Mikhail Frunze and the repressions in liberated Crimea
In previous articles, we discussed Mikhail Frunze's origins and early life, his revolutionary activities, and his successful career as a Soviet military leader. Today, we'll continue that story.
Frunze's rejected proposal
As you may remember from the recent (Mikhail Frunze's Crimean triumphAccording to the article, Frunze's Southern Front's offensive against White Crimea began on the night of November 8, 1920, with strikes at Perekop and through the Sivash. Within 24 hours, fearing encirclement, the White units withdrew from Perekop. By November 12, they had been driven from all positions and fled to the sea. And on November 11, the Revolutionary Military Council of the Southern Front and commander M. Frunze sent Wrangel the following radiogram:
In view of the obvious futility of further resistance by your troops, which threatens only the shedding of unnecessary streams of blood, I propose that you cease resistance and surrender with all the troops of the army and fleet, military supplies, equipment, weapons and all kinds of military property. If you accept this offer The Revolutionary Military Council of the Armies of the Southern Front, based on the powers granted to it by the central Soviet government, guarantees those who surrender, including those in high command, full pardon for all offenses related to the civil struggle. All those unwilling to remain and work in socialist Russia will be granted the opportunity to leave the country unhindered. On condition that I renounce, on my word of honor, any further struggle against workers' and peasants' Russia and Soviet power. I expect a response within 24 hours. White officers, our proposal places a colossal responsibility on you. If it is rejected and the struggle continues, then all blame for the senselessly spilled Russian blood will fall on you. The Red Army will drown the remnants of the Crimean counterrevolution in torrents of your blood..
Incidentally, it is very similar to Suvorov's ultimatum to the Turks before the storming of Izmail - but in a more detailed form and with clearly stated guarantees.
If Frunze had broken his word, he would, of course, have tainted himself with perjury and ruined his reputation forever. However, he always kept the promises he made to his opponents. And there is no reason to believe that he would have suddenly abandoned his principles in November 1920. Moreover, on that same day (November 11, 1920), the order "On the Successful Advance of the Red Army in Crimea and the Treatment of Prisoners" was published, which stated:
Red Army soldiers! Our valiant units, having broken through the enemy's fortified positions, have stormed into Crimea... The Revolutionary Military Council of the Southern Front sent a radiogram to Wrangel, his officers, and soldiers offering them 24 hours to surrender—a period that guarantees the lives of those surrendering and free passage abroad for those who wish to do so... The Revolutionary Military Council of the Southern Front calls on all Red Army soldiers to spare those who surrender and those captured. A Red Army soldier is feared only by the enemy. He is a knight to the vanquished.
He also contacted Vice-Admiral Charles Dumesnil, commander of the French Mediterranean Squadron, by radio, informing him of his intention to create a "golden bridge" for Wrangel's forces. He then ordered a halt to the offensive for two or three days, which gave Wrangel the opportunity to load his troops onto ships; otherwise, they would have been simply destroyed en route to the sea.
The Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars, Lenin, was not at all pleased with Frunze's "leniency" and telegraphed him:
If the enemy does not accept these conditions, then, in my opinion, they cannot be repeated any more and must be dealt with mercilessly.
However, as you can see, he did not give the order to break the promise, knowing Frunze’s character.
It's worth noting that Wrangel had already given up on resistance and was busy organizing the evacuation of his troops, which was far from ideal. General Ya. Slashchev, mentioned in the previous article, recalled:
Of course, there was no complete order during the evacuation of Sevastopol... The evacuation took place in a nightmarish atmosphere of disorder and panic.
Here is how A. Sudoplatov describes the boarding of the transport "Saratov" in his diary:
The crowd is still loading. The gangway has already been lifted. They're climbing ropes, jumping into the water, and approaching in boats. Horses are swimming in the water. Poor animals. One is already exhausted. And the banks of the pier are rocky, high. Hundreds of boats glide along the bay, and more and more are arriving. The cramped, crushed conditions on the ship are terrifying. There are as many people as flies. You can't squeeze through.
