Today an enemy, tomorrow a military expert? Mitrofan Grekov. Captured White Guard. 1931. Simferopol Art Museum
Military historian, Doctor of Historical Sciences Andrei Ganin, in his fundamental research, debunking many myths concerning the history of the Red Army and the service of former officers to the Bolsheviks, based on materials from Russian and foreign archives, including special services and family archives of the descendants of officers, talks about how, thanks to who the Reds were able to win in the Civil War.
The answer lies not only in the number of Red Army soldiers, but also in who commanded them. In the Workers' and Peasants' Red Army in 1918 - mid-1919, there were 1.7 times more generals and staff officers who graduated from the Nikolaev Military Academy than those who served in the White Army under Kolchak and Denikin. “The victory of the Red Army was achieved not only by the iron will and revolutionary enthusiasm of the Bolshevik Party, not only by mass mobilizations and a merciless punitive apparatus. Today it is obvious that its achievement would have been impossible without the experience and knowledge of former officers who joined the new army as military specialists (military experts). Without detracting from the merits of other categories of command staff of the Red Army, we note that among the tens of thousands of former officers who ended up with the Reds, the greatest value for the construction of the armed forces was a relatively small group of former General Staff officers, who personified the intellectual elite of the old army, its “brains.” However, the party triumphers almost immediately after the Civil War forgot about those to whom they owed victory. And soon even the man who led the policy of recruiting former officers, the leader of the Red Army, one of the party leaders of that time, Leon Trotsky, was erased from Soviet history...”
The book describes how the country's defense from the Germans was actually led by the General Staff, who also played an important role in the formation of the veil troops. After the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk on March 3, 1918 and the country’s exit from the First World War, the headquarters of the Northern and Western Fronts were liquidated. The decree issued by the Council of People's Commissars provided for the creation of a new central body of military control - the Air Force (Supreme Military Council), to which leadership of operations on the fronts would pass, as well as the formation of the Red Army. Some leaders of Headquarters also began to serve in the leadership of the Air Force. In order to strengthen the Red Army and use former officers of the tsarist army in it, the Air Force on March 21, 1918 adopted an order that abolished the elective principle. But the revolutionary army needed fighters and commanders, and therefore a transition from the volunteer principle of recruitment to universal conscription became necessary. It was for this purpose that in the spring of 1918 the military administrative apparatus began to be created. At the same time, the Bolsheviks did not miss the opportunity to use the experience and specialists of the control apparatus of the tsarist army, front-line and army headquarters. In April 1918, under the leadership of the Air Force, the formation of local military administration bodies of military districts began - Moscow, Oryol, Belomorsky, Priuralsky, Volga, North Caucasus, Yaroslavl and district, provincial, district and volost commissariats for military affairs.
At the same time, the formation of an instrument of control—the political apparatus of the Red Army—was underway. In March 1918, the institute of commissars appeared in the army - two commissars at all headquarters and military institutions. The All-Russian Bureau of Military Commissars was created under the Air Force, headed by Konstantin Yurenev, which controlled the work of the commissars in the Red Army. The term “special food” that arose at that time eloquently characterized the attitude towards former officers serving in the Red Army on the part of commissars and Red Army soldiers - often with distrust, as disguised enemies and counter-revolutionaries.
What was the role of the General Staff during the Civil War? Ganin emphasizes that “it cannot be denied that the fight against the whites took place under the general leadership of the Bolshevik leaders, who made a significant contribution to it. However, civilians Lenin, Stalin, Trotsky and the former volunteer Frunze did not master the technology of preparing and organizing combat operations. Based on knowledge of the social nature of the Civil War, the Bolshevik leaders could propose a certain general idea (for example, Trotsky, who considered it necessary to advance in the South not through the Don region, but bypassing it, splitting the white camp into two parts and promoting Donetsk miners and Ukrainian peasants), but developing ways to implement it, of course, fell on the shoulders of the General Staff.”
Analyzing the composition of the front commanders in the Red Army during the Civil War, it can be noted that of the 21 commanders, less than half - 10 - were not related to the Academy of the General Staff. Among these 10 were Frunze, Tukhachevsky, Antonov-Ovseenko, Egorov, Gittis, Shorin. Of these, Mikhail Frunze, Alexander Egorov (a member of the Bolshevik Party from July 1918) and Vladimir Gittis (who joined the Red Army in February 1918) commanded several fronts, which reduced the percentage of General Staff officers occupying senior positions.
The final section of the book - “And so my heart grinds over Re-se-fe-sir, feed - don’t feed” - is dedicated to the life of the General Staff. It talks about living conditions and property, recreation and social security, and hobbies. For example, Commander-in-Chief Kamenev collected historical weapons and received a personal revolver as a gift from Frunze, from which he fired back in 1921 from the bandits attacking him. Ganin emphasizes that by the mid-1920s, new people became the head of the Red Army and “the brightest era of the formation of the Soviet Armed Forces ended.”
Firstly, I must say that we were not very lucky with the history of the Civil War - in full accordance with the idea that history is written by the victors, the USSR began publishing the History of the Civil War and Foreign Intervention, and then it suddenly turned out that half of the characters were enemies people more than the enemies they fought against.
In general, this matter stalled, and the memoirs of those enemies who sailed from Crimea on time on ships under the tricolor flag were rarely published in our country.
And as always, in the absence of sources, the vacuum is filled by mass culture - at first the White Guards were pure animals, then, in the sixties, honest people in uniform began to appear in films, and then suddenly the Reds lost everything.
And already the red ones began to emerge as uniform monkeys, and the white ones as refined and noble people.
Meanwhile, the Civil War was not at all a confrontation between reds and whites, but a tragic mixing of different colors, with very complex combinations, but an indispensable admixture of blood.
That's why it makes sense to turn to this book.
