Pepelyaev Anatoly Nikolaevich, White Guard general. From the family of an officer. Graduated from the Pavlovsk Military School (1910). In the 1st World War, Colonel. In May 1918 he led an anti-Soviet rebellion in Tomsk, supported by the White Czechs. From August 1918 he commanded the Central Siberian Corps, operating in the Perm direction.
Born into an officer family. Graduated from the Omsk Cadet Corps (1908), Pavlovsk Military School in 1910. Participant of the First World War. He rose from lieutenant to colonel (1917). Having led a team of reconnaissance officers, he was distinguished by successful operations at Prasnysh, Soldau and other operations. Was marked by a telegram from the emperor. In 1915, commanding scouts of the 11th Army and a hundred Cossacks during the retreat of the Russian army from Poland, he defeated 2 enemy battalions and regained lost positions, for which he was awarded the Cross of St. George. After the October Revolution of 1917, he returned to Siberia, to Tomsk, where he organized an anti-Bolshevik officer organization. He led a successful uprising against Soviet power in Tomsk on May 28, 1918. With the rank of lieutenant colonel, in early July 1918 he defeated the Red troops near Irkutsk (commanding, among other things, Krasilnikov’s detachment), making it possible to raise an uprising there and capture it . Commander of a detachment of white troops in the Yekaterinburg group from June to August 1918, major general (received this rank from the Provisional Siberian Government for the liberation of Siberia from the Bolsheviks). He was promoted thanks to his personal qualities and ability to “be” with the soldiers. Together with the troops, Gaida advanced from Tomsk to Olovyannaya station, pushing back the Bolsheviks. On August 7, 1918, together with Gaida, he defeated a large red detachment on the Baikal Front. This event was called by Soviet historians the “catastrophe near Posolskaya”. Returning to Tomsk, he formed a corps and went to the Perm Front. The only general who did not introduce shoulder straps in his troops and was considered a “Socialist Revolutionary.” He did not belong to the Socialist Revolutionary Party, but sympathized with it, although he was more inclined towards Siberian regionalism. From August 1918 to July 1919 - commander, intermittently, of the Central Siberian Corps in the Siberian Army. In August 1918, at the suggestion of Vologodsky, he almost replaced Gaida as commander of the anti-Bolshevik troops in Siberia and at the same time acted as a mediator in the conflict between Gaida and Semyonov. He was present at conciliatory dinners between Gaida and Semyonov, where he was specially invited by them to smooth out contradictions. To satisfy Semenov’s ambitions, he was offered command of the V separate Amur Corps, which was accepted by the ataman. In many ways, Pepelyaev ensured recognition of the Provisional Siberian Government by Semenov. In December 1918, he won an outstanding victory, taking Perm with the forces of his corps, where significant trophies were captured. He repeatedly turned to Kolchak with a request to convene a “Zemsky Sobor” in Siberia. During Kolchak's illness in December 1918, he was considered as his possible successor as Supreme Ruler, and even Zhardetsky supported him. At the end of December 1918, at the time of the establishment of the Headquarters of the Supreme Commander-in-Chief and the reorganization of the Siberian Army, which included his Central Siberian Corps, he was removed from command, and for several months nothing was known about him. Since July 1919 - Lieutenant General. Commander of the 1st Siberian Army of the Eastern Front from July to December 1919. Participated in the Tobolsk offensive operation. In September - October 1919, units of Pepelyaev's 1st Siberian Army occupied the area of the city of Ishim, the Golyshmanovo and Tyumen stations of the Omsk railway and defensive positions almost to Tobolsk in the Yalutorovsky direction. His army showed relatively low fighting qualities at this time; additional support was required for them from Wojciechowski’s forces in order to shoot down the Red forces opposing it. At the beginning of November 1919, Pepelyaev's forces were replaced by Kappel's corps and taken to Central Siberia for reorganization and replenishment. In December 1919, A. Pepelyaev almost died when partisans destroyed his train by explosion. Pepelyaev's army was defeated when the Reds captured Tomsk on December 22, 1919. He was very popular in Siberia and was close to the soldiers. After the defeat of the 1st Siberian Army and the collapse of the front, he tries to disassociate himself from Kolchak, while simultaneously speaking out against the Bolsheviks. Ready
and with his brother, V. Pepelyaev, planned a coup against Kolchak, but at the last moment abandoned it. He was close to the Social Revolutionaries and anarchists from December 1919 to 1921. At the beginning of 1920, being a typhoid patient, he was brought on a Czechoslovak train to Chita. In March 1920, he formed the Special Siberian Partisan Detachment from the remnants of his 1st Siberian Army. Verzhbitsky was hostile towards him at this time, so he emigrated to Harbin. Together with Voitsekhovsky, he conducted fierce criticism of Semenov there, including from the pages of the official “Russian Army”. I was sick for a long time in 1920. He made his living as a cab driver. He came into contact with the Diterichs government in July 1922, came to Vladivostok and began forming the Siberian Volunteer Squad. At the invitation of the leaders of the Yakut uprising, in September 1922 he arrived with a detachment of volunteers of 700 people - the “Siberian squad” - in Yakutia, in Ayan, and led the anti-Soviet forces of Yakutia. By this time, the main rebel forces had been defeated. He was captured due to the treason of some of his people on June 18, 1923 on the coast of the Sea of Okhotsk in Ayan. Delivered by sea on a ship to Primorye. During his delivery there, a fire broke out on the ship, during which Pepelyaev participated in extinguishing it, and the Red convoy was so frightened that the ship was out of his control for some time. In 1924, he was convicted in Chita by the Revolutionary Tribunal of the 5th Red Army and sentenced to death. In letters to his brother Arkady, he repented of fighting against Soviet power. His brother Arkady, who occupied a high position among the Reds, interceded for him with Kuibyshev and Kalinin. The All-Russian Central Executive Committee replaced the execution with a 10-year prison term. Under pressure from the communists, he soon turned to his former comrades with a proposal to lay down their arms and stop the fight against Soviet power. He served his sentence in 1933 in the Yaroslavl detention center. In 1936 he was released. He sought permission to return his family to the USSR, but his wife and child refused to return. Recently lived in Vorkuta. According to some sources, he was arrested while trying to cross the state border of the USSR; according to other sources, some former officers of Kolchak’s army, arrested in April–September 1937, testified against him, saying that they were preparing an uprising and were associated with it. Shot on January 14, 1938
