White General Pepelyaev. Russian Army in the Great War: Project file: Anatoly Nikolaevich Pepelyaev

Anatoly Nikolaevich Pepelyaev (July 3, 1891, Tomsk - January 14, 1938, Novosibirsk) - Russian military leader, lieutenant general, participant in the First World War and the Civil War on the Eastern Front, an outstanding member of the White movement, commander of the 1st Siberian army, Siberian regionalist. Native brother government prime minister.

encyclopedic reference

He graduated from the Omsk Cadet Corps and the Pavlovsk Military School in St. Petersburg.

He began his service in the 41st Siberian Rifle Regiment. Member of the First World War. Lieutenant Colonel, Battalion Commander. From February 1918 he was a member of an underground officer organization in Tomsk. After the overthrow of Soviet power in Tomsk on May 27, 1918, he was commander of the 1st Central Siberian Army Corps, promoted to colonel.

A.N. Pepelyaev fought in, on, for Verkhneudinsk and Chita. From September 10, 1918 - Major General, from January 31, 1919 - Lieutenant General. From April 1919 - Commander southern group Siberian Army, from July 14 - Commander of the 1st Army. However, parts of the army raised a series of rebellions and self-destructed as a military force. On December 9, 1919, at the Taiga station, the Pepelyaev brothers, in an attempt to overthrow Kolchak and organize a government of "public trust", arrested the front commander, disorganizing the administration.

Sick with typhus A.N. Pepelyaev left for the east. In 1920, in Harbin, he was engaged in the arrangement of those who arrived from Russia, organized the "Military Union". To support the anti-Bolshevik uprising, it was decided to send a detachment to Yakutia. By the end of August 1922 A.N. Pepelyaev, at the head of a detachment of 750 people, set off on steamboats from Vladivostok to Ayan. Until spring, there were fierce battles with the Reds under the command of I. Strod. June 17, 1923 A.N. Pepelyaev surrendered in Ayan. Sentenced to death, which the All-Russian Central Executive Committee replaced with 10 years in prison.

Released January 6, 1936. Worked as an assistant to the head of the horse depot in Voronezh. Arrested again on August 20, 1937, shot by a troika of the NKVD Novosibirsk region.

He was awarded the St. George weapon and 8 orders, including St. George IV degree.

Irkutsk. Dictionary of History and Local Lore, 2011

Biography

Origin

Born in the family of a hereditary nobleman and lieutenant general 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, 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.

In 1912, Pepelyaev married Nina Ivanovna Gavronskaya (1893-1979), originally from. From this marriage two sons were born: Vsevolod - in 1913, who lived until 1946 in Harbin, in 1946-1947 - an employee of the military intelligence of the Trans-Baikal Military District, in 1947 he was arrested. Lavr - 1922-1991, an employee of the emigration bureau, a graduate of the Japanese military mission courses, 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 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. 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)

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. After the 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 Brest-Litovsk peace, which ended 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 the chief of staff of this organization, which planned the overthrow of the Bolsheviks who 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. On May 27, an armed uprising began in Tomsk. 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 Corps, at the head of which he stood. With him, he moved east to liberate Siberia from the Bolsheviks. On June 18, Krasnoyarsk was taken, on July 11, Verkhneudinsk was liberated on August 20. West of Chita, Pepelyaev's troops joined up with the Trans-Baikal Cossacks of Semyonov. The meeting of the military leaders themselves took place in late August / early September at the Olovyannaya station. During this campaign, Pepelyaev was promoted to colonel.

Perm - Hike to Vyatka

By order of Avksentiev's Ufa directory, Pepelyaev's corps was transferred to the west of Siberia, and Anatoly Nikolayevich himself was promoted to major general (September 10, 1918), thanks to which he became the youngest general in Siberia (27 years old). 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 him to power. Pepelyaev immediately recognized the supreme power of Kolchak, since the power of the Socialist-Revolutionary Avksentiev was unpleasant to him.

After the capture of Perm, Pepelyaev traveled another 45 km to the west, but severe frosts set in 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 village of Balezino. On April 24, Kolchak's armies were reorganized and Pepelyaev became the commander of the Northern Group of the Siberian Army. 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.

Great Siberian Ice Campaign

After the June retreat, Pepelyaev did not win major military victories. On July 21, 1919, he 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. 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 Supreme Ruler Russia arrived at the Taiga station, he was detained by Pepelyaev's troops. Pepelyaev sent Kolchak an ultimatum to convene the Siberian Zemsky Sobor, resign Commander-in-Chief Sakharov, whom Pepelyaev had already ordered arrested, and investigate the surrender of Omsk. In case of non-compliance, Pepelyaev threatened to arrest Kolchak. On the same day, Pepelyaev's brother, 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 Verkhneudinsk, 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.

Harbin and Primorye

In late April - early May 1920, Pepelyaev and his family settled in Harbin. There he organized artels of carpenters, cab drivers and loaders. He created the "Military Union", chaired by General Vishnevsky. 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 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, 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 Tatar Strait Police helped with a landing Siberian flotilla, who fought against 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 reported to 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 November 5, 1922 to Ayan,

Pepelyaev was strengthened in his intention to go to Yakutsk, since a ship arrived in Ayan with Vishnevsky, who brought with him 187 volunteers and provisions. 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.

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 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.

Wikipedia, Irkipedia

Appendix. General Pepelyaev: Admiral Kolchak took away his victory over the Bolsheviks

The fate of Anatoly Nikolaevich Pepelyaev reflected the tragedy of the Russian democratic officers, who enthusiastically accepted February revolution and the overthrow of the monarchy and who rose against the Bolsheviks under the slogan Constituent Assembly. Under the conditions of the Civil War, Democratic officers were forced to choose the lesser of two evils and found themselves between two fires. A staunch monarchist and a very intelligent man, Vladimir Shulgin, with severe mental pain, said: "The White movement was started almost by saints, and it was almost finished by robbers." Pepelyaev believed in a white cause until he realized that the robbers from Kolchak's entourage took advantage of the fruits of his victories.

Hereditary officer

Anatoly Pepelyaev was born in Tomsk on August 15, 1891 in the family of an officer. At the age of nineteen, he graduated from the Pavlovsk military school in St. Petersburg and during the German war he commanded a battalion, for more than three years he did not crawl out of the trenches. After the collapse of the Russian army near Baranovichi, the brave Lieutenant Colonel Pepelyaev arrived in Siberia at the end of December 1917. Politically, he was close to the Social Revolutionaries - a party that expressed the interests of the peasantry. After the Bolsheviks dispersed the Constituent Assembly and concluded the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, Pepelyaev created an underground officer organization in his native Tomsk and established contact with the local Social Revolutionaries. In the spring of 1918, the rebellion of the Czechoslovak Corps began, and the organization led by Pepelyaev, with the help of Czech legionnaires, overthrew the Tomsk Soviet. Pepelyaev, who was extremely brave and very popular among the troops, quickly formed a regiment from Tomsk and led it to Krasnoyarsk. After the capture of Krasnoyarsk, divisions from Barnaul, Novonikolaev and Krasnoyarsk joined Pepelyaev. In all Siberian cities there were officer organizations similar to Pepelyaev's, and they prepared in advance the overthrow of the Bolsheviks. The ideological leadership of the underground was carried out by the regional Social Revolutionaries, supporters of the creation of the Siberian Democratic Republic.

