Filibusters and adventurers of the Russian revolution

December 2 2014 1

Akashev and Fishman: a comparative life story

In August 1910, the newly opened flight school of engineer Giovanni Caproni in Milan received a new student who came from France. He was a Russian emigrant and his name was Konstantin Akashev. The Caproni School was still being created. In parallel with it was built the famous factory. In the only hangar, the mechanics assembled the monoplane of the French inventor Blériot. The first training flights began only in December. The pupils repeated the actions of the instructors, and, as they say in Russia, before learning to fly, they had to fill a lot of cones. And not only in the figurative sense. Shortly before Christmas 22-year-old Akashev crashed in the air, but, fortunately for him, at a low altitude. He remained unharmed, and the "airship" required repair. The repair and adjustment of the airplane was made by Akashev himself. Meanwhile, Caproni was already finishing the construction of a new aircraft of his own design. In May 1911, his Russian student, who was only two years younger than his teacher, passed the Caproni airplane exam and was one of the first in Italy to receive the diploma of an aviator pilot issued by an Italian aeroclub.

A year later, Akashev went to Italy by sea by another fugitive from the same Turukhansk region, Yakov Fishman, who had submitted a prison certificate as an identity document to enter the University of Naples.

Exactly ten years later, the former secretary of the Petrograd Club of Anarchist Communists, the first commissar of the Red aviation and former head of the Glavvozdukhflot (Main Directorate of the Workers 'and Peasants' Red Air Fleet) The Red Army Akashev went on a two-year secret mission abroad. He spent most of his time in Italy, where he received the purchased planes and engines, controlled their production and tests in the air. There, in February 1921, a prominent figure in the revolutionary movement Yakov Fishman, a recent member of the Central Committee of two parties, the Russian and Ukrainian Left Socialist Revolutionaries, and in the near future the creator and first head of the Military Chemical Directorate of the Red Army, went as a Soviet military attaché.

From Turukhansk region to the sky over Europe

Let us now dwell on their biographies. Belarusian by nationality Konstantin Vasilyevich Akashev was born in 1888, in the village of Mikhalino, Lyutsinsky district, Vitebsk province, in a rich peasant family. He received his primary education in a public school, and then entered a real school in Dvinsk (now Daugava in Latvia). Widowed, his mother remarried the landowner Volodin for the second time, which is why Kostya left home at 17. Even earlier, in 1903, he was expelled from school for communication with revolutionaries. He decided to continue his education in the Great Onions of the Pskov province. Here the young rebel joined the Social Revolutionary Party. In the midst of the First Russian Revolution, in the summer of 1905, he moved to Vilna, where he led propaganda on behalf of the Social Revolutionaries. During the All-Russian October strike, which had begun, Akashev participated in the seizure of printing houses, which the revolutionaries had converted to print leaflets. Then he appeared in a small homeland in Latgale, where he propagandized among the peasants agrarian terror and personally participated in the arson of landlord estates.

The liberal newspaper Rus published the following message from Vilna: “Today the case of the peasant Akashev, accused of participating in a political demonstration in the town of Kaman Kovel province, where he disarmed the bailiff, was dismantled, forced him to go in procession and carry a red flag. The Chamber sentenced him to half a year of the fortress. ”

After serving time and when the police found bombs during a search of his apartment, Akashev had to flee from Vilna to Velikie Luki. Here he joined the militant group, which organized several terrorist attacks against the chairman of the local branch of the Union of the Russian People and police officers. After that, the leaders of the Northern Regional Committee of the AKP became interested in Akashev, who made him an offer to join the famous Flying Combat Detachment of the Northern Region, headed by one of the most dangerous militants in the empire, Latvian Albert Trauberg named "Karl". This detachment, in particular, committed the murder of the Chief Military Prosecutor General Pavlov, the Chief of the Main Prison Administration, Maksimovskiy, and a number of other high-profile and defiant actions.

Akashev was involved in a number of military actions, the most famous of which was the murder of Borodulin, the head of one of the Siberian hard labor prisons (who ordered the use of corporal punishment against the political prisoner anarchist Latina) in Pskov. However, by this time he had begun to express disagreements with the party program and tactics, and had established close contacts with anarchists.

Having decided to join them, at the beginning of 1907, Akashev moved to Kiev, where he joined the group of communist anarchists created by the well-known anarchist journalist I.S. Grossman-Roshchin, becoming one of its leaders. It is noteworthy that it was in this group that Dmitri Bogrov, nicknamed “Mitya the Bourgeois”, was shot, who shot five years later Prime Minister Stolypin. At the same time, Bogrov was a police officer, and soon, not without his help, failures began.

