A bullet for Comrade Shchors. From whose hands did the “Ukrainian Chapaev” die? Biography of Nikolai Shchors Biography of Nikolai Shchors

Nikolay Shchors

Song about Shchors Words by M. Golodny Music by M. Blanter A detachment walked along the shore, Walked from afar Walked under the red banner Regimental commander. The head is tied, Blood on my sleeve A bloody trail is spreading On damp grass. "Boys, whose will you be, Who is leading you into battle? Who is under the red banner Is the wounded man walking? “We are the sons of farm laborers, We are for a new world Shchors marches under the banner - Red commander.

In hunger and cold His life has passed But it was not for nothing that it was spilled There was his blood. Thrown back beyond the cordon Fierce enemy Tempered from a young age Honor is dear to us." Silence by the shore The sun is going down, Dew is falling. The cavalry rushes dashingly, The sound of hooves is heard, Shchors red banner It makes noise in the wind.

Nikolai Aleksandrovich Shchors was born in the village of Snovsk, Gorodnyansky district, Chernigov province. Some sources mention that the birthplace of Shchors is the Korzhovka farm. In this regard, it should be noted that Snovsk as a city appeared on the site where the Korzhovka farmstead had long been located. Considering that, in fact, the village of Snovsk at the time of Shchors’s birth included the Korzhovka farm, then indicating the latter as Shchors’s small homeland should not be considered a mistake.

Shchors's parental home in Snovsk

Shchors' father, Alexander Nikolaevich, came from Belarusian peasants. In search of a better life, he moved from the Minsk province to the small Ukrainian village of Snovsk. From here he was drafted into the army. Returning to Snovsk, A.N. Shchors, got a job at the local railway depot. In August 1894, he married his fellow countrywoman, Alexandra Mikhailovna Tabelchuk, and in the same year he built his own house in Snovsk. Shchors knew the Tabelchuk family for a long time, because... its head, Mikhail Tabelchuk, led an artel of Belarusians working in the Chernigov region, which at one time included Alexander Shchors.

Opinions about Shchors' nationality among researchers of his biography are divided. Most often he is called Ukrainian - after his place of birth. Some historians and publicists, based on the fact that the Shchors family comes from the Belarusian Korelichi, where the village of Shchorsy still exists, and that the parents of the future division commander came to Seversk Ukraine from Belarus, believe that Shchors by nationality, accordingly, was also Belarusian

The more ancient history of the Shchors family allegedly goes back to Serbia or Croatia, from where the distant ancestors of the division commander, fleeing Ottoman oppression, came to Belarus through the Carpathians around the middle of the 18th century.

In 1895, the first child was born into the family of the young Shchorsov couple, Nikolai, named after his grandfather. After him, brother Konstantin (1896-1979) and sisters were born: Akulina (1898-1937), Ekaterina (1900-1984) and Olga (1900-1985).

Nikolai Shchors quickly learned to read and write - at the age of six he could already read and write passably. In 1905, he entered a parochial school, and a year later, great grief happened to the Shchors family - while pregnant with their sixth child, the mother died of bleeding. This happened when she was in her homeland, in Stolbtsy (modern Minsk region). She was buried there.

Six months after the death of his wife, the head of the Shchors family remarried. His new chosen one was Maria Konstantinovna Podbelo. From this marriage, our hero Nikolai got two half-brothers - Grigory and Boris, and three half-sisters - Zinaida, Raisa and Lydia.

In 1909, Nikolai Shchors graduated from school and, obeying the desire to continue his studies, the following year, together with his brother Konstantin, he entered the Kyiv Military Paramedic School, whose students were fully supported by the state. Shchors studied conscientiously and four years later he left the educational institution with a diploma as a medical assistant.

building of the former Kyiv military paramedic school

After his studies, Nikolai was assigned to the troops of the Vilna Military District, which became front-line with the outbreak of the First World War. As part of the 3rd light artillery division, Shchors was sent to Vilna, where he was wounded in one of the battles and was sent for treatment. After recovery, Nikolai Shchors entered the Vilna Military School, which at that time was temporarily evacuated to Poltava.

In 1915, Shchors was already among the cadets of the Vilna Military School, where non-commissioned officers and warrant officers began to be trained in a shortened four-month program due to martial law. In 1916, Shchors successfully completed a course at a military school and, with the rank of ensign, served in the rear forces in Simbirsk.

Shchors in the uniform of an officer of the Russian Imperial Army

In the fall of 1916, the young officer was transferred to serve in the 335th Anapa Regiment of the 84th Infantry Division of the Southwestern Front, where Shchors rose to the rank of second lieutenant. However, at the end of 1917 his short military career came to an abrupt end. His health failed - Shchors fell ill (presumably with tuberculosis) and after short treatment in Simferopol at the end of December 1917 he was discharged due to his unfitness for further service.

Finding himself out of work, at the beginning of 1918 Shchors decided to return to his homeland. The estimated time of his return to Snovsk is January 1918.

By this time, colossal changes had occurred in the country. In February 1917, the monarchy fell, and in October power was already in the hands of the Bolsheviks. And in Ukraine at the same time the independent Ukrainian People's Republic was proclaimed. The troubled year of 1918 began.

Around the spring of 1918, a period began in connection with the creation of a Soviet military unit, headed by Nikolai Shchors. It went down in history under the name of the Bohunsky regiment.

In the early spring of 1918, many Ukrainian provinces were within the proclaimed Ukrainian People's Republic (UNR), but in fact - under the rule of German occupation forces, which were present in Ukraine with the consent of the Central Rada. However, not all residents of Ukraine welcomed the presence of the Germans in the country. On the contrary, a significant number of Ukrainians, especially those who had recently fought the Germans in the trenches, saw them as enemies and occupiers.

To fight the Germans in the occupied and nearby territories, rebel partisan detachments were formed. One of these detachments was formed in March 1918 in the village of Semenovka, Novozybkovsky district, Chernigov province. The young Nikolai Shchors was elected commander of this detachment. This year he turned only 23 years old, but despite his young age, Shchors by this time already had combat experience acquired on the fields of the First World War. In addition, according to the memoirs of his contemporaries, Shchors possessed all the qualities necessary for a commander: toughness, assertiveness, courage and initiative. Shchors arrived in Semyonovka approximately at the end of February 1918, together with a group of his fellow countrymen, in order to join the Red Guard insurgent detachment already created here. There is also a version that Shchors fled to Semyonovka, fearing persecution from the hetman’s troops for his officer past. One way or another, once in Semyonovka, Shchors joined the rebel detachment and was elected its commander. Such detachments were made up of the most diverse people, among whom there were many yesterday’s front-line soldiers, among whom was Shchors. If we try to somehow determine what Shchors’ detachment was, then it was, in essence, a spontaneous paramilitary team of the partisan type, close to the Bolshevik movement. In general, such detachments led by “field commanders” appeared in Ukraine in those years like mushrooms after rain. The actions of these detachments found considerable support among the population of Ukraine.

The main task that the detachment set for itself was to fight against the German occupiers using guerrilla warfare tactics. In the spring of 1918, Shchors' detachment, numbering approximately 300-350 people, moved to the area of ​​​​the village of Zlynka, where it entered into local skirmishes with the detachments of the German General Hoffmann. However, having failed, Shchors retreated east in the direction of Unecha station. The Germans continued to advance along the same course, parallel to the Gomel-Bryansk railway. In the first half of April 1918, they managed to capture Novozybkov, Klintsy and stopped at the Kustich Bryanovy-Lyshchichi-Robchik line, i.e., almost under Unecha itself, where by this time, as is known, the border demarcation line ran. Shchors and his detachment arrived at the Unecha station, which by that time was located in territory controlled by Soviet Russia (although the formal status of this area had not yet been determined).

Apparently, this was his first acquaintance with Unecha. And not only with Unecha. At the station at that time, the well-known Fruma Khaikina, an employee of the local Cheka, who became the greatest love in Shchors’ life, was in charge of all affairs. Meanwhile, in Ukraine, the Central Rada and the UPR ceased to exist, liquidated by the Germans. Under the protectorate of the latter, power passed to the “hetman of all Ukraine” P.P. Skoropadsky (1873-1945).

In April 1918, a truce was concluded between the Bolsheviks and the new hetman government, according to the terms of which all Ukrainian formations that found themselves on the territory of Soviet Russia, including the Shchors detachment, were disbanded.

In 1917-1918, Ukrainian society was very diverse in terms of political sympathies. Many were openly hostile to Bolshevism, which was approaching from the north. However, not the entire population of Ukraine supported the UPR government and the nationalists. The number of supporters of Soviet power was also large. In some areas, home-grown “fathers” were very popular, a classic example of which is the famous Nestor Makhno, who proclaimed the Gulyai-Polye Free Republic in his small homeland.

In May-June 1918, Shchors arrived in Moscow. Most likely, it was from this moment that he began to work closely with the Bolsheviks. There is an opinion that the key factor contributing to Shchors’s decision to join the Bolsheviks was the influence of the security officer Fruma Khaikina. So, after the disbandment of the rebel detachment, presumably in May 1918, Shchors headed from Unecha to Moscow, where, according to some sources, he was received by Lenin himself. In particular, Shchors’s close associate Kazimir Kvyatek (1888-1938) later recalled this.

This meeting is also mentioned by some of Shchors’ biographers.

In the first half of September 1918, Shchors, on orders from the Central Military Revolutionary Committee, arrived at the Unecha border station, with the task of forming a full-fledged military unit here from the many partisan and Red Guard detachments that already existed in the region.

Under the terms of the Brest-Litovsk Peace Treaty, a neutral zone was established between Ukraine occupied by the Kaiser’s troops and Soviet Russia. One of its sections passed just a little west of Unecha. Thus, the village of Lyshchichi, located not far from Unecha, was already in the zone of German occupation. It was to this front-line zone that Nikolai Shchors was sent in September 1918.

The birthday of the Shchorsovsky regiment is considered to be September 11, 1918, since it was on this day that the issue of choosing the name of the unit was decided at the general meeting. As you know, the regiment was named Bogunsky - in honor of Ivan Bohun - a Cossack colonel from the Khmelnitsky region.

Ivan Bogun

The Bohunsky regiment was formed from already existing rebel groups and detachments that flocked to Unecha from all sides, as well as from local volunteer residents.

Around the same time, a regiment was formed near Novgorod-Seversky under the command of Timofey Viktorovich Chernyak (1891-1919), and near Kiev - the Tarashchansky regiment, whose commander was Vasily Nazarovich Bozhenko (1871-1919).

V.N. Bozhenko

In addition, a separate company was formed in Nizhyn, which was later transformed into a separate Nizhyn regiment. On September 22, 1918, by order of the All-Ukrainian Central Military Revolutionary Committee, all these units were brought together, forming the First Ukrainian Soviet Division, the commander of which was appointed a former lieutenant colonel of the tsarist army, a native of Nezhinsky district, Nikolai Grigorievich Krapivyansky (1889-1948).

At the same time, a native of Nizhyn district, Mikhail Petrovich Kirponos (1892-1941), a future famous military leader who died in the first year of the Great Patriotic War, was very active in organizing rebel activity in the Chernigov region. According to some reports, in the fall of 1918 M.P. Kirponos with one of the detachments joined the 1st Ukrainian Insurgent Division, after which for some time he was the commandant of Starodub, where he was involved in the formation of Soviet military units.

