Camping field wives - that was the name of front-line girlfriends in the Great Patriotic War. Separated from their families, the generals and officers of the Red Army had "civilian wives" from among the female soldiers. Doctors, nurses, telephone operators and radio operators with an attractive appearance faced increased attention from their male colleagues. Commanders of different ranks courted with special perseverance. The officers, unlike ordinary soldiers, could afford to "spin the romance."
Camping-combat wives began relationships with officers for love or convenience. Even some representatives of the high command had such concubines. For example, Marshal Zhukov appointed his fighting girlfriend as a personal nurse and awarded many awards. They went through the whole war together. Before going over to the side of the enemy, General Vlasov had two field wives: military doctor Agnes Podmazenko and cook Maria Voronova. Podmazenko even became pregnant from Vlasov, and the general sent her to give birth in the rear. She bore him a son and received 5 years in the camps "for connection with a traitor to the motherland." The presence of marching-combat wives at the front was marked by the following events: - the hatred of legal wives from the rear to front-line girlfriends; - contempt of ordinary soldiers; - fear of "links" to a hot spot and a tribunal. A woman who became pregnant lost her certificate. For ordinary nurses, this meant disaster. The history of front-line love was often temporary. It ended in death or separation after the end of the war. Only a few field wives still managed to register their relationship with their "combat" comrades. Despite the presence of a legal wife in the rear, officers of the Red Army entered into relationships with temporary cohabitants. At the same time, many tried not to make such situations widely publicized or assign it the status of moral baseness. It is interesting that Marshal Zhukov took decisive action in the fight against the moral decay of the soldiers and issued an order to remove almost all women from headquarters and command posts.
"TOP SECRET. Order to the troops of the Leningrad Front No. 0055 mountains. Leningrad September 22, 1941In the headquarters and at the command posts of the commanders of divisions, regiments, there are many women under the guise of serving, seconded, etc. A number of commanders, having lost the face of communists, simply cohabitate ... On September 23, 1941, remove all women from headquarters and command posts. To leave a limited number of typists only in agreement with the Special Department. Execution to be reported on September 24, 1941. Signature: Commander of the Leningrad Front, Hero of the Soviet Union, General of the Army Zhukov.
The famous Soviet poet Simonov in his poem "Lyrical" called field wives comforters:
Men say war...
And women are hurriedly hugged.
Thank you for being so easy
Not demanding to be called sweetheart,
Another, the one that is far away,
They were hastily replaced.
She is the beloved of strangers
Here she regretted, as best she could,
In an evil hour warmed them
The warmth of an unkind body.
For such a work, he was almost deprived of his membership card.
There were no legal regulators of relations between servicemen of different sexes, writes Colonel of Justice Vyacheslav Zvyagintsev. Cohabitation in military collectives was often qualified as domestic decay and ended with the imposition of disciplinary and party penalties on the guilty or condemnation by an officer's court of honor. But in the archives of the military judicial department there was a trace of more complex conflicts between men and women that unfolded in wartime. Until the prosecution. For example, in the report of the chairman of the military tribunal of the Northern Front, the following example is given. The commander of the 3rd platoon of the searchlight battalion of the guard, Senior Lieutenant E.G. Baranov, who cohabited with a Red Army woman Sh. Art. 74 part 2, 193-17 p. "e" and 193-2 p. "g" of the Criminal Code of the RSFSR. The military tribunal of the 82nd division dismissed the case at the preparatory meeting only because Baranov had by that time entered into a legal marriage with Sh.
In many Soviet / Russian films about the war there are funny scenes when a certain “Trench Romeo” in the interval between battles tries to visit the dugout of a nurse or a cook at night, and she will certainly crack him with something, driving him away from herself, after which the rest of the soldiers laugh. In fact, such episodes hide the deep tragedy of the military fate of Soviet women.
Indeed, as the front-line soldiers recall, such a phenomenon was widespread then, and some of them, in order to protect themselves from it, were forced to cohabit with one person. Preferably with an officer who could protect from annoying admirers. This category of women among the soldiers was called the "field wife" or abbreviated PPD.
In other words, the PPD are the mistresses of the officers of the Red Army, who, in exchange for guardianship from men, had to replace their wives - first of all, to satisfy sexually. Such a phenomenon was common in the rear of the army, and not on the front line. After the war, lovers almost always parted, and the men returned to their pre-war way of family life. Although there were exceptions to the rule.
Veteran Isaak Kobylyansky writes in his memoirs that there was an unwritten order among the military commanders: the combat unit first reported to the commander, his deputies and the chief of staff about all the women who arrived in the regiment. Based on the results of the report, "smotrin", and sometimes even a short interview, it was determined where (this often meant who to bed) a new fellow soldier would be sent to.
Typically, recruitment took place in positions that women did not match in terms of skills, which made it difficult to work in headquarters to a certain extent, but personnel officers had to put up with this state of affairs. Front-line translator Irina Dunaevskaya wrote in her diary that in December 1943, after being wounded, she was sent to the location of the new regiment, but was quickly sent back, because the previous translator was returning from the hospital. Attempts by the personnel officer to leave her at the headquarters due to the position of an interpreter borrowed from one of the regiments did not yield results. “It turned out that although there really are no translators, there are no positions either - they have command PPDs, various secretaries, typists there.”
War veteran N. Posylaev, recalling this phenomenon, said: “Let the front-line soldiers forgive me, but I will talk about what I saw myself. As a rule, women who got to the front quickly became mistresses of officers. How else, if a woman is on her own, there will be no end to harassment. It’s another matter when, with someone ... “field wives” were almost all officers ... ".
The military of one of the parts of the Kalinin Front during the holidays, 1941-1942.
Of course, there is a certain percentage of exaggeration in the statements of male veterans (for example, it is hard to believe that every officer at the front had a PPD), but it is difficult to refute the fact that such an institution exists in the Red Army.