Secondly, “Seven Whys...” is good because, like any decent historical work, it is free from theatrical emotions.
The more terrible the long-ago event, the less appropriate belated hatred or pride beyond rank is to describe it.
This is a normal scientific narrative, with a package of documents attached at the end.
Thirdly, here is a list of those “whys” that will explain the range of issues discussed:
· Who were the officers with;
· What is the role of the Cossacks;
· Did the “third way” have a chance of military victory?
· Why Kolchak was defeated;
· What role did the intelligence services play;
· Did the Reds take the families of military experts hostage? and finally
· Why the Red Army won.
Fourthly, we are dealing with history, which is extremely technical. That is, instead of a mythological representation of the Civil War, the book offers a conversation about the competition of two military machines and their collision not only on the battlefield, but also in workshops, in peasant fields and on warehouse shelves. The Civil War was a battle of skills and resources
“Only according to data for April - May 1918, in the warehouses of Soviet Russia there were 896 serviceable three-inch guns, 4902 machine guns, 1,249,170 rifles, 687 million cartridges, 3.5 million grenades for three-inch guns, etc.
In addition, there were over three hundred serviceable artillery pieces of other systems (including heavy artillery).
The Red Army did not experience a shell crisis until 1919 thanks to the reserves of the First World War.”
There are funny details that are remembered better than numbers.
Here the author says: “The Bolsheviks centralized even such an industry as the production of bast shoes for the army, creating the Extraordinary Commission for the Supply of Troops with bast shoes (Chekvolap).”
It’s always funny about bast shoes, but this phrase contains quite a lot of serious meanings.
On the one hand, this tells us that the Red Army really introduced widespread accounting and control of everything that was within reach - and this became one of the factors of victory.
On the other hand, this and many other details of military supply show how the Soviet government quickly created its own military and state bureaucracy (often overstaffed and not very well functioning - I do not specifically mean the Extraordinary Commission for Bast Lapses). However, it was this bureaucracy, combined with the use of the old officer corps, that was able to compete with the structure of the white movement.
Fifthly, it is interesting how the issue of a “third force” is resolved. This idea of the third way is very popular among the honest layman - having come into contact with the documents, he understands that all the combatants suffered cruelty and horror, and it is difficult to appoint anyone as angels.
But there was probably someone third, of a different color, better than the red and white ones.
The green color quickly disappears from consideration - it is clear that peasant armies like Makhnov’s, Siberian partisan detachments or the Don Army can only claim victory in novels about hit-and-runs, such is their ideology, composition, connection to a specific topography, etc.
National forces had completely different goals in this war.
Therefore, when speaking about the third force, socialist revolutionaries are always mentioned.
The party that in 1917 collected almost forty percent of the votes of Russian voters, the party that had about a million members. And, finally, the party that actually came to power after February (it is clear with what stretch this can be said, but nevertheless. Kerensky began his political activities as a Socialist Revolutionary Party, and re-joined this party just during the second revolution).
But here the author rightly says that “Historians have written a lot about the special path of development of the country that Russia would have followed if the Socialist Revolutionaries had won the Civil War.
At the same time, however, the main thing was forgotten - the extremely low ability of the Socialist Revolutionaries for constructive state work.
The leaders of the AKP, who came to power in Russia in 1917, are largely responsible for the tragic events of that year for our country, the anarchy and the subsequent seizure of power by the Bolsheviks and the Left Socialist Revolutionaries.
An honest man in the street is always interested in the question of how the world in which he lives came to be.
The Socialist Revolutionary Party has historically been a non-state organization.
The Social Revolutionaries considered themselves defenders of the interests of the peasants, workers and intelligentsia, but the party’s political program suffered from utopianism and anarchism. Relying primarily on the peasantry, they turned out to be direct rivals of the Bolsheviks.
The latter, of course, were not going to tolerate such competition and, aware of their minority, focused on the violent seizure of power and terrorist methods of control.
As a result of the October coup, the Provisional Government, headed by the Socialist-Revolutionary A.F. Kerensky, fell. The Constituent Assembly, where the Social Revolutionaries were in the lead, was dissolved by the new government.
The complete victory of the Socialist Revolutionaries gave way to their crushing defeat."
Further, the author quite convincingly shows the quarrelsomeness of the Socialist Revolutionaries with all their potential allies in the East:
“This approach was aggravated by internal disagreements that tore apart the anti-Bolshevik camp.
The most egregious example is the events of the summer - autumn of 1918 in the Volga region, when the Komuch government, due to confrontation with the Provisional Siberian Government, chose to leave all military factories and warehouses in red rather than evacuate them to the east with the prospect of giving them to the Siberians.
The Reds then got several thousand pounds of gunpowder and about a hundred field guns in Kazan;
in Simbirsk - equipment of two cartridge factories with a supply of metal and semi-finished products for 100 million cartridges;
in Ivashchenkovo - an explosives plant, a capsule factory, artillery warehouses, explosive reserves for two million shells, millions of empty and finished shells, fuses, bushings and tubes;
in Samara there is a large pipe factory with a brass reserve of 700 thousand poods, a gunpowder factory, etc.” .
Sixthly, the reasons for the victory of the Red Army - after all, an honest man in the street is always interested in the question of how the world in which he lives came to be. Was it woven out of necessities and predeterminations, or did it come out this way by chance, which means it is unsteady and fragile.
The author provides a rather detailed, but understandable analysis for the average reader, which he sums up with the following thought:
"The Bolsheviks' recruitment into the army
multi-million peasant masses,
qualified command personnel represented by former officers,
as well as communist political workers who controlled military experts,
predetermined the success of the Reds. The combination of these three components was the strength, not the weakness, of the new army."
Seventhly and lastly. One way or another, a hundred years after the start of the Civil War, we do not have a consensus book on its general history, a kind of “Short Course” of those events.
