Anatoly Pepelyaev. Pepelyaev Anatoly Nikolaevich

Anatoly Nikolaevich Pepelyaev (1891-1938) - Russian military leader. Member of the First World War and civil war on the Eastern Front. Whiteguard. He distinguished himself by the capture of Perm on 12/24/1918 and the campaign against Yakutsk in 1922-1923. Regional manager. Born on July 15 (July 3 according to the old style) 1891 in Tomsk, in the family of a hereditary nobleman and lieutenant general of the tsarist army Nikolai Pepelyaev and the daughter of a merchant Claudia Nekrasova.

The family house of the Pepelyaevs in Tomsk.

Nikolai Pepelyaev had six sons who later passed, with the exception of the eldest, military training, and two daughters. In 1902 Pepelyaev entered the Omsk cadet corps, which he successfully graduated in 1908. In the same year, Pepelyaev entered Pavlovsk military school(PVU) in St. Petersburg. In 1910, Pepelyaev graduated from it with the rank of second lieutenant.

Immediately after graduating from the PVU, Anatoly Nikolayevich was sent to serve in the machine gun team of the 42nd Siberian rifle regiment stationed in his native Tomsk. In 1914, shortly before the outbreak of the First World War, Pepelyaev was promoted to lieutenant. In 1912, Pepelyaev married Nina Ivanovna Gavronskaya (1893-1979), originally from Nizhneudinsk. From this marriage were born Vsevolod in 1913 and Lavr in 1922.

Pepelyaev went to the front as the commander of the cavalry reconnaissance of his regiment. In this position, he distinguished himself under Prasnysh and Soldau. In the summer of 1915, under his command, the trenches lost during the retreat were recaptured. In 1916, during a two-month vacation, Pepelyaev taught tactics at the front-line ensign school.

Nina Ivanovna Pepelyaeva (Gavronskaya), wife of General Pepelyaev. Sons: Vsevolod (senior) and younger Lavr. Harbin, 1923

In 1917, shortly before February Revolution, Anatoly Nikolaevich was promoted to captain. For military prowess, Pepelyaev was awarded the following awards:

Order of St. Anne 4th class with the inscription "For Bravery"

Order of St. Anne 3rd class

Order of St. Anne 2nd class

Order of St. Stanislaus 3rd class

Order of St. Stanislaus 2nd class

Order of St. Vladimir 4th class with swords and bow

Order of St. George 4th degree and St. George's weapon (already under Kerensky)

The February Revolution found Pepelyaev at the front. Despite the gradual disintegration of the army, he kept his detachment in constant combat readiness and at the same time did not fall out of favor with his soldiers, as was the case in many other parts.

Colonel A.N. Pepelyaev

Under Kerensky, he was promoted to lieutenant colonel. In addition, Anatoly Nikolayevich was awarded the Order of St. George 4th degree and the personalized St. George weapon. After October revolution the council of soldiers' deputies of the battalion, which by that time was commanded by Pepelyaev, elected him as the battalion commander. This fact speaks of the great popularity of Pepelyaev among the soldiers. But even parts of Pepelyaev were decomposed - the reason for this was Treaty of Brest-Litovsk ending military operations. Realizing the aimlessness of his further stay at the front, Anatoly Nikolaevich left for Tomsk. Pepelyaev arrived in Tomsk in early March 1918. There he met his longtime friend, Captain Dostovalov, who introduced Pepelyaev into a secret officer organization created on January 1, 1918 and headed by colonels Vishnevsky and Samarokov. Pepelyaev was chosen as the chief of staff of this organization, which planned the overthrow of the Bolsheviks who seized power in the city on December 6, 1917.

Pepelyaev's convoy. Tomsk

On May 26, 1918, an armed uprising against the Bolsheviks began in Novonikolaevsk. This gave an impetus to the Tomsk officers. On May 27, an armed uprising began. At the same time, the performance of the Czechoslovaks began. Lieutenant Colonel Pepelyaev commanded the Tomsk uprising. On May 31, the power of the "Siberian government" of Peter Vologda was established in Tomsk. Pepelyaev recognized this power and created on June 13, 1918, on her behalf, the 1st Central Siberian Rifle Corps, at the head of which he stood.

With him, he moved east along the Trans-Siberian Railway in order to liberate Siberia from the Bolsheviks. Krasnoyarsk was taken on June 18, Verkhneudinsk was liberated on August 20, and Chita fell on August 26. Moving further east along the Trans-Siberian Railway, Pepelyaev turned onto the CER in order to meet with the commander of the Trans-Baikal Cossacks Semyonov.

Ataman Semenov

The meeting took place in late August - early September at the Olovyannaya station. For this campaign, Pepelyaev was awarded the Order of St. George 3rd degree on February 28, 1919. By order of Avksentiev's Ufa directory, Pepelyaev's corps was transferred to the west of Siberia, and Anatoly Nikolaevich himself was promoted to major general (September 10, 1918), thanks to which he became the youngest general in Siberia (27 years old!).

Meeting at st. Tin in September 1918. In the center is General Konstantin Mikhailovich Diterikhs, to his left Anatoly Nikolayevich Pepelyaev, to his right is Radola Gaida, to the left of Pepelyaev, General Boris Petrovich Bogoslovsky.

From October 1918, his group was in the Urals. In November, Pepelyaev launched a Perm operation against the 3rd Red Army. During this operation, a coup took place in Omsk, which brought Kolchak to power. Pepelyaev immediately recognized the supreme power of Kolchak, since the power of the Socialist-Revolutionary Avksentiev was unpleasant to him.

Pepelyaev and the First Siberian Assault Brigade.

On December 24, 1918, Pepelyaev’s troops occupied Perm abandoned by the Bolsheviks, capturing about 20,000 Red Army soldiers, who were all sent home on Pepelyaev’s orders. Due to the fact that the liberation of Perm fell on the 128th anniversary of the capture of the fortress by Izmail Suvorov, the soldiers nicknamed Anatoly Nikolaevich "Siberian Suvorov." On January 31, Pepelyaev was promoted to lieutenant general. After the capture of Perm, Pepelyaev walked about 45 km to the west, but they came very coldy and the front froze. On March 4, 1919, a general offensive of Kolchak's troops began, and Pepelyaev moved his corps to the west. By the end of April, he was already standing on the Cheptsa River near the town of Balezino. On April 24, Kolchak's armies were reorganized and Pepelyaev became the commander of the Northern Group of the Siberian Army.

On the banner of the 3rd battalion of the 1st Siberian Assault Brigade Pepeliaev's skulls are depicted on both sides. On the front side there is a skull inside a sleeve chevron. In the corners of the cloth, in the place where the emperor's monograms used to be, there are four letters "P" (Pepelyaev).

Meanwhile, the front froze again, and only on May 30 Pepelyaev was able to launch an attack on Vyatka, to join Miller's troops. Pepelyaev was the only one who managed to advance in May - the rest of the White groups were repulsed by the Reds. On June 2, Pepelyaev took Glazov. But on June 4, the Pepelyaev group was stopped by the 29th Infantry Division of the 3rd Army in the area between Yar and Falenki. By June 20, he was recaptured approximately to the front line on March 3. After the June retreat, Pepelyaev did not win major military victories. July 21, 1919 Kolchak reorganized his units and officially formed the Eastern Front, which was divided into 4 armies (1st, 2nd, 3rd and Orenburg), a separate Steppe group and a separate Siberian Cossack Corps. Pepelyaev was appointed commander of the 1st Army. This reorganization did not make the conduct of hostilities more effective, and Kolchak's armies retreated to the east. For some time, the Whites managed to linger on Tobol and Pepelyaev was responsible for the defense of Tobolsk, but in October 1919 this line was broken through by the Reds.

Eastern group. Exhumation of the remains of Lieutenant Colonel Ushakov in the presence of Colonel Gaida (left) and Pepelyaev.

In November, Omsk was abandoned and a general flight began. Pepelyaev's army still held the Tomsk region, but there was no hope of success. In December, a conflict broke out between Anatoly Nikolaevich and Kolchak. When the train of the Supreme Ruler of Russia arrived at the Taiga station, it was detained by Pepelyaev's troops. Pepelyaev sent Kolchak an ultimatum to convene the Siberian Zemsky Sobor, the resignation of Commander-in-Chief Sakharov, whom Pepelyaev had already ordered to be arrested, and the investigation into the surrender of Omsk. In cases of non-compliance, Pepelyaev threatened to arrest Kolchak. On the same day, Pepelyaev's brother, Viktor Nikolaevich, who was prime minister in the Kolchak government, arrived in Taiga. He "reconciled" the general with the admiral.

As a result, on December 11, Sakharov was removed from the post of commander in chief. On December 20, Pepelyaev was driven out of Tomsk and fled along the Trans-Siberian Railway. His wife, son and mother fled with him. But since Anatoly Nikolaevich fell ill with typhus and was placed in a sanvagon, he was separated from his family. In January 1920, Pepelyaev was taken to Verkheudinsk, where he recovered. On March 11, Pepelyaev created the Siberian partisan detachment from the remnants of the 1st Army, with which he left for Sretensk. But since he was subordinate to Ataman Semyonov, and he collaborated with the Japanese, Pepelyaev decided to leave Russia and on April 20, 1920, went to Harbin with his family. In late April - early May 1920, Pepelyaev and his family settled in Harbin. There he earned his living as a carpenter, cab driver, porter and fisherman. He organized artels of carpenters, cab drivers and loaders. He created the "Military Union", of which General Vishnevsky became the chairman (see "The Beginning of the Fight against the Bolsheviks"). First, the organization came to the Bolsheviks from Blagoveshchensk, hiding under the guise of the Far East. However, Pepelyaev realized their essence and interrupted negotiations on the merger of his organization with the NRA FER. In 1922, Pepelyaev was approached by the Socialist-Revolutionary Kulikovsky, who persuaded him to organize a campaign in Yakutia to help the rebels against the Bolsheviks. In the summer of 1922, Pepelyaev went to Vladivostok to form military unit, which was to sail across the Sea of ​​Okhotsk with the aim of landing in Okhotsk and Ayan.

