Desolation or genocide? The consequences of the destruction of the Cossacks

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

A little more than 100 years ago, on January 24, 1919, the Organizing Bureau of the Central Committee of the RCP (b) adopted a secret directive "To all responsible comrades working in the Cossack regions", later signed by the famous revolutionary leader Yakov Sverdlov. She, in particular, decreed: “… a merciless struggle with all the tops of the Cossacks through their complete extermination … No compromises, no halfway paths are allowed.

Therefore, it is necessary:

Spend mass terror against wealthy Cossacks, exterminating them without exception; to carry out a merciless mass terror against all Cossacks in general who took any direct or indirect part in the struggle against Soviet power …

Confiscate bread and force all surpluses to be poured into the indicated points, this applies both to bread and to all other agricultural products.

Spend complete disarmamentshooting everyone who has a weapon after the deadline …"

It is believed that it was this directive that laid the foundation for decossackization. Participants of the “Two-Headed Eagle” meeting told about some other documents of the Bolsheviks, details of their atrocities against the Cossacks, facts and figures.

In his opening remarks, Deputy Chairman of the Two-Headed Eagle Society, Chairman of the Supreme Council of the Union of Cossack Warriors of Russia and Abroad Victor Vodolatskygave some chilling examples:

“I had to read the notes of the commissars, who sent their messages to Moscow, about the need to change international detachments, whose psyche is breaking down, because from morning till night they burned, destroyed, raped Cossacks and Cossacks - and others had to be sent, to replace these executioners. And in Novocherkassk, where we installed a huge Orthodox cross, there was the Trinity Church - there are photographs left in the archives. In those days, when there were 20-degree frosts, they brought children, old men, women undressed to it, locked them up for the night in a church, and in the morning they took them out on a sleigh and lowered their corpses into the Tuzlov River."

Almost anyone could be subjected to such repressions - most of the Cossacks were wealthy people, in the Bolshevik sense "kulaks", and therefore they could easily be brought to justice for this.

Andrey Gorban about which Cossacks were affected by the Bolshevik repressions

“In February 1919, a more detailed instruction of the Revolutionary Military Council of the Southern Front on the implementation of the indicated directive of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee (of January 24 - Tsargrad's note) followed in the localities - on the Don in particular. She prescribed immediately shoot all, without exception, Cossacks who held official positions by election or by appointment, district, capital atamans, their assistants, police officers, judges and others … All, without exception, the officers of the then Krasnov army, all without exception rich Cossacks. Well, from the point of view of Donrevkom, there was no need to talk about the Cossack poor, since the Cossacks are almost entirely well-to-do, they consist of kulaks and middle peasants. That is, everyone could be held accountable there,”noted Andrey Gorban, a military judge of the Kuban Cossack Host in his speech.

He also read out another document of that time - the directive of the Revolutionary Military Council of the Southern Front of March 16, 1919, signed by its member Andrey Kolegaev … Here is an excerpt from her text:

I propose for execution the following: a) burning of the insurgent farmsteads; b) merciless executions of all persons without exception who took a direct or indirect part in the uprising; c) executions, after 5 or 10 people, of the adult male population of the insurgent farmsteads; d) mass taking of hostages from neighboring farmsteads to the rebels; e) widespread notification of the population of the farmsteads of the villages, etc.that all villages and farms, noticed in helping the rebels, will be subjected to merciless extermination of the entire adult male population and be burned at the first opportunity to find help.

These brutal massacres greatly reduced the size of the Cossack population. So, according to the data given by the deputy chairman of the Rostov regional branch of the Two-Headed Eagle Society Dmitry Leusenko, on January 1, 1916, the population of the Don region was 4 million 13 thousand people. In 1922 - just over one and a half million people. In seven years, it decreased by 2.5 million people, that is, more than 60%. There are no exact statistics on the share of repressed Cossacks in these losses, however, according to historians, it was considerable.

The mass destruction from 1918 to 1941, according to the most conservative estimates, claimed the lives of more than a million Cossacks. Although a number of researchers give much larger numbers, - said Andrei Gorban.

The Ural Cossack army also suffered huge losses, which fought the Bolsheviks literally to the last Cossack.