Konstantin Akashev Photo: airaces.ru

In Kiev, the Lukyanovskaya prison in the life of Akashev there was a serious change. From the Great Onions, the bride Varvara Obedkova came to him, with whom he was married a prison priest. Although Akashev was arrested with false documents addressed to Milyaev, the police established his real name. He urgently requested the metropolitan gendarmerie to bring to justice in connection with the great process against the Social Revolutionaries that was happening at that time. In July, 1907, he was transferred from Kiev, however, in St. Petersburg it turned out that very little evidence was collected against him. Having spent about a year in pre-trial detention, Akashev administratively, without trial, was exiled for four years to the Turukhansk region.

While he gets there, let's talk about the biography of Fishman. He was a native of Odessa, born in the family of a small servant a year earlier than Akashev, in 1887. Having lost his father early, he, along with his younger brother Veniamin, joined the Social Revolutionary Party while he was still studying at the 2 of the Odessa gymnasium. Yakov Fishman's final exams coincided with the “Potemkin” days, which left no one indifferent in Russia. Fishman entered the Faculty of Physics and Mathematics of the Novorossiysk University in Odessa, but he clearly did not have time to study at that moment. At the end of 1905, his trail was recorded in Petersburg, where an 18-year-old student somehow (without the help of his fellow countryman Lev Bronstein?) Joined the St. Petersburg Workers' Council (!) Of deputies and became a member of the capital committee of Social Revolutionaries and the leader of the fighting squad of the Powder Plant.

Having escaped the defeat of the St. Petersburg Council, Fishman returned to his native Odessa, where in 1906 he began preparing a terrorist act against the chairman of the Odessa branch of the Union of Russian People, Count Konovnytsyn, who, in order to counter revolutionaries, began to create 1906 in August. "White Guard", divided into six hundred. Militants Konovnitsyna terrorized not only the Jewish population of the city and students of Novorossiysk University, but also foreign nationals. The consuls were indignant, but the count and his henchmen found an influential patron - the commander of the troops of the Odessa Military District, Baron Kaulbars. Fishman’s comrades several times prepared the attempts on Konovnitsyn and Kaulbars, but each time they were prevented. In the midst of the preparation of one of these attempts, Fishman was suddenly arrested, but since there was not enough evidence against him, he was acquitted by the court.

How much in common with Konstantin Akashev was the young Fishman! His second arrest followed 1907 for attending a conference of the Social Revolutionaries in Moscow. As a result, Fishman also found himself exiled to the Turukhansk region for the same four years.

The place of exile to Akashev was assigned the village of Popovskoe on the Angara. But he stayed there for long. Literally a few months later he, together with the Bolshevik Yakov Shumyatsky and two other exiles, managed to make a successful escape, after which he emigrated first to Algeria (in March 1909), and from there he moved to France. For some time I lived in Switzerland, where his wife came to give birth to their first daughter. In Paris, Akashev again became involved in anarchist circles, and at the same time became seriously interested in aviation. The sky attracted him so much that he even called his son Icarus! He and his wife lived on the money left over from the land they inherited, and which his mother regularly sent him. These funds were quite enough to study at Caproni Flight School. Having successfully passed the exam in Milan, Akashev returned to Paris and entered the Higher School of Aeronautics, which he graduated from on the eve of World War I in 1914 with a degree in mechanical engineering aeronaut.

The exile fisherman Fishman was housed in the town Osinovka, lying on the route trying to escape the group of exiles. The well-known anarchist Leo Cherny was considered the ideological inspirer of the “Turukhansk revolt” in the late autumn of 1908. Although Yakov Fishman did not participate in him, he was arrested on suspicion of helping the rebels, who managed to disarm the guards and seize Turukhansk for several days, before starting to make their way to the ocean and die in battle with weapons in hand. Since he gave shelter to the fugitives in his house in Osinovka, Fishman had to spend a year under investigation in the Yenisei prison, but only get rid of with fright. (The surviving members of the Turukhansk revolt were sentenced to life penal servitude.) But after his release, he now himself set off on the run. Taking into account the unsuccessful experience of escaping the executed rebels, he chose to run alone and make his way not to the northern seas, but to the Pacific Ocean.

As a result, the escape was a success, and on the boat through China the fugitive with a fishing name reached Europe. (Amazingly, two years later, the younger brother Jacob Veniamin, who had served four years of hard labor, who had escaped from a settlement in the Irkutsk province, reached Italy and entered the Faculty of Mathematics of the University of Rome, did the same route.