This topic is specific and irritable for the post-Soviet society. It seems that in this issue we have become hostages of the Soviet tradition of writing about the war in an idealistic way, avoiding front-line reality and crystallizing a certain noble image of a soldier. For example, an Englishman or an American will not be surprised by the facts about sex between the military in World War II. They understand that this is a normal natural phenomenon.
For our middle-aged people, sexual life at the front is a sensation. After all, the war in the Soviet films and books familiar to them is only the heroism and valor of the then soldiers. The fact that a soldier could sleep with a woman at the front was not even imagined. Although sexual attraction to the opposite sex is normal for a healthy person, even in war. Another thing is whether it corresponds to the principles of morality, whether everything happens by mutual agreement without coercion and blackmail.
The negative point was the impossibility for the Red Army soldier to legally relieve sexual tension. In other armies, the use of brothels was common, but there were none in the Soviet army. True, according to General Nikolai Antipenko, in the summer of 1944, two brothels were opened for Soviet officers with the consent of the high command. They were called "holiday homes". The experiment quickly failed. The first group of officers, after a 3-week vacation, returned to the front, taking their new girlfriends with them.
There was no vacation practice in the Soviet army, unlike the Wehrmacht, when soldiers could take a break from hostilities for several weeks, stay with their wives or brides.
There were even rumors in the Red Army that women were sent to military service on purpose, in order to satisfy the sexual needs of men.
Actually, this is one of the reasons for the appearance of PPD among the Soviet military. Another reason is the feeling of a constant threat to life, which often led to demoralization. The famous Russian opera singer Galina Vishnevskaya (she served at the front in the Air Defense Headquarters) in her memoirs “The History of Life” quite accurately described the condition of women and soldiers at that time: “In those terrible years, when such an exorbitant burden fell on the shoulders of women, much was destroyed lives. Women drank on a par with men, smoked tobacco ... The loss of husbands and suitors led to the moral decline of many.
However, according to the author, the main reason for the existence of the PPD institute in the Red Army was the problem of the moral decay of its command staff and leadership of the USSR. And it happened not during the Second World War, but back in the 1920s and 1930s. The German-Soviet war only exacerbated and exposed this problem.
In those days, most party leaders had mistresses and were not shy about it. Usually love adventures were remembered to communist bosses when they fell into disgrace.
There was enough immorality in the life of party leaders. Joseph Stalin, at the beginning of his political activity, lived with a 14-year-old girl, Lida Pereprigina, while serving a link in the Turukhansk region. The minor even gave birth to two children from him, but the future "leader of the peoples" did not recognize them as his own. Such facts from the life of Stalin are described in a secret letter from the head of the KGB, Ivan Serov, to Nikita Khrushchev dated July 18, 1956. From the second half of the 1930s, the mistresses of the leader were actresses, singers and ballerinas of the Bolshoi Theater: Natalya Shpiller, Valeria Barsova, Vera Davydova, Marina Simonova, Olga Lepeshinskaya.
There were legends about Lavrentiy Beria's sexual exploits in the Central Committee. In his claims, he did not stop at nothing. So, one of his mistresses, Nina Alekseeva, is sure that, on the orders of Beria, her fiancé was shot.
The situation among the highest military command staff of the Red Army was no better. Most of the military, from marshals to officers, had “field wives”. Among the marshals, these were Georgy Zhukov, Andrey Eremenko, Ivan Konev, Rodion Malinovsky, Konstantin Rokossovsky. The last two after the war formalized their relationship by marriage.
Marshal Rodion Malinovsky with his wife R. Kurchenko, as well as figures of the Ukrainian SSR L. G. Melnikov and D. S. Korotchenko (in the center) at the railway station in Kyiv, October 27, 1948.
Malinovsky was a widower during the war. He met his second wife at the front in the summer of 1943, when awarding orders to soldiers and sergeants (Raisa was among those awarded). The general liked her so much that he found out where the girl served and ordered her to be transferred to his headquarters. The woman was 17 years younger than him. At first she was his PPD. However, in June 1945 they arrived together at the "victorious" reception in the Kremlin. None of the marshals and generals present were seen there with their PPD. In 1946, the couple got married, lived in marriage for 25 years, had two children.
In general, during the war, the PPD problem grew to enormous proportions, as evidenced even by archival documents. In the beginning, management tried to fight this phenomenon. Pairs were bred, spreading across different divisions and fronts. But it was like that somewhere until the end of 1942, then they "was given up on them." Lev Kopelev writes in his memoirs that at that time a rumor spread through the troops that Stalin said: “I don’t understand why military commanders are punished for sleeping with women. After all, it is natural when a man sleeps with a woman. Now, if a person sleeps with a man, then this is unnatural, and then you need to punish. And so why? »
Usually, ordinary fighters treated the PPD with contempt, composed vulgar jokes and obscene rhymes about them. The blame for this lay partly on the very "holders" of the PAP. After all, these men, having great power, created very comfortable conditions for their mistresses by front-line standards. "Wives", while in military positions, often lived at the headquarters in the rear and had a vague idea about the war. Received military awards without proper reason - most often the medal "For military merit", known in soldier folklore as the medal "For sexual services".
The military of one of the units of the Southwestern Front during the rest, 1941-1942
In the first post-war years, women who returned from the front were greeted with coolness by Soviet society. They were divided into “correct” and “wrong”, PPD or not PPD, and almost all were called “front-line” or “front-line”. Then these words, unlike today, did not cause respect, but rather condemnation, since they contained accusations of accessibility, immorality. Moreover, many of them returned from the front pregnant. It is clear that most of the "rear" women assumed that the "front-line soldier" could, in theory, sleep with her husband, and this caused jealousy, anger and contempt.
