Alexander Dutov: The Life and Death of the White Ataman of the Orenburg Cossacks
Lieutenant General Dutov in a photograph from 1919.
Today we'll talk about Alexander Dutov, another White Ataman of the Civil War. His great-grandfather is known to have been assigned to the Stavropol Cossack Host (Stavropol-on-Volga – now Tolyatti), created from baptized Kalmyks in 1737. In 1803, it was granted equal rights with other Cossack hosts, and in 1842, it was abolished, with the Cossacks and their families transferred to the Orenburg Cossack Host. Dutov's grandfather was a troop foreman of the Orenburg Cossacks. The subject of this article's father, Ilya Petrovich Dutov, rose to the rank of major general. Alexander's mother, Elizaveta, née Uskova, was also a Cossack – the daughter of a sergeant major in the Orenburg Cossack Host. However, the subject of this article was born in the town of Kazalinsk in the Syrdarya region—en route to Fergana, where his parents were headed. This happened in August 1879.
A. Dutov spent his childhood in Fergana and Orenburg. At the age of 10, he was sent to study at the Orenburg Neplyuevsky Cadet Corps, after graduating in 1897, he entered the Nikolaev Cavalry School in Moscow. From previous articles, you may recall that other active participants in the Civil War were also alumni of this school: Pyotr Wrangel, Vladimir Kappel, Andrei Shkura (Shkuro), and the Don Ataman Afrikan Bogaevsky.
The Ataman's Youth
Ensign Alexander Dutov began his military service in 1899 in the 1st Orenburg Cossack Regiment, which, despite its name, was stationed in Kharkov.
In this photo we see ensign Alexander Dutov (far left) with other officers of the First Orenburg Cossack Regiment
However, already in 1902, Dutov transferred to the engineering corps, serving as an instructor in the sapper school, and then (from 1903) in the telegraph school at the Kiev Sapper Battalion. In 1903, he was promoted to lieutenant and married Olga Viktorovna Petrovskaya. He then studied at the Nikolaev Academy of the General Staff, which was interrupted during the Russo-Japanese War. Dutov volunteered for Manchuria, serving in one of the sapper battalions of the 2nd Manchurian Army from March 11 to October 1, 1905, and was awarded the Order of St. Stanislav, 3rd Class.
He ultimately graduated from the Academy only in 1908 with a second-class degree, without promotion to the next rank or assignment to the Guards or the General Staff, and without a year of seniority. The first ten graduates of the course remained in the St. Petersburg Military District, and Staff Captain Dutov was sent to the headquarters of the 10th Army Corps (Kiev Military District).
Continuation of service
In 1909, we find Dutov in Orenburg: here, at the local Cossack cadet school, he taught tactics, horse sapper skills, and topography for three years. One of his students was the infamous Grigory Semyonov, who would become one of the bloodiest and most notorious White Atamans of the Civil War. In December 1910, Alexander Dutov received another Order of St. Anna, 3rd Class. Finally, in October 1912, he returned to the 1st Orenburg Cossack Regiment, assigned to this unit to obtain the qualifications for commanding a hundred, a necessary step for promotion to the next rank.
Having received the rank of troop sergeant major, in October 1913 he returned to Orenburg to his previous position as an instructor at the cadet school, a position he held until March 1916, when he was sent to the front—again, to the 1st Orenburg Cossack Regiment, part of the 10th Cavalry Division, fighting on the Southwestern Front. As a graduate of the General Staff Academy, he was appointed assistant regimental commander. He participated in the famous spring-summer offensive of the Southwestern Front (the Lutsk or Brusilov Offensive), was wounded twice, and in October was appointed commander of the 1st Orenburg Cossack Regiment. Dutov's performance appraisal from that time stated:
He doesn't complain about the hardships of life on the march – he's always cheerful. He has good moral character and is well-developed intellectually. He's keenly interested in his service and loves it. He's well-read and well-educated. He doesn't yet have combat experience, but strives to independently solve combat problems. In combat, he's somewhat impressionable and tends to present battlefield situations based on the impressions of his juniors, and somewhat exaggerated. He likes to work for show, although he's generally tireless in his work. He knows his way around the house and is caring about his subordinates. A good commander.
