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 24, 1918 and the campaign against Yakutsk in 1922-1923. Regionalist. 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 the daughter of a merchant Claudia Nekrasova.
Pepelyaev family house in Tomsk.
Nikolai Pepelyaev had six sons, who later underwent military training, with the exception of the eldest, and two daughters. In 1902, Pepelyaev entered the Omsk Cadet Corps, which he successfully graduated 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.
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 Vsevolod was born in 1913 and Laurus in 1922.
Pepelyaev went to the front as the commander of his regiment's mounted reconnaissance. In this position he distinguished himself under Prasnysh 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.
Nina Ivanovna Pepelyaeva (Gavronskaya), wife of General Pepelyaev. Sons: Vsevolod (senior) and junior Laurus. Harbin, 1923
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 and Arms of St. George (already under Kerensky)
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.
Colonel A.N. Pepelyaev
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 ended hostilities. Realizing the pointlessness of his further stay at the front, Anatoly Nikolaevich left for Tomsk. 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 the chief of staff of this organization, which planned to overthrow the Bolsheviks, who seized power in the city on December 6, 1917.
Pepelyaev's convoy. Tomsk
On May 26, 1918, an armed uprising against the Bolsheviks began in Novonikolaevsk. This gave impetus to Tomsk officers. On May 27, an armed uprising began. At the same time, the performance of the Czechoslovaks began. The Tomsk uprising was commanded by Lieutenant Colonel Pepelyaev. On May 31, the power of the “Siberian Government” of Peter of Vologda was established in Tomsk. Pepelyaev recognized this power and created on June 13, 1918, on her instructions, the 1st Central Siberian Rifle Corps, which he headed.
With him, he moved east along the Trans-Siberian Railway to liberate Siberia from the Bolsheviks. On June 18, Krasnoyarsk was captured, on August 20, Verkhneudinsk was liberated, and on August 26, Chita fell. Moving further east along the Trans-Siberian Railway, Pepelyaev turned onto the Chinese Eastern Railway in order to meet with the commander of the Trans-Baikal Cossacks, Semenov.
Ataman Semenov
The meeting took place at the end of August - beginning of September at Olovyannaya station. For this campaign, Pepelyaev was awarded the Order of St. George, 3rd degree, on February 28, 1919. By order of the Ufa directory of Avksentyev, Pepelyaev’s corps was transferred to the west of Siberia, and Anatoly Nikolaevich himself was promoted to major general (September 10, 1918), thanks to which he became the youngest general in Siberia (27 years old!).
Meeting at the station Tin in September 1918. In the center is General Konstantin Mikhailovich Diterikhs, to his left is Anatoly Nikolaevich Pepelyaev, to his right is Radola Gaida, to the left of Pepelyaev, one after the other, is General Bogoslovsky Boris Petrovich.
Since October 1918, his group was in the Urals. In November, Pepelyaev began the Perm operation against the Red 3rd Army. During this operation, a coup took place in Omsk, which brought Kolchak to power. Pepelyaev immediately recognized the supreme power of Kolchak, since the power of the Socialist Revolutionary Avksentiev was unpleasant to him.
Pepelyaev and the First Siberian Assault Brigade.
On December 24, 1918, Pepelyaev’s troops occupied Perm, abandoned by the Bolsheviks, capturing about 20,000 Red Army soldiers, all of whom were sent home by order of Pepelyaev. Due to the fact that the liberation of Perm coincided with the 128th anniversary of the capture of the fortress by Izmail Suvorov, the soldiers nicknamed Anatoly Nikolaevich “Siberian Suvorov”. On January 31, Pepelyaev was promoted to lieutenant general. After the capture of Perm, Pepelyaev walked another 45 km to the west, but severe frosts set in and the front froze. On March 4, 1919, a general offensive of Kolchak’s troops began, and Pepelyaev moved his corps to the west. By the end of April, he was already standing on the Cheptsa River near the city of Balezino. On April 24, Kolchak’s armies were reorganized and Pepelyaev became commander of the Northern Group of the Siberian Army.
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).
Meanwhile, the front froze again and only on May 30 Pepelyaev was able to launch an attack on Vyatka, to connect with Miller’s troops. Pepelyaev was the only one who succeeded in advancing in May - the rest of the white groups were repulsed by the reds. On June 2, Pepelyaev took Glazov. But on June 4, Pepelyaev’s group was stopped by the 29th Infantry Division of the 3rd Army in the area between Yar and Falenki. By 20 June he was driven back approximately to the front line of 3 March. After the June retreat, Pepelyaev did not win any major military victories. On July 21, 1919, Kolchak reorganized his units and officially formed the Eastern Front, which was divided into 4 armies (1st, 2nd, 3rd and Orenburg), a separate Steppe group and a separate Siberian Cossack Corps. Pepelyaev was appointed commander of the 1st Army. This reorganization did not make the conduct of hostilities more effective and Kolchak’s armies retreated to the east. For some time the Whites managed to stay on Tobol and Pepelyaev was responsible for the defense of Tobolsk, but in October 1919 this line was broken through by the Reds.
Eastern group. Exhumation of the remains of Lieutenant Colonel Ushakov in the presence of Colonel Gaida (left) and Pepelyaev.
In November, Omsk was abandoned and a general flight began. Pepelyaev's army still held the Tomsk region, but there was no hope for success. In December, a conflict occurred between Anatoly Nikolaevich and Kolchak. When the train of the Supreme Ruler of Russia arrived at the Taiga station, it was detained by Pepelyaev’s troops. Pepelyaev sent Kolchak an ultimatum about the convocation of the Siberian Zemsky Sobor, the resignation of Commander-in-Chief Sakharov, whom Pepelyaev had already ordered to be arrested, and an investigation into the surrender of Omsk. In case of non-compliance, Pepelyaev threatened to arrest Kolchak. On the same day, Pepelyaev’s brother, Viktor Nikolaevich, who was the prime minister in the Kolchak government, arrived in Taiga. He “reconciled” the general with the admiral.
As a result, on December 11, Sakharov was removed from the post of commander in chief. On December 20, Pepelyaev was driven out of Tomsk and fled along the Trans-Siberian Railway. His wife, son and mother fled with him. But since Anatoly Nikolaevich fell ill with typhus and was placed in a confinement car, he was separated from his family. In January 1920, Pepelyaev was taken to Verkheudinsk, where he recovered. On March 11, Pepelyaev created the Siberian partisan detachment from the remnants of the 1st Army, with which he went to Sretensk. But since he was subordinate to Ataman Semenov, and he collaborated with the Japanese, Pepelyaev decided to leave Russia and on April 20, 1920, he and his family went to Harbin. At the end of April - beginning of May 1920, Pepelyaev and his family settled in Harbin. There he earned his living as a carpenter, cab driver, loader and fisherman. Organized artels of carpenters, cab drivers and loaders. He created the “Military Union”, the chairman of which was General Vishnevsky (see “The beginning of the fight against the Bolsheviks”). First, the organization contacted the Bolsheviks from Blagoveshchensk, hiding under the guise of the Far Eastern Republic. However, Pepelyaev realized their essence and interrupted negotiations on the merger of his organization with the NRA DDA. In 1922, the Socialist Revolutionary Kulikovsky approached Pepelyaev, who persuaded him to organize a campaign in Yakutia to help the rebels against the Bolsheviks. In the summer of 1922, Pepelyaev went to Vladivostok to form a military unit that would sail across the Sea of Okhotsk with the aim of landing in Okhotsk and Ayan.
Ayan village
At that time, a change of power occurred in Vladivostok, as a result of which the ultra-right General Diterikhs became the “ruler of Primorye”. He liked the idea of going to Yakutia and helped Pepelyaev with money. As a result, 720 people voluntarily joined the ranks of the “Tatar Strait Militia” (as the detachment was called for camouflage) (493 from Primorye and 227 from Harbin). The detachment also included Major General Vishnevsky, Major General Rakitin and others. The detachment was also supplied with two machine guns, 175,000 rifle cartridges and 9,800 hand grenades. Two ships were chartered. They could not accommodate all the volunteers, so on August 31, 1922, only 553 people, led by Pepelyaev and Rakitin, set off on a voyage across the Sea of Okhotsk. Vishnevsky remained in Vladivostok. In addition to supervising the volunteers who remained with him, he also had to try to replenish the ranks of the “Militia”. At the beginning of September, the “Tatar Strait Militia” helped the Siberian flotilla, which was fighting the Red partisans in the area of the Terney River, with landings. On September 6, troops were landed in Okhotsk. A base was created in Okhotsk under the leadership of the commandant, Captain Mikhailovsky. A group of General Rakitin was also created, which was supposed to move deep into Yakutia to join the main forces of Pepelyaev. The purpose of the division - Rakitin was to move along the Amgino-Okhotsk tract and gather white partisans into the ranks of the “Militia”.