“We were even told: “Whatever you deserve your awards, hang them there.” Therefore, at first they did not want to wear either orders or medals. This is how we were first met, ”recalled Yudif Golubkova. Veteran Nina Afanasyeva notes that in the first post-war years, the attitude towards them was bad: “You could hear from outsiders: “front-line”, “front-line”. This continued for five years after the war. Many did not say that they fought, they were shy.”
And so what if in an environment where there are many young people of the opposite sex for some time, it is difficult to avoid sexual relations, romance and claims?
Photos - from TsGKFFA of Ukraine. G.S. Pshenichny.
The very phenomenon of LLP was not massive. But it remained in the memory of many, especially when it comes to the memories of ordinary soldiers who fed lice in the trenches. For them, the novels that the command played in front-line conditions were something beyond.For example, the famous collaborator General Andrei Vlasov, who created the Russian Liberation Army (ROA) under the wing of the Nazis, had two PJs before going over to the side of the enemy.
The first is the military doctor Agnes Podmazenko, whom Vlasov was even going to marry. It was she who helped the general in 1941 to get out of his first environment - the Kyiv boiler.
Moving along with Vlasov along the German rear, in order to connect with her own, the "wife" scouted the road, got food and clothes from local residents. This epic continued for two and a half months until the couple caught up with the Red Army near Kursk.
Podmazenko stayed next to Vlasov until January 1942, and then the general sent his pregnant lover to the rear. There, the military doctor gave birth to a son, whom she named Andrei. Subsequently, Pomazenko was given five years - "for communication with a traitor to the motherland." However, Vlasov's legal wife was no more fortunate: "for her husband" she received a longer term - eight years.
Vlasov, having barely sent Pomazenko to the rear, found her a replacement in the person of the cook Maria Voronova. In July 1942, he was again surrounded, and again, as a year earlier near Kyiv, he went to meet his people in the company of PPJ. However, in the end he was captured and transferred to the service of the Germans. His companion was sent to the camp from where Voronova fled.
The cook got to Riga, found out that her general was in Berlin, and went there. Arriving in the capital of the Third Reich, she was convinced that Vlasov did not need her: the leader of the ROA at that time was courting Agenheld Biedenberg, the sister of the personal adjutant of the Reich Minister of the Interior, Heinrich Himmler.
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A funny story about the relationship of front-line soldiers to the PPP was described by Nina Smarkalova, a front-line mortar gunner. One day, a regimental commander came to her with his girlfriend and announced that he had brought a new fighter who needed to be shown how mortars fired.
Smarkalova decided to play a trick on the "rookie". To do this, she brought the calculation of the mortarmen together with the PZH of the regiment commander into the field. It was April and the ground was wet. If in such conditions to shoot from a mortar, then fountains of mud fly out from under its base plate.
“I told her (PPZH) to stand exactly in the place where all this would fly, and commanded: “Rapid fire!” Smarkalova recalled. “She didn’t know that she needed to cover her hair, face, uniform. I fired three shots.”
Smarkalova thought that after such a “baptism of fire” the regimental commander would send her to the guardhouse herself, but nothing happened.
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Maria Fridman, who served in the intelligence of the First Division of the NKVD, recalled how she had to fight with male fellow soldiers. “If you don’t hit me in the teeth, you’ll be lost! In the end, the scouts themselves began to protect me from“ foreign ”fans: if no one, then no one,” said Friedman.
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About how hard it was to resist, Ekaterina Romanovskaya, who went through the war as a simple signalman, told in her book. She was the first among female veterans to frankly describe the life of girls at the front: from fighting to sexual harassment and love.
Romanovskaya turned out to be the object of claims of the elderly division commander. To drag the girl into bed, he ordered that a young signalman be on duty at night at the telephone in his dugout. On one of her shifts, a set table was waiting for her.
"A half-liter of cognac appeared in a crystal decanter, fried potatoes, scrambled eggs, lard, a can of canned fish and two appliances," writes Romanovskaya. At that time, near Stalingrad, where the described events took place, the Red Army was starving, and here such dishes.
After the fourth glass, the division commander invited the girl to become his LPG. He promised to clothe, feed, drive and, where possible, represent his wife. Romanovskaya refused the colonel, who was 22 years older than her, answering that she went to the front to fight, and not to twist novels.
The commander retreated. However, he subsequently offered Romanovskaya to marry him. Having received a turn from the gate here too, the colonel got angry, unsuccessfully tried to take it by force. And then he started messing around.
Romanovskaya had a romantic relationship with the captain of a neighboring regiment, and when the colonel found out about this, he sent a signalman to an assault company, from where rarely anyone returned alive. And the opponent, under pressure from the divisional commander, was transferred to another formation.
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The result of such courtship, as a rule, is pregnancy and being sent to the rear, which in the language of military offices was called "a trip by order of 009." True, by order of 009, not only the LPG left - often the pregnancy was the result of real feelings. Moreover, at the front they escalated.
Here is what Nina Vishnevskaya, the medical instructor of the tank battalion, said about this. Once, with her unit, she was surrounded.
“We are already deciding: at night we will either break through or die. It was thought that we would most likely die. We sit, wait for the night to make an attempt to break through, and the lieutenant, he was 19 years old, no more, says: “Have you even tried? ". - "No." - "And I haven't tried it yet either. You'll die and you won't know what love is."
The veteran medical instructor emphasized that this was the most terrible thing - not that they would kill you, but that you would die without knowing the fullness of life. “We went to die for life, not yet knowing what life is,” Vishnevskaya recalled.
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B. Schneider cites interesting oral reminiscences and reflections of the participants in the Great Patriotic War. The author interviewed respondents on the question of the attitude of Soviet soldiers during the war to sex. As a result, he received a number of unexpected, even discouraging answers.
Vasil Bykov answered the question as follows:
“On the front line, people had absolutely no time for this. For example, I never thought further than until the evening. I only dreamed of surviving until dark, when the battle subsided. After that, you could take a breath, relax. At such hours, I only wanted to sleep, even hunger was not felt that way - just to forget ... I think that the bulk of the soldiers were so depressed that even in a calmer atmosphere they did not remember women.