In the winter of 1916-1917, this regiment suffered heavy losses while covering the retreat of the Romanian Army to Bucharest. Already on the eve of the revolution, in February 1917, A. Dutov received the rank of colonel and the Order of St. Anne, 2nd class.
Alexander Dutov after the February Revolution
Dutov sympathized with the ouster of Nicholas II, as, like the vast majority of Russia's population at the time, he despised the last emperor, considering him incapable of governing a great country. According to contemporaries, the future ataman was sympathetic to the political program of the Constitutional Democratic Party at the time. And even after Kolchak's rise to power, he still supported the convening of the Constituent Assembly. Dutov himself, incidentally, wrote:
I love Russia, and in particular my Orenburg region; that's my entire platform. I have a positive attitude toward regional autonomy, and I'm a big regionalist myself. I have never accepted and never will accept party strife.
In March 1917, with the consent of the Prime Minister of the Provisional Government, G. E. Lvov, the First All-Cossack Congress was held in Petrograd, convened "to clarify the needs of the Cossacks." The subject of this article, who attended as a delegate from his regiment, was elected deputy chairman, and then chairman of the Second Congress.
Presidium of the All-Russian Congress of Cossack Units, headed by A. Dutov. Petrograd, July 7, 1917.
In the summer of 1917, the Provisional Government appointed Dutov as food commissar in the Orenburg province and Turgai region.
In September of the same year, he was elected military ataman of the Orenburg Cossack army and head of the military government of the Orenburg military district.
Alexander Dutov during the civil war
On October 26, 1917, Dutov signed an order non-recognizing Bolshevik authority in the Orenburg Cossack Host. The following day, he announced that he was assuming executive state authority in the lands under his control. In November, he was elected a member of the Constituent Assembly representing the Orenburg Cossack Host.
On November 25, 1917, the Council of People's Commissars issued an appeal calling for a fight against the atamans A. Kaledin and A. Dutov, who were declared outlaws. In December 1917, Dutov called for mobilization at the Orenburg Cossack Host's Military Circle, but most Cossacks were unwilling to fight. Dutov had no more than 2 men under his command. On January 31, 1918, he was driven out of Orenburg by Blucher. The city's zemstvo assembly and several Cossack villages recognized Soviet power. Dutov fought in Verkhneuralsk; in March 1918, after the loss of that city, he retreated to the village of Krasninskaya.
In April, it was surrounded by Bolshevik troops, and on the 17th of that month, Dutov managed to break through to the Turgai steppe. But by the end of May 1918, with the help of rebellious legionnaires of the Czechoslovak Corps, the Red Army was finally routed. On June 8, 1918, effectively at the bayonets of the Czechoslovaks, an "all-Russian government" was formed in Samara—the Committee of Members of the All-Russian Constituent Assembly (Komuch), whose authority Dutov recognized. On July 25, he received the rank of major general from these self-proclaimed rulers.
A. I. Dutov in Samara, 1918
On July 3, 1918, Orenburg also fell, having been entered by the detachments of Nikolai Karnaukhov, and on July 7, Dutov and the Military Government arrived in this city.
A. Dutov in a photograph taken in Orenburg, 1918.
On September 28, 1918, Orsk was also captured. On October 17, Dutov became commander of the Southwestern White Army, formed by the Orenburg Cossack Circle. By the end of that year, it numbered nearly 11 infantry and 22 cavalry. Until November 1918, this army was subordinate to the Ufa Directory, after which Lieutenant General Dutov recognized Kolchak's authority.
Kolchak and Dutov in front of a line of volunteers
In December 1918, Dutov's army became the Separate Orenburg Army. It fought in the Southern Urals and the northern regions of the Steppe Region, achieving little success: on January 21, 1919, the Whites abandoned Orenburg, and on February 18, 1919, the Bashkirs of Validov's detachment defected to the Bolsheviks. That spring, Dutov's army became a corps of General Belov's Southern Army, and the Whites went on the offensive, capturing Ufa. However, on April 28, the Soviet Southern Army, commanded by 34-year-old Mikhail Frunze, routed Kolchak's forces, liberating Buguruslan, and defeated General Kappel's Volga Corps.
On May 23, Admiral Kolchak, who played the role of ruler of Russia, appointed Dutov as the field ataman of all Cossack troops and inspector general of cavalry, while also retaining for him the position of military ataman of the Orenburg Cossack army.
