The beginning of the career of Minister Sukhomlinov. From success to success
The darling of fate
Vladimir Alexandrovich Sukhomlinov. A cavalry general and adjutant general, he has made what is called a brilliant career. He is also a member of the Council of State and Minister of War, dismissed under the hooting of the crowd. He was the object of hatred of almost the entire high society, with the exception of the royal family.
The general married for love, but with a scandal, and was considered the main culprit for the defeats of the Russian army in the world war. Sukhomlinov was tried and convicted under the Provisional Government. But considering the fact that he died after the revolution and the Civil War, at a very old age - 77 years old, fate was not too cruel to him.
Well, right up until the days when the ministerial portfolio was given to the favorite of Nicholas II, Sukhomlinov was often just lucky. He was lucky to join the guard and enter the secular society, making acquaintances in the august family. I was lucky not to die in the Russo-Turkish war and not go to war with Japan.
He was lucky with patrons, among them were the great dukes and famous generals. Luckily, in the summer of 1911, the terrorist Bagrov mortally wounded the chairman of the Council of Ministers, Stolypin, who was ready to fire Sukhomlinov. After Stolypin, the prime ministers replaced each other, leaving in the post of Minister of War, whom Nicholas II liked so much, as well as his wife.
Guardsman and General Staff
Vladimir Sukhomlinov was born on 16 (4th according to the old style) August 1848 in the tiny town of Telshi, Kovno province. Inhabited mainly by Catholics, it clearly gravitated towards Poland, and this almost cost the young Sukhomlinov his military career.
Vladimir, the son of a modest district police officer, that is, the chief district police officer, entered the Alexander Cadet Corps in Vilna. It was only two years before the so-called Polish Uprising of 1863. Then an urgent reform of military education began, and he was hastily transferred to St. Petersburg.
Sukhomlinov graduated from the 1st military gymnasium in the capital successfully, and he was enrolled as a cadet, first in the 2nd Konstantinovsky school, and from there, as a good rider, almost immediately to the Nikolaev cavalry school. This was also a success, giving 19-year-old Sukhomlinov the opportunity to join the guard in 1867.
The young graduate becomes a life-lancer and serves where his regiment is stationed - in the recently rebellious Warsaw. Just four years later, Sukhomlinov successfully passed the entrance exams and was enrolled in the Academy of the General Staff. After graduating from the academy, he was already a captain of the General Staff and served for three years as a senior adjutant of the 1st Guards Cavalry Division.
In the same rank, and still a cavalryman, Sukhomlinov, commanding a squadron of His Majesty's Life Guards Cuirassier Regiment, somewhat unexpectedly received the rank of Chief Officer for special assignments at the headquarters of the 1st Army Corps. There he met Major General M.I. Dragomirov, then a simple division commander.
First triumph
In the summer of 1877, the war with the Turks began, and Sukhomlinov, having gone to the Balkans as an officer of the General Staff, began organizing civil administration in the old Bulgarian capital Tarnovo. But the inveterate cavalryman literally rushed to the front, because his division remained in St. Petersburg. He was sent to Plevna, where he was more than once entrusted with reconnaissance of Turkish fortifications.
At the front, Sukhomlinov finally received the rank of lieutenant colonel and performed an excellent reconnaissance before the battle at Gorny Dubnyak, which saved the Russian regiments from unjustified losses. He crossed the Balkans as part of the detachment of General P.P. Kartsov, having under the command of only one and a half hundred Cossacks. He crossed the Troyanovsky Pass, with battles, although not as fierce as on Shipka.
The main enemy there was winter with its generals "snow" and "frost". In the course of an unsuccessful attempt to overcome the pass on the move, Sukhomlinov almost fell under a landslide of snow and stones, and his subordinates rescued him. However, with the exit to the Maritsa valley, when the main forces of the Turks surrendered at Sheinovo, all that was left was to pursue the enemy.
A little later, the lieutenant colonel once again escaped death, already literally under the walls of Constantinople. Formally remaining at the disposal of the commander-in-chief of the Grand Duke Nikolai Nikolaevich, Sukhomlinov became the chief of staff of General Skobelev Sr., who was also called 1st, in contrast to his son, the already famous “White General”.
Dmitry Ivanovich, a hero of the Crimean War, was openly jealous of his son's successes and knocked out for himself the high appointment of the army cavalry commander. But even with the outbreak of hostilities, the cavalry was assigned to detachments, and only its chief, Lieutenant Colonel Sukhomlinov, and with him Prince Sumbatov, were on the staff.
A bit of "personal"
They, not overworked by the staff work, received a combined equestrian brigade at their disposal and still managed to accomplish their feat, capturing the town of Gyumurdzhin for a couple of days, very close to Constantinople. Alas, only Sukhomlinov's own memoirs have written about this in any intelligible way.
Let's turn to them, with the inevitable reductions:
... In the neighboring port, the retreating troops of Suleiman are loaded onto battleships to be sent to Gallipoli. Under such conditions, our detachment was too weak to take the city by open force ...