After graduating from the Faculty of Chemistry at the University of Neapolitan with a doctorate in science and a Master’s degree school with a Master’s degree in chemistry, Jacob Fishman began teaching at the Polytechnic School in Naples, consisting of an assistant in the department of industrial chemistry and merchandising. At that time, Europe was already plunged into the First World War, and the views of it from the brothers Fishmanov and Konstantin Akashev, who, however, were hardly familiar at that time, radically diverged.

Being a staunch follower of Peter Kropotkin, Akashev apparently shared the position of the main ideologue of anarcho-communism with respect to militant German militarism. Since the beginning of the war, he volunteered to and e in the 1-th air regiment of the French army and participated in the battles on the Western Front. In May 1915, with the consent of Akashev, the French command sent him to the Russian army. But he was suddenly arrested at the border in Tornio. The police department was going to bring him back to Siberia to serve the former punishment without any additional penalty for escape, as was supposed in the case of voluntary return. However, Akashev’s appeal to the Minister of Internal Affairs and the intercession of State Duma deputies saved him from this fate. At the same time, as a politically unreliable person, he received a refusal to enroll in the army.

Then, towards the end of the same year, Akashev managed to get a test pilot at the Vladimir Lebedev Aircraft Plant. However, the very word "pilot" poet Velimir Khlebnikov still invented, and it did not have time to spread widely. Therefore, it will be correct to call him an aviator.

As Yuri Halperin, the discoverer of Akashev’s figure in historical literature, Lebedev, the owner and director of the plant, was himself a professional pilot. His interest in aviation grew on the basis of his passion for the then new bicycle races and motor sports. Like Akashev, Lebedev received an aviation education in Paris, and on April 8, 1910 participated in the record of Daniel Kine, who lasted 2 hours 15 minutes in the air with a passenger (that is, Lebedev). Having received a pilot’s diploma, he returned from France to Russia and opened his own aircraft manufacturing plant, where he produced airplanes, seaplanes, propellers and engines for airplanes. Naturally, such a bright person and an excellent specialist evaluated people not by the principle of their political reliability, but by their professional qualities.

Subsequently, Akashev worked as an assistant director for the technical part at the Shchetinin and Slyusarenko aircraft plants. At the same time, he renewed his ties with the revolutionary circles, in particular, with the anarchist poet, Yesenin’s youth friend, Boris Verkhostinsky, and the Social Democrat Ekaterina Kherson, who belonged to the Menshevik internationalists and had contact with the Bolsheviks. Together with them, Akashev began to carry out plans for the bombing of the Tsarskoye Selo Palace from an airplane at the time of the start of an armed coup. The forecasts of the Police Department that the revolutionary-aviator would be doubly dangerous began to make excuses. However, the spontaneously initiated revolution destroyed the plans of the left radicals in relation to the airstrike on the residence of the king.

How Ikar's father overthrew the Provisional Government, and Fishman did not allow him to finish his “Romanov remnants”

After the start of the February revolution, Konstantin Akashev became secretary of the Petrograd Communist Anarchist Club and began to openly oppose the policies of the Provisional Government. As an anarchist, he called for the seizure of enterprises by workers. He quickly becomes one of the leaders of the labor movement in Petrograd, participates in the conference of the All-Russian Union of Metalworkers, speaks at street rallies.

At the same time, Fishmans, who held anti-war positions, are returning from emigration. Veniamin Fishman settled in his native Odessa, and Jacob's path lay in Petrograd. Both brothers joined the internationalist wing of the AKP.

Yakov Fishman Photo: supotnitskiy.ru

After clashes between supporters of left-wing parties and government forces in the face of the junkers and Cossacks in July 1917, Akashev was fired from a military factory. It took only a month and during the failed Kornilov march on the capital, Akashev offered his services to the headquarters of the Petrograd Military District as a reconnaissance pilot. In response to his appeal, the headquarters decided to send him a commissar to the Mikhailovsky Artillery School, whose cadets were reactionary. He rotated some of the officers, who in the artillery calculations were clearly counterrevolutionaries in the artillery crews, were replaced by soldiers and left-winged youth officers. However, in October, the situation in the school went out of his control, since the majority of the junkers decided to defend the Provisional Government, and the soldiers, led by the commissar, agreed with the Bolsheviks. Nevertheless, Akashev could not prevent the sending of two school batteries to protect the Winter Palace.