In April-June 1918, Konstantin Konstantinovich Rokossovsky (1896-1968) - the future legendary Soviet marshal, and at that time - assistant to the chief of the Kargopol Red Guard cavalry detachment, operating in the area of ​​Unecha, Khutor-Mikhailovsky and Konotop. This detachment was formed in December 1917 from soldiers of the 5th Dragoon Kargopol Regiment who wished to enlist in the Red Army. Among them was Konstantin Rokossovsky. By the way, the 5th Dragoon Kargopol Detachment was once formed on the basis of the dragoon regiment of General Gudovich. Before being transferred to the Unecha region, the Kargopol detachment carried out tasks to “clean up” territories in the Vologda and Kostroma region. At the end of March 1918, a train with Kargopol residents arrived in Bryansk, from where they moved southwest, to the no-man's-land area. The Kargopol detachment stayed here until the beginning of June 1918, after which it was hastily transferred to the Urals.

However, the list of famous personalities who participated in the events of 1918 near our city is not limited to this. Among other famous figures from the times of the revolution and civil war, who were active in our region, we can name Vitaly Markovich Primakov (1897-1937) - the famous corps commander, repressed in 1937. During the Civil War, Primakov commanded a cavalry brigade, division and cavalry corps of the Chervonny Cossacks. In 1918, Primakov participated in organizing the insurgent movement in the no man's land near Unecha. Let us note that he, like many others active in our region during the years of the revolution and civil war, ended up here not by chance. Primakov was a native of Semenovka and, accordingly, knew the Northern Chernihiv region well. Under the leadership of Primakov, in January 1918, the 1st Regiment of the Red Cossacks was formed from volunteers, which was stationed for two months in Pochep. This regiment soon became a brigade, and then was deployed into a cavalry division. After the civil war, V.M. Primakov was on military-diplomatic work in China, Afghanistan and Japan. In June 1937 he was shot on charges of a fascist military conspiracy. I went on a case with M.N. Tukhachevsky, I.E. Yakir, I.P. Uborevich. An interesting detail from the personal life of V.M. Primakov is his third marriage, which he entered into in June 1930 with Lilya Brik (1891-1978), better known to the general public as Mayakovsky's common-law wife.

Vitaly Markovich Primakov

The Bohunsky regiment, which interests us primarily, under the command of Shchors, became part of the division as number three. By the beginning of October 1918, the regiment's personnel numbered about 1,000 people. Some of the fighters were formed from local volunteers. There were a lot of people who wanted to join the ranks of the Bogunians from among the residents of the surrounding villages. However, despite the large number of people wishing to enroll in the regiment, it is unlikely that “mobilization” was in all cases a purely voluntary matter.

Among the Bogunians there were especially many residents of Naitopovich, Lyshchich, Bryankustich, Ryukhova. Most of them served as ordinary fighters, but some were appointed to leadership positions. So, residents of Naitopovich F.N. Gavrichenko (1892-1940) and Ya.B. Hasanov commanded battalions in the regiment. F.L. Mikhaldyko from Lyshchich was a political commissar, his fellow villager Mikhail Isakovich Kozhemyako (1893-?) was the head of the regiment's mounted reconnaissance, Zakhar Semenkov from Naytopovich served as the head of the regimental armory.

So, there was no shortage of personnel to replenish the regiment. However, the material resources of the unit left much to be desired. Many Bogunians did not have uniforms at all and fought in whatever they had to. Thus, in the book of the Unecha local historian A. Bovtunov, “The Knot of Slavic Friendship,” it is said that an order from the local revolutionary committee was posted throughout Unecha, which ordered the entire local non-working population to hand over 500 pairs of boots to the regiment within three days.

The structure of the Bohunsky regiment at the initial stage of its formation was as follows: the regiment had 3 battalions, an artillery battery of three guns (commander - Nikitenko), a cavalry squadron (commander - Bozhora) and a machine gun team of more than ten machine guns.

In parallel with the combat organization of the regiment, a utility unit and a medical unit were created in the unit. A regimental Revolutionary Military Tribunal was created from among the command, representatives of the political department of the regiment and Red Army soldiers. From the regimental political department, the tribunal initially included Kvyatek, Luginets and Zubov. The regiment's political department was specially created for cultural, educational and political work. The department had a recruiting unit that had connections with Ukraine and transported propaganda literature and newspapers there in Russian and German. The regiment's recruiting unit also supervised the withdrawal of partisan detachments from Ukraine to Soviet territory.

By the end of October 1918, the formation of the Bohunsky regiment was almost completed and Shchors decided to test his fighters in action. On October 23, 1918, the first battalion of the regiment under the command of Yakov Hasanov was tasked with liberating the villages of Lyshichi and Kustich Bryanov from the Germans. However, this task was not completed. Apparently, the regular German army was too much for the Bogunians, who did not have artillery support. It was here that the Bogunians suffered their first losses.

Unecha station stands apart in Shchors’ life not only because it was here that he began his military career. In the city Shchors met his fate. Her name was Fruma Efimovna Khaikina (1897-1977).

This extraordinary woman was born on February 6, 1897 in Novozybkov into the family of a Jewish employee (a very large Jewish diaspora lived in Novozybkov before the revolution). She received a home education (within two classes), from childhood she mastered the skill of a dressmaker and worked in a workshop.

Fruma Efimovna Khaikina

The exact time and place of Shchors’s acquaintance with Khaikina is unknown, but most likely it happened in the fall of 1918 in Unecha, since it is difficult to assume that this could have happened somewhere else based on objective data.

Khaikina is usually called Shchors’s wife, although there is no information about the official registration of the marriage between them. However, this is not so significant, since in fact for Shchors she was a constant life partner. The surviving touching letters of the commander to his beloved testify to the strong feelings Shchors had for Khaikina.

One of Shchors' closest associates during the “Unech period” of his life was Sergei Ivanovich Petrenko-Petrikovsky (1894-1964), one of the active organizers of the Bolshevik movement in the Chernigov province in 1918-1919. Petrenko-Petrikovsky was born in 1894 in Lublin. He joined the ranks of the RSDLP in 1911, while still studying at the Lublin gymnasium. According to gendarmerie reports, Petrenko-Petrikovsky was identified as a member of the anarcho-syndicalist group of the RSDLP. Then he studied at St. Petersburg University, but in 1915 he was expelled and exiled to Siberia for participating in the revolutionary movement. It is known that in 1914 Petrenko-Petrikovsky, who was fluent in Polish, illegally traveled to Krakow, where he visited Lenin, giving him letters and literature. In 1916, while in Krasnoyarsk, Petrenko-Petrikovsky was drafted into the army, after which he was removed from police surveillance. In May 1917, Petrikovsky entered a four-month course at the Vladimir Junker Infantry School, while continuing to conduct Bolshevik propaganda work, actively participating in the political life of the party. On September 1, 1917, Petrenko-Petrikovsky was promoted to ensign and sent to continue his service in Kharkov. After the October Revolution, in November 1917, he was appointed head of the Kharkov garrison. In March 1918, after the occupation of Kharkov by German troops, he was evacuated to Moscow. During the formation of the Bohunsky regiment, Petrenko-Petrikovsky was the chief of staff of the 1st Ukrainian Insurgent Division, often visited Unecha and probably took an active part in the organization of the regiment.

commanders of the Bohunsky regiment

Known as one of the participants in negotiations with the Germans during the so-called “Lishchich fraternization”. Subsequently, Petrikovsky was the commander of the Special Cavalry Brigade, which was part of the 44th Division. After this, he served in the Crimean Army, which fought against Denikin. He directly commanded the units that crossed Perekop and Sivash in April 1919, rushed deep into the Crimean Peninsula and reached Sevastopol. After this, Petrikovsky was appointed chief of staff of the Crimean Army. After Crimea S.I. Petrikovsky served as military commissar of the 25th Chapaevskaya Rifle Division, division commander of the 52nd and 40th Rifle Divisions. In 1935 he was brigade commissar of the Red Army. In 1937, Petrikovsky worked as a senior engineer at the Orgoboronprom plant of the People's Commissariat of the Aviation Industry. During the Great Patriotic War, S.I. Petrikovsky traveled around the front on inspection trips, and then was appointed head of the Central Scientific Experimental Air Force Base. Since 1943 - Major General of the Engineering and Technical Service. After the war, Petrikovsky worked as the head of the military department of the Moscow Aviation Technological Institute and took an active part in social and political life. In 1962, Petrikovsky conducted a private investigation into the circumstances of N.A.’s death. Shchors, based on the results of which he concluded that the commander was deliberately killed. January 25, 1964 S.I. Petrikovsky died and was buried in Moscow at the Novodevichy cemetery. In the name of S.I. One of the streets of Simferopol was named Petrenko-Petrikovsky.

S.I. Petrenko-Petrikovsky

Another person close to Shchors was Kazimir Frantsevich Kvyatek (real full name - Jan Karlovich Vitkovsky) - born in 1888, a Pole by nationality, a native of Warsaw, a revolutionary, who in tsarist times spent a lot of time in prison for his activities. In 1905, Kwiatek participated in the assassination attempt on the Warsaw governor Maksimovic and only due to his minority escaped the gallows, which was commuted to a long prison sentence (according to other sources, to eternal settlement in Eastern Siberia). Kwiatek was rescued from captivity by the events of February 1917, and soon yesterday’s criminal and convict plunged headlong into the thick of events. In general, people like Kwiatek, in the wake of revolutionary changes, often turned out to be the most popular characters.

Kazimir Franzevich Kwiatek

After his release, fate brought Kvyatek to the Chernigov region, where he met Shchors, with whom he went through his entire military journey from beginning to end, remaining close until the death of the commander.

In 1918, Kvyatek, together with Shchors, graduated from the Red Commanders Course in Moscow. At the age of 30, Kvyatek was one of the most experienced fighters in the Bohunsky regiment, holding the position of assistant commander, and after Shchors was appointed to the post of division commander, Kvyatek himself became the commander of the Bogun regiment. Subsequently, he commanded the 130th Bogunskaya Brigade, was assistant commander of the 44th and 19th Infantry Divisions, and finally rose to the position of commander of the Kharkov Military District (KhVO). In 1938, Kwiatek, who at that time served as deputy commander of the HVO, was repressed on charges of military conspiracy and belonging to the Polish Military Organization. Together with him in this case was such a famous Soviet figure as I.S. Unschlicht (1879-1938) and many other military leaders, mostly of Polish origin. The criminal case ended with the expected tragic result for Kvyatek - he was sentenced to capital punishment. The execution date for Kwiatek is unknown.

Meanwhile, the headquarters of the Bohunsky regiment moved to Naitopovichi. The building where the regiment's command was located in this village has survived to this day. Today it is an ordinary residential building.

Also in the village there is a mass grave of Red Army soldiers of the Bogunsky regiment who died in 1918. Most likely, the Bogunians, who laid down their heads in the very first clashes with the Germans near Unecha, were buried in this grave.

The concentration of troops in Naitopovichi was noted even in the Kyiv press, where at that time Petliura was already dominant. Thus, the newspaper “Kyiv Mysl” dated November 21, 1918 reported:

“...In the village of Naitopovichi, which is 20 versts north of Starodub, a concentration of Bolshevik gangs was noticed, so far with a force of up to 800 people...”.