Battles for Irkutsk

After the liberation of many Siberian cities from Bolshevism, Pepelyaev's regiment turned into a corps that approached Irkutsk under the white and green banner of autonomous Siberia. In Irkutsk, there also existed a powerful SR-officer underground, headed by former political prisoners Nikolai Kalashnikov, Arkady Krakovetsky and Pavel Yakovlev. Before the revolution, two of them were prisoners of the famous Alexander Central. After the December battles in Irkutsk in 1917, Kalashnikov, who was assistant commander of the East Siberian Military District under the Provisional Government, took the surviving officers and cadets out of the city and created a fortified area in Pivovarikha, from which he constantly threatened the Bolsheviks for six months. In Irkutsk itself, Kalashnikov also created a numerous and a well-organized underground organization. It consisted of socialist-revolutionaries and non-party officers who sympathized with the populist ideology. It was divided into battalions, companies, platoons and fives. One company was stationed in the very center, the other - in Workers, the third - in Glazkovo, while the main forces were in Pivovarikha and along the Aleksandrovsky tract. In total, the underground formations numbered over a thousand people who were well armed and trained. The Kalashnikovs made their first attempt to capture Irkutsk on February 23, 1918, when the II Congress of Soviets of Siberia was held in the city. The Bolsheviks managed to prevent a coup attempt, but on June 14, the underground fighters broke into Irkutsk and captured almost the entire city. Irkutsk underground policemen, led by police chief V.A. Shchipachev, hit the rear of the Bolsheviks and inflicted great damage on them. The Reds were helped by the Trans-Baikal Cossacks, whose echelon unexpectedly approached the city. Right from the station on horseback they swept through the streets of Irkutsk, chopping down the underground fighters drunk from the near victory. Many officers died under the Cossack drafts, the rest retreated to Pivovarikha, having managed, however, to release their comrades from prison, including the former provincial commissar Pavel Yakovlev, the first Irkutsk governor after the fall of the monarchy.

Less than a month later, on July 10, the Kalashnikovs again broke into Irkutsk, captured the station and the railway bridge and ensured the approach of the vanguard of Pepelyaev's Siberian Corps. Having liberated the capital Eastern Siberia, Pepelyaev went to the Baikal Front. By that time, the corps, replenished by the Irkutsk people, had grown into the Siberian army, and Pepelyaev himself became a general, the liberator of Siberia from the Bolsheviks. The Siberian general was only twenty-seven years old.

The offensive of the Siberian army

By the time of the fall of Soviet power, the situation in the Siberian underground was not in favor of the Socialist-Revolutionaries. If in the Irkutsk organization there were no disagreements between the Socialist-Revolutionaries and the officers, then in other cities the leadership of the underground was seized by the reactionary monarchists, who had hated the Socialist-Revolutionaries since the seventeenth year, rightly considering them guilty of overthrowing the tsar. With the support of the emissaries of the Entente, the monarchists pushed back the Socialist-Revolutionaries and took advantage of the fruits of their labors. Already in the autumn of 1918, protest rallies were held in Pepelyaev’s army against the persecution of socialist revolutionaries by the Kolchak secret police. After the Kolchak coup, the Siberian army was transferred to Yekaterinburg, it became integral part admiral's troops. Thousands and thousands of Siberians willingly marched under the white-green banners of Pepelyaev, which could not but disturb the "supreme ruler" Kolchak. After the Pepelyaevites, with bayonets at the ready, drove the Bolsheviks out of Perm in severe frost, almost without firing, opening the way to Moscow, the popularity of the "Siberian general" reached its climax. knew that the positions of the Socialist-Revolutionaries were very strong in Pepelyaev's army. Nikolai Kalashnikov, who became Pepelyaev’s deputy and head of counterintelligence in the Siberian Army, even created a secret anti-Kolchak organization that intended to overthrow the reactionary monarchists who had dug in at Kolchak’s headquarters and replace them with regional Social Revolutionaries. The mediocre Kolchak leadership was not able to defeat the Bolsheviks, and the Siberian army was strike force admiral. Kalashnikov began to conduct intelligence work against the Kolchak government, his efforts were aimed at clarifying the position of the "supreme ruler" in relation to the Social Revolutionaries and military units loyal to them.

After the Kolchak coup, many Socialist-Revolutionaries, including deputies of the Constituent Assembly, under the slogan of which Pepelyaev and his associates began the fight, were killed or thrown into dungeons, and those who remained free found refuge in the Siberian army and surrounded by Pavel Yakovlev, who again became the governor of Irkutsk and representing the opposition to Kolchak. At the head of the democratic opposition in Siberia were Pepelyaev himself and former chiefs Irkutsk underground Kalashnikov and corps commander Ellerz-Usov. Kolchak at first did not interfere with the activities in Siberia of the zemstvos, city dumas, peasant and workers' unions led by the Socialist-Revolutionaries, but the alliance between the monarchists and the socialists could not be durable. Pepelyaev repeatedly submitted ultimatum reports to Kolchak and even threatened to move his army to Omsk, but the admiral was still afraid to touch the famous Siberian commander. When the Siberians took Perm and the road to red Moscow was open, the admiral unexpectedly ordered to stop the offensive. He sent Pepelyaev to take Kazan, but when it was one and a half hundred kilometers away, western army Kolchak went to cut across the Siberians and blocked their path. Kolchak was afraid that the Siberians themselves would go to Moscow or even make an alliance with the Red Army. The reason for these fears was the decision of the Central Committee of the RCP (b) to change the attitude of the Bolsheviks towards the Social Revolutionaries and readiness to cooperate with them. At the same time, anti-Kolchak peasant uprisings began throughout Siberia, the rear collapsed, paralyzed by corruption of officials and military departments. The polar admiral was more afraid of the Pepelyaev Siberians than the Reds, although he owed his victories to the white-green banner of the Siberian army and the red flags of the workers of the Izhevsk and Votkinsk regiments. Irony of history! The socialists fought in Kolchak's army against Bolshevism, and at that time, in the rear, the punitive detachments of the Cossacks massacred entire villages, and the obscurantist Black Hundreds created concentration camps for workers just because they were workers.

Enemy of Admiral Kolchak

In the end, General Pepelyaev openly accused Kolchak of being unable to command the army and demanded his resignation from the post of commander in chief. Kolchak, in response, removed Lieutenant General Pepelyaev from command of the Siberian Army. Pepelyaev and Kalashnikov wanted to start a new stage of the struggle under the SR banners against Lenin and Kolchak, and on June 21, 1919, Anatoly Pepelyaev turned to his army with a protest against the admiral, describing in detail how he constantly held back the advance of the Siberians, leaving them without reserves, how heroically they they fought and died at the front, while the Kolchak officers sat in the rear. Following his army commander, Kalashnikov made a report, revealing the reasons for the anti-Kolchak uprisings in the army and in the rear. He openly proclaimed the slogan of creating a free Siberia without Lenin and Kolchak, the glorified army of Pepelyaev should become the main armed force.

