The most famous Russian "graduates" of the French Foreign Legion. Zinovy Peshkov
Now we will talk about the most famous natives of the Russian Empire among those who went through the harsh school of the French Foreign Legion. And first, let's talk about Zinovia Peshkov, whose life Louis Aragon called him one of the strangest biographies of this meaningless world.
Zinovy (Yeshua-Zalman) Peshkov, the elder brother of the chairman of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee, Yakov Sverdlov, and godfather A.M. Gorky, rose to the rank of general of the French army and, among other awards, received the Military Cross with a palm branch and the Grand Cross of the Legion of Honor. He was well acquainted with Charles de Gaulle and Henri Philippe Peten, met with V.I. Lenin, A. Lunacharsky, Chiang Kai-shek and Mao Tse Dong. And such an outstanding career did not stop even the loss of his right hand in one of the fights in May 1915.
How Zalman Sverdlov became Zinoviy Peshkov and why he left Russia
The hero of our article was born in 1884 in Nizhny Novgorod in a large Jewish Orthodox family, his father (whose real name is Serdlin) was an engraver (according to some reports, even the owner of an engraving workshop).
There is reason to believe that the elder Sverdlov collaborated with the revolutionaries - he made fake stamps and cliches for documents. His children, Zalman and Yakov (Yankel), were also opponents of the regime, and Zalman was even arrested in 1901 - a boy from the family of engravers used his father’s workshop to make leaflets written by Maxim Gorky (and ended up in the same cell with him, under his influence).
Yakov (Yankel) Sverdlov was even more radical. The brothers often argued and quarreled, defending their point of view on the methods of revolutionary struggle and the future of Russia. It is time to recall the lines of the famous poem by I. Huberman:
Everywhere and any time of the year
Lasts where two Jews converge
The debate about the fate of the Russian people.
Relations between the brothers were so strained that, according to some researchers, in 1902 Zalman not just left his house in Arzamas for Gorky. The fact is that then Zalman tried to recapture a certain girl from Jacob, and he decided to bring him to the police. Fortunately, his father learned about his intention, who warned his eldest son, and he, having forgotten about his feelings, went to the writer who agreed to accept him. And in the workshop of his father he was replaced by a relative - Enoch Yehuda, in Soviet times better known as Henry Yagoda.
Zalman Sverdlov had good acting ability, which was even noted by V. Nemirovich-Danchenko, who visited Gorky: he was impressed by Zalman's reading of the role of Vaska Pepl (the character of the play “At the Bottom”). And Orthodoxy Zalman accepted for purely mercantile reasons - he, a Jew, was denied admission to the Moscow theater school. It is generally recognized that Zalman's godfather was Maxim Gorky. However, there is evidence that Gorky became the godfather of Zinovy "in absentia" - at the time of his baptism, the writer might not have been in Arzamas anymore, and he was represented by another person. One way or another, Zinovy officially took for himself the middle name and surname of Gorky, who often called him “spiritual son” in letters.
They talk about the father’s attitude to the baptism of his son in different ways. Some claim that he cursed him in some particularly terrible Jewish rite, others that he himself was soon baptized and married an Orthodox woman.
But back to our hero.
At that time, Zinovy Peshkov was so close to the family of his godfather that he became a victim of an intra-family conflict: he was on the side of the first and official wife of the writer - Ekaterina Pavlovna, and the new, civil wife of Gorky, actress Maria Andreeva, reproached him for her revenge with dependency and accused him in parasitism.
In fairness, it must be said that Gorky himself at that time often half-jokingly called Zinovy a slacker and a dope. Therefore, Andreeva's claims were most likely justified.
Such M. Andreev saw I. Repin in 1905:
As a result of this conflict, in 1904 it was no longer Zalman, but Zinovy Alekseevich Peshkov who went to Canada, and then to the USA, where he changed his name and surname, temporarily becoming Nikolai Zavolzhsky.
But there is another version: Zinovy could leave Russia in order to avoid mobilization to the front of the Russo-Japanese War.
Life in exile
The country of “great opportunities” and “advanced democracy” made the most unpleasant impression on him: despite all the efforts, success was not achieved.
He tried to make a living with literary work: having appeared in one of the American publishing houses, introduced himself as the son of Maxim Gorky (family, not godmother) and offered to publish his stories. Denouement of this stories It turned out to be unexpected: after paying a guest $ 200, the publisher threw his manuscript out of the window, explaining that both of them were done out of respect for his father, the great Russian writer.
Therefore, in March 1906, learning about Gorky’s arrival in the United States, Zinovy, having forgotten about the feud with Andreeva, came to him and began to act as an interpreter, having seen then many celebrities - from Mark Twain and Herbert Wells to Ernest Rutherford.