Ayan village

At that time, a change of power took place in Vladivostok, as a result of which the far-right General Diterikhs became the “ruler of Primorye”. He liked the idea of ​​​​a trip to Yakutia and he helped Pepelyaev with money. As a result, 720 people (493 from Primorye and 227 from Harbin) voluntarily joined the ranks of the "Militia of the Tatar Strait" (as the detachment was called for disguise). The detachment also included Major General Vishnevsky, Major General Rakitin and others. The detachment was also supplied with two machine guns, 175,000 rifle cartridges and 9,800 hand grenades. Two ships were chartered. They could not accommodate all the volunteers, so on August 31, 1922, only 553 people headed by Pepelyaev and Rakitin set sail on the Sea of ​​Okhotsk. Vishnevsky remained in Vladivostok. In addition to supervising the volunteers who remained with him, he also had to try to replenish the ranks of the Militia. In early September, the "Militia of the Tatar Strait" helped with the landing of the Siberian flotilla, which was fighting the red partisans in the area of ​​​​the Terney River. On September 6, troops landed in Okhotsk. In Okhotsk, a base was created under the leadership of the commandant, Captain Mikhailovsky. A group of General Rakitin was also created, which was supposed to move deep into Yakutia, to join the main forces of Pepelyaev. The purpose of the separation - Rakitin was supposed to move along the Amgino-Okhotsk tract and gather White partisans into the ranks of the "Militia".

Amga village. 1953 Yakutia

Pepelyaev himself sailed on ships along the coast to the south and landed in Ayan on September 8. On the same day, a meeting was held at which Pepelyaev announced the renaming of the Tatar Strait Police to the Siberian Volunteer Squad (SDD). On September 12, the "People's Congress of the Tungus" took place, which handed over 300 deer to the SDD. Leaving a garrison of 40 people in Ayan, on September 14, Pepelyaev moved the main forces of the squad of 480 people along the Amgino-Ayansky tract through mountain range Dzhugdzhur to the village of Nelkan. However, on the outskirts of Nelkan, a day was given, during which three volunteers fled. They informed the red garrison of Nelkan about the approach of the SDD, in connection with which the commandant of Nelkan, Chekist Karpel, dispersed the local residents and sailed with the garrison down the Maya River. Pepelyaev occupied Nelkan on September 27, two hours before that, the city was abandoned. All that the SDD managed to find were 120 hard drives and 50,000 cartridges for them, which were buried by the Reds. Pepelyaev realized that the campaign was poorly prepared and in October he left with guards for Ayan, leaving the main forces in Nelkan. Returning to Ayan on November 5, 1922, Pepelyaev was strengthened in his intention to go to Yakutsk, since a ship arrived in Ayan with Vishnevsky, who brought 187 volunteers and provisions with him. In mid-November, a detachment of Pepelyaev and Vishnevsky set off for Nelkan, arriving there in mid-December. At the same time, Rakitin set off from Okhotsk in the direction of Yakutsk. By December, residents returned to Nelkan - the Tungus, who at their meeting expressed support for the SDD and provided Pepelyaev with deer and provisions. In early January 1923, when all the White Guards had already been defeated, the SDD moved from Nelkan to Yakutsk. Soon a detachment of the White Partisans of Artemyev and the Okhotsk detachment of Rakitin joined it. On February 5, the village of Amga was occupied, where Pepelyaev placed his headquarters. On February 13, Vishnevsky's detachment attacked the Red Army detachment of Strod in the Sasyl-Sysy alas.

Strode in the center of the picture

The attack was unsuccessful and Strod was able to fortify himself in Sasyl-Sysyy. The last siege in the history of the Civil War began. Pepelyaev refused to move on until Strode and his detachment were taken prisoner. On February 27, Rakitin was defeated by a detachment of Kurashov's red partisans and began a retreat to Sasyl-Sysyy. A detachment of Baikalov left Yakutsk against Pepelyaev, which, having united with Kurashov, reached 760 people. From March 1 to March 2, there were battles near Amga and Pepelyaev was defeated. On March 3, the siege of Sasyl-Sysyy was lifted - the flight to Ayan began. Rakitin fled to Okhotsk. The Reds began to chase, but stopped halfway and returned. On May 1, Pepelyaev and Vishnevsky reached Ayan. Here they decided to build kungas and sail on them to Sakhalin. But their days were already numbered, for already on April 24, Vostretsov's detachment sailed from Vladivostok, the purpose of which was to eliminate the SDD. At the beginning of June 1923, Rakitin's detachment in Okhotsk was liquidated, and on June 17 Vostretsov occupied Ayan. To avoid bloodshed, Pepelyaev surrendered without resistance. On June 24, the captured SDD was sent to Vladivostok, where she arrived on June 30.

Command staff

In Vladivostok, a military court sentenced Pepelyaev to death, but he wrote a letter to Kalinin asking for clemency. The request was considered, and in January 1924 a trial was held in Chita, which sentenced Pepelyaev to 10 years in prison. Pepelyaev was supposed to serve his term in the Yaroslavl political isolator. Pepelyaev spent the first two years in solitary confinement, in 1926 he was allowed to do work. He worked as a carpenter, glazier and joiner. Pepelyaev was even allowed to correspond with his wife in Harbin.

Chita. January 1924

Chita. January 1924. Defendants in the courtroom. Third from the left - Lieutenant General A. Pepelyaev.

In 1933, Pepelyaev's term ended, but back in 1932, at the request of the OGPU board, they decided to extend it for three years. In January 1936, he was unexpectedly transferred from the political isolator in Yaroslavl to the Butyrka prison in Moscow. The next day, Pepelyaev was transferred to the inner prison of the NKVD. On the same day, he was summoned for interrogation to the head of the Special Department of the NKVD Guy. Then he was again placed in the Butyrka prison. On June 4, 1936, Pepelyaev was summoned again to Guy, who read him a resolution on release. On June 6, Anatoly Nikolaevich was released.

The NKVD settled Pepelyaev in Voronezh, where he got a job as a carpenter. It is believed that Pepelyaev was released in order to organize a front society, like the Industrial Party. In August 1937, Pepelyaev was arrested a second time and taken to Novosibirsk, where he was charged with creating a counter-revolutionary organization.

On December 7, Pepelyaev was sentenced to death by firing squad. The sentence was carried out on January 14, 1938 in a prison in the city of Novosibirsk. The grave of Anatoly Nikolaevich is unknown. October 20, 1989 prosecutor's office Novosibirsk region rehabilitated Pepelyaev.

Sources:

Shambarov V. E. White Guard. M., Eksmo-Press, 2002

Valery Klaving Civil War in Russia: White armies. M., Ast, 2003

Mityurin D. V. Civil War: White and Red. M., Ast, 2004

The last battles in the Far East. M., Tsentrpoligraf, 2005

General Staff of the Armed Forces of the USSR. Atlas of an officer. M., Military topographic department, 1984

Great October: Atlas. M., Main Directorate of Geodesy and Cartography under the Council of Ministers of the USSR, 1987

"Motherland", 1990 No. 10, Yuri Simchenko, Imposed happiness.

"Motherland", 1996 No. 9, Alexander Petrushin, Omsk, Ayan, Lubyanka ... Three lives of General Pepelyaev

Klipel V.I. Argonauts of the Snows. About the failed campaign of General A. Pepelyaev.

Konkin P.K. Drama of the General.

Civil war in faces (photo documents).

Timofeev E. D. Stepan Vostretsov. M., Military Publishing, 1981

Grachev G.P. Yakut campaign of General Pepelyaev. (edited by P.K. Konkin)

Those who wish to download the book of General E.K. Vishnevsky " White Dream Argonauts "(Description of the Yakut campaign of the Siberian Volunteer Squad. Publisher: Harbin. Year of publication: 1933.) can do this at the link:

From the memoirs of the former minister of the provisional Siberian government Serebrennikov I.I.

A.N.PEPELYAEV

In Harbin I managed to get to know General Pepelyaev, the famous hero of the civil war in Siberia in 1918-19. The general visited me several times, and we talked for a long time, recalling the recent past and trying to make forecasts for the future of Russia.

A.N. Pepelyaev told me about how he was evacuated to Manchuria. It turns out that he did not quite voluntarily come here. In the midst of the December catastrophe of 1919, during the disorderly retreat of Kolchak's armies, he, being somewhere in the Krasnoyarsk region, fell down, catching typhus. Almost in an unconscious state, the general was taken by the Czechoslovaks into the car, and in this form they took him to the east.

At one of the stations, the general told me, the workers, having found out about my presence on the Czechoslovak train, surrounded it and began to demand my extradition. The commandant of the train did not lose his head, went out to the crowd and said: “Yes, that's right, we were carrying Pepelyaev with us. He was ill with typhus, at one of the previous stations he became very ill, and we left him there to be admitted to the hospital. The crowd believed this statement of the commandant and gradually dispersed peacefully.

Antoly Nikolaevich also shared with me memories of various combat episodes from the era of the civil war in Siberia and the Urals.

We were moving towards Vyatka,” he once said. - Numerous deputations from peasants from the Vyatka region have already come to us, with promises of support for our campaign with local uprisings against the Bolsheviks. The troops were eager to march; everything turned out in such a way that foreshadowed complete success. And suddenly we receive an order from Omsk to retreat. I was entirely against the retreat, for which, in my opinion, there were absolutely no grounds, and stood for advancing forward, to Vyatka, and then to Vologda, from where, if necessary, we could spread to Arkhangelsk, to connect with the allies. . However, the military conference I called called for the execution of the Omsk order to retreat. The retreat we started led us, in the end, to disaster.

I don’t know, of course, whether, given the strategic situation, this campaign planned by Pepelyaev against Vologda and Arkhangelsk could have been carried out at one time, but if his plan had been adopted and implemented, we would have, in the history of the past civil war, an amazing march of Siberian troops from Manchuria to the waters of the White Sea.

Monument to the heroes who fell in the fight against the Comintern, in the city of Harbin

"Monument to the heroes who fell in the fight against the Comintern, in the city of Harbin" City of Harbin. Authors: project N.I. Zakharov, N.S. Sviridov. Builder - N.P. Kalugin. Founded June 8, 1941. Dismantled (blown up) in 1945.