And then, there were very young fighters in the infantry. Those who are older, who were 25-30 years old, who already had a family and some kind of profession, ended up in tankers or got jobs as drivers, in the kitchen, in orderlies, in shoemakers and could stay in the rear. And seventeen-eighteen-year-olds were given guns in their hands and sent to the infantry.
These youths, yesterday's schoolchildren, have not yet reached the age when a person wants and can live an active sexual life. Millions of these died without knowing a woman, and some without even experiencing the joy of the first kiss.
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Viktor Nekrasov, the author of the story "In the trenches of Stalingrad", noted during an interview that "in the German army, whatever it was, the soldiers regularly received vacations; there were also brothels, so the soldiers had somewhere to relax, make love. us - no leave, no brothels.
The officers lived with nurses, with signalmen, and the private could only engage in masturbation. In this regard, it was also very difficult for the Soviet soldier."
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General M.P. Korabelnikov, Doctor of Psychology, said:
“When I joined the army, I was not yet twenty and I still didn’t love anyone - then people grew up later. I gave all the time to study and until September 1942 I didn’t even think about love. And this was typical of all youth of that time Feelings awakened only at twenty-one or twenty-two.
And besides ... it was very hard in the war. When in forty-three - forty-four we began to advance, women began to be taken into the army, so that cooks, hairdressers, laundresses appeared in each battalion ... but there was almost no hope that any one would pay attention to a simple soldier.
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However, as B. Schneider notes, he heard the most amazing answer from General Nikolai Antipenko, who during the war was Deputy Marshals G.K. Zhukov and K.K. Rokossovsky on rear issues.
He reported that in the summer of 1944 two brothels were opened in the Red Army with the consent of the High Command with his direct participation.
It goes without saying that these brothels were called differently - rest houses, although they served exactly this purpose and were intended only for officers. There were many applicants. The experiment, however, ended touchingly - and in a very Russian way.
The first group of officers spent their three-week vacation according to plan. But after that, all the officers returned to the front and took all their girlfriends with them. No new ones have been taken.
The crew of the boat minesweeper of the Volga flotilla (from left to right): the Red Navy A. Shchebalina, V. Chapova, foreman of the 2nd class T. Kupriyanova, the Red Navy V. Ukhova, A. Tarasova. 1943 Photo provided by the author
About the role of women in the Great Patriotic War, we published most often laudatory, and since 1990 slanderous materials. In any case, I personally did not come across a single competent and objective study. Although, for the most part, our female servicemen honestly performed their military duty. But they were heavily compromised by men from great military leaders to journalists and party functionaries. But even the best soldier or commander is very easy to compromise by attributing undeserved successes.
A WOMAN ON A SHIP IS NOT ALWAYS UNFORTUNATELY
From an early age, it has jarred me when in the anniversary photographs of the Black Sea sailors, the first row is occupied by respectable ladies. Alas, there were no women in the crews of the ships of the Black Sea Fleet. But in the Caspian and Volga, everything was different. In 1941, 67 women were admitted to the Caspflot teams, in 1942 - 44, and in 1943 - 129. These were mostly the wives of sailors and people from sailors' families. For them, the difficulties of marine life were not news, and they boldly went to work as sailors, stokers and machinists. During the war years, Slovokhotova and Rapoport rose to the post of captain's assistant in Caspflot, Savitskaya, Kolodai, Izmailova and Kozlova became navigators of the Komsomol member.
Most of the women served in the Reidtanker. During 1942-1943, the shipping company took on its ships 260 women for the positions of privates and 85 women for the positions of officers.
But hundreds of photos of rear Black Sea ladies were published, and I did not see sailors from the Caspian Sea. In the Volga military flotilla there were minesweepers, the teams of which consisted of only women. Many hundreds of women served on the transport ships of the river fleets of the North from Pechora to Kolyma and Indigirka. But for some reason almost no one writes about them.
According to the order of the People's Commissariat of Defense No. 0099 of October 8, 1941, three women's air regiments were formed: the 586th fighter on the Yak-1, the 587th bomber on the Pe-2 (since 1943 - the 125th Guards) and the 588th night light bomber on the U-2 (on February 8, 1943, it was transformed into the 46th Taman Guards Regiment).
Needless to say, poorly fighting units never became guards.
Nevertheless, in 2005 a book appeared in which a certain "sweet couple" claimed that orders in the 46th Guards Regiment "were given through the bed."
The best answer can be the number of sorties by female pilots of the 46th regiment who received the title of Hero of the Soviet Union: Senior Lieutenant R.E. Aronov - 960; senior lieutenant E.A. Zhigulenko - 968; senior lieutenant N.F. Meklin - 980; senior lieutenant E.V. Ryabov - 890; senior lieutenant N.F. Sebrova - 1004 departures. For comparison: three times the heroes Kozhedub and Pokryshkin made 330 and 650 sorties, respectively. Of course, fighter pilots have their own specifics. But, in my opinion, female pilots who have made 800-1000 sorties deserve even greater awards.
But about whom, in the rear and at the front, did numerous obscene ditties sing? The answer is simple - about the so-called PZh, that is, field wives.
LOST COMMAND FACE
LPG in 1941-1945 became the norm in the Red Army. I foresee the indignation of the "leavened patriots" - this is, they say, slander! Well, let's remember September 1941. The enemy is rushing towards Moscow and Leningrad, and the commander of the Leningrad Front, Georgy Konstantinovich Zhukov, is very concerned about the spread of PJP.
"Top secret.
Order to the troops of the Leningrad Front No. 0055
In the headquarters and at the command posts of the commanders of divisions and regiments there are many women under the guise of serving, seconded, etc. A number of commanders, having lost the face of the communists, simply cohabitate ...
