Lieutenant General V.O. Kappel, Knight of St. George, commander-in-chief of the White armies of the Eastern Front, died heroically during the Siberian Ice Campaign while crossing Lake Baikal. Until the last hour, he shared with his soldiers the hardships and hardships of wartime, and the soldiers did not leave their commander, it was not for nothing that they proudly called themselves Kappelians even after his death.
An ice campaign is 3000 miles from Omsk to Transbaikalia, the end of 1919, winter, a convoy of tired, hungry, ragged, freezing and sick people stretched in a chain, steadily moving forward after the commander, whom they wholeheartedly believe.
Not dressed in winter, refusing the slightest comfort, Kappel, always in the forefront of the army. During a difficult transition into a snowstorm far from home, he fell waist-deep into a deep snowdrift and soaked his frozen feet. They were immediately iced over. 70 miles to the nearest village, the general walked on lifeless, stiff legs, in a chill, losing consciousness. On the third day, unconscious, he was brought to the taiga village of Barga, where the doctor, using a simple knife without anesthesia, amputated the frostbitten tissues on both legs. However, even after the operation, Vladimir Oskarovich did not agree to leave the saddle, despite the fact that his soldiers found a sled for the sick general. In the evenings, the commander-in-chief was taken out of the saddle and transferred to the bed, from where he continued to lead the army, he could no longer walk.
About a week passed after the amputation, but the general's condition worsened - the fever increased, consciousness was confused, there was a cough that was not paid attention to, the doctors did not stop, pneumonia developed, and Kappel was laid in a sleigh. On January 21, 1920, Vladimir Oskarovich transferred command of the armies of the Eastern Front to General Voitsekhovsky. Physical forces are rapidly leaving Kappel, at dawn on January 25, he dies in the field infirmary, never regaining consciousness. Shortly before his death, Kappel gave Woitsekhovsky an engagement ring and a St. George cross with a request to pass them on to his wife. Vladimir Oskarovich had no other valuables.
The coffin with the body of V.O. Kappel, despite the difficulties of wartime, was taken to Chita. In the autumn of 1922, the remains of Kappel were transported to Harbin by the White Guard troops who left Russia and reburied near the northern wall of the Holy Iberian Church. A granite monument was erected over the grave with the inscription "of the General Staff, Lieutenant General Vladimir Oskarovich Kappel", the monument was destroyed in the 50s by order of the Soviet authorities.
There were many legends around Kappel's grave in Harbin. They talked about the fact that the remains were secretly transported to an Orthodox cemetery outside the city, and that, allegedly, a certain Chinese, who was instructed by the authorities to desecrate the grave, dug it up and, finding imperishable relics, placed a cross from the monument on the coffin lid, threw the grave land and reported on the completion of the task. In addition to legends, there were also contradictory reports of those citizens of the USSR who worked in the Soviet institutions of Harbin in the 50s and were involved in the destruction of the monument.
A long and painstaking work began on organizing the exhumation and reburial of the remains, in which many representatives of secular and spiritual organizations of Russia and China took part.
A family
- Father - Oscar Pavlovich Kappel (-) - a descendant of immigrants from Sweden, a hereditary nobleman of the Kovno province. He served in Turkestan: first as a "lower rank", and then as an officer. For bravery during the fighting against the troops of the Emirate of Bukhara, he was awarded the soldier's St. George's Cross of the 4th degree. For the courage shown during the capture of the Jizzakh fortress, he was promoted to ensign of the army infantry and awarded the Order of St. Anna 4th degree with the inscription "For Courage" and the Order of St. Stanislav 3rd degree with swords and a bow. In transferred to the service in the Separate corps of gendarmes, captain.
- Mother - Elena Petrovna, nee Postolskaya (1861-1949), daughter of Lieutenant General Pyotr Ivanovich Postolsky - participant in the Crimean War, hero of the Defense of Sevastopol, holder of the Order of St. George 4th degree. The mother of Vladimir Oskarovich Kappel survived the Civil War and the time of Stalinist repressions, replacing one letter in her surname and becoming E.P. Koppel. Lived in Moscow.
- Brother - Boris, sister - Vera.
- Wife - Olga Sergeevna, nee Strolman. She was born on July 24, 1888. Daughter of a real state councilor, director of a cannon factory. The wedding took place in 1909 in secret (V. O. Kappel stole his beloved from his parents' house in January 1909 and married her in a rural church), since the bride's parents were against her marriage to a young officer. Relations between V. O. Kappel and them normalized only after he entered the Nikolaev Academy of the General Staff, the end of which made it possible to count on a successful career. During the civil war, she was taken hostage by the Bolsheviks, but attempts to blackmail the general with her help were unsuccessful. After the Civil War, she remained in Russia, again taking her maiden name Strolman. She died April 7, 1960.
- Children - Tatyana and Cyril.
Education
He completed his primary education in 1894. He graduated from the 2nd Cadet Corps in St. Petersburg (), served as a cadet rank in the Nikolaev Cavalry School (graduating in the first category and graduating to the 54th Novomirgorodsky Dragoon Regiment with production in cornets).
From November 9, 1915 to March 14, 1916 - senior adjutant of the headquarters of the 14th cavalry division. In November 1915, Vladimir Oskarovich temporarily acted as chief of staff of the division.
Already on October 2, 1917, V. O. Kappel left the service and departed on his vacation, which was allowed to him due to illness, to Perm to his family. Vladimir Oskarovich no longer returned to the front of the world war, and he also did not find the final collapse of the army ...
Participation in the civil war
From Perm to Samara
General Staff Lieutenant General V. O. Kappel. Winter 1919
He refused the position of head of the department of the District Headquarters offered by the Reds, about which the corresponding personal telegram from V. O. Kappel was received in the department for office work in the service of the General Staff.
At the first opportunity - immediately after the occupation of Samara by the troops of the Czechoslovak Corps who rebelled against the Bolsheviks who tried to disarm and intern them and the beginning of a local uprising - he ended up in the People's Army of the Committee of Members of the Constituent Assembly as Assistant Chief of the Operations Department of the General Staff. Vladimir Oskarovich remained at this post for less than a day ... The number of the first volunteer units - a couple of infantry companies, a cavalry squadron and a horse battery with two guns - was negligible in comparison with the Red forces that were beginning to hang on all sides. Therefore, there were few officers who wanted to command the first Samara volunteers among the officers - everyone considered the matter to be doomed to failure in advance.
Only one Lieutenant Colonel Kappel volunteered:
One of his contemporaries recalled a meeting on June 9 or 10, 1918, of General Staff officers living in Samara, at which the question was raised of who would lead the volunteer units:
| There were no people willing to take on a difficult and responsible role. Everyone was silent, embarrassed, lowering their eyes. Someone timidly suggested casting lots. And then, modest in appearance, almost unknown to anyone, an officer who had recently arrived in Samara stood up and asked for the words: “Since there are no people who want it, then temporarily, until a senior is found, allow me to lead units against the Bolsheviks,” he said calmly and quietly. . At that moment, history entered the name of Lieutenant Colonel of the General Staff Vladimir Oskarovich Kappel in its book of white struggle ... |
And Kappel "led", so successfully that already in June - August his name began to rattle throughout the Volga, the Urals and Siberia. Kappel took not by number, but by skill, in a Suvorov way, which was already shown by his first brilliant operation in Syzran.
A monarchist by conviction, far from the views of the leaders of the SRs of KOMUCH, V. O. Kappel was sure that the main task of the moment was the fight against Bolshevism. For him, it was not so important under what slogans the work of KOMUCH was going on, the main thing was the opportunity to immediately enter into a struggle with the Soviet power ... First, having destroyed this power, then it would be possible to equip Russia on the basis of the thousand-year experience of its development and existence.
From Samara to Simbirsk
Initially, Vladimir Oskarovich led a volunteer detachment of 350 people (combined infantry battalion of Captain Buzkov (2 companies, 90 bayonets), a cavalry squadron (45 sabers) of Staff Captain Stafievsky, the Volga Horse Battery of Captain Vyrypaev (with 2 guns and 150 servants), horse intelligence, subversive team and economic unit), called the 1st Samara volunteer squad and formed on June 9, 1918 in Samara. Staff captain M. M. Maksimov became the chief of staff of the squad. According to V. E. Shambarov, the core of the emerging People's Army was the former Kornilov strikers, who did not make their way to the South of Russia and settled on the Volga.
The first battle of the detachment under the command of Vladimir Oskarovich took place near Syzran on June 11, 1918: the operation went exactly according to the commander’s plan: thanks to the “wide maneuver” - Kappel’s favorite method of warfare subsequently, the combination of which with the “deep detour” became his hallmark, always leading to resounding victories over the Reds.
Syzran was taken by Kappel with a sudden stunning blow.
| Already the first battles conducted by V.O. Kappel showed that the General Staff officer, who spent the entire Great War at the headquarters of the first cavalry divisions, and then at the headquarters of the Southwestern Front, is able to brilliantly apply the knowledge and experience gained in practice. The basis of his successful actions was, first of all, an accurate calculation and consideration of the specifics of the Civil War, a balanced assessment of both his own forces and the forces of the enemy. He scrupulously weighed the degree of acceptable risk directly on the battlefield, and that is why his blows were so devastating. |
Having taken Syzran on June 11, 1918, the 12th detachment of Kappel's volunteers is already returning to Samara, from where it is transferred along the Volga to Stavropol-Volzhsky in order to take the city, which Vladimir Oskarovich successfully does, having cleared the bank of the Volga opposite the city along the way. On July 10, Kappel is already giving a new battle near Syzran, which was again occupied by the Reds and returning it under the control of KOMUCH. This was followed by the capture of Buguruslan and Buzuluk. And the defeat of the Reds by Kappel after a hard battle at the Melekes station throws the enemy back to Simbirsk, thus securing Samara.
Soon, from an ordinary lieutenant colonel, Vladimir Oskarovich became one of the most famous white generals on the Eastern Front. Kappel also enjoyed great respect among his enemies - the Bolshevik newspaper Krasnaya Zvezda in 1918 called him " little Napoleon".
The Bolshevik headquarters, by a separate order, appointed cash bonuses: for the head of Kappel - 50,000 rubles, as well as for unit commanders ...
