Nikolai Aleksandrovich Shchors: biography. Bullet for Comrade Shchors
Russian empire
Ukrainian SSR
served as chief
Nikolai Shchors on a postcard from IZOGIZ, USSR
Nikolai Alexandrovich Shchors(May 25 (June 6) - August 30) - second lieutenant, red commander, divisional commander during the Civil War in Russia. Member of the Communist Party since 1918, before that he was close to the Left SRs.
Biography
Youth
Born and raised in the village of Korzhovka, Velikoschimelsky volost, Gorodnyansky district, Chernihiv province (from - the city of Snovsk, now the regional center of Shchors, Chernihiv region of Ukraine). Born into the family of a wealthy peasant landowner (according to another version - from the family of a railway worker).
Civil War
In September 1918, in the Unecha region, he formed the 1st Ukrainian Soviet Regiment named after P.I. Bohun. In October - November, he commanded the Bogunsky regiment in battles with the German interventionists and hetmans, from November 1918 - the 2nd brigade of the 1st Ukrainian Soviet division (Bogunsky and Tarashchansky regiments), which captured Chernigov, Kiev and Fastov, repelling them from the troops of the Ukrainian directory .
On August 15, 1919, the 1st Ukrainian Soviet division under the command of N. A. Shchors was merged with the 44th border division under the command of I. N. Dubovoy, becoming the 44th rifle division. On August 21, Shchors became her head, and Dubova became the deputy head of the division. The division consisted of four brigades.
The division, which stubbornly defended the Korosten railway junction, which ensured the evacuation of Kyiv (on August 31, the city was taken by the Volunteer Army of General Denikin) and the exit from the encirclement of the Southern Group of the 12th Army.
Doom studies
The official version that Shchors died in battle from a bullet of a Petlyura machine gunner began to be criticized with the onset of the “thaw” of the 1960s.
Initially, the researchers charged the murder of the commander only with the commander of the Kharkov military district, Ivan Dubovoi, who during the Civil War was Nikolai Shchors's deputy in the 44th division. The 1935 collection “Legendary Chief Division” contains the testimony of Ivan Dubovoy: “The enemy opened heavy machine-gun fire and, I especially remember, showed“ dashing ”one machine gun at the railway booth ... Shchors took binoculars and began to look where the machine-gun fire came from. But a moment passed, and the binoculars from the hands of Shchors fell to the ground, Shchors' head too ... ". The head of the mortally wounded Shchors was bandaged by Oak. Shchors died in his arms. “The bullet entered from the front,” writes Dubovoy, “and exited from behind,” although he could not help but know that the entrance bullet hole was smaller than the exit one. When the nurse of the Bogunsky regiment, Anna Rosenblum, wanted to change the first, very hasty bandage on the head of the already dead Shchors to a more accurate one, Dubovoy did not allow it. By order of Oak, Shchors' body was sent without a medical examination to be prepared for burial. Witness to the death of Shchors was not only Oak. Nearby were the commander of the Bogunsky regiment, Kazimir Kvyatyk, and the authorized representative of the Revolutionary Military Council of the 12th Army, Pavel Tankhil-Tankhilevich, sent with an inspection by a member of the Revolutionary Military Council of the 12th Army, Semyon Aralov, a protege of Trotsky. He was twenty-six years old, he was born in Odessa, graduated from high school, spoke French and German. In the summer of 1919 he became a political inspector of the Revolutionary Military Council of the 12th Army. Two months after the death of Shchors, he left Ukraine and arrived on the Southern Front as a senior censor-controller of the Military Censorship Department of the Revolutionary Military Council of the 10th Army.
The exhumation of the body, carried out in 1949 in Kuibyshev during the reburial, confirmed that he was killed at close range by a shot in the back of the head. Near Rovno, Shchorsovite Timofey Chernyak, the commander of the Novgorod-Seversky regiment, was later killed. Then Vasily Bozhenko, the brigade commander, died. He was poisoned
Nikolai Shchors
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Song about Shchors Words by M. Golodny Music by M. Blanter The squad was walking along the shore, Walked from afar Went under the red flag Regiment commander. The head is tied Blood on my sleeve A trail of bloody creeps On wet grass. "Boys, whose will you be, Who is leading you into battle? Who is under the red banner Is the wounded man coming?" "We are the sons of laborers, We are for a new world Shchors goes under the banner - Red commander. |
In hunger and cold His life has passed But not in vain shed His blood was. Thrown behind the cordon fierce enemy, Tempered from youth Honor is dear to us." Silence on the coast The sun is sinking down The dew is falling. The cavalry gallops, The sound of hooves is heard Shchors banner red Noisy in the wind. |
Nikolai Alexandrovich Shchors was born in the village of Snovsk, Gorodnyansky district, Chernihiv province. Some sources mention that the homeland of Shchors is the Korzhovka farm. In this regard, it should be noted that Snovsk as a city appeared on the site where the Korzhovka farm had been located for a long time. Considering that, in fact, the village of Snovsk at the time of the birth of Shchors included the farm of Korzhovka, the indication of the latter as the small homeland of Shchors should not be considered a mistake.
Shchors' parental home in Snovsk
Shchors' father, Alexander Nikolaevich, came from Belarusian peasants. In search of a better life, he moved from the Minsk province to the small Ukrainian village of Snovsk. From there he was drafted into the army. Returning to Snovsk, A.N. Shchors, got a job at the local railway depot. In August 1894, he married his fellow countrywoman, Alexandra Mikhailovna Tabelchuk, and in the same year built his own house in Snovsk. Shchors knew the Tabelchuk family for a long time, because. its head, Mikhail Tabelchuk, led an artel of Belarusians working in the Chernihiv region, which at one time included Alexander Shchors.
Opinions about the nationality of Shchors among the researchers of his biography were divided. Most often he is called a Ukrainian - by his place of birth. Some historians and publicists, based on the fact that the Shchors family comes from the Belarusian Korelich, where the village of Shchorsy still exists, and that the parents of the future commander came to Seversk Ukraine from Belarus, believe that Shchors, by nationality, respectively, was also Belarusian.
The more ancient history of the Shchorsov family, allegedly, goes back to Serbia or Croatia, from where the distant ancestors of the commander, fleeing the Ottoman oppression, came to Belarus through the Carpathians around the middle of the 18th century.
In 1895, the first child, Nikolai, was born in the family of the young couple Shchorsov, named after his grandfather. After him, brother Konstantin (1896-1979) and sisters were born: Akulina (1898-1937), Ekaterina (1900-1984) and Olga (1900-1985).
Nikolai Shchors quickly learned to read and write - at the age of six he already knew how to read and write tolerably. In 1905, he entered the parochial school, and a year later, a great grief happened in the Shchors family - being pregnant with her sixth child, her mother died of bleeding. This happened when she was in her homeland, in Stolbtsy (modern Minsk region). She was also buried there.
Six months after the death of his wife, the head of the Shchorsov family remarried. His new chosen one was Maria Konstantinovna Podbelo. From this marriage, our hero Nikolai had two half-brothers - Grigory and Boris, and three half-sisters - Zinaida, Raisa and Lydia.
In 1909, Nikolai Shchors graduated from high school and, in obedience to the desire to continue his studies, the following year, together with his brother Konstantin, entered the Kyiv military paramedic school, whose students were fully supported by the state. Shchors studied conscientiously and four years later, with a diploma of a medical assistant, he left the walls of the educational institution.
building of the former Kyiv military medical school
After studying, Nikolai was assigned to the troops of the Vilna military district, which became front-line with the outbreak of the First World War. As part of the 3rd Light Artillery Battalion, Shchors was sent near Vilna, where he was wounded in one of the battles and was sent for treatment. After recovering, Nikolai Shchors entered the Vilna Military School, which at that time was temporarily evacuated to Poltava.
In 1915, Shchors was already among the cadets of the Vilna Military School, where non-commissioned officers and warrant officers, due to martial law, began to be trained according to a shortened four-month program. In 1916, Shchors successfully completed the course of a military school and, with the rank of ensign, left for the rear troops in Simbirsk.
Shchors in the form of an officer of the Russian Imperial Army
In the fall of 1916, the young officer was transferred to serve in the 335th Anapa Regiment of the 84th Infantry Division of the Southwestern Front, where Shchors rose to the rank of second lieutenant. However, at the end of 1917, his short military career came to an abrupt end. His health failed - Shchors fell ill (presumably with tuberculosis) and after a short treatment in Simferopol at the end of December 1917 he was discharged due to unsuitability for further service.
Being out of work, Shchors at the beginning of 1918 decides to return to his homeland. The estimated time of his return to Snovsk is January 1918.
By this time, tremendous changes had taken place in the country. In February 1917, the monarchy fell, and in October the power was already in the hands of the Bolsheviks. And in Ukraine at the same time, an independent Ukrainian People's Republic was proclaimed. The troubled year of 1918 began.
Around the spring of 1918, a period begins in connection with the creation of a Soviet military unit, headed by Nikolai Shchors. It went down in history under the name of the Bogunsky regiment.
In the early spring of 1918, many Ukrainian provinces were within the proclaimed Ukrainian People's Republic (UNR), and in fact - under the rule of the German occupation troops, who were present in Ukraine with the consent of the Central Rada. However, not all residents of Ukraine welcomed the presence of the Germans in the country. On the contrary, a significant number of Ukrainians, especially those who had recently fought the Germans in the trenches, saw them as enemies and occupiers.
Insurgent partisan detachments were formed to fight the Germans in the occupied and nearby territories. One of these detachments was formed in March 1918 in the village of Semyonovka, Novozybkovsky district, Chernihiv province. Young Nikolai Shchors was elected commander of this detachment. This year he was only 23 years old, but, despite his young age, Shchors by this time already had combat experience gained on the fields of the First World War. In addition, according to the memoirs of contemporaries, Shchors possessed all the qualities necessary for a commander: toughness, assertiveness, courage and initiative. Shchors arrived in Semyonovka approximately at the end of February 1918, together with a group of his countrymen, in order to join the Red Guard insurgent detachment already created here. There is also a version that Shchors fled to Semyonovka, fearing persecution by the hetman's troops for his officer past. One way or another, but, once in Semenovka, Shchors joined the rebel detachment and was elected its commander. Such detachments were made up of the most diverse people, among whom there were many yesterday's front-line soldiers, among whom was Shchors. If you try to somehow determine what the Shchors detachment was, then, in essence, it was a spontaneous paramilitary partisan team close to the Bolshevik movement. In general, such detachments led by "field commanders" in those years in Ukraine appeared like mushrooms after rain. The actions of these detachments found considerable support among the population of Ukraine.
The main task that the detachment set for itself was the fight against the German invaders using the tactics of guerrilla warfare. In the spring of 1918, the Shchors detachment, numbering approximately 300-350 people, advanced to the area of the village of Zlynka, where they entered into local skirmishes with the detachments of the German General Hoffmann. However, having failed, Shchors retreated to the east in the direction of the Unecha station. The Germans continued to advance on the same course, parallel to the Gomel-Bryansk railway. In the first half of April 1918, they managed to capture Novozybkov, Klintsy and stopped at the Kustichi Bryanovy-Lyschichi-Robchik line, i.e., almost under Unecha itself, where, as is known, the border demarcation line lay by that time. Shchors with his detachment arrived at the Unecha station, which by that time was in the territory controlled by Soviet Russia (although the formal status of this area had not yet been determined).