Is this good or bad?
The question is posed incorrectly - because it is not clear who should be considered the winner and who should write this story.
For a huge number of our contemporaries, the victory of the Red Army continues with the Dnieper Hydroelectric Station, Stalingrad and Gagarin.
At the same time, for a large mass of other people, the crunch of a French roll, Russian evenings with a samovar, and a saber with Anna’s cranberries are much more pleasant.
And they cannot be reconciled, because here questions of faith, not knowledge, collide.
Any bureaucratic attempt to describe the events of a hundred years ago in a megalomaniac project will now be unnatural.
It is better to study this history in parts, on individual issues, from particular to general - well, for example, as in this book
Ganin A. Seven “whys” of the Russian Civil War. — M.: “Fifth Rome”, 2018. — 864 p.
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One of the most relevant and popular historical topics among the general public is the history of the Russian Revolution and the Civil War. The mythologization of the history of this period in Soviet times was complemented, perhaps, by greater mythologization in post-Soviet times - only with the opposite sign. The book “Seven Whys of the Russian Civil War” was recently published by the famous historian Andrei Ganin, who is trying to correct this situation.
The book is a volume of 850 pages, half of which are documentary appendices. In accordance with the questions posed by the author, the main text is divided into seven chapters; many fragments of the text and entire chapters are previously published articles, revised and supplemented. The breadth of coverage of sources is indicated by the following: the book contains about 2,000 footnotes to sources and documents are cited (including those introduced into scientific circulation for the first time) from 27 archives. These are mainly the Russian State Military Archive and the State Archive of the Russian Federation, as well as a number of regional archives and central archives of other countries: Poland, Finland, Ukraine, the Caucasus, the Baltic States and the USA.
The first and most profound chapter is devoted to the officers: Ganin analyzes the composition and mood of the officer masses during the Civil War. It is impossible to determine the exact number of officers on different sides of the barricades - the surviving data is too scattered and often incomplete. But, according to the author, in total at least 200 thousand officers served in the red and white armies. There were more of them on the white side, albeit slightly: various data suggest that there were between 110-130 thousand people. For example, on the entire Eastern Front of Kolchak there were no more than 30 thousand officers. In Denikin’s Volunteer Army as of July 1919, there were only 16,765 officers out of 244,890 people, there were even fewer officers on other fronts, and more than 100 thousand military experts, including captured whites, could not pass through the Red Army. About 26 thousand served in the national armies and several tens of thousands more avoided participating in the war. At the same time, the Reds used their officers better - they were able to quite successfully carry out their registration, mobilization and distribution. The Reds had reliable political control in the form of commissars instead of the white generals subject to corporate officer solidarity, the elimination of the old rank system made it possible to avoid many personal conflicts, moreover, the use of military experts was limited to the military sphere, while the whites had to spend personnel officer resources to solve certain problems. other management tasks. Despite inevitable problems, such as the poor education of most Red Army commanders and frequent betrayals by officers (hence the atmosphere of mistrust and terror towards former officers), this system turned out to be more effective. Ganin concludes: “With a smaller number of military experts in comparison with the white officers, the Red Army, which was built on the principles of strict centralization, had organizational superiority.”
This deep, thorough and detailed study of the history of officers in the Civil War is unique in modern historiography. The remaining chapters are distinguished by the same qualities - an extensive source base, the author’s scrupulous approach to the accuracy of the facts identified and the depth of conclusions.
Unfortunately, the emphasis on the military component of the Civilian, which prevails in the book, relegates its political component to the background.
This is especially clear in the second chapter. The section on the Cossacks is devoted mainly to their military role and reflects exclusively the participation of the Cossacks in the white movement.
Without denying the existence of the Red Cossacks, the author describes it extremely sparingly, in just a few paragraphs, since the bulk of the Cossacks were on the side of the white movement.
Meanwhile, it is known about a considerable number of Don and Kuban Cossacks in the red troops of the North Caucasus Military District in 1918, about the active participation of the Transbaikal Cossacks in the partisan movement, about the excellent detachments of Orenburg Cossacks in the troops of V.K. Blucher, etc. The leaders of the Red Cossacks are well known, despite the often tragic end - F.K. Mironov, F.G. Podtelkov, M.V. Krivoshylkov, A.A. Avtonomov, I.L. Sorokin, I.A. Kochubey, Kashirin brothers.
The author not only does not argue with the Cossack researcher L. A. Futoryansky, but does not even refer to him, although in the book “The Cossacks of Russia in the Fire of the Civil War (1918-1920)” (Orenburg, 2003) he came to the conclusion that The whites managed to mobilize no more than 30% of the total number of Cossacks into their armies.
The political role of the Cossacks, in contrast to the military one, is revealed rather poorly and mainly through conflicts with the white command.
Meanwhile, the Cossacks as a social force had their own interests and government projects - from military dictatorship to democratic federalism. Ignoring the political evolution of the Cossacks also makes it difficult to understand the problem of their relationship with the leaders of the white movement.
But the chapters of the book “Why Kolchak was defeated”, “What role did the special services play” and “Why the Red Army won” are very valuable. The reader is presented with a wide panorama of the organization of military operations on the eastern front of Kolchak, demonstrating a lot of problems and mistakes of the Kolchak command, which ultimately led him to defeat. The chapter on the role of the intelligence services examines the peculiarities of the formation and effectiveness of the actions of both the red and white underground. The author does not hide the fact that this section represents rather a general overview of a topic that has so far been studied rather superficially. In the well-founded opinion of Andrei Ganin, the special services did not play a serious role in the war, since they had an improvisational nature on both sides - both in intelligence and counterintelligence; however, the Reds managed to create the basis for their systematic and successful development in the future.