In Harbin, local Bolsheviks began to intensively look after General Pepelyaev, who tried to drag him to the Soviet camp. At the same time, the general was promised some prominent appointment within the Russian Far East. As I know about this from A.N. Pepelyaev himself, the Bolsheviks made a number of meetings with him, treated him to lunch and dinner and diligently worked in their favor, skillfully exploiting the Siberian-regional moods of the young general, who was not very sophisticated at that time in matters of politics .

It must be said that the temptations for the gene. Pepelyaev were too great, and his friends had no small difficulty to keep him from the Bolshevik temptations.

The financial situation of A.N. Pepelyaev at that time was unenviable: both he himself and many of his close friends and comrades-in-arms in past battles were in great need in Harbin. I note how not quite a common fact that the general and several officers of his former army began to exist as a cab trade. I don’t know if Pepelyaev himself appeared on the streets of Harbin as a cab driver, but his friends could often be seen doing this. It is true that the horses and the carriage were bought into the property by a company of cab officers, and this to some extent mitigated for them the severity of their present position **.

I.I. Serebrennikov. My memories.

v. 2, mountains. Tientsin, 1940, pp. 33-34.

* This, for example, is evidenced by the decision of the Revolutionary Military Council of the 5th Red Army of December 15, 1919. Paragraph 6 of this resolution stated: “... in case of refusal of the partisan units from subordination to order and the manifestation of unbridledness, self-will, during the robbery (!) of the local population, in an attempt to raise confusion, these units should be subjected to merciless punishment.”

If possible, no more than 24 hours were allotted for disarmament and reprisal against the like. Wherein " command staff and the kulak leaders must be subjected to the most severe punishment.” Well, there was no doubt about the methods of punishing “willfulness”, it is enough to recall Kronstadt in March 1921, peasant unrest in the Tambov province, Western Siberia etc. (Note by P. Konkin).

** A.N. Pepelyaev organized in Harbin not only an artel of cab drivers, but also carpenters and loaders. A “Military Union” was created from former comrades-in-arms in the war in Siberia, whose chairman was Major General E.K. Vishnevsky, commander of the 2nd Corps of the 1st Siberian Army, which in 1919 was commanded by A.N. Pepelyaev. (Note by P. Konkin).

Civil war in Yakutia

The one who knows how to wage war

subdues another's army without fighting.

Sun Tzu

Part 1

The history of the Civil War, it would seem, has already been studied, as they say, up and down. But archival documents still make it possible to make unexpected discoveries. Including in the biographies of the prominent founders of the Yakut statehood, in particular, Platon Alekseevich Oyunsky. I must say right away that this is not a detective story at all. But the events that will be told very accurately convey the features internecine war officially ended 87 years ago.

GOOD COLONEL

In the canonical book of the hero of the Civil War Ivan Strod “In the Yakut taiga”, Colonel Khutoyarov, the head of the reconnaissance detachment of the Pepelyaevites, is mentioned. His only successes are the capture of a telegraph in the village of Taatta, eight telephone operators and the repulse of the Red offensive in the Walba area. It is also mockingly told about Khutoyarov's naive order to the "informers-spies" of the GPU to leave for Yakutsk under the threat of a court-martial. Despite the dismissive tone of Ivan Strod, Colonel Khutoyarov was a talented opponent, whose success Strod "tactfully" kept silent about. On January 13, 1923, a detachment of Khutoyarov in the Tattinsky ulus captured an authorized GPU and a policeman. Then, on the instructions of Khutoyarov, a detachment of White rebels seized 800 poods of meat and flour, collected by the Reds as a food tax, in the administration of the Borogonsky ulus. Although these were tactical level successes, they were not achieved by chance. The reconnaissance detachment of Khutoyarov had rare maps of Yakutia on a scale of 25 versts in 1 inch (2.5 cm). There is reason to believe that he was one of the leaders of Pepelyaev intelligence. But more on that later. The counterintelligence of the Siberian Volunteer Squad, of course, was inferior to the special departments of the Reds, allowing the transition to the Reds of one second lieutenant and military official almost immediately after entering Yakutia. But Pepelyaev's military intelligence was at its best. Only thanks to accurate intelligence data, from September 6, 1922 to January 1923, the Whites managed to make the most difficult march from Ayan through the Dzhugdzhur mountain range of Central Yakutia, and without stragglers and seriously frostbite. Such an extreme winter throw has not been repeated by anyone so far. Tactical successes in Taatta and Borogons are also not at all accidental. But the weakness of the intelligence service of Lieutenant General Pepelyaev was that it had a military bias, although in the conditions of Yakutia then the art of political intelligence was required, and especially the ability to negotiate.

UNKNOWN PAGE OF OYUNSKY'S LIFE

In January 1923, Khutoyarov in the Churapchinsky ulus “identified” and captured Zharny, the brother of Baikalov, the commander of the Red troops in Yakutia, and P.A. Oyunsky, when on January 17-18, 1923, in the area of ​​​​Wolba, he negotiated with the wavering White rebels and persuaded them to capitulate. And only fearing bad consequences, the Pepeliaevs released Zharny and Oyunsky under pressure from the White Rebels, who remembered how he saved their lives, having achieved amnesty for many of them in 1922. Khutoyarov brilliantly performed cleanly military task- distracted the red garrison in Churapcha from helping Strode and captured important prisoners. But he did not cope with the political task, not keeping the chairman of the government of the Yakut Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic in captivity and not persuading the Yakut White Rebels to continue the fight. The capture by the whites of the chairman of the Yakut Central Executive Committee could have demoralized the Reds. But on the other hand, the Bolsheviks could present his capture as a manifestation of the hatred of the alien Russian White Guards for the Yakuts, appealing to the latter to their national feelings. The events of January 17-18, 1923 testify to outstanding diplomatic skills and the personal bravery of Platon Oyunsky, who traveled to the negotiations practically without guards. And then, after all, many still mistakenly think that he spent the entire war in Yakutsk, despite the fact that his departure to Churapcha replaced fighting at least two battalions of Red Army soldiers.

Memorial complex in Yakutsk. House of P. Oyunsky.

Oyunsky, really risking his life, did the almost impossible: despite the invasion of Pepelyaev, which raised the spirit of the Bepopov rebels, the Plenipotentiaries of the regional people's government agreed in principle to surrender. Colonel Khutoyarov had a real chance to dissuade them from capitulation. On January 14 and 15, 1923, his detachment repulsed the attacks of the Reds advancing on Wopba, with the support of one gun. True, it was a low-powered mountain gun of the Maclene system. Her 37-millimeter shells could not penetrate the thick shaft built by whites from manure slabs (“balbachs”), doused with water interspersed with snow. Pepeliaevites clearly showed that they are new force capable of defeating the Bolsheviks, and this could agitate better than any eloquence. But Oyunsky managed to convince the White rebels to give up the fight. He skillfully took advantage of the mistake of the ideological inspirer Kulikovsky, who ordered the dissolution of the Provisional Yakut Regional People's Administration, the authority of the white rebels. And their leaders clearly liked the fact that negotiations with them, as with equals: unlike the Pepelyaev "governor", the chairman of the government of the YASSR conducts negotiations. Oyunsky's policy is reminiscent of the "national reconciliation" policy pursued many years later by pro-Soviet Afghan President Najibullah. : who tried to eliminate the Islamic counter-revolution through negotiations and amnesty. True, Oyunsky did it much more successfully.

WHITE START AND... LOSE!

On February 2, 1923, Pepelyaev's regular units captured Amga with a sudden blow, making it the base for an attack on Yakutsk. But even before that, Cheka intelligence officer Ivan Konstantinov reported on the dangerous approach of the Whites. But the slowness of the preparations, the carelessness of the commanders of the Amga garrison and the distracting blows of the detachments of Artemyev and Khutoyarov did not allow the defense of Amga. Pepelyaev was on the verge of victory when his march to Yakutsk was held back only by the heroic, at the limit of human capabilities, defense of the red detachment of Ivan Strod in the Sapyl-Sysy area. But further success of the general did not follow. The rapid attack on Yakutsk failed not only because of Strode, but also because of a psychological break. Rumors reached ordinary Pepelyaevites that the Reds had captured Vladivostok and now they were deprived of rear, remaining all alone. Pepelyaev received information about this at the end of 1922, but now it was no longer possible to hide it from his subordinates. Field reconnaissance of the Reds was already superior to that of Khutoyarov. This was, again, the merit of Oyunsky. At his insistence, in defiance of the ban of the Siberian Revolutionary Military Council, the “Yakut People’s Revolutionary Volunteer Detachment” (Yaknarrevdot) was created from the former Bepopov rebels, granting the families of his fighters benefits like for the families of Red Army soldiers. In fact, it was an illegal armed formation, an illegal armed formation, although it fought for Soviet power. But the cavalrymen of Yaknarrevdot, thanks to their knowledge of the area and Yakut language outnumbered Pepelyaev's scouts, constantly intercepting white reconnaissance groups. Therefore, White did not notice the approach of his opponent to Amga. On March 2, 1923, the Reds took it by storm, capturing the main warehouses and all the secret correspondence of the "team". The loss of Amga and the defeat suffered on the same day near the town of Billistyakh forced Pepelyaev to begin a retreat. But even then, 400 Pepelyaevites showed courage, almost capturing the Reds’ cannons in the battle near Abaga, five times “approaching our guns for several tens of steps.” The general was again on the verge of victory. If part of his forces had not been diverted to the siege of the Strode detachment, then the whites could have mastered the artillery.

Part 2

On the territory of Yakutia in the Civil War, no more than three thousand people actually fought on both sides. A perfect minuscule compared to the battles in the western part of the country. But the importance of intelligence was very great. Intelligence operations in Yakutia were not global. But they were almost tantamount to maneuvering with huge masses of cavalry, strikes from armored trains and assaults on fortified areas. If only because they allowed the Bolsheviks to keep 1/5 of the RSFSR. However, it cannot be denied that the adventurism and inconsistency of the actions of the white movement helped the Reds a lot.