Amga village. 1953 Yakutia
Pepelyaev himself sailed on ships along the coast to the south and landed in Ayan on September 8. On the same day, a meeting was held at which Pepelyaev announced the renaming of the “Tatar Strait Militia” to the “Siberian Volunteer Squad” (SDD). On September 12, the “People's Congress of the Tungus” took place, which handed over 300 deer to the SDD. Leaving a garrison of 40 people in Ayan, on September 14 Pepelyaev moved the main forces of the squad of 480 people along the Amgino-Ayan tract through the Dzhugdzhur mountain range to the village of Nelkan. However, on the approaches to Nelkan, a day was given, during which three volunteers fled. They informed the red garrison of Nelkan about the approach of the SDD, in connection with which the commandant of Nelkan, security officer Karpel, dispersed the local residents and sailed with the garrison down the Maya River. Pepelyaev occupied Nelkan on September 27, two hours before that the city was abandoned. All that the SDD managed to find were 120 hard drives and 50,000 rounds of ammunition for them, which were buried by the Reds. Pepelyaev realized that the campaign was poorly prepared and in October he left with his guards for Ayan, leaving the main forces in Nelkana. Returning to Ayan on November 5, 1922, Pepelyaev was strengthened in his intention to go to Yakutsk, since a ship with Vishnevsky arrived in Ayan, who brought with him 187 volunteers and provisions. In mid-November, a detachment of Pepelyaev and Vishnevsky set off for Nelkan, arriving there in mid-December. At the same time, Rakitin set off from Okhotsk in the direction of Yakutsk. By December, the Tungus residents returned to Nelkan, who at their meeting expressed support for the SDD and supplied Pepelyaev with deer and provisions. At the beginning of January 1923, when all the White Guards had already been defeated, the SDD moved from Nelkan to Yakutsk. Soon she was joined by a detachment of white partisans Artemyev and the Okhotsk detachment of Rakitin. On February 5, the village of Amga was occupied, where Pepelyaev located his headquarters. On February 13, Vishnevsky’s detachment attacked Strode’s Red Army detachment in the Sasyl-Sysy alas.
Strode in the center of the photo
The attack was unsuccessful and Strod was able to fortify himself in Sasyl-Sysy. The last siege in the history of the Civil War began. Pepelyaev refused to move further until Strode and his detachment were captured. On February 27, Rakitin was defeated by a detachment of red partisans of Kurashov and began a retreat to Sasyl-Sysy. Baikalov’s detachment left Yakutsk against Pepelyaev, which, having united with Kurashov, reached 760 people. From March 1 to 2, there were battles near Amga and Pepelyaev was defeated. On March 3, the siege of Sasyl-Sysy was lifted and the flight to Ayan began. Rakitin fled to Okhotsk. The Reds began to chase, but stopped halfway and returned. On May 1, Pepelyaev and Vishnevsky reached Ayan. Here they decided to build kungas and sail on them to Sakhalin. But their days were already numbered, for already on April 24, Vostretsov’s detachment sailed from Vladivostok, whose goal was to eliminate the SDD. At the beginning of June 1923, Rakitin’s detachment in Okhotsk was liquidated, and on June 17, Vostretsov occupied Ayan. To avoid bloodshed, Pepelyaev surrendered without resistance. On June 24, the captured SDD was sent to Vladivostok, where she arrived on June 30.
Command staff
In Vladivostok, a military court sentenced Pepelyaev to execution, but he wrote a letter to Kalinin asking for clemency. The request was considered, and in January 1924 a trial was held in Chita, which sentenced Pepelyaev to 10 years in prison. Pepelyaev was supposed to serve his sentence in the Yaroslavl political prison. Pepelyaev spent the first two years in solitary confinement; in 1926 he was allowed to go to work. He worked as a carpenter, glazier and joiner. Pepelyaev was even allowed to correspond with his wife in Harbin.
Chita. January 1924
Chita. January 1924. The defendants in the courtroom. Third from left is Lieutenant General A. Pepelyaev.
Pepelyaev’s term ended in 1933, but back in 1932, at the request of the OGPU board, they decided to extend it for three years. In January 1936, he was unexpectedly transferred from the political isolation ward in Yaroslavl to the Butyrka prison in Moscow. The next day, Pepelyaev was transferred to an internal NKVD prison. On the same day, he was summoned for questioning by the head of the Special Department of the NKVD, Gai. Then he was again placed in Butyrka prison. On June 4, 1936, Pepelyaev was summoned again to Guy, who read him the release order. On June 6, Anatoly Nikolaevich was released.
The NKVD settled Pepelyaev in Voronezh, where he got a job as a carpenter. There is an opinion that Pepelyaev was released for the purpose of organizing a dummy society, like the Industrial Party. In August 1937, Pepelyaev was arrested a second time and taken to Novosibirsk, where he was charged with creating a counter-revolutionary organization.
On December 7, Pepelyaev was sentenced to death by firing squad. The sentence was carried out on January 14, 1938 in the prison of the city of Novosibirsk. The grave of Anatoly Nikolaevich is unknown. On October 20, 1989, the prosecutor's office of the Novosibirsk region rehabilitated Pepelyaev.
Sources:
Shambarov V. E. White Guard. M., Eksmo-Press, 2002
Valery Klaving Civil War in Russia: White Armies. M., Ast, 2003
Mityurin D.V. Civil War: White and Red. M., Ast, 2004
The last battles in the Far East. M., Tsentrpoligraf, 2005
General Staff of the Armed Forces of the USSR. Atlas of an officer. M., Military Topographical Directorate, 1984
Great October: atlas. M., Main Directorate of Geodesy and Cartography under the Council of Ministers of the USSR, 1987
“Motherland”, 1990 No. 10, Yuri Simchenko, Imposed happiness.
“Motherland”, 1996 No. 9, Alexander Petrushin, Omsk, Ayan, Lubyanka... Three lives of General Pepelyaev
Klipel V.I. Argonauts of the Snows. About the failed campaign of General A. Pepelyaev.
Konkin P.K. Drama of the General.
Civil war in faces (photo documents).
Timofeev E. D. Stepan Vostretsov. M., Voenizdat, 1981
Grachev G.P. Yakut campaign of General Pepelyaev. (edited by P. K. Konkin)
Those who wish to download the book of General E.K. for free. Vishnevsky " Argonauts of the White Dream "(Description of the Yakut campaign of the Siberian Volunteer Squad. Publisher: Harbin. Year of publication: 1933.) can do this using the link:
From the memoirs of the former minister of the provisional Siberian government I.I. Serebrennikov.
A.N.PEPELYAEV
In Harbin, I was able to get to know General Pepelyaev, the famous hero of the civil war in Siberia of 1918-19. The general visited me several times, and we talked for a long time, remembering the recent past and trying to make forecasts for the future of Russia.
A.N. Pepelyaev told me about how he was evacuated to Manchuria. It turns out that he didn’t quite come here voluntarily. At the height of the December catastrophe of 1919, during the chaotic retreat of Kolchak’s armies, he, somewhere in the Krasnoyarsk region, collapsed and contracted typhus. Almost unconscious, the general was taken by the Czechoslovaks into a carriage, and in this form they took him to the east.
At one of the stations, the general told me, the workers, having learned about my presence on the Czechoslovak train, surrounded it and began to demand my extradition. The train commandant was not taken aback, went out to the crowd and said: “Yes, that’s right, we were taking Pepelyaev with us. He was sick with typhus, at one of the previous stations he became very ill, and we left him there to be admitted to the hospital.” The crowd believed this statement of the commandant and gradually dispersed peacefully.
Antoliy Nikolaevich also shared with me his memories of various military episodes from the era of the civil war in Siberia and the Urals.
“We were moving towards Vyatka,” he once said. - Numerous deputations from peasants from the Vyatka region have already come to us, with promises of support for our campaign through local uprisings against the Bolsheviks. The troops were eager to march; everything turned out in such a way that it foreshadowed complete success. And suddenly we receive an order to retreat from Omsk. I was completely against retreat, for which, in my opinion, there was absolutely no reason, and stood for moving forward to Vyatka, and then to Vologda, from where, if necessary, we could move to Arkhangelsk to join the allies . However, the military meeting I convened spoke in favor of carrying out the Omsk order to retreat. The retreat we began ultimately led us to disaster.