Soon Kalashnikov, in the Czech echelon of General Gaida, left the front and went to Vladivostok to organize an armed uprising against the Kolchak regime. Many Pepelyaev officers traveled with him, who settled in their cities in order to prepare the overthrow of Kolchakism. Pepelyaev at that time withdrew his army to Tomsk, along the way arresting Kolchak generals K.V. Sakharov and S.N. Voitsekhovsky. From Tomsk, the commander with part of his army went to Manchuria, intending to start a fight against Kolchak from Harbin. In Harbin, many Pepelyaevs came into contact with the Reds and took part in the fight against the gangs of Ataman Semenov and the expulsion of the Japanese from the Far East, fighting in the People's Revolutionary Army of Primorye.

In Irkutsk, Kalashnikov was enthusiastically greeted by the Socialist-Revolutionaries and Pepelyaevs from the corps of General Grivin, who shortly before that had been personally shot by Voitsekhovsky for betraying Kolchak. In November 1919, the Social Revolutionaries created a coalition body and representatives of the Zemstvo, the Irkutsk City Duma and cooperation - the Political Center. It also included the Siberian Mensheviks. Kalashnikov became the commander of the Political Center, and a month later his detachments began military operations against the Kolchak garrison, creating two fronts - Glazkovsky and Znamensky. As a result, on January 5, 1920, power in Irkutsk passed to the Provisional Council of the Siberian People's Administration, and the Kolchak regime fell. Kalashnikov became the commander of the People's Revolutionary Army, at the same time he led the work to identify the punishers known to him, Kolchak counterintelligence officers, embezzlers generals, rear corrupt officials. On January 15, Kalashnikov's people received from the Czechs a train with a gold reserve and personally the "supreme ruler" Kolchak. Thus, the Socialist-Revolutionaries, and not the Bolsheviks, who had the honor only to shoot the prisoner, put an end to his career.

General's last campaign

When power in Irkutsk passed to the Bolsheviks, Kalashnikov, fearing reprisals from the Cheka, quickly reorganized the People's Revolutionary Army into a division and took it to Transbaikalia. In March 1920, the Pepelyaevites drove out the Cossacks of Ataman Semenov from Verkhneudinsk and left in full force for Manchuria. A revolutionary who went through hard labor, an experienced underground worker and a talented military leader Nikolai Kalashnikov said goodbye to Pepelyaev in Harbin, boarded a ship and sailed across the ocean. In America, he took up science, and the date of his death is unknown. And Lieutenant General Anatoly Pepelyaev lived quietly in Harbin until 1922. The unlucky "supreme ruler" had already been shot in Irkutsk, and Pepelyaev's older brother Victor, a former deputy of the State Duma and Minister of Internal Affairs in the government of the admiral, died with him on the ice of Ushakovka.

The Siberian general could not sit idle for a long time and in September 1922 he created the Siberian volunteer squad of seven hundred Tomsk officers, which landed on the Okhotsk coast and moved deep into Yakutia. They wanted to separate this region rich in furs and gold from Soviet Russia and establish a democratic system in it.

The Soviet government sent special units from Irkutsk and other cities, the commander of one of which was the illustrious red commander, a former anarchist from Nestor's detachment Ivan Strod, who fought with Pepelyaev back in 1918. The Strod detachment met the rebels near the Sasyl-Sasyy camp and took up a circular defense. The siege of the ice fortress continued for eighteen days, and on March 3, 1923, the expedition of the Siberian general ended. The approaching units of the Red Army defeated his squad, the remnants of which retreated to Okhotsk. On June 17, 1923, Pepelyaev, with the surviving officers, surrendered in the port of Ayan to the commander of the expeditionary force S.S. Vostretsov, was taken to Vladivostok, from there to Chita, where he stood trial.

All the defendants were sentenced to death, but the All-Russian Central Executive Committee commuted their death to ten years in prison. At the trial, Pepelyaev, as a professional military man, expressed admiration for the courage of the fighters of the Ivan Strod detachment.

Siberian general Anatoly Nikolaevich Pepelyaev died in the Lefortovo dungeon on January 14, 1938. Together with him, Ivan Yakovlevich Strod, a holder of four orders of the Red Banner, who fought with him in the Baikal region and in Yakutia, was shot. It's time to pay tribute to the memory of both heroes of Siberia.

. Irkipedia

Literature

Privalikhin V. Pepelyaevs // East Siberian Truth. - 2003. - March 29.
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.
Shambarov V. E. White Guard. - M.: Eksmo-Press, 2002
Valery Klaving Russian Civil War: White armies. - M.: Ast, 2003.
Mityurin D.V. Civil War: Whites and Reds. - M.: Ast, 2004 (photo documents).
Timofeev E. D. Stepan Vostretsov. - M.: Military Publishing House, 1981.
Grachev G.P. The Yakut campaign of General Pepelyaev (edited by P.K. Konkin).

February 3rd, 2015

At the end of the Civil War, when the whites were already firmly pressed to the ocean, a group of several hundred desperate people went on an adventure in an attempt to turn the tide of history to its knees. They failed, but the duel between the Reds and the Whites in the wastelands of Yakutia, unthinkably huge even by Russian standards, remained one of the brightest plots in Russian history.

In 1922, the Reds gradually cleared the Far East, Uborevich was preparing for the last push to the shores of the Pacific Ocean. By this time, the majority of whites on Far East has already been squeezed out to China, there are either those who are the most unlucky, or persistent on an especially large scale. At that moment, General Dieterikhs, who represented the remnants of the White Guard on DalVas, and his assistant Kulikovsky came up with the idea to light northeastern Siberia. The plan envisaged a landing on the shores of the Sea of Okhotsk east of Yakutsk, the rapid capture of the city and the creation of a center of a new uprising against the Reds there. Fortunately, envoys from the local population have already appeared from there, reporting a desire to rebel against the Reds. It was supposed to march 800 km into the depths of the continent on impassable roads. For such an enterprise, volunteers were needed, volunteers needed a commander. "Commandos" were found quickly, the commander was also gone.

Among other emigrants in northeastern China, in Harbin, lived General Anatoly Pepelyaev, the protagonist our play. He was a young man, but with considerable combat experience. Pepelyaev was a regular military man, by the beginning of the First World War he was already the head of intelligence of the regiment, and he waved the whole war with honor. "Anna" for courage, an honorary weapon, an officer's "George", "Vladimir" with swords - even by those standards, an impressive iconostasis. At the end of the war, when the commanders were made elected, the soldiers matched him to the battalion commanders. He graduated from World War I as a lieutenant colonel, and during the Civil War he joined Kolchak's army, and, as was the custom of that time, quickly rose in rank. In general, Civil - the time of generals under 30 years old. Turkul, Manstein, Buzun ... Here is the 27-year-old Pepelyaev. In 1920, due to a conflict with Ataman Semenov, to whom he was subordinate, Pepelyaev left with his wife and children for Harbin, where he lived for the second year. Dieterikhs' people easily found him and offered to take part in the "special operation".

