Summer and autumn 1919. Information from the newspaper "Izvestia"
One of the paintings by I. A. Vladimirov. This is how he saw the socialist revolution in the Russian village...
– Why are you going if they tell you to “fight”?
You can be torn apart by a bomb,
you can die for your land,
but how to die for the common?
- A wife, an apartment, and a current account.
this is the fatherland, heavenly places!
For the sake of such a fatherland
We would understand both death and youth.
V. Mayakovsky “Good”
You can be torn apart by a bomb,
you can die for your land,
but how to die for the common?
- A wife, an apartment, and a current account.
this is the fatherland, heavenly places!
For the sake of such a fatherland
We would understand both death and youth.
V. Mayakovsky “Good”
Unknown Wars. So, we continue our journey to 1919 through the pages of the Izvestia newspaper! Today we have autumn on our pages. But even before autumn it was a difficult summer.
And in the summer of 1919, the Red Army retreated for a year. Denikin’s men were marching towards Moscow, carrying salt for sale on an “officer” armored train, in a word, the prospects were excellent. And then, in order to finally finish off the Red Army, it was decided to send the Red Cavalry Corps of General Mamontov to the rear.
The goal is to disrupt transport routes in the area of Tambov and Kozlov, Yelets and Voronezh, destroy railway stations, warehouses, headquarters and, of course, raise an uprising of local peasants dissatisfied with Soviet power. The corps consisted of 9 horsemen, also had 000 guns and several armored vehicles. The front was broken through, and an avalanche of Cossack cavalry rushed towards the red rear.
On August 18, 1919, the Cossacks captured Tambov without firing a single shot, and its garrison fled. The Cossacks dispersed the rear units that were preparing to be sent to the front, robbed and destroyed Soviet institutions, and their workers, and those simply sympathizing with the Soviet regime, were shot en masse.
But the front itself was not broken through. Denikin did not have the reserves to move after Mamontov. The Cossack cavalry was shot from airplanes, and the routes for advance and retreat were cut off by arriving fresh troops.
Well, the horses themselves... They are not made of iron. They get tired quite quickly, they need long rest and good feeding. Where could all this be obtained behind the Red lines?
As a result, the corps went back, losing up to half of its strength and exhausting its horses to the limit. So the success of the raid was purely tactical; it was not possible to develop it. But the reports about the atrocities committed by the Mammothites came at just the right time. Here, as they say, there would be no happiness - but misfortune helped: the choice between whites and reds became more and more obvious among the masses.
Information from the Izvestia newspaper about human casualties during the First World War
But what was happening in Ukraine at that time?
And then the Reds gathered their strength and began to defeat Denikin. And here, as in the case of Mamontov, the traditionality and inertia of thinking of the White Guard command and the rank and file had an impact.
Cossacks... During the raid, according to their ancient tradition, they became carried away with robbery. And although Mamontov himself did his best to prevent the convoys from fouling his corps, he could not do anything. And even worse, Denikin publicly declared his commitment to “non-predetermination.” Like, let’s beat the Reds, then we’ll decide what the country will be like and what kind of power there will be in it. That is, he was for preserving the empire within its old borders.
As a result, he received a front in the Caucasus, where he had to maintain considerable forces against the mountain separatists. He received a front in the rear - Father Makhno operated there. The Poles also did not support him, and all because they received the statehood they had long desired from the Soviets. And the same thing happened with Yudenich and the Finns.
But you could promise everything to everyone, and then... not give what was already promised. But doing this was completely impossible for Yudenich and Denikin. And that's why they lost. What if they promised? Then the question of land remained, and that’s where they would all definitely stumble!
One of the serious problems of the Red Army was the problem of desertion. In this regard, many World War I veterans were even worse than young recruits. During the war years they had seen enough of everything and at the first opportunity they thought about how to get out. And they fled from both the Reds and the Whites!
Pilots, for example, “ran” with airplanes all the time
But prisoners were also actively used. Of course, they tried to eliminate all the ideological ones, but the peasant soldier was usually lucky, both among the whites and the reds
Well, what difficulties did the Reds have at that time?
There were many and serious ones. But the most important thing they did was give land to the country’s peasant population. And this was the positive general thing that outweighed any negative particulars.
Like any war, the Civil War gave society its heroes
And examples of heroism at the front
It is interesting that it was at this time that people who were sensitive to the wind began to join the party. Here at VO they like to criticize those who have changed their shoes, but they appeared already then. And there were a lot of them. And here one important, I would say theoretical, question arises: why exactly are careerists in the party bad? After all, in order to make a career with its help or in it itself, one should... shout louder, work harder, go bolder, but what is really in a person’s soul, then how is it known. A person might not approve of all the innovations of modern times, but, as an intelligent person, he accepted and used them, both for his own personal benefit and for the benefit of the state.
Information in Izvestia about Mamontov’s raid. The newspaper called it a “raid,” and there’s hardly any better way to describe it.
They fought the Mammothites not only with bombs and machine guns, but also with leaflets like these
One little detail is important here - if personal interests prevailed in the work of a party member, and this was noticeable to others, then... it was bad, and, as a rule, such stupid people were quickly identified and got rid of them. But if the public was in the first place, and the personal in the second, then this did not cause any protest from anyone (you can’t look into a person’s soul), and he made a career step by step with a party card on his chest. Well, stupid people, like smart people, have always been and will be. They existed at that turbulent time, and Izvestia wrote about them - they were expelled from the party.
To strengthen revolutionary discipline, special Cheka trains were sent to the front line!
The newspaper wrote quite a lot about Trotsky and wrote practically nothing about Stalin... Of course, the popularity of the former during the Civil War was significantly higher than the popularity of the latter...
Some, let's say, exceptions to this rule are interesting. And they always have been and will be. And here is one of them, based on personal, or rather, family memories.
I don’t know for what reasons my grandfather joined the RCP(b), but he joined in the summer of 1918 and was immediately sent with a food detachment to get bread in the village, because at that time he was an inspector of public schools and was responsible for rural schools in the villages the provinces knew him. But sometime in November his mother dies, and there are no relatives to organize her funeral.
This is revolutionary and, above all, party discipline in action!
And here, as always, “immediately go with the detachment.” Who will bury the mother? "The revolution is in danger!" “And why does she have to lie on the table in the middle of the house?” “And now it’s cold, nothing will happen to her! But if you come back, then bury it. Or... put your membership card on the table!” My grandfather got angry and... put down his party card. He buried his mother, did everything honorably, as it should have been, and went for bread with the next food detachment.
Revolutionary tribunals were also active at this time...
Then they drained the gasoline, and they are draining it now...
Just the topic for us today. Even then, such people joined the party. Stupid but cunning. Only the trick was quickly revealed, they were given the nickname “selfish” and kicked out of the party in three necks! Here is the same “comrade Mosolov”... “He worked little and poorly!” What if he worked “hard and well”?! No one would say a bad word to him! How does the Bible say: “By their works will you know them?” It’s just that in times of war, certain things are required, and in times of peace, others. And people, accordingly... are different!
He joined the party for the second time already in 1940 and, what is most interesting, he was accepted, and no one blamed him for this episode: “Such were the times!”
That is, the party as an organization is certainly required in order to take power and retain it, but as soon as power is taken, the process of its degeneration from “combat” begins weapons” into a means of career growth, that is, it turns into something like a Masonic lodge. What, by the way, was very clearly shown in 1991.
But, it is clear that in 1919, no one could even think that this was what awaited the Bolsheviks ahead...
And of course, one of the “enemies” of the army was... scabies
And typhus, the causative agent of which was discovered precisely then!
To be continued ...
Information