NEW METHOD OF PETER KOCHNEV

By the end of the war, the superiority of the Reds was also achieved in terms of the number of agents. Especially for the fight against Pepelyaev, an undercover department was created under the leadership of Pyotr Kochnev (the future head of the Yakutsk department of the GPU) for reconnaissance in the Amginsky, Megino-Kangalassky and Borogonsky directions. Kochnev supported Oyunsky's policy of recruiting people from among the former White Rebels and their relatives to the war with Pepelyaev. The most successful scout was the non-partisan teacher Ivan Ivanovich Platonov, the father of the wife of the famous professor-historian G.P. Basharin. He was married to the sister of Vasily Borisov, deputy governor of the Yakutsk region in the Pepelyaev civil administration, and persuaded his brother-in-law, who was hiding after the defeat of Pepelyaev in the taiga with his detachment, to capitulate. The Whites again showed their remarkable marching abilities, this time during the retreat, and it was not possible to catch up with them. Only on June 1, 1923, the red detachment of S.S. Vostretsova, arriving on two ships from Vladivostok, overtook the remnants of Pepelyaev’s squad in the port of Ayan, who were preparing to evacuate to Sakhalin, and forced them to capitulate along with their commander. This was a considerable merit of the red intelligence. In the work of Kochnev's unit, one felt completely new approach, who made intelligence operations more successful than at the beginning of the war. The bitter experience of unsuccessful exploration in the Vilyuisk district was taken into account and analyzed. Intelligence work there until the summer of 1922 was unsuccessful due to the fact that local Chekists recruited only people already known as supporters Soviet power. And their heroism and efforts were in vain due to the lack of proper cover. For example, Cheka scout Brovin-Oegosturov rode, sleighed and skied 350 miles, visiting 11 villages and 5 naslegs, but then he was identified as the former chairman of the revolutionary committee in the Oleminsk district and killed in Mastakhsky ulus ... It was like send a person in winter, dressing him up instead of a white camouflage suit in red clothes, visible in the snow for several miles.

INTELLIGENCE SERVICE

during the Civil War

POLITRUKI GENERAL PEPELYAEV

After Wrangel's flight from the Crimea in 1920, there were about 200,000 white emigrants in Europe capable of holding weapons. But they did not lift a finger to help their brethren in the Far East, although the European white emigration had the means and their own fleet to transfer troops to Asia. As a result of 1922, General Molchanov lost the battle at Volochaevka due to a lack of people, and the Reds soon captured Primorye, the last stronghold of the White Army. The morale of the “European” Whites was low even before the loss of Crimea: Wrangel was never able to mobilize the bourgeois, nobles, intellectuals, officials and other “parasites” who fled from the Reds to build a second line of defense, which was so lacking after the Red Army broke through the Sivash and Perekop. The strategic confusion inevitably affected the White Guards in Yakutia. Going on a Yakut campaign, Pepelyaev hoped not only for military intelligence, but also for political intelligence. Under his "team" there was an "information department" headed by a certain A. Sobolev and a Socialist-Revolutionary G.P. Grachev, people without officer ranks. The "Osvedotdel" in the white armies is traditionally a hybrid of an intelligence agency and a press service. Sobolev and Grachev were carrying a small printing press with them. "Osvedtdel" is sometimes referred to as "lighting department", i.e. "lighting department" By the way, the tsarist gendarmes called operational observation and supervision precisely with the verb “illuminate”. From the captured diary of A. Sobolev, it can be seen that the intelligence department as a whole owned the moods of the Peleliayevites and knew how to maintain their morale. But not only white "political officers" were needed, but also intelligence officers who felt the political mood of the Yakut population. In October 1922, the inspirer of Pepelyaev’s campaign, Socialist-Revolutionary Pyotr Kulikovsky, declared the Provisional Yakut Regional People’s Administration (VYaONU), the government of the Yakut White Rebels, dissolved, ordering him to transfer all affairs and funds as a civilian “manager of the Yakut region”. The matter seems to be insignificant, but it was fatal mistake, and the White Guards felt its consequences already in January of the next, 1923, when the White rebels forced them to release Oyunsky from captivity. In general, Pepelyaev's expedition was adventurous. Knowing that the Reds had artillery in Yakutia, the general went on a campaign without a single gun. Although, theoretically, he could get something more serious than the worn-out guns of the Reds ... Already in 1920, the Japanese army began to use new models of military equipment: grenade launchers and even submachine guns copied from the world's first foreign machine gun - the German "Machinen-pistole" sample 1918. In the same year, Japanese units received steel helmets. There were enough different weapons in the Far East. But the commander of the Japanese troops in Primorye, General Ooi, refused to hand over the latest weapons to the Whites. The Japanese command, not without reason, believed that the white army was decomposing and, together with the deserters from the army of Dieterichs, the weapons would fall to the red ones ... So Pepelyaev could not get a single seedy gun in Vladivostok. On September 25, 1922, he ordered the Japanese company Arai Gumi "2 light guns" Hotchkiss "and 2000 shells. But the guns were never brought, although on February 14, 1923, the order was once again confirmed by the Pepelyaevsky head of the Ayan garrison, Colonel Seifullin. The Japanese received an advance payment, but simply "threw" Pepelyaev.

QUESTION WITHOUT ANSWER

Who was the boss military intelligence Pepelyaeva? The materials of the trial of the Pepeliaevites contain a lot of detailed information about them, the defendants. Who, when and where was born, single or married, how many children he had, what he did before the Civil War and even before 1917, and what position he held in Pepelyaev's squad. The Cheka knew or learned a lot.

General A.N. Pepelyaev on the eve of the trial in Chita. Left - former boss Okhotsk garrison captain Boris Mikhailovsky. Right - former adjutant Yemelyan Anyanov. A photograph from the end of 1923.

But nowhere is it indicated in any way who was the head of military intelligence in the Siberian Volunteer Squad and who was his deputy and assistants. This question was of great interest to serious people from the GPU and military intelligence. Lieutenant General Pepelyaev, as an experienced veteran of the First World War and the Civil War, could not do without an intelligence agency. But the chief of Pepelyaev's military intelligence was never officially named. There is no suggestion as to who it could be. If he died, then the defendants could point to him, what is the demand from the dead? There are two reasons for this secrecy. The head of the military intelligence of the “team” disguised himself as a different position, was a good conspirator, and neither the investigators of the GPU, nor the counterintelligence officers of the Red Army, nor the judges revealed him. He himself could not admit - why take on aggravating circumstances? The second reason: the chief of military intelligence, Pepelyaev, was not extradited. Not so much out of friendly feelings, but realizing that during interrogations he would say (or be forced to say) things that would be worse for everyone. The Pepelyaevs, who escaped from the meat grinder of battles in Yakutia, really wanted to live.

Memorial of the Civil War in Yakutia. Yakutsk. Photo by Sergey Dyakonov.

Colonel Khutoyarov is not on the list of defendants. He was killed in battle with the Reds. Colonel Toporkov is mentioned in documents and books as assistant chief of staff of the squad and former head of counterintelligence for whites in Vladivostok, who was fired there for bribes. But in the materials of the court he is not called the head of intelligence. The heads of political intelligence Sobolev and Grachev also do not appear among the defendants. They either died or fled.

Evgeny KOPYLOV.

The materials of the National Archives of the RS (Y) and the archive of the Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation for the RS (Y) were used.

The famous White Guard commander Anatoly Nikolaevich Pepelyaev was born in 1891 in the east of Russia in the city of Tomsk into a noble family. His father, Nikolai, was a lieutenant general in the tsarist army, and his mother Claudia was the daughter of a merchant. Anatoly followed in his father's footsteps and successfully graduated from the cadet corps in the city of Omsk in 1908, then, having moved to, and after training at the Pavlovsk Military School, he received the rank of second lieutenant, was sent to serve in his native city of Tomsk in the Siberian Rifle Regiment.

When it began, Anatoly Nikolaevich was already serving with the rank of lieutenant and commanded cavalry reconnaissance in his regiment. He very successfully participated in military operations under Prasnysh and Soldau and in other operations, was awarded numerous awards for his services and received the next military rank of captain. And even despite the revolutionary moods brewing in the ranks of the soldiers caused by the February events in Russia, Pepelyaev managed to keep his regiment in a cohesive and combat-ready state. Anatoly Nikolaevich enjoyed great trust and respect among the combat personnel, as evidenced by his election by the assembly of soldiers' deputies as a battalion commander. And when it became completely useless to stay at the front after the signing of the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, Pepelyaev moved to his homeland in Tomsk in 1918 and there he was elected chief of staff of a secret officer organization created to counter Bolshevism.

The organization, led by Pepelyaev, actively supported the uprising in Novonikolaevsk in May 1918 and helped establish Volodarsky's "Siberian government" in Tomsk. By order of the new government, Anatoly Nikolayevich Pepelyaev created the 1st Rifle Corps and moved further east to fight the Bolsheviks. During the period from June to August 1918, thanks to the successful military operations carried out by Pepelyaev with his corps, Krasnoyarsk, Verkhneudinsk and Chita were taken, for which he received the rank of colonel and was awarded the 3rd degree. In October, Pepelyaev, together with his corps, advanced to the Urals already in the rank of major general. Such a title is quite rare for a 27-year-old officer. November passes in successful battles against the Red Army, during which Kolchak was brought to power.

Omsk and Perm were already under the control of the White Guard troops, and during the operation in Perm, Anatoly Nikolaevich captured almost 20 thousand Red Army soldiers and then generously sent them home. In the spring of 1919, a massive offensive of all Kolchak’s troops in the western direction will begin, Pepelyaev already at that time commanded the Northern Group of the Siberian Army and stubbornly advanced with fierce battles to Vyatka, despite the fact that many white corps were crushed by the enemy. The northern group of Pepelyaev could not be stopped until the summer of 1919, but still, in the end, he had to retreat, the forces were very unequal. Even the reorganization of the troops, carried out, did not help, the white army continued to back away further and further east. Pepelyaev with the 1st Army still managed to hold the Siberian cities for some time. But the conflict with Kolchak, Pepelyaev's accusation of great military leaders in the weak-willed surrender of the city of Omsk, led to disagreements in the ranks of the white army. And even the subsequent reconciliation did not help. Pepelyaev's army was defeated by the Bolsheviks, and he and his family fled along the Trans-Siberian Railway. Then, already at the beginning of 1920, there was participation in the partisan detachments of Ataman Semyonov, and then emigration to the Land of the Rising Sun with his family.