Reference: Anatoly Nikolaevich Pepelyaev (1891-1938) - Russian military leader. 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. Brother of the Kolchak Prime Minister Russian government Viktor Nikolaevich Pepelyaev.

In total, there were 730 people in the detachment, including as many as two generals and 11 colonels, all volunteers from the regions of the Far East and the Russian colonies of China that remained under white control. The Whites experienced a great shortage of weapons, so there were only two machine guns. There were plenty of rifles, but more than half of them were single-shot Berdanks, thanks for not being the fuzei of Peter the Great. Ammunition was by the standards of the Civil not so little, 250 rounds and a half dozen grenades per brother. The matter was complicated by the fact that it was a "one-time" ammunition load, no supply was provided. Artillery was not available, and was not required, from the place of the proposed landing to Yakutsk it was necessary to travel more than 800 km through the wild wastelands on foot (the expedition diary mentions, for example, a swamp 8 km wide), guns simply would not be pulled.

This plan looks somewhat out of touch with reality. Fight Yakutsk with a detachment of 700 kopecks. But the Reds had the same trouble, armies of several hundred soldiers, often with rather sonorous names, rushed across the vast expanses. Pepelyaev's group, for example, was called the "Police of the Tatar Strait" for disguise.

There was little time and transport. They landed in Okhotsk and Ayan at the end of August. Ayan is a village on the seashore, a dozen and a half houses, several warehouses and a couple of "suburbs" of the same merits. By the way, in the brochure of Vishnevsky, one of the participants in the campaign, there is such an intriguing remark about this expedition: “The rain in Ayan is especially dangerous: it is extremely plentiful and, thanks to the force of the wind, breaks through the walls of buildings.” It is difficult to say what is meant by “breaking through the walls”, but nature really did not favor hiking. In Ayan, white partisans and local residents were waiting, about a hundred people. The detachment was divided in two in order to collect white partisan units along the way. In Ayan, a people's gathering of the surrounding Tungus and local Russians was gathered, who motorized our partisans, allocating three hundred deer. At this time, the second batch of troops was just about to start from Vladivostok. Pepelyaev was already moving into the depths of the continent, but because of the lack of roads, he walked slowly, with difficulty overcoming swamps and rivers. The rendezvous point of the white detachments was the village of Nelkan. Those who got there before the others suffered from starvation, eating horses. Steamers with the second wave of landing arrived only in November. At the same time, the population gathered transport, those very mentioned deer. By this time in Vladivostok, the Whites had already been completely defeated. Pepelyaev, from the commander of either a partisan or sabotage detachment, turned into the leader of the main military force whites. There was no one else behind.

Along the way, detachments of white partisans operating in these areas were attached. Colonel Reinhardt (one of the two battalion commanders) estimated their total strength at about 800 people. The partisans pretty much set the local population against themselves, they ate from the same Yakuts and Tungus, in general, the population, according to the Whites, belonged to the Reds and Whites in the style of the unforgettable phrase “the Reds will come - they rob, the whites will come - they rob” and did not particularly adore either those or others. Although a certain division of sympathies was noted: who is poorer - for the Reds, who is more prosperous - rather for the Whites. The forces of the Reds were estimated at about 3 thousand fighters in total.

We must pay tribute, the discipline was close to exemplary, there were no frostbite and stragglers, although last squad came to Nelkan already in the winter under the snow, making marches and at minus thirty.

On December 20, the detachment set out for the village of Amga, the next stop before Yakutsk, 160 miles from the city. We went on foot and on reindeer. I note that these regions are the coldest of all that are in Russia. They approached Amga on a cold night on February 2, 1923 and attacked her from the march. During this final rush to Amga ... I almost wrote “the thermometers showed”, the thermometers did not show a damn thing, because at minus forty-five standing in the yard, mercury freezes. It was cold to read about it. The White Walkers stormed the Amga with a bayonet, killing a small garrison.

The Reds formally had a certain numerical advantage at that time. But they were not gathered together, but acted in three separate detachments. Pepelyaev decided to first destroy the medium-sized detachment of Strod. It was a red partisan group of 400 people, with machine guns, but without cannons, weighed down by a convoy. Strode seemed like a good target.

Actually who it was. Ivan Strod is actually Janis Strods, the son of a Latvian and a Polish woman, the protagonist of the red side of our story. He, like Pepelyaev, fought in the First World War. Only not as a regular officer, but as a "mobilization" ensign. Ensign, I must say, was dashing, four "George". In Civil, he was an anarchist, later joined the Bolsheviks, led a partisan detachment, with whom he went to meet Pepelyaev.

The white leader devised a plan for a surprise attack against Strode. Leaving one and a half hundred bayonets of Colonel Peters in Amga, he moved forward to meet, preparing to inadvertently fall on the Reds. This plan had thirty-four advantages and one disadvantage. His virtues were that he was flawless, and his disadvantage was that he went head over heels.

Pepelyaev got hooked on the human factor. Two soldiers, rabid from the cold, went to the village to warm themselves. The Reds were already there, these two, exhausted in a warm yurt, were seized. The plan was immediately revealed to Strode, and he feverishly began to prepare for battle. Pepelyaev, realizing that surprise did not work out, hit with brute force and beat off the convoy. But the brave Krasnopribalt was not at a loss and did not lose heart. Strod settled in a winter hut under the poetic name Sasyl-Sysyy. This, so to speak, the village consisted of several houses, surrounded by a fence, as Vishnevsky writes, made of dung. There, the Reds dug in and prepared for all-round defense. It was February 13th. Until the 27th, Pepelyaev desperately stormed these three yurts. Strode bristled with machine guns and fought back. By the way, it looks like frozen manure was really widely used in field fortification. The Soviet newspaper writes that the Pepelyaevites tried to use something like a Wagenburg from a sleigh with frozen dung. So most likely a fortress made of dubious material really took place. In the meantime, two other red detachments, Baikalova and Kurasheva, joined up and amounted to 760 people with guns. Together they attacked Amga again. A detachment of 150 fighters, left there by Pepelyaev, lost more than half of the people under cannon fire and was forced to retreat. Baikalov's brother died in battle, and this predetermined the sad fate of the captured officers. True, it must be said that information about the death of prisoners comes from whites, so it is difficult to verify its authenticity.

It was the end. On March 3 the siege was lifted. It is difficult to say what it is like in the sense of personal glory to be called the winner of the battle of Sasyl-Sysy, but this success brought the Order of the Red Banner and the laurels of the victor of the last siege of the Civil War to Strode.