- Biography:
From the family of a career military man (father - Lieutenant General Nikolai Mikhailovich Pepelyaev (1858-1916), in 1916 - head of the 8th Siberian Rifle Division). Brother - Viktor Nikolaevich Pepelyaev, the last prime minister of the government of Admiral A.V. Kolchak. Native of Tomsk. Graduated from the 1st Siberian Omsk Cadet Corps (1908), Pavlovsk Military School (1910). At the school he received the title of an excellent marksman with a rifle and a revolver. Released as a second lieutenant (08/06/1910; art. 08/03/1909) into the 42nd Siberian Rifle Regiment. Junior officer of the 11th company of the regiment. Junior officer of the regiment's machine gun team (04/13/1913). Lieutenant (December 25, 1913; Art. 08/06/1913). During mobilization, he was appointed head of a reconnaissance team (07/18/1914). Staff captain for distinction (VP 12/28/1915; art. 09/04/1915). Awarded the Arms of St. George (VP 09/27/1916). Commander of the 9th company of the regiment (07/23/1916). Vr. commanded the 3rd battalion (from 07/02/1916). Awarded the Order of St. George, 4th class. (VP 01/27/1917). On 10.27.-12.07.1916 on a business trip to the army school of warrant officers in Vileika as a head of classes. Captain (12/15/1916; article 09/01/1915). Sent to form the 711th Nerekhtinsky Infantry Regiment (01/10/1917). 07/13/1917 arrived to the regiment from leave and was appointed commander of the 2nd battalion. Lieutenant colonel. After the regiment was disbanded, he returned to Tomsk, where he worked as a guard at a prisoner of war camp. In 05.1918 one of the organizers of the underground officer organization in Tomsk. Led the uprising on May 27, 1918. Then he served in the troops of the Provisional Siberian Government. From 06/13/1918 commander of the 1st Central Siberian Corps, which occupied Krasnoyarsk and Verkhneudinsk. Together with the intensification of the actions of Ataman Semenov’s troops (his troops occupied Chita on August 26, 1918), this led to the overthrow of Soviet power throughout Siberia and Transbaikalia. Colonel for successful military operations in the East. front (07/02/1918). Major General for the liberation of Transbaikalia (09/08/1918). In the army of Admiral A.V. Kolchak - commander of the 1st Central Siberian Army. Corps of the Siberian Army (06/13/1918-04/25/1919), one of the leaders of the Perm operation (12/24/12/25/1918). Lieutenant General (01/31/1919). Commander of the Northern Army Group of Forces with the rights of an independent army (1st Central Siberian and 5th Siberian Corps) of the Siberian Army (04/25/08/31/1919), then commander of the 1st Siberian Army (from 08/31/1919). Awarded the French Croix de Guerre with palm branch (04/09/1919). Member of the St. George Duma of the Siberian Army. Chairman of the St. George Duma of the 1st Central Siberian Army Corps. He was close to the Social Revolutionaries, advocated the democratization of power by A.V. Kolchak. On 11/1919 the army was withdrawn to the Tomsk region for replenishment and reorganization, but by 12/1919 it disintegrated and melted away from desertion. 12/20/1919 Tomsk was captured by the Red partisans and the approaching units of the 3rd Army of the Red Army. Only a small part of the army (the Tobolsk column of General Redko) managed to reach the Trans-Siberian Railway at the station. Taiga, where they joined the general mass of white armies retreating to Transbaikalia. As a sign of protest against the inept military leadership, he and his brother V.N. were arrested. Pepelyaev in 12.1919 at the Taiga station of the commander of the Eastern Front, Lieutenant General K.V. Sakharov, who was soon replaced by General V.O. Kappel. Participant of the Siberian Ice March. Near Krasnoyarsk, together with his units, he was surrounded, but was able to make his way to the east (he was transported in an ambulance car of the Czech troops to Verneudinsk). In Chita, he tried unsuccessfully to form a “partisan detachment of General Pepelyaev.” Then he left Chita and on April 20, 1920, arrived to his family in Harbin, where, together with his fellow soldiers, he organized an artel of cab drivers. In 04.1922 he was summoned to Vladivostok by the governor of the Yakut region Kulikovsky with a proposal to lead a military expedition to Yakutia to support the population rebelling against the Bolsheviks. From the end of 04.1922 he led the formation of the “Siberian Volunteer Squad” and the preparation of the campaign. On 08/30/1922, together with his squad (520 people), he sailed from Vladivostok on two ships and landed on 09/06/1922 in the village of Ayan. On September 14, 1922, a detachment of 480 bayonets set out from Ayan and on September 23, 1922, attacked and captured the village of Nelkan (250 km from Ayan). After spending the winter there, the detachment traveled 950 versts along taiga paths and on 02/05/1923 occupied the suburb of Yakutsk - the settlement of Amga. Fierce battles broke out here with Soviet units (commander I. Strod), which continued with varying success until the spring. In April 1923, an expedition was sent from Vladivostok to Okhotsk on the ships “Indigirka” and “Sevastopol” to help the red units (a rifle battalion, 4 cannons, several machine guns) under the command of S.S. Vostretsova. 05/01/1923 A.N. Pepelyaev led the detachment back to Ayan. Pressed against the ocean, on June 17, 1923, many fighters of the Siberian Volunteer Squad stopped resisting. Captured, A.N. Pepelyaev agreed to sign an appeal to the volunteers who did not surrender with a proposal to surrender their weapons. 06/30/1923 expedition of S.S. Vostretsova returned to Vladivostok with 450 prisoners. From Vladivostok the arrested were transported to Chita, where at 01. In 1924, a trial took place over the command staff of the squad. A.N. Pepelyaev was sentenced to death, which was replaced by the All-Russian Central Executive Committee with a 10-year sentence in the Yaroslavl political prison. After two years of "solitude" he worked in prison as a carpenter, joiner and glazier. Was released on 07/06/1936. He settled in Voronezh, worked as a cabinetmaker at a furniture factory, and as an assistant to the head of the Voronezhtorg horse depot. On August 20, 1937, he was arrested again, sent to Novosibirsk and accused of organizing a “cadet-monarchist rebel organization whose goal was to overthrow the Soviet regime.” Shot in the Novosibirsk prison by order of the NKVD troika for the Novosibirsk region dated December 7, 1937. Rehabilitated on January 16, 1989.
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- Additional Information:
- Sources:
- 1918 in the East of Russia. M. 2003
- E.V. Volkov, N.D. Egorov, I.V. Kuptsov White generals of the Eastern Front of the Civil War. M. Russian way, 2003
- Information provided by Mikhail Sitnikov (Perm)
- "Military Order of the Holy Great Martyr and Victorious George. Bio-bibliographic reference book" RGVIA, M., 2004.
Native of Tomsk; hero of the First World War; General of the 1st Siberian Army; Kolchak commander. Executed in 1938 in Novosibirsk
Born July 3 (15), 1891 in Tomsk. He received his education at the Omsk Cadet Corps and at the Pavlovsk Military School (St. Petersburg), served in Tomsk, and married the noblewoman Nina Gavronskaya.