Apparently, this was his first acquaintance with Unecha. And not only with Unecha. At the station at that time, the notorious Fruma Khaikina, an employee of the local Cheka, who became the greatest love in Shchors' life, was in charge of all affairs. Meanwhile, in Ukraine, the Central Rada and the UNR, liquidated by the Germans, ceased to exist. Under the protectorate of the latter, power passed to the “Hetman of All Ukraine” P.P. Skoropadsky (1873-1945).
In April 1918, a truce was concluded between the Bolsheviks and the new Hetman's government, according to which all Ukrainian formations that ended up on the territory of Soviet Russia, including the Shchors detachment, were disbanded.
In 1917-1918 Ukrainian society was very diverse in terms of political sympathies. Many were openly hostile to Bolshevism approaching from the north. However, far from the entire population of Ukraine supported the government of the UNR and the nationalists. The number of supporters of the Soviet regime was also great. In some areas, home-grown "fathers" were very popular, a classic example of which is the famous Nestor Makhno, who proclaimed the Gulyai-Polye Free Republic in his small homeland.
In May-June 1918, Shchors arrived in Moscow. Most likely, it was from that moment that he began to work closely with the Bolsheviks. There is an opinion that the key factor that contributed to Shchors's decision to join the Bolsheviks was the influence of the Chekist Fruma Khaikina. So, after the disbandment of the rebel detachment, presumably in May 1918, Shchors was sent from Unecha to Moscow, where, according to some reports, he was at the reception of Lenin himself. In particular, Kazimir Kvyatek (1888-1938), a close associate of Shchors, later recalled this.
This meeting is also mentioned by some biographers of Shchors.
In the first half of September 1918, Shchors, on the instructions of the Central Military Revolutionary Committee, arrived at the Unecha border station, having the task of forming a full-fledged military unit here from the many partisan and Red Guard detachments that already existed in the region.
Under the terms of the Brest peace treaty, a neutral zone was established between Ukraine occupied by the Kaiser troops and Soviet Russia. Just a little to the west of Unecha, one of its sections passed. Thus, the village of Lyshchichi, located not far from Unecha, was already in the zone of German occupation. It was to this front line that Nikolai Shchors was sent in September 1918.
September 11, 1918 is considered the birthday of the Shchorsovsky regiment, since it was on this day that the issue of choosing the name of the unit was decided at the general meeting. As you know, the regiment was named Bohunsky - in honor of Ivan Bohun - a Cossack colonel from the time of the Khmelnytsky region.
Ivan Bohun
The Bohun regiment was formed from already existing insurgent groups and detachments that flocked to Unecha from all sides, as well as from local volunteers.
Around the same time, a regiment was formed near Novgorod-Seversky under the command of Timofey Viktorovich Chernyak (1891-1919), and near Kiev - the Tarashchansky regiment, commanded by Vasily Nazarovich Bozhenko (1871-1919).
V.N. Bozhenko
In addition, a separate company was formed in Nizhyn, which was later transformed into a separate Nizhyn regiment. On September 22, 1918, by order of the All-Ukrainian Central Military Revolutionary Committee, all these units were brought together, forming the First Ukrainian Soviet Division, the commander of which was a former lieutenant colonel of the tsarist army, a native of the Nezhinsky district, Nikolai Grigoryevich Krapivyansky (1889-1948).
At the same time, Mikhail Petrovich Kirponos (1892-1941), a native of Nizhinsky district, a future famous military leader who died in the first year of the Great Patriotic War, was very active in organizing insurgent activities in the Chernihiv region. According to some reports, in the fall of 1918 M.P. Kirponos with one of the detachments joined the 1st Ukrainian Insurgent Division, after which for some time he was the commandant of Starodub, where he was engaged in the formation of Soviet military units.
In April-June 1918, Konstantin Konstantinovich Rokossovsky (1896-1968) - the future legendary Soviet marshal, and at that time - assistant chief of the Kargopol Red Guard cavalry detachment, which operated in the Unecha area, Khutor-Mikhailovsky and Konotop. This detachment was formed in December 1917 from the soldiers of the 5th Kargopol Dragoon Regiment, who wished to enlist in the Red Army. Among them was Konstantin Rokossovsky. By the way, the 5th Kargopol Dragoon Detachment was once formed on the basis of the dragoon regiment of General Gudovich. Prior to being transferred to the Unecha region, the Kargopol detachment carried out the tasks of "cleansing" the territories in the region of Vologda and Kostroma. At the end of March 1918, an echelon with Kargopol arrived in Bryansk, from where they moved to the southwest, to the area of \u200b\u200bthe no man's land. Here the Kargopol detachment stayed until the beginning of June 1918, after which it was hastily transferred to the Urals.
However, the list of famous personalities who participated in the events of 1918 near our city is not limited to this. Among other well-known figures of the times of the revolution and the civil war, who were noted for their activity in our region, we will name Vitaly Markovich Primakov (1897-1937), the famous commander who was repressed in 1937. During the Civil War, Primakov commanded a cavalry brigade, division and cavalry corps of the Red Cossacks. In 1918, Primakov participated in the organization of the insurrectionary movement in the neutral zone near Unecha. It should be noted that he, like many others acting during the years of revolution and civil war on the territory of our region, was not here by chance. Primakov was a native of Semyonovka and, accordingly, knew the Northern Chernihiv region well. Under the leadership of Primakov, in January 1918, the 1st Regiment of the Red Cossacks was formed from volunteers, which was stationed for two months in Pochep. This regiment soon became a brigade, and then was deployed into a cavalry division. After the civil war, V.M. Primakov was on military-diplomatic work in China, Afghanistan and Japan. In June 1937 he was shot on charges of a military fascist conspiracy. I was on one case together with M.N. Tukhachevsky, I.E. Yakir, I.P. Uborevich. A curious detail from the personal life of V.M. Primakov is his third marriage, which he entered into in June 1930 with Lilya Brik (1891-1978), better known to the general public as Mayakovsky's common-law wife.
Vitaly Markovich Primakov
We are primarily interested in the Bogunsky regiment under the command of Shchors, became part of the division under the third number. By the beginning of October 1918, the regiment's personnel numbered about 1,000 people. Some of the fighters were formed from local volunteers. There were a lot of people from the neighboring villages who wanted to join the ranks of the Bogunians. However, despite the large number of people who wanted to join the regiment, it is unlikely that “mobilization” was in all cases a purely voluntary matter.
Especially many among the Bogunians turned out to be residents of Naytopovich, Lyshchich, Bryankustich, Ryukhov. Most of them served as simple fighters, but some were appointed to leadership positions. So, the inhabitants of Naytopovich F.N. Gavrichenko (1892-1940) and Ya.B. Gasanov commanded battalions in the regiment. F.L. Mikhaldyko from Lyshchich was a political commissar, his fellow villager Mikhail Isakovich Kozhemyako (1893-?) was the head of the regiment's cavalry reconnaissance, Zakhar Semenkov from Naytopovich served as the head of the regimental armory.
So, there was no shortage of human replenishment of the regiment. However, the material base of the unit left much to be desired. Many Bogunians did not have uniforms at all and fought in whatever they had to. So, in the book of the Unecha local historian A. Bovtunov “The Knot of Slavic Friendship”, it is said that an order of the local revolutionary committee was pasted all over Unecha, which ordered the entire local non-working population to hand over 500 pairs of boots to the regiment within three days.
The structure of the Bogunsky regiment at the initial stage of its formation was as follows: the regiment had 3 battalions, an artillery battery of three guns (commander - Nikitenko), a squadron of cavalry (commander - Bozhora) and a machine gun team of more than ten machine guns.
In parallel with the combat organization of the regiment, an economic unit and an okolodok (medical unit) were created in the unit. From among the command, representatives of the political department of the regiment and the Red Army, a regimental Revolutionary Military Tribunal was created. From the regimental political department, the tribunal initially included Kvyatek, Luginets and Zubov. The political department of the regiment was specially created for cultural, educational and political work. There was a recruiting unit at the department, which had connections with Ukraine and sent propaganda literature and newspapers in Russian and German there. The recruiting unit of the regiment also supervised the withdrawal of partisan detachments from Ukraine to Soviet territory.
By the end of October 1918, the formation of the Bogunsky regiment was almost completed and Shchors decided to try his fighters in action. On October 23, 1918, the first battalion of the regiment under the command of Yakov Gasanov was tasked with liberating the villages of Lyshchichi and Kustichi Bryanovy from the Germans. However, this task was not completed. Apparently, the regular German army turned out to be too tough for the Bogunians, who did not have artillery support. Here the Bogunians also suffered their first losses.
Station Unecha in the life of Shchors stands apart, not only because here he began his military career. In the city of Shchors met his fate. Her name was Fruma Efimovna Khaikina (1897-1977).
This extraordinary woman was born on February 6, 1897 in Novozybkov in the family of a Jewish employee (a very large Jewish diaspora lived in Novozybkov before the revolution). She received a home education (within two classes), from childhood she mastered the skill of a dressmaker, worked in a workshop.
Fruma Efimovna Khaikina
The exact time and place of Shchors' acquaintance with Khaikina is unknown, but most likely it happened in the autumn of 1918 in Unecha, since it is difficult to assume that this could happen somewhere else, based on objective data.
Khaikin is usually called the wife of Shchors, although there is no information about the official registration of marriage between them. However, this is not so significant, since in fact for Shchors she was a constant life partner. The surviving touching letters from the commander to his beloved testify to the strong feelings Shchors had for Khaikina.
One of the closest associates of Shchors in the "Unech period" of his life was Sergei Ivanovich Petrenko-Petrikovsky (1894-1964) - one of the active organizers of the Bolshevik movement in the Chernigov province in 1918-1919. Petrenko-Petrikovsky was born in 1894 in Lublin. He joined the ranks of the RSDLP in 1911, while still studying at the Lublin Gymnasium. According to the reports of the gendarmerie, Petrenko-Petrikovsky passed as a member of the anarcho-syndicalist group of the RSDLP. Then he studied at St. Petersburg University, but for participation in the revolutionary movement in 1915 he was expelled and exiled to Siberia. It is known that in 1914 Petrenko-Petrikovsky, who spoke Polish well, traveled illegally to Krakow, where he visited Lenin, passing him letters and literature. In 1916, while in Krasnoyarsk, Petrenko-Petrikovsky was drafted into the army, after which he was removed from police supervision. In May 1917, Petrikovsky entered a four-month course at the Vladimir Junker Infantry School, while continuing to conduct Bolshevik propaganda work, actively participating in the political life of the party. On September 1, 1917, Petrenko-Petrikovsky was promoted to ensign and sent to continue his service in Kharkov. After the October coup, in November 1917, he was appointed head of the Kharkov garrison. In March 1918, after the occupation of Kharkov by German troops, he was evacuated to Moscow. During the formation of the Bogunsky regiment, Petrenko-Petrikovsky was the chief of staff of the 1st Ukrainian Insurgent Division, often visited Unecha and, probably, took an active part in the organization of the regiment.
commanders of the Bogunsky regiment
Known as one of the participants in negotiations with the Germans during the so-called "Lyshchich fraternities." Subsequently, Petrikovsky was the commander of the Special Cavalry Brigade, which was part of the 44th division. After that, he served in the Crimean army, which fought against Denikin. He directly commanded the units that crossed Perekop and Sivash in April 1919, rushed deep into the Crimean peninsula and reached Sevastopol. After that, Petrikovsky was appointed chief of staff of the Crimean army. After the Crimea, S.I. Petrikovsky served as a military commissar of the 25th Chapaevskaya Rifle Division, commander of the 52nd and 40th Rifle Divisions. In 1935 he was a brigade commissar of the Red Army. In 1937, Petrikovsky worked as a senior engineer at the plant of the Orgodefense Industry of the People's Commissariat of the Aviation Industry. During the Great Patriotic War, S.I. Petrikovsky traveled around the fronts with inspector trips, and then was appointed head of the Central Scientific and Experimental Air Force Base. Since 1943 - Major General of the Engineering and Technical Service. After the war, Petrikovsky worked as the head of the military department of the Moscow Aviation Technological Institute, and took an active part in social and political life. In 1962, Petrikovsky conducted a private investigation into the circumstances of the death of N.A. Shchors, according to the results of which he concluded for himself that the division commander was deliberately killed. January 25, 1964 S.I. Petrikovsky died and was buried in Moscow at the Novodevichy Cemetery. In the name of S.I. Petrenko-Petrikovsky was named one of the streets of Simferopol.