The remnants of Pepelyaev's detachment began to retreat to Ayan. The Yakuts, who at first cheerfully participated in the expedition, went to run home. As a result, Pepelyaev gathered everyone and ordered those who wished to leave openly. Another two hundred people left the detachment, three-quarters - Yakuts. Meanwhile, General Rakitin, the commander of the detachment retreating to Okhotsk, was about to break through to the south by land. In this he was promised to be helped by the remnants of the white partisans, who had been here before Pepelyaev's raid group and knew the area. Off-road also affected the Reds, in every shed it was necessary to leave a garrison, because they also did not move rapidly. In addition, Pepelyaev fought rearguard battles, not allowing him to push too hard. At the same time, a small outpost of the Whites in Kamchatka was destroyed, fifty people with an indispensable general at the head died, the noose around the White detachments was compressed. It must be said that the Kamchatka outpost ruined itself, the Yakuts, angry with robberies, helped the Reds. Kamchatka, according to the Whites, fell quickly and without much pressure from the Reds, if it had held out longer, perhaps Pepelyaev’s detachment would have been saved at least with the remnants.

At the beginning of June, Rakitin was preparing for the siege of Okhotsk, but the city fell due to an uprising of workers inside. Rakitin shot himself with a hunting rifle. The partisans retired back to the taiga.

In mid-June 1923, after long ordeals, the remnants of Pepelyaev's squad, 640 people, gathered in Ayan. A smaller part were paratroopers who landed here at the end of last summer, the larger part were Yakuts, partisans and the like. The Whites decided to leave by sea, for which it was necessary to build boats. However, the Reds were not going to give them time.

The Reds had an agent in Ayan, and a very valuable one, a radiotelegrapher. For this reason, they were aware of the preparations of the whites, and were not going to allow a retreat. On June 15, a landing force landed 40 km from Ayan. Kraskomandir Vostretsov secretly concentrated near the town. On the night of the 17th, hiding behind the fog, he sneaked into Ayan like Freddy Krueger in the dream of an eighth grader and captured the headquarters. Pepelyaev, wanting to prevent bloodshed, which had already become redundant, gave the order to the subordinates who had not yet been captured to lay down their arms.

Needless to say, not everyone followed through. Since Ayan was very small, some of the officers were in the villages in the neighborhood. Colonel Stepanov gathered about a hundred fighters, prepared for the campaign in a few hours and went into the forests, his end is unknown. Another colonel, Leonov, at the head of a group of a dozen people, went along the coast to the north, and succeeded, he managed to contact Japanese fishermen, through them to find a steamer and go to the country of anime. Colonel Anders, who had previously defended Amga, also tried to break through, but in the end he and his people were starving and decided that it was better to surrender than eat belts and boots. A total of 356 people were taken prisoner. Thus ended the Civil War in the Far East.

Pepelyaev and the fighters of his detachment were sentenced to various terms of imprisonment. Initially, the general was going to be shot, but at the suggestion of Kalinin they were pardoned. Apparently, in the camp of the Reds, they believed that there was time to scatter stones and there was time to collect them, they tried to return the Whites to the USSR as military experts, and it was unnecessary to frighten them with executions. Interesting, by the way, is the characterization that Vostretsov, who captivated him, gave Pepelyaev.

“Dear comrade Solts.
In 1923, I liquidated the gang of General Pepelyaev in the Okhotsk - port of Ayan region, and more than 400 people were captured, of which 2/3 were officers.
They were tried in 1923 in the mountains. Read and sentenced to different terms, and they all sit in different houses of detention.
Having received a letter from one of the convicts, I decided to write to you briefly what General Pepelyaev is like.
1. His idea is petty-bourgeois, or rather, Menshevik, although he considered himself a non-party.
2. Very religious. Well studied the literature on religion, especially Renan.
3. Personal qualities: very honest, disinterested; lived on a par with the rest of the warriors of the battles (soldiers); their slogan is all brothers: brother general, brother soldier, etc. I was told by his colleagues since 1911 that Pepelyaev does not know the taste of wine (I think that this can be believed).
4. He had great authority among his subordinates: what Pepelyaev said - there was a law for subordinates. Even in such difficult moments as his defeat near the city of Yakutsk and captivity in Ayan, his authority did not weaken. Example: a detachment of about 150 people was in 8 ver. from the port of Ayan, and when he learned that the port of Ayan had been captured by the Reds, he decided to attack the port of Ayan, and when they were met halfway by a messenger with an order from General Pepelyaev to surrender, they, having read this order, said: “Since the general orders, we must fulfill”, which they did, that is, they surrendered without a fight into captivity.
I have this thought: isn't it time to let him out of prison. I think that he can do absolutely nothing for us now, and he can be used as a military specialist (and he, in my opinion, is not bad). If we have such former enemies as General Slashchev, who outweighed our brother more than one hundred, and now works as a teacher in tactics at Shot.
These are the thoughts that I had and presented to you as the person who is in charge of this.
With communist greetings.
Commander of the 27th Omsk Str. Division S. Vostretsov. (13.4.1928)"

Nevertheless, Pepelyaev spent 13 years in prison, although he was allowed some liberties, such as correspondence with his wife. And in 1938, he fell under the rink of repression and was shot. Even earlier, in 1937, Strod was arrested and shot. Vostretsov, who finished off the Pepelyaev detachment with paint, also did not end his life very happily, in 1929 he participated in the conflict on the CER in one of the leading roles, and in 1932 he already committed suicide.

Actually, in Vladivostok, a military court sentenced Pepelyaev to death, but he wrote a letter to Kalinin asking for pardon. 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.

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 January 14, 1938, the Troika of the NKVD in the Novosibirsk Region was sentenced to capital 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.

The original article is on the website InfoGlaz.rf Link to the article from which this copy is made -

Anatoly Nikolaevich Pepelyaev (1891-1938) - Russian military leader. Member of the First World War and the Civil War on the Eastern Front. Whiteguard. He distinguished himself by the capture of Perm on 12/24/1918 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, with the exception of the eldest, underwent military training, and two daughters. 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.

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.

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

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 and St. George's weapon (already under Kerensky)

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 the 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 Brest-Litovsk peace, which ended hostilities, was to blame. 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 traveled another 45 km to the west, but severe frosts set in 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, Pepelyaev'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. On 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, resign Commander-in-Chief Sakharov, whom Pepelyaev had already ordered arrested, and investigate 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 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.

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 entered 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 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 Artemiev 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, 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.