In 1914 he was sent to the active army. He took part in the battles of the First World War and was awarded 8 orders and the Golden Arms of St. George. At the beginning of 1918 he returned to Tomsk, where he joined the anti-Bolshevik resistance as the chief of staff of an underground armed officer organization and actively participated in the overthrow of the Soviets. authorities in Tomsk at the end of May 1918.
After leaving the underground, P. was appointed commander of the Central Siberian Corps, at the head of which he participated in the liquidation of the Owls. authorities in Central and Eastern Siberia. At 27 years old A.N. Pepelyaev receives the rank of lieutenant general and commands the 1st Siberian Army. At the end of 1918, troops under the command of P. completely defeated the 3rd Red Army, took Perm and launched an offensive in the Moscow direction. In the second half of 1919, during the general retreat of Kolchak’s troops, P. commanded the 1st Siberian Army, from November 21. to 16 Dec. 1919, together with the army headquarters, was in Tomsk. Under the onslaught of the Red Army and rebel-partisan formations on the night of December 17. 1919 P.'s headquarters train left the railway. Art. Tomsk-2, while the bulk of the soldiers of the Tomsk garrison joined the rebels. On the way to the East, P. fell ill with typhus, but with the help of retreating Czechoslovak troops he managed to get to Transbaikalia, from where in April. 1920 he emigrated to Harbin (China).
On Sept. 1922 - June 1923 participated in the armed struggle against Red Army units on the territory of Yakutia, where an anti-Soviet armed uprising broke out. However, headed by P. Siberian volunteer squad numbering 750 people. was defeated, he was captured, and in February 1924, by decision of the tribunal of the 5th Army in Chita, he and his comrades were sentenced to death, which was commuted on February 29 by the decision of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee to imprisonment in the Yaroslavl special prison. After spending 12 years and 7 months in a Yaroslavl prison, in July 1936 he was released and received permission to settle in Voronezh, where he got a job at Voronezhtorg as an assistant manager of a horse-drawn train. However, on Aug. 21. 1937 he was arrested again, transferred to the NKVD prison in Novosibirsk, on December 7 by the NKVD troika for the Novosibirsk region. accused of leading “a large branched counter-revolutionary cadet-monarchist organization on the territory of the West Siberian Territory” (Article 58-11 of the Criminal Code of the RSFSR). Shot on January 14, 1938. October 20, 1989 Rehabilitated by the Prosecutor's Office of the Novosibirsk Region.
On July 15, 2011 in Tomsk, at the Baktin city cemetery (apartment No. 97), a monument was opened and consecrated over the symbolic grave of A.N. Pepelyaev and his father N.M. Pepelyaev. The monument was erected with funds and with the personal participation of A.N.’s grandson. Pepelyaev, Viktor Lavrovich Pepelyaev.
Source and lit.: Ustryalov N. General Pepelyaev (From personal memories) // Life News. Harbin, 1923. July 12; Vishnevsky E.K. Argonauts of the White Dream (Description of the Yakut campaign of the Siberian volunteer squad). Harbin, 1933; Larkov N. Siberian White General//Red Banner. Tomsk, 1992. November 19; 1993. May 29; Petrushin A. Omsk, Ayan, Lubyanka... Three lives of General Pepelyaev // Motherland. M., 1996. No. 9; It's him. General Pepelyaev: hero and victim of the Siberian white movement // Siberian Historical Journal. Novosibirsk, 2002. No. 1; Privalikhin V. From the Pepelyaev family. Tomsk, 2004; N.S. Larkov. Pepelyaev Anatoly Nikolaevich // Tomsk from A to Z: a brief encyclopedia of the city. - Tomsk, 2004. - P. 252-253; Encyclopedia of the Tomsk region. Volume 2. Ed. TSU. P.561.
Pepelyaev House in Tomsk
Portrait of A.N. Pepelyaeva
A.N. Pepelyaev in 1918
Lieutenant General A.N. Pepelyaev and officers of the assault battalion of the Central Siberian Corps, participants in the capture of Perm. February 28, 1919.
Letter from G. Yagoda to I. Stalin dated 1936 with a proposal to release A.N. Pepelyaeva from prison
Rehabilitation of A.N. Pepelyaeva
Article about the fate of the Pepelyaev brothers
Vladimir Igolkin
THE FATE OF THE PEPELIAEV BROTHERS
The past century, the “wolfhound” century, according to the poet’s definition, turned out to be truly merciless for the large and ancient Pepelyaev family. The first mentions of their surname are found in Novgorod sources 500 years ago. And since then, many generations of Pepelyaevs have served in the military and civilian fields for the benefit of the Fatherland.
But, alas, it did not reciprocate its sincere patriots. The youngest of the brothers, Login, not having time to graduate from the cadet corps, fell in arms during the years of Russian unrest, called the Civil War, opening a sad family martyrology. Victor and Anatoly were shot by the verdict of extrajudicial authorities. Arkady and Mikhail perished in Stalin's camps. Their wives and children, thrown out of their native country by political cataclysms and scattered throughout the world, drank the bitter cup of hardship and suffering in full...
Long after midnight, the key rang in a cell on the second floor of the Irkutsk Central Prison. The ominous, blood-chilling sound, like the click of a rifle bolt, immediately made me feel uneasy.
“During searches in the city, warehouses of weapons, bombs, and machine-gun belts were discovered in many places,” the voice of the revolutionary committee reading out the resolution did not reach consciousness immediately, as if from another reality.
- Portraits of Kolchak are scattered around the city... All this data forces us to admit that there is a secret organization in the city...
Listening to the head of the Irkutsk Cheka S. Chudnovsky, the prisoner could not get rid of the obsessive thought that all this was familiar to him and had already happened, but not to him. Oh yes! A year and a half ago, Ipatiev House, around midnight. The imperial family was asked to go into the basement. Nikolai, it seems, was the first to descend, holding the heir in his arms. Behind him are the queen, daughters, doctor, servants. At one of the last reports in Omsk, investigator N.A. Sokolov told him this scene in all the details. Before the shots were fired, they were also read a semblance of an indictment. And it mentioned the attack on Yekaterinburg by the enemies of the revolution and conspiracies to free the prisoners.
Well, a familiar trick. Will they really treat him the same way?
- Decided: the former Supreme Ruler, Admiral Kolchak, and the former Chairman of the Council of Ministers, Pepelyaev, should be shot.
What I heard hit me like an electric shock and I couldn’t wrap my head around it. Well, isn't it stupid to die in the prime of life, at 36 years old? Bad... And how wonderful it all started!