The chapter on the victory of the Reds shows exactly how the army organized by the revolution was able to win: on the basis of the outstanding work of the Soviet leadership, the energy, cohesion of the Soviet camp, its transition to the principles of total war, a wide range of means from agitation to repression, and most importantly - close connections with the military construction: “The white author’s assertion that allegedly “all military successes of the Red Army can be attributed solely to its numbers” is completely incorrect.” The veterans of the White movement really wanted to believe in this naive explanation in order to close their eyes to the deeper and more serious reasons for the victory of the Reds and their own failures. It is enough to note that the Reds were superior to their opponents in almost everything: from the size of the army and the scale of preparations for it to the quality of the system for recording military specialists, the number of leaflets issued and the number of enemies shot. White's fatal mistakes only widened this gap. It is not surprising that the new force eventually prevailed.”
A person with little or no knowledge of this period can read a lot of interesting and perhaps even unexpected things in this book. For example, he learns that the white movement, which proclaimed itself a spokesman for the interests of Russia and the majority of the people, in fact relied on a fairly narrow layer of active officers who decided to resist the Bolsheviks, which before the uprising of the Cossacks had practically no support from the broad masses. This contributed to a high level of corporatism and casteism among Denikin’s followers, who were suspicious even of those officers whose guilt was only a temporary stay on Soviet territory. The reader learns that the number of officers in both camps did not differ much - and the majority were those who were mobilized at the height of the war. The reader learns how unorganized the attempts to create an underground and fight it were on both sides: the special services were no more professional than the underground, which led both of them to regular failures. The reader will learn what heroic efforts it cost the Bolsheviks to create a five-million-strong Red Army from scattered military detachments, which at the end of the war for the most part was fully trained and equipped, despite the growing economic crisis. At the same time, he will see how monstrous and even absurd were the failures of the Whites, who were unable to prepare a minimum strategic reserve within the same period of time, who sent entire military units to the front not only without weapons, but even without field kitchens and uniforms, who were unable to hold on front of their own Cossack allies and mired in bureaucracy, corruption and robberies, who captured both the front and the rear.
For example, even during the March offensive of 1919, Kolchak’s army did not have enough ammunition, although according to the plan the Whites were going to go all the way to Moscow.
Just two months later, the Siberian Shock Corps, formed as a strategic reserve in Yekaterinburg, rich in trophies, under the patronage of the commander of the Siberian Army himself, R. Gaida, was shamefully defeated in the very first battles, since many units did not receive telephones, convoys and even weapons, and most of the officers were assigned immediately before being sent to the front.
At that time, in all of Siberia, the only reinforcements were only three divisions, consisting of untrained conscripts.
Having barely managed to receive convoys and artillery, they were also hastily thrown into battle near Chelyabinsk, where from the 13th division alone, 80% of the strength defected to the Reds within a week.
It is not surprising that after the defeats the army rolled east in disarray, plundering the population.
White officer I. S. Ilyin wrote in his diary furiously about his own command: “The soldiers were undressed, the units that should have been ready turned out to be unformed, and these gentlemen were engaged in intrigue. Pathetic, worthless people."
There are many similar examples in the book. Just look at the report on the telegraph company of the headquarters of the Siberian Army. At the height of the fighting at the front, she did not do any work, drank heavily, took prostitutes and did not pay them money.
And all this became known only from correspondence intercepted by military censorship - that’s how bad things were with the whites with discipline. Andrei Ganin points out: “Kolchak’s army can hardly be called a single military force, formed according to one model, staff, etc. Almost every corps or detachment was different from the rest, which by no means testified in favor of the “regularity” of this army, which is sometimes written about, but rather spoke about the partisan and improvisational nature of the formations.” What can we say about the White Army of the South, which was even officially called the Armed Forces of the South of Russia, uniting the most heterogeneous elements, and where partisanship was systemic in nature. The situation was completely different in the Red Army, where, as the corresponding chapter shows, energetic work led to the abandonment of partisanship in favor of centralization and the constant strengthening of discipline.
Actually, this is precisely the main conclusion of the book: the victory of the Bolsheviks and the Red Army in the war was predetermined. The energetic, decisive and talented leadership of the Bolsheviks was able, with the help of a set of different measures, from agitation to coercion, high organization and efficiency of decisions at that time, in a short time to create a large, armed and combat-ready army, supply it, strengthen the rear, mobilize it, secure a political support, use the old military apparatus and former officers, organize the work of intelligence agencies to ensure political security. This process was not easy and without errors and failures, but overall it achieved its goals. The whites' policy became more and more ineffective, adherence to outdated norms and templates, inertia, bureaucratization, reliance on abstract and momentary schemes, poor organization of the rear and a high degree of corporatism among the participants of the white movement, who in the end were not even able to use the factors favorable to them. , such as the presence of large masses of officers and Cossacks. The latter is directly related to the fact that at the head of the white movement were representatives of the old officers with their inherent traditional views, backward worldview, outdated methods of organizing the rear and front, and isolation from the masses. We emphasize that all of these are the author’s conclusions, which he presents only in a slightly softened (compared to the above) form.
Unfortunately, the breadth of issues explored by the author, the emphasis on military aspects, and some features of the collection’s formation led to a certain imbalance in the text. This is especially noticeable in the length of each chapter. Thus, the first chapter, dedicated to officers and the largest, has 144 pages - it is clear that it is the most deeply worked out. The smallest chapters, the third and sixth, consist of 34 and 20 pages, respectively, since they represent separate subplots about the struggle of the Socialist Revolutionaries with Kolchak after November 1918 (only on the territory of Komuch) and about the policy of taking hostage the families of military experts. The remaining chapters, devoted to broader issues, contain 40-60 pages and are fully consistent with the popular science nature of the collection. It is also not entirely clear on what principle the documentary appendices were selected: along with valuable and informative documents (mostly the memories of the participants), among which there is an unknown part of the most interesting diary of the former Minister of War Kolchak A.P. Budberg discovered by the author, there are also frankly passable ones materials. Occasionally, the author’s personal preferences are also felt, especially when it comes to Soviet internal politics or the behavior of opponents of the white command. For example, while repeatedly mentioning the cruelty of the Red Terror and the persecution of officers by the Bolsheviks, the author almost never touches on the question of what role repression and cruelty played in the politics of the Whites.