Command staff

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 penalty through shooting. The sentence was carried out on January 14, 1938 in a prison in the city of Novosibirsk. The grave of Anatoly Nikolaevich is unknown. On October 20, 1989, the prosecutor's office of the 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 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 of his officers former army began to exist by the cab industry. 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 could be no doubt about the methods of punishing "willfulness", it is enough to recall Kronstadt in March 1921, peasant unrest in 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 allow us 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 about very accurately convey the features of the internecine war, which 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 Borogontsy 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 completed a purely military task - he distracted the red garrison in Churapcha from helping Strod 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. Otherwise, many still mistakenly think that he spent the entire war in Yakutsk, despite the fact that his departure to Churapcha replaced the fighting of 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. Its 37-millimeter shells could not penetrate the thick rampart constructed by the 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 government, the authority of the white rebels. And their leaders clearly liked the fact that negotiations with them, as with equals: unlike Pepelyaev's "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 the 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. A completely new approach was felt in the work of Kochnev's unit, which made reconnaissance 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 who were already known as supporters of 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 fighting spirit. 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 case seemed to be insignificant, but it was a fatal mistake, and the White Guards felt its consequences in January of the following year, 1923, when the White Guards 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 Japanese troops in Primorye, General Ooi refused to transfer 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 Pepelyaev's chief of military intelligence? 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: Captain Boris Mikhailovsky, former head of the Okhotsk garrison. 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.

Born into an officer's family. He graduated from the Omsk Cadet Corps (1908), the Pavlovsk Military School in 1910. Participant I world war. He went from lieutenant to colonel (1917). Having led a team of scouts, he was distinguished by successful operations at Prasnysh, Soldau and other operations. He was marked by a telegram from the emperor. In 1915, commanding the intelligence officers of the 11th Army and hundreds of Cossacks during the retreat of the Russian army from Poland, he defeated 2 enemy battalions and returned the lost positions, for which he was awarded the St. George Cross. After the October Revolution of 1917 he returned to Siberia, to Tomsk, where he organized an anti-Bolshevik officer organization. He led a successful uprising against Soviet power in Tomsk on May 28, 1918. In the rank of lieutenant colonel, in early July 1918, he defeats the Red troops near Irkutsk (commanding, including the Krasilnikov detachment), thanks to which it becomes possible to raise an uprising there and capture it . The commander of a detachment of white troops in the Yekaterinburg group from June to August 1918, Major General (he received this rank from the Provisional Siberian Government for the liberation of Siberia from the Bolsheviks). Moved forward thanks to personal qualities, the ability to "be" with the soldiers. Together with the troops of Gaida, he advanced from Tomsk to the Olovyannaya station, pushing the Bolsheviks. On August 7, 1918, together with Gaida, he defeated a large red detachment on the Baikal Front. This event was called Soviet historians"catastrophe near Posolskaya". Returning to Tomsk, he formed a corps and went to the Perm front. The only general who did not introduce shoulder straps in his troops and was considered "Socialist-Revolutionary". He did not belong to the Socialist-Revolutionary Party, but he sympathized with it, although he was more inclined towards Siberian regionalism. From August 1918 to July 1919 - intermittent commander of the Central Siberian Corps in the Siberian Army. In August 1918, at the suggestion of Vologda, he almost replaced Gaida as commander of the anti-Bolshevik troops in Siberia and at the same time acted as a mediator in the conflict between Gaida and Semenov. He was present at conciliatory dinners between Gaida and Semyonov, where he was specially invited by them to smooth out contradictions. To satisfy Semenov's ambitions, he offered him command of the 5th separate Amur Corps, which was accepted by the ataman. In many ways, Pepelyaev ensured the recognition of this by Semenov of the Provisional Siberian Government. In December 1918, he won an outstanding victory, taking Perm with the forces of his corps, where significant trophies were captured. Repeatedly appealed to Kolchak with a request to convene a "Zemsky Sobor" in Siberia. During Kolchak's illness in December 1918, he was considered as a possible successor to him as Supreme Ruler, even Zhardetsky supported him. At the end of December 1918, at the time of the establishment of the Headquarters of the Supreme Commander-in-Chief and the reorganization of the Siberian Army, which included his Central Siberian Corps, he was removed from command, and nothing was known about him for several months. From July 1919 - lieutenant general. Commander of the 1st Siberian Army Eastern Front from July to December 1919 Participated in the Tobolsk offensive operation. In September - October 1919, units of the 1st Siberian Army of Pepelyaev occupied the area of \u200b\u200bthe city of Ishim, the Golyshmanovo and Tyumen Omsk stations in the Yalutorovsky direction railway and defensive positions almost to Tobolsk. His army showed at that time relatively low fighting qualities, it took additional support for them by Wojciechowski's forces in order to bring down the Red forces that were against it. In early November 1919, Pepelyaev’s forces were replaced by Kappel’s corps and taken to Central Siberia for reformation and replenishment. In December 1919, A. Pepelyaev almost died when partisans destroyed his train by blowing it up. Pepelyaev's army was defeated when the Reds took Tomsk on December 22, 1919. Enjoyed great popularity in Siberia, was close to the soldiers. After the defeat of the 1st Siberian Army and the collapse of the front, he tries to dissociate himself from Kolchak, while opposing the Bolsheviks. Ready

silt with his brother, V. Pepelyaev, a coup against Kolchak, but at the last moment he abandoned it. He was close to the Social Revolutionaries and anarchists from December 1919 to 1921. At the beginning of 1920, being a typhoid patient, he was brought in a Czechoslovak train to Chita. In March 1920, he formed the Special Siberian Partisan Detachment from the remnants of his 1st Siberian Army. Verzhbitsky at that time treated him with hostility, so he emigrated to Harbin. Together with Voitsekhovsky, he conducted a fierce criticism of Semyonov there, including from the pages of the official Russian Army. For a long time in 1920 he was ill. He made a living as a cab driver. In July 1922, he got in contact with the government of Dieterikhs, arrived in Vladivostok and began to form the Siberian Volunteer Squad. At the invitation of the leaders of the Yakut uprising in September 1922, he arrived with a detachment of volunteers of 700 people - the "Siberian squad" in Yakutia, in Ayan, led the anti-Soviet forces of Yakutia. By this time, the main rebel forces had been defeated. He was taken prisoner due to the betrayal of some of his people on June 18, 1923 on the coast of the Sea of Okhotsk in Ayan. Delivered by sea on a ship to Primorye. During its delivery there, a fire broke out on the ship, during which Pepelyaev participated in extinguishing it, and the Red convoy was so frightened that the ship was out of his control for some time. In 1924 he was convicted in Chita by the Revolutionary Tribunal of the 5th Red Army and sentenced to death. In letters to his brother Arkady, he repented that he had fought against Soviet power. His brother Arkady, who had taken a high position among the Reds, interceded for him before Kuibyshev and Kalinin. The All-Russian Central Executive Committee replaced the execution with a 10-year term of imprisonment. Under pressure from the communists, he soon turned to his former comrades-in-arms with a proposal to lay down their arms and stop the fight against Soviet power. He served his sentence until 1933 in the Yaroslavl prison. In 1936 he was released. He sought permission to return his family to the USSR, but his wife and child refused to return. lived recent times in Vorkuta. According to some sources, he was arrested while trying to cross the state border of the USSR, according to other sources, some former officers Kolchak's armies, who were arrested in April-September 1937, stating that they were preparing an uprising and were associated with it. Shot on January 14, 1938

The biography of General Anatoly Nikolaevich Pepelyaev still attracts the attention of researchers and enthusiasts studying national history. One of the numerous but vivid episodes in the string of nightmare that any civil war always brings with it is the famous Yakut campaign of General Pepelyaev. The rebellion showed the courage and tragedy of the people of the former Great Russian Empire, becoming a formidable reminder to posterity of what the collapse and split of society lead to for the sake of various political forces, ready even with weapons in their hands to prove their right to power.