S.I. Petrenko-Petrikovsky
Another person close to Shchors was Kazimir Frantsevich Kvyatek (real full name - Jan Karlovich Witkovsky) - a native of 1888, a Pole by nationality, a native of Warsaw, a revolutionary who in tsarist times spent a lot of time in prisons for his activities. In 1905, Kvyatek participated in the assassination attempt on the Warsaw governor Maksimovich and only because of his minority escaped the gallows, which was replaced by a long hard labor term (according to other sources, to an eternal settlement in Eastern Siberia). The events of February 1917 rescued Kvyatek from captivity, and soon yesterday's criminal and convict plunged headlong into the thick of things. In general, people like Kwiatek, in the wake of revolutionary changes, often turned out to be the most sought-after characters.
Kazimir Frantsevich Kvyatek
After his release, fate threw Kvyatek to the Chernihiv region, where he met Shchors, with whom he went through his entire battle path from beginning to end, remaining close to the death of the commander.
In 1918, together with Shchors, Kvyatek graduated from the courses of red commanders in Moscow. At the age of 30, Kvyatek was one of the most experienced fighters in the Bogunsky regiment, holding the position of assistant commander, and after Shchors was appointed to the post of chief division, Kvyatek himself became the commander of the Bogunians. Subsequently, he commanded the 130th Bogunsky brigade, was the assistant commander of the 44th and 19th rifle divisions, and, finally, rose to the post of commander of the Kharkov Military District (KhVO). In 1938, Kwiatek, who at that time served as the deputy commander of the KhVO, was repressed on charges of a military conspiracy and belonging to the Polish military organization. Together with him, such a well-known Soviet figure as I.S. Unshlikht (1879-1938) and many other military leaders, mostly of Polish origin. The criminal case ended for Kvyatek with the expected tragic result - he was sentenced to capital punishment. The date of execution of the sentence against Kwiatek is unknown.
Meanwhile, the headquarters of the Bogunsky regiment moved to Naytopovichi. The building where the command of the regiment was located in this village has been preserved to this day. Today it is an ordinary residential building.
Also in the village there is a mass grave of the Red Army soldiers of the Bogunsky regiment, who died in 1918. Most likely, the Bogunians who laid down their heads in the very first clashes with the Germans near Unecha were buried in this grave.
The concentration of troops in Naytopovichi was noted even in the press of Kyiv, where at that time Petliura already dominated. So, in the newspaper "Kyiv thought" dated November 21, 1918, it was reported:
“... In the village of Naytopovichi, which is 20 versts north of Starodub, an accumulation of Bolshevik gangs has been noticed so far with a force of up to 800 people ...”.
Another consequence of the November Revolution in Germany was the annulment of the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk by Soviet Russia. This event took place on the same day as the fraternization in Lyshchichi - November 13, 1918. In the first half of November 1918, a revolution took place in Germany, as a result of which Emperor Wilhelm abdicated. These days, November 13, 1918, those significant events took place related to the fraternization of the fighters of the Bogunsky regiment, led by N. A. Shchors, with German soldiers on the outskirts of Lyshchich. Three days later, the Germans, having concluded a truce, left Lyshchichi. From here, parts of the Bohunsky regiment began their campaign for the liberation of Ukraine. After that, the Bolsheviks were no longer tied to the implementation of plans to establish Soviet power in Ukraine, especially since the main obstacle to this - the German army - had already left the country. Starting to implement these plans, Moscow urgently creates the Provisional Workers' and Peasants' Government of Ukraine, headed by Georgy Leonidovich Pyatakov (1890-1937).
G.L. Pyatakov
However, no one was going to give power in Ukraine to the Bolsheviks just like that. It had to be conquered by force of arms. One of the key roles in the upcoming struggle of the Bolsheviks for Ukraine will be played by Shchors and his unit. From the moment of the creation of the Bogunsky regiment, Shchors and his fighters began to fight with the Germans, i.e. with foreign occupiers, but now they had to refocus on a completely different kind of task - the struggle for power in Ukraine. And their compatriots - Ukrainians, Russian Belarusians, who did not accept Bolshevik ideals and did not want to understand them - should have become a rival in this struggle. This was the most terrible tragedy of the civil war in Russia. Brother against brother, son against father...
On November 17, 1918, the Revolutionary Military Council of the Ukrainian Front was formed, which already 2 days later gave the order to launch an offensive against Ukraine, for which the Bolsheviks had to fight with a wide variety of forces. In 1918-1921, in Ukraine, they were opposed by the troops of Skoropadsky, Petliura, the Ukrainian Galician Army, the White Guards of Denikin and Wrangel, Makhno's father ...
So, the First Ukrainian Soviet Division began its combat path.
The Bogunsky regiment is removed from its place of deployment and leaves Unecha. Meanwhile, German troops begin a hasty evacuation from Ukraine. Of course, in the current situation, they were no longer considered by the Bolsheviks as a military enemy - the First Ukrainian Soviet Division, which included the Shchors Bogunsky Regiment, had the task of advancing in the direction of Kiev, overcoming the resistance of the Petliura troops. The second Ukrainian division was sent to Kharkov.
Division names change: 1st Soviet division. Regiment names:
1st Soviet Bogunsky Regiment,
2nd Soviet Tarashchansky Regiment,
3rd Soviet Novgorod-Seversky regiment.
The Nezhin company joins the 1st Soviet Bogunsky regiment.
After the start of the Ukrainian campaign, the closest target of the Bogunsky regiment was Klintsy, the battles for which began from the end of November 1918. On the territory of Starodubshchina, including in the battles for Klintsy, the soldiers of Shchors were opposed by the Ukrainian Serozhupannaya division, which since September 1918 was stationed in the regions of Starodubshchyna that were not occupied by the Bolsheviks. The number of "gray-skins" was a little over 1000 people, however, later, after Petliura came to power, the division was replenished with recruits. In addition to the Gaidamaks, near Klintsy, German units also entered into confrontation with the Bogunians in separate episodes.
The German artillery general von Gronau reported the following about these events:
“Under the protection of dense fog, on November 28 at 9 o’clock in the morning, four hundred Bolsheviks from the south and south-west advanced, and after a while another 300 from the east to Klintsy. In the first commotion they managed to take the railway station. A brisk counteroffensive carried out under the command of Captain Kospot by the second battalion of 106 German. regiment and department. hussars with the very successful help of the Germans. art. Regiment No. 19 took the station from the enemy and repulsed the enemy who had burst in from the east. He fled from Germany. onslaught, leaving in the hands of the Germans many dead and wounded, as well as 12 prisoners and 5 machine guns. At 3 o'clock in the afternoon, again a detachment of Bolsheviks in the number of 300 people repeated the offensive from the north. Their attack penetrated the wire barriers of the city and was here defeated by the fire of our infantry. German Fifth Company. infantry The regiment counterattacked several prisoners and two machine guns. Our movements were performed under the command of Lieutenant Colonel Schulz. The Ukrainian police chiefly participated in the defense. I thank the army and leaders for the surrendered posture and courage. They repulsed the malevolent, outnumbered enemy from our desires. dor. ways of the area of concentration. It was important for the entire corps and for our comrades returning from the south of Ukraine to their homeland ... ".
The first November attempts to take Klintsy were unsuccessful and Shchors took a break.
On November 25, 1918, Starodub was occupied by the forces of the Tarashchansky regiment. In the coming days, the entire territory in the vicinity of Starodub was cleared of the Haidamaks and Germans.
Attempts to take Klintsy resumed in the first decade of December 1918. At that time, the Germans were still in the city and their presence was a serious hindrance to Shchors. However, the issue with the Germans was resolved peacefully. So, even earlier, Shchors ordered the soldiers of the 1st battalion of the Tarashchansky regiment to occupy the Svyattsy railway siding between Klintsy and Novozybkovo and thereby block the retreat path for the Germans, who were already eager to go home as soon as possible. On December 9, 1918, the Tarashchans occupied the junction, where the Germans immediately sent a detachment with a gun and machine guns. The Germans managed to disarm 2 platoons of the squadron of the Tarashchansky regiment. The situation was resolved through negotiations, during which it was agreed that the Germans would return weapons to the Tarashchans, leave Klintsy without a fight, and Shchors would give them the right to unhindered travel by rail towards Novozybkov and Gomel.
After the removal of a strong opponent from the theater of operations, further events developed according to the scenario of Shchors. For the Gaidamaks, the situation was further complicated by the fact that armed skirmishes broke out between them and the Germans leaving Klintsy.
On December 13, 1918, during the battles with the Haidamak units, the Bogunsky regiment occupied Klintsy and Soviet power was established in the city. Soon the head of the Unech Cheka, Fruma Khaikina, arrived here and began to restore “revolutionary order” in the city.
By the time of occupation, Klintsov Shchors was already in command of the 2nd divisional brigade, formed by order of the division on October 4, 1918. The 2nd brigade included the Bogunsky and Tarashchansky regiments. There were also changes in the leadership of the division itself. Instead of Krapivyansky, the former Socialist-Revolutionary militant I.S. was appointed division chief. Lokotosh (Lokotash), head of the divisional headquarters instead of Petrikovsky - Fateev.
On December 25, 1918, Novozybkov was occupied and immediately after him Zlynka. Along the way, the Bogunsky regiment was constantly replenished with new volunteers. Four days later, Shchors was already on his native land. On December 29, 1918, the Gorodnyansky district of Chernihiv region was almost completely liberated. In particular, the first serious battle between the Bogunsky regiment and the Haidamaks (regular troops of the UNR) took place in Gorodnya. At about the same time, the Tarashchansky regiment of Father Bozhenko, who was previously stationed in Starodub, adjacent to Unecha, also arrived in the indicated area and moved in the direction of Chernigov through Klimovo. It was the Tarashchans who entered Gorodnya on the first day of 1919, and the day before they liberated Shchors' hometown of Snovsk.
