Russian Amazons. Double portrait against the background of wars and revolutions
Two are not just Mary
Maria Leontyevna Bochkareva and Maria Vladislavovna Zakharchenko are heroines with whom it would be quite possible to paint icons in our time. Moreover, they are one of the first women officers, warriors who, by the will of fate, found themselves on the other, "white" side of the barricades.
Not so long ago they would have been told that they "were not with the people." But we still cannot figure out what it really meant at that bright and cruel time - to be with the people. History, as you know, the winners write, and then the next winners rewrite it.
And, probably, it is not just that one of our heroines - Maria Zakharchenko, a real fury, a convinced monarchist, inspired Alexei Tolstoy to the image of his "Viper", who fought not at all for whites. In the old TV series "Operation Trust" she was very convincingly played by Lyudmila Kasatkina, but there is not a word about the stormy youth of the negative heroine in this film.
The other, Maria Bochkareva, was really remembered quite recently, and the talented comedian and successful producer Igor Ugolnikov shot his sensational "Battalion" with Maria Aronova in the title role based on her fate. Historical truth was not required from the series, however, the film did not become a cult film either - in Russia they do not really believe in this.
However, indeed, women were not only in the Revolution, they also fought against it. For many years we knew only Lyubov Yarovaya, and also the beautiful commissar from Optimistic Tragedy, and Anka the machine-gunner, whom the Vasiliev brothers famously “added” for Furmanov to his dryish “Chapaev”.
There were very few on the same side of the fronts - if only Lyuska, just a combat friend, the front-line wife of General Charnota in Bulgakov's "Run", and the Socialist Revolutionary Maria Spiridonova from "The Sixth of July" in the brilliant performance of the great Alla Demidova.
There are women in Russian villages
Only historians did not forget about the real Mary, although no solid biographies have been written about Bochkareva or Zakharchenko. And they could well take a worthy place, for example, in the series "The Lives of Remarkable People".
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Maria Zakharchenko was from a fairly noble family of Lysovs - hereditary nobles with an estate in the Penza province, her father rose to the rank of actual state councilor. Maria was an avid horsewoman, which later came in handy for her, and even before the war she managed to organize an exemplary stud farm on her father's estate.
She studied at the Smolny Institute, she was lucky to meet the royal family, and above all - with the eldest daughter of Nicholas II Olga. Maria Lysova graduated from Smolny with a gold medal, after which she studied for another year in Lausanne, Switzerland.
In the last peaceful year of 1913, 20-year-old Maria married Ivan Mikhno, a guardsman from Semyonov, and together with him settled in St. Petersburg in the officers' house on Zagorodny Prospekt.
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Maria Bochkareva, on her father's side - Frolkova, could not boast of the same noble origin. Her ancestors were only Ural, and earlier - Yaik Cossacks. In the family of his father, Leonty Frolkov, who settled near Novgorod, there was a legend that they once "followed Pugachev" and were forced to move closer to the north.
At the end of the 15th century, they had to flee again - from poverty and hunger to the Siberian village of Ksenyevka near Tomsk (pictured). That is why Bochkareva always called herself a Siberian. In Siberia, her XNUMX-year-old was married, but her husband, Afanasy Bochkarev, turned out to be a heavy drinker.
Maria endured for seven years, and left him for the Jewish butcher Yakov Buk, but nothing good was to be expected from that either. For participation in the robbery, he was sent to Yakutsk, and his wife followed him. Buk did not calm down and there, trading in a gang of hunghuz, and was exiled even further.
For faith, king and fatherland
When the war broke out with Germany and Austria, Maria Bochkareva just turned 25 - in July 1914, and Masha Mikhno was not even 25, as in that legendary song from "Officers". Both went to the front absolutely out of conviction, and let it sound a little pretentious - out of love for the motherland.
But one - Mikhno, following her husband, to whom she did not have time to give her daughter. She was born just three days after the death of the captain of the Life Guards, who died of wounds in his wife's arms. The other, Bochkareva, wanted to join the army, obviously, because she did not need any husbands.
It was not easy for both of them to get to the front. Bochkarev, who returned to Tomsk with some difficulty and appeared to the commander of the 24th reserve battalion, was simply kicked out. Maria Mikhno needed the patronage of the tsar's daughter and the empress personally.
Grand Duchesses Olga and Tatiana Nikolaevna
Maria left the child in the care of her relatives, and she was enrolled as a volunteer in the Elizavetgrad hussar regiment, where the Grand Duchess Olga Nikolaevna was listed as the chief. The regimental commander was ordered not to expel the female hussar.