Andrei Ganin has written an extensive and in-depth study on a number of important aspects of the history of the Civil War. He set out to provide the reader with “concise and understandable material on the most pressing issues of the military-political history of the Civil War” in the form of popular science research. In the introduction, he criticizes modern negative trends in public consciousness and the scientific community - incompetence, the prevalence of stereotypes, the popularity of falsifications and conspiracy theories. The book is compiled according to the standards of academic research, with a large number of references, a lot of facts and a scientific style of presentation - all these are undoubted advantages, but this form is unlikely to be convenient for the general reader. The volume of the book alone will become a difficulty for him, and many of the questions being explored will completely baffle him - after all, the average reader, as a rule, does not even know the chronology of the Civil War. At the same time, for a fairly educated person interested in history, the book will be understandable, interesting and extremely informative.
In the "Journal of Historical and Military Historical Researchers", which has already gone to print, the famous civil war historian A.V. Ganin published his new article "Bloody lessons of the sixteenth year. The uprising of 1916 in the Semirechensk region."
It was precisely this event that served as the reason for writing this post. For reasons unknown to me, A.V. For some reason, Ganin regularly appears as a definite expert on this well-known topic. Obviously, this is a consequence of his interest in the Orenburg Cossacks at the beginning of the twentieth century. (as you know, his first monographs were dedicated specifically to him and the Orenburg ataman Dutov). This resulted in an article: Ganin A.V. The last midday expedition of Imperial Russia: the Russian army to suppress the Turkestan rebellion of 1916-1917. // Russian collection. Research on the history of Russia. Ed.-comp. O.R. Airapetov, Miroslav Jovanovic, M.A. Kolerov, Bruce Manning. T. 5. M., 2008. pp. 152-214.
Apparently, this article became the basis for his further works on this topic, which, however, do not contain anything fundamentally new. Thus, Ganin recently became the author of the preface to the collection of documents “Events in Semirechye in 1916 according to documents from Russian archives,” which was posted online by Rosarkhiv. In it, Ganin assesses the events more softly, but in essence, this is a rehash of the first article: http://semirechye.rusarchives.ru/predislovie He also has an article in the magazine “Rodina”, where he works in the editorial office, Lessons of the Turkestan Uprising // Homeland. 2016. No. 7. P. 107-112, but this is a summary of the first two - not a single new word. Well, you understand the “educational character” of the magazine.
Based on this, I somehow doubt that Andrei Vladislavovich will present something very original in his new article. It’s quite strange to me that Andrei Vladislavovich, of course, an expert on the history of representatives of the General Staff in the Civil War, the white movement, military experts in the Red Army, the Orenburg Cossacks in the revolution and other similar topics, is now for some reason regularly called upon as an expert on this completely different topic. Because I have read the articles and I must admit that in many respects they are very dubious. Even if we leave the purely factual side, which also has some errors, the conclusions of the study are not entirely correct from a historical point of view.
Let me make a reservation right away that I am not an expert on this topic, but I have a certain familiarity with the literature on the issue and at one time I carefully read the volume “The Uprising of 1916 in Central Asia and Kazakhstan” - this is a 600-page essay, a joint work of the USSR Academy of Sciences, academic historical institutes of four Central Asian Soviet republics (with the exception of the Tajik USSR) and the Main Archival Administration, published by the publishing house of the USSR Academy of Sciences in 1960. Despite the fact that now the historiography of the issue is expanding, this is still the most representative publication of documents on the topic, and if there are those who want to understand in general terms this plot “for themselves,” then they just need to read this collection - and they will get a fairly comprehensive idea about the events that took place.
In addition, the events of 1916 have recently attracted increasing attention from historians - works are published regularly, even entire conferences are held, so willy-nilly we have to follow this issue. Due to the vastness and complex diversity of the issue, I will only note individual points in Ganin’s seminal article.
It is the most polemical of all three and is written in the most strikingly accusatory tone. The author in many places accuses the rebels of being harsh.
In fact, one should not be afraid to admit that Tursunov and other Soviet authors (almost exclusively from the indigenous population of Central Asia and Kazakhstan) deliberately lied, trying to hide, first of all, the ethno-confessional basis of the events of 1916. If they had admitted this, the events of 1916 . would be impossible to qualify as progressive. However, these authors stubbornly refused to admit that in the summer and autumn of 1916, a real massacre took place in Turkestan and the Steppe Territory, and it is unthinkable to admire these events.
In fact, as can be seen from the same volume of 1960, the events can be called ethno-confessional very conditionally - they were based on social reasons. Actually, many people do not understand at all that any ethno-confessional conflict has a social content - the ethnic component only has a reinforcing effect. Where the ethnic environment is culturally and socially homogeneous, there is no place for ethnic conflicts at all, otherwise we would have witnessed the massacre of the French and Germans, for example. The events in Turkestan were the result of a gradually worsening situation for the local population, which was a consequence of the wrong actions of local authorities, both Russian governors and local national bodies, formed from the rich elite of local tribes and clans. And it was on them that the main hatred of the rebels was brought down, which resulted in pogroms, beatings, destruction of documents for organizing conscription, and less often, murders.