Another consequence of the November Revolution in Germany was the annulment of the Brest Peace Treaty by Soviet Russia. This event occurred on the same day as the fraternization in Lyshchichi - November 13, 1918. In the first half of November 1918, a revolution took place in Germany, as a result of which Emperor Wilhelm abdicated the throne. On these days, November 13, 1918, those significant events took place related to the fraternization of the soldiers of the Bohunsky regiment, led by N. A. Shchors, with German soldiers on the outskirts of Lyshchich. Three days later, the Germans, having concluded a truce, left Lyshchichi. From here, units of the Bohunsky regiment began their campaign for the liberation of Ukraine. After this, the Bolsheviks were no longer bound by anything in the implementation of plans to establish Soviet power in Ukraine, especially since the main obstacle to this - the German army - had already left the country. Starting to implement these plans, Moscow urgently creates a Provisional Workers' and Peasants' Government of Ukraine headed by Georgy Leonidovich Pyatakov (1890-1937).

G.L Pyatakov

However, no one was going to give power in Ukraine to the Bolsheviks just like that. She had to be conquered by force of arms. Shchors and his unit will be destined to play one of the key roles in the upcoming Bolshevik struggle for Ukraine. From the moment the Bogunsky regiment was created, Shchors and his fighters began to fight the Germans, i.e. with foreign occupiers, but now had to refocus on a completely different kind of task - the struggle for power in Ukraine. And their compatriots - Ukrainians, Russian Belarusians, who did not accept Bolshevik ideals and did not want to understand them - were supposed to become opponents in this struggle. This was the most terrible tragedy of the civil war in Russia. Brother against brother, son against father...

On November 17, 1918, the Revolutionary Military Council of the Ukrainian Front was formed, which 2 days later gave the order to launch an attack on Ukraine, for which the Bolsheviks had to fight a wide variety of forces. In 1918-1921 in Ukraine they were opposed by the troops of Skoropadsky, Petlyura, the Ukrainian Galician Army, the White Guards of Denikin and Wrangel, Father Makhno...

So, the First Ukrainian Soviet Division began its combat journey.

The Bohunsky regiment is removed from its place of deployment and leaves Unecha. Meanwhile, German troops begin a hasty evacuation from Ukraine. Of course, in the current situation, they were no longer considered by the Bolsheviks as a military adversary - the First Ukrainian Soviet Division, which included Shchors’ Bohunsky Regiment, was tasked with advancing in the direction of Kyiv, overcoming the resistance of Petliura’s troops. The Second Ukrainian Division was sent to Kharkov.

The names of the division change: 1st Soviet Division. Regiment names:

1st Soviet Bogunsky Regiment,

2nd Soviet Tarashchansky Regiment,

3rd Soviet Novgorod-Seversky Regiment.

The Nizhyn company joins the 1st Soviet Bogunsky Regiment.

After the start of the Ukrainian campaign, the immediate target of the Bohunsky regiment was Klintsy, battles for which began at the end of November 1918. On the territory of Starodubshchina, including in the battles for Klintsy, Shchors’ fighters were opposed by the Ukrainian Serozhupanna division, which since September 1918 was stationed in the regions of Starodubshchina not occupied by the Bolsheviks. The number of “serozhupanniks” was a little more than 1000 people, however, later, after Petliura came to power, the division was replenished with recruits. In addition to the Haidamaks, German units also entered into confrontation with the Bohunts near Klintsy in separate episodes.

The German artillery general von Gronau reported the following about these events:

“Under the protection of thick fog, on November 28 at 9 o’clock in the morning, four hundred Bolsheviks attacked from the south and southwest and after a while another 300 from the east to Klintsy. In the first commotion they managed to occupy the railway station. A vigorous counter-offensive, carried out under the command of Captain Kospot by the second battalion of 106 Germans. shelf and department. hussar with the very successful help of the Germans. art. Regiment No. 19 took the station from the enemy and repelled the enemy who burst in from the east. He fled from the Germans. onslaught, leaving many killed and wounded in the hands of the Germans, as well as 12 prisoners and 5 machine guns. At 3 o'clock in the afternoon, a detachment of Bolsheviks, numbering 300 people, repeated the attack from the north. Their attack reached the wire fences of the city and was defeated here by the fire of our infantry. Fifth company of the Germans. infantry The regiment took several prisoners and two machine guns in a counterattack. Our movements were performed under the command of Lieutenant Colonel Schultz. The Ukrainian police were mainly involved in the defense. I thank the army and leaders for their posture and courage. They repelled the malicious, outnumbered enemy from our villages. dor. paths of the concentration area. This was important for the entire corps and for our comrades returning from the south of Ukraine to their homeland...”

The first November attempts to take Klintsy were unsuccessful and Shchors took a break.

On November 25, 1918, Starodub was occupied by the forces of the Tarashchansky regiment. In the coming days, the entire territory in the vicinity of Starodub was cleared of Haidamaks and Germans.

Attempts to take Klintsy resumed in the first ten days of December 1918. At that time, the Germans were still in the city and their presence was a serious obstacle for Shchors. However, the issue with the Germans was resolved peacefully. So, even earlier, Shchors gave the order to the soldiers of the 1st battalion of the Tarashchansky regiment to occupy the Svyatsy railway crossing between Klintsy and Novozybkov and thereby block the retreat route for the Germans, who were no longer eager to go home as soon as possible. On December 9, 1918, the Tarashans occupied a crossing point, where the Germans immediately sent a detachment with a gun and machine guns. The Germans managed to disarm 2 platoons of the Tarashchansky regiment squadron. The situation was resolved through negotiations, during which it was agreed that the Germans would return weapons to the Tarashchanites, leave Klintsy without a fight, and Shchors would give them the right to unhindered travel by rail towards Novozybkov and Gomel.

After the removal of a strong rival from the theater of operations, further events developed according to Shchors’ scenario. For the Haidamaks, the situation was further complicated by the fact that armed clashes began between them and the Germans who were leaving Klintsy.

On December 13, 1918, during battles with the Haidamak units, the Bohunsky regiment occupied Klintsy and Soviet power was established in the city. Soon, the head of the Unecha Cheka, Fruma Khaikina, arrived here and began to establish “revolutionary order” in the city.

By the time of the occupation of Klintsov, Shchors already commanded the 2nd divisional brigade, formed by divisional order dated October 4, 1918. The 2nd brigade included the Bohunsky and Tarashchansky regiments. There were also changes in the leadership of the division itself. Former Socialist Revolutionary militant I.S. was appointed division commander instead of Krapivyansky. Lokotosh (Lokotash), chief of divisional headquarters instead of Petrikovsky - Fateev.

On December 25, 1918, Novozybkov was occupied, followed immediately by Zlynka. Along the way, the Bohunsky regiment was constantly replenished with new volunteers. Four days later, Shchors was already on his native land. On December 29, 1918, the Gorodnyansky district of the Chernihiv region was almost completely liberated. In particular, the first serious battle of the Bohunsky regiment with the Haidamaks (regular troops of the UPR) took place in Gorodnya. Around the same time, Father Bozhenko’s Tarashchansky regiment arrived in the indicated area, which had previously been stationed in Starodub, neighboring Unecha, and was moving in the direction of Chernigov through Klimovo. It was the Tarashchanites who entered Gorodnya on the first day of 1919, and the day before liberated Shchors’s hometown of Snovsk.

At the end of 1918, German troops left Ukraine. Together with them, the Ukrainian hetman Pavel Petrovich Skoropadsky (1873-1945) emigrated to Berlin. His escape was preceded by the following events. After it became obvious that Skoropadsky’s main support - the German army - intended to evacuate from Ukraine, the hetman tried to rely on the Entente and the White movement. To do this, he abandoned the slogan of an independent Ukraine and announced his readiness to fight for the restoration of a united Russia together with the White Army. However, these plans were not destined to come true, since in December 1918 he was overthrown by the leaders of the Ukrainian National Union Petliura and Vinnychenko. On December 14, 1918, Skoropadsky officially renounced power.

So, after Skoropadsky’s flight, power in Ukraine passed into the hands of the Directory, headed by V.K., even more hostile to Bolshevism. Vinnichenko (1880-1951) and S.V. Petlyura (1879-1926).

The leaders of the Directory understood that their armed forces did not have too much potential, and therefore, on the eve of the fight against the Bolsheviks, they counted heavily on the help of the Anglo-French troops that landed in Odessa, and also relied on reserves from Galicia.

On January 12, 1919, as a result of stubborn fighting, fighters of the Bohunsky regiment captured Chernigov, in which there was a large Petlyura corps, well armed with artillery and even armored cars.

By the end of January 1919, the division liberated the large centers of the Chernihiv region Oster and Nizhyn, and by the beginning of February 1919, Shchors was already on the near approaches to Kyiv. Subsequent events showed that the capture of the Ukrainian capital was not a very difficult task, since the Directory had insufficiently combat-ready troops in Kyiv and Petliura surrendered the city practically without a fight.

On February 1, 1919, the Bohunsky and Tarashchansky regiments almost simultaneously entered Brovary and, without waiting for the rest of the divisional forces to arrive, began preparing for an attack on Kyiv. It was here, in Brovary, that Shchors met with the commander of the Ukrainian Front, Vladimir Antonov-Ovseenko. Subsequently, he would describe this meeting in his memoirs as follows:

“... We got acquainted with the command staff of the division. Shchors - commander of the 1st regiment (former staff captain), dry, well-groomed, with a firm look, sharp, clear movements. The Red Army men loved him for his thoughtfulness and courage, his commanders respected him for his intelligence, clarity and resourcefulness...”

The main forces of the 1st Division entered Kyiv on February 6, 1919 in the Pechersk region. The very next day, Antonov-Ovseyenko announced a telegram from the center about the presentation of honorary red banners to the Bogunsky and Tarashchansky regiments, and their commanders Shchors and Bozhenko - award weapons. After the capture of Kyiv, according to the order of the division chief Lokotosh, Shchors was appointed commandant of the Ukrainian capital - the city in which he spent his youth. For ten days, Shchors was the absolute master of Kyiv, placing his commandant’s office on the corner of Khreshchatyk and Duma Square (now Maidan Nezalezhnosti.

1st Soviet Division in Kyiv 1919

Researchers of the civil war in Ukraine often like to compare the Bohuntsy commander Shchors with another divisional military leader - the commander of the Tarashchansky regiment, “father” Bozhenko. At the same time, these were people of very different types.

From the biography of Vasily Nazarovich Bozhenko it is known that he was born in 1871 in the village of Berezhinka, Kherson province, into a peasant family. During the years of the first Russian Revolution, he participated in propaganda campaigns of the RSDLP in Odessa, where he worked as a carpenter. In 1904 he was arrested. A participant in the Russo-Japanese War, he held the rank of sergeant major in the tsarist army. In 1907 he was sentenced to prison for revolutionary activities. In 1915-1917 he worked in Kyiv as a cabinetmaker. After the February Revolution of 1917, he was a member of the Kyiv Council. After October 1917, he was an active participant in the civil war in Ukraine on the side of the Bolsheviks. Brother V.N. Bozhenko - Mikhail Nazarovich - during the civil war he commanded a squadron of the Bohunsky regiment.

bust of V.N. Bozhenko in Kyiv
After a two-week rest in Kyiv, the division continued to move west - in the direction of Fastov, which was soon taken. After Fastov’s lesson, a course was set for Berdichev and Zhitomir.

After the capture of Berdichev, on March 8, 1919, Shchors was appointed head of the First Ukrainian Soviet Division. This happened while the commander was in Kazatin (modern Vinnytsia region). Shchors handed over command of the 1st Bogunsky Regiment to his assistant Kvyatek, and he himself took command of the division from Lokotosh, which became part of the formed 1st Ukrainian Soviet Army. Thus, at the age of 23, Shchors became the youngest division commander in the history of the Russian army.