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In turn, Bochkareva was recommended to go to the sisters of mercy, but this was not for her. And she, too, needed the august help - she sent a telegram to the emperor himself, and the one that is simply amazing today reached him. And Nicholas II answered Maria Leontievna with the highest consent.
A young and strong Cossack woman was taken into the infantry, she quickly stopped all attempts of the soldiers to pester her, and demanded that she be called Yashka - as an unlucky second husband. Already in the spring of 1915, Maria fought as part of the Polotsk infantry regiment, and fought, admittedly, heroically.
Battles, exploits, crosses
The names of these women warriors only later gained general fame, especially after the formation of women's shock battalions, where, by the way, Kerensky was ready to attract Maria Mikhno. Even at the front, very little was known about the exploits of the two Mari.
It is strange that they were not noticed by reporters, who were more often received at headquarters or during the front-line trips of the emperor-emperor. The women themselves in shoulder straps did not really strive for the first roles. Mikhno and Bochkareva preferred to simply serve, and real feats were not exceptional for either one or the other.
The Cossack Bochkareva was not eager to join the cavalry, but in the infantry, side by side with the men, she went to the bayonet, was in reconnaissance, surprising everyone with resourcefulness and courage. She received several wounds, fell under gas attacks, once carrying several wounded comrades on her.
By the beginning of 1917, Bochkareva was already a senior non-commissioned officer and a full Knight of St. George, and not one of her contemporaries doubted that all the awards were received by her on the case. In the trenches, Maria also mastered literacy, which soon helped her to go up for promotion.
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The young widow Maria Mikhno also did not delay taking part in the battles. The hussars admitted that she was completely "horseback riding like a man". At first, of course, it was said that the volunteer Mikhno “never learned to own weapons and intelligence: it means that from a combat point of view it was useless».
The presence of the lady could not but embarrass the real hussars, but everything changed very quickly. Already in the fall of 1915, for the first time, she was not refused to go on reconnaissance - as a conductor. Maria led the detachment directly into the rear of the German company, which the cavalrymen partly chopped up and partly scattered.
Then she, herself slightly wounded, carried the wounded soldier out from under the fire. And in 1916, on the Romanian front in Dobrudja, when she had already deservedly received the rank of non-commissioned officer, she completely surprised the whole regiment. She managed to capture a Bulgarian infantryman, in fact, with one cry.
In one of the quiet country courtyards, Mikhno, without dismounting from his horse, yelled at the unfortunate "little brother" who happened to be there that he preferred to give up the rifle for the best. Imagine how embarrassed he was when he learned to whom he surrendered. Later, Maria often wore her St. George's crosses even in Red Russia, even as a spy, or, if you like, a scout.
Revolution is the time to choose
In the spring of 1917, when it became clear to the Provisional Government that had taken power that something had to be done with the army, Maria Bochkareva was invited to Petrograd. Kerensky needed an unbiased look from the inside. A simple woman, a complete Georgievsky cavalier, spoke in favor of the need to raise the morale in the units.
Bochkareva's memoirists have no doubt that the idea of forming women's battalions came to her long ago, perhaps under the impression of stories about the Amazons and the cavalry girl Nadezhda Durova. Maria Leontievna, as she was respectfully dubbed in the capital, naively believed that one kind of dying women would inspire Russian heroes to heroic deeds.
In fact, there was no end to the volunteers, in just a week two thousand of them signed up for Bochkareva. The new division of the Russian army had everything - and tough selection, and shooting, and drill until you drop, and even jaws.
Kerensky himself tried to reprimand Mary, already a lieutenant, for assault. To which he received in response: “disgruntled can go to hell". However, before that Bochkareva assured the commander-in-chief, General Brusilov, that her battalion “will not disgrace Russia».
Maria Leontyevna, who was not even 30 years old, was increasingly difficult to distinguish from the veterans of male soldiers, she grew stronger and grayer, which no one saw because of her short hair, and even her voice became low and harsh. But at the front, however, her "female shock" did not find big laurels. Either he did not have time, or the men did not support.
Having received the banner on June 21 right on St. Isaac's Square, the Death Battalion, and how could it be otherwise, went under German bullets and shells. The battalion commander, which ended up with only 300 bayonets, which, however, was not bad at that time, was wounded in the first battle near Smorgon.
Bochkareva lay down in the hospital, and again led the battalion, which, contrary to all legends, did not guard the Winter Palace in October 1917 at all. There, only the company headed by Lieutenant Loskov did not last long against the sailors and the workers' guard. But she was also from the second shock battalion, where the commander was an officer with a very similar surname - Bocharnikova.