Gorky's popularity throughout the world was really great. In the 11th volume of Cambridge Contemporary History, published in 1904, in the section “Literature, Art, Thought” the names of four writers are named who “most fully express the mood of modernity”: Anatole France, Leo Tolstoy, Thomas Hardy and Maxim Bitter. In the USA, at one of Gorky’s meetings with feminists, the ladies who wanted to shake his hand nearly fought in line.
But this trip of Gorky ended in scandal. Dissatisfied with the "left" views of the "guest" publishers of American newspapers unearthed the story of his separation from his first wife. The result was a series of publications that the writer who left his wife and children in Russia is now traveling around the United States with his mistress (recall that Andreeva was only Gorky's civil wife).
The New York World was the first to “shoot”, which posted two photographs on the front page on April 14, 1906. The first was signed: "Maxim Gorky, his wife and children."
The inscription below read:
In Puritan America of those years, this was a very serious compromising evidence, as a result, hotel owners began to refuse to populate such scandalous guests. The writer first had to live in one of the rooms of the house rented by socialist writers, and then take advantage of the hospitality of the sympathetic family Martin, who invited the outcasts to his estate (here he continued to receive guests and engage in literary work). The invitation to the White House was canceled, the administration of Barnard Women's College expressed "censure" to Professor John Dewey (a famous American philosopher of the first half of the twentieth century) for allowing minor students to meet with the "bigam". Even Mark Twain, one of the initiators of his invitation to the United States, refused ties with Gorky. Mark Twain stated then:
That is, it turns out that the “democratic” America of those years lived not according to the laws, but “according to the concepts”.
But they met Gorky with these pictures:
The result was only worse: Gorky’s attitude towards the United States, initially quite benevolent, changed dramatically, the writer’s views became more radical. But he continued to be the idol of the left intelligentsia of the whole world. One of the answers to this insulting persecution was the famous story “The City of the Yellow Devil”.
Because of this scandal of money for the “needs of the revolution,” Gorky managed to collect less than he expected. But the sum of 10 thousand dollars was very impressive at that time: the US currency was then provided with gold, and at the turn of the 0,04837th-1,557514th centuries the gold content of one dollar was XNUMX ounces, that is XNUMX grams of gold.
On April 21, 2020, the price of an ounce of gold was $ 1688 per ounce, or 4052 rubles, 14 kopecks per gram. That is, one US dollar in 1906 would now cost about 6 rubles. Thus, if we exchange the money received by Gorky for gold, it would turn out that the writer had collected donations in the amount equivalent to the current 311 million 63 thousand rubles.
At the end of 1906, Gorky and his godson broke up: the writer went to Capri Island, Zinovy was hired as an assistant fireman on a merchant ship going to New Zealand, where he had long wanted to visit. He didn’t like it here either: he called the self-righteous inhabitants of Auckland “stupid rams” and “pathetic sheep,” confident that they live in the best country in the world.
As a result, he again came to Gorky and lived on Capri from 1907 about 1910. He met with V. Lenin, A. Lunacharsky, F. Dzerzhinsky, I. Repin, V. Veresaev, I. Bunin and many other famous and interesting people .
Once again, Zinovy had to leave the house of the writer because of a scandal over Maria Andreeva, who this time accused him of stealing money from the cash desk, which received numerous donations from liberal-minded representatives of the bourgeoisie (both Russian and foreign from among those called then "limousine socialists"). The offended Peshkov left Gorky for another writer known at that time - A. Amfiteatrov, becoming his secretary. Bitter communication with the godson did not interrupt: apparently, the charges of Andreeva did not seem convincing to him.
At this time, Peshkov married Lydia Burago, the daughter of a Cossack officer who gave birth to a daughter, Elizabeth.
The life and fate of Elizabeth Peshkova
Elizaveta Peshkova received a good education, graduating from the department of Romance languages of the University of Rome. In 1934, she married a Soviet diplomat I. Markov and left for the USSR. In 1935 she gave birth to a son, Alexander, and in 1936-1937. again she was in Rome, where her husband, being a career intelligence officer, was acting the 2nd secretary of the embassy. They were forced to leave Italy after the authorities accused I. Markov of espionage. They could not provide evidence of Markov's guilt, from which it can be concluded that Peshkov's son-in-law was a high-class professional. On February 17, 1938, in Moscow, Elizabeth gave birth to a second son, Alexei, and on March 31, she and Markov were arrested - already as Italian spies. After refusing to testify against her husband, Elizabeth was sent into exile for 10 years. In 1944, she was sought after by the former Soviet military attache in Rome, Nikolai Biyazi, who knew her from his work in Italy, who at that time was the director of the military institute of foreign languages. He secured the return of an old acquaintance from exile and provided her with a 2-room apartment and helped to find his sons. At his institute, she taught French and Italian, in 1946 she was even given the rank of lieutenant, and in 1947 she was appointed head of the Italian language department.