Life in Japan forced Pepelyaev to take up peaceful affairs, he had to live somehow and had to work as a loader, fisherman, carpenter. But the thought of fighting against the Bolsheviks still did not leave him, and in 1922 Pepelyaev arrived in Vladivostok to help form the rebel troops. In early September, Pepelyaev set off with a detachment to conquer Yakutia. The advance was quite successful, the village of Nelkan was captured, which it was decided to make the main springboard for the further operation to capture Yakutsk. And as a result, a large united army of white partisans under the leadership of Pepelyaev, Vishnevsky. Artemyeva and Rakitina went to Yakutsk. So in March 1923, the last offensive of the White Guards in the Civil War began, which, after unequal resistance, was stopped by the Red detachments and Pepelyaev eventually had to surrender in June along with the remnants of the White partisan detachments.

The petition sent by Pepelyaev to Kalinin helped commute the court's sentence from death to 10 years in prison. He spent two years in solitary confinement, then worked, and after the end of his term, instead of being released, he was transferred to Butyrka, where, after long exhausting interrogations, he was nevertheless released in June 1936, but was forcibly settled in. Already in August 1937, he was again taken into custody, suspected of counter-revolution, and, in the end, on January 14, 1938, Anatoly Nikolayevich Pepelyaev was shot. And in 1989 he was rehabilitated by the Novosibirsk prosecutor's office.

Anatoly Nikolaevich Pepelyaev was born on July 15 (July 3 according to the old style) 1891 in Tomsk, in the family of a hereditary nobleman and lieutenant general of the tsarist army Nikolai Pepelyaev and the daughter of a merchant Claudia Nekrasova. Nikolai Pepelyaev had six sons, who later, with the exception of the eldest, underwent military training, and two daughters.
In 1902, Pepelyaev entered the Omsk Cadet Corps, which he successfully graduated in 1908. In the same year, Pepelyaev entered the Pavlovsk Military School (PVU) in St. Petersburg. In 1910, Pepelyaev graduated from it with the rank of second lieutenant.

Start of service and marriage
Immediately after graduating from the PVU, Anatoly Nikolayevich was sent to serve in the machine gun team of the 42nd Siberian Rifle Regiment, stationed in his native Tomsk. In 1914, shortly before the outbreak of the First World War, Pepelyaev was promoted to lieutenant.

Harbin and Primorye
In late April / early May 1920, Pepelyaev and his family settled in Harbin. There he earned his living as a carpenter, cab driver, porter and fisherman. He organized artels of carpenters, cab drivers and loaders. He created the "Military Union", of which General Vishnevsky became the chairman (see "The Beginning of the Fight against the Bolsheviks"). First, the organization contacted the Bolsheviks from Blagoveshchensk, who were hiding under the guise of the FER. However, Pepelyaev realized their essence and interrupted negotiations on the merger of his organization with the NRA FER. In 1922, Pepelyaev was approached by the Socialist-Revolutionary Kulikovsky, who persuaded him to organize a campaign in Yakutia to help the rebels against the Bolsheviks. In the summer of 1922, Pepelyaev left for Vladivostok to form a military unit that was to sail across the Sea of ​​Okhotsk with the aim of landing in Okhotsk and Ayan. At that time, there was a change of power in Vladivostok, as a result of which the far-right General Diterikhs became the "ruler of Primorye". He liked the idea of ​​​​a trip to Yakutia and he helped Pepelyaev with money. As a result, 720 people (493 from Primorye and 227 from Harbin) voluntarily joined the ranks of the "Militia of the Tatar Strait" (as the detachment was called for disguise). The detachment also included Major General Vishnevsky, Major General Rakitin and others. The detachment was also supplied with two machine guns, 175,000 rifle cartridges and 9,800 hand grenades. Two ships were chartered. They could not accommodate all the volunteers, so on August 31, 1922, only 553 people headed by Pepelyaev and Rakitin set sail on the Sea of ​​Okhotsk. Vishnevsky remained in Vladivostok. In addition to supervising the volunteers who remained with him, he also had to try to replenish the ranks of the Militia.

Hike to Yakutsk
In early September, the "Militia of the Tatar Strait" helped with the landing of the Siberian flotilla, which was fighting the red partisans in the area of ​​​​the Terney River. On September 6, troops landed in Okhotsk. In Okhotsk, a base was created under the leadership of the commandant, Captain Mikhailovsky. A group of General Rakitin was also created, which was supposed to move deep into Yakutia, to connect with the main forces of Pepelyaev. The purpose of the separation - Rakitin was supposed to move along the Amgino-Okhotsk tract and gather White partisans into the ranks of the "Militia". Pepelyaev himself sailed on ships along the coast to the south and landed in Ayan on September 8. On the same day, a meeting was held at which Pepelyaev announced the renaming of the Tatar Strait Police to the Siberian Volunteer Squad (SDD). On September 12, the "People's Congress of the Tungus" took place, which handed over 300 deer to the SDD. Leaving a garrison of 40 people in Ayan, on September 14, Pepelyaev moved the main forces of the squad of 480 people along the Amgino-Ayansky tract through the Dzhugdzhur mountain range to the village of Nelkan. However, on the outskirts of Nelkan, a day was given, during which three volunteers fled. They informed the red garrison of Nelkan about the approach of the SDD, in connection with which the commandant of Nelkan, Chekist Karpel, dispersed the local residents and sailed with the garrison down the Maya River. Pepelyaev occupied Nelkan on September 27, two hours before that, the city was abandoned. All that the SDD managed to find were 120 hard drives and 50,000 cartridges for them, which were buried by the Reds. Pepelyaev realized that the campaign was poorly prepared and in October he left with guards for Ayan, leaving the main forces in Nelkan. Returning to Ayan on November 5, 1922, Pepelyaev was strengthened in his intention to go to Yakutsk, since a ship arrived in Ayan with Vishnevsky, who brought 187 volunteers and provisions with him. In mid-November, a detachment of Pepelyaev and Vishnevsky set off for Nelkan, arriving there in mid-December. At the same time, Rakitin set off from Okhotsk in the direction of Yakutsk. By December, residents returned to Nelkan - the Tungus, who at their meeting expressed support for the SDD and provided Pepelyaev with deer and provisions. In early January 1923, when all the White Guards had already been defeated, the SDD moved from Nelkan to Yakutsk. Soon a detachment of the White Partisans of Artemyev and the Okhotsk detachment of Rakitin joined it. On February 5, the Amga settlement was occupied, where Pepelyaev placed his headquarters. On February 13, Vishnevsky's detachment attacked the Red Army detachment of Strod in the Sasyl-Sysy alas. The attack was unsuccessful and Strod was able to fortify himself in Sasyl-Sysyy. The last siege in the history of the Civil War began. Pepelyaev refused to move on until Strode and his detachment were taken prisoner. On February 27, Rakitin was defeated by a detachment of Kurashov's red partisans and began a retreat to Sasyl-Sysyy. A detachment of Baikalov left Yakutsk against Pepelyaev, which, having united with Kurashov, reached 760 people. From March 1 to March 2, there were battles near Amga and Pepelyaev was defeated. On March 3, the siege of Sasyl-Sysyy was lifted - the flight to Ayan began. Rakitin fled to Okhotsk. The Reds began to chase, but stopped halfway and returned. On May 1, Pepelyaev and Vishnevsky reached Ayan. Here they decided to build kungas and sail on them to Sakhalin. But their days were already numbered, because already on April 24, Vostretsov's detachment sailed from Vladivostok, the purpose of which was to eliminate the SDD. At the beginning of June 1923, Rakitin's detachment in Okhotsk was liquidated, and on June 17 Vostretsov occupied Ayan. To avoid bloodshed, Pepelyaev surrendered without resistance. On June 24, the captured SDD was sent to Vladivostok, where she arrived on June 30.

Trial and imprisonment
In Vladivostok, a military court sentenced Pepelyaev to death, but he wrote a letter to Kalinin asking for clemency. The request was considered, and in January 1924 a trial was held in Chita, which sentenced Pepelyaev to 10 years in prison. Pepelyaev was supposed to serve his term in the Yaroslavl political isolator. Pepelyaev spent the first two years in solitary confinement, in 1926 he was allowed to do work. He worked as a carpenter, glazier and joiner. Pepelyaev was even allowed to correspond with his wife in Harbin.

In 1933, Pepelyaev's term ended, but back in 1932, at the request of the OGPU board, they decided to extend it for three years. In January 1936, he was unexpectedly transferred from the political isolator in Yaroslavl to the Butyrka prison in Moscow. The next day, Pepelyaev was transferred to the inner prison of the NKVD. On the same day, he was summoned for interrogation to the head of the Special Department of the NKVD, Mark Guy. Then he was again placed in the Butyrka prison. On June 4, 1936, Pepelyaev was summoned again to Guy, who read him a resolution on release. On June 6, Anatoly Nikolaevich was released.

Short freedom and execution
The NKVD settled Pepelyaev in Voronezh, where he took a job as a carpenter. It is believed that Pepelyaev was released in order to organize a front society, like the Industrial Party.

In August 1937, Pepelyaev was arrested a second time and taken to Novosibirsk, where he was charged with creating a counter-revolutionary organization. On January 14, 1938, the Troika of the NKVD in the Novosibirsk Region was sentenced to highest measure punishment. The sentence was carried out on January 14, 1938 in a prison in the city of Novosibirsk. Buried in the courtyard of the prison.

Sources
Shambarov V. E. White Guard. M., Eksmo-Press, 2002
Valery Klaving Civil War in Russia: White armies. M., Ast, 2003
Mityurin D. V. Civil War: White and Red. M., Ast, 2004
The last battles in the Far East. M., Tsentrpoligraf, 2005
General Staff of the Armed Forces of the USSR. Atlas of an officer. M., Military topographic department, 1984
Great October: Atlas. M., Main Directorate of Geodesy and Cartography under the Council of Ministers of the USSR, 1987
"Motherland", 1990 No. 10, Yuri Simchenko, Imposed happiness.
"Motherland", 1996 No. 9, Alexander Petrushin, Omsk, Ayan, Lubyanka ... Three lives of General Pepelyaev
Klipel V.I. Argonauts of the Snows. About the failed campaign of General A. Pepelyaev. (this site is currently closed)
Konkin P.K. Drama of the General.
Pepelyaevshchina. September 6, 1922 - June 17, 1923.
Civil war in faces (photo documents).
Timofeev E. D. Stepan Vostretsov. M., Military Publishing, 1981
Grachev G.P. Yakut campaign of General Pepelyaev. (edited by P.K. Konkin)

Literature
Pepelyaev, Anatoly Nikolaevich on the website of the Russian Army in the Great War
Privalikhin V.I. From the Pepelyaev family, Tomsk, 2004-112 p. ISBN 5-9528-0015-7

A native of Tomsk; hero of the First World War; General of the 1st Siberian Army; Kolchak commander. Shot in 1938 in Novosibirsk

Born on July 3 (15), 1891 in Tomsk. He was educated at the Omsk Cadet Corps and at the Pavlovsk Military School (St. Petersburg), served in Tomsk, married a noblewoman Nina Gavronskaya.