I order:
Under the responsibility of the Military Councils of the armies, commanders and commissars of individual units, by September 23, 1941, remove all women from headquarters and command posts. Leave a limited number of typists only in agreement with the Special Department.
It is curious that Comrade Zhukov himself in the fall of 1941 had a PPL - Lidia Vladimirovna Zakharova (military rank - senior lieutenant, position - Zhukov's personal nurse). Throughout the war, she relentlessly followed him. Zhukov awarded her the rank of senior lieutenant, although a nurse was not supposed to be an officer. She was awarded 10 military orders, including the Order of the Red Banner and the Order of the Red Star.
However, Zhukov's actions did not fall under his orders. It was precisely stipulated there who was supposed to have a PPL and who was not. The order spoke about the command posts of division commanders and below. Consequently, the commanders of corps, armies and fronts were not forbidden by order to have a LPL.
But did PPG appear in 1941 in the Red Army? The answer is no.
HISTORICAL HERITAGE
Almost all famous commanders of the Middle Ages and the New Age had one or more LPG. The same Peter the Great had several dozen of them.
The most famous LPG of the early 19th century was Maria Valevskaya, the wife of 70-year-old chamberlain Anestaziy Valevsky.
Most historians are sure that on January 17, 1807, Polish magnates literally slipped the 21-year-old Mary to Emperor Napoleon. The novel, with long breaks, lasted until June 28, 1815.
Napoleon did not hide his PJ, and in the army she was openly called the "Polish wife of the emperor." Nevertheless, the hopes of the lords did not come true, Marysia did not influence either the policy or the military plans of Napoleon.
In the meantime, Napoleon was having fun with the chamberlain Marysya, his future opponent Kutuzov was having fun in Bucharest with the 14-year-old noblewoman Alexandra (Luxandra) Guliano. Of course, Mikhailo Illarionovich did not know that in 2003 the wise Duma members would increase the "age of consent" from 14 to 16 years. I note that the father of the beautiful Alexandra, the Wallachian boyar Konstantin Filipesko, was clearly not a blunder. Since 1806, there was a war between Russia and Turkey, and the boyar slipped his 11-year-old daughter to the corps commander, General Mikhail Miloradovich. The brave crest was carried away by Alexandra and even promised to marry.
On this occasion, General Bagration, on December 29, 1809, rolled a slander to Minister of War Arakcheev: “... He shouted and wrote - I will give an example to everyone to serve and obey, etc., it turned out that he did not want to part with Mamzel Filipesko, ears in love. His love is God bless him, let him have fun, but her father is our first enemy, and he plays the first role in all of Wallachia ... Our friend is madly in love, and there is no way to get along with him.
Apparently, the letter had the desired effect, and in April 1810 Miloradovich was turned away from the army and sent to govern in Kyiv. Well, 13-year-old Luxandra was urgently married to the boyar Nicolae Guliano.
April 1, 1811 Kutuzov arrived in Bucharest and took command of the Danube army. Lord boyars took advantage of the opportunity and introduced Mikhail Illarionovich to Luxandra. Nicolae Guliano, of course, did not mind.
As an eyewitness wrote, a Frenchman in the Russian service Langeron: “Kutuzov liked her very much, and he, knowing the Wallachian customs well, ordered her husband to deliver her to him, which he did. The next day, Kutuzov introduced his beloved to us and introduced her into society.
Luxandra started something like a sovereign court under the commander-in-chief, arranged balls, parties. And her husband was engaged in supplying the Russian army with fodder. Well, the Russian troops, thanks to the competent command of Kutuzov, smashed the Turks, as they say, "on foreign territory and with little bloodshed." On October 25, 1811, 12,000 Turks dying of hunger surrendered on the banks of the Danube near Ruschuk, and 2,000 human and 8,000 horse corpses were found in the Turkish camp.
Napoleon's diplomats did their best to force the Sultan to continue the war. But hunger and, let's not dissemble, the huge bribes given by Kutuzov to Turkish pashas played a role. On May 16, 1812, Turkey ratified the Treaty of Bucharest. According to this agreement, Russia included the interfluve of the Prut and Dniester, that is, Bessarabia with the fortresses of Khotyn, Bendery, Akkerman, Kiliya and Izmail.
Thus, Kutuzov inflicted the first defeat on Napoleon five weeks before the crossing of the Berezina by the Great Army, lying on the couch with 14-year-old Luxandra.
HEROINES OF CIVIL
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| Larisa Reisner. Photo from 1920 |
All the heroes of the Civil War had LPG, including Mikhail Tukhachevsky, Vasily Chapaev, etc. We are most familiar with the three LLPs that have been included in dozens of books, films and performances.
So, in the TV series “His Excellency’s Adjutant”, which was released in 1969, Tanya Shchukina (Tatiana Ivanitskaya) was introduced as a friend of the Soviet intelligence officer Koltsov (played by Yuri Solomin). And their relationship was purely platonic.
In fact, the commander of the Volunteer Army, Lieutenant-General Mai-Maevsky and his gallant adjutant Pavel Makarov, had the Zhmudsky sisters from the family of a wealthy Kharkov merchant as their LPS. After spending time with the sisters, the drunk general and adjutant often drove to the front line in a car and raised the soldiers in a psychic attack. Always successful and always without a single scratch.
Later, the Zhmudsky sisters drove off to Belgium, and from there to the USA. Wrangel expelled Mai-Maevsky from the army, and sent Makarov to jail. The brave adjutant fled. Until mid-November 1920, in the Crimean mountains, he fought in the army of A. Mokrousov. Well, 20 years later, he was doing the same there and the same under the command of the same Mokrousov, but not against Baron Wrangel, but against Colonel General Manstein.
In the 1930s-1960s, two dozen films and performances were released in the USSR, where the main character was a female commissar in a leather jacket and with a Mauser. Alas, her prototype Larisa Reisner preferred the most expensive fur coats, dresses and diamond jewelry, and elegant browning to Mauser.