But after Biyazi’s dismissal, his ward was also dismissed, ordering her to leave Moscow. She worked as a French teacher in one of the villages of the Krasnodar Territory, and after rehabilitation, as a nurse and librarian and archivist of the Sochi Museum of Local Lore. In 1974, the Soviet authorities allowed her to visit her father’s grave in Paris, and in the same year Italian relatives found her: she then visited her half-sister Maria (Maria-Vera Fiaschi) 5 times, who was 11 years younger than her. The eldest son of Elizabeth became the captain of the marine corps of the Soviet Army, the youngest - a journalist.
But now back to her father, Zinovy Peshkov, who made yet another unsuccessful attempt to “conquer America”: working in the library of the University of Toronto, he invested all his money in a piece of land in Africa, but the deal turned out to be extremely unsuccessful. So I had to return to Capri - but not to Gorky, but to the Amphitheater.
Stars, as we see, Zinovy Peshkov was not enough then, but everything changed with the beginning of World War I, when a 30-year-old man who had a reputation as a chronic loser finally found his place in life.
The beginning of military career
Succumbing to a general impulse, Zinovy Peshkov reached Nice, where he enlisted in one of the infantry regiments. When the authorities learned that the rookie speaks five languages, Zinovy was instructed to restore order in the regimental archive. After completing this assignment, he was awarded the rank of ordinary second class, but it turned out that he was admitted to this regiment by mistake - without French citizenship, Zinovy could serve only in the Foreign Legion, to which he was transferred to the Second Regiment. By April 1, 1915 he rose to the rank of corporal, but on May 9 he was seriously wounded near Arras, having lost most of his right hand.
Former serkte6ar of Stalin B. Bazhenov claimed:
"Which hand?"
And when it turned out that the right one, there was no limit to triumph: according to the formula of the Jewish ritual curse, when the father curses his son, he must lose his right hand. ”
On August 28, 1915, Marshal Joseph Joffre awarded Zinovy Peshkov with a name weapons and with a military cross with a palm branch and, apparently, to finally get rid of it, he signed an order to confer upon him the rank of lieutenant. As a wounded legionnaire, Peshkov could now bother about obtaining French citizenship and the appointment of a military pension. Any other, probably, would have lived the rest of his life as an invalid, occasionally speaking to the audience at ceremonial meetings dedicated to the celebration of a date. But Zinovy Peshkov was not "any." Healing the wound, he achieved return to military service.
From June 22, 1916 he was engaged in staff work, and then went along the diplomatic line: he went to the United States, where he remained until the beginning of 1917. Upon returning to Paris, he received the rank of captain, the Order of the Legion of Honor ("for exceptional services to the allied countries") and French citizenship.
Diplomatic missions in Russia
In May of the same year, Peshkov, in the rank of a diplomatic officer of the third class, arrived in Petrograd as a representative of France at the Russian Ministry of War, which was then headed by A. Kerensky (from Kerensky Peshkov managed to receive the Order of St. Vladimir of the 4th degree). In Petrograd, Zinovy, after a long separation, met with Gorky.
There is evidence of a meeting between Peshkov and Yakov Sverdlov. According to one version, the brothers “did not recognize” each other at the meeting and did not shake hands. On the other hand, they secluded themselves in a room for a long time (from which they "came out with white faces"), the conversation obviously did not ask, and led to a final breakdown in relations. According to the third, on which J. Etinger insists, referring to the testimony of the half-brother of Jacob Sverdlov German, Zinovy “in response to his brother’s attempt to embrace him, sharply pushed him away, declaring that he would conduct the conversation only in French.” The latest version seems to me the most believable.
And here is another brother of Zinovia, Benjamin, in 1918 returned to Russia covered by the civil war from prosperous America, where he worked in one of the banks. He served as Commissar of Railways, in 1926 he became a member of the Presidium of the Supreme Economic Council, then he was the head of the scientific and technical department of the Supreme Economic Council, secretary of the All-Union Association of Science and Technology and the director of the road research institute.
After the October Revolution, Zinovy Peshkov returned to France for a short time, but returned to Russia in 1918 as the Entente "curator" Kolchak, who brought an act recognizing him as the "supreme ruler" of Russia. For this, the "Omsk ruler" awarded him the Order of St. Vladimir of the 3rd degree.
You may have heard a historical joke that from the Kolchak headquarters Z. Peshkov sent an insulting and threatening telegram to his brother Jacob, in which there were the words: “we will hang” (you and Lenin). How to relate to such messages?