Sergei Kasser, a former tsarist officer, was appointed chief of staff of the division. The position of political commissar of the division was then occupied by Isakovich, who had known Shchors since the days of Unecha, where he helped organize political work in the Bogunsky regiment. Kazimir Kwiatek took command of the Bohun regiment.

In March 1919, the Bogun forces captured the temporary capital of the Directory, Vinnitsa, followed by the strategically important Zhmerinka. At this time, Petlyura, who had retreated to Kamenets-Podolsky, received significant reinforcements from Galicia and by the end of March 1919 launched a counter-offensive in the Kiev direction. As a result of the offensive, Petliura’s troops, with the support of the Galicians and White Poles, managed to occupy Zhitomir, Berdichev, Korosten and thereby open a direct path to the Ukrainian capital. To correct the current situation, the Bohunsky and Tarashchansky regiments were urgently transferred from near Vinnitsa to the Gorodyanka station area and thereby blocked Petlyura’s path to Kyiv. Stubborn fighting ensued, as a result of which Petlyura was soon forced to retreat to the west.

In May 1919, the 1st Ukrainian Division achieved significant successes, advancing deep into western Ukraine. The Shchorsovites managed to occupy such strategically important cities as Dubno, Rivne and Ostrog.

It should be noted that in the spring of 1919, Shchors’s 1st Ukrainian Division was a very large and combat-ready formation that played a key role in the entire Kiev military theater of the Ukrainian front. The division's personnel numbered about 12 thousand fighters. The division was armed with, not counting personal small arms and saber weapons, more than 200 machine guns, about 20 artillery pieces, 10 mortars, bomb throwers and even an armored train. The division also had its own air detachment and included a communications battalion and a marching unit. The main forces of the division were represented by four regiments: Bogunsky (commander Kvyatek), Tarashchansky (Bozhenko), Nezhinsky (Chernyak) and the 4th regiment (Antonyuk). In terms of ethnic composition, Shchors' division was multinational - in addition to Russians, Ukrainians and Belarusians, Poles, Czechs, Slovaks, Romanians and representatives of other nations also served here. There were even Chinese (it is possible that these were Chinese soldiers who were brought to Unecha by F. Khaikina in 1917).

One of the main problems during the civil war was the acute shortage of qualified leadership personnel. With the rapidly growing number of enlisted personnel, the command staff experienced a huge shortage of trained officers. It was necessary to promote the most competent Red Army soldiers to command positions, who stood out from the general background with their valuable qualities. Realizing the seriousness of this problem, Shchors in May 1919 issued an order to create a “School of Red Commanders” in Zhitomir, for training in which about 300 Red Army soldiers were selected, who were supposed to comprehend all the intricacies of command. Let us note in this regard that Shchors, as a commander, was always characterized by a desire for drill training - he paid increased attention to it. M.P. was appointed assistant head of the divisional school for Red commanders in June 1919. Kirponos. The building in which the Shchorsov school was located has been preserved in Zhitomir to this day and is located on Pushkinskaya Street.

By the beginning of June 1919, Shchors' division, by decision of the Revolutionary Military Council of the Republic, was included in the 12th Ukrainian Army. At the same time, the area of ​​​​combat operations for the Shchorsovites did not change - they still operated in the Western Ukrainian direction, where, as already mentioned, by the beginning of the summer of 1919 they achieved impressive successes. However, soon a turning point came at the front.

Tension on the civil war fronts reached its peak in the summer of 1919. Ukraine became a key springboard in the struggle for power for the Bolsheviks, where events developed in a very threatening manner for the Reds. In the south and east of Ukraine, White Guard units were actively advancing, and from the west and southwest the joint forces of the Poles and Petliurists were pressing hard. Speaking about the western direction, we note that, by and large, this entire front was held by Shchors’ division, which was supposed to withstand the onslaught of the Petliurists, Galicians and Poles expected here. And this onslaught was not long in coming.

The powerful offensive of Petliura’s troops began with a breakthrough of the front near the city of Proskurov (modern Khmelnitsky). Soon Starokonstantinov and Shepetivka fell. At the same time, in the north, the Poles took Sarny and continued moving towards Kyiv. In such conditions, there was a serious threat of losing Zhitomir, which was a key point on the way to the Ukrainian capital.

To rectify the situation, the Bolshevik command in June-July 1919 developed a counteroffensive plan, as a result of which Shchors managed to recapture Starokonstantinov, Zhmerinka and Proskurov, throwing the Petliurists behind the Zbruch River (the left tributary of the Dniester on the Podolsk Upland).

At the same time, the White Poles advanced from the west. Shchors organizes a retreat to the Korosten area, leaving town behind town.

At this time, news of the death of regimental commanders Bozhenko and Chernyak reaches the division commander. On August 19, 1919, Shchors attended the farewell ceremony for the Tarashchan commander. According to the official version, Father Bozhenko died suddenly as a result of a stomach ulcer; according to another version, he was poisoned by agents of Petlyura’s counterintelligence. About the death of Timofey Chernyak, it was reported that he was brutally killed in Zdolbunov (modern Rivne region) by Petliurists who made their way to the location of the Novgorod-Severskaya brigade. According to another version, Chernyak was killed as a result of a riot raised by a company of Galicians that was part of his brigade. Involuntarily, but this interesting detail attracts attention: all three commanders - Shchors, Bozhenko and Chernyak, who once launched a campaign against Ukraine together, died under reliably unclear circumstances almost at the same time - in August 1919.

Farewell to Bozhenko

While in Korosten, Shchors receives an order to hold the city by any means possible for as long as possible. This was very important for the Bolsheviks, because... Kyiv was evacuated through Korosten, which Denikin was already attacking from the south.

After the loss of Kyiv, Shchors, whose division was near Zhitomir, was faced with the task of evacuating from this area, since the division commander was already practically in a pincer movement: the Poles were advancing from the west, Petlyura in the southwest, Makhno to the south, and Denikin’s troops from the east.

While at Korosten, the division commander began organizing a retreat, while his division regularly engaged in battle with Petlyura’s troops advancing from the west. By this time, Shchors' division had already become known as the 44th Rifle Division. It was formed by uniting under the leadership of Shchors the 1st Ukrainian Soviet and 44th Border Divisions (commander I.N. Dubovoy). The divisional regiments received new numbering: the 1st, 2nd and 3rd Bogun regiments were renamed the 388th, 389th and 390th Bogun regiments, respectively.

The second half of August 1919 began. Shchors had exactly two weeks to live.

The officially announced version of Shchors's death sounded as follows: the commander died on the battlefield near the village of Beloshitsa (now Shchorsovka) not far from Korosten from a bullet wound to the head, which was inflicted on him by a Petlyura machine gunner who was holed up at a railway booth. Here it should immediately be said that the main source of this version was Ivan Dubovoy, who served in the 44th division as Shchors’ deputy, and the commander of the Bohunsky regiment, Kazimir Kvyatek, who were in close proximity to him at the time of the division commander’s death.

This happened on August 30, 1919. Before the start of the battle, the commander and Dubovoy arrived in the vicinity of the village of Beloshitsa, where fighters of the 3rd battalion of the Bohunsky regiment (commander - F. Gavrichenko) lay down in a chain, preparing for battle with the Petliurists. The Boguntsy dispersed along the railway embankment at the edge of a small forest, and in front, about 200 meters from the embankment, there was a railway box in which the Petliurists organized a machine-gun firing point. When Shchors was in position, the enemy opened strong machine-gun fire, and the commander came within the radius of action. According to Dubovoy, the fire was so strong that it forced them to lie down on the ground. Shchors began to examine the enemy’s machine-gun position through binoculars, and at that moment the fatal bullet overtook him, hitting him directly in the head. The commander died 15 minutes later. Ivan Dubovoy, who was long believed to be the only witness to the death of Shchors, claimed that he personally bandaged Shchors’s shot head and at that very time the commander literally died in his arms. The entry hole of the bullet, according to Dubovoy, was located in the front, in the area of ​​the left temple, and the bullet came out from behind.

This heroic version of the death of the Red commander completely suited the political elite of the Soviet Union and was not questioned by anyone for a long time.

Only many years later, circumstances became known that provided rich food for thought about the reliability of the version voiced above. But this will be discussed below.

After the death of Shchors, his body, without an autopsy or medical examination, was transported to Korosten, and from there by funeral train to Klintsy, where a farewell ceremony for relatives and colleagues with the division commander took place.

The body of Shchors in Klintsy was met by Khaikin and E.A. Shchadenko (1885-1951) - the same Shchadenko who during the Great Patriotic War was Deputy People's Commissar of Defense of the USSR. Shchors' father and sister urgently arrived from Snovsk. In Klintsy, the division commander’s body was embalmed, sealed in a zinc coffin and then sent by freight train to Samara, where he was buried on September 12 (according to other sources, 14), 1919, in the same coffin at the local All Saints Cemetery. The funeral was quiet and modest. F. Khaikina took part in the procession, as well as Red Army soldiers, including the Bohuntsy - Shchors' military comrades-in-arms. Why Samara was chosen as the burial place for Shchors is not known for certain. There are only versions, of which we highlight three main ones:

1) Shchors was taken to distant Samara and secretly buried away from his native places by order of the Bolshevik elite, who thus tried to hide the true reasons for the death of the commander;

2) The commander was not buried in his homeland, because they feared that his grave, being in a zone of active hostilities, could become the object of vandalism by enemies, as happened with Bozhenko, who died in Zhitomir in August 1919. The Petliurists brutally abused the latter’s corpse: they removed Bozhenko’s body from the grave, tied it to two horses and tore it into pieces. “...The soldiers, like children, cried at his coffin. These were difficult times for the young Soviet republic. The enemy, sensing that death was imminent, made last desperate efforts. The brutal gangs brutally dealt with not only living fighters, but also mocked the corpses of the dead. We could not leave Shchors to be abused by the enemy... The political department of the army forbade burying Shchors in threatened areas. We went north with the coffin of our comrade. A permanent guard of honor stood at the body, laid in a zinc coffin. We decided to bury him in Samara.”

3) There is information that Shchors’s wife, F. Khaikina, at that time had parents living in Samara who fled Novozybkov in the spring of 1918 when the Germans approached the city. That is why the decision was made to bury the commander in the city on the Volga. In addition, Khaikina was already pregnant at that time and was soon to give birth, so perhaps she chose to go to her parents for that time. Although the exact place and time of birth of their daughter Valentina with Shchors are unknown. This version is indirectly supported by the following important fact: with the beginning of the Great Patriotic War, Fruma Khaikina evacuated with her daughter from Moscow not just anywhere, but specifically to Kuibyshev.

After Shchors' death, command of the division was taken over by his assistant Ivan Naumovich Dubovoy (1896-1938). Under his leadership, the division soon achieved significant success on the fields of the civil war in Ukraine.

It is known about Dubov that he was born in 1896 in the Chigirinsky district of the Kyiv province and came from a peasant family. Until 1917 he studied at the Kiev Commercial Institute, then served in the army. In June 1917, while still in military service, he joined the RSDLP(b). Participated in the establishment of Soviet power in Siberia and Donbass. From February 1918, Dubovoy was the commander of the Red Guard detachment in Bakhmut (modern Artemovsk, Donetsk region), then the military commissar of the Novomakeevsky district, the commandant of the Central Headquarters of the Red Guard of Donbass, and the assistant chief of staff of the 10th Army. In the summer and autumn of 1918 he took part in the defense of Tsaritsyn.

I.N. Oak

In February 1919, Dubovoy was appointed chief of staff of the group of troops of the Kyiv direction of the Ukrainian Front, then became chief of staff of the 1st Ukrainian Soviet Army, and in May-July 1919 served as commander of the 1st Ukrainian Soviet Army.