Said while reading the order and laughing Kappel.
In the summer battles of 1918, Vladimir Oskarovich proved himself not only as a talented military leader, he became a true leader of the volunteers of the Volga region, becoming related to ordinary volunteers, along with them and other leaders of the detachment, sharing all the dangers and hardships of battles with them, having won the sincere love of his subordinates :
| “... A modest, slightly taller than average military man, dressed in a camouflage tunic and lancers retuza, in officer cavalry boots, with a revolver and a saber on his belt, without shoulder straps and only with a white bandage on his sleeve” - Vladimir Oskarovich remained so in the memory of his contemporaries.
At that time, every commander, including Kappel, was at the same time an ordinary soldier. On the Volga, Kappel more than once had to lie in a chain with his volunteers and fire at the Reds. Maybe that's why he knew the mood and needs of his soldiers so subtly. As usual, all the ranks of the detachment had to have rifles or carbines. Kappel was the most exemplary in this respect. He did not part with the rifle even when he was commander in chief of the armies. The detachment ate from the common soldier's kitchens or canned food. In the cavalry, none of the officers had officer saddles for a long time. Everyone had soldier saddles, as they were more comfortable for a pack. The volunteers of the detachment, seeing their chief all the time before their eyes, living the same life with them, became more and more attached to Kappel every day. Experiencing joy and sorrow together, they fell in love with him and were ready for everything for him, not sparing their lives. |
On July 17, a shock consolidated Russian-Czech detachment (2 infantry battalions, a cavalry squadron, a Cossack hundred, 3 batteries) under the command of Lieutenant Colonel Kappel marches on Simbirsk, and, having made a 150-kilometer forced march, takes the city on July 21, 1918. Simbirsk defended superior forces of the Reds (about 2000 people and strong artillery) under the command of the Soviet commander G. D. Gai, who later became famous, plus the defenders had an advantage in choosing a position for the defense of the city. Commander-in-Chief of the Eastern Front of the Red Army I. I. Vatsetis in his telegram dated July 20, 1918 ordered
The Soviet commander Guy could not oppose anything to Kappel's "crown" sudden flank maneuver, who shot down the red defense of Simbirsk in the early morning of July 21 and, having cut the Simbirsk-Inza railway, broke into the city from the rear.
The next success of V. O. Kappel was solemnly announced in order No. 20 for the troops of the People's Army of KOMUCH dated July 25, 1918, and on August 24, 1918, for the victory near Simbirsk, by order of KOMUCH No. 254, V. O. Kappel was promoted to colonel.
By the beginning of August 1918, the “territory of the Constituent Assembly” stretched from west to east for 750 miles (from Syzran to Zlatoust, from north to south - for 500 miles (from Simbirsk to Volsk). Under his control, except for Samara, Syzran, Simbirsk and Stavropol-Volzhsky were also Sengiley, Bugulma, Buguruslan, Belebey, Buzuluk, Birsk, Ufa. South of Samara, a detachment of Lieutenant Colonel F. E. Makhin took Khvalynsk and approached Volsk. The Czechs, under the command of Lieutenant Colonel Voitsekhovsky, occupied Yekaterinburg.
Kappel's successes frightened the Bolshevik leadership, and the fall of Simbirsk, the birthplace of the "leader of the world proletariat", made a huge negative impression in Moscow. Trotsky calls for reinforcements, announces "the revolution is in danger", and arrives in person on the Volga. All possible Red forces urgently begin to go to the Eastern Front. As a result, the following Red forces were deployed against Simbirsk and Samara: the 1st Army of M.N. Tukhachevsky, consisting of 7 thousand bayonets and 30 guns, as well as the Volskaya division from the 4th Army. In Kazan, under the personal leadership of the commander of the Eastern Front, I. I. Vatsetis, the 5th Soviet army was concentrated, consisting of 6 thousand soldiers, 30 guns, 2 armored trains, 2 airplanes and 6 armed steamers.
The choice of the direction of the new strike caused a lot of controversy. The main headquarters in Samara, represented by Colonel S. Chechek, Colonel N. A. Galkin and Colonel P. P. Petrov, insisted on delivering the main blow to Saratov, which was of strategic importance for the People's Army. Colonel V. O. Kappel, A. P. Stepanov, V. I. Lebedeev, B. K. Fortunatov defended the need for a strike in the direction of Kazan. As a result, the demonstration planned by the command turned into the capture of the city by units of Kappel and Stepanov.
General Kappel at the staff car. 1918
Having started moving from Simbirsk on steamships on August 1, the flotilla of the People's Army, having previously defeated the Red flotilla at the mouth of the Kama, already created a threat to Kazan on August 5, landing troops on the pier and the opposite bank of the Volga. Kappel with three companies headed east, bypassing the city, while the Czechs attacked the city from the pier. On August 6, in the middle of the day, Kappel entered the city from the rear, causing panic in the ranks of the defending Bolsheviks. Nevertheless, the battle dragged on due to the stubborn resistance of the Latvian riflemen (the Soviet 5th Latvian regiment), who even began to push the Czechs back to the pier. The decisive was the transition to the side of the White 300 fighters of the Serbian battalion of Major Blagotich, stationed in the Kazan Kremlin, who at the decisive moment delivered an unexpected flank blow to the Reds. As a result, the resistance of the Latvians was broken.
The military field court sentenced them, as foreigners who did not take up their own business, to be shot.
Kappel's telegram about the capture of Kazan
After two days of heavy fighting, despite the numerical superiority of the Reds, as well as the presence of serious fortifications on the defending side, on August 7, by noon, Kazan was taken by the joint efforts of the Samara detachment of the People's Army, its combat flotilla and Czechoslovak units. Trophies "could not be counted", the gold reserves of the Russian Empire were captured (Kappel did everything to take Russia's gold reserves out of Kazan in time and save them for the White movement). The losses of the Samara detachment amounted to 25 people.
As for the Reds defending in Kazan, I. I. Vatsetis, who personally commanded the Eastern Front instead of the killed Muravyov, said the best about them: “... in their mass they turned out to be completely incapable of battle due to their tactical unpreparedness and indiscipline.” At the same time, the commander of the red Eastern Front miraculously escaped capture.
The value of the capture of Kazan by the troops of V. O. Kappel:
- the Academy of the General Staff, headed by General A.I. Andogsky, located in Kazan, moved to the anti-Bolshevik camp in full force;
- thanks to the success of Kappel's troops, the uprising at the Izhevsk and Votkinsk factories succeeded;
- along the Vyatka River, the Reds left the Kama;
- Soviet Russia lost Kama bread;
- Huge warehouses with weapons, ammunition, medicines, ammunition, as well as Russia's gold reserves (650 million gold rubles in coins, 100 million rubles in credit marks, gold bars, platinum and other valuables) were captured.
From Kazan to Ufa
With the capture of Kazan, the reorganization of the People's Army followed: the Volga Front was created under the command of Colonel S. Chechek, which united all Russian and Czechoslovak troops. The front was divided into military groups: Kazan, Simbirsk (under the command of Colonel V.O. Kappel), Syzran, Khvalynsk, Nikolaev, Ufa, a group of the Ural Cossack army and a group of the Orenburg Cossack army. In Kazan, parts of the People's Army planned to deploy a corps of two divisions, but there was no time left for this ...
Immediately after the capture of Kazan, Kappel begins to develop a plan for a further attack on Moscow through Nizhny Novgorod, because only about 300 miles remained before the Golden-domed, and long-term positional defense in the situation that developed immediately after the capture of Kazan was not possible. At a meeting of officers of the General Staff in Kazan, Vladimir Oskarovich insisted on moving further towards Moscow. Kappel's plan was based on the information received about the readiness of the workers of the Nizhny Novgorod Sormovo plant to oppose Soviet power. The episode that took place on August 5, when V. O. Kappel answered the question of A. P. Stepanov, “Will we take Moscow?” answered in the affirmative.
Kappel suggested to Galkin, Lebedev and Fortunatov to build on their success - to take Nizhny Novgorod on the move, and with it the second "golden pocket", which would certainly deprive the Bolsheviks of the "golden key" in the game with the Kaiser: before the signing of the "Additional agreements" in Berlin only 20 days left. But the headquarters “troika”, as well as the Czechs, referring to the lack of reserves for the defense of Samara, Simbirsk and Kazan, categorically opposed the bold plan of the colonel, who claimed that the one who advances wins the civil war (general A.I. Denikin; he believed that in a civil war, the impulse of the attackers was fundamentally important, and heavily fortified and even seemingly impregnable positions were not as decisive as they were in the Great War; because of this conviction, Denikin did not pay attention to the creation in the course of the offensive during the Campaign to Moscow of the troops of the South of Russia, defensive fortified lines, for which, in case of failure, the troops could be able to "hook"). Instead of an offensive, the Social Revolutionaries preferred limited defense, which was a major strategic mistake of KOMUCH, because despite all the calls, the influx of volunteers into the People's Army was weak - even teachers and students of the Academy of the General Staff in Kazan evaded mobilization, continuing to observe "neutrality".
Most of the officers conferring in August 1918 in Kazan decided, as the textbooks taught: “First, consolidate what was won, and then move on” - and V. O. Kappel’s bold plans were not given a chance to be realized.
Meanwhile, the fears of the General Staff in Samara were soon justified: the Bolshevik command made every effort to return Kazan, - in Sviyazhsk, where the remnants of the defeated Red troops retreated from Kazan, the people's commissar for military affairs and the chairman of the Supreme Military Council of the Soviet Republic L. D arrived Trotsky, who developed the most vigorous activity there and applied the most cruel measures to establish discipline in the scattered and demoralized Red troops. Thanks to the strategically important bridge across the Volga, which remained in the hands of the Bolsheviks, the 5th Soviet Army quickly received reinforcements and soon Kazan was surrounded by the Reds from three sides.
From the composition of the Baltic Fleet to the Volga, the Bolshevik leadership transferred 3 destroyers, and the local Volga steamships of the Reds were armed with heavy naval guns. The advantage on the water quickly passed to the Reds. Samara gave no additional reserves, declaring that Kazan must hold out on its own. The forces of the volunteers were melting, and the Reds, on the contrary, increased their pressure by sending their best troops to the Volga, that is, the Latvian regiments.