Viktor Nikolaevich was the first-born in a large noble family, where there were 8 children - six brothers and two sisters. Father, Nikolai Mikhailovich Pepelyaev, although he was a native of the St. Petersburg province, graduated from the Siberian Military Gymnasium, as the Omsk Cadet Corps was at one time called. After the Alexander Military School, I served as an officer far from the capitals. As they say, he didn’t grab stars from the sky, but slowly, step by step, he climbed the career ladder. The service record compiled in 1907 lists 5 orders and several medals awarded to the commander of the 8th Siberian Reserve Tomsk Infantry Regiment. However, as you know, righteous labor cannot make stone chambers. In the column about real estate, ancestral or acquired, the laconic entry is “does not have.” And an extremely clear conclusion: “There were no circumstances in the service of this staff officer that deprived him of the right to receive the insignia of blameless service or delayed his term of service.”
His eldest son's social activities began from his student days. Unlike his younger brothers, Victor chose a civilian career for himself in his early youth. Having entered the Faculty of Law of Tomsk University, from the third year he was an elected headman. But the time was turbulent - the first Russian revolution broke out, political passions were in full swing at the university.
Having received his diploma, with his wife and three-year-old daughter Galya, Viktor Nikolaevich moved to the quiet merchant Biysk in 1909. At first, he taught history and geography at a girls’ gymnasium. The earnings were small, and therefore I also had to earn extra money as a librarian. A couple of years later he transferred to the newly opened men's gymnasium. He taught history, was a class teacher and at the same time - secretary of the pedagogical council.
All free time is occupied by social activities - active participation in the Biysk Society for the Care of Primary Education, organization of amateur performances and musical evenings. He also tries his hand at journalism. The local newspaper “Altai” publishes his historical essays, and a brochure “In Memory of February 19, 1861” is published on the 50th anniversary of the abolition of serfdom.
The energetic activity and dedication of the young teacher did not go unnoticed. With 1,341 votes out of 1,602, he was elected in the Biysk district as an elector to the State Duma of the fourth convocation. And on October 21, 1912, newspapers reported that at the congress of electors of the Tomsk province, which then included the Altai district, V. N. Pepelyaev received 30 out of 37 votes and became one of the youngest deputies of the Russian parliament, where he joined the cadet faction and He dealt mainly with issues of education and took an active part in organizing the Second All-Russian Congress of People's Teachers.
Soon after the February Revolution, the Provisional Government sent him as a commissar to Kronstadt. At the main base of the Baltic Fleet, extremely radical sentiments reigned among the sailors and soldiers under the influence of the Bolsheviks, anarchists and Socialist Revolutionaries. In the first days after the fall of the monarchy, the situation here completely got out of control. Several dozen naval and army officers from the fortress garrison became victims of spontaneous massacres. The reason for the bloody excesses is not only revolutionary agitation. Contemporaries also pointed to the enemy's trail of pogroms and lynchings. Under these conditions, a certain amount of personal courage was required to pursue the government's political line in an openly hostile environment.
In the summer the moment of truth came. The army to which his father gave his whole life is falling apart before his eyes. When desertion became widespread, Pepelyaev himself put on a soldier's overcoat and went to the front. The impressions and mood of those days are expressed extremely succinctly in one of the letters to his wife: “The Bolsheviks (...) did everything that traitors can do.”
I managed to get to my native land only in the summer of 19. After the fall of Bolshevik power in Siberia, V.N. Pepelyaev, as a member of the Central Committee of the Cadet Party and on his instructions, crossed the front lines. In July I reached Omsk. A few days later, we set off again to other Siberian cities to get acquainted with local party organizations and organize their work.
But his mission was not limited to this (Leaving Moscow, he received great powers to consolidate all anti-Bolshevik forces; create strong power on this basis. The rest of the summer and the whole of September were spent traveling around Siberia, the Far East and Manchuria. As a result of numerous numerical negotiations with authoritative public figures, consultations with the command of the Czechoslovak corps, all this shuttle diplomacy, the conviction is gradually emerging that Admiral A. V. Kolchak is most suitable for the role of leader of White Russia.Successful command of the Black Sea Fleet, participation in the heroic defense of Port Arthur, several full expeditions and scientific works. Thus, V. N. Pepelyaev became one of the ideological inspirers of the coup of November 18. Carried out by several Cossack officers of the Omsk garrison, it was, indeed, bloodless. The very next day the appeal of the Supreme Ruler of Russia A V. Kolchak “To the Population of Russia.” In this program document, which was drawn up with the participation of V.N. Pepelyaev, the main goal was proclaimed “the establishment of law and order, so that the people could freely choose for themselves the form of government they wish, and implement the great ideas of freedom that are now being realized throughout the world!”
The peak of Viktor Nikolaevich’s political career coincided with the agony of the Kolchak regime. On November 23, the admiral, by his rescript, instead of P.V. Vologodsky, who was confused and gave up, appointed Pepelyaev Chairman of the Council of Ministers. The new prime minister was aware of the burden he had shouldered. The collapsing front and harsh criticism of the authorities from all circles did not inspire optimism. And yet, he did not lose hope of stabilizing the situation. The program of the Cabinet of Ministers assumed a dialogue with the opposition, the unification of all healthy forces in the country, a decisive fight against arbitrariness and lawlessness in all their manifestations, and a reduction in departments.
History has given this government a negligibly short time. A month and a half later, power in Irkutsk, with the open connivance of the Czechoslovak corps, passed to the political center, which was dominated by the Socialist Revolutionaries. They turned out to be much more flexible than the Supreme Ruler. The entire railway from Krasnoyarsk to Irkutsk was clogged with corps echelons. On average, there was a carriage for every two soldiers. The Czechoslovaks did not miss their interest - they brought everything they could. From sewing needles and samovars to factory machines and agricultural machines. Kolchak insisted that all this property was Russian property and should remain in the country. The political center was not particularly scrupulous and promised to freely let the Slavic brothers through to Vladivostok, where they, having boarded ships, could sail to Europe. It ended with the Czechoslovaks detaining the Supreme Ruler and his Prime Minister, who was with him, and handing them over to the political center. And literally a few days later he voluntarily ceded power to the Bolshevik Revolutionary Committee.
When they were taken out of prison on the frosty night of February 7, 1920, sluggish gunfire could be heard from the opposite bank of the Angara from the Innokentyevskaya station. Exhausted by a thousand-mile march on foot, the troops of General Voitsekhovsky fought on the outskirts of Irkutsk. But they clearly did not have enough strength to take the city.
The sentence was carried out on a hillock near the confluence of its tributary Ushakovka into the Angara. When it was all over, the firing squad threw Pepelyaev’s body into the hole. Admiral Kolchak followed him on his last voyage.