The paths of Shchors and Dubovoy crossed in July 1919, when the latter was appointed head of the 3rd Border Division, and then head of the 44th Infantry Division. At the beginning of August 1919, after the merger of the 44th Infantry Division with the 1st Ukrainian Soviet Division, Dubovoy became Shchors' deputy, and after the latter's death he took the place of division commander.

By 1935, Dubovoy had risen to the position of commander of the Kharkov Military District, but was soon arrested

In August 1937, the NKVD arrested Shchors' former divisional deputy, Ivan Dubovoy. It is difficult to name the true reasons for his arrest. Many historians believe that it was no coincidence that he was repressed precisely at the moment when Shchors began to be made into a popularly beloved hero - Dubov probably knew too much about the true causes of Shchors’ death. Officially I.N. Dubovoy, who at the time of his arrest held the position of commander of the Kharkov Military District, was convicted in the case of organizing a “military-fascist Trotskyist anti-Soviet conspiracy.” This was the famous “military case” in which Tukhachevsky, Yakir, Kork, Uborevich, Primakov and many other prominent Soviet military leaders were involved. All of them were liquidated and Dubovoy was no exception. He was shot on July 29, 1938 in Moscow, the day after the verdict was pronounced. In 1956, Dubovoy was posthumously rehabilitated.

During the investigation, Dubovoy made a shocking confession, saying that the murder of Shchors was his doing. Explaining the motives for the crime, Dubovoy stated that he killed the division commander out of personal hatred and a desire to take the place of division chief himself. The interrogation protocol of Dubovoy dated December 3, 1937 records: “When Shchors turned his head towards me and said this phrase (“the Galicians have a good machine gun, damn it”), I shot him in the head with a revolver and hit him in the temple. The then commander of the 388th Infantry Regiment, Kvyatek, who was lying next to Shchors, shouted: “They killed Shchors!” I crawled to Shchors, and he died in my arms, 10-15 minutes later, without regaining consciousness.”

In addition to the confession of Dubovoy himself, similar accusations were made against him in March 1938 by Kazimir Kvyatek, who wrote a statement from Lefortovo prison addressed to the People's Commissar of Internal Affairs Yezhov, where he indicated that he directly suspected Dubovoy of the murder of Shchors.

Here's the statement in full:

"To the People's Commissar of Internal Affairs
USSR to Nikolai Ivanovich Yezhov from the arrested Kazimir Frantsevich Kvyatek.

Statement

I decided to frankly tell the investigation about my anti-Soviet work and everything that is known about the anti-Soviet affairs of other participants in the anti-Soviet military conspiracy. Wanting to cleanse myself completely, I consider it my duty to tell you about one, the most terrible crime against the Soviet people, of which I consider I.N. guilty. Dubovoy, former commander of the HVO. I want to talk about the murder of the former commander of the 44th Infantry Division Shchors and everything that leads me to the firm belief that Dubovoy is involved in this case. At the end of August 1919, the 44th Division defended Korosten. The 388th Infantry Regiment, which I commanded, occupied the defense from the village of Mogilno to Beloshitsa. I arrived at the site of the 3rd battalion in the village. Beloshitsa with the aim of organizing a short counterattack in order to draw part of the forces of the Petlyura and Galician units towards themselves. When I brought the reserve company to the edge of the forest, gave the order and assigned the task, I was informed from the headquarters of the Mogilno regiment that Shchors, his deputy Dubovoy, Semenov, the commander of the division, and others had arrived at the 3rd battalion. On the outskirts of the village I met Shchors and reported to him the situation. Shchors ordered to lead him to the position. I tried to persuade Shchors not to go to the front line of fire, however, he went to the soldiers lying in the trenches, talking to them and joking. One of the Red Army soldiers suddenly told Shchors that in the morning he had observed a gathering of the enemy in the barn house, that there was a machine gun there, and that it was dangerous for Shchors to walk around openly. Semenov, the head of the artillery division, proposed firing at this house from the battery and ordered the battery commander to move the command post to himself, and when the battery command post was ready, he began to shoot himself. Semyonov shot unsuccessfully, scattered the shells, to stop wasting shells, I suggested that Shchors entrust the shooting to the battery chief, Khimichenko, who covered the house with a 3-4 m shell; smoke and dust appeared, which covered this house. About 20 seconds later machine gun fire was suddenly opened. I lay down to the left of Shchors, Dubovoy to the right, next to him. Lying under machine-gun fire, I drew Shchors’ attention to the fact that the enemy had a good machine gunner, that he had studied the area in front of him and was clearly observing. Shchors answered me that the enemy’s machine gunner was good and seasoned. At this time, I heard a strong swearing from a Red Army soldier, who said “who is shooting from a revolver there,” although I did not see the shooter. The conversation with Shchors stopped; suddenly I looked at Shchors and noticed his glassy eyes, I shouted to Dubovoy - Shchors has been killed. I immediately got up and rushed to the edge of the forest, 50-70 meters from the position, to the location of the reserve company, battalion headquarters, and battalion medical aid station. By this time, Dubovoy had already pulled Shchors behind cover and ordered the battalion commander to carry out the assigned task, i.e. deliver a short blow to the enemy. I myself went forward with the advancing chains. Having walked 500-600 meters with them, I returned back, but Shchors was no longer there, Dubovoy had taken him to Korosten. From the nurse, and I myself saw that Shchors was hit in the right temple. He lived for 20 minutes without regaining consciousness. It is noteworthy that Shchors was not buried in Korosten, but was hastily sent, with some kind of panic, to the Volga to Samara. Subsequently, there were separate conversations in the regiment that Shchors was killed by his own people. Moreover, there was intense talk among the fighters that Shchorsa was killed by Dubova in order to take Shchorsa’s place. This thought also occurred to me back then. I proceeded from personal suspicions, based on the circumstances of Shchors’ death, which I myself observed. I knew very little of Dubovoy at that time, since I saw him for the second time. Before this, Dubovoy was the chief of staff of the 1st Ukrainian Soviet Army. Shchors was thus subordinate to Dubovoy. Shchors himself waged a tough fight against banditry, introduced revolutionary iron discipline and punished banditry strictly, stopping at nothing. In 1936, in January or February, when Dubov recruited me into a counter-revolutionary military conspiracy, I raised a question with Dubov regarding the picture of Shchors’ death and, among other things, I said that Shchors died somehow absurdly and that there were separate conversations in the regiment pointing to him Dubovoy. He answered me that there should be no discussion about the death of Shchors, since the vast majority believes that Shchors was killed by Petliura. Let this opinion remain so and he suggested to me, somewhat worried, not to talk about it anymore. This convinced me even more that Dubov had a direct connection to Shchors’ death.

Kwiatek
14.III.1938
Moscow Lefortovo Prison.

The most likely perpetrator of the murder of Shchors is a certain Pavel Tankhil-Tankhilevich, who on August 30, 1919 was on the battlefield near the village of Beloshitsa next to the division commander. The personality of Tankhil-Tankhilevich is not very well studied due to the lack of detailed information about him. However, some details are known: Pavel Samuilovich Tankhil-Tankhilevich, born in 1893, a native of Odessa, a Jew by nationality, a former high school student, in 1919, at the age of 25-26, he became a political inspector of the Revolutionary Military Council of the 12th Army. He was a member of the RCP(b). He spoke foreign languages, in particular French. This last detail may indicate his origins from a noble family. According to some reports, he had a criminal past, which, however, cannot be surprising, because. During the civil war, there were many former criminals in the ranks of the Bolsheviks.

The version of Tankhil-Tankhilevich's involvement in the murder is based primarily on the testimony of several eyewitnesses. Thus, a close associate of Shchors since Unech times - S.I. Petrikovsky, who served in the division as the commander of a cavalry brigade, said in his memoirs that Ivan Dubovoy, a few hours after the death of the commander, told him some interesting circumstances about the events that took place near the village of Beloshitsa. So, according to Dubovoy, next to Shchors there really was a political inspector of the Revolutionary Military Council, and at the same time he also fought, shooting at the enemy from a revolver, being next to the division commander. For what reason the political inspector found himself at the forefront of the 44th division during the battle is unclear. Subsequently, during interrogations by the NKVD, Dubovoy did not mention Tankhil-Tankhilevich even once.

It is also unknown who and when gave Tankhil-Tankhilevich the instruction to go on an inspection trip to Shchors’ division, however, it is obvious that this could not have been the personal initiative of the political inspector. One of those who had the authority to send political inspectors to certain units was a member of the Revolutionary Military Council of the 12th Army, Semyon Ivanovich Aralov, whose possible involvement in

Almost nothing is known about the further fate of Tankhil-Tankhilevich. In the fall of 1919, traces of the political inspector are lost; all that is known is that immediately after the death of Shchors, he was urgently transferred to the Southern Front. The name of Tankhil-Tankhilevich surfaced only in the second half of the 20s in the Baltic states, where he allegedly worked in Estonian counterintelligence.

In Unecha, a street was named after Shchors, and in 1957, opposite the railway station, a monument to the division commander was erected, made by Bryansk sculptor G.E. Kovalenko. Near the monument to Shchors in Unecha, in the late 80s of the last century, a square was laid out, which was previously called “Komsomolsky”. In 1991, due to its wear and tear, the monument was replaced with a new one, made by Kyiv craftsmen under the direction of sculptor V.M. Ivanenko. By the way, the people of Kiev already had experience in erecting a monument to Shchors. In the Ukrainian capital, a bronze division commander appeared in 1954 on Shevchenko Boulevard, and the sculptor was posed by none other than Leonid Kravchuk, the future first president of independent Ukraine, and then a young student at Kyiv University.

Old monument New monument

grave of N.A. Shchorsa in Kuibyshev

monument to N.K. Shchorsa in Kyiv

Youth

Born and raised in the village of Korzhovka, Velikoschimel volost, Gorodnyansky district, Chernigov province (since 1924 - the city of Snovsk, now the regional center of Shchors, Chernigov region of Ukraine). Born into the family of a wealthy peasant landowner (according to another version, from the family of a railway worker).

In 1914 he graduated from the military paramedic school in Kyiv. At the end of the year, the Russian Empire entered the First World War. Nikolai went to the front first as a military paramedic.

In 1916, 21-year-old Shchors was sent to a four-month accelerated course at the Vilna Military School, which by that time had been evacuated to Poltava. Then a junior officer on the Southwestern Front. Shchors spent almost three years as part of the 335th Anapa Infantry Regiment of the 84th Infantry Division of the Southwestern Front. During the war, Nikolai fell ill with tuberculosis, and on December 30, 1917 (after the October Revolution of 1917), Second Lieutenant Shchors was released from military service due to illness and went to his native farm.

Civil War

In February 1918, in Korzhovka, Shchors created a Red Guard partisan detachment, in March - April he commanded a united detachment of the Novozybkovsky district, which, as part of the 1st Revolutionary Army, participated in battles with the German invaders.

In September 1918, he formed the 1st Ukrainian Soviet Regiment named after. Bohuna. In October - November he commanded the Bogunsky regiment in battles with German invaders and hetmans, from November 1918 - the 2nd brigade of the 1st Ukrainian Soviet division (Bogunsky and Tarashchansky regiments), which captured Chernigov, Kyiv and Fastov, repelling them from the troops of the Ukrainian Directory .

On February 5, 1919, he was appointed commandant of Kyiv and, by decision of the Provisional Workers' and Peasants' Government of Ukraine, was awarded an honorary weapon.

