Sergei Ulagay. The most atypical of the White Guard generals.
General Ulagay in a pencil drawing by A. Voronetsky
В previous article We discussed the origins and early life of Sergei Georgievich Ulagay, and his service in the Tsarist army. Today we will continue and conclude this story.
S. Ulagay during the civil war
As we recall, S. Ulagay, who supported Kornilov's uprising, was arrested and released from prison only after the Provisional Government was dispersed by the Bolsheviks. He went south, where A. Filimonov, the ataman of the Kuban Cossack Host, tasked him with forming volunteer White Guard units. However, it turned out that there were virtually no volunteers to fight for the old regime, as Filimonov recalled:
I entrusted the task of organizing volunteers to a young and popular hero of the German war, Colonel Ulagay... After tinkering with the matter for about a month, he declared that he didn't believe in it, since only officers signed up as volunteers, that rank-and-file Cossacks didn't want to volunteer, that special officers' organizations wouldn't find sympathy among the population, and therefore the whole enterprise was doomed. Colonel Ulagay's opinion was shared by General Cherny, commander of the Kuban Army.
That's exactly what happened, and the logical step for Ulagay in this situation would have been to defect to the Reds. Unfortunately, he remained on the Whites' side, which was doomed to defeat from the start.
In the second half of January 1918, Ulagay managed to organize a Plastun detachment, the majority of whose soldiers were Cossack officers. history This detachment entered the Civil War under the name "Ulagaevsky." The start of the fighting was unsuccessful, as Ataman Filimonov wrote:
Colonel Ulagay remained the natural and desirable candidate for the post of army commander, but he, as before, did not believe in the matter and, appointed to assist Colonel Lisevitsky as chief of cavalry, failed and returned to Yekaterinodar in an even more pessimistic mood than before.
The Whites were then forced to abandon Yekaterinodar and retreat into the mountains. After the Kuban Cossacks joined forces with the White Volunteer Army, an unsuccessful attempt to storm the city was made, and Ulagay was seriously wounded in a battle near the farm of the Yekaterinodar Agricultural Society. Interestingly, on March 31, 1918, the commander of the Volunteer Army, General Lavr Kornilov, was killed at this same farm near Yekaterinodar. Ulagay only recovered by July 1918. Returning to duty, he commanded the 2nd Kuban Cossack Brigade, previously commanded by Shkuro. A short time later, it became a division, and Ulagay was promoted to major general in November of that year.
In February 1919, the name "General Ulagay" was given to an armored tractor of the White Army. It was a half-track tractor with guide wheels, assembled in Novorossiysk at the Sudostal plant on the chassis of a Bullock-Lombard tractor. The vehicle had a 100-horsepower engine, weighed between 10 and 12 tons, and had a maximum speed of 8 kilometers per hour. It had a crew of 10 and was armed with five Maxim machine guns: two on the roof of the turret, two in the side sponsons, and one in the rear compartment. These armored tractors were officially designated "Combat Vehicle of the Sudostal Plant." The White Army had only two of them (the other was the "Valiant Labinets"), and they were designed to attack in reverse. At the end of 1919, both Novorossiysk armored tractors became trophies of the Red Army.
One of two "Combat vehicles of the Sudostal plant" assembled in Novorossiysk
In March 1919, Ulagay commanded the 2nd Kuban Corps. That spring, north of Manych, his troops defeated Dumenko's Red Army Corps, and then, in June, they took part in the offensive on Tsaritsyn. At the same time, Ulagay was promoted to lieutenant general. The city was captured only after the arrival of Wrangel's Caucasian Army. Ulagay's corps then advanced on Kamyshin and then defended Tsaritsyn alongside Wrangel's "volunteers." In October, Ulagay was temporarily sidelined, despite being the desired successor by the Ataman of the Kuban Cossack Host, Alexander Filimonov. And in December 1919, Wrangel offered him the post of commander of a combined cavalry group of Don and Kuban Cossack units. He was to replace Mamontov, whom Wrangel had a very negative attitude toward. Ulagay was not thrilled by the low morale of the "Mamantovites," who had long been accustomed to looting, a practice condemned even by the most rational White commanders. Among them was Denikin, commander of the 1st Labinsky Regiment of the Kuban Army. Fyodor Eliseev wrote about this:
General Denikin does not favor the Kuban Cossacks of those months in his descriptions.
