Russian officers on the fields of the Civil War: Colonel Vasily Kotomin, a White Guard who was misunderstood by his own people
The First World War had a significant impact on the worldview of the Russian officer corps at the beginning of the revolutionary events of 1917, primarily due to significant changes in its social composition. If at the beginning of the war the Russian army numbered over 40 thousand officers (the same number were called up for mobilization), then by the fall of 1917, according to historian S.V. Volkov, there were already 276 thousand officers in the army.
Huge changes in the size of the officer corps were aggravated by the fact that the mass of losses was not distributed proportionally between the officers who were personnel and those who were promoted during the war; its main part falls on the former [2]. For this reason, the number of pre-war career officers - hereditary military officers (in many cases, hereditary nobles), wearing shoulder straps from the age of ten, bearers of military traditions, has seriously decreased.
By the end of the war, many infantry regiments had only 1–2 career officers; in others, at best, they were provided to the battalion level. The companies were everywhere commanded by wartime officers. The sharp renewal of the social composition of the officer corps on the eve of the February Revolution led to the fact that the officers ceased to be of noble origin, and other traditions and another culture began to be massively introduced into their midst [4].
The Revolution and Civil War destroyed the previous foundations of society and led to its split. Representatives of the officer corps also had to make their own life choices: first, after the abdication of the emperor and the transfer of power to the Provisional Government in the context of the ongoing “democratization” of the army, then after the Bolsheviks took power and broke the centuries-old way of life [4].
Many officers did not want to be drawn into a fratricidal war and took a neutral position. Officers had to make their ideological, political and life choices based on ideas about duty, honor, on the basis of their personal experience in 1917, as well as on the specific circumstances in which these people found themselves [1].
There were also frequent cases of desertion, when whites went over to reds, and reds to whites. Thus, Colonel F.A. Bogdanov, who commanded the 2nd separate Orenburg Cossack brigade, went over to the Red side on September 8, 1919, together with the brigade. Transitions of representatives of the command staff of the Red Army to the side of the Whites during the Civil War, including collective ones, were also common, which is confirmed by story desertion of the command staff of the 35th Infantry Division in July and September 1919.
The anti-Bolshevik underground in the Red Army was also quite extensive, the most famous representatives of which, who later went over to the side of the White Army, were Colonel V.V. Kotomin, Colonel A.L. Nosovich, as well as General N.N. Stogov. The story of the Russian officer Vasily Kotomin, a member of the anti-Bolshevik underground, who not only defected to the whites, but also prepared for them a detailed report on the state of the Red Army, deserves special attention.
Russian officers and the Civil War
Before moving directly to the story of V. Kotomin, it is necessary to tell in a little more detail about the motives for the entry of Russian officers into the armies of the warring parties.
This issue is discussed in more detail in the book by Doctor of Historical Sciences Andrei Ganin “The Russian Officer Corps during the Civil War. Confrontation between command personnel. 1917–1922”, so it will be cited quite often below.
A. Ganin notes that the mass of officers greeted the Bolshevik coup rather passively. The Red Army in the first half of 1918 was replenished with only a small number of former officers. The increase in the number of military specialists resulted in subsequent forced mobilizations [1].
In turn, historian Gennady Marchenko writes that if after the February Revolution the majority of officers remained in military service, then by the fall of 1917 the situation had changed. The separate Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, signed by the Bolshevik leaders in March 1918 with the German authorities on unfavorable terms, led to the transition of a significant part of the officer corps to opposition to Soviet power, some of whom joined the White movement [4].
What were the motives of the officers who, after the October Revolution, took one or another opposing side?
A. A. Shuvalov in his article notes that the classification of the reasons for the transition of officers to the side of the Red Army was given back in 1919 by Colonel Y. M. Lisovoy, an officer of the Volunteer Army, as well as the emigrant publicist A. S. Belorusov. He lists the following reasons, on the basis of which several groups of motives can be distinguished.