From March 6 to August 15, 1919, Shchors commanded the 1st Ukrainian Soviet Division, which, during a rapid offensive, recaptured Zhitomir, Vinnitsa, Zhmerinka from the Petliurists, defeated the main forces of the Petliurists in the area of ​​Sarny - Rivne - Brody - Proskurov, and then in the summer of 1919 defended itself in the area of ​​Sarny - Novograd-Volynsky - Shepetovka from the troops of the Polish Republic and the Petliurists, but was forced under pressure from superior forces to retreat to the east.

From August 21, 1919 - commander of the 44th Infantry Division (the 1st Ukrainian Soviet Division joined it), which stubbornly defended the Korosten railway junction, which ensured the evacuation of Kyiv (captured by Denikin’s troops on August 31) and the exit from the encirclement of the Southern Group of the 12th army.

On August 30, 1919, while in the advanced chains of the Bohunsky regiment, in a battle against the 7th brigade of the II Corps of the UGA near the village of Beloshitsa (now the village of Shchorsovka, Korostensky district, Zhitomir region, Ukraine), Shchors was killed under unclear circumstances. He was shot in the back of the head at close range, presumably from 5-10 steps away.

Shchors' body was transported to Samara, where it was buried in the Orthodox All Saints Cemetery (now the territory of the Samara Cable Company). According to one version, he was taken to Samara, since the parents of his wife Fruma Efimovna lived there.

In 1949, the remains of Shchors were exhumed in Kuibyshev. On July 10, 1949, in a solemn ceremony, Shchors’ ashes were reburied on the main alley of the Kuibyshev city cemetery. In 1954, when the three-hundredth anniversary of the reunification of Russia and Ukraine was celebrated, a granite obelisk was installed on the grave. Architect - Alexey Morgun, sculptor - Alexey Frolov.

Death studies

The official version that Shchors died in battle from a bullet from a Petlyura machine gunner began to be criticized with the beginning of the “thaw” of the 1960s.

Initially, researchers accused only the commander of the Kharkov Military District, Ivan Dubovoy, of the commander’s murder, who during the Civil War was Nikolai Shchors’s deputy in the 44th division. The 1935 collection “Legendary Division Commander” contains the testimony of Ivan Dubovoy: “The enemy opened strong machine-gun fire and, I especially remember, one machine gun showed “daring” at the railway booth... Shchors took binoculars and began to look at where the machine-gun fire was coming from. But a moment passed, and the binoculars fell from Shchors’ hands to the ground, and Shchors’s head too...” The head of the mortally wounded Shchors was bandaged by Dubovoy. Shchors died in his arms. “The bullet entered from the front,” writes Dubovoy, “and came out from the back,” although he could not help but know that the entrance bullet hole was smaller than the exit hole. When Bohunsky Regiment nurse Anna Rosenblum wanted to change the first, very hasty bandage on the head of the already dead Shchors to a more accurate one, Dubovoy did not allow it. By order of Dubovoy, Shchors’ body was sent for preparation for burial without a medical examination. It was not only Dubovoy who witnessed the death of Shchors. Nearby were the commander of the Bohunsky regiment, Kazimir Kvyatyk, and the representative of the Revolutionary Military Council of the 12th Army, Pavel Tankhil-Tankhilevich, sent with an inspection by a member of the Revolutionary Military Council of the 12th Army, Semyon Aralov, Trotsky’s protégé.

The probable perpetrator of the murder of the red commander is Pavel Samuilovich Tankhil-Tankhilevich. He was twenty-six years old, he was born in Odessa, graduated from high school, spoke French and German. In the summer of 1919 he became a political inspector of the Revolutionary Military Council of the 12th Army. Two months after the death of Shchors, he left Ukraine and arrived on the Southern Front as a senior censor-controller of the Military Censorship Department of the Revolutionary Military Council of the 10th Army.

The exhumation of the body, carried out in 1949 in Kuibyshev during reburial, confirmed that he was killed at close range with a shot to the back of the head. Near Rovno, Shchorsovite Timofey Chernyak, commander of the Novgorod-Seversky regiment, was later killed. Then Vasily Bozhenko, the brigade commander, died. He was poisoned in Zhitomir (according to the official version, he died in Zhitomir from pneumonia). Both were Nikolai Shchors's closest associates.

Memory

• A monument was erected at Shchors’ grave in Samara.
• Equestrian monument in Kyiv, erected in 1954.
• In the USSR, the IZOGIZ publishing house published a postcard with the image of N. Shchors.
• In 1944, a USSR postage stamp dedicated to Shchors was issued.
• The village of Shchorsovka, Korosten district, Zhitomir region, bears his name.
• The urban-type settlement of Shchorsk in the Krinichansky district of the Dnepropetrovsk region is named after him.
• Streets in the cities are named after him: Chernigov, Balakovo, Bykhov, Nakhodka, Novaya Kakhovka, Korosten, Moscow, Dnepropetrovsk, Baku, Yalta, Grodno, Dudinka, Kirov, Krasnoyarsk, Donetsk, Vinnitsa, Odessa, Orsk, Brest, Podolsk, Voronezh, Krasnodar, Novorossiysk, Tuapse, Belgorod, Minsk, Bryansk, Kalach-on-Don, Konotop, Izhevsk, Irpen, Tomsk, Zhitomir, Ufa, Yekaterinburg, Smolensk, Tver, Yeisk, Bogorodsk, Tyumen, Buzuluk, Saratov, Lugansk, Ryazan Belaya Church, children's park in Samara (founded on the site of the former All Saints Cemetery), Shchors Park in Lugansk.

• Until 1935, the name of Shchors was not widely known; even TSB did not mention him. In February 1935, presenting Alexander Dovzhenko with the Order of Lenin, Stalin invited the artist to create a film about the “Ukrainian Chapaev,” which was done. Later, several books, songs, even an opera were written about Shchors; schools, streets, villages and even a city were named after him. In 1936, Matvey Blanter (music) and Mikhail Golodny (lyrics) wrote “Song about Shchors”:

• When the body of Nikolai Shchors was exhumed in Kuibyshev in 1949, it was found well preserved, practically incorrupt, although it had lain in a coffin for 30 years. This is explained by the fact that when Shchors was buried in 1919, his body was previously embalmed, soaked in a steep solution of table salt and placed in a sealed zinc coffin.

December 11th, 2013

This is how the country has known Nikolai Shchors since the mid-1930s. IZOGIZ postcard.

In the Soviet Union, his name was a legend. All over the country, schoolchildren in class learned a song about how “the regiment commander walked under the red banner, his head was wounded, there was blood on his sleeve...” It is about Shchors, the famous hero of the Civil War. Or, in modern terms, a field commander who fought on the side of the Bolsheviks.

Under the Democrats, the attitude towards Shchors changed. Today's schoolchildren have heard practically nothing about him. And those who are older know that the “red division commander” was a Ukrainian from Snovsk (now the city of Shchors, Chernigov region). After the outbreak of the First World War, he completed accelerated officer courses and was assigned to the Southwestern Front with the rank of ensign. He rose to the rank of second lieutenant.

After the establishment of Soviet power, Shchors became the commander of the First Red Ukrainian Regiment.

It is difficult to judge his leadership talents: in the first major clash with the regular Denikin army, Shchors was defeated and died in October 1919 at the Beloshnitsa station. He was twenty-four years old.

But that's not the whole story...

On the same days, another legendary painter, Vasily Chapaev, died in the Urals, surviving Shchors by five days. He became more famous - rather because the film “Chapaev” with the brilliant Boris Babochkin came out earlier and was more talented than the film “Shchors”. (you can see it at the end of the post)

This, in sum, is a short and fragmentary assessment of the personality of Nikolai Shchors, gleaned from Moscow publications.

SHOT IN THE BACK OF THE HEAD

That's what writes Matvey SOTNIKOV: I learned about the fate of Shchors from his maternal grandson, Alexander Alekseevich Drozdov. He had solid journalistic experience, the rank of lieutenant colonel and twenty-one years of service in the KGB. He spent eight of them in Tokyo, combining the work of a journalist under the roof of a Komsomolskaya Pravda correspondent and a Soviet intelligence officer. Then he returned home, in the 1988-1990s he worked as the executive editor of Komsomolskaya Pravda, and then headed the newspaper of the Russian parliament - the weekly Rossiya.

Once, when we were on a business trip in Kyiv, Drozdov began to talk about Shchors and some family legends, and already in Moscow he showed materials on this topic. So in my mind the image of the “Ukrainian Chapaev” (Stalin’s definition) received a new interpretation.

... Nikolai Shchors was buried at the Orthodox All Saints Cemetery in Samara - away from Ukraine. Before this, the body, without an autopsy or medical examination, was transported to Korosten, and from there by funeral train to Klintsy, where a farewell ceremony for relatives and colleagues with the division commander took place.

Shchors was transported to his final resting place by freight train in a zinc coffin. Previously, in Klintsy, the body was embalmed. The doctors dipped him into a cool solution of table salt. They buried him at night, hastily. In fact, secretly, avoiding publicity.

Shchors’ common-law wife, an employee of the Cheka, Frum Khaikina, wrote in 1935: “...The soldiers, like children, cried at his coffin. These were difficult times for the young Soviet republic. The enemy, sensing that death was imminent, made last desperate efforts. The brutal gangs brutally dealt with not only living fighters, but also mocked the corpses of the dead. We could not leave Shchors to be desecrated by the enemy... The political department of the army forbade burying Shchors in threatened areas. We went north with the coffin of our comrade. A permanent guard of honor stood at the body, laid in a zinc coffin. We decided to bury him in Samara" (collection "Legendary Division Commander", 1935).

The reason why the command took such measures became known only in 1949 after the exhumation of the body. It was thirty years since the death of Shchors. The surviving veterans sent a letter to Moscow in which they were indignant at the disappearance of the commander’s grave. The Kuibyshev authorities received a scolding, and in order to smooth over the blame, they urgently created a commission that got down to business.

The first attempt to find Shchors’ burial was made in the spring of 1936; excavations were carried out by the NKVD Directorate for a month. The second attempt took place in May 1939, but it also turned out to be unsuccessful.

The place where the grave was located was indicated by a random witness to the funeral - citizen Ferapontov. In 1919, while still a street boy, he helped the cemetery watchman. Thirty years later, on May 5, he led members of the commission to the territory of the cable plant and there, after a long period of calculation, he indicated the approximate square where the search should be conducted. As it turned out later, Shchors’ grave was covered with a half-meter layer of rubble.

The commission found that “on the territory of the Kuibyshev Cable Plant (former Orthodox cemetery), 3 meters from the right corner of the western facade of the electrical shop, a grave was found in which the body of N. A. Shchors was buried in September 1919.”

On July 10, 1949, the coffin with the remains of Shchors was moved to the main alley of the Kuibyshev cemetery, a few years later a granite monument was built on the grave, to which wreaths and flowers were laid on the red days of the calendar. Pioneers and Komsomol members came here, who did not suspect that the truth about his death was buried along with the remains of Shchors.

Monument to Nikolai Shchors in Kiev.

Let's turn to the official document: “At the first moment after the lid of the coffin was removed, the general contours of the head of the corpse with the hairstyle, mustache and beard characteristic of Shchors were clearly visible. The mark left by the gauze bandage in the form of a wide sinking strip running across the forehead and along the cheeks was also clearly visible on the head. Immediately after the lid of the coffin was removed, before the eyes of those present, the characteristic features, due to the free access of air, began to change quickly and turned into a shapeless mass of a monotonous structure...”