In 1914 he was sent to the active army. He participated in the battles of the First World War, was awarded 8 orders and the golden St. George weapon. In early 1918 he returned to Tomsk, where he joined the anti-Bolshevik resistance as chief of staff of an underground officer armed organization, actively participated in the overthrow of the owls. authorities in Tomsk at the end of May 1918.

After leaving the underground, P. was appointed commander of the Central Siberian Corps, at the head of which he participated in the elimination of owls. authorities in the territory of Central and Eastern Siberia. At the age of 27, A.N. Pepelyaev received the rank of lieutenant general, commanded the 1st Siberian Army. At the end of 1918, the troops under the command of P. utterly defeated the 3rd Red Army, took Perm and launched an offensive in the Moscow direction. In the second half of 1919, during the period of the general retreat of the Kolchak troops, P. commanded the 1st Siberian Army, from November 21. to 16 Dec. 1919 together with the army headquarters was in Tomsk. Under the onslaught of the Red Army and the rebel-partisan formations on the night of December 17. 1919 staff train P. left the railway. Art. Tomsk-2, while the bulk of the soldiers of the Tomsk garrison joined the rebels. On the way to the East, P. fell ill with typhus, but with the help of the retreating Czechoslovak troops, he managed to get to Transbaikalia, from where in April. 1920 he emigrated to Harbin (China).

In Sept. 1922 - June 1923 participated in the armed struggle against the Red Army units on the territory of Yakutia, where an anti-Soviet armed uprising broke out. However, the Siberian Volunteer Squad, headed by P., numbering 750 people. was defeated, he was captured, in February 1924, by the decision of the tribunal of the 5th Army in Chita, he was sentenced along with his associates to death, replaced on February 29 by the decision of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee with imprisonment in the Yaroslavl Special Purpose Prison. After spending 12 years and 7 months in the prison of Yaroslavl, in July 1936 he was released, received permission to settle in the city of Voronezh, where he got a job at Voronezhtorg as an assistant to the head of the horse transport. However, on 21 Aug. In 1937, he was again arrested, transferred to the NKVD prison in Novosibirsk, on December 7 by the NKVD troika in the Novosibirsk region. accused of leading a "large branched counter-revolutionary cadet-monarchist organization on the territory of the West Siberian Territory" (Article 58-11 of the Criminal Code of the RSFSR). He was shot on January 14, 1938. On October 20, 1989, he was rehabilitated by the Prosecutor's Office of the Novosibirsk Region.

On July 15, 2011, in Tomsk, at the Baktin city cemetery (apartment No. 97), a monument was opened and consecrated over the symbolic grave of A.N. Pepelyaev and his father N.M. Pepelyaev. The monument was erected at the expense and with the personal participation of the grandson A.N. Pepelyaev, Viktor Lavrovich Pepelyaev.

Source and literature: Ustryalov N. General Pepelyaev (From personal memories) // Life News. Harbin, 1923. July 12; Vishnevsky E.K. White Dream Argonauts (Description Yakut campaign Siberian Volunteer Squad). Harbin, 1933; Larkov N. Siberian White General//Red Banner. Tomsk, 1992. November 19; 1993. May 29; Petrushin A. Omsk, Ayan, Lubyanka ... Three lives of General Pepelyaev // Motherland. M., 1996. No. 9; He is. General Pepelyaev: hero and victim of the Siberian white movement// Siberian historical journal. Novosibirsk, 2002. No. 1; Privalikhin V. From the Pepelyaev family. Tomsk, 2004; N.S. Larkov. Pepelyaev Anatoly Nikolaevich // Tomsk from A to Z: brief encyclopedia cities. - Tomsk, 2004. - S. 252-253; Encyclopedia of the Tomsk region. Volume 2. Ed. TSU. P.561.

House of Pepelyaevs in Tomsk

Portrait of A.N. Pepelyaeva

A.N. Pepelyaev in 1918

Lieutenant General A.N. Pepelyaev and officers of the assault battalion of the Central Siberian Corps, participants in the capture of Perm. February 28, 1919.

Letter from G. Yagoda to I. Stalin dated 1936 with a proposal to release A.N. Pepelyaeva from prison