I don’t know, of course, whether, due to the strategic situation, this campaign against Vologda and Arkhangelsk, proposed by Pepelyaev, could have been carried out in due time, but if his plan had been accepted and implemented, we would have, in the history of the past civil war, had an amazing march of Siberian troops from Manchuria to the waters of the White Sea.
Monument to the heroes who died in the fight against the Comintern in the city of Harbin
“Monument to the heroes who fell in the fight against the Comintern, in the city of Harbin” City of Harbin. Authors: project N.I. Zakharov, N.S. Sviridov. Builder - N.P. Kalugin. Founded June 8, 1941. Dismantled (exploded) in 1945.
In Harbin, General Pepelyaev began to be intensively courted by local Bolsheviks, who tried to drag him into the Soviet camp. At the same time, the general was promised some prominent appointment within the Russian Far East. As I know about this from A.N. Pepelyaev himself, the Bolsheviks achieved a number of meetings with him, treated him to lunches and dinners and carefully worked him in their favor, skillfully exploiting the Siberian-regional sentiments of the young general, who was not very sophisticated at that time in matters of politics .
It must be said that temptations for the gene. Pepelyaev were too great, and it took his friends no little effort to keep him from the Bolshevik temptations.
The financial situation of A.N. Pepelyaev at that time was unenviable: both he himself and many of his close friends and comrades from former battles experienced great need in Harbin. I note as an unusual fact that the general and several officers of his former army began to subsist as a cab driver. I don’t know whether Pepelyaev himself showed up on the streets of Harbin as a cab driver, but his friends could often be seen doing this. True, the horses and carriage were purchased as property by a company of driver-officers, and this to some extent softened the severity of their current situation for them**.
I.I.Serebrennikov. My memories.
t. 2, mountains. Tianjin, 1940, pp. 33-34.
* This, for example, is evidenced by the resolution of the Revolutionary Military Council of the 5th Red Army dated December 15, 1919. Paragraph 6 of this resolution stated: “... in case of refusal of partisan units to obey order and manifestation of unbridledness, self-will, when robbing (!) the local population, when trying to stir up unrest, these units must be subjected to merciless punishment.”
If possible, no more than 24 hours were allotted for disarmament and reprisal against such people. At the same time, “the command staff and the kulak leaders must be subjected to the strictest punishment.” Well, there was no doubt about the methods of punishing “willfulness”; it is enough to recall Kronstadt in March 1921, peasant unrest in the Tambov province, Western Siberia, etc. (Note by P. Konkin).
** A.N. Pepelyaev organized in Harbin not only an artel of cab drivers, but also carpenters and loaders. A “Military Union” was created from former comrades in the war in Siberia, the chairman of which was appointed Major General E.K. Vishnevsky, commander of the 2nd Corps of the 1st Siberian Army, which in 1919 was commanded by A.N. Pepelyaev. (Note by P. Konkin).
Civil war in Yakutia
The one who knows how to wage war,
conquers another army without fighting.
Sun Tzu
Part 1
The history of the Civil War, it would seem, has already been studied, as they say, inside and out. But archival documents still allow us to make unexpected discoveries. Including in the biographies of prominent founders of the Yakut statehood, in particular, Platon Alekseevich Oyunsky. Let me point out right away that this is not a detective story at all. But the events that will be described very accurately convey the features of the internecine war that officially ended 87 years ago.
BRAVE COLONEL
In the canonical book of the Civil War hero Ivan Strode “In the Yakut Taiga”, Colonel Khutoyarov, the head of the reconnaissance detachment of the Pepelyaevites, is mentioned. His only successes are recognized as capturing a telegraph in the village of Taatta, eight telephone operators and repelling the Red offensive in the area of Walba. Khutoyarov’s naive order to the GPU “informant spies” to leave for Yakutsk under the threat of a court-martial is also mockingly told. Despite Ivan Strode’s dismissive tone, Colonel Khutoyarov was a talented opponent, about whose successes Strode “tactfully” kept silent. On January 13, 1923, Khutoyarov’s detachment in the Tattinsky ulus captured a GPU commissioner and a policeman. Then, on the instructions of Khutoyarov, a detachment of White rebels seized 800 pounds of meat and flour from the Borogonsky ulus administration, collected by the Reds as a food tax. Even if these were successes at the tactical level, they were not achieved by chance. Khutoyarov's reconnaissance detachment had rare maps of Yakutia on a scale of 25 versts in 1 inch (2.5 cm). There is reason to believe that he was one of the leaders of Pepelyaev’s intelligence service. But more on that later. The counterintelligence of the Siberian Volunteer Squad, of course, was inferior to the special departments of the Reds, allowing one second lieutenant and a military official to transfer to the Reds almost immediately after entering Yakutia. But Pepelyaev’s military intelligence was at its best. Only thanks to accurate intelligence data did the Whites manage to complete the most difficult march from Ayan through the Dzhugdzhur mountain range of Central Yakutia from September 6, 1922 to January 1923, without any stragglers or seriously frostbitten people. Such an extreme winter throw has not been repeated by anyone so far. Tactical successes in Taatta and Borogontsy are also not at all accidental. But the weakness of Lieutenant General Pepelyaev’s intelligence service was that it had a military bias, although in the conditions of Yakutia the art of political intelligence was then required, and especially the ability to negotiate.
AN UNKNOWN PAGE OF OYUNSKY'S LIFE
In January 1923, Khutoyarov in the Churapchinsky ulus “identified” and captured Zharnykh, the brother of the commander of the Red troops in Yakutia, Baikalov, and P.A. himself. Oyunsky, when on January 17-18, 1923, in the area of Walba, he negotiated with the wavering White rebels and persuaded them to surrender. And only fearing bad consequences, the Pepeliaevites released Zharny and Oyunsky under pressure from the White rebels, who remembered how he saved their lives by achieving amnesty for many of them in 1922. Khutoyarov brilliantly completed a purely military task - he distracted the red garrison in Churapcha from assisting Strode and captured important prisoners. But he failed to cope with the political task, failing to hold the chairman of the government of the Yakut Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic in captivity and without persuading the Yakut White rebels to continue the fight. The capture of the chairman of the Yakut Central Executive Committee by the Whites could greatly demoralize the Reds. But on the other hand, the Bolsheviks could present his captivity as a manifestation of the hatred of the newly arrived Russian White Guards towards the Yakuts, appealing to the latter to their national feelings. The events of January 17-18, 1923 testify to the extraordinary diplomatic abilities and personal courage of Platon Oyunsky, who went to negotiations with virtually no security. Otherwise, many still mistakenly think that he spent the entire war in Yakutsk, despite the fact that his departure to Churapcha replaced the fighting of at least two battalions of Red Army soldiers.
Memorial complex in Yakutsk. House of P. Oyunsky.
Oyunsky, really risking his life, did the almost impossible: despite Pepelyaev’s invasion, which raised the spirit of the Bepop rebels, consent in principle to surrender was obtained from the Representatives of the Regional People’s Administration. Colonel Khutoyarov had a real chance to dissuade them from surrender. On January 14 and 15, 1923, his detachment repelled the attacks of the Reds advancing on Wopba, with the support of one cannon. True, it was a low-power mountain weapon of the Maclean system. Its 37-millimeter shells were unable to penetrate the thick wall built by the whites from slabs of manure (“balbachs”), doused with water mixed with snow. The Pepelyaevites clearly showed that they were a new force capable of defeating the Bolsheviks, and this could agitate better than any eloquence. But Oyunsky managed to convince the White rebels to give up the fight. He skillfully took advantage of the mistake of the ideological inspirer Kulikovsky, who ordered the dissolution of the Provisional Yakut Regional People's Administration, the power body of the white rebels. And their leaders clearly liked the fact that negotiations with them, as with equals, were conducted by the Chairman of the Government of the YASSR himself, unlike Pepeliaev’s “governor”. Oyunsky's policy is reminiscent of the policy of “national reconciliation” pursued many years later by the pro-Soviet Afghan President Najibullah. : who tried to eliminate the Islamic counter-revolution through negotiations and amnesty. True, Oyunsky did it much more successfully.
WHITE STARTS AND... LOSE!