At the end of 1918, German troops left Ukraine. Together with them, the Ukrainian hetman Pavel Petrovich Skoropadsky (1873-1945) also emigrated to Berlin. His flight was preceded by the following events. After it became obvious that Skoropadsky's main support - the German army - intended to evacuate from Ukraine, the hetman tried to rely on the Entente and the White movement. To do this, he abandoned the slogan of an independent Ukraine and announced his readiness to fight for the re-establishment of a united Russia together with the White Army. However, these plans were not destined to come true, since in December 1918 he was overthrown by the leaders of the Ukrainian National Union Petliura and Vinnichenko. On December 14, 1918, Skoropadsky officially resigned from power.
So, after the flight of Skoropadsky, power in Ukraine passed into the hands of an even more hostile to Bolshevism Directory headed by V.K. Vinnichenko (1880-1951) and S.V. Petliura (1879-1926).
The leaders of the Directory understood that their armed forces did not have too much potential, and therefore, on the eve of the fight against the Bolsheviks, they counted heavily on the help of the Anglo-French troops that landed in Odessa, and also relied on reserves from Galicia.
On January 12, 1919, as a result of stubborn battles, the fighters of the Bogunsky regiment took Chernigov, in which there was a large Petliura corps, well armed with artillery and even armored cars.
By the end of January 1919, the division liberated the large centers of Chernigov Oster and Nizhyn, and by the beginning of February 1919, Shchors was already on the near approaches to Kyiv. Subsequent events showed that the capture of the Ukrainian capital was not a very difficult task, since the Directory had an insufficiently combat-ready army in Kyiv and Petliura surrendered the city almost without a fight.
On February 1, 1919, the Bogunsky and Tarashchansky regiments almost simultaneously entered Brovary and, without waiting for the rest of the divisional forces to approach, began to prepare for an attack on Kyiv. It was here, in Brovary, that Shchors met with the commander of the Ukrainian Front, Vladimir Antonov-Ovseenko. Subsequently, he will describe this meeting in his memoirs as follows:
“... We got acquainted with the command staff of the division. Shchors - commander of the 1st regiment (former staff captain), dryish, tucked up, with a firm look, sharp, clear movements. The Red Army soldiers loved him for his diligence and courage, the commanders respected him for his intelligence, clarity and resourcefulness ... ".
The main forces of the 1st division entered Kyiv on February 6, 1919 in the Pechersk region. The next day, Antonov-Ovseenko read out a telegram from the center about the awarding of honorary red banners to the Bogunsky and Tarashchansky regiments, and award weapons to their commanders Shchors and Bozhenko. After the capture of Kyiv, according to the order of the head of the division Lokotosh, Shchors was appointed commandant of the Ukrainian capital - the city in which he spent his youthful years. For ten days, Shchors was the sovereign master of Kyiv, placing his commandant's office at the corner of Khreshchatyk and Dumskaya Square (now Maidan Nezalezhnosti.
1st Soviet division in Kyiv 1919
Researchers of the civil war in Ukraine often like to compare the commander of the Bogunians Shchors with another divisional commander - the commander of the Tarashchansky regiment, the "father" Bozhenko. However, they were very different people.
From the biography of Vasily Nazarovich Bozhenko, it is known that he was born in 1871 in the village of Berezhinka, Kherson province, in a peasant family. During the years of the first Russian revolution, he participated in the propaganda actions of the RSDLP in Odessa, where he worked as a carpenter. In 1904 he was arrested. Member of the Russo-Japanese War, in the tsarist army had the rank of sergeant major. In 1907 he was sentenced to prison for revolutionary activities. In 1915-1917 he worked in Kyiv as a cabinetmaker. After the February Revolution of 1917 he was a member of the Kyiv Council. After October 1917 - an active participant in the civil war in Ukraine on the side of the Bolsheviks. Brother V.N. Bozhenko - Mikhail Nazarovich - during the Civil War he commanded a squadron of the Bogunsky regiment.
bust of V.N. Bozhenko in Kyiv
After a two-week rest in Kyiv, the division continued to move west - in the direction of Fastov, which was soon taken. After the occupation of Fastov, a course was set for Berdichev and Zhitomir.
After the capture of Berdichev, on March 8, 1919, Shchors was appointed head of the First Ukrainian Soviet Division. This happened while the commander was in Kazatin (modern Vinnitsa region). Shchors handed over command of the 1st Bogunsky Regiment to his assistant Kvyatek, and he himself took command of the division from Lokotosh, which became part of the formed 1st Ukrainian Soviet Army. Thus, at the age of 23, Shchors became the youngest commander in the history of the Russian army.
Sergei Kasser, a former tsarist officer, was appointed chief of staff of the division. The post of political commissar of the division was then held by Isakovich, who had known Shchors since the time of Unecha, where he helped organize political work in the Bogunsky regiment. The command of the Bogunsky regiment was taken over by Kazimir Kvyatek.
In March 1919, the temporary capital of the Directory, Vinnitsa, was taken by the forces of the Bogunians, followed by the strategically important Zhmerinka. At this time, Petliura, who had retreated to Kamenets-Podolsky, received significant reinforcements from Galicia and by the end of March 1919 launched a counteroffensive in the Kiev direction. As a result of the offensive, the Petliura troops, with the support of the Galicians and the White Poles, managed to occupy Zhytomyr, Berdichev, Korosten and thereby open a direct route to the Ukrainian capital. To remedy the situation, the Bohunsky and Tarashchansky regiments were urgently transferred from Vinnitsa to the Gorodyanka station area and thus blocked Petlyura's path to Kyiv. Stubborn battles ensued, as a result of which Petlyura was soon forced to retreat to the west.
In May 1919, the 1st Ukrainian Division made significant progress, pushing deep into western Ukraine. Shchorsovites managed to occupy such strategically important cities as Dubno, Rovno and Ostrog.
It should be noted that in the spring of 1919, the 1st Ukrainian division of Shchors was a very large and combat-ready formation, which played a key role in the entire Kiev military theater of the Ukrainian front. The personnel of the division consisted of about 12 thousand fighters. In addition to personal small arms and saber weapons, the division was armed with more than 200 machine guns, about 20 artillery pieces, 10 mortars, bomb throwers and even an armored train. The division also had its own squadron, had a communications battalion and a marching unit. The main forces of the division were represented by four regiments: Bogunsky (commander Kvyatek), Tarashchansky (Bozhenko), Nezhinsky (Chernyak) and the 4th regiment (Antonyuk). According to the ethnic composition, the Shchors division was multinational - in addition to Russians, Ukrainians and Belarusians, Poles, Czechs, Slovaks, Romanians and representatives of other peoples also served here. There were even Chinese (it is possible that they were Chinese soldiers, who were brought to Unecha by F. Khaikina in 1917).
One of the main problems during the civil war was an acute shortage of qualified leadership personnel. With the rapidly growing number of rank and file, the command staff experienced a huge shortage of trained officers. It was necessary to promote the most competent Red Army soldiers to command positions, who stood out against the general background for their valuable qualities. Realizing the seriousness of this problem, in May 1919, Shchors issued an order to establish the "School of Red Commanders" in Zhytomyr, for training in which about 300 Red Army soldiers were selected, who were supposed to comprehend all the intricacies of command work. We note in this regard that Shchors, as a commander, has always been characterized by a craving for drill training - he paid increased attention to it. M.P. was appointed assistant to the head of the divisional school of the Red Commanders in June 1919. Kirponos. The building in which the Shchorsovsky school was located has been preserved in Zhitomir to this day and is located on Pushkinskaya Street.
By the beginning of June 1919, the Shchors division, by decision of the Revolutionary Military Council of the Republic, was included in the 12th Ukrainian Army. At the same time, the area of operations for the Shchorsovites did not change - they continued to operate in the Western Ukrainian direction, where, as already mentioned, by the beginning of the summer of 1919 they achieved impressive success. However, soon a turning point came at the front.
The tension on the fronts of the civil war reached its peak in the summer of 1919. Ukraine became a key springboard in the struggle for power for the Bolsheviks, where events developed in a very threatening way for the Reds. In the south and east of Ukraine, White Guard units were actively advancing, and from the west and south-west, the joint forces of the Poles and Petliurists were firmly pressing. Speaking about the western direction, we note that, by and large, this entire front was held by the Shchors division, which was supposed to withstand the onslaught of the Petliurists, Galicians and Poles expected here. And this onslaught was not long in coming.
The powerful offensive of the Petliura troops began with a breakthrough of the front near the city of Proskurov (modern Khmelnitsky). Starokonstantinov and Shepetovka soon fell. At the same time, in the north, the Poles took Sarny and continued to move towards Kyiv. Under such conditions, there was a serious threat of losing Zhytomyr, which was a key point on the way to the Ukrainian capital.
To correct the situation, the Bolshevik command in June-July 1919 developed a counteroffensive plan, as a result of which Shchors managed to recapture Starokonstantinov, Zhmerinka and Proskurov, pushing the Petliurists across the Zbruch River (the left tributary of the Dniester on the Podolsk Upland).
At the same time, the White Poles advanced from the west. Shchors organizes a retreat to the Korosten region, leaving the city behind the city.
At this time, news of the death of regimental commanders Bozhenko and Chernyak reached the division commander. On August 19, 1919, Shchors attended the funeral ceremony of farewell to the commander of the Tarashchans. According to the official version, Bozhenko died suddenly as a result of a stomach ulcer, according to another version, he was poisoned by agents of the Petliura counterintelligence. On the death of Timofey Chernyak, it was reported that he was brutally murdered in Zdolbunovo (modern Rivne region) by Petliurists who made their way to the location of the Novgorod-Seversk brigade. According to another version, Chernyak was killed as a result of a riot raised by a company of Galicians, which was part of his brigade. Unwittingly, but such an interesting detail attracts attention: all three commanders - Shchors, Bozhenko and Chernyak, who once started a campaign against Ukraine together, died under reliably obscure circumstances almost at the same time - in August 1919.
Farewell to Bozhenko
While in Korosten, Shchors receives an order to hold the city by any means possible for as long as possible. This was very important for the Bolsheviks, because. Kyiv was evacuated through Korosten, which Denikin was already advancing from the south.
After the loss of Kiev, before Shchors, whose division was near Zhytomyr, the task was to evacuate from this area, since the commander was already practically in ticks: the Poles were advancing from the west, Petliura in the south-west, Makhno to the south, Denikin's troops from the east.
While at Korosten, the division commander began organizing a retreat, while his division regularly engaged in battle with Petliura's troops advancing from the west. By this time, the Shchors division had already become known as the 44th Rifle Division. It was formed by combining under the command of Shchors the 1st Ukrainian Soviet and 44th border divisions (commander I.N. Dubova). The divisional regiments received a new numbering: the 1st, 2nd and 3rd Bogunsky regiments were renamed the 388th, 389th and 390th Bogunsky regiments, respectively.
The second half of August 1919 began. Shchors had exactly two weeks to live.
The officially announced version of the death of Shchors was as follows: the commander died on the battlefield near the village of Beloshitsa (now Shchorsovka) not far from Korosten from a bullet wound in the head, which was inflicted on him by a Petlyura machine gunner who sat down at the railway booth. Here it should immediately be said that the main source of this version was Ivan Dubovoi, who served in the 44th division as Shchors's deputy, and the commander of the Bogunsky regiment, Kazimir Kvyatek, who were in the immediate vicinity of him at the time of the death of the commander.