Then he decided to resort to tricks, and he managed to get the gunners back to the barracks, which he himself later told about in the magazine “Past”. In the evening of October 25, Akashev walked into the inner courtyard of the Winter Palace and handed the commander of the junkers a non-existent order from the head of the school to withdraw them to the barracks. The commander guessed about deception, but, not wanting to shed blood in vain, he decided to play along with the commissioner. Together they commanded the cadets to ride horses and advance with guns to Palace Square. And on arrival there, suddenly, without giving the cadets a chance to come to their senses, they gave the order to move in a trot. When they crossed the square at a speed and realized it was no longer possible to turn around, because all the surrounding streets were cordoned off by Red Guards, pro-Soviet soldiers and sailors. Thus, with his decisive actions, Akashev deprived those who tried to resist a crucial element of defense.

When discussing the protection of red Peter from the alleged assault by troops loyal to the government, Akashev met with Lenin, after which an announcement appeared on the doors of one of the rooms in Smolny: “Aviation Headquarters”. At a meeting of representatives of military units and factory workers, the Bureau of Aviation Commissioners was elected from three people. One of them was, of course, Akashev. When, in the process of structuring the people's commissariat for military affairs, by order No. 4 of December 20, the All-Russian Air Fleet Management Board was formed, it was he who became its chairman.

As for the Doctor of Chemistry Fishman, his path in October could well have intersected with the Commissar of Aviation, since he was from the Left SRs was a member of the Petrograd Military Revolutionary Committee, a transitional authority. After the overthrow of the Provisional Government, Yakov Fishman assumed the position of comrade (deputy) chairman of the Committee to Combat Alcoholism, Gambling and Pogroms, headed by Vladimir Bonch-Bruyevich, not Dzerzhinsky, but the old Bolshevik.

Antonov-Ovseenko, who at that time commanded the troops of the Petrograd Military District, recalled:

“... The unprecedented atrocity spread in Petrograd. Here and there crowds of thugs appeared, most of the soldiers who broke up the wine warehouses, and sometimes thundering and shops ... No admonitions helped. Particularly acute was the question of the cellars of the Winter Palace ... As soon as evening came, a mad bacchanalia poured. “Let's finish the Romanov remnants!” - this cheerful slogan was mastered by the crowd. They tried to wall up the entrances - the crowd penetrated through the windows, dropping out the grates, and plundering stocks. We tried to fill the cellars with water - the firemen drank themselves during this work. ” Effective measures to combat the pogroms prompted the revolutionary masses, who began to crack down on drunks and robbers. “It was only when the Helsingfors sailors took on the fight against drunkards that the cellars of Zimny were neutralized. It was a kind of titanic struggle. The sailors held steadfastly, bound by a ferocious companionable vow - "death to one who fails to fulfill the vow."

Bonch-Bruyevich told me in his memoirs about how the Committee to Combat Drunkenness, Gambling and Pogroms was formed: “Our selection of employees was such that they took only workers, certainly Party members, and Left Socialist-Revolutionaries. The factory elected, the district claimed ... ". At the meeting of the Petrograd Soviet, he reported:

“Petrograd is flooded with a squall of drunken defeats ... Defeats began with small fruit, followed by the warehouses of Koehler and Petrov, a large store of ready-made dresses. In one half hour, we received 11 notices about the pogroms and barely had time to send military units to the field ... When interviewing detainees of individual military officials, it turned out that they were soldered and organized from them a special institution of brothers instigators for drinking, for which they paid 15 rubles a day ... ".

On December 6, the Committee to Combat Pogroms imposed a state of siege in Petrograd and issued a formidable ultimatum: “Attempts to defeat wine cellars, warehouses, shops, shops, private apartments, and so on. etc., will be terminated by machine gun fire without any warning. ” After several incidents of fire to defeat, the pogroms began to fade.

In January-February 1918, the paths of the two revolutionaries were inevitably to cross, since Fishman at that time became part of the All-Russian Emergency Headquarters and the bureau of the Committee of Revolutionary Defense of Petrograd due to the expected German offensive. He also twice at the All-Russian congresses of the Soviets was elected to the Central Executive Committee. As part of the revolutionary parliament and the government, both Fishman and Akashev are being evacuated to Moscow.

Anarchist in government

Having entered the Soviet government, Konstantin Akashev was still an anarchist. But pure politics began to fade into the background for him. From his residence on Fontanka, 22 Akashev managed a huge farm, which included 35 of thousands of officers and soldiers, 300 of various units and one and a half thousand aircraft. In addition, in 1918, he became the editor-in-chief of the first in Soviet history aviation magazine “Vestnik of the Air Fleet”.