In 1916, 21-year-old Larisa began a stormy romance with the poet Gumilyov. Well, in August 1918, in Sviyazhsk, she became Trotsky's master. Lev Davydovich publicly called her "the Valkyrie of the revolution with the appearance of an ancient goddess." Larisa and Lev were in correspondence at least until 1922.
Leaving Sviyazhsk, Trotsky handed Larisa over to Fyodor Raskolnikov, whom he made commander of the Volga Flotilla. Larisa went to serve in the political administration of the flotilla and took the cabin of Empress Alexandra Feodorovna on the royal river yacht Mezhen.
At Mezhenya, Reisner, together with the flotilla, escorted to Astrakhan, and then, according to the plan, Reisner was supposed to go along the Caspian Sea to Petrovsk on the Kursk transport, together with the political council of the Volga-Caspian flotilla subordinate to her. But Lyalya loved the exotic and decided to go on the destroyer "Active". The commander of the destroyer Isakov was called to the Reisner mansion, to whom Lyalya capriciously stated: “That's it, captain! I decided to go to Petrovsk with you on a destroyer!”
However, the midshipman decisively refused for a very good reason: "In the latrine of the officer's compartment - one point." So Lyalya had to go to Petrovsk on the Kursk.
In June 1920, Trotsky appointed Raskolnikov commander of the Baltic Fleet. From Astrakhan to Petrograd two days by train. But Fedya and Lyalya traveled for a whole month to Yaroslavl on the Mezhen yacht.
In Kronstadt, Lyalya took several positions at once in the political department of the Baltic Fleet. Reisner toilets were not just beautiful, but defiantly luxurious. When famine reigned in Petrograd in 1919, one of Larisa’s acquaintances met her “twenty-two-year-old, perfumed and discharged, coquettishly calling herself“ komorsi ”- the commander of the naval forces. The fur coat is blue, the dress is lilac, the kid glove is fragrant with Guerlain Fol Aroma.
At the New Year's Eve ball at the House of Arts in 1921, Reisner appeared in a super-original ball gown. It turned out that the outfit was made according to the drawings of Leon Bakst for the ballet "Carnival" to the music of Schumann. At the direction of Larisa Mikhailovna, the dress was confiscated from the dressing rooms of the Mariinsky Theatre.
The poet Vsevolod Rozhdestvensky recalled that when he came to Larisa Reisner in the apartment of the former naval minister Grigorovich, which she occupied, he was amazed by the abundance of objects and utensils - carpets, paintings, exotic fabrics, bronze Buddhas, majolica dishes, English books, bottles of French spirits.
The political department of the Baltic Fleet ordered the creation of a theater named after Raskolnikov. Raskolnikov abandoned all official affairs and engaged in propaganda of Trotsky's ideas in the fleet, in every possible way discredited party leaders - opponents of Lev Davydovich. Larisa and her father, Professor Mikhail Reisner, actively helped him in this.
As a result, the Revolutionary Military Council had to remove Fedya and Lyalya from Kronstadt. And on time. A few days later, the Kronstadt rebellion began, in the emergence of which Raskolnikov and Reisner made a significant contribution.
Well, the third LPG, included in literature and cinema, was Nina Nechvolodova. At the end of 1919, the 20-year-old "Junker Nechvolodov" became an orderly of the White General Yakov Slashchev. In March 1920, the Reds tried to break into the Crimea through Perekop. On March 22, Lieutenant General Slashchev led 300 cadets of the Konstantinovsky School to the Chongarsky Bridge in a psychic attack. Next to the general was "Junker Nechvolodov." The junkers went on the attack in close formation, in step and with the orchestra. Nechvolodov was wounded, but did not leave the line. The Reds fled.
Envying Slashchev's success, Wrangel kicked him out of the army. At the end of November 1921, Slashchev and Nina returned to the USSR. The general was appointed to command the Shot courses, and Nina directed the theater created at the courses. Through the theater, Nechvolodova met Mikhail Bulgakov and his wife.
In 1925, the association "Red Cinema" made the film "Wrangel". In it, Slashchev was a consultant, and together with Nina they played themselves in the film. On January 11, 1929, Slashchev was assassinated in his apartment by the Trotskyist Lazar Kollenberg.
How the fate of Nina developed is unknown. In any case, I found out that in 1937 the feature film "Youth" was released, which told about the events of 1920 in the Crimea. The scriptwriter of the film was Nina Nechvolodova.
Well, in 1970 the film "Running" was released, created based on the work of Mikhail Bulgakov. Bulgakov was unable to embody the features of Slashchev in one image and presented him in two generals - a graduate of the Academy of the General Staff Khludov and a desperate grunt and drunkard General Chernoty. Well, Nina Nechvolodova became the prototype of Luska, the field wife of General Black.
THERE WERE NO PUNISHMENT
Since June 1941, LPG became the norm for most of the command staff of the Red Army. After the war, about half of the generals and marshals returned from the LPG to their legal spouses, such as Marshal Malinovsky from Raisa Galperina, Marshal Rokossovsky from Galina Talanova, Marshal Zhukov from Lidia Zakharova, etc. Well, the other half of the commanders entered into a legal marriage with the LPG. So, Marshal Katukov married Ekaterina Lebedeva, General Batov - Nina, whom he called Vasilka (for unknown reasons, her maiden name does not appear in numerous materials dedicated to her and the general).
However, even the abandoned PPS did not go to waste. Many illegitimate children received the names of famous commanders. The chest of all PJP without exception was decorated with an iconostasis of orders and medals. For some reason, the fathers-commanders most often gave their metresses the Order of the Red Star. Maybe due to the fact that the name of the order rhymed well in ditties with a different word?