Rehabilitation of A.N. Pepelyaeva

An article about the fate of the Pepelyaev brothers

Vladimir Igolkin

THE FATE OF THE PEPELYAEV BROTHERS

The past century, the century - "wolfhound", according to the poet's definition, turned out to be truly ruthless for the large and old Pepelyaev family. The first mentions of their names are found in Novgorod sources 500 years ago. And since then, many generations of the Pepelyaevs have served in the military and civilian fields for the benefit of the Fatherland.
But, alas, it did not reciprocate with its sincere patriots. The youngest of the brothers, Login, not having time to graduate from the cadet corps, fell with weapons in his hands during the years of Russian unrest, called the Civil War, opening a sad family martyrology. Viktor and Anatoly were shot by order of extrajudicial bodies. Arkady and Mikhail perished in the Stalinist camps. The bitter cup of deprivation and suffering was drunk in full by their wives and children, thrown out of their native country by political cataclysms and scattered around the wide world ...
Long after midnight, a key jingled in a cell on the second floor of the Irkutsk Central. From the ominous sound, like a click of a rifle bolt, chilling the blood, immediately became uneasy.
- Searches in the city found warehouses of weapons, bombs, machine-gun belts in many places, - the voice of the revolutionary committee reading the decree did not reach consciousness immediately, as if from another reality.
- Portraits of Kolchak are scattered around the city ... All these data force us to admit that there is a secret organization in the city ...
Listening to the head of the Irkutsk Cheka, S. Chudnovsky, the prisoner could not get rid of the obsessive thought that all this was familiar to him and had already happened, but not with him. Oh yes! A year and a half ago, Ipatiev House, around midnight. The imperial family was offered to go to the basement. Nikolai, it seems, was the first to descend, holding the heir in his arms. Behind him - the queen, daughters, doctor, servants. At one of the last reports in Omsk, investigator N. A. Sokolov told him this scene in every detail. Before the shots rang out, a semblance of an indictment was also read to them. And it mentioned the attack on Yekaterinburg by the enemies of the revolution and conspiracies to free the prisoners.
Well, a familiar trick. Would they treat him the same way?
- Resolved: former supreme ruler-Admiral Kolchak and the former chairman of the Council of Ministers - Pepelyaev - to be shot.
What he heard hit like an electric shock, it did not fit in his head. Well, isn't it stupid to die in your prime, at 36? It's bad... And how wonderful it all began!
Viktor Nikolaevich was the firstborn in a large noble family, where there were 8 children - six brothers and two sisters. Father, Nikolai Mikhailovich Pepelyaev, although he was a native of the St. Petersburg province, graduated from the Siberian Military Gymnasium, as the Omsk Cadet Corps was called at one time. After the Alexander Military School, he pulled an officer's strap away from the capitals. There were not enough stars from the sky, as they say, but slowly, step by step, he climbed the career ladder. The track record, compiled in 1907, lists 5 orders and several medals, which marked the commander of the 8th Infantry Siberian Reserve Tomsk Regiment. However, righteous labor, as you know, will not make stone chambers. In the column on real estate, generic or acquired, the laconic entry is “does not have”. And an extremely clear conclusion: “In the service of this staff officer there were no circumstances depriving him of the right to receive a distinction impeccable service or extending the term of service.
The social activities of his eldest son began as a student. Unlike younger brothers, Viktor chose the civil field for himself in his early youth. Enrolling in Faculty of Law Tomsk University, from the third year he was an elected headman. But the time was restless - the first Russian revolution broke out, political passions were seething at the university.
Having received a diploma, with his wife and three-year-old daughter, Galya Viktor Nikolaevich in 1909 moved to a quiet merchant Biysk. At first, he taught history and geography at the women's gymnasium. The salary was low, and therefore I had to earn additionally as a librarian. A couple of years later, he moved to the newly opened men's gymnasium. He taught history, was a class mentor and at the same time - the secretary of the pedagogical council.
All free time is occupied by social activities - active participation in the Biysk Society for the Care of primary education, organization of amateur performances and musical evenings. He tries his hand at journalism. His historical essays are published in the local newspaper "Altai", and a brochure "In memory of February 19, 1861" is published on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the abolition of serfdom.
Energetic activity, asceticism of the young teacher did not go unnoticed. By 1341 votes out of 1602 he was elected in the Biysk district as an elector in State Duma IV convocation. And on October 21, 1912, the newspapers reported that at the congress of electors of the Tomsk province, which then included the Altai district, V.N. Pepelyaev received 30 out of 37 votes and became one of the youngest deputies of the Russian parliament, where he joined the dealt mainly with education, took an active part in organizing the II All-Russian Congress folk teachers.
Soon after the February Revolution, the Provisional Government sent him to Kronstadt as a commissar. At the main base of the Baltic Fleet, extremely radical moods reigned among the sailors and soldiers under the influence of the Bolsheviks, anarchists and Social Revolutionaries. In the first days after the fall of the monarchy, the situation here completely got out of control. Several dozen naval and army officers of the fortress garrison became victims of spontaneous massacres. The reason for the bloody excesses is not only in the revolutionary agitation. Contemporaries also pointed to the enemy trail of pogroms and lynching. Under these conditions, a certain amount of personal courage was required to carry out the political line of the government in an openly hostile environment.
Summer is the moment of truth. The army, to which his father gave his whole life, is falling apart before our eyes. When desertion becomes massive, Pepelyaev himself put on a soldier's overcoat and went to the front. The impressions and mood of those days are extremely succinctly expressed in one of the letters to his wife: "The Bolsheviks (...) did everything that traitors can do."
It was possible to get to their native lands only in the summer of 1919. After the fall of the Bolshevik power in Siberia, V.N. Pepelyaev, as a member of the Central Committee of the Cadet Party and on his behalf, crossed the front line. In July I reached Omsk. A few days later - again on the road to other Siberian cities to get acquainted with party organizations in the field, to establish their work.
But his mission was not limited to this only (Leaving Moscow, he received great powers to consolidate all anti-Bolshevik forces; to create a strong government on this basis. The rest of the summer and all of September were spent traveling around Siberia, the Far East and Manchuria. As a result of numerous numerical negotiations with authoritative public figures, consultations with the command of the Czechoslovak corps, all this shuttle diplomacy, the conviction is gradually emerging that Admiral A.V. Kolchak is most suitable for the role of leader of white Russia. Successful command spoke in his favor Black Sea Fleet, participation in the heroic defense of Port Arthur, several full expeditions and scientific works. Thus, V.N. Pepelyaev became one of the ideological inspirers of the November 18 coup. Carried out by several Cossack officers of the Omsk garrison, it really went without bloodshed. The very next day, the appeal of the Supreme Ruler of Russia A. V. Kolchak “To the population of Russia” was published. In this program document, which was drawn up with the participation of V.N. Pepelyaev, the main goal was proclaimed "the establishment of law and order, so that the people can freely choose for themselves the form of government that they wish, and implement the great ideas of freedom, now implemented throughout the world!"
The peak of Viktor Nikolaevich's political career coincided with the agony of the Kolchak regime. On November 23, the admiral, by his rescript, instead of P.V. Vologodsky, who was confused and dropped his hands, appointed Pepelyaev as chairman of the Council of Ministers. The new prime minister was aware of the burden he had taken on himself. The collapsing front, sharp criticism of the authorities by all circles did not inspire optimism. And yet, he did not lose hope of stabilizing the situation. The program of the Cabinet of Ministers assumed a dialogue with the opposition, the unification of all healthy forces country, a resolute struggle against arbitrariness and lawlessness in all their manifestations, the reduction of departments.
History gave this government a negligibly short time. A month and a half later, power in Irkutsk, with the frank connivance of the Czechoslovak corps, passed to the political center, which was dominated by the Socialist-Revolutionaries. They turned out to be much more accommodating than the Supreme Ruler. All Railway from Krasnoyarsk to Irkutsk was packed with corps echelons. On average, two soldiers accounted for a wagon. The Czechoslovaks did not lose their interest - they brought everything they could. From sewing needles and samovars to factory machines and agricultural machines. Kolchak insisted that all this goodness was Russian property and should remain in the country. The political center was not particularly squeamish and promised to let the Slavic brothers through to Vladivostok without hindrance, where they, boarding ships, could sail to Europe. It ended with the fact that the Czechoslovaks detained the Supreme Ruler and his Prime Minister, who was with him, and handed them over to the political center. And just a few days later, he voluntarily ceded power to the Bolshevik Revolutionary Committee.
When frosty night on February 7, 1920, they were taken out of prison, from the opposite bank of the Angara, from the Innokentievskaya station, a sluggish gunfight was heard. Exhausted by a thousand-mile march, the detachments of General Voitsekhovsky fought on the outskirts of Irkutsk. But they clearly lacked the strength to take the city.
The sentence was carried out on a hillock near the confluence of its tributary Ushakovka into the Angara. When it was all over, the firing squad threw Pepelyaev's body into the hole. Admiral Kolchak followed him on his last voyage.
The earthly path of Viktor Pepelyaev ended, but his brother Arkady had to live and survive a lot more. He began to prepare for the worst ahead of time, in the midst of repression. Although it was bitter, he stopped the correspondence that had been going on for a decade and a half with his mother Klavdia Georgievna and other relatives who lived in emigration in Harbin, conducted a thorough revision of the family archive, getting rid of papers and documents that, despite their purely personal nature, could give rise to his accusation. First of all, I had to destroy the letters of people dear to my heart - mother and brother Anatoly.
Then, in 1937, thank God, it passed. Arkady Nikolaevich was not touched, most likely for purely pragmatic reasons. The number of regular patients of one of the best Omsk doctors, who practiced in the first city polyclinic, which is still located in the same building on Lyubinsky Prospekt, included the then local elite. Atmosphere constant fear and, perhaps, the doom in which the family lived for all subsequent years was not suppressed in a graduate of the St. Petersburg Military Medical Academy, who graduated with honors, best qualities Russian intellectual - the ability to analyze and adequately assess reality, to think critically. In conversations with colleagues, he qualified the government's decree, which strictly punished unauthorized leaving production, as an infringement of personal freedoms. In the introduction of an 8-hour working day for medical staff, he saw a disguised reduction in wages, an attack on living standards, complained, contrary to the victorious reports of the official agitprop, that due to too high rates of industrialization, little attention is paid to light industry, which leads to the disappearance of a wide range of goods from the market. consumption and a fall in the real value of the ruble. Arkady Nikolaevich did not approve of collectivization, which, in his opinion, turns into exhaustion Agriculture, causes discontent of the peasantry, creates a food shortage in the country. To get to such obvious things, of course, it is not necessary to be seven spans in the forehead. But the majority preferred to remain silent about it. Arkady Nikolaevich, by virtue of his ideas of decency and dignity, felt the need to speak out.
They came for him on a fateful day for the country, on the night of June 23, 1941. Not earlier and not later. And this also had its own logic. Far to the west, German tank spearheads, having easily crossed the border, were already rushing into Soviet territory, sowing destruction, panic and confusion. At the border airfields, mangled planes were burning down, which never took off due to a lack of ammunition, fuel, or even simply because of the elementary lack of an order. And in the deep rear, the repressive machine of the totalitarian regime worked like a well-oiled mechanism. In her millstone, the former, as the NKVD investigator wrote in his personal data, a hereditary nobleman pleased not only and not so much because of his way of thinking. Why, however, the former? After all, a nobleman is not only a class concept, meaning belonging to the class of people who are in the service of the state, but also a style of behavior in life, demeanor, upbringing. Everything, in a word, what is now commonly called fashionable foreign word"mentality". So that social background nothing here.
Finishing the academy, young military doctors took an oath. This is a kind of code of corporate honor: "I promise to be fair to my fellow doctors and not offend their personalities, however, if the benefit of the patient required it, to speak the truth directly and without partiality." And what is the difference here, in principle, whether we are talking about human infirmities or about ailments to which society is subject?
And now, more than six decades later, his daughter, Nina Arkadyevna, remembers this night in detail, as if everything was just yesterday. When the search was coming to an end and the Chekists were sorting through family photographs, she made a wish on one of them - if the picture was put in the left pile, she would be taken away with her father. The card was placed to the right. A few minutes later, my father was taken away. They didn't see each other again.
A man of the most humane and so necessary profession in a difficult time was obviously doomed to spend the rest of his life behind barbed wire because of a surname that became widely known in Siberia during the civil war in the White camp. But this will become quite obvious later. And in this context, the arrest of the last of the Pepelyaev family can be interpreted by saying modern language, as a purely preventive punitive action - so, just in case, no matter how something happens. According to Stalin's theory of the exacerbation of the class struggle with new successes in the construction of socialism, the brother of the chairman of the government of white Russia and one of Kolchak's generals was a potential danger to the Soviet system. Well, and if it came to an open armed confrontation between the two systems, then even more so you can expect anything from him - subversive activities, betrayal. For patriotism, citizenship, elementary decency, there was simply no place in this uncomplicated scheme.
The next day after the arrest, a medical examination report is drawn up, dispassionately stating the suitability of the person under investigation. physical labor in the conditions of labor camps. This is also a grimace of Themis of those years. The indictment will appear only a couple of months later. A special meeting under the People's Commissar of Internal Affairs will consider it even at the beginning of the future, in 1942, and Gulag medicine obsequiously, without unnecessary hesitation and unnecessary sentimentality, issues its quick verdict to the person under investigation. That's really really - if there was a person, but there would be an article.
Case No. 12385 begins with a backdated arrest warrant. State security lieutenant Lugovin found that Arkady Nikolaevich Pepelyaev, a native of Tomsk, had previously served as a military doctor, had the rank of collegiate assessor, and was awarded tsarist government four officer orders. Apart from the unsubstantiated assertion that he is now hostile, there is, in principle, not much reason for punitive measures. Nevertheless, the heads of the investigation department, Senior Lieutenant Biryukov, agree with the arrest warrant, and the deputy regional prosecutor Ivlev meekly issues the appropriate warrant, which, in fact, already looks like an empty formality.
Then, as is customary, a decision on the choice of a preventive measure (detention, what else), a search protocol and a profile of the arrested person. It follows that he is an otolaryngologist by profession. And then - a few "not" in a row. He did not participate in gangs and uprisings, did not join anti-Soviet parties and organizations, did not have any property or property. True, in the “conviction” column, he mentions that he was under trial by the Revolutionary Tribunal of the 5th Army for possession of some documents, but was acquitted.
Then there are the protocols of several interrogations, mostly at night. Successive investigators question the detainee in detail about his family ties, hoping, apparently, to find in them additional arguments that reinforce the flimsy accusations.
And this tactic pays off. The arrested man's father, Nikolai Mikhailovich, held responsible command positions in the army before the revolution. The last of them is the military commandant of Tomsk. So, a major administrator of the tsarist regime - this is the time. And a lengthy correspondence with his brother Anatoly, a Kolchak general, is two.
Naturally, the investigation could not ignore the mention in the questionnaire of an episode of 20 years ago. The interrogation about him lasted three and a half hours, although his record takes only one and a half pages, handwritten in large handwriting.
“Were they subjected to repressions under the Soviet regime?
- In 1920, I was arrested by the Cheka and was under arrest for about two months.
- For what?
- For keeping my brother's personal papers...
- What kind of documents?
- Brother's personal letters, his diary and materials of the investigation about the execution of the family
Romanovs.
- How did you get the documents?
- Brought brother's wife and asked to keep.
- What was the purpose of keeping your brother's documents when he had already been shot?
- I wanted to keep the memory of my brother. His wife did not dare to keep, fulfilled her
request.
- How did the documents end up in the Cheka?
- The documents were stored in the vent of the foundation of the house. The worker found them
who worked on repairs and handed them over to the Cheka.
The brother in question here is Viktor Nikolaevich, who headed the cabinet of ministers during the most tragic period for the white movement in eastern Russia. The story with the documents happened in 1920. Arkady Nikolaevich with his military hospital was evacuated as part of the Kolchak troops from Omsk to Krasnoyarsk. One of the decisive battles of the civil war in Siberia took place off the banks of the Yenisei, ending in the defeat of the White Army. The hospital, along with its chief physician, surrendered. However, just a few days later, all the personnel were enrolled in the Red Army to save the wounded, help the crippled and suffering in the same Tyumen hospital. True, not the head physician, but a junior intern. Typhus was rampant everywhere. The louse spared neither the reds nor the whites. And is it really so important for doctors, under whose banner to fight the infection, save the wounded, help the crippled and suffering?
In Irkutsk, where a worker accidentally stumbled upon a bundle of papers and a dozen photographs taken in the Urals, the Pepelyaevs lived in the same house with Yaroslav Gashek. The future creator of the immortal novel about the good soldier Schweik served in the political department of the 5th Army. In the evenings, he played with six-year-old Nina Pepelyaeva and her older sister Tanya, and with a funny accent treated the children to tea "without sugar, bread and tea." It was he who worked for their father. The writer also played the violin well. In the house of the Pepelyaevs, for many years, the notes donated by Hasek shortly before his departure to his homeland were kept. They disappeared on the fateful night of the arrest of Arkady Nikolaevich ...
The situation of total terror and general suspicion broke the lives and destinies of not only the victims of the regime. She crippled the souls of their relatives. There are many examples when the closest relatives - parents, children, husbands, wives - renounced even before the verdict. Arkady Nikolaevich was more fortunate than many of his other comrades in misfortune. Almost two months after his arrest, investigator Povolotsky interrogated his wife Anna Georgievna. Witness, from the point of view of the investigation, she turned out to be useless. The only thing they managed to get from her was meager information about relatives: “The husband’s mother, husband’s sister Vera Nikolaevna with her family and the husband’s brother’s wife were evacuated to Harbin in 1919. As far as I know, my husband's mother died in 1938 (approximately).
How do you know about death?
- From 1921 to 1935, we corresponded, in addition, Anatoly Nikolaevich financially helped his mother. In 1940, we learned from a woman (I don't know her last name) that her husband's mother had died in Harbin.
- What was the material assistance?
- We sent 20 - 35 rubles by mail every month. In 1928, it was forbidden to send Soviet money abroad. Then we found an acquaintance, Elizarova, who lived in Tomsk, and her daughter lived in Harbin. Money was sent to Elizarova, and she, in turn, informed her daughter about this, and she transferred the same amount to her mother-in-law in Japanese characters.
And further - approximately in the same spirit. Minimum names, surnames, ratings. The daughter of the teacher of the cadet corps, Colonel G. Yakubinsky, who served in his youth during the Balkan campaign as an adjutant to the legendary General M. Skobelev, did not forget what noble honor is. For her, this concept has not become an empty phrase.
A fatal role in the fate of Arkady Nikolayevich was played by two of his medical colleagues. Interrogated as witnesses, they testified about his critical judgments expressed in different time in confidential private conversations. This was quite enough for the accusation of anti-Soviet agitation. The names of both doctors are in the investigation file. But it is hardly appropriate to name them - they may have children, grandchildren who have nothing to do with the sins of their parents. The verdict of a special meeting - the standard for those times "ten" with serving in the Mariinsky camps. From here, from the Kemerovo region, at the end of August 1944, a letter in a blue home-made envelope with a pilot on a 30-kopeck postage stamp left the People's Commissar for State Security.
“Being imprisoned in labor camps for the fourth year,” writes Arkady Nikolayevich, “and considering that the main reason for my arrest and isolation was my belonging to the Pepelyaev family, well-known in the history of the civil war in Siberia, I find it possible and timely in the present the moment when the victory of Soviet power over the fascists is assured and inevitable, to ask for a review of my case, for an end to repression against me and for me to be able to prove my loyalty to Soviet power by working at the front as a doctor.
Words full of dignity - the author does not ask for pardon, does not beg for mercy. I just want to add one more short phrase for him: “I have the honor!” Behind the restrained, purely business-like tone of the letter is a determined attempt to challenge fate, to change it. What is it caused by - despair, hopelessness? Rather, something else. What is imbibed with mother's milk is one's understanding of duty, patriotism. How else to explain that a year earlier from the sultry Khorezm, which is thousands of miles from Siberia, a similar letter was sent addressed to Stalin himself. The political exile B. A. Engergardt addressed the leader of the peoples with a request to send him to the front as a soldier. The former court page, a participant in the coronation of the last Russian autocrat, then a colonel in the tsarist army, was already in his eighties. Both letters went unanswered. Shortly after the war, Arkady Nikolaevich died in the camp from tuberculosis.
As soon as a "thaw" blew in the country, Anna Georgievna sent a statement to the federal prosecutor's office about the posthumous rehabilitation of her husband. “My husband,” she writes, “had been a doctor all his life, never engaged in counter-revolutionary agitation. The case would not have ended with a prosecution if it had been possible to defend itself in court.”
The petition did not go unnoticed - the country really began to change. In the winter of 1956, N. S. Khrushchev made a historic report on the cult of personality at the XX Congress, and already on September 29, the then prosecutor of the region Suchkov submitted a protest to the presidium of the regional court in the form of supervision. In it, the senior adviser of justice notes that A. N. Pepelyaev was interrogated 10 times in pre-trial detention. At 9 interrogations, he denied the charges and only at the last day he pleaded guilty. But from his testimony, no elements of a counter-revolutionary crime can be seen.
Another three weeks pass, and a decision appears, signed by the chairman of the presidium of the regional court, Igoshev, to cancel the sentence of the OSO. The good name of the doctor was restored, justice, albeit belatedly and partially, triumphed.