Among other things, the “Soviet” anarchist (as the anarchs actively collaborated with the authorities at that time) also worked on finding personnel to create a new structure for managing the air fleet and the aviation industry. Thus, the engineer of Russobalt, Nikolai Polikarpov, was sent by Akashev to the factory “Dux”, which first produced bicycles, but during the First World War, reoriented to the production of airplanes. As it turned out, it was not for nothing: it was under the leadership of Polikarpov that a team of specialists designed the I-1, the first Soviet monoplane, and later the famous U-2 (Po-2).

In February, 1918 of the year, Akashev met with the Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars Ulyanov-Lenin, and in May, the Air Fleet Management Board was reorganized into the General Directorate of the Workers 'and Peasants' Red Military Air Fleet, headed by a Council composed of a Chief and two Commissioners. One of these commissioners again became Akashev, the other - a member of the RSDLP from 1911, Andrei Sergeev. The anarchist communist Akashev was loyal to the Kremlin, and soon left for the Eastern Front in the Volga region, where he was entrusted with the command of the aviation of the 5 Army Tukhachevsky.

Unlike the “Soviet” anarchist Akashev, Yakov Fishman, along with other leftist Social Revolutionaries, strongly opposed ratification of the predatory Brest peace. In order to counter the Austro-German offensive, he, as part of the Southern delegation of the Central Committee of the Left Social Revolutionaries, left Ukraine. Here in March 1918, Fishman is elected a member of the All-Ukrainian CEC. Then he took part in the congresses of the Don Councils in Rostov-on-Don and the Kuban in Ekaterinodar. While in Ekaterinodar, he participated in the defense of the city against the advancing forces of Kornilov, who laid his head there. At the time of the 5th All-Russian Congress of Soviets that opened on July 4, which became fatal in the allied relations of the Bolsheviks and Left Socialist-Revolutionaries, Fishman was secretary of the party faction. But behind this external screen was his direct involvement in the preparation of the assassination of the German ambassador, Count von Mirbach. It was Doctor of Chemistry Fishman who made bombs in a secret laboratory, which the terrorists Blumkin and Andreev then took advantage of.

Delegates of the V All-Russian Congress of Soviets at the Bolshoi Theater, Moscow, 1918 year. Photo: TASS

But the role in party representation at the congress as a person who designed the Left Socialist-Revolutionary mandates was very important. At the time of the outbreak of armed clashes on the streets of Moscow, Fishman actively participated in meetings of the party leadership in the headquarters of the detachment under the command of Popov and traveled to the Red Army units for agitation. After the failure of the Left Socialist-Revolutionary speech, he disappeared into the Penza province, from there he made his way to the division of the left Socialist-Revolutionary Kikvidze on the Don Front. In October 1918, he was transferred to the Central Committee through the front line at Gotnya station in Ukraine. Arriving in Kharkov, Fishman was a member of the Central Committee of the Ukrainian Party of Left Social Revolutionaries and the Central (Left Socialist-Revolutionary) Staff of the partisan detachments. While he took part in the battles with the white kazaks of Krasnov and the Petliurists, in Moscow there was an investigation into the case of the Left Socialist-Revolutionaries, which ended with the imposition of a three-year imprisonment by the Supreme Revolutionary Tribunal of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee 27 November.

Meanwhile, Akashev also fought on the Volga front. As commander of the 5 Army Aviation Commander, he showed himself from the best side, managing to organize uninterrupted support for the Red Army units from the air. On his initiative, the bombing of the airfield in Kazan was undertaken, effectively depriving the Red Army People's Army of Aviation, since their planes were bombed before they could take off. Among other military achievements of Akashev was the air support of the Red Army soldiers in the battles for Rostov-on-Don and Novocherkassk.

An even more experienced strategist, Konstantin Akashev, proved himself to be the chief of aviation of the Southern Front, which he had been occupying since December 1918. In the midst of decisive battles with Denikin’s armies, in August of 1919 he commanded a special-purpose aviation group to eliminate General Mamontov’s cavalry raid. The White Cossacks, breaking through the defense of the Red Army, occupied Voronezh, Tambov, Kursk and a number of other cities, and rapidly advanced towards Moscow. In the midst of fighting, Akashev personally flew combat flights on the famous "Ilya of Murom", participating in the bombardment of white cavalry. And 25 March 1920, he received a new appointment, this time - to the post of Chief of the Main Administration of the military air fleet. In this position, he replaced the former royal aviation colonel Alexander Vorotnikov, and became commander in chief of the Air Force of the Republic of Soviets. Ahead were the organization of strikes by aviation forces during the Soviet-Polish war, the fight against Wrangel and the capture of the Crimea.