Nikolay Dyakonov about the Ural Cossack army and its resistance to the Bolsheviks

“Ural Cossack army. 174 thousand. By 1920, it decreased due to a decrease in the male Cossack population by almost two and a half times. With a shortage of workers in Cossack families in 1917-1920, the sown area in the Ural region decreased three times, and the livestock population - 3.5 times. Part of the Cossacks after the Bolshevik captivity was returned to their places of permanent residence in the Urals, but this is only a part. However, their peaceful life at home was short-lived: in the 1930s, for refusing to join collective farms, former members of the white movement as representatives of the counter-revolutionary class were almost completely destroyed … In 1933-1938, the organs of the OGPU and the NKVD completed the purge of "anti-Soviet elements" in the Urals. Only women, children and very old people remained in Cossack families. Only 10% of the entire Ural army survived, "said Nikolai Dyakonov, Supreme Ataman of the Union of Cossack Warriors of Russia and Abroad, in his report.

Ataman noted that the Ural Cossacks did not lose almost a single battle to the Bolsheviks - the reds were even forced to import the typhoid virus to their places of residence, since they could not cope with the brave warriors by force. Moreover, in the Urals, unlike other Cossack troops, there have never been "Red Cossacks", that is, those who went over to the side of the revolutionaries.

Andrey Gorban about why today remember about decossackization

The scale of the victims, the cruelty of the sentences, the atrocities and the massacres of the Cossacks give reason to define decossackization in the harshest terms - all the participants in the meeting of the "Two-Headed Eagle" agreed with this. However, today it is important not so much to find a suitable word for this phenomenon, but to remember, study and pass on to descendants knowledge about this page of our history, said in an interview to Constantinople a military judge of the Kuban Cossack Host Andrei Gorban: To those Cossacks who exist in heaven, whose souls look at us and cry to us: "Remember!" - it doesn't matter to them what it is called, what term to use for this … But they demand that we remember, do not forget, draw conclusions from historical lessons. So that we educate our youth in the spirit of patriotism, protection of our homeland and connoisseurs of our clan, patriarchal clan.

In the footsteps of Sholokhov's heroes: How the decossackization of the Quiet Don began

The revolutionary upheavals of 1917 radically changed the former way of life of the Cossack class. On the one hand, social differentiation has not escaped it either. On the other hand, the issue of land relations between the Cossack and peasant (both indigenous and nonresident) population acquired an extremely acute character.

So, in the Oblast of the Don Cossack - with a relatively equal number of Cossack and peasant populations - the Cossacks used 15 million dessiatines of land. Don peasants owned 3.5 million dessiatines. The Decree on Land, issued by the Bolsheviks immediately after the October Revolution, proclaimed equal land use, which generally reflected the aspirations of the bulk of the nonresident population and undermined the economic and estate privileges of the Cossacks. This factor largely determined the brutality and duration of the civil war in the Cossack regions, which became springboards for the counter-revolutionary anti-Bolshevik forces.

Bolsheviks on the Don

Many leaders of the Bolsheviks had a negative attitude towards the Cossacks, considering them "the mainstay of the autocracy" and one of the most reactionary estates. Meanwhile, the bulk of the Cossacks initially did not see the Bolsheviks as a threat to their existence. Many of the villagers who returned from the front of the First World War initially kept neutrality. Only a small part of the Cossacks initially sided with either side in the flaring civil war.

So, a partisan detachment Vasily Chernetsov, who formed the basis of the military forces of the Don ataman Alexey Kaledin, numbered only about 200 people - mostly students who did not smell gunpowder at the age of 15 to 20 years. And after the seizure of the Don capital of Novocherkassk by the Bolsheviks on the Steppe campaign in the Salsk steppes together with the ataman Peter Popov only a little more than 1,700 Cossacks left.

In fact, at the beginning of 1918, the bulk of the Cossacks allowed the Bolsheviks to establish their power on the Don without serious bloodshed. Part of the Cossacks of the land-poor upper districts openly declared their support for the new government, convening on January 10 (23) in the village of Kamenskaya a congress of the front-line Cossacks, at which the Don Cossack Military Revolutionary Committee headed by the Bolshevik Cossacks was formed Fedor Podtyolkov and Mikhail Krivoshlykov … The attempts of Kaledin, outlawed by the Council of People's Commissars, to mobilize the Cossacks did not lead to the desired results. On January 29 (February 12), 1918, the Don chieftain committed suicide.

“The Cossacks remained deaf to the call of their chieftain, the chieftain whom they had so recently refused to let into the headquarters, protecting him from the lynching of the mob. He died, showing the Don an example of honest and impeccable service, - will write in his memoirs the head of the intelligence and operational department of the headquarters of the White Guard Don Army, Colonel Vladimir Dobrynin.

The old cathedral bell is buzzing for a long time: not long ago he called to a free circle, and now he rings to the liking of Ataman Alexei Kaledin, - wrote the head of the Don Military Government, who was subsequently shot by the Bolsheviks, Don Bayan. Mitrofan Bogaevsky … - But they also say something else: "The funeral bell is ringing for the free Don Cossacks."