It must be understood that Peshkov was not a private individual and, moreover, was not an officer of the white army. On the contrary, at that time he was a high-ranking French diplomat. The word “we” in his telegram addressed to the chairman of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee of Soviet Russia should not be read “I and Kolchak”, but “France and the countries of the Entente”. And this would mean recognition of the fact of France’s participation in the civil war in Russia on the side of the “whites” - exactly what this state has always denied and denies (like Great Britain, the USA, Japan), representing the presence of its troops in the territory of a foreign country as “humanitarian mission. " The Bolsheviks would publish this telegram in the newspapers and then at all conferences they would poke the French into it like a tattered cat in a pool made by it. And Peshkov would fly out of public service with a “black ticket”. But this man was never demented, and therefore did not send such a telegram (which, incidentally, no one had ever seen and never held in his hands).
Then Peshkov was part of the French mission at Wrangel and in Georgia led by the Mensheviks.
It should be said that Peshkov’s choice as a French emissary was not very successful: very many both at Kolchak’s headquarters and at Wrangel did not trust him and suspected of spying on the “Reds”.
On January 14, 1920, Zinovy returned to military service for a short time, becoming captain of the 1st Armored Cavalry Regiment of the Foreign Legion, in which former White Guard officers served mainly, but on January 21, 1921 he again turned to diplomatic work.
In 1921, Peshkov briefly became the public secretary of the International Relief Commission, starving in Russia. But, according to numerous testimonies of people who knew him, he did not show any interest either in his family or in his abandoned homeland either then or later. The new job did not cause any particular enthusiasm: he stubbornly sought permission to return to military service. Finally, in 1922 he managed to get an appointment in Morocco.
Back in line
In 1925, Zinovy Peshkov, as the commander of the battalion of the First Regiment of the Foreign Legion (40 of his soldiers were Russians), took part in the Reef War, injured in the left leg, the second Military Cross with a palm branch and earned a strange and funny nickname from his subordinates - Red Penguin . While in the hospital, he wrote the book “Sounds of the forge. Life in the Foreign Legion ”, which was published in 1926 in the USA, and in 1927 was published in France under the title“ Foreign Legion in Morocco ”.
In the preface to one of the editions of this book, A. Morois writes:
From 1926 to 1937 Peshkov was again in the diplomatic service (from 1926 to 1930 - at the French Foreign Ministry, from 1930 to 1937 - in the mission of the High Commissioner in the Levant), and then returned to Morocco as commander of the 3rd battalion of the Second Infantry Regiment of the Foreign Legion. After the outbreak of World War II, he fought on the Western Front, and then told an unlikely story of fleeing from France about how he had taken a German officer hostage and demanded an airplane to Gibraltar. According to a more likely version, his connection was part of the troops loyal to the Vichy government. Not wanting to serve the “traitor Peten,” Peshkov resigned due to reaching the age limit for his rank, after which he calmly left for London.
At the end of 1941, he was a representative of de Gaulle in the colonies of South Africa, was engaged in the protection of allied transports, in 1943 - received the rank of general.
French diplomat Zinovy Peshkov
In April 1944, Peshkov finally switched to diplomatic work and was sent to the headquarters of Chiang Kai-shek, with whom he was destined to meet again in 1964 - on the island of Taiwan.
On September 2, 1945, Zinovy, as part of the French delegation, was aboard the battleship Missouri, where a pact on the surrender of Japan was signed.
From 1946 to 1949 Peshkov was in diplomatic work in Japan (in the rank of head of the French mission). In 1950, he retired, finally receiving the title of corps general. He completed his last major diplomatic mission in 1964, handing Mao Zedong an official document recognizing France as communist China.
November 27, 1966 he died in Paris and was buried in the cemetery of Saint-Genevieve-des-Bois. According to his will, an inscription was carved on the stove: "Zinovy Peshkov, Legionnaire."
As we see, Zinovy Peshkov attached great importance to his service in the Foreign Legion, was brave, had military awards, but he did not perform any special military feats in his life and was not a military diplomat, but most of his life. In the diplomatic field, he achieved the greatest success. In this regard, it is significantly inferior to many other Russian "volunteers" of the legion, for example, D. Amilakhvari and S. Andolenko. About S.P. Andolenko, who managed to rise to the rank of brigadier general and the posts of regiment commander and deputy inspector of the legion, was described in the article “Russian volunteers of the French Foreign Legion”. And we will talk about Dmitry Amilahvari in the article “The French Foreign Legion in the First and Second World Wars”.
Rodion Yakovlevich Malinovsky, twice Hero of the Soviet Union, People’s Hero of Yugoslavia, Soviet Marshal who became the Minister of Defense of the USSR, was much more successful in the military field.
He will be described in the next article.
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