Pepelyaev's regular units captured Amga with a surprise attack on February 2, 1923, making it the base for an attack on Yakutsk. But even before this, Cheka intelligence officer Ivan Konstantinov reported about the dangerous approach of the Whites. But the slowness of the preparations, the carelessness of the commanders of the Amga garrison and the distracting attacks of the detachments of Artemyev and Khutoyarov did not allow the defense of Amga. Pepelyaev was on the verge of victory when his march to Yakutsk was held back only by the heroic, at the limit of human capabilities, defense of the red detachment of Ivan Strode in the area of Sapyl-Sysy. But there were no further successes for the general. The rapid attack on Yakutsk failed not only because of Strode, but also because of a psychological turning point. Ordinary Pepeliaevites heard rumors that the Reds had captured Vladivostok and now they were deprived of a rear, remaining completely alone. Pepelyaev received information about this at the end of 1922, but now it was no longer possible to hide it from his subordinates. The Reds' field reconnaissance was already superior to Khutoyarov's reconnaissance. This was, again, the merit of Oyunsky. At his insistence, contrary to the ban of the Siberian Revolutionary Military Council, the “Yakut People’s Revolutionary Volunteer Detachment” (Yaknarrevdot) was created from former rebels, granting the families of its fighters the same benefits as the families of Red Army soldiers. In fact, it was an illegal armed formation, an illegal armed group, although it fought for Soviet power. But Yaknarrevdot's cavalrymen, thanks to their knowledge of the terrain and the Yakut language, were superior to Pepelyaev's scouts, constantly intercepting White reconnaissance groups. Therefore, White did not notice the approach of his opponent to Amga. On March 2, 1923, the Reds took it by storm, seizing the main warehouses and all the secret correspondence of the “squad”. The loss of Amga and the defeat suffered on the same day near the town of Billistyakh forced Pepelyaev to begin a retreat. But even then, 400 Pepeliaevites showed courage, almost capturing the Red guns from Abaga in battle, five times “coming within several dozen steps of our guns.” The general was again on the verge of victory. If part of his forces had not been diverted to the siege of Strode’s detachment, then the whites could have taken possession of the artillery.
Part 2
On the territory of Yakutia in the Civil War, no more than three thousand people actually fought on both sides. Completely minuscule compared to the battles in the western part of the country. But the importance of intelligence was very great. Intelligence operations in Yakutia were not global. But they were almost equivalent to maneuvers by huge masses of cavalry, attacks by armored trains and assaults on fortified areas. If only because they allowed the Bolsheviks to keep 1/5 of the RSFSR. However, it cannot be denied that the Reds were helped a lot by the adventurism and lack of coordination in the actions of the white movement.
NEW METHOD OF PETER KOCHNEV
By the end of the war, the superiority of the Reds was achieved in terms of the number of agents. Especially to combat Pepelyaev, an intelligence department was created under the leadership of Pyotr Kochnev (future head of the Yakut department of the GPU) for reconnaissance in the Amginsky, Megino-Kangalassky and Borogonsky directions. Kochnev supported Oyunsky’s policy of involving people from among the former White rebels and their relatives in the war with Pepelyaev. The most successful intelligence officer was the non-partisan teacher Ivan Ivanovich Platonov, the father of the wife of the famous historian professor G.P. Basharina. He was married to the sister of Vasily Borisov, deputy governor of the Yakut region in the Pepelyaev civil administration, and persuaded his brother-in-law, who was hiding in the taiga with his detachment after the defeat of Pepelyaev, to surrender. The Whites again showed their remarkable marching abilities, this time while retreating, and they were unable to catch up. Only on June 1, 1923, the red detachment of S.S. Vostretsov, arriving on two ships from Vladivostok, overtook the remnants of Pepelyaev’s squad in the port of Ayan, who were preparing for evacuation to Sakhalin, and forced them to capitulate along with their commander. This was largely due to red intelligence. A completely new approach was felt in the work of Kochnev’s unit, which made reconnaissance operations more successful than at the beginning of the war. The bitter experience of unsuccessful reconnaissance in the Vilyuisky district was taken into account and analyzed. Intelligence work there until the summer of 1922 was unsuccessful due to the fact that local security officers recruited only people already known as supporters of Soviet power. And their heroism and efforts were in vain due to the lack of proper cover. For example, Cheka intelligence officer Brovin-Oegosturov traveled 350 miles on horseback, on a sleigh and on skis, visiting 11 villages and 5 naslegs, but then was identified as the former chairman of the revolutionary committee in the Olyominsky district and killed in the Mastakhsky ulus... It was the same as send a person in winter, dressing him instead of a white camouflage coat in red clothes, visible in the snow several miles away.
INTELLIGENCE SERVICE
during the Civil War
"POLITUCERS" OF GENERAL PEPELYAEV
After Wrangel’s flight from Crimea in 1920, there were about 200 thousand White emigrants in Europe capable of holding weapons. But they did not lift a finger to help their brothers in the Far East, although the European white emigration had the means and their own fleet to transport troops to Asia. As a result, in 1922, General Molchanov lost the battle of Volochaevka due to a lack of men, and the Reds soon captured Primorye, the last stronghold of the White army. The morale of the “European” whites was low even before the loss of Crimea: Wrangel was never able to mobilize the bourgeoisie, nobles, intellectuals, officials and other “parasites” who fled from the Reds to build a second line of defense, which was so lacking after the Red Army’s breakthrough through Sivash and Perekop. The strategic confusion inevitably affected the White Guards in Yakutia. Going on the Yakut campaign, Pepelyaev hoped not only for military intelligence, but also for political intelligence. His “squad” had an “informative department” headed by a certain A. Sobolev and the Socialist-Revolutionary G.P. Grachev, people without officer ranks. The “Intelligence Department” in the white armies is traditionally a hybrid of an intelligence agency and a press service. Sobolev and Grachev took with them a small printing house. “Osvetdel” is sometimes referred to as “Osvetdept”, i.e. "lighting department" By the way, it was the verb “to illuminate” that the tsarist gendarmes used to describe operational observation and supervision. From the captured diary of A. Sobolev it is clear that the intelligence department as a whole was in control of the mood of the Pelyaevites and knew how to maintain their fighting spirit. But not only white “political instructors” were needed, but also intelligence officers who sensed the political sentiments of the Yakut population. In October 1922, the inspirer of Pepelyaev’s campaign, Socialist-Revolutionary Pyotr Kulikovsky, declared the Provisional Yakut Regional People’s Administration (VYAONU), the government of the Yakut White rebels, dissolved, ordering all affairs and funds to be transferred to him as the civilian “governor of the Yakut region.” The matter seems to be insignificant, but it was a fatal mistake, and the White Guards felt its consequences already in January of the following year, 1923, when the White rebels forced them to release Oyunsky from captivity. In general, Pepelyaev’s expedition was adventurous. Knowing that the Reds had artillery in Yakutia, the general went on a campaign without a single cannon. Although theoretically he could get something more serious than the worn-out Red guns... Already in 1920, the Japanese army began to use new types of military equipment: grenade launchers and even submachine guns, copied from the world's first foreign machine gun - the German "Machinen-pistole" model 1918. That same year, Japanese units received steel helmets. There were plenty of different weapons in the Far East. But the commander of the Japanese troops in Primorye, General Ooi, refused to hand over the latest weapons to the whites. The Japanese command, not without reason, believed that the white army was disintegrating and, together with deserters from Dieterichs’s army, the weapons would go to the red ones... So Pepelyaev could not get a single run-down gun in Vladivostok. On September 25, 1922, he ordered “2 Hotchkiss light guns” and 2,000 shells from the Japanese company Arai Gumi. But the guns were never delivered, although on February 14, 1923, the order was once again confirmed by Pepelyaev’s head of the Ayan garrison, Colonel Seifullin. The Japanese received an advance payment, but simply cheated Pepelyaev.
QUESTION WITHOUT ANSWER
Who was the chief of Pepelyaev’s military intelligence? The materials of the trial of the Pepeliaevites contain a lot of detailed information about them, the defendants. Who, when and where was born, single or married, how many children he has, what he did before the Civil War and even before 1917, and what position he held in Pepelyaev’s squad. The Cheka knew or learned a lot.
General A.N. Pepelyaev on the eve of the trial in Chita. On the left is the former chief of the Okhotsk garrison, Captain Boris Mikhailovsky. On the right is former adjutant Emelyan Anyanov. Photo from the end of 1923.
But nowhere and in no way is it indicated who was the head of military intelligence in the “Siberian Volunteer Squad” and who were his deputy and assistants. This question was of great interest to serious people from the GPU and military intelligence. Lieutenant General Pepelyaev, as an experienced veteran of the First World War and the Civil War, could not do without an intelligence agency. But the chief of Pepelyaev’s military intelligence was never officially named. There is no idea who it could be. If he died, then the defendants could point to him, what is the demand for a dead person? There are two reasons for this mystery. The head of the military intelligence of the “squad” disguised himself under another position, was a good conspirator, and neither the GPU investigators, nor the counterintelligence officers of the Red Army, nor the judges identified him. He couldn’t admit it himself - why take on aggravating circumstances? Reason two: the chief of military intelligence, Pepelyaev, was not extradited. Not so much out of friendly feelings, but understanding that during interrogations he would say (or be forced to say) things that would be worse for everyone. The Pepelyaevites, who escaped from the meat grinder of battles in Yakutia, really wanted to live.