It happened on August 30, 1919. Before the start of the battle, the commander and Dubovoy arrived in the vicinity of the village of Beloshitsa, where the soldiers of the 3rd battalion of the Bogunsky regiment (commander - F. Gavrichenko) lay down in a chain, preparing for a battle with the Petliurists. The Bogunians dispersed along the railway embankment at the edge of a small forest, and in front, about 200 meters from the embankment, there was a railway booth in which the Petliurists organized a machine-gun emplacement. When Shchors was in position, the enemy opened heavy machine-gun fire, which included the commander. According to Dubovoy, the fire was so strong that it forced them to lie down on the ground. Shchors began to examine the enemy’s machine-gun position through binoculars and at that moment the fatal bullet overtook him, hitting him right in the head. The commander died 15 minutes later. Ivan Dubovoy, who, for a long time, was believed to be the only witness to the death of Shchors, claimed that he personally bandaged Shchors' head, and at that very time the commander died literally in his arms. The entrance bullet hole, according to Dubovoy, was in front, in the region of the left temple, and the bullet exited from behind.
Such a heroic version of the death of the red commander suited the political elite of the country of the Soviets quite well and for a long time was not questioned by anyone.
Only many years later, circumstances became known that provided rich food for thought about the reliability of the version voiced above. But this will be discussed below.
After the death of Shchors, his body, without an autopsy and medical examination, was transported to Korosten, and from there by a funeral train to Klintsy, where a farewell ceremony was held for relatives and colleagues with the commander.
The body of Shchors in Klintsy was met by Khaikin and E.A. Shchadenko (1885-1951) - the same Shchadenko, who during the years of the Great Patriotic War was the Deputy People's Commissar of Defense of the USSR. Shchorsa's father and sister urgently arrived from Snovsk. In Klintsy, the body of the division commander was embalmed, soldered in a zinc coffin and then sent by freight train to Samara, where he was buried on September 12 (according to other sources on September 14), 1919, in the same coffin at the local All Saints cemetery. The funeral was quiet and modest. The procession was attended by F. Khaikina, as well as Red Army soldiers, including the Bogunians - Shchors' comrades-in-arms. Why Samara was chosen as the burial place of Shchors is not known for certain. There are only versions, of which we single out three main ones:
1) Shchors was taken to distant Samara and secretly buried away from his native places by order of the Bolshevik elite, who thus tried to hide the true causes of the death of the commander;
2) The commander was not buried at home, because they feared that his grave, being in the zone of active hostilities, could become an object of vandalism by enemies, as happened with Bozhenko, who died in Zhytomyr in August 1919. The Petliurists brutally abused the corpse of the latter: they removed the body of Bozhenko from the grave, tied it to two horses and tore it to pieces. “... The soldiers, like children, cried at his coffin. These were difficult times for the young Soviet republic. The enemy, who felt that death was near, made his last desperate efforts. The brutal gangs brutally dealt not only with living fighters, but also mocked the corpses of the dead. We could not leave Shchors to desecrate the enemy ... The political department of the army forbade Shchors to be buried in threatened areas. With the coffin of a friend, we went north. The body, placed in a zinc coffin, had a permanent guard of honor. We decided to bury him in Samara.”
3) There is information that the wife of Shchors, F. Khaikina, at that time had parents in Samara who fled from Novozybkov in the spring of 1918 when the Germans approached the city. That is why it was decided to bury the commander in the city on the Volga. In addition, Khaikina was already pregnant at that time and she was soon to give birth, so, perhaps, she preferred to leave for this time with her parents. Although the exact place and time of birth of their joint daughter Valentina with Shchors is unknown. This version is indirectly supported by such an important fact: with the beginning of the Great Patriotic War, Fruma Khaikina was evacuated with her daughter from Moscow not just anywhere, but to Kuibyshev.
After the death of Shchors, his assistant Ivan Naumovich Dubovoy (1896-1938) took command of the division. Under his leadership, the division soon achieved significant success on the fields of the civil war in Ukraine.
It is known about Dubov that he was born in 1896 in the Chigirinsky district of the Kyiv province, came from a peasant family. Until 1917 he studied at the Kiev Commercial Institute, then served in the army. In June 1917, while still in military service, he joined the RSDLP(b). Participated in the establishment of Soviet power in Siberia and the Donbass. Since February 1918, Dubovoy was the commander of the Red Guard detachment in Bakhmut (modern Artemovsk, Donetsk region), then the military commissar of the Novomakeevsky district, the commandant of the Central Headquarters of the Red Guard of Donbass, and the assistant chief of staff of the 10th Army. In the summer and autumn of 1918 he participated in the defense of Tsaritsyn.
I.N. Oak
In February 1919, Dubov was appointed chief of staff of the group of troops in the Kiev direction of the Ukrainian Front, then became chief of staff of the 1st Ukrainian Soviet Army, in May-July 1919 he served as commander of the 1st Ukrainian Soviet Army.
The paths of Shchors and Dubovoy crossed in July 1919, when the latter was appointed head of the 3rd border division, and then head of the 44th rifle division. In early August 1919, after the unification of the 44th Rifle Division with the 1st Ukrainian Soviet Division, Dubovoy became Shchors's deputy, and after the death of the latter, he took the place of division commander.
By 1935, Dubovoy had risen to the position of commander of the Kharkov Military District, but was soon arrested.
In August 1937, the former divisional deputy Shchors, Ivan Dubovoi, was arrested by the NKVD. It is difficult to name the true reasons for his arrest. Many historians believe that it was not by chance that he was repressed at the very moment when they began to make a popularly beloved hero out of Shchors - probably Dubov knew too much about the true causes of Shchors' death. Officially I.N. Dubovoy, who at the time of his arrest held the post of commander of the Kharkov military district, was convicted in the case of organizing a "military-fascist Trotskyite anti-Soviet conspiracy." This was the very famous "military case" in which Tukhachevsky, Yakir, Kork, Uborevich, Primakov and many other prominent Soviet military leaders were involved. All of them were liquidated and Dubovoy was no exception. He was shot on July 29, 1938 in Moscow, the day after the verdict was passed. In 1956, Dubovoy was posthumously rehabilitated.
During the investigation, Dubovoy made a shocking confession, stating that the murder of Shchors was his doing. Explaining the motives for the crime, Dubovoy stated that he had killed the division commander out of personal hatred and a desire to take the place of division chief himself. The protocol of the interrogation of Dubovoy dated December 3, 1937 says: “When Shchors turned his head towards me and said this phrase (“the Galicians have a good machine gun, damn it”), I shot him in the head with a revolver and hit his temple. The then commander of the 388th Infantry Regiment, Kvyatek, who was lying next to Shchors, shouted: “Shchors was killed!” I crawled up to Shchors, and he was in my arms, after 10-15 minutes, without regaining consciousness, he died.
In addition to the recognition of Dubovoy himself, Kazimir Kvyatek made similar accusations against him in March 1938, who wrote a statement from the Lefortovo prison addressed to People's Commissar of Internal Affairs Yezhov, where he indicated that he directly suspected Dubovoy of the murder of Shchors.
Here is the statement in full:
"People's Commissar of Internal Affairs
USSR to Nikolai Ivanovich Yezhov from the arrested Kazimir Frantsevich Kvyatek.
Statement
I decided to frankly tell the investigation about my anti-Soviet work and everything that is known about the anti-Soviet affairs of other participants in the military anti-Soviet conspiracy. Wishing to be cleansed to the end, I consider it my duty to tell you about one, the most terrible crime against the Soviet people, of which I consider I.N. Dubovoy, former commander of the HVO. I want to talk about the murder of the former commander of the 44th Infantry Division, Shchors, and about everything that leads me to a firm belief that Dubovoy was involved in this case. At the end of August 1919, the 44th division defended Korosten. The 388th Infantry Regiment, which I commanded, took up the defense from the village of Mogilno to Beloshitsy. I arrived at the site of the 3rd battalion vil. Beloshitsy in order to organize a short counterattack in order to pull back part of the forces of the Petliura and Galician units towards themselves. When I pulled up the reserve company to the edge of the forest, gave the order and set the task, I was informed from the headquarters of the Mogilno regiment that Shchors, his deputy Dubovoy, Semyonov of the charter division and others had arrived in the 3rd battalion. On the outskirts of the village, I met Shchors and reported the situation to him. Shchors ordered to lead him to the position. I persuaded Shchors not to go to the front line of fire, however, he went to the soldiers lying in the trenches, talking to them, joking. One of the Red Army soldiers suddenly told Shchors that in the morning he had observed the accumulation of the enemy in the barn house, that there was also a machine gun there, and that, they say, it was dangerous for Shchors to roam openly. Semyonov, the head of the artillery battalion, offered to fire at this house from the battery and ordered the battery commander to move the command post to himself, and when the battery command post was ready, he began to shoot himself. Semyonov shot unsuccessfully, scattered the shells in order to stop the waste of shells, I suggested to Shchors to instruct the head of the battery Khimichenko to shoot, who covered the house with 3-4 m shells, smoke appeared, dust that closed this house. After about 20 seconds, machine-gun fire was suddenly opened. I lay down to the left of Shchors, Oak to the right, next to him. Lying under machine-gun fire, I drew Shchors' attention to the fact that the enemy had a good machine gunner, that he had studied the area in front of him and was clearly observing. Shchors answered me that the enemy's machine gunner was good, seasoned. At this time, I heard a strong curse from a Red Army soldier who said “who is shooting from a revolver”, although I did not see the shooter. The conversation with Shchors stopped; suddenly I looked at Shchors and noticed his glassy eyes, shouted to Dubovoy - Shchors was killed. Immediately I got up and rushed to the edge of the forest, 50-70 meters from the position, to the location of the reserve company, the battalion headquarters, and the battalion medical aid station. By this time, Dubovoy had already pulled Shchors behind the shelter and ordered the battalion commander to carry out the assigned task, i.e. inflict a short blow on the enemy. I myself went forward with the advancing chains. Having walked 500-600 meters with them, I returned back, but Shchors was already gone, he was taken away by Dubovoy to Korosten. From the nurse, and I myself saw that the blow was inflicted on Shchors in the right temple. He lived for 20 minutes without regaining consciousness. It is noteworthy that Shchors was not buried in Korosten, but hastily sent, with some kind of panic, to the Volga in Samara. Subsequently, there were separate conversations in the regiment that Shchors was killed by his own. Moreover, among the fighters there were intensified conversations that Shchors was killed by Dubovoy in order to take the place of Shchors. This idea even then occurred to me. I proceeded from personal suspicions, based on the circumstances of the death of Shchors, which I myself observed. I knew very little of Oakovoy at that time, since I had seen him for the second time. Prior to that, Dubova was the chief of staff of the 1st Ukrainian Soviet Army. Shchors was thus subordinate to Dubovoy. Shchors himself waged a tough fight against banditry, introduced revolutionary iron discipline and punished banditry severely, stopping at nothing. In 1936, in January or February, when Dubov was recruiting me into a counter-revolutionary military conspiracy, I raised a question before Dubov regarding the picture of Shchors' death, and among other things, I said that Shchors died somehow ridiculously and that there were separate conversations in the regiment pointing to him Oak. He answered me that we should not raise a conversation about the death of Shchors, since the vast majority believes that Shchors was killed by Petliura. Let this opinion remain so, and he suggested that, somewhat agitated, I say no more about it. This convinced me even more that Dubova had a direct bearing on the death of Shchors.