In the subsequent failures of the People's Army, the main role was played by the complete absence of reserves not trained by the Socialist-Revolutionary leadership of KOMUCH - despite the time that Kappel's successes on the Volga gave, and the opportunities that gave in terms of mobilization the territories under the control of KOMUCH.
Kappel, instead of marching on Moscow, a week after the capture of Kazan, that is, on August 14, 1918, he had to hastily return to Simbirsk, where the position of the People's Army deteriorated sharply - units of the 1st Red Army were advancing on the city. On August 14-17, a fierce battle took place near Simbirsk, in which Kappel proved himself to be a talented tactician, leading his units into battle directly from the ships. The military talent of Kappel clashed with the commensurate talent of Tukhachevsky. On the third day of a stubborn battle, the latter was forced to withdraw and move his headquarters to Inza, 80 miles west of Simbirsk.
Not having time to complete the operation near Simbirsk and barely starting to develop a plan to pursue the retreating troops of the future Marshal of the Soviet Union, Kappel receives an order to urgently return to the Kazan region to participate in the battles for Sviyazhsk, where he and his brigade went on ships on August 25. The Kappel brigade at that time consisted of two rifle regiments, a cavalry squadron and three artillery batteries with a total number of about 2000 people with 10-12 guns.
In the battles for Sviyazhsk, Kappel was initially successful. Parts of his brigade broke into the station, nearly capturing the headquarters of the 5th Army and Trotsky's personal train, but just at that time reinforcements approached the Reds and units of the 5th Army, supported by naval artillery, began to cover the left flank of the brigade. In view of the overwhelming superiority of the enemy, Kappel had to abandon the capture of Sviyazhsk, but the operation caused a strong panic among the Bolsheviks and temporarily eased the situation of Kazan. Kappel insisted on a second attack on Sviyazhsk, but, as before near Simbirsk, he failed to complete what he had begun - the brigade was urgently called to Simbirsk, the situation of which had deteriorated sharply.
By the beginning of September 1918, the offensive of the People's Army finally fizzled out: the Northern group stops its offensive near Sviyazhsk, Khvalynskaya - near Nikolaevsk. By the autumn of 1918, the People's Army was in a desperate situation: its few detachments at the front could no longer hold back the Bolshevik forces, which were many times superior to them. In this situation, the most combat-ready brigade of V. O. Kappel played the role of a kind of "fire brigade", being, in essence, the only mobile reserve of the People's Army on a huge front from Kazan to Simbirsk.
Kappel, who personally arrived in Samara in September for help, was told in KOMUCH: all this is nothing, the main thing is that "we have now achieved the formation of the All-Russian government and our names have gone down in history."
On September 5, 1918, the general offensive of the Soviet Eastern Front began. The main battles unfolded around Kazan, where the Reds created a fourfold superiority over the small forces of Colonel A.P. Stepanov defending the city, consisting of only officers and volunteers. It was not possible to give a serious battle in such conditions, and as a result, Kazan was surrendered under pressure from three sides.
The fall of Kazan endangered Simbirsk as well. On September 9, the Reds went on the offensive in the Buinsk area and, having repelled all counterattacks, by September 11 they managed to cut the Simbirsk-Kazan railway and the Syzran-Simbirsk highway, pinning the defenders to the Volga.
The catastrophe in the north led to a sharp deterioration in the situation in the south: despite all attempts to stop the advance of the Reds, Volsk was abandoned on September 12, then Khvalynsk. The units of the 2nd Infantry Syzran Division that defended them were drawn to Syzran.
V. O. Kappel approached Simbirsk from Kazan only on September 12, by which time the city had already been evacuated. The stubborn attempts of his brigade to return the city are not crowned with success. Kazan, which was surrendered almost simultaneously with Simbirsk, on the night of September 11, could not resist either. Now Kappel had to solve a complex and difficult task of a different kind: to defend the direction to Ufa and Bugulma and at the same time cover the retreat from near Kazan of the Northern Group of the People's Army of Colonel Stepanov. This task was fully completed by Colonel Kappel, despite the difficult situation: bad weather, low spirits, disagreement with the Czechs, poor food supply. Kappel manages to establish a defense on the left bank of the Volga opposite Simbirsk, adding to his detachment all the units that retreated from the city and uniting them into the Consolidated Corps. On September 21, Kappel delivers with all his might a counterattack on the Reds who crossed to the left bank and throws them into the Volga. Until September 27, the Consolidated Corps of Kappel managed to hold out on the left bank, thus providing an opportunity for the units of the People's Army retreating from Kazan to join him at the Nurlat station. After uniting by October 3 into the Simbirsk Group of Forces, the fairly battered units under the command of Kappel began to retreat slowly and in order to Ufa with stubborn battles. The total number of troops of Colonel Kappel by this time was 4460 bayonets and 711 sabers with 140 machine guns, 24 heavy and 5 light guns.
The Kappelites retreated to Ufa under the onslaught of an enemy that outnumbered them by more than 10 times! They retreated, and when necessary, they stopped and detained for a week, two, three in one place, holding back the enemy and giving the command the opportunity to withdraw other units from the threat of encirclement and destruction.
Fighting in the Urals and Siberia
Recognized the power of the Supreme Ruler A. V. Kolchak. He advocated a strong state power, but at the same time, in order to achieve the main task - the victory over the Bolsheviks - he considered it possible to cooperate with a part of the Socialist-Revolutionaries. This position of Kappel provoked rejection of the monarchical-minded military. He was very popular among his subordinates, who called themselves Kappelites.
He played a significant role in the defense of Perm from the advancing troops of the Red Army in winter.
In the spring of 1919, Kappel, on behalf of Kolchak, began to form a strategic reserve of the Headquarters of the Supreme Ruler of Russia - the legendary Volga Corps. The deployment of units took place in the area of the city of Kurgan. The backbone of the corps consisted of the remnants of units of the Kazan and Simbirsk groups of the Volga Front, which had been under the command of Kappel since August 1918. By order of the Chief of Staff of the Supreme Commander-in-Chief N 155 dated February 27, 1919, as well as on the basis of the order of the Supreme Ruler and Supreme Commander-in-Chief Admiral Kolchak, the 1st Volga Army Corps was deployed as part of three rifle divisions: the 1st Samara, 3rd Simbirsk and 13th Kazan. Each division was to have three rifle regiments, a jaeger battalion, a rifle artillery battalion, a separate howitzer battery, a separate cavalry battalion, an engineering battalion, an artillery park, a field infirmary with a dressing detachment and ambulance transport, as well as a division convoy. In addition, the corps included a separate cavalry Volga brigade (of two cavalry regiments of four squadrons and a separate horse battery), a separate field battery of heavy howitzers, a telegraph company, a mobile artillery workshop, as well as the 1st personnel rifle Volga brigade (three personnel rifle regiment, a separate personnel engineering company, a personnel artillery battalion and a personnel squadron).
Banner of the 1st Volga Army Corps, General Kappel, 1919
The banner of the 1st Volga Army Corps is exhibited at the Central Museum of the Armed Forces. It is a silk light green double-sided rectangular panel with a narrow crimson and wide light green border. At the top of the banner is a white-blue-red national flag in the entire length of the cloth. On the right side of the banner there is an interlaced monogram "VK" (the letter B is embroidered in silver, K is embroidered in gold). On the left side there is an inscription in three lines "Volzhans of General Kappel". However, there are ambiguities in the origin of the banner. Most likely, this banner was not an officially approved banner of the Kappel units, but was made and presented as a gift by the inhabitants of the city of Kurgan in the spring of 1919. This is also indirectly evidenced by the inscriptions on the cloth - the fact is that Kappel himself was a resolute opponent of perpetuating his name in the names and symbols of his subordinate units (which, however, did not prevent the soldiers from deciphering the letters VK on their shoulder straps not as "Volga Corps" , but as "Vladimir Kappel"). However, the banner was still used in battles, and was captured by units of the Red Army during the defeat of a detachment under the command of Colonel Malitsky in February 1920 near the city of Bratsk, Irkutsk Region. Since mid-May 1919, Kappel has been commander of the Volga Group of Forces. On May 22, 1919, for the capture of Syzran, Simbirsk and Kazan in 1918, Kappel was awarded the Order of St. George 4th degree.
General Kappel in the summer of 1919
In the summer-autumn of 1919, at the cost of the death of a significant part of the personnel of the unformed, but thrown into battle by the Headquarters of the 1st Volga Army Corps, the offensive of the Red Army was temporarily delayed, but then Kappel's units again had to retreat. At the same time, the Kappelites repeatedly counterattacked the enemy, inflicting a number of tactical defeats on the Reds (in particular, in the region of the Ural Mountains and the Belaya River), despite the fact that the most combat-ready formations of the Red Army fought against them. On September 12, 1919, for this operation, Kappel received the rank of lieutenant general and the Order of St. George, 3rd degree, to which he replied that reinforcements would be the best reward for him.
On January 15, Admiral Kolchak was extradited by the Czechs to the SR-Menshevik Political Center, which captured Irkutsk. Upon learning of this, Kappel called the commander of the Czechs and Slovaks in Siberia, Jan Syrovoy, but did not receive a response from him to the call. During the retreat near Krasnoyarsk in early January 1920, Kappel's army was surrounded as a result of the rebellion of General Zinevich, who demanded that Kappel surrender. However, after fierce fighting, the Kappelites were able to bypass the city and break out of the encirclement.
The further path of the army of Kappel passed along the channel of the river Kan. This section of the route turned out to be one of the most difficult - in many places the ice of the river thawed due to non-freezing hot springs, which gave numerous polynyas in conditions of almost 35-degree frost. During the transition, Kappel, who was leading his horse, like all the other horsemen of the army, fell into one of these holes, but did not tell anyone about it. Only a day later, in the village of Varga, the general was examined by a doctor. The doctor ascertained frostbite on the feet of both legs and rising gangrene that had begun on the basis of frostbite. An amputation was necessary, but the doctor did not have the necessary tools or medicines to perform a full-fledged operation, as a result of which the amputation of part of the left foot and toes of the right was carried out with a simple knife without anesthesia.
