guard troops, he was transferred to the post of assistant army commander. He took part in the famous 1st Kuban ("Ice") campaign, sharing with the soldiers all his hardships and hardships. After the death of General L.G. Kornilov April 13, 1918 during the storming of the Kuban capital, the city of Yekaterinodar, Denikin became the commander of the Volunteer Army, and in September of the same year - its commander in chief.

The first order of the new commander of the Volunteer Army was an order to withdraw troops from Yekaterinodar back to the Don with the sole purpose of preserving its personnel. There, the Cossacks, who had risen against the Soviet regime, replenished the White army.

With the Germans who temporarily occupied the city of Rostov, General Denikin established relations that he himself called "armed neutrality", because he fundamentally condemned any foreign intervention against the Russian state. The German command, for its part, also tried not to aggravate relations with the volunteers.

On the Don, the 1st brigade of Russian volunteers under the command of Colonel Drozdovsky became part of the Volunteer Army. Gaining strength and replenishing its ranks, the White Army went on the offensive and recaptured the line of the Trade - Grand Duke railway from the Reds. Together with her, the white Don Cossack army of General Krasnov now interacted.

Second Kuban campaign

Denikin in the tank units of his army, 1919

After that, the army of Lieutenant General A.I. Denikin began, this time successful, the Second Kuban campaign. Soon the entire south of Russia was in the fire of the Civil War. The majority of the Kuban, Don and Terek Cossacks went over to the side of the White movement. A part of the mountain peoples also joined him. As part of the White Army of the South of Russia, the Circassian Cavalry Division and the Kabardian Cavalry Division appeared. Denikin also subjugated the White Cossack Don, Kuban and Caucasian armies (but only operationally; the Cossack armies retained a certain autonomy).

In January, the general becomes commander-in-chief of the Armed Forces of the South of Russia. On January 4, 1920 (after the defeat of the Kolchak armies) he was proclaimed the Supreme Ruler of Russia.

In his political views, General Denikin was a supporter of a bourgeois, parliamentary republic. 1919, April - he addressed the representatives of Russia's allies in the Entente during the First World War with a corresponding declaration defining the goals of the White Volunteer Army.

Time to win

The capture of the city of Ekaterinodar, the Kuban region and the North Caucasus inspired the fighters of the Volunteer Army. It was largely replenished with the Kuban Cossacks and officer cadres. Now the Volunteer Army numbered 30-35,000 people, yet noticeably inferior to the Don White Cossack Army of General Krasnov. But on January 1, 1919, the Volunteer Army already consisted of 82,600 bayonets and 12,320 cavalry. She became the main striking force of the White movement.

A.I. Denikin moved his headquarters as commander-in-chief, first to Rostov, then to Taganrog. 1919, June - in his armies there were more than 160,000 bayonets and sabers, about 600 guns, more than 1,500 machine guns. With these forces, he launched a broad offensive against Moscow.

Denikin's cavalry with a massive blow was able to break through the front of the 8th and 9th Red armies and united with the rebel Cossacks of the Upper Don, participants in the Veshensky uprising against the Soviet regime. A few days earlier, Denikin's troops dealt a strong blow at the junction of the Ukrainian and Southern fronts of the enemy and broke through to the north of Donbass.

White Volunteer, Don and Caucasian armies began a rapid advance in a northerly direction. During June 1919, they were able to capture the entire Dobass, Don region, Crimea and part of Ukraine. They took Kharkov and Tsaritsyn with battles. In the first half of July, the front of Denikin's troops entered the territory of the provinces of the central regions of Soviet Russia.

fracture

July 3, 1919 - Lieutenant General Anton Ivanovich Denikin issued the so-called Moscow directive, setting the ultimate goal of the offensive of the White troops to capture Moscow. The situation in mid-July, according to the Soviet high command, assumed the dimensions of a strategic catastrophe. But the military-political leadership of Soviet Russia, after taking a number of urgent measures, managed to turn the tide of the Civil War in the South in their favor. During the counter-offensive of the red southern and southeastern fronts, Denikin's armies were defeated, and by the beginning of 1920 they were defeated in the Don, the North Caucasus and Ukraine.

In exile

The grave of Denikin with his wife in the Donskoy Monastery

Denikin himself with part of the White troops retreated to the Crimea, where on April 4 of the same year he transferred the power of the Supreme Commander to General P.N. Wrangel. After that, he and his family sailed on an English destroyer to Constantinople (Istanbul), then emigrated to France, where he settled in one of the suburbs of Paris. Denikin did not take an active part in the political life of the Russian emigration. 1939 - he, remaining a principled opponent of the Soviet government, addressed the Russian emigrants not to support the fascist army in the event of its campaign against the USSR. This appeal had a great public outcry. During the occupation of France by the Nazi troops, Denikin flatly refused to cooperate with them.

Anton Ivanovich Denikin left memoirs that were published in Russia in the 1990s: Essays on Russian Troubles, Officers, The Old Army, and The Way of the Russian Officer. In them, he tried to analyze the reasons for the collapse of the Russian army and Russian statehood in the revolutionary year of 1917 and the collapse of the White movement during the Civil War.

Death of General Denikin

Anton Ivanovich died of a heart attack on August 7, 1947 at the University of Michigan Hospital in Ann Arbor, he was buried in a cemetery in Detroit. The American authorities buried him as the commander-in-chief of the allied army with military honors. 1952, December 15 - by decision of the White Cossack community of America, the remains of General Denikin were transferred to the Orthodox Cossack St. Vladimir cemetery in the town of Kesville, in the area of ​​Jackson (New Jersey.)

October 3, 2005 - the ashes of General Anton Ivanovich Denikin and his wife Ksenia Vasilyevna were transported to Moscow for burial in the Donskoy Monastery.