The first, small group, consisted of people who served for ideological reasons and shared communist beliefs. The second consisted of those who voluntarily came in the spring of 1918 to repel the German invasion. The third were those who deliberately ended up in the Red Army for its disorder and decay. The fourth group consists of individuals who, given the shortage of specialists, felt an opportunity to advance under the new government. The fifth, most numerous (up to 80%) were people mobilized by the Soviet government and served under the threat of reprisals against their families [3].
As for the officers, cadets and cadets who chose the path of armed struggle against Soviet power, they can also be divided into several groups.
The first group are staunch opponents of Soviet power. The second group consists of individuals who associated their personal benefits, primarily material ones, with the overthrow of the Soviets. The third group - those who were offended by the Soviet regime for insult and humiliation, who harbored anger and a sense of revenge towards it. The fourth group, the most numerous, were those who fought for self-defense, for a piece of bread, for a salary [3].
Many officers were united by a negative perception of the Bolsheviks, who were perceived as enemies of Russia, traitors, henchmen of Germany, who were striving for the defeat of their own country in the First World War. Other officers believed that they were serving their country regardless of the ruling regime. Nevertheless, for the period 1918–1920. Every third General Staff officer deserted from the Red Army [1].
This is primarily due to the fact that the Bolsheviks and their allies, the Left Socialist Revolutionaries, took power in the wake of the disintegration of the old army, soldiers' permissiveness, unprecedented humiliation and massacres of officers. Having come to power, the Bolsheviks pursued a discriminatory policy towards officers, which inevitably alienated the latter. Among the symbols of the dark past were everyone who had previously enjoyed any privileges, including officers, “gold chasers” [1].
Hordes of propagandized soldiers, maddened by permissiveness, thirsted for the blood of those whom they considered their oppressors. The officers could not calmly appear on the street in uniform. Outright criminality was covered up with revolutionary slogans. The very word “officer” became a symbol of the “class enemy”, aroused suspicions of counter-revolution, and in the Red Army the euphemism “military specialist” was later introduced instead [1].
Andrei Ganin in his work emphasizes that during the Civil War, officers often had no choice on which side to fight on, due to the fact that mobilizations were carried out by all warring parties. Much depended on the location of the officer at a particular period of time, as well as on the quality of the work of the mobilization or punitive apparatus. Officers often switched sides, either by accident or by conscious choice [1].
One of these defectors was Colonel Vasily Vasilyevich Kotomin, commander of the 2nd brigade of the 35th rifle division of the Red Army.
Military career of Vasily Kotomin and his participation in the anti-Bolshevik underground
Colonel Vasily Vasilyevich Kotomin was born on November 15, 1882 and came from the nobility of the Tiflis province. He graduated from eight classes of the Tiflis 3rd Men's Gymnasium and the St. Petersburg Infantry Junker School in the 1st category (1905), passed the entrance exam to the preparatory school of Oriental languages (1909) [1].
He entered military service as a 1st category volunteer at the Moscow Military School on August 29, 1901. However, apparently, something went wrong with his studies, so in 1903 Kotomin was enrolled without an exam in a special class of the St. Petersburg Infantry Junker School, while serving in the 7th Samogit Grenadier Regiment [1].
Kotomina's officer service from the spring of 1905 to the spring of 1911 took place in Turkestan. He served in the 5th and 1st Turkestan rifle battalions, served as adjutant of the headquarters of the I Turkestan Army Corps, as well as chief officer in the Amudarya flotilla at the headquarters of the Turkestan Military District.
In the spring of 1911, Kotomin was sent to the Main Directorate of the General Staff, where from June he served as assistant to the head of the V department of the department for the organization and service of troops, and the next year he transferred to the 197th Forestry Infantry Regiment in Sveaborg. He took an active part in the First World War.
Having enlisted in the Red Army in 1918, Kotomin was simultaneously a member of the white underground - the Union of National Revival and the Ryazan underground anti-Bolshevik organization [1].