Memorial to the memory of the civil war in Yakutia. Yakutsk Photo by Sergei Dyakonov.
Colonel Khutoyarov is not on the list of defendants. He was killed in battle with the Reds. Documents and books mention Colonel Toporkov as the assistant chief of staff of the squad and the former head of white counterintelligence in Vladivostok, who was fired there for bribes. But in the court materials he is not called the chief of intelligence. The heads of political intelligence, Sobolev and Grachev, are also not among the defendants. They either died or fled.
Evgeny KOPYLOV.
Materials from the National Archive of the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia) and the archive of the Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation for the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia) were used.
The Siberian general from whom Kolchak took away the victory
High and tragic was the fate of Lieutenant General Anatoly Pepelyaev, one of the youngest, most gifted and popular military leaders of the anti-Bolshevik resistance in Russia among the masses of soldiers. Endowed with rich strategic thinking, a brilliant tactician, a man of rare personal charm, he most fully embodied the drama of that part of the Russian democratic officers who enthusiastically accepted the February Revolution and the overthrow of the monarchy. And then, when the Bolsheviks showed themselves in all their “glory,” she was the first to raise the banner of resistance to their power.
Anatoly Pepelyaev became the youngest general of the white movement at the age of 27, in September 1918. And the most unusual general: he was the only one who did not introduce the wearing of shoulder straps in his troops. He was considered a “Socialist Revolutionary”, although he did not join the Socialist Revolutionary Party. As befits a native of Tomsk, these “Siberian Athens,” Anatoly Nikolaevich was inclined towards the ideas of Siberian regionalism in their most popular version.
Raising the green and white banner
Anatoly Pepelyaev was born in Tomsk on August 15, 1891, in the family of an officer, in the near future - lieutenant general of the imperial army. At the age of nineteen he graduated from the Pavlovsk Military School in St. Petersburg. During the German War, he commanded a battalion and for more than three years shared with his soldiers all the hardships of front-line trench life. Sergei Kara-Murza writes that the trenches of the First World War created a powerful agrarian-communist unity from the peasants, hitherto sufficiently imbued with the ideas of communal communism, and other classes who found themselves in the trenches. The antagonism between the self-sacrifice of front-line soldiers and the hedonistic orgies of the bourgeoisie hidden behind them was psychologically and ideologically clear to Anatoly Pepelyaev. And his sympathies were already quite clear then. Free-thinking Tomsk, completely imbued with the ideas of the great regionalists Yadrintsev and Potanin, saturated the inquisitive mind and sympathetic soul of Pepelyaev Jr. with these ideas...
At the end of December 1917 he returned to Tomsk. Of the parties actually operating at that time, the ones closest to him were the Socialist Revolutionaries, who most consistently expressed the interests of the peasantry. It is clear that these sentiments intensified many times after the unceremonious dispersal of the Constituent Assembly by the Bolsheviks. And the conclusion of the Brest-Litovsk Peace Treaty, which even Lenin himself called “obscene,” all the more inspired Pepelyaev to take decisive action. Anatoly Nikolaevich created an underground officer organization in his native Tomsk and established contacts with local Socialist Revolutionaries. In the spring of 1918, the officer underground, with the clear sympathy of the Siberian peasantry, outraged by the surplus appropriation policy, overthrew the power of the Tomsk Council and raised the green and white banner of Autonomous Siberia.
Infinitely brave, possessing brilliant strategic and tactical thinking and therefore fantastically popular among the troops, Pepelyaev quickly formed a regiment from Tomsk residents and led it to Krasnoyarsk. After the capture of Krasnoyarsk, his troops were joined by divisions of Barnaul, Novonikolaev and Krasnoyarsk residents. Such a rapid expansion of Pepeliaev’s army is explained by the fact that well-conspiracy officer organizations operated in many Siberian cities. They carefully prepared not only the overthrow of the rule of the local Bolsheviks, but also a campaign against the central government they had seized. The ideological leaders of the anti-Bolshevik underground were politically sophisticated Socialist-Revolutionary regionalists who dreamed of creating the Siberian Democratic Republic - an independent state formation that would be guided in its practical activities by the ideas of the great regionalists Yadrintsev and Potanin.
Battles for Irkutsk
After the liberation of many Siberian cities from Bolshevism, Pepelyaev’s regiment turned into a corps that approached Irkutsk under the green and white banner of autonomous Siberia. In Irkutsk there also existed a powerful SR-officer underground, headed by former political prisoners Nikolai Kalashnikov, Arkady Krakovetsky and Pavel Yakovlev. Two of them were prisoners of the famous Alexander Central before the revolution. After the December battles in Irkutsk in 1917, Kalashnikov, who was assistant commander of the East Siberian Military District under the Provisional Government, took the surviving officers and cadets out of the city and created a fortified area in the village of Pivovarikha, relying on which he constantly threatened the Bolsheviks. In the most unofficial “capital of Eastern Siberia,” Kalashnikov, a born leader and talented conspirator, created a united underground organization committed to an uncompromising struggle. It consisted of socialist revolutionaries and non-party officers who sympathized with regionalist and populist ideology. The crowning glory of the conspiracy was that the Irkutsk Bolsheviks considered the underground formations to be small in number and devoid of real influence. But in fact, they numbered over a thousand people, each of whom was not only perfectly armed and trained, but also possessed the skills of psychological processing of the masses, the ability to attract them to a selfless fight against the Bolshevik regime.
The Kalashnikovites made their first attempt to capture Irkutsk on February 23, 1918, when the city hosted the Second Congress of Soviets of Siberia. Then the Bolsheviks managed to prevent a coup. But Kalashnikov and his comrades were not the kind of people to abandon their hard-won program. On June 14, underground fighters fought their way into Irkutsk and captured almost the entire city. Irkutsk anti-Bolshevik underground fighters, led by V.A. Shchipachev, hit the Reds in the rear and inflicted great damage on them. Completely unexpected help for the Bolshevik Soviet arrived from the direction from which it would seem foolish to expect it. The Transbaikal Cossacks, whose train unexpectedly approached the city, unloaded from the cars and galloped along the Irkutsk streets. Moreover, at full gallop they cut down the “white-greens” with checkers, who were confused by the deceptive anticipation that the hour of victory was near. As eyewitnesses recalled, Cossack sabers demolished many officers’ heads. The surviving rebels retreated to Pivovarikha. And at the same time they managed to free their comrades from prison, including the former provincial commissar Pavel Yakovlev, the first Irkutsk governor after the fall of the monarchy.
Less than a month later, on July 10, 1918, Kalashnikovites again burst into Irkutsk. The White Partisans took the station and the railway bridge in battle and ensured the approach of the vanguard of the Siberian Corps Anatoly Pepelyaev. Having liberated the capital of Eastern Siberia, Pepelyaev went to the Baikal Front. By that time, the corps he led, replenished with Irkutsk residents, had grown into the Siberian Army. And the commander of this army, born in battle, became not just a general, of which there were in general many, but a legendary personality - the liberator of long-suffering Siberia from the next contenders for dominance over it - the Bolsheviks.
Attack of the Titans. Lilliputian intrigues
The November 1918 coup in Omsk, which led to the supreme power of Admiral Kolchak, meant a serious political defeat for the so-called “democratic counter-revolution”. Therefore, it is not surprising that the “winners” launched a campaign of repression against the socialist revolutionaries.
A few days after Kolchak’s coup, the Siberian Army was transferred to Yekaterinburg. Despite the political “extravagances” of the commander, the army enjoyed the reputation of a combat-ready unit devoted to its leader. Therefore, at first it became one of the pillars of the admiral’s military doctrine. Thousands and thousands of Siberians eagerly marched under the green and white banners of Pepelyaev. But such a high popularity of the young commander could not help but worry the supreme ruler. All the more contradictory was Kolchak’s attitude towards Anatoly Pepelyaev after the latter’s brilliant victory near Perm. On the one hand, it was impossible not to recognize the heroism and devotion of the Pepelyaevites. After all, in the bitter cold, with a ferocious bayonet attack, they drove the Bolsheviks out of Perm, capturing colossal trophies and practically opening the way to Moscow. At this moment, the popularity of the Siberian general Pepelyaev reached its apogee. After all, it was not without reason that Lenin sent two professionals of the highest class - Stalin and Dzerzhinsky - to eliminate the consequences of this defeat.