Viktor Pepelyaev’s earthly journey ended, but his brother Arkady still had to live and experience a lot. He began to prepare for the worst ahead of time, at the very height of the repressions. Although it was bitter, I stopped the correspondence that had been going on for fifteen years with my mother Claudia Georgievna and other relatives who lived in exile in Harbin, and carried out a thorough audit of the family archive, getting rid of papers and documents that, despite their purely personal nature, could give reasons for his accusation. First of all, we had to destroy letters from people dear to our hearts - Anatoly’s mother and brother.
Then, in 1937, thank God, it passed. They did not touch Arkady Nikolaevich, most likely for purely pragmatic reasons. The regular patients of one of the best Omsk doctors, who practiced in the first city clinic, which to this day is located in the same house on Lyubinsky Prospekt, included the then local elite. The atmosphere of constant fear and, possibly, doom in which the family lived in all subsequent years did not suppress in the graduate of the St. Petersburg Military Medical Academy, who graduated with honors, the best qualities of a Russian intellectual - the ability to analyze and adequately assess reality, to think critically. In conversations with his colleagues, he qualified the government decree, which strictly punishes unauthorized departure from work, as an infringement of personal freedoms. In the introduction of an 8-hour working day for medical staff, he saw a disguised reduction in wages, an attack on the standard of living, and complained, contrary to the victorious reports of official propaganda, that due to too high rates of industrialization, little attention is paid to light industry, which leads to the disappearance of a wide range of goods from the market consumption and the fall in the real value of the ruble. Arkady Nikolayevich also did not approve of collectivization, which, in his opinion, results in the depletion of agriculture, causes discontent among the peasantry, and creates a food shortage in the country. To reach such obvious things, of course, you don’t have to be a genius. But the majority preferred to remain silent about it. Arkady Nikolaevich, due to his ideas about decency and dignity, felt the need to speak out.
They came for him on a fateful day for the country, on the night of June 23, 1941. Not earlier and not later. And this also had its own logic. Far to the west, German tank spearheads, having easily crossed the border, were already rushing into Soviet territory, sowing destruction, panic and confusion. At border airfields, mangled planes were burning out, never taking off due to a lack of ammunition, fuel, or even simply due to a simple lack of orders. And deep in the rear, the repressive machine of the totalitarian regime worked like a well-oiled machine. The former, as the NKVD investigator wrote in his personal data, a hereditary nobleman fell into its millstone not only and not so much because of his way of thinking. Why, however, the former? After all, a nobleman is not only a class concept, meaning belonging to a class of people serving the state, but also a style of behavior in life, demeanor, and upbringing. Everything, in a word, is what is now commonly called the fashionable foreign word “mentality”. So social origin has nothing to do with it.
Upon graduating from the academy, young military doctors took an oath. This is a kind of code of corporate honor: “I promise to be fair to my fellow doctors and not to insult their personalities, but, if the benefit of the patient requires it, to tell the truth directly and without partiality.” And what is the difference here, in principle - whether we are talking about human infirmities or about ailments to which society is susceptible?
And now, more than six decades later, his daughter, Nina Arkadyevna, remembers this night in detail, as if it all happened just yesterday. When the search was coming to an end and the security officers were sorting out family photographs, she made a wish on one of them - if the photo was put in the left pile, she would be taken away along with her father. The card was put to the right. A few minutes later the father was taken away. They never saw each other again.
A man of the most humane and so necessary profession in hard times was obviously doomed to spend the rest of his life behind barbed wire because of his surname, which became widely known in Siberia during the civil war in the white camp. But this will become quite obvious later. And in this context, the arrest of the last of the Pepelyaev family can be interpreted, in modern terms, as a purely preventive punitive action - just in case, no matter what happens. According to Stalin’s theory of the intensification of the class struggle with new successes in the construction of socialism, the brother of the chairman of the government of White Russia and one of Kolchak’s generals posed a potential danger to the Soviet system. Well, if it comes to open armed confrontation between the two systems, then even more so you can expect anything from him - subversion, betrayal. There was simply no room left for patriotism, citizenship, and basic decency in this simple scheme.
The next day after the arrest, a medical examination report is drawn up, which dispassionately states the defendant’s suitability for physical labor in forced labor camps. This is also the grimace of Themis of those years. The indictment will appear only a couple of months later. A special meeting at the People's Commissar of Internal Affairs will consider it at the beginning of the next year, 1942, and Gulag medicine obsequiously, without unnecessary hesitation and unnecessary sentimentality, delivers its quick verdict to the defendant. It really is true - if only there were a person, there would be an article.
Case No. 12385 begins with a backdated arrest warrant. State Security Lieutenant Lugovin found that Arkady Nikolaevich Pepelyaev, a native of Tomsk, had served as a military doctor in the past, had the rank of collegiate assessor, and was awarded four officer orders by the tsarist government. Apart from the assertion, which is not supported by any arguments, that he is now hostile, then, in principle, there are not many grounds for punitive measures. However, the heads of the investigative unit, Senior Lieutenant Biryukov, agrees with the arrest order, and Deputy Regional Prosecutor Ivlev meekly issues the appropriate warrant, which, in fact, already looks like an empty formality.
Then, as is customary, a decision on the selection of a preventive measure (detention, what else), a search report and a questionnaire of the arrested person. It follows from it that he is an otolaryngologist by profession. And then - several “no’s” in a row. He did not participate in gangs or uprisings, did not join anti-Soviet parties and organizations, and did not have any property. True, in the “criminal record” column he mentions that he was tried by the Revolutionary Tribunal of the 5th Army for storing some documents, but was acquitted.
Next are the protocols of several interrogations, mostly at night. Successive investigators question the arrested person in detail about his family connections, apparently hoping to find in them additional arguments that strengthen the flimsy accusations.
And such tactics are justified. The father of the arrested man, Nikolai Mikhailovich, held responsible command positions in the army before the revolution. The last of them is the military commandant of Tomsk. This means that a major administrator of the tsarist regime is one thing. And the long correspondence with his brother Anatoly, Kolchak’s general, is two things.
Naturally, the investigation could not ignore the mention in the questionnaire of an episode 20 years ago. The interrogation about him lasted three and a half hours, although his protocol only takes up one and a half pages, handwritten in large handwriting.
“Were you subjected to repression under Soviet rule?
- In 1920, I was arrested by the Cheka and was under arrest for about two months.
- For what?
- For storing my brother’s personal documents...
- What kind of documents?
- Personal letters from my brother, his diary and investigation materials about the execution of the family
Romanovs.
- How did you get the documents?
“My brother’s wife brought it and asked me to keep it.”
- For what purpose did they keep my brother’s documents when he had already been shot?
“I wanted to preserve the memory of my brother.” His wife did not dare to keep it, fulfilled it
request.
- How did the documents end up in the Cheka?
- The documents were kept in a hole in the foundation of the house. They were discovered by a worker
who worked on the repairs and handed them over to the Cheka.”