Probably in connection with underground work, Kotomin, according to N.D. Egorov, was arrested in October 1918, but was released [5]. Apparently, Kotomin was still trusted, since upon his release he took the post of commander of the 13th regiment of the 2nd Infantry Division stationed in Ryazan.
The Tula provincial military commissar D.P. Oskin left evidence of Kotomina in his memoirs:
“The commander of this brigade, Kotomin, a former colonel, a Ryazan landowner, arrived in Tula at the moment he received the order to send the brigade to the front. The first impression is that he is energetic, agile and lively, knowing military affairs well.”
Dmitry Porfiryevich Oskin (1892 - 1934), later commander of the troops of the Trans-Volga Military District.
According to the commissar of the 27th Infantry Division A.P. Kuchkin, Kotomin -
“a man slightly above average height, with a buzz cut and clean shaven. There is gray hair at the temples. He is plump, but lively and slender beyond his years. He was very correct and helpful, which greatly captivated his interlocutor, whom he looked straight in the eye” [6].
At the post of brigade commander, Kotomin, as before, carried out subversive work. It is not surprising that the orders were not carried out, and the actions of the brigade aroused criticism from the divisional authorities. The assistant chief of staff of the brigade for the operational part, former lieutenant N.N. Zagorsky, was also associated with the white underground [1].
During the fighting near Chelyabinsk, Kotomin, on the night of July 24, 1919, with a group of like-minded people, went over to the side of Kolchak’s troops. According to D.P. Yamyshev, the collective transition to the whites was planned in advance.
The commander of the Western White Army, General K.V. Sakharov, wrote this about the transition of the Kotomina group:
“They ended up at an outpost that vigilantly guarded the road, since our troops were accustomed to various tricks and deceptions of the Bolsheviks. The first salvo killed Colonel Kotomin's horse and wounded two officers; they all scattered, and only a day later it was possible to bring these heroes together. Colonel Kotomin spent a terrible hour and a half lying behind the horse's corpse until our officer freed him and led him out. Colonel Kotomin was taken to the nearest headquarters just as I was touring the troops. A tall, powerfully built man with an open, energetic face, a hero of the German war, he trembled all over from his experience with a fine nervous tremor, like a little frozen boy. “I thought they would kill me.” But it was so hard for the Bolsheviks that death was better” [7].
Among the Whites, Kotomin was seconded to the headquarters of the 3rd Army and was at the disposal of the headquarters of the 3rd Army. At the beginning of August 1919, the defector was received by the Supreme Ruler, Admiral A.V. Kolchak. According to the order to the troops of the 3rd Army No. 743 of September 20, 1919, Kotomin was seconded to the army headquarters, and before he received the appointment, it was ordered that he be satisfied with his salary in the amount of 80% of the salary of the division chief.
At the end of 1919, Colonel V.V. Kotomin died of typhus.
A few days before the transition to the whites, Kotomin prepared a report, the purpose of which was to inform the white command as fully as possible about the strengths and weaknesses of the Soviet troops. And although the sense of objectivity often betrayed the speaker, nevertheless, as A. Ganin notes, many of the author’s assessments seem quite balanced [1].
Kotomina's report and reaction to it
In an effort to attract the attention of white officers to the constant improvement of the Red Army, Kotomin in Siberia gave lectures on the Red Army, but encountered misunderstanding, since evidence of the growing power of the Red Army and the strengthening of discipline in it was interpreted by whites as Bolshevik propaganda.
In particular, as Baron Alexey Budberg, who was at that time the chief supply officer of the Siberian Army under A.V. Kolchak, wrote in his diary, they even tried to beat the lecturer:
“Yesterday there was a public lecture by Colonel Kotomin, who fled the Red Army; those present did not understand the bitterness of the lecturer, who pointed out that in the commissar army there is much more order and discipline than ours, and they created a huge scandal, with an attempt to beat the lecturer, one of the most ideological workers of our national Center; they were especially offended when K. noted that a drunken officer was impossible in the Red Army, because any commissar or communist would immediately shoot him; Here in Petropavlovsk there is such drunkenness that one is ashamed of the Russian army” [8].