Despite the postponed operation, Kappel continued to lead the troops. He also refused the place offered by the Czechs in the hospital train. In addition to frostbite, the sinking into the wormwood caused the general to take a bad cold. However, Kappel rode at the head of his army even when he could only stay on his horse, being tied to the saddle. One of the participants in the campaign (later called the Great Siberian Ice Campaign) A. A. Fedorovich recalled:
The last words of the general were: "Let the troops know that I was devoted to them, that I loved them and proved it with my death among them." Colonel V. O. Vyrapaev, who accompanied Kappel on the Ice Campaign, recalled
On January 20 or 21, 1920, feeling that his forces were leaving him, Kappel ordered the appointment of General Voitsekhovsky as commander-in-chief of the armies of the Eastern Front. In the next two or three days, the sick general became very weak. Throughout the night of January 25, he did not regain consciousness. The next night, our stop was at the railway superintendent's house. General Kappel, without regaining consciousness, raved about the armies, worrying about the flanks, and, breathing heavily, said after a short pause: “How I got caught! End!" Without waiting for dawn, I left the caretaker's house to the nearest stationed echelon, in which the Romanian battery named after Marasheti went east along with the Czech troops. I found the battery doctor K. Danets, who willingly agreed to examine the patient and took the necessary supplies. Having quickly examined the sick general, he said: “We have one cartridge in the machine gun against the advancing infantry battalion. What we can do?" And then he quietly added: "He will die in a few hours." General Kappel had, according to Dr. K. Danets, bilateral lobar pneumonia. One lung was no longer there, and a small part of the other remained. The patient was transferred to the battery infirmary, where he died six hours later without regaining consciousness. It was 11:50 am on January 26, 1920, when the echelon of the Romanian battery was approaching the Utai junction, 17 versts from the Tuluna station near the city of Irkutsk.
Memory
The funeral
Transfer of the ashes of Lieutenant-General Kappel from the New Cathedral to the convent in Chita. February 1920
After the death of the general, it was decided not to bury his body at the place of his death in order to avoid desecration by the Bolsheviks. The retreating troops carried the body of the general laid in the coffin with them for almost a month, until they reached Chita, where Kappel was buried in the Alexander Nevsky Cathedral (a little later, his ashes were transferred to the cemetery of the Chita convent). However, already in the autumn of 1920, when the units of the Red Army approached Chita, the surviving Kappelites transported the coffin with the body of the general to Harbin (northern China) and buried him at the altar of the Iberian Church. A monument was erected on the grave, destroyed by the Chinese Communists in 1955 (other sources give 1956). According to a number of data, there is reason to believe that the destruction of Kappel's grave was authorized by secret KGB directives. According to the memoirs of Colonel Vyrapaev, thanks to the foresight of the district bailiff who led the funeral in Chita, Kappel was buried in permafrost, and when the coffin was opened during transportation to Harbin, the body did not change. At the funeral, the poet Alexander Kotomkin-Savinsky read the poem "
ON DEATH CAPPEL
Hush!.. Bow your knees in prayer:
Before us is the hero of the dear dust.
With a silent smile on dead lips
It is full of unearthly holy dreams...
You died ... No, I believe in the poet's faith -
You are alive!.. Let the frozen lips be silent
And they will not answer us with a smile of greetings,
And let the mighty chest be motionless,
But the beauty of glorious deeds is alive,
We are an immortal symbol - your life path
For the Motherland! To battle! - you will not call the call,
You can’t call volunteer eagles to yourself ...
But the Ural Mountains will echo,
The Volga will respond... The taiga will buzz...
And the people will compose a song about Kappel,
And Kappel's name, and a feat without measure
Among the glorious heroes will never die ...
Bow your knees to the Creed
And stand up for the Fatherland, dear people! .
Kappel in films
"Psychic attack", frame from the film "Chapaev"
The troops of General Kappel are depicted in the film "Chapaev" in the episode "psychic attack". However, in the film, the whites are dressed in black and white uniforms worn by the "Markovites" (the units that were the first in the Volunteer Army to receive the nominal patronage of the General Staff of Lieutenant General S. L. Markov), which were not part of Kolchak's army, but of the Armed Forces of the South Russia. In addition, the Kappelites in Chapaev go into battle under the banner of the Kornilovites. And, finally, not a single documentary evidence of direct clashes between Chapaev and Kappel's units has been preserved. Apparently, the figure of Kappel was chosen by the directors of the film "Chapaev" to create the image of a kind of "ideal enemy".
The new film "Admiral", which tells about the fate of the Supreme Ruler of Russia A. V. Kolchak, examines in detail the figure of V. O. Kappel in Russian history and the civil war itself. Present in the film is the “Kappelevskaya attack”, famous from the film “Chapaev”, but acquiring a new, tragic sound, when the frozen and hungry troops, left without cartridges, run out of the trenches at the command of the general and go to the bayonet on Red Army machine guns. Vladimir Oskarovich Kappel himself played
On January 13, 2007, a solemn burial of the remains of one of the heroes of the White movement, Lieutenant General Vladimir Kappel, took place at the Donskoy Monastery in Moscow. Most Russians know him from the movie "Chapaev", where the "Kappelevites" fearlessly go on a "psychological attack" - with their chests on machine guns. The episode is fictional, since Kappel and Chapaev did not collide in battle, but there are no less interesting facts from the life of the legendary White Guard. "RG" gives some episodes from his biography.
1. Lieutenant-General Vladimir Kappel was born on April 16, 1883 in the county town of Belev, Tula province, in the family of a native of Sweden, Oscar Kappel, a hereditary nobleman of the Moscow province. The father of the future hero of the White movement was a member of the Akhal-Teke expedition of General Skobelev, and on the night of January 11-12, 1881, he participated in the capture of the fortified fortress of the Tekins Geok-Tepe. For the feat in the capture of this stronghold, Oscar Pavlovich was awarded the Order of St. George.
2. In 1909, the chief officer of the 17th Novomirgorodsky Lancers Regiment Vladimir Kappel married. The wife of a young officer was the daughter of a real state councilor, the mining chief of the Perm cannon factories, Olga Strolman. Moreover, the wedding took place in secret, as the bride's parents were against her marriage to the lieutenant. Vladimir Kappel's relationship with his mother-in-law and father-in-law returned to normal only after he entered the Nikolaev Academy of the General Staff. During the Civil War, the Bolsheviks took Kappel's wife hostage, but attempts to blackmail the general with her help were unsuccessful. For the sake of saving the children, Tatyana and Kirill, she abandoned her husband, and after the Civil War she remained in the Soviet Union, again taking her maiden name Strolman. In March 1940, she was sentenced to five years in prison as a "socially dangerous element." She died April 7, 1960.
3. With the outbreak of the First World War, Vladimir Kappel was in the ranks of the army. He served in various positions in the army and cavalry units of the Western Front. On August 15, 1916, he was promoted to lieutenant colonel and transferred to the headquarters of the Southwestern Front as assistant chief of the operational department of the quartermaster general. For participation in the First World War, Vladimir Oskarovich was awarded the Order of St. Vladimir 4th class with swords and a bow, St. Anna 2nd class with swords, St. Stanislav 2nd class with swords, St. Anna 4th class with an inscription for bravery .
4. General Kappel was devoid of vanity. So, noting in the report the actions of his detachment during the capture of Syzran in 1918, he wrote: “The success of the operation was achieved solely by the self-sacrifice and courage of the officers and lower ranks of the detachment, not excluding the sisters of mercy. despite the fire of the enemy's excellent artillery, they fired at his chains and firing positions with direct fire. The most significant victory of the detachment led by Kappel and parts of the Czechoslovak corps was the capture of Kazan on August 7, 1918. "The trophies are incalculable, Russia's gold reserves of 650 million have been captured," Kappel reported to the high command by telegraph. It should be noted that he carried out such a successful operation with small losses - Kappel's detachment lost only 25 people.
5. The nobility of General Kappel is evidenced by his attempt to curb the excesses of the retreating White Czechs, who in the winter of 1919-1920 threw Russian wounded and refugees out of train cars. Kappel, in an ultimatum form, demanded that General Syrovy, the commander-in-chief of the Czech troops, immediately stop the excesses, otherwise he challenged Syrovy to a duel. “If you decide to insult the Russian army and its supreme commander in chief, then I, as the commander-in-chief of the Russian army, in defense of its honor and dignity, demand satisfaction from you by dueling with me,” Kappel said, but the Czech general did not accept the challenge.
6. On the outskirts of Krasnoyarsk, in which the garrison rebelled, Kappel's troops were surrounded, but were able to go down the Yenisei to the mouth of the right tributary of the Kan River. This section of the route turned out to be one of the most difficult - in many places the ice of the river thawed due to non-freezing hot springs, which gave numerous polynyas in conditions of almost 35-degree frost. During the transition, Kappel, leading his horse like all the other horsemen of the army, fell into one of these holes. However, he did not tell anyone about it. Only a day later, in the village of Barga, the general received medical assistance and his legs were amputated. Despite the postponed operation, Kappel continued to lead the troops. He also refused the place offered by the Czechs in the hospital train. On January 26, 1920, at the Utai junction, near the Tulun station near the city of Nizhneudinsk, Vladimir Kappel died of bilateral pneumonia.
7. After the death of the general, it was decided not to bury his body at the place of death, in order to avoid desecration by the Bolsheviks. The retreating troops carried the coffin with the body of the general with them for almost a month, until they reached Chita, where Kappel was buried. However, already in the autumn of 1920, when the Red Army units approached Chita, the surviving Kappelites transported the coffin with the body of the general to Harbin and buried him at the altar of the Iberian Church. A monument was erected on the grave, which after 1945 was visited by Soviet employees and the military. In 1956, by order of the Soviet Consulate General in Harbin, Kappel's grave was destroyed: the monument was destroyed, taken out and thrown near the fence of the New (Assumption) cemetery, and the grave itself was razed to the ground. Nevertheless, the burial place of the general still managed to be established and his remains were reburied in Moscow.
Kappel Putin's"thaw"?