Italian overtures and German cantata

At the beginning of 1919, Fishman, a member of the underground Central Committee, under the pseudonym “I. Talin ”(read: Jacob Talin or Italin - in honor of Italy’s second homeland) led the party work in Kharkov, now in Kiev, now in Moscow. However, on July 19 he was tracked down and captured by the KGB, finding himself in Butyrskaya prison. Here by this time there were already several hundred of his fellow party members. However, after Fishman signed the Theses of the Central Committee on the unity of the revolutionary front with the Bolsheviks, his release was followed at the beginning of 1920. He joined the legalist wing of the party led by Isaac Steinberg, and in October of the same year he joined the Central Organizing Bureau, proclaiming the reorganization of the party on the platform supporting Soviet power in the fight against "armed counterrevolution." However, December 4 Fishman unexpectedly published in the central Izvestia a letter of withdrawal from the party of the Left Socialist-Revolutionaries, “which I worked on since its inception,” motivating his departure with the desire to “continue to work in the ranks of the party, which now symbolizes the revolution.” He was admitted to the Communist Party on the basis of the decision of the Organizing Bureau of the Central Committee of the RCP (B.) Of December 10 and sent to work in the Commissariat for Foreign Trade.

Soon he was included in the trade delegation sent to Italy, and at the same time entered the disposal of the Red Army Intelligence Directorate. Having traveled in March 1921 to Italy via Riga and Berlin as part of the mission of V.V. Vorovskogo, Fishman with his wife N.M. Rychkova settled on the street Diocletian Terme (Terme di Diocleziano). It is known that Akashev then left for the Apennines along the line of the same Commissariat of foreign trade. Together with him, a famous Russian and Soviet pilot Yevgeny Gvaita and a major enginebuilding specialist, engineer Shechenko, set off through Riga and Revel (now Tallinn). In Rome, Akashev settled in the house on Via Sistino (Gogol once lived on the same street, and the most famous portrait of the writer was painted by the artist Moller), where the import department of the NKVT representative office was located. According to the questionnaire of the NKVT import department, filled with Akashev in Rome on July 20 1921, he received a salary in 4500 liras and was engaged in official trade deals.

But this is only one side of the coin. There are good reasons to believe that in Italy Akashev worked in close contact with a resident of military intelligence, Yakov Fishman. It is known that at the same time with Akashev in Italy was his former deputy (assistant chief of the Air Force of the army and fleet for hydroaviation) Stolyarsky. Interestingly, his son Stanislav Stolyarsky, born in 1923 in Italy, was named Ikar as Akashev!

According to the recollections of the Soviet diplomat defaulter Naglovsky, published in the New York “New Journal”, Fishman quickly acquired agents and, with the help of the Italian Communists, bought a number of secret documents and samples of new weapons. One of these agents was none other than the future Stalinist architect Boris Iofan, who built the famous House on the Embankment for the families of members of the government and designed the construction of the House of Soviets on the site of the blown-up Temple of Christ the Savior. Yofan Yakov Fishman, a graduate of the Rome Institute of Fine Arts who lived in Italy from pre-revolutionary times, met long before the revolution (most likely in Odessa, the brothers-architects Dmitry and Boris Iofany were like the revolutionary brothers of Fishman). As Boris Iofan told in his memoirs, in the family villa of his wife Olga (in his first marriage Ogareva, after the father of the Italian duchess Ruffo di Sasa, married to the Russian princess Mescherskaya!), Antonio Gramsci and Palmiro Togliatti created the Italian Communist Party at that time.

Iofan also recalled how, under the leadership of Stolarsky, the “civil war hero”, the aircraft were procured “manufactured at the Fiat enterprise by Sesto Calendo. According to Naglovsky’s memoirs, Fishman simultaneously purchased samples of automatic rifles and new Italian machine guns at 10 thousand lire per piece.

A further fragment of these revealing memories, consistent with the memoir sketching by Iofan published in the USSR, is worth quoting entirely: “But if it was easy to send documents, then with the delivery of gun models to Vorovsky and Fishman to Moscow, I had to scratch my head. Finally, Vorovsky invented such a plan.