Of course, Kolchak knew that in Pepelyaev’s army the positions of socialist revolutionaries were strong and the ideas of Siberian regionalism were deeply rooted. Nikolai Kalashnikov, who became Pepelyaev’s deputy and head of counterintelligence of the Siberian Army, even created a secret anti-Kolchak organization that intended to overthrow the reactionary monarchists entrenched in Kolchak’s headquarters and replace them with regional Socialist Revolutionaries. The Kolchak elite demonstrated their inability to defeat Bolshevism. And the Siberian Army, loyal to its commander, was an undoubted striking force. Nikolai Kalashnikov organized a successful intelligence confrontation with the admiral’s favorite, actual privy adviser Kirsta, the embarrassment of this “lion of the secret war” in almost all directions. I’ll tell you a secret: a quarter of a century ago, officers of the secret reserve of the GRU during classes played out the situations of that time and were amazed at the depth of intuition and accuracy of the calculations of the former political prisoner Kalashnikov...
Literally the next day after the coup on November 18, 1918, many socialist revolutionaries, including deputies of the Constituent Assembly, under whose slogans Pepelyaev and his associates began the armed struggle in the spring of 1918, were killed by the revolutionaries or thrown into prison. And those who managed to remain free found refuge in Pepelyaev’s Siberian Army, as well as in the entourage of Pavel Yakovlev, who again became the Irkutsk governor and did not hide his opposition to Kolchak. The democratic front in Siberia was led by Anatoly Pepelyaev, as well as former leaders of the Irkutsk underground Nikolai Kalashnikov, Pavel Yakovlev, and corps commander Ellerts-Usov. At first, the "Supreme" did not interfere with the activities of the zemstvo, city dumas, peasant and workers' unions led by the Socialist Revolutionaries in Siberia. But this shaky alliance between monarchists and socialists could not last. “The Triumphant of Perm” addressed more than one ultimatum report to the supreme ruler on the need for decisive steps to democratize the regime and bring it closer to regionalist ideals. And he even threatened to move his army to Omsk if this was not done. However, for all the undisguised audacity of these demarches, Kolchak was still afraid to touch the famous Siberian military leader. But it must be said that in December 1918, during the illness of the Supreme Commander, it was Pepelyaev who was considered as his most likely successor. However, Kolchak recovered...
While demonstrating in public his complete favor towards Pepelyaev, Alexander Vasilyevich in fact very skillfully put obstacles in his way. When the Siberians took Perm and the road to red Moscow was open, the admiral unexpectedly ordered the offensive to be stopped. He sent Pepelyaev to take Kazan. But, when there were one and a half hundred kilometers left before it, the Western Army of the Whites rushed forward to cross the Pepeliaevites and practically blocked their path. Kolchak was afraid that the Siberians themselves would march on Moscow or even enter into an alliance with the Red Army. The reason for these fears was not only the mood of Pepelyaev himself and his entourage, but also the decision of the Central Committee of the RCP (b) to change the attitude of the Bolsheviks towards the Socialist Revolutionaries and their readiness to cooperate with them.
At the same time, peasant uprisings against the Omsk regime began throughout Siberia, the rear was collapsing, paralyzed by the most unbridled corruption. The Polar Admiral was afraid of the Pepelyaev Siberians MORE than the RED ones. Although it was precisely the white and green banner of the Siberian Army and the red flags of the workers of the Izhevsk and Votkinsk factories, under which they fought under the command of General Molchanov, that Kolchak owed the overwhelming majority of his so-called “own” victories. Such is the merciless irony of history! Socialists and regional democrats selflessly fought in Kolchak’s army against Bolshevism, and at the same time, in the rear, punitive detachments burned out entire villages, pushing hitherto peaceful men into guerrilla warfare. And the obscurantist Black Hundreds created concentration camps for workers on the sole grounds that they were workers, and therefore simply could not help but be Marxists...
"Against Kolchak, for free Siberia"
In the end, General Pepelyaev openly accused Kolchak of his inability to govern Siberia and its armed forces. And he demanded his resignation from the post of commander in chief. Kolchak responded by removing him from command of the Siberian Army. Pepelyaev and Kalashnikov wanted to start a new stage of the struggle under the Socialist Revolutionary-Regional banners against Lenin and Kolchak. Therefore, on June 21, 1919, the young victorious general addressed his army with an angry protest against the policy of the land admiral. He fearlessly described how he constantly held back the advance of the Siberians, left them without reserves, how they heroically fought and died at the front, while the “correct” Kolchak officers sat behind them. Following his army commander, Kalashnikov made a report, revealing the reasons for the anti-Kolchak uprisings in the army and in the rear. He openly proclaimed the slogan of creating a free Siberia without Lenin and Kolchak, the main armed force of which was to be the famous army of Anatoly Pepelyaev.
Soon, the former underground Socialist Revolutionary and political prisoner Nikolai Kalashnikov, in the Czech echelon of General Gaida, on whom he had considerable influence, went to Vladivostok. There he intended to organize an armed uprising against the Omsk anti-people regime. His “retinue” consisted of Pepelyaev officers, who, as the train moved, settled in their cities in order to prepare the overthrow of the Kolchak regime. Anatoly Nikolaevich himself led his army to Tomsk, arresting Kolchak’s generals K.V. Sakharov and S.N. Voitsekhovsky along the way. Already in retrospect, Kolchak’s staff officers, in order to somehow “retouch” the split, falsified the order to transfer Pepelyaev’s army. From Tomsk the army commander led part of his army to the east. However, he fell ill with typhus, was placed on a Czechoslovak train and taken to Chita. And then he left for Harbin, which was then practically a Russian city. Meanwhile, many Pepeliaevites, outraged by the stupid villainy of Ataman Semenov, came into contact with the Reds. And they not only provided them with moral support, but also took an active part in the fight against the ataman’s gangs and the expulsion of the Japanese from the Far East. Many of them fought bravely and skillfully in the ranks of the People's Revolutionary Army of the Far Eastern Republic.
However, let's return to Nikolai Kalashnikov. He was enthusiastically greeted in Irkutsk by the Socialist Revolutionaries and Pepeliaevites from the corps of General Grivin, who shortly before was personally shot by Voitsekhovsky “for treason against the Supreme Ruler.” In November 1919, the Socialist Revolutionaries created a coalition body of representatives of the zemstvo, the Irkutsk City Duma and cooperation - the Political Center. It also included Siberian Mensheviks. Kalashnikov became the commander of the troops of the Political Center, and a month later his troops began military operations against the Kolchak garrison, creating two fronts - Glazkovsky and Znamensky. As a result, on January 5, 1920, power in Irkutsk passed to the Provisional Council of the Siberian People's Administration. The Kolchak regime in Irkutsk, the most important economic, political and transport hub of Eastern Siberia, fell. The commander of the People's Revolutionary Army of the Siberian People's Administration was the ardent socialist-revolutionary and Siberian regionalist Nikolai Kalashnikov. At the same time, he, as a counterintelligence officer from God, successfully led the work to identify and arrest Kolchak’s punitive forces, counterintelligence officers, embezzler generals, and corrupt rear officials. On January 15, 1920, Kalashnikov’s people accepted from the Czechs a train with part of the country’s gold reserves, captured from the Bolsheviks during the capture of Kazan. Along the way, the Socialist Revolutionaries also demanded a “supreme ruler” from their former allies. The unanimous decision to extradite the latter was made by the Czech “Wudze” Jan Syrov, who adhered to social democratic views, and the commander-in-chief of the allied forces in Siberia, General Janen.
Former regionalist and former anarchist: six spools of lead each...
When power in Irkutsk passed to the Bolsheviks, Kalashnikov, not without reason, feared reprisals from them. Therefore, he quickly reorganized the People's Revolutionary Army into a division and took it to Transbaikalia. In March 1920, the Pepelyaevites drove the Cossacks of Ataman Semenov out of Verkhneudinsk and went to Manchuria in full force. A revolutionary who went through hard labor, an experienced underground fighter and a talented military leader, Nikolai Kalashnikov said goodbye to Pepelyaev in Harbin. Despite all his antipathy to the methods of the Bolsheviks, he understood that they had won. Therefore, I boarded a ship in Dairen and sailed overseas. In America, he took up science, and succeeded in this too. His developments were immediately classified, as was his person, so even the date of death of the former prisoner of tsarism is unknown...
And Lieutenant General Anatoly Pepelyaev, the son of Lieutenant General Nikolai Pepelyaev, lived in Harbin until 1922. The unlucky “supreme ruler” had already been shot in Irkutsk, and together with him, Pepelyaev’s elder brother Viktor, a former deputy of the State Duma and one of the most prominent political figures of “Kolchakia”, died on the ice of the Ushakovka River...