What is happening in our country? Do our "democrats" know the history and those whom they bury? Have you read the so-called "Czechoslovak Memorandum" about the atrocities of the White Guards, "...before whom the whole civilized world will be horrified"? How did the solemn funeral of the executioner who organized the genocide of the Russian people in Siberia in the 18-19s of the last century become possible? Tens of thousands of people were brutally murdered without trial or investigation, hundreds of houses were burned on his orders. His bloody path was marked by robberies and arbitrariness. He is personally responsible for the outbreak of the Civil War in Russia and its consequences. He is guilty of plundering the gold reserves of Tsarist Russia.
But our “freest, most truthful press in the world” chose not to say anything about this. She also kept silent about the fact that almost 90 years ago all of Siberia, the entire Far East rose to fight with their executioners, whose, without any exaggeration, the military-fascist dictatorship, which held out on bayonets and cannons for about a year and a half, was swept off the face of the earth by the rebels. people.
No, we are talking not only about Kolchak, the Belguard admiral with sadistic inclinations, whose romanticized image was sung the other day by our mediocre corrupt cinema. On January 15, 2007, Kappel's solemn funeral was shown on Russian television. It was served with grandiose pomp, as if they were burying the heroes of the country. The announcer commented on the reburial of the general's relics: “his ashes will be interred next to General Anton Denikin. In the morning, a liturgy and memorial service was held in the monastery. The coffin, accompanied by a guard of honor, was delivered to the burial place.
Information for reflection: during the Civil War, Kappel led the troops of the Constituent Assembly and commanded Kolchak's Eastern Front.
From the biography of Kappel Vladimir Oskarovich
Most of the sources very sparingly indicate his data. He was born on March 16, 1883 in the family of a native of Sweden. He received his primary education at home. He graduated from the 2nd Cadet Corps, the Nikolaev Cavalry School in 1906, in 1913 - from the Academy of the General Staff. Member of the 1st World War. Chief of Staff of the 347th Infantry Regiment, lieutenant colonel, in 1918 colonel. He served with the Bolsheviks as a military specialist at the headquarters of the Volga Military District and then betrayed them, participating on July 8, 1918 in the overthrow of Soviet power in Samara. Created anti-Soviet underground detachments during the Czechoslovak uprising. Here, in Samara, the deputies of the dispersed Constituent Assembly formed the so-called KOMUCH, which formed the "Army". Kappel led the 1st Volunteer Squad and near Simbirsk struck at the rear of the 1st Red Army of Tukhachevsky, who then almost completely defeated Kappel.
In Kazan, on August 6, Kappel seized the gold reserves of Russia - gold bars, jewelry, coins worth more than 600 million rubles. Further, the stock was transported to Kolchakia and part of it was distributed to the interventionists for the supply of weapons, part was lost, losing it to Russia forever. But on August 28, Tukhachevsky's troops drove Kappel out of Simbirsk, and on September 9, the Red Army took Kazan. So Kappel did not have outstanding military successes.
KOMUCCH and Kappel moved to Ufa and formed a Directory there - something like an "all-Russian government". During the military coup of Kolchak, on November 18, 1918, he and his troops took an active part in the arrests and executions of the Socialist-Revolutionaries, members of the Directory, which he had previously served "faithfully", however, as well as the Bolsheviks. In Ufa, only in May, Kappel formed the 1st Volga Army Corps from various rabble. And then he distinguished himself in a punitive expedition to suppress a peasant revolt in the Kustanai district, which he brutally suppressed. In July 1919 he commanded the 3rd Army, and in November - the 2nd and 3rd Siberian armies of the Eastern Front.
In May, the Red Army crushed the Kolchak units to pieces near Ufa with a powerful blow, and the Kappelites were thrown back there. 17 kilometers from Ufa (Krasny Yar) they met with the 25th Chapaev division, which pretty much patted them. On July 9, Kappel was driven out of Ufa and pushed back to the Ural Mountains. Frunze's troops almost took him into the "cauldron", but he managed to slip out. At the Yuryuzan River, he managed to briefly detain the Reds.
Kolchak arrested General Sakharov for the collapse of the front and put Kappel in his place, but attempts to keep Omsk turned out to be a complete disaster for the Whites. The end of Kolchakia and Kappel has come. Dissatisfaction with Kolchak's dictatorship was already ripe in his troops. On November 28, the commander of the troops of the Yenisei province sent an “Open letter” to Kolchak: “I, Major General Zinevich, as an honest soldier, alien to intrigues, followed you as long as I believed that the slogans proclaimed by you would really be carried out. I see that the slogans in whose name we united around you were only loud phrases that deceived the people and the army. The civil war has engulfed the whole of Siberia with fire, the authorities are inactive. I urge you, as a citizen who loves his homeland, to find enough strength and courage in yourself to give up power.”
Kolchak read Zinevich's letter and ordered the adjutant: “... prepare a telegram to Kappel. If he has reliable units that can be removed from the front, let him deal with Zinevich. He knew what sadist instructs to "engage" in Zinevich. General Zinevich was hanged by Kappel. Here's how "he was against executions" , so you should not trust the words of his grandson, who tried to whitewash his grandfather's story in front of him. Officers who knew Kappel closely described him as "an infinitely cruel person". (By the way, Zinevich's brigade then completely passed to the partisans).
When the front rolled back to the east, Kappel made plans to capture the insurgent Irkutsk and vowed "to hang a Bolshevik on each pillar, and first to redeem all liberals in an ice hole, and then replace them with tongues on the bells of the Spasskaya and Krestovskaya churches," i.e. already frozen corpses.
Already in January 1920, the entire army of Kappel from the Orenburg Cossacks, Izhevsk, Votkinsk people was driven on the heels of the 5th army of Tukhachevsky along the Siberian highway in 35-degree frost. But not only her. He was reminded of the atrocities against the civilian population and the local partisans, who beat the Kappelites in the forehead and on the flanks. The weakened were finished off by typhus and frost. And again, Kappel is surrounded. On January 23, on the Kan River, after a 100-kilometer retreat, while fleeing from the Reds, the sleigh with the general fell through the ice in a 30-degree frost. He frostbitten his feet.
In the region of Nizhneudinsk, partisans of the East Siberian Army again overtook him and gave battle. The Kappelians managed to fight to reach the railroad. There they loaded the general into the Romanian train, after which on January 25 he died of pneumonia in the village of Verkhneozerskaya near Verkhneudinsk. So ingloriously ended the life of the executioner.
Coffin for Kappel
The field cemetery of this "army" consisted of six coffins. The last refuge for the "hero", a solid and spacious domino, was made by a local undertaker.
A funeral was held in the church, where only last night the bandits of Ataman Krasilnikov stabbed with bayonets the captured partisan machine gunners .
The blood of the dead had not yet cooled, and General Voitsekhovsky, who had taken command, ordered to fire a salute in honor of Kappel. An hour later, another "salute" was given - they shot all the prisoners (100 people in total) partisans, Bolsheviks and their sympathizers. True, at first there were 97 of them, but then, for good measure, three more were added, including the master who made the coffin for Kappel.
As you can see, these animals spared no one. Lieutenant Kappel's adjutant commanded the mass execution Derbentiev(by the way, a former student of the conservatory, a great lover of the classics) - he personally finished off the wounded with a revolver, since the soldiers did not shoot well in 35-degree frost. Then, in 1941-45, the Nazis will widely practice this "method" during mass executions.
There will be only one difference: the Nazis will be accused at the Nuremberg Trials of inhumane rules of warfare and atrocities against prisoners, and in Russia these scum, murderers, half a century after the Great Victory, will become national heroes. Concerning, it would be interesting to know Putin's personal assessment of this funeral.
Just do not talk about "reconciliation" - it is impossible to reconcile the victim with the killer. Never. Just like the bloody maniac Chikatilo cannot be reconciled with his victims and their graves can not be placed side by side. Today everything is mixed into some kind of sticky, vile dirt weird people, dressed in the White Guard uniform, with the same stripes on the sleeves and bands on the caps. It was in this form that they brutally killed old women, old people, robbed and burned villages. In Germany, appearing in a public place in a Nazi uniform is punishable by imprisonment, as is hanging portraits of the Fuhrer.
In our country, on TV screens, when showing Cossack gatherings, portraits of ataman Dutov and even Krasnov, who was hanged for the formation of the Cossack SS troops, often flash. It turns out legal nonsense: Have we got an SS man rehabilitated? Why hasn't a law been drafted prohibiting the hanging of portraits of criminals and war criminals? How is it done in Germany, England, USA, Europe? There are many questions, but the current government prefers not to answer them, but to continue its “just cause” of whitewashing war criminals during the Civil War.
"Noble" grave diggers
Commissions of inquiry about the atrocities of the whites and their eyewitnesses - local residents noted the mass opening of the graves of the burial places of the Red Army soldiers who fell on the battlefield.
White, “noble”, dug up the remains and mocked the corpses, stakes were stuck into the severed heads and placed horizontally. The bodies of the fighters were thrown into landfills and eaten by dogs and pigs. The eyes of the dead were gouged out, they were chopped to pieces .... Even the horrors of the medieval Inquisition pale before the horrors perpetrated by Russian educated, educated non-humans. After all, the language does not turn to call them people.
The facts of desecration of graves were and are being persecuted severely in any country, even a little civilized one. When trying to dig a grave among the Udege, you can get a bullet in the back, the same is true of the Tatar people. In Europe, this threatened at least imprisonment. Even the Neanderthals did not open the graves - it was a kind of taboo for the cave dwellers. So it turns out that the "gray-pawed peasant" had much more nobility than the "noble" officers.
Kappel's body was transported to China and buried in the Iberian Church in Harbin. And in Siberia, investigating authorities and commissions were working with eyewitnesses brutal crimes of Kolchak and his generals, including Kappel - his crimes were proven. These documents and accusations, which are stored in the State Archives, could be familiarized with TV presenters and government officials who organized a magnificent funeral for a man guilty of the genocide of civilians. For his atrocities in Siberia, the Soviet Union demanded that the Chinese government remove the monument erected on his grave in Harbin. It was demolished in 1955.