] Lieutenant General Alexey Pavlovich von Budberg came from hereditary nobles of the Livonia province. He headed the headquarters of the Vladivostok fortress for more than ten years and was one of the most famous military figures who served in the Far East. Commander of an infantry division and army corps during the First World War, manager of the War Ministry in the government of Admiral A.V. Kolchak. Author of the widely known memoirs “The Diary of a White Guard.”
As a result, Kotomin acquired a reputation as a Bolshevik, although he sincerely wanted victory for the Whites.
The problem of underestimating the enemy in the white camp was systemic and consisted of a lack of self-criticism. Representatives of the White movement often perceived the Reds as a kind of undisciplined mass that was driven to the front by various commissars and troublemakers. In addition, even in 1920, many White Guards seriously believed that the Red Army was actually led by the German General Staff.
Kotomin's report, prepared for the white command, was already intercepted by the Reds in September 1919. The report was appreciated, and soon it ended up on the desk of the head of the Soviet government, V.I. Lenin. The defector’s report caused a resonance in party circles and was discussed not only in the Central Committee of the RCP (b), but also in the Moscow party committee. In particular, the military organizer of the committee, A.F. Myasnikov, mentioned him [1].
This attitude is due to the relative objectivity and content of the document written by an enemy of the Reds. It is no coincidence, according to Trotsky, that Kotomin - “a person is not stupid, not lacking in observation and character” [1].
Thus, Kotomin’s knowledge of the structure and life of the Red Army and the report based on this knowledge were not in demand - it was clearer and easier for whites to continue not to take the Reds seriously, despite the failures at the front. The Reds took the report more seriously. In October 1919, members of the Central Committee studied the defector's report, trying to understand the weaknesses of the Red Army organization.
It is noteworthy that the philosopher N.V. Ustryalov, who personally talked with Kotomin, wrote the following:
“There was a radical difference between the “native” whites and those who managed to breathe the Soviet air and consciously look at their surroundings. The latter could not, with all their hostility towards the Bolsheviks, turn a blind eye to their strengths. We can say that one way or another they went through the school of political literacy and therefore assessed the situation more soberly and more deeply. And in the “primordial” white kingdom the naive version continued to hold: the Bolsheviks were robbers and German spies” [9].
Использованная литература:
[1]. Ganin A.V. Russian officer corps during the Civil War. Confrontation between command personnel. 1917–1922 – M.: Tsentrpoligraf, 2019.
[2]. Volkov S.V. The tragedy of Russian officers. – M.: Tsentrpoligraf, 2001.
[3]. Shuvalov A. A. Reasons for the choice of the opposing side by representatives of the Russian officer corps at the end of 1917 - beginning of 1918 // Bulletin of Bryansk State University. Story. Literary criticism. Right. Linguistics. 2012. No. 2 (2).
[4]. Marchenko G.V. Russian officers during the years of revolutionary upheavals and the Civil War: moral and political choice // Management consulting. 2017. No. 11.
[5]. Egorov N.D. Colonel V.V. Kotomin and his report. M., 2018. pp. 353–354.
[6]. Kuchkin A.P. In battles and campaigns from the Volga to the Yenisei: Notes of a military commissar. M., 1969. P. 100.
[7]. Sakharov K.V. White Siberia: [Internal War 1918–1920]. Munich, 1923.
[8]. Budberg A. Diary of a White Guard. – M.: AST, 2001.
[9]. N.V. Ustryalov. 1919. From the past / publ. A. V. Smolina // Russian past. Historical and documentary almanac (St. Petersburg). 1993. No. 4.
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