Prologue to decossackization

What happened on the Don in 1918 was not yet decossackization as such, but rather its prologue. But the attempts to forcible redistribution of the Cossack land that followed from the beginning of spring, which were often carried out by the Bolsheviks with the involvement of detachments of the Red Guard with actions of intimidation and disarmament of unreliable Cossack villages, led to the beginning of a powerful anti-Soviet uprising. The Bolsheviks did not have the strength to suppress it.

In early May, German troops approached the borders of the Don region, and the insurgent Cossacks, together with the colonel's detachment moving from Romania to join the White Guard Volunteer Army Mikhail Drozdovsky drove the Bolsheviks out of Novocherkassk.

The so-called government of the Don Soviet Republic, headed by the aforementioned Podtyolkov and Krivoshlykov, organizes an expedition to the riding districts in order to mobilize the Cossacks into the Red Army. However, in the area of the Kalashnikov farm, they are surrounded and disarmed by the rebels. On May 11, 1918, on the verdict of the military-field court, Podtyolkov and Krivoshlykov were hanged, and 78 Cossacks accompanying them were shot.

The tragedy of the Cossacks

Subsequently, participation in the destruction of Podtyolkov's expedition will become an aggravating circumstance during the decossackization that followed the directive of the Organizing Bureau of the Central Committee of the RCP (b) of January 24, 1919.

Treason

In the summer of 1918, the Cossacks under the leadership of the ataman Petra Krasnova formed the 50-thousandth Don army and cleared the Don Cossack Region of the Bolsheviks, significantly going beyond its borders in the Voronezh and Saratov provinces. Three times they came close to Tsaritsyn - "red Verdun", but they did not succeed in taking possession of this Bolshevik stronghold. One of the military reasons that led to the failure of the White Cossacks at Tsaritsyn was the appearance of large cavalry units from the Reds. Among their organizers were both nonresident residents of the Don Boris Dumenko and Semyon Budyonny, and natives of the Cossacks - Philip Mironov, Mikhail Blinov, Ivan Kolesov, which carried away with them a considerable number of stanitsa who succumbed to Bolshevik propaganda. However, this did not add confidence to the Cossacks on the part of the Red leaders.

So, who led the defense of Tsaritsyn Joseph Stalin in one of his letters to Lenin, he explained the unfavorable situation and the surrender of an entire section of the strategically important Tsaritsyn-Povorino railway line by the "Cossack composition of Mironov's troops." They say that the Red Cossacks "cannot and do not want to wage a decisive struggle against the Cossack counter-revolution" and whole regiments go over to Krasnov's side.

The fluctuations of the majority of the Cossacks and the transitions to one side or the other were really massive during the civil war. It is enough for the reader to remember how many times the protagonist of "Quiet Don" fought for the Whites, then for the Reds, then for the rebels. Grigory Melekhov … At the same time, this led to the cruelty of the Bolsheviks towards the Cossacks.

It all began after one of the best Don Cossack regiments - the 28th "Invincible" - on the eve of Christmas 1919 left his positions in the Voronezh province and arbitrarily left the front home, to the district village of Vyoshenskaya, Verkhne-Don district.

They abandoned the front, came to Vyoshenskaya stanitsa, established Soviet power there and decided to live there in peace, since the Reds, with whom a peace treaty was signed, promised not to enter the stanitsa, and, of course, not to commit robberies, of course, - wrote a contemporary in the White Guard weekly "Donskaya Volna" published in Rostov-on-Don.

On the one hand, the opening of the front by the Cossacks was a consequence of the Bolshevik propaganda carried out by the Donburo of the RCP (b). Note that it is this body that will soon become the main conductor of the “decossackization” policy. On the other hand, the deterioration of material supplies and the extreme reluctance of the Cossacks to fight outside the Don Cossack Region played a role. The Cossack of the Rubezhny farm in the village of Elanskaya led this uprising against the ataman Krasnov. Yakov Fomin … In 1921, the ambitious Fomin would become the head of the anti-Bolshevik uprising, which will be described by Mikhail Sholokhov in the final book of The Quiet Don, and will die when it is suppressed. In the meantime, the opening of the front by the Cossacks led to the fact that the Bolshevik troops advanced right up to the Seversky Donets, taking control of the upper districts of the Don Cossack Region.

Decorating

… Terror … and little bustles fly, Terror … and blood pours in the beams, And frightened dogs bark over a pile of corpses without heads

Denunciations, executions, evictions, on the faces of a bitter brand

But the Donburo threatens to exterminate all over again

… The revolutionary committees acted firmly, kept the whole people in fear

- Lamps off! And right in the face

If you don’t want to argue, it’s a waste!