Moreover, in December 1919, Ulagay, who was in Yekaterinodar, contracted typhus and suffered a severe illness. After recovering, in late February 1920 he assumed command of the Kuban Army, which had previously been commanded by Andrei Shkura (Shkuro), who had been sent to the reserves by Denikin (and soon expelled from the army by Wrangel). However, the Cossacks had already become so corrupt that Denikin later wrote:
Shkuro was soon replaced by General Ulagay, a valiant warrior, averse to politics and an impeccable man, but no one listened to him either.
V. Leontovich writes in his book "The First Battles in Kuban. Memories":
The old men held firm, but the youth, indoctrinated at the front, rushed back to their villages, bringing with them the spirit of decay. The Cossack, in his unbelted khaki tunic, was no longer recognizable as the former dashing horseman and natural marksman.
The situation was practically hopeless, culminating in the inept evacuation of White Army units from Novorossiysk, which ruined Denikin's military reputation and led to his resignation. The Cossacks were denied boarding ships altogether, and Ulagay withdrew his men to Tuapse. There, at a meeting of senior commanders of the Kuban Army on March 15, the decision was made to withdraw to Georgia. But on March 22, Ulagay was summoned to Crimea by General Denikin and took part in the selection of a new commander-in-chief, who was chosen by Wrangel, who held him in high esteem.
On April 10, 1920, Ulagay handed over command of the Kuban Army to Ataman N. Bukretov, who categorically refused to transfer the Kuban people to Crimea, declaring that there
They will be stepchildren, as they always were in the Volunteer Army.
Wrangel, in exile, recalled:
General Ulagay's attempts to launch an offensive were futile. The Cossacks were completely unwilling to fight.
Ulagay was still able to evacuate some of the Kuban troops, but the bulk of the army capitulated on April 18–20, 1920. Ataman Bukretov, who had promised to remain “with the army until the end,” fled to Georgia.
On June 25, 1920, at a congress of members of the Kuban Rada and delegates from the Kuban villages in Feodosia, S. Ulagai was elected ataman of the army. On August 1 (14) of that year, he led the landing operation of the so-called Special Purpose Group of the Russian (Wrangel) Army on the Kuban coast near the village of Primorsko-Akhtarskaya. Wrangel wrote:
General Ulagay was placed in charge of the landing force. There was no one to replace him. With his widespread charm among the Cossacks, General Ulagay alone could successfully "call the shots," rouse the Cossacks, and lead them. It seemed everyone would follow him.
Ulagay commanded approximately four and a half thousand men, including up to one thousand one hundred cavalry, with 14 artillery pieces and 83 machine guns. Among his subordinates were the popular generals N. Babiev and B. Kazanovich.
N. G. Babiev, nicknamed "General Forward" in the White Army, in a photograph taken around 1920.
B. I. Kazanovich, who was then somewhat pompously called "an incomparable battering ram for frontal attacks", photograph from 1918
Let's recall that on June 6 of that same year, 1920, the main forces of Wrangel's army launched an offensive and seized lands between the Dnieper and the Sea of Azov. On August 15, the Tambov peasant revolt (the "Antonovshchina") began. The war with Poland continued, and already during the landing operation of Ulagay's troops, news arrived of the Red Army's tragic defeat near Warsaw. White Guard officer V. Terentyev recalled this:
In the evening, we received news of the terrible defeat of the Red Army in Poland. The Poles took over 200,000 prisoners. Our military group was ordered to be notified of this.
In Kuban, Ulagay's landing forces met the Red Army of Mikhail Levandovsky, a former staff captain of the Imperial Army, a holder of four Tsarist orders, a member of the Socialist Revolutionary Maximalist Party since 1918, and the RCP (b) since 1920.
Second-rank Army Commander Mikhail Karlovich Levandovsky in a photograph taken around 1938.
The Red Army received support from the Azov Flotilla: approximately 600 soldiers, armed with four cannons and 15 machine guns, aboard three steamships and four barges, descended the Kuban and Protoka rivers and struck the rear of Ulagay's landing forces near the village of Grivenskaya. The Red Army commander was Epifan Kovtyukh, and the commissar was Dmitry Furmanov.
Corps Commander E. I. Kovtyukh, a non-commissioned officer and later ensign in the Tsarist army, was awarded two St. George's Crosses. Anninsky weapons, three Orders of the Red Banner, and commanded Red Army corps from May 1926. He is the hero of A. Serafimovich's novel "The Iron Stream" about the Taman Army's campaign in the summer of 1918 and the author of "The Iron Stream in Military Exposition."