It would seem that in such a situation, Wrangel should have simply blessed Frunze for his proposal. But the "Black Baron" wanted to preserve his troops, hoping to negotiate with the Entente countries for support and continue the war. And Frunze's proposal was literally destroying his army. The rank and file already knew that their comrades who remained in Novorossiysk had not been executed or sent to hard labor; many had been accepted into the Red Army, while others, having surrendered, weapon, and went home. The officers had promised not to fight against Soviet Russia, and not all of them were as dishonest as Krasnov, who had broken his word. And so Wrangel not only failed to respond to Frunze's radiogram, but also forbade its dissemination to the troops and ordered the closure of all radio stations except one, manned by officers.
The consequences were tragic. First, Frunze and the members of the Revolutionary Military Council of the Southern Front concluded that their proposal had been rejected, and that the retreating Whites were implacable enemies, ready to die rather than surrender. And now the fanatics had a free hand. Especially since Lenin himself had issued an order on the table for "merciless reprisals" against any White Guards who refused to lay down their arms. And Frunze could do nothing: "You can't beat a whip with a club."
On the other hand, many Whites refused evacuation precisely because they counted on the generosity of the victors, which had already been demonstrated in Novorossiysk. By failing to inform them of Frunze's offer or the consequences of refusing it, Wrangel literally exposed these people to the bullets. Thus, responsibility for the large-scale repressions against the remaining White Guards falls not only on the notorious "Extraordinary Troika for Crimea"—composed of the Hungarian Béla Kun, the Jewish woman R. Zemlyachka, and the Russian nobleman Yuri (Georgy) Pyatakov—but also on Pyotr Wrangel—as Frunze stated in his radiogram.
Wrangel's "Innocent Lambs"
However, there is a third side to the problem. The fact is that the White Guards who remained in Crimea were not at all the meek, innocent "lambs" who would submit to the slaughter, as today's admirers of Kolchak and Denikin try to portray them. After Wrangel's departure, many formed large detachments (effectively gangs), which even included nurses. The commanders were White Guard officers, and large gangs were led by, for example, Staff Captain Mamuladze (his detachment was the largest, with 175 men), Captain Glazer, Colonel Motitsirov, Captain Glazar, and Lieutenants Alyoshin and Spai. The total number of such detachments reached several thousand (some researchers put the figure at 8-10). The former Whites had no shortage of weapons and ammunition, knew the "taste of blood," and killed easily and without hesitation. This is how the commandant of the Crimean Cheka (and famous polar explorer) Ivan Papanin recalled them:
Crimea in 1921 was full of gangs and anti-Soviet groups! They terrorized the population, raided cities and towns, disrupted Soviet events... We often encountered beasts, mistakenly called humans. There were cutthroats who thought nothing of killing a person, even a small child, just for the hell of it... I led raids, searched suspicious houses, traveled into the Crimean forests with Cheka detachments to catch White Bandits, and expropriated valuables from wealthy people who hadn't managed to emigrate. They shot at me, and I shot back. Sometimes I thought angrily that life was easier and simpler at the front.
Ivan Dmitrievich Papanin in a photograph from 1918
And here is how he conveys the words addressed to him by his immediate superior, Stanislav Redens (plenipotentiary representative of the All-Russian Extraordinary Commission in Crimea):
Do you pity? Who do you pity?! Remember, Papanin: a judge who is incapable of punishing ultimately becomes an accomplice to criminals. By sparing criminals, honest people are harmed. The greatest firmness is the greatest mercy. He who strokes everyone and everything on the fleece loves no one and nothing but himself; he who pleases everyone does nothing good, because good is impossible without the destruction of evil. These are not my words. That's what Chernyshevsky said.
Golden words. Law enforcement officers and judges shouldn't be humane, kind, or merciful—they should be fair. Excessive mercy toward a criminal is cruelty toward his victim. "Vengeance is mine, and I will repay." Anything else is "from the evil one": both cruelty and kindness.
Let's continue the story about the White bandits of Crimea.