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The regiment, which continued to include non-commissioned officer Maria Mikhno, was found in February 1917 on vacation in Bessarabia. Having served by this time for more than a year, she remained the same educated, tactful, not losing her femininity. According to the historian, who never became her serious biographer, there was no “nothing fake, nothing fancy».
The revolutionary events, surprisingly, did not become any serious shock for her. It seems that only subsequent events made her a convinced monarchist. After the Bolsheviks came to power in October, Maria, along with most of the officers and soldiers from Elizavetgrad, went home.
There she also found devastation, fermentation, robbery of landowners' estates and ... her own stud farm, abandoned to the mercy of fate. She tried to organize self-defense units, but most importantly, she sent officers to the Don to Kornilov and Denikin, and to Siberia to Kolchak. She hid many of them.
Having married in 1918 to Grigory Alekseevich, an officer-ulan, a friend of her first husband, she began to bear his surname - Zakharchenko, under which she went down in history. Young with adventures, disguised as Persians, got to the Don and managed to fight in the Armed Forces of the South of Russia.
G.A. Zakharchenko commanded the Caucasian Cavalry Regiment, his wife was his orderly. Grigory Zakharchenko died from serious wounds received in the battle near Kakhovka. Maria was also wounded there, but survived and together with Wrangel's army was evacuated to Gallipoli - on the peninsula, which became the military base of the former White Army.
The right to die
The battalion of Bochkareva, like all the other female drums, was disbanded immediately after the overthrow of the Provisional Government. Maria Leontyevna was arrested, and there is evidence that she met with both Trotsky and Lenin. Cooperation, apparently, did not work out, especially since Maria categorically opposed peace with the Germans.
The Bolsheviks did not consider it necessary to keep her in prison, and on the way home to Tomsk, she actively campaigned against the new government. For this, comrade soldiers simply threw Madame Lieutenant off the train. In Siberia, she almost got drunk, did not linger and returned to Petrograd.
There she got in touch with the white underground and moved to Novocherkassk to L.G. Kornilov. And together with the general, out of the blue, she set off on a foreign voyage. The British establishment and the American President Wilson honored “Russian Jeanne d'Arc", And the press was absolutely delighted with her.
Help from the White Army helped to knock Bochkarev out, but returning to Russia through Arkhangelsk, she refused to fight for the Whites. Later, having already returned to Siberia, Bochkareva formed an ambulance train for Kolchak's army, which his subordinates shamelessly abandoned during the retreat. Bochkareva did not go against the Reds, but this did not save her from accusations of counter-revolutionary activity.
Arrived in Siberia, the head of the Special Department of the Cheka Pavlunovsky, whom F.E. Dzerzhinsky endowed with extraordinary powers, and immediately wrote to Maria Leontyevna "a letter of execution." The verdict was carried out in Tomsk on May 16, 1920. The retired lieutenant Bochkareva was then only 30 years old.
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The end of the career of Maria Vladislavovna Zakharchenko is worthy of a separate novel, although it is well represented in the half-forgotten four-part film Operation Trust. By that time, our heroine had married for the third time - again to the officer, the life-ranger Georgy Radkovich.
Together they returned to Russia under the name of the Schultz spouses, and for some reason this conspiratorial name is now added to Maria Vladislavovna in all sources. Shultsev was personally sent to long-term reconnaissance by General A.P. Kutepov - to prepare a monarchist conspiracy.
A lot has been written about how he failed, we will not repeat. It is important for us that Zakharchenko herself considered Trest her last business, which she even shared with the notorious Vasily Shulgin. When in the spring of 1927 it became clear that the entire combination with the "Trust" was carried out with the almost direct "participation" of Soviet "authorities", the Schultz spouses had to hide from Russia.
But they soon returned to the USSR - already for "direct action", that is - terrorist acts. In the same 1927, Maria Zakharchenko, together with another "trustee" - Eduard Oppertut, who became her lover, attempted to blow up the OGPU hostel in Moscow.
The monarchist terrorists were almost seized, they were able to break away from their pursuers and made it to Polotsk. But there both were killed in a shootout, although Soviet sources, not without reason, also put forward a version of suicide.
And hatred for the red, and the indomitable monarchism of Maria Vladislavovna manifested itself in her back in 1918. They, among other things, may well be associated with the fact that she was friends with the tsar's daughter Olga, as, obviously, with the entire august family. Irrefutable evidence of their death - this alone would have been quite enough, but there was also a lot more.
- Alexey Podymov
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