Ataman Dutov and Kolchak, February 1919, Troitsk
As a result, Dutov spent the late spring and summer of 1919 in Omsk, where he met with local atamans—Semenov, Gamov, and Kalmykov. He returned to command the Orenburg Army only in September.
The White troops suffered defeats everywhere, and the remnants of Dutov's troops were forced to retreat to Ishim, where they joined up with the 2nd Steppe Corps.
In early September 1919, the 20-strong Orenburg Army group of Dutov, General Bakich, and the Cossack detachments of Zakharov and Razumnik-Stepanov began a retreat that was not completed until late December. The final stage of this retreat was history as the "Hunger March." One of its participants, Ivan Elovsky, recalled what happened in September:
Everyone feared losing a horse more than death... It was not uncommon to see a refugee's entire family sobbing around a fallen horse, doomed to starvation... Our supplies dwindled with each passing day. There was nowhere to get food. If the Kyrgyz did spend the night, upon hearing the Russians were coming, they would migrate somewhere far from our route. Everyone's sense of compassion vanished. A dying man would lie by the roadside, begging for help, stretching out his hands to passersby, moaning, but no one saw or heard. Such scenes were becoming commonplace.
In October, the retreating Whites learned that the Reds had captured Petropavlovsk and Omsk. The Second Steppe Corps had defected to the Bolsheviks, who now controlled Semipalatinsk. The Whites had only one route left—through Karkaralinsk to Sergiopol and Semirechye, which was controlled by Boris Annenkov, a White general but, in fact, a rather incompetent bandit. The retreating White Guards were constantly attacked by Bolshevik troops, as well as by partisans from the "Mountain Eagles" detachments, commanded by Sergeant Yegor Alekseyev, who had previously served under Annenkov. An epidemic of typhus and typhoid fever broke out. Elovsky writes:
There were no medicines or care. Sometimes two or three people among the sick would die and remain with the sick for several days, as there was no one to carry the dead or bring water to the sick.
By the end of December 1919, these combined forces had completed a 550-verst march across the virtually deserted steppe, having lost 9 of their 20 men to hunger, hypothermia, and infectious diseases. The atrocities they witnessed in Annenkov's domain horrified the new arrivals, as General Andrei Bakich recalled:
The method of command and order in the partisan units of Ataman Annenkov, where the basic requirements of military service were not observed, law and order were denied, incredible atrocities and robberies were allowed both in relation to the peaceful population of villages and stanitsas, as well as in relation to the ranks of my detachment, who, due to illness, were unable to stand up for themselves, caused bitterness against the partisans of General Annenkov on the part of the ranks of my detachment.
Annenkov was also not happy with the allies - so much so that he issued an order that shocked everyone:
Every partisan has the right to shoot anyone who has not served in my units, without trial or investigation.
There was no talk of supplying the "allies": Dutov and other White Army commanders had to buy food from Annenkov. They also had to pay for housing. Annenkov appointed Dutov himself to the formal and powerless position of civilian governor of the Semirechye region. General A.S. Bakich was to exercise overall command, but everyone understood that the war was already lost.
Escape to China
On April 2, 1920, Ataman Dutov and his detachment (approximately 500 Cossacks and civilian refugees) crossed the Kara-Saryk Pass into China. He was followed by General Bakich and Ataman Annenkov. In China, Dutov's detachment was disarmed, and he and his closest associates were quartered in the barracks of the Russian consulate in Suiding (now Shuiding, located in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region of China).
Ataman Dutov in an Asian robe
Most of the rank-and-file Cossacks were stationed in the nearby town of Kuldzha. According to Elovsky, more than half of them soon fled to Soviet territory. But Dutov did not give up the fight. He established contact with representatives of the Entente and appealed to all White Guards in China to unite to continue the war. Moreover, Dutov was willing to cooperate with the Basmachi. Incidentally, one recalls the film "The Crown of the Russian Empire" and Colonel Kudasov's address to the Basmachi:
Great warriors of Islam, in the name of Allah, drive this red scum out of our native land!
It must be said that the idea of an alliance with the Basmachi and radical Islamists shocked even many of the hardline White officers. But Dutov had already "gone wild," declaring:
I will go out to die on Russian soil and will not return back to China.