Not content with simple robberies, they committed genuine sabotage and terrorist acts, such as a raid on a prison in Yalta and a factory in Kerch, the bombing of the Simferopol-Sevastopol railway line, and an attack on the village revolutionary committee in Sably (now Partizanskoye), where five local activists were executed. Thanks to the measures taken in advance, an armed takeover of Bakhchisarai was prevented. As you can imagine, these bandits' actions did not inspire sympathy for the former Whites, but instead fueled further anger among the Red Army soldiers and local residents.
Most of these former White Guard gangs were defeated only by the end of 1921. But as early as 1925, eight former White Guards seized the steamship Utrish and hijacked it to Bulgaria. An attempt to seize the steamship Ignatiy Sergeyev was also recorded, this time unsuccessful. The capabilities of the escaped Wrangelites can be judged by the former head of Wrangel's naval counterintelligence, Count Pavel Keller, who fought against our country during the Great Patriotic War as a colonel in the Romanian Army. In 1944, he was captured in Crimea and sentenced to 11 years in a labor camp. For some reason, he was then allowed to emigrate, and he died in West Germany at the age of 97.
In general, Dzerzhinsky’s telegram, which stated:
Take all measures to ensure that not a single White Guard escapes from Crimea to the mainland. It would be the greatest misfortune for the republic if they managed to infiltrate.
It was after receiving this information that the Crimean Revolutionary Committee issued a decree requiring the mandatory registration of all soldiers and officers of Wrangel's army remaining on the peninsula. At this time, extrajudicial reprisals against White Guards had already begun, carried out primarily by Makhnovists and "Red-Green" partisans. Their actions were approved by many local residents, who were extremely embittered by both the official "requisitions" and the "unofficial" looting that had occurred en masse under Wrangel. None other than Yu. P. Gaven, a member of the Crimean Revolutionary Committee, claimed that at least three thousand White Guards were killed in this way. And when a telegram arrived demanding that Crimea be "cleansed of counterrevolutionaries," mass repressions began.
On December 6, 1920, Lenin declared:
There are currently 300 bourgeois in Crimea. They are a source of future speculation, espionage, and all manner of aid to the capitalists. But we are not afraid of them. We say we will take them, distribute them, subjugate them, and digest them.
As you can see, there was no order to "kill a hundred thousand bourgeois." Now some "researchers" are talking about some undocumented "oral orders." But serious historians shouldn't rely on information from a cesspool of "one woman said" sources.
Mass repressions took place, and there was no shortage of fanatical perpetrators on the ground. Yefim Yevdokimov, head of the Southern Front's Special Department, distinguished himself with great zeal in carrying out the "purges." According to his award sheet:
During the defeat of General Wrangel's army in Crimea, he and his expedition cleared the Crimean peninsula of the white officers and counterintelligence agents who had remained there for underground activities, removing up to 30 governors, 50 generals, more than 300 colonels, the same number of counterintelligence agents, and a total of up to 12,000 white elements.
And many serious researchers are inclined to believe that this document provides general data on the repressions in Crimea.
It should also be pointed out that the statements about per capita the extermination of the remaining soldiers and officers of Wrangel's army in Crimea fall into the category historical Myth. I. Papanin, quoted above (let us recall that he was the commandant of the Crimean Cheka and was not at all embarrassed about it), reports that at that time a certain student of the Physics and Mathematics Department of Taurida University often approached him with petitions on behalf of his comrades:
A tall, dark-haired young man with clear eyes came to me to plead for several students who had been accidentally detained. He vehemently asserted that he would vouch for his friends.
What is the ending of this story?
I forgot about this "petitioner" and would never have remembered him if, three and a half decades later, a world-renowned scientist hadn't stopped me in the hallway of the Academy of Sciences. "Ivan Dmitrievich, do you remember how, at my request, students were released from prison?!" he asked, laughing.
It was Igor Vasilyevich Kurchatov.
It was Igor Vasilyevich Kurchatov.