There was no massacre in the proper sense of the word in Turkestan at all, despite the propaganda of this in modern literature. Everywhere, except Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan, events were violent, but there was practically no bloodshed. It even got to the point that the rioting natives themselves defended the Russians who happened to come across them. This is completely understandable if you look at the same volume of 1916 on the uprising - and Ganin definitely read it, he has references. The only place (not counting the Islamized Jizzakh, the events in which, by the way, were diligently condemned even in Soviet times) where events broke out beyond the pogroms of local authorities is Kazakhstan, where a real war broke out between local Kazakhs and Russians and where the war really began in extermination. Causes? What, do Kazakhs somehow really dislike Russians? Or were the Kazakhs strong Muslims? No, of course, it was just that local Russian settlers took the land for themselves and regularly oppressed the Kazakhs, using them as cheap labor. I read in some pre-revolutionary leaflet an eyewitness account of how a certain Russian settler killed a “Kyrgyz” just like that, at will. And he had nothing to do with it. What is this if not colonialism? And in the first three years of the war in the Semirechensk region, 1.8 million dessiatines of the best pasture and arable land were confiscated from the Kazakhs, and their former owners were evicted to desert and semi-desert areas. By mid-1916, the total area of land taken from the Kazakh population amounted to 45 million dessiatines. On the territory of modern Kyrgyzstan, in the Chui region alone, by 1915, more than 700 thousand hectares of land were taken from the local population from the Kyrgyz and transferred to settlers, in the modern Osh region - 82 thousand hectares. Is it really surprising that the Kazakhs began to exterminate the Russian population without exception, seeing it as the cause of all their troubles?
And Ganin writes instead: “One cannot agree with the fact that the Cossacks and local “marginal tramps” were especially zealous in the suppression, allegedly intending to drive the nomadic population from their lands. The Cossacks did not need such an expansion of their territory (obviously we are talking about bordering the steppe with the Astrakhan, Ural, Orenburg, Siberian and Semirechsn troops), especially since the lands on which the nomadic population lived were huge and to expand the military territories, if it were really necessary, it was not at all necessary to drive the steppe neighbors from their places of residence." That is, he clearly simply does not know about the relocation. As, indeed, about the fact that the Kyrgyz were exiled from all lands without exception, where there were riots and where there were none.
I will not dwell on this in more detail, since even in Ganin’s article itself, if you look closely, cases of demonstrations of cruelty outside Kazakhstan are very rare, and even the situation in Jizzakh, where a massacre took place under the influence of the feudal-Islamic elite, is assessed by the author as specific. By the way: “It is interesting to note that according to the personal allocation of recruitment into the rear detachments in the Samarkand region, which included the Jizzakh district, 35 thousand fell. After a protest from administration representatives from the cotton regions of Turkestan, who stated that recruitment in their areas could disrupt the cotton harvest ( Moscow textile manufacturers also sounded the alarm about this), this number was increased to 38 thousand, we hide the intra-regional distribution was carried out for the Samarkand region itself in such a way that the cotton districts of this region received a smaller percentage of the “requisitioned” population than the grain districts In this regard, the Jizzakh district, as a grain district, found itself in the most disadvantageous position regarding the number of those mobilized: 10,600 people had to be taken from the district" (c).
It must be said that Soviet historians, apparently without realizing this, exposed themselves. Thus, prominent figures of the Kazakh and Bashkir national movements M. Chokaev and A.-3. Validov in emigration wrote about the anti-Russian nature of the rebellion and that it preceded the Basmachi movement.
In the same piggy bank. And what role did these gentlemen play during the rebellion? They would have attached you and Genghis Khan to the national movement if they could.
In comparison with the situation of the Christian subjects of the empire, the burden placed on foreigners was relatively light, however, it should be taken into account that the native population had not previously served military service and even labor mobilization struck them.
The author broadcasts a very popular accusation of the natives that they rebelled without a reason: Meanwhile, according to the authorities’ orders, 230 thousand residents of the Steppe Territory (mainly Kazakhs) and 250 thousand residents of Turkestan were supposed to be sent to military work - 8% of the population of Turkestan and a significant part of its working-age male population. shares. Who would work? For comparison, in Russia only 38% of the population could be physically conscripted. Moreover, the poorest and most powerless were sent to Turkestan - the rich paid off, as everywhere and always? Otherwise, why did the rebels smash their own elders and other qazis? Actually, the author himself understands this: “The table shows that the strongest increase in the number of troops was in Semirechye - it was in this region that the rebellion took on its most brutal forms.” Let us then scold the Indian sepoys for the cruelty of the English officers - after all, such kind Englishmen fed them, cleaned them, trained them, gave them weapons, and let the treacherous sepoys kill them!
The annexation of Central Asia to the Russian Empire led to positive changes in the lives of the indigenous population. The region became part of a state that stood at a higher level of socio-economic and cultural development. As a result of the establishment of peace and economic development, the spread of public health care and the fight against epidemics in Turkestan, mortality rates significantly decreased and a population explosion occurred. From the middle of the 19th century. by 1916 the population increased from 4 to 7.5 million people. Education began to spread. Telegraph, post office, new irrigation canals, industry (primarily cotton growing), and banks appeared. The region is surrounded by a network of railways. The local administration, formed from representatives of the indigenous population, played an important role in the regional governance system.
The accession of India to Great Britain led to positive changes in the life of the indigenous population... The region became part of a state that stood at a higher level of socio-economic and cultural development... Telegraph, post office, new irrigation canals, industry (primarily sericulture) appeared ), banks. The region is surrounded by a network of railways. An important role in the regional governance system was played by the local administration, formed from representatives of the indigenous population...