The brother we are talking about here is Viktor Nikolaevich, who headed the cabinet of ministers during the most tragic period for the white movement in eastern Russia. The story with the documents happened in 1920. Arkady Nikolaevich with his military hospital was evacuated as part of Kolchak’s troops from Omsk to Krasnoyarsk. One of the decisive battles of the civil war in Siberia took place off the banks of the Yenisei, ending in the defeat of the White Army. The hospital, along with its chief physician, surrendered. However, literally a few days later, all the personnel were enlisted in the Red Army to save the wounded, help the crippled and suffering in the same Tyumen hospital. True, not as a chief physician, but as a junior resident. Typhus was raging everywhere. The louse spared neither red nor white. And is it really so important for doctors, under whose banner they fight infection, save the wounded, help the disabled and suffering?
In Irkutsk, where a worker accidentally stumbled upon a bundle of papers and a dozen photographs taken in the Urals, the Pepelyaevs lived in the same house with Yaroslav Hasek. The future creator of the immortal novel about the good soldier Schweik served in the political department of the 5th Army. In the evenings, he played with six-year-old Ninotchka Pepelyaeva and her older sister Tanya and, with a funny accent, treated the children to tea “without sugar, bread and tea.” It was he who worked for their father. The writer also played the violin quite well. For many years, the Pepelyaevs' house kept the sheet music donated by Hasek shortly before leaving for his homeland. They disappeared on the fateful night of Arkady Nikolaevich's arrest...
The climate of total terror and general suspicion ruined the lives and destinies of not only the victims of the regime. She crippled the souls of their relatives. There are many examples when those arrested were disowned by their closest relatives - parents, children, husbands, wives - even before the verdict. Arkady Nikolaevich was luckier than many of his other comrades in misfortune. Almost two months after the arrest, investigator Povolotsky interrogated his wife Anna Georgievna. From the point of view of the investigation, she turned out to be a useless witness. The only thing she managed to get from her was meager information about her relatives: “The husband’s mother, her husband’s sister Vera Nikolaevna with her family and the wife of her husband’s brother were evacuated to Harbin in 1919. As far as I know, my husband's mother died in 1938 (approximately).
- How do you know about death?
- From 1921 to 1935 we corresponded, in addition, Anatoly Nikolaevich helped his mother financially. In 1940, we learned from one woman (I don’t know her last name) that her husband’s mother died in Harbin.
- What was the financial assistance?
- We sent 20 - 35 rubles monthly by mail. In 1928, it was forbidden to send Soviet money abroad. Then we found one friend Elizarova, who lived in Tomsk, and her daughter lived in Harbin. The money was sent to Elizarova, and she, in turn, informed her daughter about this, and she transferred the same amount to her mother-in-law in Japanese signs.”
And then - in approximately the same spirit. Minimum names, surnames, ratings. The daughter of a cadet corps teacher, Colonel G. Yakubinsky, who in his youth served as an adjutant to the legendary General M. Skobelev during the Balkan campaign, has not forgotten what noble honor is. For her, this concept did not become an empty phrase.
Two of his medical colleagues played a fatal role in the fate of Arkady Nikolaevich. Questioned as witnesses, they testified about his critical judgments expressed at different times in confidential private conversations. This was quite enough to be accused of anti-Soviet agitation. The names of both doctors are in the investigation file. But it is hardly appropriate to name them - they may have children, grandchildren who have nothing to do with the sins of their parents. The verdict of a special meeting was the standard “ten” for those times with serving in the Mariinsky camps. From here, from the Kemerovo region, at the end of August 1944, a letter left to the People's Commissar of State Security in a blue homemade envelope with a pilot on a 30-kopeck postage stamp.
“Having been imprisoned in forced labor camps for four years,” writes Arkady Nikolaevich, “and considering that the main reason for my arrest and isolation was my belonging to the Pepelyaev family, well known from the history of the civil war in Siberia, I find it possible and timely at this time the moment when the victory of Soviet power over the fascists is assured and inevitable, to ask for a review of my case, for an end to the repression against me and for giving me the opportunity to prove my devotion to Soviet power by working at the front as a doctor.”
Words full of dignity - the author does not ask for mercy, does not beg for mercy. I just want to add one more short phrase for him: “I have the honor!” Behind the restrained, purely business tone of the letter is a decisive attempt to challenge fate, to change it. What is it caused by - despair, hopelessness? More likely something else. What is absorbed with mother's milk is our own understanding of duty and patriotism. How else can one explain that a year earlier, a similar letter addressed to Stalin himself left from sultry Khorezm, which is thousands of miles from Siberia. Political exile B. A. Engerhardt approached the leader of the peoples with a request to send him to the front as a soldier. The former court page, participant in the coronation of the last Russian autocrat, then colonel of the tsarist army was already in his eighties. Both letters remained unanswered. Soon after the war, Arkady Nikolaevich died in the camp from tuberculosis.
As soon as the “thaw” began to blow in the country, Anna Georgievna sent an application to the Union Prosecutor’s Office for the posthumous rehabilitation of her husband. “My husband,” she writes, “has been a doctor all his life and has never been involved in counter-revolutionary agitation. The case would not have ended with an accusation if there had been an opportunity to defend ourselves in court.”
The petition did not go unheeded - the country really began to change. In the winter of 1956, N. S. Khrushchev spoke at the 20th Congress with a historical report on the cult of personality, and already on September 29, the then regional prosecutor Suchkov submitted a protest to the presidium of the regional court as a form of supervision. In it, the senior justice adviser notes that in pre-trial detention A.N. Pepelyaev was interrogated 10 times. During 9 interrogations he denied the charges and only on the last day he pleaded guilty. But from his testimony there is no evidence of a counter-revolutionary crime.
Another three weeks pass, and a resolution to overturn the OSO verdict appears, signed by the chairman of the presidium of the regional court, Igoshev. The doctor’s good name has been restored, justice, although belatedly and partially, has triumphed.
Not subject to oblivion.
Omsk 2002 p. 418-423
It is believed that “the assault nights of Spassk, the Volochaev days” put an end to the Civil War. And yet, Kolchak’s Lieutenant General Anatoly Pepelyaev put an end to it, who in the winter of 1922 landed officers on the Okhotsk coast and went deeper into Eastern Siberia...
In solitary confinement, after the death sentence of the revolutionary tribunal, the bearded and frostbitten prisoner of the Chita prison was almost sure that he would repeat the fate of the admiral. The guards' keys will jingle, the door will open, and he, broken by rifle shots, will go into oblivion...
In the tense silence of a loner, Anatoly Pepelyaev, the brother of the leader of the Omsk government, Viktor Pepelyaev, who was shot along with Kolchak, recited his poems:
We were not going for joy, but for a difficult feat,
We did not expect rewards from people.