The democrats should have known that a number of foreign historians qualifies the Kolchak regime as "military-fascist dictatorship in Russia". The commander of the French troops, General Janin, called this phenomenon "the Black Hundred-monarchist reaction." And this was long before Hitler and his fascist party came to power. Hitler, apparently, adopted something from Kolchak's sadistic generals: the system of hostages, executions of every fifth or tenth, "take no prisoners", general robbery of civilians, savage torture and executions, burning villages and villages to the ground, executions in churches, executions without trial or investigation.
This happened for the first time in international practice - the Russians behaved on the territory of Russia like brutal invaders.[These were not Russians, but really occupiers, descendants of the Nemchura who had seized Russia earlier - proof of - ]
No one in Europe in the 19th and 20th centuries allowed the killing of all prisoners - this was first done by the Russian White Guards. There were rules for the conduct of hostilities, under which the civilian population and prisoners should not have suffered. Not without reason, apparently, the White Czechs handed over Kolchak with all his "menagerie" into the hands of the Socialist-Revolutionary political center in order to wipe their hands from this dirt. I emphasize that it was not handed over to the Bolsheviks, as our illiterate historians write, although there are documents, acts of transfer, namely to the Socialist-Revolutionaries. It was the political center that created the Extraordinary Investigative Commission and interrogated Kolchak.
Part of it reached Baikal and Amur and moved to China, entered the service of the Japanese. Others in the Chinese army, dirty their homeland as best they could. In 1941, many went to serve in the Nazi troops and again burned and killed, and the son of General Krasnov, the creator of the Cossack SS troops, moved to Chile after the war, was an officer in her army. Pathological sadistic tendencies in the father's genes played a role - in Chile, under the leadership of Pinochet, he brutally tortured and killed both communists and civilians. Made it so even the Americans were forced to put him behind bars.
But the other part of Kolchak - Kappel, Semenov, and others rolled back to the Primorsky Territory. A trail of blood trailed behind them.
Consequences of the Civil War
The war lasted 3.5 years, in the Far East from January 1918 to October 25, 1922. Losses in the White Guard on all fronts in battles - about 900 thousand killed and wounded. The total losses of the Red Army are about the same, but 51 thousand people are listed as killed.
The initial number of the Red Army was about 1 million people, the White Guard - about half a million. And these 500 thousand whites tried impose their will by cruel measures on the 147 million Russian people... This is equivalent to "a pug barks at an elephant", given that at the end of the civil war, the Red Army had 5.5 million soldiers, and these people knew that they were fighting for a new life. So the score was not in favor of the whites, and it must be taken into account that they were driven by 90 percent of the population, who were against the draconian orders that they were trying to establish.
Civilian casualties
The most terrible consequences were for the economy, industry and the civilian population. 8 million civilians died as a result of hostilities, typhus, starvation. This is a huge number! The consequences of this internecine slaughter are comparable to the losses in the 1st World War. And the blame for these losses lies directly with the White Guards and their main puppeteers - England, France, Japan, the Czechs. 50 billion rubles - these are the consequences of the destruction of the Russian economy.
Agriculture has halved, and industry has shrunk by 20 percent. 112 thousand people were killed by whites in prisons According to other statistics (Population. Statistical dictionary. M. 1994), for various reasons, about 20 million people died and went abroad, i.e. the population decreased by 29.5 million.
In the 2nd World War, the bloodiest in the history of mankind, our country lost 19.5 percent of the population, i.e. 0.4 percent less than in the Civil War. In terms of the severity of their crimes and their consequences, the White Guards can be compared with the Nazis, but they fought with their own people!
Consequences of the war Kolchakism with your people
More than 20 thousand destroyed and burned buildings. Tens of thousands were killed, thousands were wounded and thousands died of disease, starvation and typhus. Several hundred blown up bridges and train stations. More than 70 percent of steam locomotives have been put out of action. Coal production has halved. The gold reserves of Russia (most of it) are irretrievably lost - plundered, plundered by the interventionists. The Czechs built a powerful industry for a part of this gold. 60,000 peasant farms were deliberately destroyed in the course of punitive actions. And this is far from complete data stored in state archives.
The split of Russian society
It should be noted that most of society followed the Bolsheviks: not only the peasants, but also the intelligentsia - few wanted to live the old way.
The current "historians" try not to mention the following facts - the number of officers who served in the Red Army was twice the number of whites . 40 percent of the generals (252) served in the Reds and 57 percent (750 generals) in the Whites.
Colonel of the tsarist General Staff Shaposhnikov became a marshal in the USSR, Major General M.D. Bonch - Bruevich, Colonel I.I. Vatsetis, cavalry general A.A. Brusilov (the author of the famous Brusilov breakthrough into the 1st World War), Colonel V.M. Gittis, Lieutenant Colonel A.I. Egorov, Colonel S.S. Kamenev, Colonel N.N. Petin, Major General A.P. Nikolaev (in 1919 he was captured by the Whites, refused to go over to their side and change the oath of the Red Army, for which he was shot), D. Mirsky - the son of Svyatopolk-Mirsky, the tsarist Minister of the Ministry of Internal Affairs , the main organizer of Bloody Sunday and the execution of the demonstration on January 9, 1905, was a writer in the 30s in the USSR.
The Reds have never been "bloodthirsty", as they are presented by the current scribes of history. They released officers and generals on parole, who, having changed their word, fled and created Volunteer armies, trying to destroy the Soviets by bloody terror. Only later, seeing their dishonor and treachery, the Reds immediately took retaliatory measures. Take the documents, compare - and immediately everything will become clear.
Allies
The leading role in the outbreak of the Civil War belongs to former allies of tsarist Russia, the purpose of which was the weakening of Russia, the elimination of its influence on Europe and Asia, the Transcaucasus, the territorial division and the establishment of their protectorates. England dreamed of capturing Transcaucasia, Japan - Sakhalin and the Far East, the Finns, Poles, Germans, etc. had their own plans.
So, only in Primorye and Siberia were: 75 thousand Japanese, 9 thousand Americans, 1.5 thousand British, 1.5 thousand Italians, 60 thousand White Czechs.
Among other things, there were Australian commandos (hunters), Poles, Canadians, Danish volunteers, French, Greek units, Romanians, Chinese. Only 145 thousand people of the international robber "international". With the local population, they behaved like Americans with Indians and blacks - they robbed, killed, even raped old women.
All this foreign army financed the Civil War. If it weren’t for her former allies, then there wouldn’t be such dire consequences for her, and, perhaps, for herself.
What happened in Primorye in the last years of the Civil War is the topic of the next article, since my relatives were eyewitnesses and victims of the Kappel bandits. The local population of Primorye called them "animal people".
I would like to ask questions to the President of the country, the Prosecutor General's Office, the priests of the Orthodox Church:
1. Who and at what level authorized the solemn funeral of General Kappel as a hero of Russia, although at the trial on May 20, 1920 in Omsk, guilt was established in the atrocities of not only Kolchak and his entourage, but also General Kappel. The meeting was held in the presence of more than 8 thousand workers and peasants who suffered from the Kolchak genocide. Why didn't the Prosecutor General's Office bring up archival documents that clearly indicate the general's guilt? Why is everything done in our state that someone from the mighty of this world suddenly got into his head, and not in accordance with the laws of the state?
2. Who gave the order to bury a criminal, a murderer of thousands of civilians with an honor guard? He personally gave orders for executions, on his orders Major General Zinevich was hanged for his “Open Letter” to Kolchak.
3. Why was the coffin covered with the national flag of Russia? Kappel was not a citizen of the Russian Federation, but had a passport of a citizen of the Russian Empire in 1917.
4. Since when does the Orthodox Church solemnly bury the murderers of civilians and bury them in the monastery as saints? Given that Kappel's funeral took place in a church that had been defiled by a murder a few hours earlier(stabbed with bayonets right in the church) 40 captured partisans, and an hour later, in the same place, these bandits shot 100 prisoners. There is no burial service here, but it is necessary to anathematize - after all, these are crimes in the temple of God! Are you not ashamed, holy fathers, before people and God?
The Time of Troubles has come, when black is made white, and red is black, sadists - the White Guards are elevated to the rank of martyrs.
And the most amazing, incomprehensible thing is that they are elevated to the saints not by the descendants of the White Guards, princes and landowners, but by the grandchildren of those peasants, laborers, swineherds and others whose grandfathers were killed, beaten with whips and ramrods by the same White Guards ...
Who is next in line for the solemn reburial in Russia, what monsters? After all, in Kaliningrad, the mayor's office hung a memorial plaque with a bas-relief of Napoleon on the house where he stopped before going to Russia. The man who plundered and burned Moscow, arranged stalls for horses in churches and ripped off icons from the walls and paved the footpath with them so as not to walk through the mud?
How can the descendants of the winners of this "enlightened" tyrant come to such stupidity? Our holy fathers are aware of these facts of sacrilege, but not one of them was indignant and did not demand to remove the memorial plaque. Why?
Vladimir Oskarovich
Battles and victories
An outstanding Russian commander, a participant in the First World War and the Civil War. He became famous in 1918, when, at the head of the People's Army Komuch, in the course of a series of daring battles, he managed to recapture Kazan from the Reds. Legendary personality in the White movement.
But starting as a hero, he ended up as a martyr...
His father was a participant in campaigns in Turkestan led by General Chernyaev, and his mother, Elena Petrovna, came from the family of General P.I. Postolsky - the hero of the defense of Sevastopol. V.O. Kappel continued the family tradition. In 1903, he graduated from the Nikolaev Cavalry School and was sent to serve in the 54th Novomirgorod Dragoon Regiment.
As fellow soldier Colonel Sverchkov recalled about him:Of the majority of the officers of the regiment, he stood out as a comprehensive education, culture and erudition, I think that there was not a single book left in our extensive library that he would have left unread ... Vladimir Oskarovich was loved by everyone, starting from the private of the 1st squadron, in which he, along with I served, up to and including the commander of the regiment.
Kappel V.O.
upon graduation from school
At the beginning of 1906, Kappel was promoted to lieutenant. During the years of the first Russian revolution, he participated in the defeat of terrorist formations in the Perm province. Then he continued to serve in the regiment. In 1913, he graduated from the elite Nikolaev General Staff Academy in the first category, and was awarded the Order of St. Anna, 3rd class, for his success in studying military sciences.