The former Perm triumphant could not sit idle for long. In September 1922, he created the Siberian volunteer squad of seven hundred Tomsk officers, which landed on the Okhotsk coast and moved deep into Yakutia. They wanted to separate this region, rich in furs and gold, from Soviet Russia and organize there the Free Siberia they dreamed of - a state of popular rule, free from the Bolsheviks. The Reds viewed the campaign of Pepelyaev and his associates as an ordinary military rebellion. Special units were sent to suppress it. One of them was headed by the famous Red commander, a former anarchist from Nestor Kalandarishvili’s detachment, Ivan Strod, who fought against Pepelyaev back in 1918. Strode's detachment met the rebels near the Sasyl-Sasy camp and took up a perimeter defense. The siege of the ice fortress continued for eighteen days, and on March 3, 1923, the expedition of the Siberian general ended. The approaching units of the regular Red Army defeated his squad. On June 17, 1923, Pepelyaev with the surviving officers surrendered in the port of Ayan to the commander of the expeditionary force S.S. Vostretsov, was taken to Vladivostok, and from there to Chita, where he stood trial.
All defendants were sentenced to death, but the All-Russian Central Executive Committee commuted their death to ten years' imprisonment. At the trial, Pepelyaev, as a professional military man, expressed admiration for the courage of the soldiers of Ivan Strod’s detachment.
Great Russian, Siberian general Anatoly Nikolaevich Pepelyaev was shot on January 14, 1938. At the same time, the holder of four Orders of the Red Banner, Ivan Yakovlevich Strod, with whom Pepelyaev’s military fate brought him together in the Baikal region in 1918 and in Yakutia in 1923, received his “six spools of lead.”
February 3rd, 2015
At the end of the Civil War, when the whites were already firmly pressed to the ocean, a group of several hundred desperate people went on an adventure in an attempt to turn the tide of history at its knees. They failed, but the duel between the Reds and the Whites in the unimaginably huge wastelands of Yakutia, even by Russian standards, remained one of the brightest stories in Russian history.
In 1922, the Reds gradually cleared the Far East, Uborevich was preparing for the last push to the shores of the Pacific Ocean. By this time, the bulk of the whites in the Far East had already been squeezed out to China, leaving either those who were most unlucky or those who were persistent on a particularly large scale. At this moment, General Dieterichs, who represented the remnants of the White Guard on DalVas, and his assistant Kulikovsky came up with the idea of setting fire to northeastern Siberia. The plan envisaged a landing on the shores of the Sea of Okhotsk east of Yakutsk, a quick capture of the city and the creation there of a center for a new uprising against the Reds. Fortunately, envoys from the local population had already arrived from there, reporting their desire to rebel against the Reds. It was planned to march 800 km deep into the continent on rough roads. For such an undertaking, volunteers were needed, and volunteers needed a commander. The “commandos” were found quickly, and the commander had no problem either.
Among other emigrants in northeastern China, in Harbin, lived General Anatoly Pepelyaev, the main character of our play. He was a young man, but had noticeable combat experience. Pepelyaev was a career military man; by the beginning of the First World War he was already the chief of reconnaissance of a regiment, and he fought off the entire war with honor. “Anna” for bravery, an honorary weapon, an officer’s “George”, “Vladimir” with swords - even by those standards, an impressive iconostasis. At the end of the war, when the commanders were elected, the soldiers asked him to join the battalion commanders. He finished the First World War as a lieutenant colonel, and during the Civil War he joined Kolchak’s army, and, as was the custom of that time, quickly rose in rank. In general, the Civil War is the time of generals under 30 years of age. Turkul, Manstein, Buzun... Here comes 27-year-old Pepelyaev. In 1920, due to a conflict with Ataman Semenov, to whom he was subordinate, Pepelyaev left with his wife and children for Harbin, where he lived for the second year. Dieterichs’s people easily found him and offered to take part in the “special operation.”
Reference: 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.
In total, there were 730 people in the detachment, including as many as two generals and 11 colonels, all volunteers from the regions of the Far East and the Russian colonies of China that remained under white control. The Whites experienced a great shortage of weapons, so there were only two machine guns. There were plenty of rifles, but more than half of them were single-shot Berdankas, thanks for not being fusees from the times of Peter the Great. There was not so little ammunition by Civilian standards, 250 rounds of ammunition and a dozen grenades per brother. The matter was complicated by the fact that it was a “one-time” ammunition, and no supplies were provided. There was no artillery, and it was not required; from the place of the proposed landing to Yakutsk it was necessary to travel more than 800 km through wild wastelands on foot (the expedition diary somehow mentions, for example, a swamp 8 km wide), simply no one would have pulled the guns.
This plan seems somewhat divorced from reality. Fight Yakutsk with a detachment of 700 kopecks of people. But the Reds had the same problem; armies of several hundred soldiers, often with rather sonorous names, rushed across vast spaces. Pepelyaev’s group, for example, was called “Tatar Strait Militia” for camouflage purposes.
There was little time and transport. They landed in Okhotsk and Ayan at the end of August. Ayan is a village on the seashore, a dozen and a half houses, several warehouses and a couple of “suburbs” of the same merits. By the way, in the brochure of Vishnevsky, one of the participants in the expedition, there is the following intriguing remark about this expedition: “The rain in Ayana is especially dangerous: it can be extremely heavy and, thanks to the force of the wind, breaks through the walls of buildings.” It’s hard to say what you mean by “breaks through walls,” but nature really wasn’t conducive to hiking. White partisans and local residents, about a hundred people, were waiting in Ayan. The detachment was divided in two in order to collect white partisan units along the way. In Ayan, a people's gathering of the surrounding Tungus and local Russians was held, who motorized our partisans, providing three hundred deer. At this time, the second batch of troops was just about to take off from Vladivostok. Pepelyaev was already moving into the depths of the continent, but due to the lack of roads he walked slowly, with difficulty overcoming swamps and rivers. The rendezvous point for the white detachments was the village of Nelkan. Those who got there before others suffered from lack of food, eating horses. The ships with the second wave of landings arrived only in November. At the same time, the population collected transport, those very mentioned deer. By this time, the Whites in Vladivostok had already been completely defeated. Pepelyaev from the commander of either a partisan or sabotage detachment turned into the leader of the main military force of the whites. There was no one else behind me.
Along the way, detachments of white partisans operating in these areas were added. Colonel Reinhardt (one of the two battalion commanders) estimated their total strength at approximately 800 people. The partisans pretty much turned the local population against themselves, they fed on the same Yakuts and Tungus, in general, the population, according to the whites, treated the reds and whites in the style of the unforgettable phrase “the reds will come and rob, the whites will come and rob” and did not particularly adore either one or the other. Although a certain division of sympathies was noted: those who are poorer are for the Reds, those who are more prosperous are more likely to be for the Whites. The Red forces were estimated at about 3 thousand fighters in total.
We must pay tribute, the discipline was close to exemplary, there were no frostbites or stragglers, although the last detachment arrived in Nelkan in the winter under the snow, making marches even at minus thirty.
On December 20, the detachment set out for the village of Amga, the next stop before Yakutsk, 160 versts from the city. We walked and rode reindeer. I note that these regions are the coldest of all that exist in Russia. They approached Amga on the cold night of February 2, 1923 and attacked it from the march. During this final rush to Amga... I almost wrote “the thermometers showed”, the thermometers didn’t show a damn thing, because when it was minus forty-five outside, the mercury freezes. It was cold reading about it anyway. The White Walkers stormed Amga with a bayonet, killing the small garrison.
The Reds formally had a certain numerical advantage at that time. But they were not gathered together, but acted in three separate detachments. Pepelyaev decided to destroy first the medium-sized detachment of Strode. It was a red partisan group of 400 people, with machine guns, but without cannons, weighed down by a convoy. Strode seemed like a good target.
Actually, who was it? Ivan Strods is actually Janis Strods, the son of a Latvian and a Polish woman, the protagonist of the red side of our story. He, like Pepelyaev, fought in the First World War. Just not a career officer, but a “mobilization” warrant officer. The ensign, I must say, was a dashing one, four “Georges”. In Civil, he was an anarchist, later he joined the Bolsheviks, led a partisan detachment, with which he went to meet Pepelyaev.
The white leader developed a plan for a surprise attack against Strode. Leaving Colonel Peters' one and a half hundred bayonets in Amga, he moved forward, preparing to accidentally fall on the Reds. This plan had thirty-four advantages and one disadvantage. His merits were that he was flawless, but his disadvantage was that he went head over heels.