It was possible to take it only from a raid, and for this it was necessary that they did not know about the size of our detachment in Gyumurjin. Therefore, having closed the exit from the mountains, we did not let anyone into the city until we occupied it.
But I asked the permission of General Chernozubov for his occupation as follows: with a small patrol of three or four horsemen, it would be possible to quickly get into the city and demand its surrender in order to avoid ... artillery shelling and the inevitable destruction of houses. "
At the risk of being hit by Turkish bullets at once,
I went to the entrance of the house, went up the steps to the entrance ... I opened a large massive door and was struck by an unexpected sight: the Turks were sitting on a solid sofa along the walls of the hall.
If I was struck by the surprise of finding myself among the city meeting of representatives of a hostile country, then these latter could not help but be struck by a Russian officer who came to them unexpectedly.
This "living picture" was interrupted by my statement through an interpreter that ... in case of a voluntary surrender, the city would be occupied only by a cavalry detachment. We ourselves will strictly observe the order, and we will pay for fodder and food in gold ...
If they do not agree to my peaceful terms, I will leave the city; the chief of the detachment will not wait long, he will start hostile actions and let his "tops" (top - in Turkish, cannon) talk to them ...
I was about to leave, but a kaymakam came up to me and said that my conditions were accepted and asked that everything I had promised to be fulfilled. "
A few hours later, Sukhomlinov received a dispatch from the Turkish commander Savfet Pasha, who demanded that
... Such a demand was completely impracticable, especially since we did not have any official notification of the truce that had taken place. "
And only when "the cornet Bunin arrived from Adrianople with an order from the headquarters to withdraw our detachment for the demarcation line of the Arda River, since the armistice really took place," Sukhomlinov gave the order to march the brigade back - beyond the demarcation line.
Academician and cavalryman
Sukhomlinov returned from the Balkans with the Order of St. weapons for bravery. But seriously ill - in Constantinople, he contracted smallpox. But he quickly recovered and received a new appointment - the ruler of the Nikolaev Academy of the General Staff with the assignment of the rank of colonel soon.
General M.I. Dragomirov is one of the war heroes who took Sukhomlinov under his wing. However, the future minister Sukhomlinov did not quickly receive the rank of general, neither the patronage of the head of the academy, nor support in the august family helped.
The colonel of the Guards Cavalry led practical training in tactics for almost ten years and wrote a number of textbooks. He also lectured at the Corps of Pages and at the Nikolaev Cavalry School, where he listened to the Grand Dukes Pyotr Nikolaevich and Sergei Mikhailovich. Subsequently, both took up high posts in the army.
And Sukhomlinov, whom everyone knew as an excellent rider, after eight years at the academy headed the officer's cavalry school and led it for almost 12 years. At this time, he wrote a number of textbooks, historical a study about Napoleonic Marshal Murat, a brochure about partisans in 1812, as well as several stories published under the pseudonym Ostap Bondarenko.
The head of the school actively collaborated with the magazines "Razvedchik", "Voenny Sbornik" and the newspaper "Russian invalid". It is not easy to understand how such a busy officer, who became a general only in 1890, still had time to command. First, the Pavlograd hussar regiment, which, under Alexander III, was reorganized first into a dragoon regiment, and then back, and then by the 10th cavalry division.
Finally, in 1899, Sukhomlinov, already a lieutenant general, took over as chief of staff of the Kiev military district. Then such a post in the Russian army was not considered high enough, and three years later the aging Dragomirov actually made Sukhomlinov his deputy, appointing him as assistant commander.
When Russia got involved in the war with Japan, General Dragomirov was supposed to be appointed commander-in-chief of the Russian army in the Far East. And if this appointment took place, then Sukhomlinov's participation in heavy battles in Manchuria could not be avoided.
Commander and Governor General
Adjutant General Dragomirov refused, citing poor health, which was confirmed by his death in October next year. But the infantry general managed to promote his deputy, cavalry general Sukhomlinov, to the post of commander of the Kiev military district.
In October of the revolutionary 1905, Sukhomlinov was appointed to the post of the Kiev, Podolsk and Volyn governor-general. Dragomirov categorically refused such a combination of military and civilian posts, and Sukhomlinov agreed only after the riots in Kiev.
Ahead, the cavalry general and adjutant general had an appointment to the highest army posts. And also - a scandalous resignation followed by a court verdict and almost a year of imprisonment in the Trubetskoy bastion of Petropavlovka. And death in Berlin, where Sukhomlinov will have time to work as a consultant at the General Staff of the Reichswehr.
And before that, Sukhomlinov had an equally scandalous second marriage. In 1904 he was widowed and soon became close friends with the Butovich family. The aging general fell in love with Ekaterina Viktorovna, the wife of a poor but very well-born landowner Vladimir Nikolaevich, whose ancestor had signed the Pereyaslav Rada.
Sukhomlinov will seek their divorce for several years. Threats, blackmail and forgery with the betrayal of her husband, who allegedly had adultery with a governess, were used. Later it turned out that he simply could not be, since she, who had left for France for a long time, turned out to be a girl, according to the doctor's conclusion. But the general in love nevertheless achieved a divorce, although he completely ruined his reputation.
The ending should ...
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