D. A. Furmanov (a Socialist Revolutionary Maximalist, later an anarchist, a member of the RCP(b) since 1918) next to the wounded Chapaev, the photograph was taken in July 1919. Pyotr Isaev is reclining on the left.
The Whites' hopes for an anti-Bolshevik uprising were not realized, and the commander of the 2nd Kuban Regiment, F. Golovko, already in exile, wrote to Lieutenant General V. L. Pokrovsky:
There was no upsurge among the Cossacks, and they failed to create one.
Red Army units quickly began to push back the White Guards. Soviet military historian A.V. Golubev, who participated in those events on the "Red side," gave the following assessment of Ulagay's actions in 1929:
Ulagay maintained a firm grip on his units and, despite a number of isolated defeats, prevented the destruction of his main forces. This enabled him to systematically carry out the return evacuation to Crimea, taking with him not only all his units, the sick and wounded, but also mobilized White-Greens, and captured Red Army soldiers, including the wounded.
Nevertheless, many at Wrangel's headquarters were dissatisfied with Ulagay's actions. The commander-in-chief also appeared disappointed, believing that Ulagay had deviated from the original plan, which called for a swift advance on Yekaterinodar (regardless of the surrounding situation):
If General Ulagay had not stopped, if he had moved on without looking back at the base, Yekaterinodar would have fallen in two days and the northern Kuban would have been cleared.
But this was a pure gamble. The aforementioned V. Terentyev wrote about a conversation he overheard between Ulagay and General Kazanovich:
"What Yekaterinodar," says Ulagay, "when they couldn't hold Timashevka! The Reds were fools who didn't let us into Yekaterinodar; not a single person would have left there."
On August 25, Sergei Ulagay was awarded the Order of St. Nicholas the Wonderworker, 2nd degree (established in Crimea by Wrangel), but was dismissed in September.
Sergei Ulagay in exile
By November 1920, the Red Army, led by Frunze, had broken through to Crimea, and White Guard Lieutenant General Sergei Georgievich Ulagay left Russia forever. He lived for a time in Constantinople and is believed to have become one of the prototypes for Bulgakov's General Grigory Charnota (a character in the play "The Flight").
M. Ulyanov as Charnota, a still from the Soviet film "The Flight"
However, some believe that Lieutenant General Ivan Barbovich had a significant influence on Charota's character – he was known for his love of gambling, for which the "Black Baron's" wife, Olga Wrangel, often gently chided him in her letters.
Some claimed that Ulagay was considered by émigré circles as a candidate to command a new landing force that was to land again on the Kuban coast. However, all these plans clearly smacked of wishful thinking.
From Constantinople, S. Ulagaj moved to the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes, but later settled in Marseille, France. In the 40s, he worked on "Memoirs of a Cossack Officer, 1912-1918." His memoirs were never published as a book.
It should be noted that, when writing about Sergei Ulagay's life in exile, many authors confuse him with another, much younger White Guard officer—Colonel Kuchuk Kaspoletovich Ulagay, born in 1893. And without a second thought, they write about Sergei Georgievich Ulagay's service in Albania and his active involvement in that country's affairs, as well as his collaboration with the Wehrmacht and the SS during World War II. In fact, these facts are from the biography of a distant relative of the article's subject, who was a graduate of the Elisavetgrad Cavalry School (he graduated in 1913). During World War I, Kuchuk Ulagay, with the rank of cornet, fought in the 18th Seversky Dragoon Regiment, where he commanded a platoon in which NCO Semyon Budyonny served. The Soviet military commander later accused him of cowardice.
Kuchuk Kaspoletovich Ulagay, circa 1920
S. Budyonny in a photograph of 1912
During the civil war, Captain Küçük Ulagaj fought on the White side, rising to the rank of colonel and commanding a Circassian regiment. He then found himself in Albania, and in December 1924, he provided significant assistance to the exiled Prime Minister Ahmet Zog, who later became King of Albania. During World War II, K. Ulagaj became a Waffen-Standartenführer in the SS and chairman of the Muslim Committee for the Liberation of the Caucasus. In 1944-1945, he participated in the formation of Cossack and Caucasian units of the Wehrmacht. After the defeat of Nazi Germany, he managed to escape to Chile, where he died in 1953.
Sergei Georgievich Ulagay died on April 29, 1944, in Marseille and was buried in one of the city's cemeteries. However, in January 1949, his remains were transferred to the Sainte-Geneviève-des-Bois Cemetery (near Paris).
The grave of S. G. Ulagay in the Sainte-Genevieve-des-Bois cemetery
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