For the delivery of these models, Vorovskiy bought two Caproni airplanes from Fiat, and from Turin (where the Fiat factory is located) these Capronis were to fly to Moscow. Four prominent Italian pilots from the former squadron d'Annunzio agreed to fly for big money, two of them, Garrone and Stratt, became especially famous during the war. The pilots, among other things, made it a condition that Vorovskiy would insure their lives and in case of death pay insurance to their wives. Prudence is not superfluous, Vorovsky has insured them. Models are shipped. "Caproni" waiting for departure. And in November 1921, four pilots, on two vehicles flew from Turin.

Garrone and Stratta are experienced pilots. For the flight Vorovsky could be calm. But such are the "orange peels". For an inexplicable reason, Garrone and Stratta suddenly began to decline near Gorizia, and when landing, hitting a corner of the house with a wing, it fell to the ground. Both pilots are killed on the spot, the airplane is broken.

Seeing the catastrophe with the first “Caproni”, the second unit also decided to decline. Perhaps, two other pilots, having decreased, would try to hide the models of machine guns? Unknown. But their decline was unsuccessful. When landing in an open field, their apparatus tore off the lower fuselage.

To the crash site of the two vehicles, the residents came running. The gendarmes arrived. In the defeated Garrone and Stratt apparatus, gendarmes found models of machine guns. The pilots of the second apparatus were immediately arrested. Spying Fishman-Thieves is revealed. But the plenipotentiary, of course, categorically refused any participation in the abduction of the models, blaming everything on the crashed Garrone and Stratta. A court was appointed over the arrested pilots of the second apparatus. Vorovsky hired a lawyer to them Ferry. The court sentenced the pilots to long prison terms. And the matter somehow with the help of official and unofficial moves was managed to hush up. ”

Of course, the Soviet anarchist Akashev (like another anarchist, official of the NKID, German Sandomierz) could also carry out a political mission in Italy. As you know, the leader of the Turin section of metalworkers, anarchist Pietro Ferrero, from the very beginning of the Gramsci-Togliatti group, Ordine Nuovo, maintained close contact with her and during the occupation of Fiat enterprises in September 1920, actively participated in the management of the Factory Councils. It is possible that Akashev was charged with secret negotiations with the Italian anarchs at the expense of continuing the united front tactics with the communists and syndicalists. In the event that a revolutionary uprising began, Akashev and Stolyarsky could play the role of military advisers and assist in the creation of aviation units. It was at this time that the Italian Communists entrusted the organization of a secret aviation school to a student at the Milan Polytechnic Institute, Baron Roberto Bartini, the future well-known Soviet aircraft designer and prisoner of the Gulag.

Konstantin Akashev was in Italy until November 1922. According to him, during this time he was a representative of the RSFSR at the International Dirigible Conference in London (February 1922), an expert on air fleet of the RSFSR delegation at the Genoa Conference (April 1922) and at the International Aeronautics Conference in Rome (October 1922). Upon returning to Moscow, he worked as a senior engineer in the auto-aviation subdivision of the Military-Industrial Directorate of the Supreme Economic Council (All-Russian Council of National Economy), and later briefly headed the aviation department of the Bolshevik plant in Leningrad.

As for Jacob Fishman, at the end of 1922, he was transferred to work as an assistant military attaché in Germany. In Berlin, he continued to coordinate the work of military-technical intelligence and again became involved in a new serious scandal. It all started with the fact that in May, 1924, the German police uncovered a group of communist terrorists who were preparing a series of attacks on General von Sect, the Württemberg Interior Minister von Boltz and a number of other dignitaries. The conspirators were supervised by Gorev-Skoblevsky (an illegal reconnaissance scout from Commander Voldemar Rose), who lived in the Soviet embassy in Berlin on Unter den Linden. He also supplied the killers with ampoules with deadly bacilli and toxic containers. Believing in his invulnerability, Skoblevsky nevertheless committed carelessness: he left the embassy at the most dangerous moment and was arrested in the militants' safe house. The ominous arsenal also fell into the hands of the police. The signs were on the face, but in the Soviet mission they disowned Skoblevsky. And in the German press began to appear articles about the Soviet gas tests on captured White Guards. The prosecutor's office conducted an investigation, and then in Leipzig, a process called the “Process-Cheka” began (the accusation was made of the creation of the so-called “German Cheka” by the accused). The process was noisy and attracted a lot of spectators - the case was heard in court openly. In this regard, 3 on April 1925, Jacob Fishman regularly reported on the scandal to the main character of newspaper sensations - the People's Commissar for Military and Naval Affairs, Mikhail Frunze. A intelligence diplomat who specialized in military chemical espionage told Frunze the essence of the publication. Fishman was concerned about the pressure of the German media. Frustrated, he even wrote: "Without encroaching completely on the freedom of their political views, we want only now that the German military press educates respect for the Red Army, its structure, life and power in the Reichswehr." Fishman outlined his claims to Major Fisher, an employee of the Reichswehr Press Bureau, who promised to put pressure on the obstinate press.