But these are students who were arrested by chance. Now look at the photo:
Who do you think this powerful man in civilian clothes is? It's Anatoly Petrovich Aleksandrov, a machine gunner in Wrangel's army who remained in Crimea, defended Perekop, and managed to earn three St. George's Crosses. And, imagine, he wasn't executed by either Rozaliya Zemlyachka or Bela Kun. Instead, he became director of the nuclear center in Sarov, deputy director of the Kurchatov Institute, and president of the USSR Academy of Sciences. While working at the Kurchatov Institute, he simultaneously became deputy to the Minister of Medium Machine Building, Yefim Slavsky, who stormed Crimea with Budyonny's First Cavalry Army (as a platoon commander in the 1st Separate Cavalry Brigade).
I. Kurchatov and E. Slavsky
A. Alexandrov received nine Orders of Lenin, became a three-time Hero of Socialist Labor, and was awarded the State Prize, Lenin Prize, and four Stalin Prizes. So, it must be acknowledged: there were excesses in Crimea, but they tried to sort things out.
The exact number of alleged victims of the "Red Terror" in Crimea is virtually impossible to determine. After perestroika, "researchers" emerged who cite figures ranging from 50 to 120 and even up to 200. However, as already noted, serious historians believe the true figure is closer to the 12 cited in Yefim Yevdokimov's award sheet cited above. Indeed, Wrangel himself claims that even at its peak, his army numbered no more than 40:
The number of fighters at the front, in reserve and rear units, reached 40. Everything combat-ready was brought into action.
This army lost approximately 20 soldiers and officers during the retreat from Northern Taurida. Approximately 145 people were evacuated from Crimea, including 12 combat officers, 15 Cossacks, 10 cadets, and 30 officials and officers of rear units. Several thousand White Guards were in gangs operating in Crimea. And suddenly, "researchers" emerged who claimed that the Reds killed almost 200 officers alone in Crimea, without explaining where such numbers came from.
For example, V. Vozilov, director of the Shuya Museum named after Frunze (!), stated in one interview:
About 200 thousand officers believed Frunze's promise.
As the saying goes, there are no words—only unprintable expressions. Even the émigré historian V. Burtsev (the famous "provocateur hunter" who exposed Yevno Azef in 1908) wrote of 10–12 people repressed in Crimea. And the Tatar nationalist M. Sultan-Galiev, a member of the Board of the People's Commissariat for Nationalities of the RSFSR and founder of the Russian Muslim Communist Party and an implacable enemy of Rozaliya Zemlyachka, wrote in his denunciation of her to Moscow:
According to the Crimean workers themselves, the number of executed Wrangel officers in all of Crimea reaches 20 to 25 thousand.They indicate that in Simferopol alone up to 12,000 were shot. Popular rumor puts this figure for the whole of Crimea at 70 thousand..
But then his hand trembled, and, apparently ashamed of the figures he had given (or believing that no one would believe him), he took a “step back”:
I was unable to verify whether this is indeed the case.
It should be noted that Sultan-Galiev, who accused Zemlyachka of mass executions of White Guards, was not a witness to the events described (he arrived in Crimea a month after Zemlyachka left) and had neither the authority nor the ability to conduct any kind of investigation—he wrote from hearsay and, as you can see, he himself admitted that his information needed to be verified.
Zemlyachka is traditionally ranked alongside Béla Kun and Pyatakov as the main organizers of the repressions. Meanwhile, she was the executive secretary of the Crimean Regional Committee of the RCP(b) (one of her subordinates included Lenin's younger brother, Dmitry Ulyanov). And her "Regional Committee," unlike Béla Kun's Revolutionary Committee, was less concerned with repression than with economic matters, such as relocating working-class families from basements to bourgeois apartments and establishing the first sanatoriums for workers and peasants. Zemlyachka was a fervent supporter of turning Crimea into an "all-Russian health resort."
R. Zemlyachka was, of course, uncompromising, ascetic, cruel, and incredibly demanding—of herself and others. But she was declared almost the main symbol of the Red Terror, not entirely fairly: the primary responsibility for the repressions in Crimea rested with members of Béla Kun's Crimean Revolutionary Committee and the "special departments" of the 4th and 6th Armies and the Naval Department. This is also confirmed by the aforementioned M. Sultan-Galiev:
In the small territory of Crimea, there are three agencies charged with combating counterrevolution: the Special Department of the 4th Army, the Crimean Cheka, and the Special Department of the Naval Department.