The mutiny of the Verny (Almaty) garrison in June 1920 and the 1st Battalion of the 5th Border Regiment in Naryn in November 1920 are linked to the activities of Dutov's agents. The Soviet security services could no longer tolerate this "abscess."
Liquidation of the ataman
The optimal solution to Dutov’s problem would have been to transport the ataman to Soviet territory and hold an open trial – as was later the case with Annenkov.
In late 1920, Kasymkhan Chanyshev was tasked with establishing contact with Dutov. His family was not only wealthy but also noble, and Kasymkhan even earned the nickname "Prince." Before the revolution, he had actively engaged in smuggling with China, had connections there, and was known for his bravery and piety—he even made the Hajj to Mecca. The detachment Chanyshev formed attacked White Guard groups retreating to China, and on December 1, 1920, Kasymkhan was awarded a gold watch "for the elimination of Ataman Sidorov." He later wrote about this period of his life:
From the day of his return from the tsarist army, he was the first to organize partisan detachments from front-line volunteers in the city of Jarkent on the border strips of China against the fleeing Whites... and commanded these detachments until 1919.
However, some believe that Kasymkhan attacked the Whites not for ideological reasons, but simply to rob them – after all, like Black Abdullah from the film “White Sun of the Desert,” they did not flee “abroad” empty-handed.
On April 13, 1920, Chanyshev was appointed chief of the district and city police in Jarkent. As you've probably guessed, members of his unit became rank-and-file police officers. Since his father's orchards had already been confiscated by that time, Chanyshev could play the role of "one who was offended by Soviet power."
In September 1920, Kasymkhan crossed the border along familiar roads and established contact with Dutov's interpreter, Colonel Ablaikhanov. Ablaikhanov introduced him to Dutov, who believed in the existence of an underground organization in Dzhanker, whose members eagerly awaited the arrival of the "ataman-liberator." Chanyshev even arranged for Dutov's agent, a certain Nekhoroshko, to work in the police, fully confirming all of Kasymkhan's claims.
Nekhoroshko's reports to Dutov were delivered by the ataman's future assassin, Makhmud Khodzhamiarov. Chanyshev met with Dutov five times, but was unable to capture him and smuggle him into Soviet territory. Ultimately, it was decided to simply eliminate the ataman: the aforementioned Makhmud Khodzhamiarov was chosen as the perpetrator. On February 6, 1921, he fatally wounded the ataman, also killing his adjutant, Ataman Lopatin.
Another member of Chanyshev's detachment, Kudduk Baismakov, fatally stabbed a Cossack sentry named Maslov. A few days after the funeral, Dutov's body was exhumed and beheaded. The ataman's supporters believed that the executioners needed Dutov's head for a report to the Cheka. However, it's entirely possible that Dutov's enemies, of whom he had many, for example among the former Annenkovites, took revenge posthumously.
Mahmud Khodjamyarov was awarded a gold watch and a Mauser with an engraving:
For the personally committed terrorist act against Ataman Dutov, comrade Khodjamiarov.
Chanyshev received a gold watch, a personalized carbine, and a document signed by Dzerzhinsky’s deputy, Peters, which stated:
The bearer of this document, Comrade Kasymkhan Chanyshev, committed an act of national significance on February 6, 1921, thereby saving several thousand lives of the working masses from a gang attack. Therefore, the Soviet authorities are required to exercise due diligence toward the said comrade, and the said comrade is not subject to arrest without the knowledge of the Plenipotentiary Representative.
A film about Dutov's assassination was made in the USSR, "The End of the Ataman," in which Asanali Ashimov played the composite role of Soviet intelligence officer Kasym-khan Chadyarov, and viewers saw Vladislav Strzhelchik as Dutov.
Asanali Ashimov as Kasym Khan Chadyarov
V. Strzhelchik as Ataman Dutov
Three more films were made about the adventures of the main character of this film: "Trans-Siberian Express", "The Manchurian Version" and "Who Are You, Mr. Ka?"
Kasymkhan Chanyshev, who became the prototype for Kasym-Khan Chadyarov, "died in 1933 at the hands of enemies of Soviet power." Nothing further is known about his death.
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