Chemistry and Life

Because of this scandal or for other reasons, in the middle of 1925, Yakov Fishman returned to the USSR, where he was awaited a serious promotion. When the order of the Revolutionary Military Council of the USSR from 22 August 1925, on the basis of the chemical department of the Artillery Directorate, the Military Chemical Directorate (VOHIMU) of the Red Army was formed under the head of the supplies of the Red Army and the Red Army of the Red Army, the creation of a professional chemist Fishman. VOKHIMU received a complex of buildings on Lubyanskaya Square in Moscow, as well as part of the premises of the 2 House of the Revolutionary Military Council of the USSR in Red Square. Initially, it was built on the American model: the supply of military-chemical property and research work in the field of combat use of poisonous substances, protective equipment, camouflage smoke and pyrotechnics. Fishman also headed the Scientific and Technical Chemistry Committee (Khimkom) created within the framework of VOHIMU to coordinate with the industry development and research projects. One by one, a series of educational and popular works emerge from his pen: “Gas War”, “Chemical Weapons”, “Military Chemicals in Modern Warfare”, “Chemistry in the National Economy and Defense”, and others. 26 August 1927, the Inspectorate of Chemical Training of the Main Directorate of the Red Army was included in the Fishman's Directorate, and the functions of the entire military-chemical training of the Red Army were assigned to it.

One of the camps of Ozerny labor camp № 7, 1951 year. Photo: TASS

Unlike a member of the VKP (b) Fishman, Akashev, who did not join the Communist Party, no longer held high command posts. Returning from Leningrad to Moscow, he became an assistant to the Aviation Plant No. XXUMX and taught at the E.Ye. Zhukovsky. As his daughter, Elena, recalled, in 1, he was unexpectedly arrested (presumably due to the arrests of the last legal anarchists), but was quickly released. However, 1929 March already 3 was followed by a new arrest. The nature of the accusations against him is still not completely clear, but it is obvious that this time he was not charged with ordinary contacts with anarchists. In this case, it could send a link, nothing more. Akashev was accused of espionage, and he was doomed. The investigation was extremely short: April 1930 3 The OGPU College sentenced the hero of the October Revolution to be shot. Six days later, he was shot, and the body was secretly buried in a common grave at the Vagankovsky cemetery in Moscow. A few months later, his spouse was arrested; she was sent into exile in Siberia.

Meanwhile, Fishman continued his career. From 1 in May of 1932, his department became the central body of the USSR Commissariat of Defense of the USSR to supervise the combat and technical training of the chemical troops and the military-chemical training of the Red Army units. As tasks became more complex, he grew up in military ranks, moving up to the corps engineer, which corresponded to the rank of comcor. But the time of the Great Terror has come. 5 of June came after him, literally several days before the formation of the Special Court Presence of the USSR Supreme Court, chaired by V.V. Ulrich for a hearing in closed session of the case of the first group of military leaders. In the course of the investigation, by which, by the way, the recent members of this very Special Judicial Presence (!) Were also held, he was accused of belonging to the leading center of an “extensive anti-Soviet military-SR organization, carrying out its subversive activities in the ranks of the Red Army” and spying for the German and Italian intelligence.

But with such a serious accusation, he was not shot, because for a long time, right up to his arrest, he was an unofficial agent of state security. Nevertheless, on May 29 of 1940, by the verdict of the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court, Fishman was convicted on 10 years of ITL. Most likely, he could have been imprisoned during a war in some kind of sharashka. The high qualification and ambiguous role of the NKVD sex group makes this assumption more than plausible. After serving his sentence, he taught chemistry at the agricultural institutes of Saratov and Uman until 1949 was arrested again in April. For half a year he was kept in a prison in Kiev. However, he nevertheless had to go to the North, although he was not under escort. Here Fishman worked for several years as the head of a chemical laboratory at a metallurgical plant in Norilsk, which was served by prisoners. And after Stalin’s death and rehabilitation in 1955, he even managed to regain the rank of major general for technical troops and awards. In 1957, he was reinstated in the ranks of the CPSU and spent the last four years of his life in Moscow. He died in the 1961 year.