Kwiatek
14.III.1938
Moscow Lefortovo Prison.
As the most likely perpetrator of the murder of Shchors, a certain Pavel Tankhil-Tankhilevich is called, who on August 30, 1919 was on the battlefield near the village of Beloshitsa, next to the commander. The identity of Tankhil-Tankhilevich is not very well studied due to the lack of detailed information about him. However, some details are known: Pavel Samuilovich Tankhil-Tankhilevich, born in 1893, a native of Odessa, a Jew by nationality, a former high school student, in 1919, at the age of 25-26, became a political inspector of the Revolutionary Military Council of the 12th Army. He was a member of the RCP (b). He spoke foreign languages, in particular French. The last detail may indicate his origins from a noble family. According to some reports, he had a criminal past, which, however, cannot be surprising, because. in the ranks of the Bolsheviks during the years of the civil war, there were many former criminals.
The version of involvement in the murder of Tankhil-Tankhilevich is based primarily on the testimony of several eyewitnesses. So, a close colleague of Shchors since Unech times - S.I. Petrikovsky, who served in the division as the commander of a cavalry brigade, said in his memoirs that Ivan Dubovoy, a few hours after the death of the commander, told him some curious circumstances about the events that took place near the village of Beloshitsa. So, according to Oak, next to Shchors there really was a political inspector of the Revolutionary Military Council, and at the same time he also fought, firing a revolver at the enemy, being next to the commander. For what reason the political inspector was during the battle at the forefront of the 44th division is not clear. Subsequently, during interrogations in the NKVD, Dubovoi did not mention Tankhil-Tankhilevich even once.
It is also unknown who and when ordered Tankhil-Tankhilevich to go on an inspection trip to the Shchors division, however, it is obvious that this could not have been the personal initiative of the political inspector. One of those who had the authority to send political inspectors to certain units was Semyon Ivanovich Aralov, a member of the Revolutionary Military Council of the 12th Army, about whose possible involvement in
Almost nothing is known about the further fate of Tankhil-Tankhilevich. In the autumn of 1919, traces of the political inspector are lost, it is only known that immediately after the death of Shchors, he was urgently transferred to the Southern Front. The name of Tankhil-Tankhilevich surfaced only in the second half of the 1920s in the Baltic states, where he allegedly worked in the Estonian counterintelligence.
In Unecha, a street was named after Shchors, and in 1957, opposite the railway station, a monument to the division commander was erected, made by the Bryansk sculptor G.E. Kovalenko. Near the monument to Shchors in Unecha, in the late 80s of the last century, a square was laid out, which was previously called Komsomolsky. In 1991, due to its wear and tear, the monument was replaced with a new one, made by Kyiv craftsmen under the guidance of sculptor V.M. Ivanenko. By the way, the people of Kiev already had experience in erecting a monument to Shchors. In the Ukrainian capital, the bronze division commander appeared in 1954 on Shevchenko Boulevard, and none other than Leonid Kravchuk, the future first president of independent Ukraine, and then a young student at Kiev University, posed for the sculptor.
old monument new monument
grave of N.A. Shchorsa in Kuibyshev
monument to N.K. Shchorsu in Kyiv
In the Soviet Union, his name was a legend. Streets and state farms, ships and military formations were named in his honor. Every schoolboy knew the heroic song about how “the commander of the regiment walked under the red banner, his head was tied, blood on his sleeve, a bloody trail spreads over damp grass.” This commander was the famous hero of the Civil War, Nikolai Shchors. In the biography of this man, whom I. Stalin called the "Ukrainian Chapaev", there are quite a few "blank spots" - after all, he even died under very strange and mysterious circumstances. This mystery, which has not been revealed so far, is almost a hundred years old.
In the history of the Civil War 1918-1921. there were many iconic, charismatic figures, especially in the camp of the "winners": Chapaev, Budyonny, Kotovsky, Lazo ... This list can be continued, no doubt including the name of the legendary Red Divisional Commander Nikolai Shchors. It is about him that poems and songs were written, a huge historiography was created, and the famous feature film by A. Dovzhenko “Shchors” was shot 60 years ago. There are monuments to Shchors in Kiev, which he courageously defended, Samara, where he organized the partisan movement, Zhitomir, where he smashed the enemies of the Soviet regime, and near Korosten, where his life was cut short. Although a lot has been written and said about the legendary commander, the history of his life is full of mysteries and contradictions, over which historians have been struggling for decades. The biggest secret in the biography of the division chief N. Shchors is connected with his death. According to official documents, the former lieutenant of the tsarist army, and then the legendary red commander of the 44th Infantry Division, Nikolai Shchors, died from an enemy bullet in the battle near Korosten on August 30, 1919. However, there are other versions of what happened ...
Nikolai Shchors, a native of Snovsk Gorodnyanskosh district, in his short life, and he lived only 24 years, managed a lot - he graduated from a military paramedic school in Kiev, took part in the First World War (after graduating from the cadet school evacuated from Vilna in Poltava, Shchors was sent to the Southwestern Front as a junior company commander), where, after difficult months of trench life, he developed tuberculosis. During 1918-1919. the former warrant officer of the tsarist army made a dizzying career - from one of the commanders of the small Semenovsky Red Guard detachment to the commander of the 1st Ukrainian Soviet division (from March 6, 1919). During this time, he managed to be the commander of the 1st regular Ukrainian regiment of the Red Army named after I. Bohun, the commander of the 2nd brigade of the 1st Ukrainian Soviet division, the commander of the 44th rifle division and even the military commandant of Kiev.
In August 1919, the 44th Streltsy Division of Shchors (the 1st Ukrainian Soviet Division joined it), which was part of the 12th Army, held positions at a strategically important railway junction in the city of Korosten west of Kiev. With the last of their strength, the fighters tried to stop the Petliurists, who at all costs tried to take over the city. When on August 10, as a result of a raid by the Don Cavalry Corps under General Mamontov, the Cossacks broke through the Southern Front and set off towards Moscow along its rear, the 14th Army, which had taken the main blow, began to hastily retreat. Between the whites and the reds, only the Shchors division, which was fairly battered in battles, now remained. However, the fact that Kyiv could not be defended was clear to everyone, it was considered only a matter of time. The Reds had to hold out in order to evacuate institutions, organize and cover the retreat of the 12th Army of the Southern Front. Nikolai Shchors and his fighters managed to do it. But they paid a high price for it.
On August 30, 1919, divisional commander N. Shchors arrived at the location of the Bogunsky brigade near the village of Beloshitsa (now Shchorsovka) near Korosten and died on the same day from a fatal wound to the head. The official version of the death of N. Shchors was as follows: during the battle, the divisional commander watched the Petliurists from binoculars, while listening to the reports of the commanders. His fighters went on the attack, but suddenly an enemy machine gun came to life on the flank, the burst of which pressed the Red Guards to the ground. At this moment, the binoculars fell out of the hands of Shchors; he was mortally wounded and died 15 minutes later in the arms of his deputy. Witnesses of the mortal wound confirmed the heroic version of the death of the beloved commander. However, from them, in an unofficial setting, there was also a version that the bullet was fired by one of their own. To whom was it beneficial?
In that last battle, there were only two people in the trench next to Shchors - assistant commander I. Dubova and another rather mysterious person - a certain P. Tankhil-Tankhilevich, a political inspector from the headquarters of the 12th Army. Major General S.I. Petrikovsky (Petrenko), who at that time commanded the 44th cavalry brigade of the division, although he was nearby, ran up to Shchors when he was already dead and his head was bandaged. Dubovoy claimed that the division commander was killed by an enemy machine gunner. However, it is surprising that immediately after the death of Shchors, his deputy ordered the dead head to be bandaged and forbade the nurse, who ran from a nearby trench, to unbandage it. It is also interesting that the political inspector lying on the right side of Shchors was armed with a Browning. In his memoirs, published in 1962, S. Petrikovsky (Petrenko) cited Dubovoy's words that during the skirmish, Tankhil-Tankhilevich, contrary to common sense, shot at the enemy from a Browning. One way or another, but after the death of Shchors, no one else saw the staff inspector, traces of him were already lost in the first days of September 1919. It is interesting that he also got to the front line of the 44th division under unclear circumstances by order of S.I. Aralov, a member of the Revolutionary Military Council of the 12th Army, as well as the head of the intelligence department of the Field Headquarters of the Revolutionary Military Council of the Republic. Tankhil-Tankhilevich was a confidant of Semyon Aralov, who hated Shchors "for being too independent." In his memoirs, Aralov wrote: "Unfortunately, persistence in personal conversion led him (Shchors) to an untimely death." With his intractable character, excessive independence, and recalcitrance, Shchors interfered with Aralov, who was a direct protege of Leon Trotsky and therefore was endowed with unlimited powers.
There is also an assumption that Shchors' personal assistant I. Dubova was accomplices in the crime. General S.I. Petrikovsky insisted on this, to whom he wrote in his memoirs: “I still think that the political inspector fired, and not Dubova. But without the assistance of Dubovoy, the murder could not have happened ... Only relying on the assistance of the authorities in the person of Deputy Shchors Dubovoy, on the support of the Revolutionary Military Council of the 12th Army, the criminal [Tankhil-Tankhilevich] committed this terrorist act ... I knew Dubovoy not only from the Civil War. He seemed like an honest man to me. But he also seemed weak-willed to me, without special talents. He was nominated, and he wanted to be nominated. That's why I think he was made an accomplice. And he did not have the courage to prevent the murder.”
Some researchers argue that the order to liquidate Shchors was given by the people's commissar and head of the Revolutionary Military Council L. Trotsky, who liked to purge among the commanders of the Red Army. The version associated with Aralov and Trotsky is considered by historians to be quite probable and, moreover, consistent with the traditional perception of Trotsky as the evil genius of the October Revolution.
According to another assumption, the death of N. Shchors was also beneficial to the "revolutionary sailor" Pavel Dybenko, a more than well-known personality. The husband of Alexandra Kollontai, an old party member and friend of Lenin, Dybenko, who at one time held the post of head of the Central Balt, provided the Bolsheviks with detachments of sailors at the right time. Lenin remembered and appreciated this. Dybenko, who had no education and was not distinguished by special organizational skills, was constantly promoted to the most responsible government posts and military positions. He, with invariable success, failed the case wherever he appeared. First, he missed P. Krasnov and other generals, who, having gone to the Don, raised the Cossacks and created a white army. Then, commanding a sailor detachment, he surrendered Narva to the Germans, after which he not only lost his position, but also lost his party card. Failures continued to haunt the former Baltic sailor. In 1919, while holding the post of commander of the Crimean army, the local people's commissar for military and naval affairs, as well as the head of the Revolutionary Military Council of the Crimean Republic, Dybenko surrendered Crimea to the whites. Soon, however, he led the defense of Kyiv, which he mediocrely failed and fled the city, leaving Shchors and his fighters to their fate. Returning to his possible role in the murder of Shchors, it should be noted that as a person who came out of poverty and managed to get a taste of power, Dybenko was terrified of another failure. The loss of Kyiv could be the beginning of his end. And the only person who knew the truth about how Dybenko “successfully” defended Kyiv was Shchors, whose words could be heeded. He knew all the ups and downs of these battles thoroughly and, moreover, had authority. Therefore, the version that Shchors was killed on the orders of Dybenko does not seem so incredible.