Destroying barriers along the way,
We completed the Way of the Cross alone...
And yet, in assessing the time allotted to him from above, Anatoly Pepelyaev was mistaken. His life, which in all respects should have fit into the cynical formula of the Bolsheviks: “Soldiers - to their homes, officers and volunteers - to their graves,” still did not stop in 1923. The All-Russian Central Executive Committee intervened in the verdict, suddenly replacing the execution with a ten-year term in the camps. Something, but this was not expected in Chita! Kolchak's lieutenant general was given life, the capture of many Siberian cities was forgiven, and this was perhaps the most mysterious fact in the biography of the legendary army commander.
Or maybe Pepelyaev was read his last order on the approach to Krasnoyarsk, where he disbanded the army, thereby avoiding senseless bloodshed on both sides? “The Siberian army,” he wrote pathetically in that document, “did not perish, and with it the liberation of Siberia from the yoke of the red tyrants did not perish. The sword of rebellion is not folded, it is only sheathed. The Siberian army is disbanded to their homes for secret work - until the terrible hour of national vengeance calls her again to fight for the liberation of Siberia. I will appear in Siberia among the faithful and brave troops when this time comes, and I believe that this time will soon come..." Instruction from a superior commander freed the hands of his subordinate - the commander of the 1st Siberian Corps, General Zenevich, who, having gone over to the side of the Reds, did not allow his recent comrades in arms into Krasnoyarsk - the troops of General Kappel, who were forced to make their way to the Trans-Siberian Railway, bypassing it, along the ice of the Yenisei and the Kan River.
Siberian Suvorov
For General Pepelyaev, a brilliant commander of the Civil War, the act was more than strange. It does not fit in with the logic of the character of a fearless and successful person. On the Eastern Front in 1918, Pepelyaev began as commander of the 1st Central Siberian Corps, which numbered fifteen thousand people in its ranks. Most of them were young men - cadets, high school students, students... Meanwhile, many had already smelled gunpowder, which is why Pepelyaev’s winter offensive on Perm was not stopped by either the difficult mountainous terrain or thirty-degree frosts. For almost six months, after taking Yekaterinburg, the Whites could not advance beyond the Urals, and the Reds calmed down to some extent. After all, if Kolchak’s men suddenly show up, Perm is thoroughly covered. In the city itself, where the headquarters of the 3rd Army was located, there were two divisions and an artillery brigade. Thirty guns along attacking lines is real strength...
On the banner of the 3rd battalion of the 1st Siberian Assault Brigade, Pepelyaev’s skulls are depicted on both sides. On the front side there is a skull inside a sleeve chevron. In the corners of the panel, in the place where the emperor’s monograms used to be placed, there are four letters “P” (Pepelyaev)
But a battalion of white skiers, demonstrating the capabilities of maneuverable tactics, instantly paralyzed the actions of the artillerymen, and the guns immediately turned in the opposite direction. Pepelyaev attacked Perm from different directions. Everything was done masterfully: without delay, with minimal losses, in one short winter day. A commander's gift - you either have it or you don't...
Of the 35 thousand bayonets and sabers of the Red 3rd Army, barely a third remained. The Siberian general fought like Suvorov: with skill, and the Bolsheviks immediately understood and appreciated this. The Vyatka fortified area was hastily created, and in the provincial city itself the evacuation of many joint institutions had already been announced. Trains with refugees and belongings accumulated at the station - confusion and confusion, panic became signs of a grandiose defeat. It seemed that a little more - and Pepelyaev would have the grain Vyatka in his hands. Newspapers wrote that the Siberian regiments were ready to move to Moscow, joining forces with the Northern Front of General Miller. Toasts were made in honor of Pepelyaev, merging with the artillery roar of future victories. Vyatka was preparing bread and salt, and the headquarters of Omsk, drowning in mediocrity and revelry, gave a disastrous order - to retreat. The Supreme Ruler in many matters was like a child who had difficulty understanding people, trusting in scoundrels and upstarts. He was late in recognizing the military talent of not only Pepelyaev, but also Kappel. And Stalin and Dzerzhinsky were already rushing to the Red 3rd Army, bringing the fighters and commanders to their senses with purges and iron measures. Was it not then that Lieutenant General Pepelyaev began to distrust the Supreme Ruler and his entourage? Dissatisfaction with the high command grew and grew...
In the fall of 1919, when the fate of the white movement in Siberia was being decided, Pepelyaev’s 1st Army was sent to the rear, and it was not clear why: either to create a reserve, or to fight the partisans? The general's indignation knew no bounds. In his native Tomsk, the son of a career officer could still count on revenge if victory on the Eastern Front did not work out. There was hope, and free, liberal Siberia personified it.
Even before the start of the Civil War, supporters of Siberian autonomy had their own leaders and their own views on the reconstruction of the region, which stretched thousands of miles beyond the Ural ridge. Here, on the Russian-Asian border, as well as in the ports of two oceans, the regional autonomists intended to establish duties on the movement of goods and supervise the entry into Siberia. An interesting detail: even as part of Kolchak’s troops, the 1st Central Siberian Corps, created by Pepelyaev, went into battle under a green and white banner. The Siberian soldier also did not recognize golden shoulder straps, agitating on occasion to the Red Army soldiers: “Come to us, because we are just as shoulderless!”
Harbin cab driver
Four years before the start of World War I, Pepelyaev graduated from the Pavlovsk Military (Junker) School, and went to the front as a lieutenant, having experience serving as a combat commander. He ended up in cavalry reconnaissance: the platoon under his command was noted both at Headquarters and personally by Nicholas II. Pepelyaev’s dashing forays near Soldau and Prasnysh made him popular among the army. With the help of a reconnaissance company in the summer of 1915, the skilled military leader defeated superior enemy forces of up to two infantry battalions and regained the Russian positions lost during the retreat. For this brilliant feat, Anatoly Nikolaevich was awarded the officer's George.
Pepelyaev also wrote poetry, had a romantic aura and very competently commanded a battalion and regiment. He received the rank of lieutenant colonel for his ingenuity and valor at the front, so his further advancement up the military ladder (now among the whites) could not seem hasty and strange.
Returning from the front, the officers made a choice. In accordance with his convictions, in the spring of 1918, Pepelyaev headed an underground officer organization in Tomsk. It was possible to overthrow the new regime only with the support of external forces - the Czechoslovak corps, stretching along the Trans-Siberian Railway from the Volga region to Chita.
When the rebellious general near Krasnoyarsk was struck down by typhus, even these “allies”, who were responsible for the plunder of Russia and a mass of betrayals, showed respect for Pepelyaev’s personality. The patient, almost unconscious, was taken into his carriage and secretly taken to the CER exclusion zone.