World War I V.O. Kappel began as a senior officer for assignments at the headquarters of the 5th Army Corps, where he served until February 1915. At this time, he became a participant in the victorious Battle of Galicia (during which the Austrians suffered a major defeat) and defensive battles near Warsaw (where they were stopped the German troops). Then, as a senior adjutant, he served in the headquarters of a number of Cossack and cavalry divisions and corps, and at one time temporarily replaced the post of chief of staff of the 14th cavalry division. In March 1916, Captain V.O. Kappel was seconded to the Office of the Quartermaster General of the Headquarters of the Southwestern Front, where he participated in the detailed elaboration of the plan for a large-scale offensive, which went down in history as the Brusilovsky breakthrough. In August 1916, he was promoted to lieutenant colonel and took the position of assistant chief of the operations department.
In this position, Kappel met the February Revolution. Being a career officer (and by conviction - a monarchist), he took these events very hard. But, like many other military men, Vladimir Oskarovich was guided by the principle that the army should be outside politics, and therefore swore allegiance to the new government: in the hour of the most difficult war, everything must be done to repel the external enemy. Unfortunately, the Provisional Government not only failed to make the necessary efforts to maintain the combat readiness of the armed forces, but also contributed to their disintegration. It is not surprising that the demands of order and legality, which at that time were called "counter-revolutionary", began to grow among the officers. One of the prominent figures of the officer "opposition" was L.G. Kornilov, who, during his unsuccessful speech at the end of August, sought to restore order in the capital by force. It is unlikely that Kappel was actively involved in the preparation of this speech, but, undoubtedly, he fully sympathized with the aspirations of Russian patriots. Interestingly, according to the statement of the soldiers of the 3rd squadron squadron (located at the headquarters of the Southwestern Front), Kappel, among others (Denikin, Markov, etc.), was called an adherent of the “old, monarchist system, an undoubted participant in the counter-revolutionary conspiracy.”
One way or another, but Vladimir Oskarovich was not arrested, and moreover, he began to act as head of the operational department of the department of the quartermaster general of the front headquarters. However, during the period of the virtually complete collapse of the army, the front-line authorities could not conduct any real combat work.
By birth - a cavalryman. The person is mobile, lively, loves the combat situation, the horse. Staff work is not for him ... He, Kappel, was not at all characterized by adventurism.
General S.A. Shchepikhin about Kappel
At the beginning of October 1917, Kappel took a leave of absence and (officially due to illness) went to stay with his relatives in Perm. Already at home, he experienced the October Revolution, the dispersal of the Constituent Assembly, the demobilization of the Russian army, the conclusion of the shameful Brest peace by the Bolsheviks, the first steps in the construction of "war communism". For Kappel, the collapse of the country and the unrest that began were, first of all, a personal tragedy.
The very tough policy of the Bolsheviks alienated many sections of the population from them. If in the south, thanks to the efforts of Kornilov and Alekseev, the Volunteer Army was formed, then various secret officer organizations operated throughout the country. They existed in the Volga region, where in the spring of 1918 the party of Socialist Revolutionaries (SRs), which received a majority in the election to the Constituent Assembly, also launched active underground work.
At the same time, the Bolsheviks also formed their own armed forces. In particular, it was planned to create an army at the headquarters of the Volga Military District (Samara), which was intended to fight the Germans if they suddenly began to advance inland. Many regular officers agreed to cooperate, believing that they would defend the country. For some, it was a way to survive in the current conditions, someone was afraid for their own family, which was held hostage, and those who were part of secret military organizations believed, not without reason, that in this way they were gaining control over the Bolshevik military. machine. It is not known what considerations Kappel was guided by when he joined the Red Army. However, it is very interesting to note that he refused the position of head of the district headquarters department offered to him.
At the end of May 1918, an uprising of the Czechoslovak corps broke out, when most of the territory of Russia was under its control - from Penza to Vladivostok. Various underground organizations also quickly became active. On June 8, Czechoslovak forces took Samara, where the Committee of Members of the Constituent Assembly (which consisted of Socialist-Revolutionaries) seized power. At the same time, the formation of the People's Army began, which at first consisted of volunteers. Among them was Kappel.
A few days later, he volunteered to command the 1st Samara Volunteer Squad, stating:I am a monarchist by conviction, but I will stand under any banner, just to fight the Bolsheviks. I give my word as an officer to be loyal to Komuch.
In total, the squad initially consisted of 350 volunteers, soldered together by the idea of opposing the Bolshevik authorities.
The experience of service at the level of division - corps in cavalry units was more useful than ever to the young lieutenant colonel in the conditions of the civil war. He quickly managed to understand its features: the importance of maneuverability, speed, constant activity, exhausting the enemy. Kappel put into practice such Suvorov principles as "eye, speed and onslaught." At the same time, he was constantly among ordinary soldiers, on the front line.
As Colonel V.O., who served with him, recalled. Vyrypaev:The volunteers of the detachment, seeing their chief all the time before their eyes, living the same life with them, every day became more and more attached to Kappel. Experiencing joy and sorrow together, they fell in love with him and were ready for him to do anything, not sparing their lives.
Moreover, Kappel showed a deep understanding of the psychology of the civil war: “A civil war is not like a war with an external enemy ... This war must be waged with particular care, because one erroneous step, if not ruining, will greatly damage the cause ... In the Civil War the winner will be the one on whose side the sympathies of the population will be ... And besides, since we honestly love the Motherland, we need to forget about which of us and who was before the revolution. It is not surprising that Kappel usually disarmed the captured ordinary Red Army soldiers and sent them home.
The results of such management showed up very soon. Already on June 11, during a daring attack, Syzran was taken: the population greeted Kappel's troops with jubilation. Then his detachment was moved up the Volga, where he cleared a number of villages opposite Stavropol from the enemy. After that, the lieutenant colonel again found himself near Syzran, where he defeated the red Penza infantry division and captured Buguruslan and Buzuluk. In mid-July, together with attached units of the Czechoslovaks, Kappel launched an offensive against Simbirsk (Lenin's hometown). It was defended by a detachment of the famous hero of the civil war G.D. Guy: under his command there were about 2000 people and strong artillery. Kappel resorted to a military trick: the Czechoslovak forces, moving along the Volga on steamboats, diverted the attention of the enemy, while the lieutenant colonel himself made a sharp throw on July 21 and captured the city from the rear. The population greeted the troops with flowers. A few days later, his squad was deployed into a division (about 3,000 thousand people).
Kappel's fame quickly spread across the Volga region. In one Bolshevik newspaper, he was even called "little Napoleon", and the enemy set a reward for his capture of 50 thousand rubles. The bright victories of the Kappelites against the backdrop of a general rise in the anti-Bolshevik movement forced the Red command to pay increased attention to events in the East: Tukhachevsky's army was hastily formed in the Simbirsk and Samara region, and the 5th army was strengthened near Kazan under the direct supervision of the commander of the Eastern Front Vatsetis.
In August 1918, the White Headquarters in Samara planned to actively advance in a southwestern direction: to capture Saratov and join forces with the rebellious Urals. Kappel, on the other hand, insisted that it was necessary to move northwest, occupy large industrial centers, and then go to Moscow. The military leadership in Samara agreed only to hold a demonstration against Kazan. However, the task was exceeded: on the morning of August 6, Kappel broke into the city from the rear, which caused a commotion in the enemy camp. By the evening of the next day, Kazan was taken. Neither numerical superiority, nor the available strong artillery helped the Red Army, whose units in the majority simply fled (the exception was the 5th Lettish Regiment, which took up a stubborn defense). Kappel’s losses amounted to 25 people, however, a huge amount of military property and most of the gold reserves of the Russian Empire (650 million gold rubles) remained in his hands, which was hastily taken out and became the financial basis for the activities of the entire white army. Moreover, the Academy of the General Staff, located here, went over to the side of the People's Army in full strength, and the Kazan victory contributed to the success of the Izhevsk-Votkinsk uprising of workers against the Soviet regime. Kazan became the westernmost point to which the White troops of the eastern front managed to reach.
In the future, Kappel planned to develop an offensive against Nizhny Novgorod, and from there - to Moscow. He rightly believed that it was necessary to take advantage of the weakness of the Red Army: a constant offensive to inflict more and more damage on it, capturing new territories and contributing to a widespread popular uprising. But neither the military leaders in Samara, nor the Czechoslovaks, nor many other colleagues, who insisted on the need, first of all, to consolidate the successes, heard his opinion.
Meanwhile, the pressure of the Reds increased more and more and the White Front began to burst at the seams. The weak government of Komuch could neither establish order in the rear nor organize effective mobilization. Therefore, Kappel's troops (as the most combat-ready) began to be used as a "fire brigade" in threatened areas. Already in mid-August, they were transferred to Simbirsk in order to stop the advance of Tukhachevsky's army. As a result, the Reds still managed to be thrown back, but not defeated. At the end of the month, Kappel again near Kazan, where he fettered the enemy. However, by that time the forces of the People's Army were almost completely exhausted. The realization came that the city would soon fall. At this time, by the way, he was awarded the rank of colonel.
In mid-September, the Kappelites were transferred to Simbirsk, which, however, failed to return, Kappel actively covered the retreat of all the white forces, subjugating the units retreating from the city. A consolidated corps was formed, which soon received the name of the Simbirsk group. It was reinforced by separate units and now numbered more than 5,000 people with 29 guns. These units were heavily fatigued and exhausted from constant fighting and marching, suffering from colossal supply problems; signs of decay also appeared (and even the unauthorized departure of individual units), however, against the general background of the demoralized People's Army, Kappel's troops were among the most stable. Continuing the retreat, they withstood a number of serious rearguard battles. So, in November, together with the 1st Czechoslovak division, they launched a short counteroffensive and defeated the Bugulma enemy grouping.
In the order for the troops, Kappel wrote:Despite a number of difficult conditions under which you had to conduct military operations, despite the superiority of the enemy forces, you, the valiant troops, with your decisive and bold pressure, broke the resistance of the impudent and insolent enemy, and he fled in a panic, abandoning weapons and carts.