Youth and formation of the Russian officer Pepelyaev

The personality and biography of General Pepelyaev, unfortunately, are little known to a wide range of people. He was undeservedly forgotten and tried not to be mentioned in Soviet times. But history also exists in order not only to remember, but also to learn lessons.

Born into the family of a Russian officer, the boy knew from childhood that he would devote his life to serving the Fatherland. He was born in Tomsk on July 15, 1891. The family was large: two sisters and five brothers. Father, Lieutenant General Nikolai Pepelyaev, sent his son to study. Teachers found Anatoly kind, quick-tempered, proud, stubborn, but truthful. There were cases of insolence towards teachers. But from everything it was clear that the boy liked the Kadets. However, all the sons, except for the eldest, received an excellent military education.

The year 1908 came and Anatoly entered the Pavlovsk military school in St. Petersburg. He was completely absorbed in studies: tactics, military history, foreign languages, chemistry, military topography - this is not the whole list of disciplines studied. At the school, he became more serious about learning, but discipline was still lame.

The future general managed to receive 16 penalties in two years. Judging by the description that the teachers left, it turns out that the cadet Pepelyaev very easily fell under the influence of comrades who were notorious. At the same time, the young man handled small arms well and was physically developed and strong, and his nature required vigorous activity.

Even having flaws in discipline, he managed to graduate from college with the rank of second lieutenant. That is, he was a graduate of the 1st category. And for this necessary condition was to score at least 8 points out of 10 possible in military disciplines, and in the knowledge of combat service to get at least 10 points. Training at the school took 2 years and the young lieutenant Anatoly Nikolaevich Pepelyaev returned to his native Tomsk in triumph in 1910.

The beginning of a military career

He was sent to serve in the machine gun team. This company-level unit in the tsarist army consisted of 99 people, there was a commander, 3 chief officers. And one of them was older, and two younger. It was one of these junior chief officers that Lieutenant Anatoly Nikolaevich Pepelyaev began his career.

Such a unit was armed with 9 machine guns and fully or partially belonged to companies or battalions. Therefore, great importance was given to the issues of interaction. Two years after the start of his service in the 42nd Siberian Rifle Regiment, Lieutenant Pepelyaev married Nina Ivanovna Gavronskaya. But happiness was interrupted by the impending First World War.

Shortly before the start of this monstrous tragedy, Pepelyaev received a promotion to the rank of lieutenant and a new position - the head of the regiment's intelligence team. Three weeks after the declaration of war, his regiment was sent to the North-Western Front.

Pepeliaev in the First World War

Scouts under the command of Lieutenant Pepelyaev proved themselves already in the first months of their arrival at the front. Several successful raids were carried out in the area of the town of Graevo, the town of Markrabovo. For this he was awarded 4, 3 and 2 degrees, 3 degrees. The scouts were lucky, and they were proud of their commander. But 1915 was rich in events that tested the strength, power and fortitude of the Russian tsarist army. We are talking about the six-day battle of Prasnysh.

On July 30, 1915, the German troops advanced, having almost twofold superiority in the sector of the front, which was defended by the Siberians. The 11th Siberian Rifle Division, in which Lieutenant Pepelyaev served, consisted of 14,500 bayonets. By evening, no more than 5,000 combat-ready fighters remained.

The fighters, showing miracles of courage, felt the power of the main blow of the Germans, but did not flinch and remained faithful to the oath to the end and military duty. They had to retreat, but the plan of the fascist command was thwarted: they failed to encircle the Russian group in Poland.

Fate kept the future Major General Pepelyaev from a bayonet and a bullet, but did not save him from a fragment. After the operation, he was eager to fight. Pepelyaev categorically rejected all persuasions about evacuation. He felt how his soldiers and comrades needed him. And to leave everyone because of a “light”, in his opinion, injury is not possible for the honor of a Russian officer.

The hardships and deprivations of the First World War. The beginning of the collapse of the army

Not having time to properly move away from the wound, the lieutenant again rushes into battle, and the command promotes him in the rank to staff captain. He continues to command his Siberian scouts and show miracles of heroism.

On September 18, 1915, a dangerous situation arose in the battle near the village of Borovaya. Pepelyaev's detachment guarded the right flank and conducted reconnaissance of the combat sector of the 11th Siberian rifle division. The Germans, having a fourfold superiority, almost came close to the positions of our troops, and if they had captured them, they would have created extremely unpleasant conditions for the defense of an entire division. There was no time to think. The captain personally led the counterattack of his scouts, and the Siberians did not blunder. They not only threw back the intruding enemy back, but also returned their positions. In this battle, more than a hundred Germans were destroyed, they themselves lost two soldiers.

You can continue to list no less glorious episodes in the biography of General Pepelyaev, but alarming trends have already been outlined in the Russian army. People began to slowly but surely get tired of the military confusion and the senselessness of what was happening. Only the Pepelyaev reconnaissance detachment did not have time for sadness and general despondency. The sequence of events in that terrible meat grinder was too bright. But the command appreciated the rich combat experience of the brave officer, and sent him to a front-line school.

The losses of the Russian army were colossal. Society increasingly asked questions about the advisability of continuing such a war. To this we can add the agitation that the Bolsheviks successfully launched at the fronts. All these and many other reasons caused confusion and vacillation, giving rise to the question in the soul of a simple Russian soldier: “What should I die for?”

Brest-Litovsk peace - a slap in the face for a Russian soldier

According to the memoirs of Major General Pepelyaev, he met the revolution at the front. Many factors influenced the collapse of the army and the loss of its combat capability. Along with this, everything old was destroyed, something new appeared - incomprehensible. For example, the election of commanders, democratization in the armed forces. How this affected the power of the army is not worth explaining. In the military environment, not without reason, the mediocre Nicholas II and his government were considered guilty of what was happening, so many met the February Revolution and the tsar's abdication from the throne absolutely calmly.

Russian patriots still hoped for victory, but every day this hope was fading away. The October Revolution and the signed separate Treaty of Brest-Litovsk - the ground was slipping from under our feet. Everything that the Russian patriots believed in was crumbling before our eyes. Pepelyaev could not change the situation, but he was also not going to put up with it. He needed time to think carefully about everything. And he went to his native Tomsk.

The fight against the Bolsheviks as a remedy for depression

Returning from the war, Pepelyaev did not forgive the Bolsheviks for their treacherous stab in the back. He, like many whites, dreamed of revenge. Anatoly Nikolaevich Pepelyaev, a general of the White Army, considered himself, judging by his recollections, a "populist". Those contradictions that arose in the society of the former Russian Empire could not be resolved peacefully.