Any secretary of the provincial regional party committee, after a call from the marshal or even his adjutant from Moscow, was in a hurry to allocate an apartment to the former PJ. All illegitimate children of generals and marshals made a brilliant career.
For communication with one or even several PJ, none of the top military leaders was punished. Let us recall once again Zhukov's order, in which it was necessary to punish up to and including the division commander. The story is widely known with complaints about Marshal Rokossovsky, who abused ties with the ladies, not only with the "sparrow" Galina Talanova, but also with many others, including the artist Valentina Serova. When asked what to do with the marshal, Stalin replied: "We will envy Comrade Rokossovsky."
As far as I know, out of all the PJs, only two of the masters of Lieutenant General Andrei Vlasov were unlucky. The first PPZh - military doctor Agnes Podmazenko - became pregnant and in January 1942 was sent to the rear. There she gave birth to a son, Andrei, but soon got 5 years "for connection with a traitor to the Motherland." It is curious that the legal wife Anna Mikhailovna Vlasova received 8 years in the horns!
The second PJ - cook Maria Voronova - was captured along with Vlasov. The Germans sent her to a concentration camp. Maria fled from there and tried to contact Vlasov, but he already had a flirtation with Agenheld Bindenberg, the sister of Himmler's adjutant.
As you can see, PJs have a long history, and, naturally, the question arises, is it necessary to fight them? Why, in civilian life, can an engineer or businessman live in a civil marriage for decades and beat anyone in the face who gets into his personal life? But an officer cannot live in a service apartment with a civilian wife in a military camp, and any boss who has at least a dozen mistresses has the right to demand that the officer “legitimize his relationship.”
Is a legal marriage always good for an officer and for the combat capability of a unit? A typical example: in mid-November 1990, the 57th Guards Fighter Aviation Regiment was redeployed to Norilsk from the Besovets airfield near Petrozavodsk. This flight "triggered protests and appeals to the authorities and the media by the wives of military personnel." And in 2014, the reluctance of pilots to relocate to subpolar airfields was primarily due to the opinion of their wives.
The fighter aviation regiment is only 30 pilots. The state will not become poorer if pilots in Tiksi and Belushya Guba receive double salaries and two years of service. In a military camp near the airfield, it is worth placing fifty young female military personnel (radar operators, electrical engineers, signalmen, canteen personnel, etc.). A rhetorical question: can a qualified pilot serve three years at this airfield without the Bolshoi Theater and "clucking hens"?
Well, as for favoritism and corruption in the army, then legal wives always give odds to PJ. So, in my opinion, both categories of officers' wives should have equal rights, and their status should be determined by the officer himself and no one else. Moreover, the activities of both of them should not reduce the combat capability of the military unit. No one is allowed to make a nightly scandal over socks thrown on the floor or a conversation with a barmaid to a missile officer taking up combat duty, or an interceptor pilot on the eve of a flight.
Well, all the awards of legal wives and PZh or their appointment to economic positions related to the distribution of material values should be checked three times by all instances compared to ordinary women.
Andrey Dyshev
LPG. field wife
God only knows how it is there - in Afghanistan, in an atmosphere saturated with rancid dust, on parched, tormented land, where metal was torn and burned to shreds, where bloodied bandages, like flowering poppies, could cover the field, where the fighters communicated with each other only shouting and cursing - how could women survive there; little of! how could they love and be loved, how could they not fade, fade, turn into dust? God alone knows, God alone...
I swear to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.
Chapter last
The head of the political department, the personification of moral purity, the standard of impeccable behavior in the service and at home, once again brought down his heavy fist on the door. Alcohol dulled the susceptibility, and the colonel did not feel pain.
Gerasimov, open up!
Lieutenant Colonel Kutsy, deputy chief of staff, stood nearby and, shrinking like a disturbed snail, awaited the denouement with trepidation. His appearance justified his name. The lieutenant colonel, in comparison with his boss, looked small, somehow bruised, underdeveloped. He had narrow shoulders, so narrow that even the edges of the shoulder straps hung down. A sand-colored Afghan jacket shriveled up on a rickety chest. And the head was small, flattened laterally.
Here's the bitch! muttered the chief communist of the division and banged on the door again.
The barracks hid. The soldiers who witnessed this scene were interested. A rare sight! The big boss is trying to take the commander of the sixth company, Senior Lieutenant Gerasimov, red-handed.
Kutsy, as befits the active six of the head of the political department, began to show zeal.
Orderly! Gerasimov is definitely at home? he shouted to the soldier, who was standing by the bedside table, suppressing his amusement with difficulty.
That's right, Comrade Lieutenant Colonel. At myself.
The soldiers wandered around the barracks, pretending to be busy with their own affairs. Everyone was terribly interested in how it would all end.
He must be drunk and asleep, Kutsy suggested. - I'll rot at the party commission ...
Chief here! - roared the chief.
Chief!! Kutsy chirped louder.
Sergeant Nefedov did not show up. He knew about what was happening and watched the situation from afar. The head of the political department didn't give a damn about him. As, in fact, any staff officer. Nefedov was not a member of the party, he didn’t need the Komsomol either. He has never been caught in a crime. It was difficult to cling to the ensign. He did not miss a single war - and what else could be scared here?
- ... your mother! - losing control over himself, roared the nachpo. His grim, puffy face turned purple. Are there any officers here? Mount me!!
Fighter, run bring the crowbar!! - Breaking into falsetto, Kutsy shouted to the orderly.
The final was approaching. Sweet twist. The cage slammed shut, and the bird finally got caught. Kutsy personally saw how Gerasimov put Gulnora Karimova, a nurse from the medical battalion, at the disposal of the company. Dozens of times he was informed about the relationship between the commander of the sixth company and the nurse, informers, but for the first time Kutsem managed to see it with his own eyes.