They left their homeland in different ways: some did it with golden luggage, like Ataman Grigory Semenov, while Pepelyaev was sick and poor abroad. And he had just recovered from typhus when another scourge struck - poverty. The military general chose to become a cab driver as a means of livelihood. Here, in quiet and peaceful Harbin, Anatoly Nikolaevich finally decided to arrange his personal life. He got married when he turned thirty, and the daughter of a railway foreman became perhaps the best match for the white general. Apparently, the marriage was for love: the Russian hero was not at all distinguished by prudence. But there was plenty of adventurism in his nature.
The last campaign of the Civil War
How else can we explain that in September 1922, the Siberian agreed to a completely insane, seemingly, enterprise: he gathered a squad of seven hundred officers and set off with them on the last campaign - to Yakutsk? There was hope, however: a counter-revolutionary rebellion was blazing in Yakutia. But while the landing party was sailing from Vladivostok, while landing at the port of Ayan on the coast of the Sea of Okhotsk, sad news arrived: the uprising was suppressed, the white partisans scattered across the endless expanses of the taiga. The expedition with help was late...
The general chose to fight; he believed in the skill and prowess of his fighting friends. They had to fight in the most extreme conditions: the officer squad overcame the Dzhugdzhursky ridge, over a thousand miles of snow-covered path in forty-degree frosts. The volunteers made bold plans: to fight their way to Yakutsk, and if circumstances were successful, to walk through the south, including Irkutsk.
Yakutsk remained two steps away - the detachment had already taken all the surrounding settlements. The white general was inspired by small victories and made a tactical miscalculation: the advantageous factor of surprise during the offensive had to be used to the end.
Of course, the detachment was tired, the people needed rest, but the respite in the battles, although short, led to a sad outcome. Did the military general understand that after the fall of Vladivostok he was left completely alone and had to fight with a huge country?
For almost a year, volunteers (strictly under a green and white banner) traveled across the Yakut taiga - military science, perhaps, does not know such an ice landing. In June 1923, the remnants of the Siberian squad, suddenly surrounded by a special expedition from Primorye, laid down their arms and surrendered to the mercy of the victors. Thus ended this last white campaign.
It is believed that the general “disappeared somewhere in the camps.” This is not so: Anatoly Nikolaevich passed all the tests, bore his heavy cross, worked in Novonikolaevsk (Novosibirsk) as a cabinetmaker, but no professions other than the military attracted him, and this talented Civil commander never found himself in the new Russia. In 1938, while crossing the border (it was really locked then!) Pepelyaev ran into an outpost. The former intelligence officer only had a few steps left to reach the cherished milestone...
Anatoly Nikolaevich Pepelyaev(1891-1938) - Russian military leader. Participant in the First World War and the Civil War on the Eastern Front. White Guard. He distinguished himself by the capture of Perm on December 25, 1918 and the campaign against Yakutsk in 1922-1923. Siberian regionalist. Brother of the Kolchak Prime Minister of the Russian Government Viktor Nikolaevich Pepelyaev.
Origin
Anatoly Nikolaevich Pepelyaev was born on July 15 (July 3, Old Style) 1891 in Tomsk, in the family of a hereditary nobleman and lieutenant general of the tsarist army Nikolai Pepelyaev and a merchant’s daughter Claudia Nekrasova. The house in Tomsk that belonged to Pepelyaev’s father has been preserved (Kuznetsova Street, 18). Nikolai Pepelyaev had six sons, who subsequently underwent military training, with the exception of the eldest, and two daughters.
Education
In 1902, Pepelyaev entered the Omsk Cadet Corps, which he successfully graduated from in 1908. In the same year, Pepelyaev entered the Pavlovsk Military School (PVU) in St. Petersburg. In 1910, Pepelyaev graduated with the rank of second lieutenant.
Beginning of service and marriage
Immediately after graduating from vocational training, Anatoly Nikolaevich was sent to serve in the machine gun team of the 42nd Siberian Rifle Regiment, stationed in his native Tomsk. In 1914, shortly before the start of the First World War, Pepelyaev was promoted to lieutenant.
In 1912, Pepelyaev married Nina Ivanovna Gavronskaya (1893-1979), originally from Nizhneudinsk. From this marriage two sons were born: Vsevolod in 1913, who lived in Harbin until 1946, in 1946-1947. military intelligence officer of the Transbaikal Military District and Lavr (1922-1991), employee of the emigrant bureau, graduate of Japanese military mission courses, repressed. Died in Tashkent.
World War I (before the February Revolution)
Pepelyaev went to the front as the commander of his regiment's mounted reconnaissance. In this position he distinguished himself under Przasnysz and Soldau. In the summer of 1915, under his command, the trenches lost during the retreat were recaptured. In 1916, during a two-month vacation, Pepelyaev taught tactics at the front-line school for warrant officers. In 1917, shortly before the February Revolution, Anatoly Nikolaevich was promoted to captain.
For military valor, Pepelyaev was awarded the following awards:
- Order of St. Anne, 4th class with the inscription "For bravery"
- Order of St. Anne, 3rd class
- Order of St. Anne, 2nd class
- Order of St. Stanislaus, 3rd degree
- Order of St. Stanislaus, 2nd class
- Order of St. Vladimir, 4th class with swords and bow
- Order of St. George, 4th degree (01/27/1917) and St. George's Arms (09/27/1916)
- French Military Cross with Palm Branch (04/09/1919)
Revolutions of 1917
The February Revolution found Pepelyaev at the front. Despite the gradual disintegration of the army, he kept his detachment in constant combat readiness and at the same time did not fall out of favor with his soldiers, as was the case in many other units.
Under Kerensky, he was promoted to lieutenant colonel. In addition, Anatoly Nikolaevich was awarded the Order of St. George, 4th degree and the personalized St. George's weapon.
After the October Revolution, the council of soldiers' deputies of the battalion, which by that time was commanded by Pepelyaev, elected him battalion commander. This fact indicates Pepelyaev’s great popularity among soldiers.
But even parts of Pepelyaev were subject to decomposition - the reason for this was the Brest-Litovsk Peace Treaty, which stopped military operations. Realizing the pointlessness of his further stay at the front, Anatoly Nikolaevich left for Tomsk.
The beginning of the fight against the Bolsheviks
Pepelyaev arrived in Tomsk in early March 1918. There he met his longtime friend, Captain Dostovalov, who introduced Pepelyaev into a secret officer organization created on January 1, 1918 and headed by Colonels Vishnevsky and Samarokov. Pepelyaev was chosen as chief of staff of this organization, which planned to overthrow the Bolsheviks, who seized power in the city on December 6, 1917.
On May 26, 1918, an armed uprising against the Bolsheviks began in Novonikolaevsk. This gave impetus to Tomsk officers.