Bloody loomed ahead fratricidal war, eclipsed by its cruelty and stupidity even the First World War. The Western states condemned the separate peace and were gladly ready to support the recalcitrant white movement for the sake of fat profits.

May 31, 1918 hometown was cleared of the Bolsheviks. Now Pepelyaev and his associates could leave the underground and form their own corps to repel the "red plague", which this group did. The Central Siberian Corps was formed, and the results were not long in coming. The liberation of Krasnoyarsk, Irkutsk, Verkhneudinsk came in turn. The military career continued its dizzying rise. He is promoted to the rank of Major General.

Anatoly Pepelyaev, general of the "white" movement, received his rank at the age of 27. But with all the talents and phenomenal luck, he had some peculiarities in behavior that alarmed the experienced military. On principle he refused to wear shoulder straps, believing that power should pass to the peasantry and the countryside. He not only despised the old regime, but also fiercely hated it, ready even with weapons in his hands to prevent its return.

His views and some actions testify, rather, to the exaltation and immaturity of the personality. He was proud of the fact that he never gave the order to be shot. But this did not mean that terror was not gaining momentum on both sides. Being in your illusory world, he refused to understand that a civil war is qualitatively new level confrontation. Young General A.N. Pepelyaev firmly believed in his ideals, and this would later play a cruel joke on him and on those who went with him on the famous Yakut campaign. As a soldier, he was never able to accept and come to terms with the barbaric inhuman cruelty that war brings.

Capture of Perm

General Pepelyaev and his troops arrived in the Urals. They rushed to Perm, but ahead of them was opposed by the 3rd Army of the Red Army. It cannot be said that the “red” situation was stable. There were supply problems and morale fighters. In addition, a significant number of people who sympathized with the "white" movement served in the ranks of the Bolsheviks. Another significant factor influencing the course of the overall battle was that the planning of operations was spontaneous, and the level of training of officers left much to be desired.

The "White" General Pepelyaev and his troops favorably differed from their opponents: they were better prepared and had excellent combat experience. In addition, they had agents at the headquarters of the 3rd Army. General Pepelyaev recognized the primacy of Kolchak and acted in obedience to his orders.

The assault on the city began on December 24, 1918 in 30-degree frost. The resistance of the "Reds" was suppressed during the day. The remaining Red Army soldiers in a hurry crossed the Kama River. The film recounts the events of those troubled years. It describes the Civil War, the capture of Perm and General Pepelyaev. The film in film distribution is known under the name "Contribution".

Unsuccessful trip to Vyatka

Perm was taken, but it was necessary to continue the offensive, and General Pepelyaev continued his march to the west. The frosts intensified, and the advance stalled. The offensive continued only in March. He stubbornly advanced towards Vyatka.

All the other commanders of the "white" movement were much less lucky: their offensive attempts were repulsed by the Red Army, and even a situation developed that threatened the entire Kolchak group. Their retreat was not organized and more like a flight.

The army of Anatoly Nikolaevich Pepelyaev covered the retreat of Kapel and Voitsekhovsky. Despite heroic efforts, the end was inevitable. His army was completely destroyed, and the general himself fell ill with typhus. But fate wanted him to survive. It was already a different person: he was disappointed in the "white" movement, and with the "red" he was clearly not on the way, so he decided to emigrate.

Harbin. Life in exile

Former General Anatoly Pepelyaev courageously met all the hardships and hardships in a foreign land. He mastered the profession of a carpenter, a fisherman. Survived by other odd jobs. It was necessary to learn to live without war and become a breadwinner. And he did it. He was an active person and therefore soon founded artels of loaders and carpenters.

But the past did not want to let him go. The unsubdued from Kolchak's defeated army constantly turned to him for help. Everyone dreamed of returning to their native Russia. General Anatoly Pepelyaev himself dreamed about this, otherwise, how to explain that he allowed himself to be persuaded again into an obvious adventure.

There was a trip to Yakutia to support the rebels. How to explain such a decision is an excellent topic for numerous disputes and disputes. And funding for this obviously crazy idea was found. The businessmen quickly realized that it would be possible to organize a clearly uncontrolled fur trade there and, having compared all the risks, reluctantly allocated funds. General A.N. Pepelyaev was ready to support 750 people. With 2 machine guns and about 10,000 light machine guns, the detachment was ready to move into the inhospitable wastelands of Yakutia.

Yakut campaign of General Pepelyaev

In early September 1922, soldiers of the Siberian Volunteer Squad landed in Okhotsk and Ayan. The Tungus warmly welcomed them, considering them their deliverers, and handed over about 300 deer - the main draft force in those places. Despite this, it became obvious to the SDD participants that the campaign was poorly prepared, however, they soon received reinforcements with people and provisions.

By the beginning of 1923, the Red Army had successfully smashed all movements, and therefore the fateful decision was made to advance to Yakutsk. Winter road of General A.N. Pepelyaeva became a serious test for the soldiers of the Russian people. But even worse were the fighting in those conditions.

The meeting with the Red Army detachment of I. Strod interfered with the plans of the Siberian Volunteer Squad. General Pepelyaev suddenly decided to break this division of the Red Army at all costs. But his wards were doomed. They fought back to Ayan, where they surrendered.

Court. Life in prison

Pepelyaev and Strod were noble people, without meanness in their souls. Strode defended him in every possible way in court. The testimony indicated that his recent opponent, General Pepelyaev, did not use atrocities and executions. The former "white" general stopped them and Strode considers him a humane person. But the court was relentless.

General Anatoly Nikolaevich Pepelyaev was sent to serve his sentence in the Yaroslavl political isolator. Years in solitary confinement, and then he was graciously allowed to write letters to his wife. On July 6, 1936, Pepelyaev was released. But it wasn't for long. The terrible year of 1937 was approaching, and already in August he was again returned to prison. In Novosibirsk, in January 1938, the death sentence was read to him. This is the answer to the question of how General Pepelyaev died.

However, he repeated the fate of millions in Russia. Historians and researchers will return more than once to the tragic fate of this great Russian officer. He knew the ups and downs, but continued to love Russia and tried to help her by virtue of his strength and understanding. General Pepelyaev is a fragment of the past and a symbol of a real Russian officer.

Reading some excerpts from his diary, you are involuntarily horrified by the suicidal longing that settled in his soul during the famous Yakut campaign. And one can only be amazed at how he found the strength in himself to continue the struggle with people and with himself.

By all indications, he was in the deepest depression. Pepelyaev tossed between the desire to shoot himself or run wherever his eyes looked. What is it? The onset of a serious illness as a result of living in stress for the past few years? Or the realization came that the Russia he knew had changed completely and irrevocably, and Pepelyaev could not save her. It remains only to guess. But surrender without a fight to the Red Army leaves a disgusting sense of shame and confirms the rule: war is not a place for romantics. This is a work that incinerates the soul, cruel and bloody, where there is no place for sentimentality and chivalrous bowing.