In November, Kappel was promoted to the rank of major general. The rest of 1918, for its fairly thinned units, passed in difficult transitions and skirmishes. Only at the beginning of January 1919 were the Kappelites withdrawn to the reserve.
At this time, a very interesting episode occurred, characterizing Kappel not only as a military man, but also as a politician. When they stopped at the Ural plant, Asha-Balashovskaya counterintelligence reported that the workers were hostile to the passing White Guard troops. Then General Kappel personally came to the plant without security, speaking at a meeting of workers. As V.O. Vyrypaev: “In brief words, Kappel outlined what Bolshevism is and what it will bring with it, ending his speech with the words:
— I want Russia to prosper along with other advanced countries. I want all factories and factories to work, and the workers to have a perfectly decent existence.
The workers were delighted with his words and covered his speech with a loud "cheers". Then they carried Kappel out of the mine in their arms and escorted him to the headquarters ... The next morning, when I arrived at the headquarters on my own business, I saw a delegation from workers in the corridor who said: “This is so general!”
It should be noted that at a time when heavy fighting was going on at the front, no less fierce battles, however, already for power, took place in the rear. Until the end of September, Komuch and the Siberian government fought to create a unified system of power. The inefficiency, inexperience, and outright weakness of both governments were evident to enough. The establishment of a single Directory, which continued to be dominated by the Socialist-Revolutionaries associated with the "Kerenschina", did not help either. Representatives of business circles and the army insisted more and more insistently on the arrival of a "hard hand". These aspirations were also supported by V.O. Kappel. Such a hand was found in the person of Admiral Kolchak, who, during the coup on November 18, became the Supreme Ruler.
Most of the officers, like Vladimir Oskarovich Kappel himself, believed that now was not the time to deal with internal strife. There is one goal - to defeat the Bolsheviks, and all efforts must be directed towards this. In this regard, the late Vladimir Oskarovich Kappel adhered strictly to this principle until the end of his life and stood out for this sacrifice in the name of the common good among other top bosses. He himself was completely far from all left groups. Possessing a strong will and direct character, at the same time he was surprisingly tactful and able to win over people of various trends and views.
Captain V.A. Zinoviev
Under the new ruler, in the highest circles, the attitude towards the former People's Army was biased: the "Siberians" did not like the "Samarans", calling all the officers who fought for Komuch, Socialist-Revolutionaries and Socialists. This prejudice was sometimes transferred to Kappel, who, with his successes and independence, irritated many staff chiefs. A personal meeting with Kolchak, which took place in January 1919, changed the situation. Kappel's troops began to reorganize into the 1st Volga Corps, which turned into a strategic reserve.
Kappel V.O. Winter, 1919
It is worth noting that the staffing of the new building by the Headquarters was actually left to chance. With the preparation and the start of a major spring offensive, reinforcements came mainly to the active armies, and, accordingly, there was no systematic recruitment of the reserve. Moreover, often former captured Red Army soldiers were sent to Kappel as privates, whose moral stamina rightly raised great doubts. The most important thing was this: the replenishment of individual forcibly mobilized or former prisoners eroded the original composition of volunteers (who fought for the idea), reducing the overall quality of the troops. And Kappel did not have enough time to prepare them.
By mid-April, the White offensive that had begun ran out of steam, and at the end of the month, the Reds (under the command of Frunze) launched a counteroffensive, thereby putting the Western Army of General Khanzhin in a difficult situation. It was to strengthen it in early May that the 1st Volga Corps was advanced. However, due to haste, mistakes of the higher command and the difficult situation at the front, he was brought into battle in parts that fell under the attacks of the Reds, suffering heavy losses (some units even went over to the side of the enemy). By the time Kappel gathered his parts together, but they could no longer advance. The retreat continued.
The Volga Corps showed special heroism in early June on the Belaya River, where it threw the enemy back three times. Contrary to popular belief, here Kappel's opponent was not Chapaev, but the neighboring 24th division. Despite heavy continuous battles, the whites not only defended themselves, but also launched successful counterattacks, capturing prisoners and machine guns. At the same time, Vladimir Oskarovich himself directly participated in the battles, thereby strengthening the spirit of his soldiers.
Colonel Vyrypaev testified:The question involuntarily arose: what force, like hypnosis, did Kappel act on the soldiers? Indeed, in such a large area, the arrived reserves, the remnants of the Urzhum regiment, normally could not do anything. The units that were stationed in this sector had an uninterrupted battle for four days and during this time were almost without sleep. Then, after the battle, I talked a lot with officers and soldiers on this topic. From their answers it could be concluded that the vast majority blindly believed that in a difficult moment for them, Kappel himself would appear, and if so, then there should be victory. “It’s not scary to die with Kappel!” they said.
But, despite individual successes, the White troops retreated under the general pressure of the enemy. Attempts to conduct a counteroffensive at the end of July near Chelyabinsk did not bring the desired results. The eastern front of the whites was on the verge of destruction. In November, Kappel was appointed commander of the 3rd Army, and in December he became Commander-in-Chief, but the front was already practically crumbling: in addition to the onslaught from the west, the white troops had to deal with numerous red partisan detachments in the rear, the arbitrariness of the Czechs, and also with a sharp drop in discipline. However, the spirit of many volunteers was not broken, and they continued to fight. In emigrant literature, this most difficult period of movement to the east in harsh winter conditions became known as the "Siberian Ice Campaign".
The new commander-in-chief wanted to withdraw troops to Krasnoyarsk and beyond the river. Yenisei, however, in early January 1920, it turned out that the garrison of this city had gone over to the side of the enemy, and therefore had to look for a detour through the fast mountain river Kan. Because of the steep banks, most of the river had to be overcome along its course. The main problem was that the river was not completely frozen, and therefore dry places under the snow had to be found by touch. As General F.A. Puchkov: “The transition of the Ufa group from the village of Podporozhnoye to the village of Barga took from 36 to 48 hours. It was the hardest of all for the 4th division and the convoy of General Kappel, who were paving the way through the virgin lands. A difficult task in itself became impossible where the leading horsemen entered the strip of unfrozen water ... We laid a well-marked, rolled and now safe road along the river. The units of the 3rd Army that followed us spent only 12-14 hours on the whole journey.
And General Kappel, as always, went ahead. He moved on foot, because of the frost, not wanting to mount a horse. So he accidentally drowned in the snow and scooped ice water into his boots. As a result, Vladimir Oskarovich received frostbite, and pneumonia soon began to develop. Only in the village of Bargi was the commander-in-chief examined by a doctor, who made a difficult decision: amputation of the feet. For some time, the commander-in-chief could move while sitting on a horse, encouraging the troops with his own appearance. During the offensive on January 15, Kansk was taken, and on the 22nd - Nizhneudinsk.
However, the general's condition worsened.
On the proposal to go to the hospital at the Czechoslovak echelon, which was sent by rail further to the east, the commander-in-chief answered with a categorical refusal:Hundreds of fighters die every day, and if I am to die, I will die among them.
Soon it happened - V.O. Kappel died on 26 January. His last words were addressed to volunteers: “Tell them that I am with them. May they never forget Russia!
Kappel was reprimanded and buried in Chita. Already in the autumn of 1920, his grave was moved to Harbin, where in 1929 a monument was erected with the money of the local community. Subsequently, the burial was desecrated twice: first in August 1945 with the arrival of Soviet troops, and then in the early 1950s by order of the Soviet consulate. It wasn't until 2007 that the remains of one of the most valiant white generals - who started out as a hero and ended up as a martyr - were reburied at the Donskoy Monastery in Moscow.
That is not a heavenly falcon,
That is our Kappel General
Dispersed the Reds in Samara
And Volzhan gathered for himself.
From the song of the Volga RiflemenGay Volzhan, Gay famously,
March homeward forward,
March homeward forward,
March homeward forward,
From Kappel's marching songs and ditties
Pakhalyuk K., head of the Internet project "Heroes of the First World War", member of the Russian Association of Historians of the First World War
Literature
Gagkuev R.G. General Kappel. Kappel and Kappelians. M., 2010
Vyrypaev V.O. Kappelians. Kappel and Kappelians. M., 2010
Internet
Golenishchev-Kutuzov Mikhail Illarionovich
(1745-1813).
1. GREAT Russian commander, he was an example for his soldiers. Appreciated every soldier. "M. I. Golenishchev-Kutuzov is not only the liberator of the Fatherland, he is the only one who outplayed the hitherto invincible French emperor, turning the "great army" into a crowd of ragamuffins, saving, thanks to his military genius, the lives of many Russian soldiers."
2. Mikhail Illarionovich, being a highly educated person who knew several foreign languages, dexterous, refined, able to inspire society with the gift of words, an entertaining story, served Russia as an excellent diplomat - ambassador to Turkey.
3. M. I. Kutuzov - the first to become a full cavalier of the highest military order of St. George the Victorious of four degrees.
The life of Mikhail Illarionovich is an example of serving the fatherland, attitude towards soldiers, spiritual strength for Russian military leaders of our time and, of course, for the younger generation - future military men.
Petrov Ivan Efimovich
Defense of Odessa, Defense of Sevastopol, Liberation of Slovakia
Antonov Alexey Inokent'evich
Chief strategist of the USSR in 1943-45, practically unknown to society
"Kutuzov" World War II
Humble and dedicated. Victorious. The author of all operations since the spring of 1943 and the victory itself. Others gained fame - Stalin and the commanders of the fronts.
Dokhturov Dmitry Sergeevich
Defense of Smolensk.
Command of the left flank on the Borodino field after the wounding of Bagration.
Tarutino battle.
Skopin-Shuisky Mikhail Vasilievich
During his short military career, he practically did not know failures, both in battles with the troops of I. Boltnikov, and with the Polish-Liovo and "Tushino" troops. The ability to build a combat-ready army practically from scratch, train, use Swedish mercenaries on the spot and during the time, select successful Russian command personnel to liberate and protect the vast territory of the Russian northwestern region and liberate central Russia, persistent and systematic offensive, skillful tactics in fight against the magnificent Polish-Lithuanian cavalry, undoubted personal courage - these are the qualities that, despite the obscurity of his deeds, give him the right to be called the Great Commander of Russia.
Rokossovsky Konstantin Konstantinovich