Forensic experts determined that the damage to the skull was “inflicted by a bullet from a rifled firearm.” It entered the back of the head and came out at the crown. And here’s the most important thing: “The shot was fired at close range, presumably 5-10 steps.”

Consequently, Shchors was shot by someone who was nearby, and not at all by a Petlyura machine gunner, as was reproduced many times in “canonical” books and a feature film. Is it really... someone else?

DUBOVOY AND KVYATEK

Now is the time to turn to the memories of eyewitnesses of that battle. In 1935, the collection “Legendary Divisional Commander” was published. Among the memories of relatives and friends is the testimony of the man in whose arms Shchors died - Ivan Dubovoy, assistant commander of the Kyiv Military District.

He reports: “August 1919 comes to mind. I was appointed deputy division commander of Shchors. It was near Korosten. At that time it was the only bridgehead in Ukraine where the red flag waved victoriously. We were
surrounded by enemies: on the one hand, the Galician-Petliura troops, on the other, Denikin’s troops, on the third, the White Poles squeezed a tighter and tighter ring around the division, which by this time had received the number 44.”

And further: “Shchors and I arrived at Bongardt’s Bogun brigade. In the regiment commanded by Comrade. Kwiatek (now commander-commissar of the 17th Corps). We arrived at the village of Beloshitsy, where our soldiers lay in a chain, preparing for an attack.”

“The enemy opened strong machine-gun fire,” says Dubovoy, “and I remember especially one machine gun at the railway booth showed “daringness.” This machine gun forced us to lie down, because the bullets literally dug the ground around us.

When we lay down, Shchors turned his head to me and said.

Vanya, look how the machine gunner shoots accurately.

After that, Shchors took binoculars and began to look at where the machine-gun fire was coming from. But a moment later the binoculars fell out of Shchors’s hands and fell to the ground, as did Shchors’s head. I called out to him:

Nikolai!

But he didn’t respond. Then I crawled up to him and began to look. I see blood appearing on the back of my head. I took off his cap - the bullet hit the left temple and exited the back of the head. Fifteen minutes later, Shchors, without regaining consciousness, died in my arms.”

So, we see that the man in whose arms Shchors died is deliberately lying, misleading readers about the direction of the bullet’s flight. Such a free interpretation of the facts makes you think.

The commander of the 2nd rank, Ivan Dubovoy, was shot in 1937 on the then standard charge of “treason to the Motherland.” The collection “Legendary Divisional Commander” ended up on a special storage shelf.

During the investigation, Dubovoy made a shocking confession, saying that the murder of Shchors was his doing. Explaining the motives for the crime, he stated that he killed the division commander out of personal hatred and the desire to take his place himself.

The interrogation report dated December 3, 1937 records: “When Shchors turned his head towards me and said this phrase (“the Galicians have a good machine gun, damn it”), I shot him in the head with a revolver and hit him in the temple. The then commander of the 388th Infantry Regiment, Kvyatek, who was lying next to Shchors, shouted: “They killed Shchors!” I crawled to Shchors, and he died in my arms, 10-15 minutes later, without regaining consciousness.”

In addition to the confession of Dubovoy himself, similar accusations were made against him on March 14, 1938 by Kazimir Kvyatek, who wrote a statement from Lefortovo prison addressed to the People's Commissar of Internal Affairs Yezhov, where he indicated that he directly suspected Dubovoy of the murder of Shchors.

Despite such revelations, no one brought charges against Dubovoy for the murder of Shchors. Moreover, the confession had no consequences at all and remained on the shelves of state security archives for many years.

ANOTHER CANDIDATE

Researcher Nikolai Zenkovich, one of the leading specialists in historical mysteries, spent a lot of time searching for the printed works of the former commander of the Bohunsky regiment. No traces. And suddenly, when it seemed that the last hope had disappeared, in the file of the Ukrainian newspaper “Communist” for March 1935, the persistent historian discovered a small note signed by the person in question.

So, Kazimir Kvyatek writes: “On August 30, at dawn, the enemy launched an attack on the left flank of the front, covering Korosten... The headquarters of the Bohunsky regiment was then in Mogilny. I went to the left flank to the village of Beloshitsa. I was warned by phone that the regiment headquarters in the village. Mogilnoye arrived to the chief of the division, Comrade. Shchors, his deputy comrade. Dubovoy and the representative of the Revolutionary Military Council of the 12th Army, Comrade. Tankhil-Tankhilevich. I reported the situation over the phone... After a while, Comrade. Shchors and those accompanying him drove up to us at the front line... We lay down. Comrade Shchors raised his head and took the binoculars to take a look. At that moment an enemy bullet hit him..."

In March 1989, the newspaper Radyanska Ukraina directly pointed to the criminal who shot Shchors with the approval of the Revolutionary Military Council of the 12th Army. The authors of the publication managed to get some information about him. Tankhil-Tankhilevich Pavel Samuilovich. Twenty six years old. Originally from Odessa. Dandy. Graduated from high school. He spoke French and German quite well. In the summer of 1919 he became a political inspector of the Revolutionary Military Council of the 12th Army.

Two months after the death of Shchors, he hastily disappears from Ukraine and appears on the Southern Front, already as a senior censor-controller of the Military Censorship Department of the Revolutionary Military Council of the 10th Army.

The investigation was continued by Rabochaya Gazeta, published in Kyiv. She published downright sensational material - excerpts from the memoirs of Major General Sergei Ivanovich Petrikovsky (Petrenko), written back in 1962, but not published for reasons of Soviet censorship. At the time of Shchors’s death, he commanded the Separate Cavalry Brigade of the 44th Army - and, it turns out, he also accompanied the division commander to the front line.

“On August 30,” the general reports, “Shchors, Dubovoy, myself and the political inspector from the 12th Army were going to leave for units along the front. Shchors' car appears to have been repaired. We decided to use mine... We left on the 30th in the afternoon. In front are Kasso (the driver) and me, in the back seat are Shchors, Dubovoy and the political inspector. Shchors decided to stay at the site of the Bogun brigade. We agreed that I would go by car to Ushomir and send a car from there to pick them up. And then they will come to Ushomir in the cavalry brigade and take me back to Korosten.

Arriving in Ushomir, I sent a car for them, but a few minutes later the field telephone reported that Shchors had been killed... I rode on horseback to Korosten, where he was taken.

The driver Kasso was taking the already dead Shchors to Korosten. In addition to Dubovoy and the nurse, a lot of people were attached to the car, obviously commanders and soldiers.

I saw Shchors in his carriage. He was lying on the sofa, his head limply bandaged. For some reason, Dubovoy was in my carriage. He gave the impression of an excited man, repeated several times how Shchors’s death occurred, became thoughtful, and looked out the window of the carriage for a long time. His behavior then seemed normal to me for a person next to whom his comrade was suddenly killed. There was only one thing I didn’t like... Dubovoy began to tell the story several times, trying to give a humorous touch to his story, when he heard the words of the Red Army soldier lying on the right: “What kind of bastard is shooting with a live gun?...” A spent cartridge case fell on the Red Army soldier’s head. The political inspector fired from the Browning, according to Dubovoy. Even when parting for the night, he again told me how the political inspector fired at the enemy at such a great distance...”

The general is convinced that the shot that killed Shchors came after the Red artillery smashed into pieces the railway box behind which he was located.

“When the enemy machine gun fired,” the general reports, “the Dubovoys lay down near Shchors on one side, and the political inspector on the other. I have not yet established who is on the right and who is on the left, but this no longer matters significantly. I still think it was the political inspector, not Dubova, who fired. But without the assistance of Dubovoy, the murder could not have happened... Only relying on the assistance of the authorities in the person of Shchors’s deputy, Dubovoy, and the support of the Revolutionary Military Council of the 12th Army, did the criminal commit this terrorist act.

I think that Dubovoy became an unwitting accomplice, perhaps even believing that it was for the benefit of the revolution. How many such cases do we know!!! I knew Dubovoy, and not only from the Civil War. He seemed to me an honest man. But he also seemed weak-willed to me, without any special talents. He was nominated, and he wanted to be nominated. That's why I think he was made an accomplice. But he didn’t have the courage to prevent the murder.

Dubovoy himself personally bandaged the head of the dead Shchors right there on the battlefield. When Bohunsky Regiment nurse Anna Anatolyevna Rosenblum (she now lives in Moscow) suggested bandaging it more carefully, Dubovoy did not allow her. By order of Dubovoy, Shchors’ body was sent for farewell and burial without a medical examination...”

Obviously, Dubovoy could not help but know that the bullet “exit” hole is always larger than the “entrance” hole. That’s why, apparently, he forbade removing the bandages.

A member of the RVS of the 12th Army was Semyon Aralov, a confidant of Leon Trotsky. He twice wanted to film the “indomitable partisan” and the “enemy of the regular troops,” as Shchors was called, but was afraid of a revolt of the Red Army soldiers.

After an inspection trip to Shchors, which lasted no more than three hours, Semyon Aralov turned to Trotsky with a convincing request to find a new division chief - just not from the locals, because the “Ukrainians” are all “kulak-minded.” In a response encrypted, the Demon of the Revolution ordered a strict purge and “refreshment” of the command staff. A conciliatory policy is unacceptable. Any measures are good. You need to start from the head.

Apparently, Aralov was zealous in carrying out the instructions of his formidable master. In his manuscript “In Ukraine 40 Years Ago (1919),” he involuntarily let slip: “Unfortunately, persistence in personal behavior led Shchors to his premature death.”

Yes, about discipline. During the reorganization of the armed forces of Red Ukraine, Shchors' division was supposed to be transferred to the Southern Front. In particular, the People's Commissar of the Republic for Military and Naval Affairs Podvoisky insisted on this. Justifying his proposal in a memo addressed to the chairman of the Council of People's Commissars, Ulyanov-Lenin, dated June 15, he emphasized that, having visited units of the 1st Army, he found the only combat division on this front, Shchors, which included the most well-coordinated regiments.

Evgeny Samoilov as “Ukrainian Chapaev” Nikolai Shchors

In the Soviet Union, five monuments to the legendary division commander were erected and the same number of Shchors museums were opened. Comrade Stalin called him the “Ukrainian Chapaev”, director Alexander Dovzhenko dedicated a film to him, writer Semyon Sklyarenko - the trilogy “Road to Kyiv”, and composer Boris Lyatoshinsky - a “personalized” opera.

ORIGIN

However, the most undoubtedly famous artistic embodiment of Shchors was the work of the songwriter Mikhail Golodny (Mikhail Semyonovich Epshtein) “Song of Shchors.” People called her from the first lines: “A detachment was walking along the shore.”

The old station of Snovsk, since 1935 - the city of Shchors. Not used for its intended purpose, episodes of the film “Heavy Sand” were filmed here

After the death of the Soviet Union, the pendulum swung in the other direction. It got to the point that in 1991, one thick Moscow magazine seriously claimed that there was no trace of Shchors.

They say that the origin of the myth began with the famous meeting of Stalin with artists in March 1935. It was then, at that meeting, that the leader turned to Alexander Dovzhenko with the question: “Why do the Russian people have a hero Chapaev and a film about a hero, but the Ukrainian people do not have such a hero?”

This is how the Legend began...

A detachment walked along the shore,
Walked from afar
Walked under the red banner
Regimental commander.
The head is tied,
Blood on my sleeve
A bloody trail is spreading
On damp grass.

“Whose guys will you be,
Who is leading you into battle?
Who is under the red banner
Is the wounded man walking?
“We are the sons of farm laborers,
We are for a new world
Shchors marches under the banner -
Red commander.