Not to be forgotten.
Omsk 2002 p. 418-423

Anatoly Nikolaevich Pepelyaev(1891-1938) - Russian military commander. Member of the First World War and the Civil War on the Eastern Front. Whiteguard. He distinguished himself by the capture of Perm on 12/25/1918 and the campaign against Yakutsk in 1922-1923. Siberian regionalist. Native brother Kolchak Prime Minister Russian government Viktor Nikolaevich Pepelyaev.

Origin

Anatoly Nikolaevich Pepelyaev was born on July 15 (July 3, according to the old style) 1891 in Tomsk, in the family of a hereditary nobleman and lieutenant general of the tsarist army, Nikolai Pepelyaev, and a merchant's daughter, Claudia Nekrasova. The house in Tomsk, which belonged to Pepelyaev's father, has been preserved (Kuznetsova Street, 18). Nikolai Pepelyaev had six sons, who later, with the exception of the eldest, underwent military training, and two daughters.

Education

In 1902, Pepelyaev entered the Omsk Cadet Corps, from which he successfully graduated in 1908. In the same year, Pepelyaev entered the Pavlovsk Military School (PVU) in St. Petersburg. In 1910, Pepelyaev graduated from it with the rank of second lieutenant.

Start of service and marriage

Immediately after graduating from the PVU, Anatoly Nikolayevich was sent to serve in the machine gun team of the 42nd Siberian Rifle Regiment, stationed in his native Tomsk. In 1914, shortly before the outbreak of the First World War, Pepelyaev was promoted to lieutenant.

In 1912, Pepelyaev married Nina Ivanovna Gavronskaya (1893-1979), originally from Nizhneudinsk. Two sons were born from this marriage: Vsevolod in 1913, who lived until 1946 in Harbin, in 1946-1947. military intelligence officer of the Trans-Baikal Military District and Lavr (1922-1991), an employee of the emigrant bureau, a graduate of the courses of the Japanese military mission, was repressed. Died in Tashkent.

World War I (before the February Revolution)

Pepelyaev went to the front as the commander of the cavalry reconnaissance of his regiment. In this position, he distinguished himself near Pshasnysh and Soldau. In the summer of 1915, under his command, the trenches lost during the retreat were recaptured. In 1916, during a two-month vacation, Pepelyaev taught tactics at the front-line ensign school. In 1917, shortly before the February Revolution, Anatoly Nikolayevich was promoted to captain.

For military prowess, Pepelyaev was awarded the following awards:

• Order of St. Anne 4th class with the inscription "For Bravery"
• Order of St. Anne 3rd class
• Order of St. Anne 2nd class
• Order of St. Stanislaus 3rd class
• Order of St. Stanislaus 2nd class
• Order of St. Vladimir 4th class with swords and bow
• Order of St. George 4th degree (01/27/1917) and St. George's weapon (09/27/1916)
• French War Cross with Palme (04/09/1919)

Revolutions of 1917

The February Revolution found Pepelyaev at the front. Despite the gradual disintegration of the army, he kept his detachment in constant combat readiness and at the same time did not fall out of favor with his soldiers, as was the case in many other parts.

Under Kerensky, he was promoted to lieutenant colonel. In addition, Anatoly Nikolayevich was awarded the Order of St. George 4th degree and the personalized St. George weapon.

After the October Revolution, the council of soldiers' deputies, the battalion, which by that time was commanded by Pepelyaev, elected him as the battalion commander. This fact speaks of the great popularity of Pepelyaev among the soldiers.

But, even parts of Pepelyaev were decomposed - the Brest-Litovsk peace, which stopped hostilities, was to blame. Realizing the aimlessness of his further stay at the front, Anatoly Nikolaevich left for Tomsk.

The beginning of the fight against the Bolsheviks

Pepelyaev arrived in Tomsk in early March 1918. There he met his longtime friend, Captain Dostovalov, who introduced Pepelyaev into a secret officer organization created on January 1, 1918 and headed by Colonels Vishnevsky and Samarokov. Pepelyaev was chosen as chief of staff of this organization, which planned to overthrow the Bolsheviks who had seized power in the city on December 6, 1917.

On May 26, 1918, an armed uprising against the Bolsheviks began in Novonikolaevsk. This gave an impetus to the Tomsk officers.