Lead to the bases, to fix the ambulance at the old pear

To destroy this saintly life, to please Sverdlov!

Through bloody thorns into empty smokes

The peasants of the Voronezh province were violently driven away by them.

And in the reeds the birds were silent and near the red shoals of the river

And Voronezh peasants frowned in other people's villages …"

The directive signed by Sverdlov of the Organizing Bureau of the Central Committee of the RCP (b) "To all responsible comrades working in the Cossack regions" arrived just at the moment when the villagers dispersed to their kurens, counting on a lasting peace with the Bolsheviks and their observance of all agreements.

Soon, however, I had to be disappointed - the "guests" came and began to rob, and in response to the instruction that, they say, we were signing the treaty, they said calmly: "You signed the treaty with the communist regiment, and we - the" Moscow revolutionary ", - this is how the Don Wave described the beginning of the decossackization policy.

The first paragraph of the directive, which laid the foundation for the systematic destruction of the Cossacks, spoke of the need for the "universal extermination" of wealthy Cossacks, as well as those of them who directly or indirectly took part in the struggle against Soviet power.

Note that the frankly savage directive of the central authorities in the localities acquired an even more sadistic character. Indeed, in the revolutionary committees that passed execution sentences, there were often local Bolshevik Cossacks - prototypes of Sholokhov's Mikhail Koshevoy, who were often guided by personal motives in relation to their villagers. In the course of the implementation of the decossackization policy, executions, including extrajudicial executions, of the Cossacks and their family members, the taking of hostages, the burning of villages suspected of being "counter-revolutionary", robberies and illegal extortions took place. So, in the village of Migulinskaya, 62 old Cossacks were shot without trial or investigation, and in Morozovskaya, the drunken chairman of the Revolutionary Committee Boguslavsky, who was later shot by his own people for "excesses", killed 64 arrested Cossacks.

For each killed Red Army soldier and member of the Revolutionary Committee, shoot a hundred Cossacks, - telegraphed to the Revolutionary Committee Vyoshenskaya one of the leaders of the Donburo and the organizer of the Red Terror on the Don Sergey Syrtsov … - Prepare the milestones for sending to forced labor in the Voronezh province, Pavlovsk and other places of the entire male population aged 18 to 55, inclusive. The sentry teams order to shoot five for each escaped, obliging the Cossacks to watch each other with mutual guarantee.

The implementation of such instructions became the catalyst for a new uprising of the Cossacks, the center of which was the district village of Vyoshenskaya. At the head of the rebels was a lieutenant Pavel Kudinov, and the 1st division of the insurgent Cossacks was led by the prototype of Sholokhov's Grigory Melekhov Kharlampy Ermakov … After three months of fierce fighting, the rebels managed to unite with the cavalry of the Don Army of the Armed Forces of the South of Russia that had broken through the red front. However, that's another story.

In mid-March 1919, when the Upper Don District was already engulfed in a Cossack uprising, the Bolshevik leadership suspended the implementation of the directive of the Organizing Bureau of the Central Committee of the RCP (b) of January 24, 1919. Despite this, the course taken to eliminate the Cossacks as an estate and a special social group was not curtailed and was continued after in 1920 the entire Don region was again under the control of the Bolsheviks. At the same time, he expressed himself as in a repressive policy, the victims of which were, among other things, many outstanding Red Cossacks, for example, the commander of the 2nd Cavalry Army Philip Mironovand in the administrative and economic transformations that deprived the Cossacks of land ownership and abolished the Don Cossack Region as an independent administrative-territorial unit.

In principle, it is impossible to calculate the exact number of victims of the Bolshevik decossackization. If we proceed from the fact that the total irrecoverable losses of the Don Cossacks in the Civil War amounted to 250 thousand people (approximately every sixth), then the total number of deaths can be tens of thousands of people.

As they say, human blood is not water, it is not good to shed it. Civil war with merciless murders practiced by all sides, decossackization, collectivization, political repression, persecution of the Church - these are the tragic pages of our history. These lessons must be taught and known in order to never repeat even a hundredth of what our ancestors experienced. Unfortunately, the lessons of the past fratricidal war were not learned, and a century later it flared up again in Novorossia and Little Russia, affecting that part of the Don Army Region, which the Bolsheviks included in the Donetsk and Lugansk regions of Soviet Ukraine in the 1920s. This is an unexpected and sad consequence of the inhuman policy, the echoes of which continue to kill a century later.