Deputy of the Saratov province A.F. Kerensky, who visited Turkestan in the summer of 1916, and other deputies of the 4th State Duma from the Duma rostrum at the end of 1916 trumpeted the severity of punitive measures. Kerensky stated, in particular, that “in the promulgation and implementation of the highest command of July 25, all the fundamental and non-fundamental laws of the Russian Empire were violated.” The speech of the representative of the Muslim faction, deputy M. Yu. Jafarov, was approximately the same in its focus. Both of them kept silent about the unprecedented atrocities against the Russian population. Meanwhile, it was the Duma members (in particular, the representative of the liberal opposition A.I. Shingarev) during the “assault on power” in the summer of 1915 who advocated extending the conscription to the Muslim population. I remember the famous phrase of P. N. Milyukov, thrown from the Duma rostrum on November 1, 1916, however, addressed to the supreme power - “is this stupidity or treason”?
Obviously, a similar question could be addressed to the liberals themselves. Most likely, this was precisely stupidity, due to the desire of liberals to come to power at any cost and the fear that the empire would win the war without them, and imperial power would only become stronger as a result.
It is not entirely clear why the murders and beheadings of Russian settlers, including women and children, are unprecedented atrocities, and the shooting of Kyrgyz by Cossacks at point-blank range with artillery and burning them alive in the reeds, including the same women and children (which Ganin himself writes about) - apparently not precedent? By the way, Kerensky did mention the atrocities, albeit in a secondary vein: “These events<...>were associated with casualties from both the Russian and native populations. Several thousand (2-3) of the Russian population and many tens of thousands of the native ones died." One can rightly reproach that Kerensky mainly describes the killings of the native population, and not the local ones, in fact justifying the rebels: "I, gentlemen, do not deny that there were excesses, but in some places relatively small groups of the Russian population suffered from this spontaneous disturbance, and even in Semirechye, with the exception of two districts - Przhevalsky and Dzharkent, and I will say why in another place. The casualties on the part of the Russians were isolated." But the characterization of his atrocities as a whole is correct. He quite rightly assesses the killings of Russians as relatively small, with the exception of Jizzakh and part of Semirechye, while the actions of the punitive troops resembled the entire occupation of an enemy country: "In in my hands is a genuine order for a punitive expedition. On August 3, I repeat, almost a month after the excesses of the crowd, an order was issued so that the entire local native population of the city of Jizzakh - I was there, I was at the ruins, I saw everything myself - where several thousand lived, over 10,000 natives (VOICE: 20,000 )... yes, 20,000 natives, if it is within three days, i.e. until August 6, will not hand over murderers from the entire district, i.e. all the murderers in an area of several hundred miles, and in the elusive mountains, “if the murderers are not betrayed, then the entire population will be mercilessly expelled from the city.” On the 6th or 7th of August this order was carried out, and in the morning, at the sound of a cannon shot, this mass, mainly women, children and old people, was thrown out of their homes and hearths without food and provisions and were sent to oases where there is water, and in deserted places deep into the district, and the city was systematically and systematically completely destroyed."
Was Mr. Oppositionist exaggerating? No, there was an order and it’s not a secret: “In a report to the tsar about this event, Kuropatkin wrote: “In the Jizzakh district, it was announced to the population about the confiscation of about 2,000 acres of land in the area where the blood of Russian people was shed, of which 800 acres undeveloped land listed within the city, the remaining 1,200 acres intended for confiscation represent several inhabited areas in which 73 Russians were killed. This measure contributed to the sobering of the native population and deterred those who hesitated from an armed attack." (With) . What law was this? According to the law of desire of the left heel of Mr. Kuropatkin, who became the new governor-general. And in total, in the district, according to the report of the military governor of the Samarkand region Lykoshin to the Turkestan governor-general on August 20, 1916, at least 50 villages, including Jizzakh, were damaged, in whole or in part.
And regarding the accusations “the deputies themselves demanded mobilization,” Kerensky himself replied: “Gentlemen, imagine now what consequences, what results this measure, unprecedented in its courage and lawlessness in its execution, produced. Perhaps it was necessary to carry out the measure that should have infused into common citizenship, according to your thoughts here in the Duma, even the distant natives, but this measure was turned into mockery and violence against the population, into a shameful phenomenon for the Russian state and it will have indelible consequences now, gentlemen. enormous not only economic, but also political significance. Everything that happened revealed to the local native population that side of Russian statehood, which, perhaps, due to their darkness and remoteness, they had no idea about.”
But in general, Kerensky’s main pathos, as can be clearly seen, is focused not on describing atrocities, but on emphasizing the criminality of the central government, which itself provoked unrest by mobilizing bypassing all existing orders, and the furious zeal of local governors only intensified its destructive actions. At the same time, Kerensky paid tribute to the intelligence and foresight of the governor of Fergana Gippius, who was the only one who changed the order of mobilization for the better and thereby avoided major unrest: “This only person who did this and so correctly understood his civil and administrative duty was immediately expelled from execution their duties, allegedly for disobedience to the orders of the highest and supreme authority." It is not surprising - Gippius was the only governor who considered it necessary to understand what he governed, and it was he who spoke before a crowd of natives in a skullcap and robe and with the Koran in his hands, giving explanations.
Or maybe Kerensky was exaggerating the exploitation of local peasants? Maybe everything was fine, Turkestan flourished under the rule of the king, and the mobilization was fair and correct? Well, the diary of a certain P. Anokhin was published and there is a conversation with a Cossack colonel who suppressed the uprising: “Then he told me about the uprising, talked about the cruelties of the Sarts against the Russians, and what surprised me was that he was opposed to the use of such measures by the Russians in front of The rebels were especially outraged by the execution of prisoners without trial; he tried to send the captured leaders to the Milyutinskaya station at the right opportunity, and from there to Tashkent. He shared with me that the government’s inability to announce the order and the incorrectly carried out colonialist plan by the administration aroused indignation against itself. natives, and now it has come to a sad end - uprising and pacification" (c).