Sultan-Galiev is a fierce and implacable enemy of Zemlyachka, but the Regional Committee of the RSDLP(b) does not write a word about her in this case.
V. Veresaev, who was in Crimea at the time, wrote about his conversation with Dzerzhinsky in January 1923:
Thousands of people were killed in Crimea. I asked Dzerzhinsky, why was all this done?
Please note: the writer, who was well aware of what was happening in Crimea, speaks of thousands of people executed – not tens of thousands (and certainly not hundreds of thousands).
Let's continue the quote:
He (Dzerzhinsky) replied:
"You see, a very serious mistake was made here. Crimea was the White Guards' main stronghold. And to destroy it, we sent comrades there with completely exceptional powers. But we never imagined they would use those powers like that."
I asked:
- Do you mean Pyatakov?
Dzerzhinsky answered evasively:
- No, not Pyatakov.
He did not say whom, but from his vague answers I concluded that he meant Bela Kun.
"You see, a very serious mistake was made here. Crimea was the White Guards' main stronghold. And to destroy it, we sent comrades there with completely exceptional powers. But we never imagined they would use those powers like that."
I asked:
- Do you mean Pyatakov?
Dzerzhinsky answered evasively:
- No, not Pyatakov.
He did not say whom, but from his vague answers I concluded that he meant Bela Kun.
Bela Kun in 1919
Special and almost Home People who weren't even close to being in Crimea in late 1920 and early 1921 ascribed a role in organizing and carrying out the repressions against Zemlyachka. These rumors were eagerly picked up by rumor-mongering foreign anti-Soviet figures like S.P. Melgunov, who wrote and published a book in Germany called "The Red Terror in Russia 1918-1923." Melgunov not only wasn't a witness to the tragic events in Crimea, but also had no contact with anyone who was there at the time. He based his book solely on articles in émigré newspapers and the stories of tipsy White Guards, not shying away from "fake" "quotes"—for example, from a nonexistent issue of "Izvestia of the Provisional Sevastopol Revolutionary Committee" from November 28, 1920, while the last issue of this newspaper dates back to 1917.
On the other hand, these rumors were spread by those within the nomenklatura who hated Zemlyachka. The fact is that this woman was known for her relentless fight against official tyranny, sloppiness, corruption, and theft, and inspired fear in many precisely as the chair of the Soviet Control Commission under the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR, and then as deputy chair of the Party Control Committee under the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks). And Demyan Bedny wrote:
From bureaucracy and hibernation
To protect yourself completely
Portrait of Comrade Zemlyachki
Hang on buddy on the wall!
Then wandering around the office,
Pray what you have learned so far
Countrywoman only in the portrait,
A hundred times more terrible than the original!
To protect yourself completely
Portrait of Comrade Zemlyachki
Hang on buddy on the wall!
Then wandering around the office,
Pray what you have learned so far
Countrywoman only in the portrait,
A hundred times more terrible than the original!
I'm sure you've read this poem many times without the first two lines: anti-Soviet authors carefully delete them, as they diametrically alter the meaning: the poem becomes complimentary, and Zemlyachka turns out to be menacing precisely for bureaucrats who are unwilling or unable to work.
This is the portrait that Demyan Bedny used to frighten Soviet bureaucrats, embezzlers and corrupt officials.
Sensing some kind of "sin" behind them, first secretaries of regional committees, directors of major factories, commanders of military districts, with bent legs, shaking with fear, entered Zemlyachka's office and then whispered in the kitchens, cementing the legend:
This time it worked out! But okay, I'm okay, but do you know what that beast did in Crimea?
We'll explore the life and fate of this extraordinary woman—the daughter of a Jewish merchant of the first guild, who studied medicine in Lyon but became deputy chair of the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR and the first woman awarded the Order of the Red Banner. And in the next article, we'll continue our story about Mikhail Frunze.
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