Don't stop! Run for the crowbar! croaked the nachpo. He himself no longer dared to move away from the door, so as not to miss the bird. Kutsy rushed to the exit from the module, grabbing the sleeves of any soldier who happened to be nearby: “Crowbar! Is there crowbar in this fucking company or not? Run scrap to me! Deprived of intelligence, he did not understand that he looked ridiculous and ridiculous and the soldiers could hardly hide their smiles.
Someone brought a bayonet shovel.
Hack! - ordered the soldier nachpo.
The soldier was young, so he fell under the arm of Kutsem. He was still afraid of the chiefs more than the war, and therefore without delay stuck a rusty bayonet between the casing and the door. The door creaked. The soldier gently pressed on the handle. Contradictory feelings rushed in the fighter's soul. On the one hand, he stupidly followed orders. But at the same time, out of the corner of my brain, I realized that I would have to answer to the company commander for the broken lock.
The case stalled. The nachpo's blood pressure rose from impatience. He imagined this sweet scene in every detail: trrrah! the door is torn off its hinges, and he sees a pale, hunted Gerasimov. The officer stands in the middle of the office and hastily zips up his fly. Somewhere in the corner, trying to decrease in size, dissolve, become invisible, rushing about, getting tangled up in Gul Karimov's clothes. The zipper on her jeans is stuck and she can't fasten them. A white body shirt with yellow stars embroidered on the chest is worn inside out, the collar is warped, a bra with tangled straps is visible in the section. A cute doll, convulsively crumpling her disgrace revealed to everyone ... But no, no, Gulya is least of all interested in the nachpo! He will glance at her only briefly, his lips will tremble in a contemptuous smile, and he will immediately turn his gaze to Gerasimov. All arrogance will come down from this kid at this shameful moment. All his feigned pride will vanish without a trace! The nachpo will look into the eyes of the company commander - his most delicious prey will become limp in them, for the sake of which he is now swelled in front of the door upholstered with aviation duralumin. Fear and humiliation, the pitiful look of the vanquished - that's what the head of the political department needed. See the fear and humiliation in the eyes of Gerasimov! Can anyone imagine this greatest pleasure?
This moment was too close for the chiefs to have the patience to watch the soldier picking at the crack in the door with the tip of a shovel. He snatched the shovel from the soldier and with all his foolishness hit in the middle of the door. Kutsy, just in case, took a step back - the chief could accidentally hit him with the shaft. The roar reverberated through the barracks. The soldiers no longer wandered, they kept at a decent distance, looking at the colonel as if he were a clown in the middle of a circus arena.
Gerasimov!! - snapped the chief officer, for the last time offering the company commander to voluntarily surrender.
And then something inexplicable happened. Someone approached the head of the political department from the back - too close, clearly crossing the line of subordination.
Did you call, Comrade Colonel?
Nachpo lowered his shovel and turned his head. Before him stood Gerasimov. Senior Lieutenant Gerasimov, commander of the sixth company. Dry as a roach, brown from the sun, shorn bald. And those eyes, those filthy, fearless eyes, cold, impassive, like glass with bottomless blue.
The head of the political department barely restrained himself from hitting Gerasimov with a bayonet - on the bridge of the nose, exactly between those impudent eyes. Dropped the shovel. Her heart was beating at a rate of one hundred and forty beats per minute. The Colonel was writhing with hatred.
Where was? - Barely unclenching his teeth, hissed nachpo.
In the medical battalion for dressing, Gerasimov answered calmly.
Damn, why didn't you open it, we've been breaking into you for half an hour already !! shouted Kutsy.
The soldiers watching the scene burst out laughing. Kutsy became crimson. The chief mentally swore at his deputy, a rare degenerate, moved him with his elbow to the side, stood hardly close to Gerasimov, touching him with his rounded stomach.
Nacpo clenched his fists. He knew that Gerasimov was lying, lying, lying, he had a snout in a cannon, he was also a bastard, also a coward, also a scoundrel, a thief, a drunkard and a beast! Same, same! No better than the rest, not a gram, not a drop. Because here everyone is like that, every one of them! But, the scoundrel, does not give up, does not prick, does not twist into a knot under the oppressive gaze of the chief. Well shit, I'll break it anyway! I'll still smear it on the parade ground! Fuck you, not the second order! And you will be replaced by me in Transbaikalia, in the most rotten garrison, and there, you hideaway, you will demonstrate your pride until the end of your life!
You smell like vodka! - rumbled the chief.
You are wrong.
Idiot shovel! Where to put her now? The soldiers chuckle. Bastard company! Bastard Division! These freaks don't honor an officer with big stars. Nachpo for them - dick dog! In the Union, at the sight of the head of the political department, young soldiers piss with fear. And here they imagine themselves as heroes, they are not afraid of anyone. You brutes will dance with me. You won't crawl out of my battlefield! You will rot at my points for months! So that you all crap yourself from dizuhi and typhus. Damn dirty!
Kutsy, clear the barracks, - said the nachpo, choking on words.
Get everyone out!! yelled Kutsy.
Nachpo leaned on Gerasimov with a look. Almost all officers were afraid of this look. Especially those who made a career for themselves, planned to enter the academy or dreamed of being replaced in a prestigious district - in Odessa or, say, Kyiv. Gerasimov, a bitch, was still young for the academy. I did not ask for the position of battalion commander. I did not look for a good place in the Union. He didn't want anything at all. He got himself a bastard, a woman, cohabits with her and thinks that he will be like cheese in butter until he gets bored. And the head of the political department of the division does not care for him ... Nothing. They didn't break them like that here. Gerasimov is a communist. And this noose is worse than war. He has a wife in the Union. Here - PZh, Gulya Karimova. In party parlance, this is called immoral behavior. In two counts, you can fly out of the party. And you would not wish an exception from the CPSU to the enemy. End of career. If you don't get into the academy, you won't get a position. You will spend the rest of your days hanging around in some lousy garrison. Nachpo can easily ruin Gerasimov's life. Easy!