But this is not the end. There is another version of the death of Shchors, which, however, hardly casts doubt on all the previous ones. According to her, Shchors was shot by his own guard out of jealousy. But in the collection "The Legendary Commanding Officer", published in September 1935, in the memoirs of Shchors's widow, Fruma Khaikina-Rostova, the fourth version of his death is given. Khaikina writes that her husband died in battle with the White Poles, but does not provide any details.
But the most incredible assumption, which is associated with the name of the legendary division commander, was expressed on the pages of the Moscow weekly Sovremennik, popular during the time of "perestroika and glasnost". An article published in 1991 in one of his issues was truly sensational! It followed from it that the divisional commander Nikolai Shchors did not exist at all. The life and death of the red commander is supposedly another Bolshevik myth. And its origin began with the well-known meeting of I. Stalin with artists in March 1935. It was then that the head of state allegedly turned to A. Dovzhenko with the question: “Why do the Russian people have the hero Chapaev and a film about the hero, but the Ukrainian people do not have such a hero?” Dovzhenko, of course, instantly understood the hint and immediately set to work on the film. As the heroes, according to Sovremennik, they appointed the unknown Red Army soldier Nikolai Shchors. In fairness, it should be noted that the meeting of the Soviet leadership with cultural and art workers in 1935 really took place. And it was precisely from 1935 that the all-Union glory of Nikolai Shchors began to actively grow. The Pravda newspaper in March 1935 wrote about this: “When the director A.P. Dovzhenko was awarded the Order of Lenin at a meeting of the Presidium of the Central Executive Committee of the USSR and he returned to his place, he was overtaken by the remark of Comrade Stalin: “Your debt is Ukrainian Chapaev” . Some time later, at the same meeting, Comrade Stalin asked Comrade Dovzhenko questions: “Do you know Shchors?” “Yes,” Dovzhenko replied. "Think about him," said Comrade Stalin. There is, however, another - absolutely incredible - version, which was born in "near-cinema" circles. Until now, the legend roams the corridors of GITIS (now RATI) that Dovzhenko began filming his heroic revolutionary film not at all about Shchors, but about V. Primakov, even before the arrest of the latter in 1937 in the case of the military conspiracy of Marshal Tukhachevsky. Primakov was the commander of the Kharkov Military District and was a member of the party and state elite of Soviet Ukraine and the USSR. However, when the investigation into the Tukhachevsky case began, A. Dovzhenko began to re-shoot the movie - now about Shchors, who by no means could be involved in conspiratorial plans against Stalin for obvious reasons.
When the Civil War ended and memoirs of participants in the military and political struggle in Ukraine began to be published, the name of N. Shchors was always mentioned in these stories, but not among the main figures of the era. These places were reserved for V. Antonov-Ovseenko as the organizer and commander of the Ukrainian Soviet armed forces and then the Red Army in Ukraine; Commander V. Primakov, who suggested the idea of creating and commanded units and formations of the Ukrainian "Red Cossacks" - the first military formation of the Council of People's Commissars of Ukraine; S. Kosior, a high party leader who led the partisan movement in the rear of the Petliurists and Denikinists. All of them in the 1930s. were prominent party members, held high government positions, represented the USSR in the international arena. But during the Stalinist repressions of the late 1930s. these people were ruthlessly exterminated. About who I. Stalin decided to fill the empty niche of the main characters of the struggle for Soviet power and the creation of the Red Army in Ukraine, the country learned in 1939, when the Dovzhenko film “Shchors” was released. The very next day after its premiere, the lead actor E. Samoilov woke up popularly famous. At the same time, no less fame and official recognition came to Shchors, who had died twenty years earlier. Such a hero as Shchors, young, brave in battle and fearlessly killed by an enemy bullet, successfully “fitted” into the new format of history. However, now the ideologists face a strange problem, when there is a hero who died in battle, but there is no grave. For official canonization, the authorities ordered to urgently find the burial of Nikolai Shchors, which no one has remembered so far.
It is known that in early September 1919, the body of Shchors was taken to the rear - to Samara. But only 30 years later, in 1949, the only witness to the rather strange funeral of the divisional commander was found. It turned out to be a certain Ferapontov, who, as a homeless boy, helped the caretaker of the old cemetery. He told how late in the autumn evening a freight train arrived in Samara, from which they unloaded a sealed zinc coffin, which was very rare at that time. Under the cover of darkness, keeping secrecy, the coffin was brought to the cemetery. After a short “funeral meeting”, a three-time revolver salute sounded and the grave was hastily covered with earth, setting up a wooden tombstone. The city authorities did not know about this event and no one looked after the grave. Now, after 30 years, Ferapontov led the commission to the burial place ... on the territory of the Kuibyshev cable plant. Shchors' grave was found under a half-meter layer of gravel. When the hermetically sealed coffin was opened and the remains were exhumed, the medical commission that conducted the examination concluded that “the bullet entered the back of the head and exited through the left parietal bone.” “It can be assumed that the bullet was revolver in diameter ... The shot was fired at close range,” the conclusion wrote. Thus, the version of the death of Nikolai Shchors from a revolver shot fired from a distance of only a few steps was confirmed. After a thorough study, the ashes of N. Shchors were reburied in another cemetery and finally a monument was erected. The reburial was carried out at a high government level. Of course, materials about this were kept for many years in the archives of the NKVD, and then the KGB under the heading "Secret", they were made public only after the collapse of the USSR.
Like many commanders of the Civil War, Nikolai Shchors was only a "bargaining chip" in the hands of the powers that be. He died at the hands of those for whom their own ambitions and political goals were more important than human lives. These people did not care that, left without a commander, the division had practically lost its combat capability. As the hero of the Civil War and a former member of the Revolutionary Military Council of the Ukrainian Front E. Shadenko said, “only enemies could tear Shchors away from the division, into whose consciousness he had grown roots. And they tore it off."
V. M. Sklyarenko, I. A. Rudycheva, V. V. Syadro. 50 famous mysteries of the history of the XX century
"There was a detachment along the shore,
Went from afar
Went under the red flag
Regiment Commander"
These lines must have been heard more than once even by those who grew up in post-Soviet times. But not everyone knows that they were taken from the Song of Shchors.
Nikolai Shchors in the Soviet period of history, he was included in the list of heroes of the revolution, whose exploits children learned about in elementary school, if not in kindergarten. Comrade Shchors was one of those who gave his life in the struggle for the happiness of the working people. That is why he, like other fallen revolutionaries, was not affected by the subsequent stages of the political struggle against the exclusion from history of yesterday's comrades-in-arms, declared "enemies of the people."
Nikolai Alexandrovich Shchors (1895-1919), red commander, commander of the Civil War in Russia. Photo: commons.wikimedia.org
Nikolai Alexandrovich Shchors was born on June 6, 1895 in the Chernihiv region, in the village of Snovsk, Velikoshchimelsky volost, Gorodnyansky district, according to some sources, in the family of a wealthy peasant, according to others, a railway worker.
The future revolutionary hero did not think about class battles in his youth. Kolya Shchors could well have made a spiritual career - after graduating from a parochial school, he studied at the Chernigov Theological School, and then at the Kyiv Seminary.
Shchors' life changed with the outbreak of the First World War. A failed priest graduates from a military paramedic school and is appointed to the post of military paramedic of an artillery regiment as a volunteer. In 1914-1915 he took part in the fighting on the North-Western Front.
Sub-lieutenant with tuberculosis
In October 1915, his status changed - 20-year-old Shchors was assigned to active military service and transferred as a private to a reserve battalion. In January 1916, he was sent to a four-month accelerated course at the Vilna Military School, evacuated to Poltava.
By that time, the Russian army had a serious problem with officer cadres, so everyone who, from the point of view of command, had abilities, was sent for training.
After graduating from school with the rank of warrant officer, Nikolai Shchors served as a junior company officer in the 335th Anapa Infantry Regiment of the 84th Infantry Division, which operated on the Southwestern and Romanian fronts. In April 1917, Shchors was awarded the rank of second lieutenant.
The commanders who sent the young soldier for training were not mistaken: he really had the makings of a commander. He knew how to win over his subordinates, to become an authority for them.
Lieutenant Shchors, however, in addition to officer epaulettes, earned himself tuberculosis in the war, for the treatment of which he was sent to a military hospital in Simferopol.
It was there that the hitherto apolitical Nicholas joined the revolutionary movement, falling under the influence of agitators.
Shchors' military career could have ended in December 1917, when the Bolsheviks, who had embarked on a course to exit the war, began to demobilize the army. Nikolai Shchors also went home.
Reproduction of the plate "Song of Shchors". The work of Palekh masters. Palekh village. Photo: RIA Novosti / Khomenko
Field commander
The peaceful life of Shchors did not last long - in March 1918, Chernihiv region was occupied by German troops. Shchors was among those who decided to fight the invaders with weapons in their hands.
In the very first skirmishes, Shchors shows courage, determination and becomes the leader of the rebels, and a little later the commander of a united partisan detachment created from disparate groups.
Within two months, the Shchors detachment caused a lot of headaches for the German army, but the forces were too unequal. In May 1918, the partisans retreat to the territory of Soviet Russia, where they cease military activities.
Shchors makes another attempt to integrate into civilian life by applying for admission to the medical faculty of Moscow University. However, the Civil War is gaining momentum, and Shchors accepts the offer of one of his comrades in the partisan detachment Kazimierz Kwiatek re-enter the armed struggle for the liberation of Ukraine.
In July 1918, the All-Ukrainian Central Military Revolutionary Committee (VTsVRK) was formed in Kursk, which plans to carry out a large-scale Bolshevik armed uprising in Ukraine. The VTsRVK needs commanders with experience in fighting in Ukraine, and Shchors comes in handy.
Shchors is given the task of forming a regiment from among the local residents in the neutral zone between the German troops and the territory of Soviet Russia, which should become part of the 1st Ukrainian Insurgent Division.
Shchors copes with the task brilliantly and becomes the commander of the 1st Ukrainian Soviet regiment named after the appointed hetman assembled by him Ivan Bohun, which was listed in the documents as "Ukrainian revolutionary regiment named after Comrade Bohun."
The rebuke of "Ataman" Shchors to "Pan-Hetman" Petliura, 1919. Photo: commons.wikimedia.org
The commandant of Kyiv and the thunderstorm of the Petliurists
The Shchors Regiment very quickly turns out to be one of the most effective combat units among the rebel formations. Already in October 1918, the merits of Shchors were marked by the appointment of the commander of the 2nd brigade as part of the Bogunsky and Tarashchansky regiments of the 1st Ukrainian Soviet division.
The brigade commander Shchors, with whom the fighters literally fall in love, conducts successful operations to take Chernigov, Kyiv and Fastov.
On February 5, 1919, the Provisional Workers' and Peasants' Government of Ukraine appoints Mykola Shchors as the commandant of Kyiv and awards him with an honorary golden weapon.
And the hero, whom the fighters respectfully call "dad", is only 23 years old ...
The Civil War has its own laws. Military leaders who achieve success often become people who do not have sufficient military education, very young people, who carry people along not so much with their skills, but with pressure, determination and energy. This is exactly what Nikolai Shchors was.