Pepelyaev was helped by the human factor. Two soldiers, maddened by the cold, went to the village to warm up. The Reds were already there; these two, exhausted in a warm yurt, were captured. The plan was immediately revealed to Strode, and he feverishly began to prepare for battle. Pepelyaev, realizing that there was no surprise, struck with brute force and recaptured the convoy. But the brave Red Baltic citizen was not at a loss and did not lose heart. Strod settled into a winter hut under the poetic name Sasyl-Sysy. This, if I may say so, village consisted of several houses surrounded by a fence, as Vishnevsky writes, made of dung. There the Reds dug in and prepared for an all-round defense. It was February 13th. Until the 27th, Pepelyaev desperately stormed these three yurts. Strode bristled with machine guns and fought back. By the way, it seems that frozen manure was indeed widely used in field fortification. The Soviet newspaper writes that the Pepeliaevites tried to use something like a Wagenburg from a sleigh with frozen dung. So, most likely, a fortress made of dubious material really took place. Meanwhile, two other red detachments, Baikalova and Kurashev, united and amounted to 760 people with guns. Together they attacked Amga again. A detachment of 150 soldiers, left there by Pepelyaev, lost more than half of its people under cannon fire and was forced to retreat. Baikalov’s brother died in the battle, and this predetermined the sad fate of the captured officers. True, it must be said that the information about the death of the prisoners comes from the whites, so its reliability is difficult to verify.
That was the end. On March 3, the siege was lifted. It is difficult to say what it is like in terms of personal glory to be called the winner of the Battle of Sasyl-Sysy, but this success brought Strode the Order of the Red Banner and the laurels of the triumphant of the last siege of the Civil War.
The remnants of Pepelyaev’s detachment began to retreat to Ayan. The Yakuts, who at first cheerfully participated in the expedition, went home. As a result, Pepelyaev gathered everyone and ordered those who wanted to leave openly. Another two hundred people left the detachment, three quarters were Yakuts. Meanwhile, General Rakitin, the commander of the detachment retreating to Okhotsk, was planning to break through to the south by land. In this they promised to help him with the remnants of the white partisans, who had been here before Pepelyaev’s raid group and knew the area. The lack of roads also affected the Reds; a garrison had to be left in every shed, so they also did not advance rapidly. In addition, Pepelyaev fought rearguard battles, not allowing much pressure. At the same time, a small white outpost in Kamchatka was destroyed, fifty people with the indispensable general at their head died, the noose around the white detachments tightened. It must be said that the Kamchatka outpost ruined itself; the Reds were helped by the Yakuts, angry at the robberies. Kamchatka, according to the Whites, fell quickly and without much pressure from the Reds; if it had held out longer, perhaps Pepelyaev’s detachment would have been saved by at least the remnants.
In early June, Rakitin prepared for the siege of Okhotsk, but the city fell thanks to an uprising of workers within. Rakitin shot himself with a hunting rifle. The partisans retreated back to the taiga.
In mid-June 1923, after long ordeals, the remnants of Pepelyaev’s squad, 640 people, gathered in Ayan. The smaller part were paratroopers who landed here at the end of last summer, the larger part were Yakuts, partisans and the like. The Whites decided to leave by sea, for which it was necessary to build boats. However, the Reds were not going to give them time.
The Reds had an agent in Ayan, a very valuable one at that, a radiotelegraph operator. For this reason, they were aware of the whites’ preparations and were not going to allow a retreat. On June 15, troops landed 40 km from Ayan. Paint commander Vostretsov secretly concentrated near the town. On the night of the 17th, hiding behind the fog, he crept into Ayan aka Freddy Krueger into the dream of an eighth-grader and captured the headquarters. Pepelyaev, wanting to prevent bloodshed, which had already become unnecessary, gave the order to his subordinates who had not yet been captured to lay down their arms.
It must be said that not everyone followed this order. Since Ayan was very small, some of the officers were in the neighboring villages. Colonel Stepanov gathered about a hundred soldiers, prepared for the campaign in a few hours and went into the forests, its end unknown. Another colonel, Leonov, at the head of a group of a dozen people, went north along the coast, and succeeded; he managed to contact Japanese fishermen, through them find a ship and go to the land of anime. Colonel Anders, who had previously defended Amga, also tried to break through, but in the end he and his men became hungry and decided that it was better to surrender than to eat belts and boots. A total of 356 people were captured. Thus ended the Civil War in the Far East.
Pepelyaev and the fighters of his squad were sentenced to various terms of imprisonment. Initially, the general was going to be shot, but at Kalinin’s suggestion he was pardoned. Apparently, in the Red camp they believed that there was a time to scatter stones and a time to collect them, they tried to return the whites to the USSR by military experts, and it was unnecessary to frighten them with executions. By the way, the characterization given to Pepelyaev by Vostretsov, who captivated him, is interesting.
“Dear comrade Solts.
In 1923, I liquidated the gang of General Pepelyaev in the Okhotsk - port Ayan area, and more than 400 people were captured, of which 2/3 were officers.
They were tried in 1923 in the city. Chita and were sentenced to different terms, and they are all in different houses of detention.
Having received a letter from one of the convicts, I decided to write to you briefly what General Pepelyaev is like.
1. His idea is petty-bourgeois, or rather Menshevik, although he considered himself non-party.
2. Very religious. He studied the literature on religion well, especially Renan.
3. Personal qualities: very honest, selfless; lived on an equal basis with other combat ascetics (soldiers); their slogan is that all are brothers: brother general, brother soldier, etc. His colleagues have told me since 1911 that Pepelyaev does not know the taste of wine (I think this can be believed).
4. He had enormous authority among his subordinates: what Pepelyaev said - there was a law for his subordinates. Even in such difficult moments as his defeat near the city of Yakutsk and his capture in Ayan, his authority did not weaken. Example: a detachment of about 150 people was in 8 faiths. from the port of Ayan, and when he learned that the port of Ayan had been captured by the Reds, he decided to advance on the port of Ayan, and when halfway they were met by a messenger with an order from General Pepelyaev to surrender, they, having read this order, said: “Since the general orders, we must fulfill,” which is what they did, i.e., they surrendered without a fight.
I have this thought: isn’t it time to release him from prison? I think that he can do absolutely nothing for us now, but he can be used as a military expert (and he, in my opinion, is not bad). If we have such former enemies as General Slashchev, who outweighed our brother more than one hundred, and now works at Vystrel as a tactics teacher.
These are the thoughts that I had and expressed to you as the person in charge of this.
With communist greetings.
Commander of the 27th Omsk Infantry Division S. Vostretsov. (13.4.1928)"
Nevertheless, Pepelyaev spent 13 years in prison, although he was allowed some liberties, for example, correspondence with his wife. And in 1938 he fell under the rink of repression and was shot. Even earlier, in 1937, Strode was arrested and shot. Vostretsov, who finished off Pepelyaev’s detachment with paint, also did not end his life very happily; in 1929 he took part in the conflict on the Chinese Eastern Railway in one of the leading roles, and in 1932 he already committed suicide.
Actually, in Vladivostok, a military court sentenced Pepelyaev to execution, but he wrote a letter to Kalinin asking for clemency. The request was considered, and in January 1924 a trial was held in Chita, which sentenced Pepelyaev to 10 years in prison. Pepelyaev was supposed to serve his sentence in the Yaroslavl political prison. Pepelyaev spent the first two years in solitary confinement; in 1926 he was allowed to go to work. He worked as a carpenter, glazier and joiner. Pepelyaev was even allowed to correspond with his wife in Harbin.
Pepelyaev’s term ended in 1933, but back in 1932, at the request of the OGPU board, they decided to extend it for three years. In January 1936, he was unexpectedly transferred from the political isolation ward in Yaroslavl to the Butyrka prison in Moscow. The next day, Pepelyaev was transferred to an internal NKVD prison. On the same day, he was summoned for questioning by the head of the Special Department of the NKVD, Mark Gai. Then he was again placed in Butyrka prison. On June 4, 1936, Pepelyaev was summoned again to Guy, who read him the release order. On June 6, Anatoly Nikolaevich was released.
The NKVD settled Pepelyaev in Voronezh, where he got a job as a carpenter. There is an opinion that Pepelyaev was released for the purpose of organizing a dummy society, like the Industrial Party.
In August 1937, Pepelyaev was arrested a second time and taken to Novosibirsk, where he was charged with creating a counter-revolutionary organization. On January 14, 1938, the Troika of the NKVD in the Novosibirsk region was sentenced to capital punishment. The sentence was carried out on January 14, 1938 in the prison of the city of Novosibirsk. He was buried in the prison yard.
The original article is on the website InfoGlaz.rf Link to the article from which this copy was made -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 trace 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 stored 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
- 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.
- Ranks:
- Awards:
- 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.