And the same diary also sets out the point of view of the rebels themselves, who did not suspect that they, it turns out, were not colonized:
Ganin is also clearly a supporter of the fairly widespread version among domestic researchers that the uprising was largely provoked by German-Turkish spies - or at least considers it necessary to mention this:
Perhaps the German prisoners of war who were in Jizzakh, as well as Turkish agitation, played a certain role in the escalation of the rebellion.
...
Despite the war, German-Turkish agents were active in the regions bordering Turkestan. In 1915-1916 in Afghanistan and Persia there was a mission of German captains O. von Niedermayer and V.O. von Hentig with several dozen officers. On May 21, 1916, the scouts left Kabul: Niedermayer went to Persia and further to Turkey, and Hentig to the Pamirs and China. The Germans seriously considered the possibility of a military invasion across the Transcaspian Sea into Khiva and Bukhara and raising an uprising in Turkestan, relying on tens of thousands of Austro-German prisoners of war held there. There could have been German agents among the prisoners of war. Along with the Germans, the Turks also played some role in organizing the uprising. Enemy agents operated from the territory of China, Afghanistan and Persia.
So, there is such a project on the website of the Sanzharbek Daniyarov Foundation, which is dedicated specifically to the events of 1916. There are many documents and articles posted on this topic. The project, of course, is very crude, the presentation is far from scientific, and so on. But still, climbing there is not a sin. Among other things, I recommend this link: 1916: BIRTH, DEATH AND EXHUMATION OF THE MYTH OF THE GERMAN TRACE IN TURKESTAN EVENTS. In short, even a superficial acquaintance with documentary sources allows us to judge that the causes of the uprising were exclusively internal, and information about the participation of foreigners was the product of wartime spy mania and disinformation of Russian officials who tried to shuffle off responsibility. The funny thing is that the local Russian population themselves suspected the local authorities of serving the Germans - after all, who, if not they, provoked the uprising? By the way, the Semirechensk governor bore the sonorous Russian name Mikhail Aleksandrovich Folbaum, which he changed from the literal name to Sokolov-Sokolinsky just before the uprising. By a strange coincidence, he died on his 50th birthday under unclear circumstances (officially from a heart attack, but there were rumors of suicide) and with minimal official condolences - and after the revolution, his ashes were taken out of the temple at the insistence of the Cossacks themselves, who stated that the church belongs to them, not to the former governors.
Something like that. I will not touch on this topic in more detail, since I fully believe the main factual descriptions of the author, who described how it was difficult for the punitive troops to go out in the winter and shoot at the rebels with freezing machine guns. At the same time, although I 85% agree with Kerensky’s conclusions, I understand that no one is obliged to believe any post, so let those who wish to get acquainted with the literature on their own. It is both very extensive and evidence-based, although research on this topic still requires a lot of effort and careful work. And if in modern historical science opposing protective opinions prevail, then this is understandable - it would be strange if democratic assessments appeared under reactionary regimes.
By the way, at the same time I’ll recommend another link from the same website of the Daniyarov Foundation: 1916: ONE OF THE MOST IMPORTANT REASONS FOR THE PEOPLE’S UNrest WAS ABUNDANT INJUSTICE. THEY DO NOT MENTION ABOUT HER! We like to say that the bad natives rebelled because they were called up for rear work, not appreciating that, unlike the Russians, they were not sent to the front. I wonder which of these accusers read the Decree on Mobilization of 1916, according to which the Russian population of Turkestan was not conscripted AT ALL - if they arrived in the Turkestan General Government before June 6, 1904 or moved there later on the basis of official “passing certificates”. That is, the colonialists were given indulgence here too.
GAVESHIN GAVRENEV GAVRIKOV GAVRILIKHIN GAVRILICHEV GAVRILICHEV GAVRISHEV GAVRISHCHEV GAVRUTIN GAVSHIKOV GAVSHUKOV GANIN GANIKHIN GANICHEV GANSHIN GANKIN GANYUSHKIN GASHUNIN GAVRILENKO CATCHER GAVRILYUK GAVRISH GAVRISHIN GAVRISHOV GAVRYUSHEV GANICHKIN... ...Russian surnames
- ... Wikipedia
Ganin (Egor Fedorovich) is a monomaniac of the first quarter of this century, obsessed with a passion for writing. A wealthy merchant, he strived for grace and built a garden in his house in St. Petersburg, on the banks of the Neva, making it a kind of cabinet of curiosities... ... Biographical Dictionary
Ganin, Mitrofan Stepanovich zoologist; born in 1839. Educated at Kharkov University. Since 1869, he lectured at the University of Warsaw on comparative human anatomy. His main works: New observations on reproduction... ... Biographical Dictionary
Kirill Ganin (real name Sergei Sergeevich Ganin; born March 8, 1970 (19700308), Moscow) is a notorious and odious director, artistic director and director of the Moscow Conceptual Theater of Kirill Ganin, ... ... Wikipedia
Playwright; genus. 1755, died around 1830 (in the "ABC Index of the Names of Russian Figures for the Russian Biographical Dictionary" the day of his death is indicated as December 11, 1825). A wealthy merchant of the first guild, obsessed with a passion for writing...
Wikipedia has articles about other people with this last name, see Ganin. Andrei Vladislavovich Ganin (born October 7, 1981 in Moscow) Russian historian, researcher of the military history of Russia, the officer corps of the Russian army, history ... ... Wikipedia
Dram. writer, b. 1755, † 11 Dec. 1825 (or 1830). (Vengerov) ... Large biographical encyclopedia
Books
- History of foreign literature of the 17th-18th centuries. Textbook for academic undergraduate studies, V.N. Ganin. In your hands is the first textbook on the history of foreign literature of the 17th-18th centuries in a quarter of a century. Its peculiarity is the original consideration of the historical and cultural periodization of this...