The time of its creation is 1936. It should be noted, however, that poetry were written a year earlier. At first the poet showed them to the composer Ivan Shishov, and he composed for them music.

Mikhail Golodny

The authors presented their song on contest. Without waiting for the results of the competition, the newspaper decided to publish it. And in the issue of July 31, 1935, under the heading “Competition for the best song,” the words and notes"Songs about Shchors' detachment."
But this song did not receive recognition. Then M. Golodny turned with his poems to the composer M. Blanter.
Mikhail Golodny

Matvey Blanter

The music composed by Blanter surprisingly coincided in mood with the figurative fabric of the poems, thanks to it the song gained wings and was sung everywhere.

The “Song about Shchors” became widespread among army amateur performance groups, which became its most important popularizers and propagandists.
Soon it was recorded on a gramophone record.

Mark Reisen

This song also owes a lot to the outstanding Soviet singer, People's Artist of the USSR Mark Osipovich Reisen. Having performed it for the first time during the celebration of the 20th anniversary of the October Revolution at the gala concert at the Bolshoi Theater, he performed with great success with her for many years, and after the war he recorded it on a record with in unison And orchestra All-Union radio governed by V. Knushevitsky.

But let's continue about our story...

"N. A. Shchors in the battle near Chernigov.” Artist N. Samokish, 1938

Shchors' father, Alexander Nikolaevich, came from Belarusian peasants. In search of a better life, he moved from the Minsk province to the small Ukrainian village of Snovsk. From here he was taken into the imperial army.

Returning to Snovsk, Alexander Nikolaevich got a job at the local railway depot. In August 1894, he married his fellow countrywoman, Alexandra Mikhailovna Tabelchuk, and in the same year he built his own house.

Shchors had known the Tabelchuk family for a long time, since its head, Mikhail Tabelchuk, led an artel of Belarusians working in the Chernihiv region. At one time it included Alexander Shchors.

Future commander Nikolai Shchors quickly learned to read and write - at the age of six he could already read and write passably. In 1905 he entered the parochial school.

And a year later, great grief happened in the Shchors family - while pregnant with their sixth child, their mother, Alexandra Mikhailovna, died of bleeding. This happened when she was in her small homeland, in Stolbtsy (modern Minsk region). She was buried there.

Six months after the death of his wife, the head of the Shchors family remarried. His new chosen one was Maria Konstantinovna Podbelo. From this marriage, Nikolai had two half-brothers, Grigory and Boris, and three half-sisters - Zinaida, Raisa and Lydia.

BUT THERE WAS NO SEMINARY!

In 1909, Nikolai graduated from school and the following year, together with his brother Konstantin, entered the Kyiv Military Paramedic School. Her pupils were fully supported by the state.

Shchors studied conscientiously and four years later, in July 1914, he received a diploma as a medical assistant and the rights of a 2nd category volunteer.

“The whole problem was that after leaving the school, Shchors was obliged to serve at least three years as a paramedic,” reported on the UNECHAonline website. - Shchors, let us remind you, graduated from college in 1914. At the same time, as stated in a number of sources, in order to avoid the mandatory three-year paramedic service, he decided to falsify and transfer in his diploma (certificate) the date of graduation from paramedic school from 1914 to 1912, which gives him the right to be released from the status already in 1915 volunteer.

In the archives of the Unecha Museum there is an electronic copy of this certificate, from which it indeed follows that Shchors entered school on August 15, 1910 and graduated in June 1912. However, the number “2” is made somewhat unnaturally, and it looks very much like it was actually transferred from a four.”

As some sources “authoritatively” state, Shchors studied at the Poltava Teachers’ Seminary - from September 1911 to March 1915. There is a clear discrepancy. So we can conclude: Shchors did not study at the seminary, and the certificate of completion is fake.

“This version,” writes UNECHAonline, “can be supported by the fact that in August 1918, Shchors, when submitting documents for admission to the medical faculty of Moscow University, among other papers, presented a certificate of graduation from the Poltava Seminary, which, unlike from a certificate of completion of the 4th grade of a paramedic school, gave the right to enter a university.”

So this certificate, a copy of which is also available in the Unech Museum, was obviously corrected by Shchors just for presentation to Moscow University.

WHOSE BOYS WILL YOU BE?

After his studies, Nikolai was assigned to the troops of the Vilna Military District, which became front-line with the outbreak of the First World War. As part of the 3rd light artillery division, Shchors was sent to Vilna, where he was wounded in one of the battles and was sent for treatment.

Ensign of the Russian Imperial Army Nikolai Shchors

In 1915, Shchors was already among the cadets of the Vilna Military School evacuated to Poltava, where, due to martial law, they began to train non-commissioned officers and warrant officers according to a shortened four-month program. In 1916, Shchors successfully completed a course at a military school and, with the rank of ensign, served in the rear forces in Simbirsk.

In the fall of 1916, the young officer was transferred to serve in the 335th Anapa Regiment of the 84th Infantry Division of the Southwestern Front, where Shchors rose to the rank of second lieutenant.

At the end of 1917, his short military career came to an abrupt end. His health failed - Shchors fell ill (almost an open form of tuberculosis) and after short treatment in Simferopol, on December 30, 1917, he was discharged due to his unfitness for further service.

Finding himself out of work, Nikolai Shchors at the end of 1917 decided to return home. The estimated time of his appearance in Snovsk is January of the eighteenth year. By this time, colossal changes had occurred in the country, which had fallen apart. At the same time, the independent Ukrainian People's Republic was proclaimed in Ukraine.

Around the spring of 1918, the period of creation of a combat unit began, headed by Nikolai Shchors. It entered the history of the Civil War, its red chronicle, under the name of the Bohunsky Regiment.

On August 1, 1919, near Rovno, during a rebellion, under unclear circumstances, Shchorsovite Timofey Chernyak, commander of the Novgorod-Severskaya brigade, was killed.

On August 21 of the same year, the “indomitable dad” Vasily Bozhenko, commander of the Tarashchansky brigade, suddenly died in Zhitomir. It is alleged that he was poisoned - according to the official version, he died of pneumonia.

The grave of Nikolai Shchors in the city of Samara. At the Kuibyshevkabel plant, where his first grave was located, a bust of the legendary division commander was erected

Both commanders were Nikolai Shchors' closest associates.

Until 1935, his name was not widely known; even the Great Soviet Encyclopedia of the first edition did not mention him. In February 1935, presenting Alexander Dovzhenko with the Order of Lenin at a meeting of the Presidium of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee, Stalin invited the director to create a film about the “Ukrainian Chapaev.”

Do you know Shchors?

Think about it.

Soon the personal artistic and political order was masterfully executed. The main role in the film was brilliantly played by Evgeny Samoilov.

Later, several books, songs, and even an opera were written about Shchors. Schools, streets, villages and even a city were named after him. As mentioned at the beginning, Matvey Blanter and Mikhail Golodny wrote the now famous “Song about Shchors” in 1935.

In hunger and cold
His life has passed
But it was not for nothing that it was spilled
There was his blood.
Thrown back beyond the cordon
Fierce enemy
Tempered from a young age
Honor is dear to us.

Parental home of Nikolai Shchors in Snovsk

Like many field commanders, Nikolai Shchors was just a “bargaining chip” in the hands of the powers that be. He died at the hands of those for whom their own ambitions and political goals were more important than human lives.

As former member of the Revolutionary Military Council of the Ukrainian Front E. Shchadenko said, “Only enemies could tear Shchors away from the division in whose consciousness he was rooted. And they tore it off." However, the truth about the death of Nikolai Shchors still made its way through.

or that Kolchak absolutely. And of course, in light of the current topic, I can’t help but remind you about The original article is on the website InfoGlaz.rf Link to the article from which this copy was made - Date of death Affiliation

Russian empire
Ukrainian SSR

Type of army Years of service Rank

held the position of division commander

Nikolai Shchors on a postcard from IZOGIZ, USSR

Nikolay Aleksandrovich Shchors(May 25 (June 6) - August 30) - second lieutenant, red commander, division commander during the Civil War in Russia. Member of the Communist Party since 1918, before that he was close to the Left Social Revolutionaries.

Biography

Youth

Born and raised in the village of Korzhovka, Velikoschimel volost, Gorodnyansky district, Chernigov province (with - the city of Snovsk, now the regional center of Shchors, Chernigov region of Ukraine). Born into the family of a wealthy peasant landowner (according to another version, from the family of a railway worker).

Civil War

In September 1918, he formed the 1st Ukrainian Soviet Regiment named after. Bohuna. In October - November he commanded the Bogunsky regiment in battles with German interventionists and hetmans, from November 1918 - the 2nd brigade of the 1st Ukrainian Soviet division (Bogunsky and Tarashchansky regiments), which captured Chernigov, Kyiv and Fastov, repelling them from the troops of the Ukrainian Directory .

On August 15, 1919, the 1st Ukrainian Soviet Division under the command of N. A. Shchors was merged with the 44th Border Division under the command of I. N. Dubovoy, becoming the 44th Infantry Division. On August 21, Shchors became its chief, and Dubova became the deputy chief of the division. The division consisted of four brigades.

The division that stubbornly defended the Korosten railway junction, which ensured the evacuation of Kyiv (on August 31, the city was taken by the Volunteer Army of General Denikin) and a way out of the encirclement of the Southern Group of the 12th Army.

Death studies

The official version that Shchors died in battle from a bullet from a Petlyura machine gunner began to be criticized with the beginning of the “thaw” of the 1960s.

Initially, researchers blamed the murder of the commander only on the commander of the Kharkov Military District, Ivan Dubovoy, who during the Civil War was Nikolai Shchors’s deputy in the 44th division. The 1935 collection “Legendary Division Commander” contains the testimony of Ivan Dubovoy: “The enemy opened strong machine-gun fire and, I especially remember, one machine gun showed “daring” at the railway booth... Shchors took binoculars and began to look at where the machine-gun fire was coming from. But a moment passed, and the binoculars fell from Shchors’ hands to the ground, and Shchors’s head too...” The head of the mortally wounded Shchors was bandaged by Dubovoy. Shchors died in his arms. “The bullet entered from the front,” writes Dubovoy, “and came out from the back,” although he could not help but know that the entrance bullet hole was smaller than the exit hole. When Bohunsky Regiment nurse Anna Rosenblum wanted to change the first, very hasty bandage on the head of the already dead Shchors to a more accurate one, Dubovoy did not allow it. By order of Dubovoy, Shchors’ body was sent for preparation for burial without a medical examination. It was not only Dubovoy who witnessed the death of Shchors. Nearby were the commander of the Bohunsky regiment, Kazimir Kvyatyk, and the representative of the Revolutionary Military Council of the 12th Army, Pavel Tankhil-Tankhilevich, sent with an inspection by a member of the Revolutionary Military Council of the 12th Army, Semyon Aralov, Trotsky’s protégé. He was twenty-six years old, born in Odessa, graduated from high school, spoke French and German. In the summer of 1919 he became a political inspector of the Revolutionary Military Council of the 12th Army. Two months after the death of Shchors, he left Ukraine and arrived on the Southern Front as a senior censor-controller of the Military Censorship Department of the Revolutionary Military Council of the 10th Army.

The exhumation of the body, carried out in 1949 in Kuibyshev during reburial, confirmed that he was killed at close range with a shot to the back of the head. Near Rovno, Shchorsovite Timofey Chernyak, commander of the Novgorod-Seversky regiment, was later killed. Then Vasily Bozhenko, the brigade commander, died. He was poisoned