In March 1919, Shchors became the commander of the 1st Ukrainian Soviet division and turned into a real nightmare for the enemy. The Shchors division is conducting a decisive offensive against the Petliurists, defeating their main forces and occupying Zhytomyr, Vinnitsa and Zhmerinka. The Ukrainian nationalists are saved from a complete catastrophe by the intervention of Poland, whose troops support the Petliurists. Shchors is forced to retreat, but his retreat does not even closely resemble the flight of other Bolshevik units.
In the summer of 1919, the Ukrainian insurgent Soviet units were included in the united Red Army. The 1st Ukrainian Soviet Division merges into the 44th Rifle Division of the Red Army, headed by Nikolai Shchors.
In this position, Shchors would have been approved on August 21 and stayed in it for only nine days. On August 30, 1919, the division commander died in battle with the 7th brigade of the 2nd corps of the Petliura Galician army near the village of Beloshitsa.
Shchors was buried in Samara, where his wife's parents lived Frum Rostova. The daughter of Shchors Valentina was born after the death of her father.
Monument at the grave of Shchors in Samara, erected in 1954. Photo: commons.wikimedia.org
PR Comrade Stalin
Oddly enough, in the 1920s, the name of Nikolai Shchors was not very familiar to anyone. The rise of its popularity occurred in the 1930s, when the authorities of the Soviet Union seriously set about creating a heroic epic about the revolution and the Civil War, on which new generations of Soviet citizens were to be brought up.
In 1935 Joseph Stalin, presenting the Order of Lenin film director Alexander Dovzhenko, noted that it would be nice to create a heroic film about the "Ukrainian Chapaev" Nikolai Shchors.
Such a film was indeed made, it was released in 1939. But even before its release, books about Shchors appeared, songs, the most famous of which was written in 1936 Matvey Blanter And Mikhail Golodny“Song of Shchors” - lines from it are given at the beginning of this material.
The name of Shchors began to be called streets, squares, towns and cities, monuments to him appeared in various cities of the USSR. In 1954, on the occasion of the 300th anniversary of the reunification of Ukraine and Russia, a monument to the hero of the two peoples was erected in Kyiv.
The image of Shchors successfully survived all the winds of change, right up to the collapse of the USSR, when everyone who fought on the side of the Reds was subjected to defamation.
Shchors has a particularly hard time after Euromaidan: firstly, he is a red commander, and everything connected with the Bolsheviks is now anathematized in Ukraine; secondly, he famously smashed the Petliura formations, declared by the current Kyiv regime "hero-patriots", which, of course, they cannot forgive him.
Shot in the back of the head
In the history of Nikolai Shchors there is one mystery that has not been solved so far - how exactly did the “Ukrainian Chapaev” die?
Reproduction of the painting "Death of the Commander" (part of the triptych "Shchors"). Artist Pavel Sokolov-Skalya. Central Museum of the Armed Forces of the USSR. Photo: RIA Novosti
The classic version says: Shchors was killed by a bullet from a Petlyura machine gunner. However, among people close to Shchors, there was persistent talk that he died at the hands of his own.
In 1949, in the year of the 30th anniversary of the death of Shchors, in Kuibyshev (as Samara was called during this period), the exhumation of the remains of the hero and his solemn reburial at the central cemetery of the city took place.
The results of the examination of the remains, conducted in 1949, were classified. The reason was that the examination showed that Shchors was shot in the back of the head.
In the 1960s, when these data became known, the version about the elimination of Shchors by his comrades-in-arms became very common.
True, it will not be possible to habitually blame Comrade Stalin for this, and the point is not only that it was the “leader and teacher” who launched the campaign to glorify Shchors. It’s just that in 1919, Joseph Vissarionovich solved completely different tasks and did not have the influence necessary for such actions. And in principle, Shchors could not interfere with Stalin in any way.
Shchors "ordered" by Trotsky?
Another thing Lev Davidovich Trotsky. At that time, the second man in Soviet Russia after Lenin, Trotsky was busy forming a regular Red Army, in which iron discipline was imposed. Uncontrollable and too obstinate commanders were disposed of without any sentimentality.
The charismatic Shchors belonged precisely to the category of commanders whom Trotsky did not like. The subordinates of Shchors were first of all devoted to the commander, and only then to the cause of the revolution.
Among those who could carry out the order to eliminate Shchors, they named the name of his deputy Ivan Oak, as well as the authorized Revolutionary Military Council of the 12th Army Pavel Tankhil-Tankhilevich, subordinate GRU founding father Semyon Aralov.
According to this version, during the shootout with the Petliurists, one of them shot Shchors in the back of the head, then passing it off as enemy fire.
Most of the arguments are against Ivan Oak, who personally bandaged the mortal wound of Shchors and did not allow the regimental paramedic to examine it. It was Dubovoi who became the new division commander after the death of Shchors.
In the 1930s, Dubova managed to write a book of memoirs about Shchors. But in 1937, Dubova, who had risen to the position of commander of the Kharkov military district, was arrested, accused of a Trotskyist conspiracy and shot. For this reason, he could not object to the accusations made in the 1960s.
If we proceed from the version that Shchors was shot to get rid of the “non-systemic” commander, it turns out that Trotsky was very unhappy with him. But the facts say otherwise.
Shortly before the death of its commander, the Shchors division stubbornly defended the Korosten railway junction, which made it possible to organize a planned evacuation of Kyiv before the army attacked Denikin. Thanks to the resilience of the Shchors fighters, the retreat of the Red Army did not turn into a full-scale disaster for it. As already mentioned, nine days before his death, Trotsky approved Shchors as commander of the 44th division. It is unlikely that this will be done in relation to a person whom they are going to get rid of in the very near future.
Reproduction of the painting "N. A. Shchors at V. I. Lenin. 1938 Author Nikita Romanovich Popenko. Kiev branch of the Central Museum of V. I. Lenin. Photo: RIA Novosti / Pavel Balabanov
fatal ricochet
But what if the murder of Shchors was not an “initiative from above”, but a personal plan of the ambitious deputy Dubovoy? This is also hard to believe. Such a plan would surface, and Dubovoi would not have taken his head off - either from the Shchors fighters, who adored the commander, or from the wrath of Trotsky, who extremely disliked such actions carried out without his own approval.
There remains one more option, quite plausible, but not popular with conspiracy theorists - division commander Shchors could become a victim of a bullet ricochet. At the place where it all happened, according to eyewitnesses, there were enough stones that could cause the bullet to bounce off them and hit the back of the head of the red commander. Moreover, the ricochet could be caused both by a shot from the Petliurists, or by a shot from one of the Red Army soldiers.
In this situation, there is an explanation for the fact that Oak himself bandaged Shchors' wound, not letting anyone in to her. Seeing that the bullet hit the back of the head, the deputy division commander was simply frightened. Ordinary fighters, having heard about a bullet in the back of the head, could easily deal with "traitors" - there were plenty of such cases during the Civil War. Therefore, Dubovoy hurried to transfer his anger towards the enemy, and quite successfully. Enraged by the death of the commander, the soldiers of Shchors attacked the positions of the Galicians, forcing them to retreat. At the same time, the Red Army did not take prisoners that day.
It is hardly possible today to establish for certain all the circumstances of the death of Nikolai Shchors, and it does not matter in principle. The red commander Shchors has long taken his place in the history of the Civil War in Ukraine, and the song about him has entered the folklore, regardless of how historians evaluate his personality.
A little less than a hundred years after the death of Nikolai Shchors, the Civil War blazes again in Ukraine, and the new Shchors are fighting to the death with the new Petliurites. But, as they say, that's a completely different story.
Russian empire
Ukrainian SSR
served as chief
Nikolai Shchors on a postcard from IZOGIZ, USSR
Nikolai Alexandrovich Shchors(May 25 (June 6) - August 30) - second lieutenant, red commander, divisional commander during the Civil War in Russia. Member of the Communist Party since 1918, before that he was close to the Left SRs.
Biography
Youth
Born and raised in the village of Korzhovka, Velikoschimelsky volost, Gorodnyansky district, Chernihiv province (from - the city of Snovsk, now the regional center of Shchors, Chernihiv region of Ukraine). Born into the family of a wealthy peasant landowner (according to another version - from the family of a railway worker).
Civil War
In September 1918, in the Unecha region, he formed the 1st Ukrainian Soviet Regiment named after P.I. Bohun. In October - November, he commanded the Bogunsky regiment in battles with the German interventionists and hetmans, from November 1918 - the 2nd brigade of the 1st Ukrainian Soviet division (Bogunsky and Tarashchansky regiments), which captured Chernigov, Kiev and Fastov, repelling them from the troops of the Ukrainian directory .
On August 15, 1919, the 1st Ukrainian Soviet division under the command of N. A. Shchors was merged with the 44th border division under the command of I. N. Dubovoy, becoming the 44th rifle division. On August 21, Shchors became her head, and Dubova became the deputy head of the division. The division consisted of four brigades.
The division, which stubbornly defended the Korosten railway junction, which ensured the evacuation of Kyiv (on August 31, the city was taken by the Volunteer Army of General Denikin) and the exit from the encirclement of the Southern Group of the 12th Army.
Doom studies
The official version that Shchors died in battle from a bullet of a Petlyura machine gunner began to be criticized with the onset of the “thaw” of the 1960s.
Initially, the researchers charged the murder of the commander only with the commander of the Kharkov military district, Ivan Dubovoi, who during the Civil War was Nikolai Shchors's deputy in the 44th division. The 1935 collection “Legendary Chief Division” contains the testimony of Ivan Dubovoy: “The enemy opened heavy machine-gun fire and, I especially remember, showed“ dashing ”one machine gun at the railway booth ... Shchors took binoculars and began to look where the machine-gun fire came from. But a moment passed, and the binoculars from the hands of Shchors fell to the ground, Shchors' head too ... ". The head of the mortally wounded Shchors was bandaged by Oak. Shchors died in his arms. “The bullet entered from the front,” writes Dubovoy, “and exited from behind,” although he could not help but know that the entrance bullet hole was smaller than the exit one. When the nurse of the Bogunsky regiment, Anna Rosenblum, wanted to change the first, very hasty bandage on the head of the already dead Shchors to a more accurate one, Dubovoy did not allow it. By order of Oak, Shchors' body was sent without a medical examination to be prepared for burial. Witness to the death of Shchors was not only Oak. Nearby were the commander of the Bogunsky regiment, Kazimir Kvyatyk, and the authorized representative of the Revolutionary Military Council of the 12th Army, Pavel Tankhil-Tankhilevich, sent with an inspection by a member of the Revolutionary Military Council of the 12th Army, Semyon Aralov, a protege of Trotsky. He was twenty-six years old, he was born in Odessa, graduated from high school, spoke French and German. In the summer of 1919 he became a political inspector of the Revolutionary Military Council of the 12th Army. Two months after the death of Shchors, he left Ukraine and arrived on the Southern Front as a senior censor-controller of the Military Censorship Department of the Revolutionary Military Council of the 10th Army.
The exhumation of the body, carried out in 1949 in Kuibyshev during the reburial, confirmed that he was killed at close range by a shot in the back of the head. Near Rovno, Shchorsovite Timofey Chernyak, the commander of the Novgorod-Seversky regiment, was later killed. Then Vasily Bozhenko, the brigade commander, died. He was poisoned
