Vasily Ivanovich Chapaev (signed as Chepaev). Born on January 28 (February 9), 1887 in the village of Budaika, Cheboksary district, Kazan province - died on September 5, 1919 near Lbischensk, Ural region. Legendary commander of the Red Army, participant in the First World War and the Civil War.
Vasily Chapaev was born on January 28 (February 9), 1887 in the village of Budaika, Cheboksary district, Kazan province, into a peasant family. The Chapaevs' ancestors lived there for a long time. Budaika, like some other neighboring Russian villages, arose near the city of Cheboksary, founded by order of the Tsar in 1555 on the site of an ancient Chuvash settlement.
Father - Ivan Stepanovich, Erzya by nationality. He belonged to the poorest peasants in Buda.
Mother Ekaterina Semenovna is of Russian-Chuvash origin.
Later, Chapaev’s brother, Mikhail Ivanovich, spoke about the origin of their surname as follows: “Vasily Ivanovich’s grandfather, Stepan Gavrilovich, was written as Gavrilov in the documents. In 1882 or 1883, Stepan Gavrilovich and his comrades contracted to load logs. The tramp Venyaminov asked to join them in the artel. He was accepted. The eldest in the artel was Stepan Gavrilovich. As the eldest, he usually shouted to his comrades work: - Chepai, chepai! (Tsepai, tsepai, which means “take, take”).
When the work was finished, the contractor did not immediately give the money for the work. The money was to be received and distributed as the eldest, Stepan Gavrilovich. The old man went for a long time to get money. Venyaminov ran along the pier, looking for Stepan. Forgetting his name, he asked everyone:
- Have you seen Gryazevo (Gryazevo is another name for the village of Budaika) old man, handsome, curly, and keeps saying “chapay”?
“He, Chapai, won’t give you the money,” they joked about Venyaminov. Then, when the grandfather received the money he earned, he found Venyaminov, gave him his earnings, and treated him to a meal.
And the nickname “Chapai” remained with Stepan. The descendants were given the nickname “Chapaevs”, which later became the official surname.".
Some time later, in search of a better life, the Chapaev family moved to the village of Balakovo, Nikolaev district, Samara province. Ivan Stepanovich enrolled his son in a local parochial school, the patron of which was his wealthy cousin. There were already priests in the Chapaev family, and the parents wanted Vasily to become a clergyman, but life decreed otherwise.
In the fall of 1908, Vasily was drafted into the army and sent to Kyiv. But already in the spring of the following year, for unknown reasons, Chapaev was transferred from the army to the reserve and transferred to first-class militia warriors. According to the official version, due to illness. The version about his political unreliability, because of which he was transferred to the warriors, is not confirmed by anything.
Before the World War, he did not serve in the regular army. He worked as a carpenter.
From 1912 to 1914, Chapaev and his family lived in the city of Melekess (now Dimitrovgrad, Ulyanovsk region). At the beginning of the war, on September 20, 1914, Chapaev was called up for military service and sent to the 159th reserve infantry regiment in the city of Atkarsk.
Chapaev went to the front in January 1915. He fought in the 326th Belgorai Infantry Regiment of the 82nd Infantry Division in the 9th Army of the Southwestern Front in Volyn and Galicia. Was wounded. In July 1915 he graduated from the training team, received the rank of junior non-commissioned officer, and in October - senior officer. He finished the war with the rank of sergeant major. For his bravery, he was awarded the St. George Medal and soldiers' St. George Crosses of three degrees.
I met the February revolution in a hospital in Saratov. On September 28, 1917 he joined the RSDLP(b). He was elected commander of the 138th reserve infantry regiment stationed in Nikolaevsk. On December 18, the district congress of Soviets elected him military commissar of the Nikolaev district. In this position he led the dispersal of the Nikolaev district zemstvo. Organized a district Red Guard of 14 detachments.
He took part in the campaign against General Kaledin (near Tsaritsyn), then (in the spring of 1918) in the campaign of the Special Army to Uralsk. On his initiative, on May 25, a decision was made to reorganize the Red Guard detachments into two regiments of the Red Army: them. Stepan Razin and them. Pugachev, united in the Pugachev brigade under the command of Chapaev.
Later he took part in battles with the Czechoslovaks and the People's Army, from whom he recaptured Nikolaevsk, which was renamed Pugachev in honor of the brigade.
From November 1918 to February 1919 - at the Academy of the General Staff. Then - Commissioner of Internal Affairs of the Nikolaev district.
From May 1919 - brigade commander of the Special Aleksandrovo-Gai Brigade, from June - head of the 25th Infantry Division, which participated in the Bugulminsky and Belebeyevsky operations against Kolchak's army.
During the capture of Ufa, Chapaev was wounded in the head by a burst from an aircraft machine gun.
Appearance of Vasily Chapaev
The chief of staff of the 4th Army, Fyodor Novitsky, described Chapaev as follows: “A man of about thirty, of average height, thin, clean-shaven and with a neat hairstyle, slowly and very respectfully entered the office. Chapaev was dressed not only neatly, but also elegantly: a superbly tailored overcoat made of good quality material, a gray sheepskin hat with a gold braid on top, and smart deerskin boots with fur on the outside. He was wearing a Caucasian saber, richly trimmed with silver, and a Mauser pistol neatly fitted to his side.
Death of Vasily Chapaev
Vasily Ivanovich Chapaev died on September 5, 1919 as a result of a deep raid by the Cossack detachment of Colonel N. N. Borodin (1192 soldiers with 9 machine guns and 2 guns), which culminated in an unexpected attack on the well-guarded and deep rear city of Lbischensk (now the village of Chapaev Zapadno -Kazakhstan region of Kazakhstan), where the headquarters of the 25th division was located.
Chapaev's division, separated from the rear and suffering heavy losses, in early September settled down to rest in the Lbischensk area, and in Lbischensk itself the division headquarters, supply department, tribunal, revolutionary committee and other divisional institutions with a total number of almost two thousand people were located. In addition, there were about two thousand mobilized peasant transport workers in the city who did not have any weapons.
The city was guarded by a division school of 600 people - it was these 600 active bayonets that were Chapaev’s main force at the time of the attack. The main forces of the division were located at a distance of 40-70 km from the city.
The command of the Ural Army decided to launch a raid on Lbischensk. On the evening of August 31, a selected detachment under the command of Colonel Borodin left the village of Kalyonoy.
On September 4, Borodin’s detachment secretly approached the city and hid in the reeds in the backwaters of the Urals. Air reconnaissance (4 airplanes) did not report this to Chapaev, apparently due to the fact that the pilots sympathized with the whites (after the death of Chapaev, they all flew over to the side of the whites).
At dawn on September 5, the Cossacks attacked Lbischensk. Panic and chaos began, some of the Red Army soldiers crowded into Cathedral Square, were surrounded there and taken prisoner. Others were captured or killed while clearing the city. Only a small part managed to break through to the Ural River. All prisoners were executed - they were shot in batches of 100-200 people on the banks of the Urals. Among those captured after the battle and shot was divisional commissar P. S. Baturin, who tried to hide in the oven of one of the houses. The chief of staff of the Ural White Army, Colonel Motornov, described the results of this operation as follows: “Lbischensk was taken on September 5 with a stubborn battle that lasted 6 hours. As a result, the headquarters of the 25th division, the instructor school, and divisional institutions were destroyed and captured. Four airplanes, five cars and other military booty were captured.”.
As documents testify, for the capture of Chapaev, Borodin assigned a special platoon under the command of the guard Belonozhkin, who, led by a captured Red Army soldier, attacked the house where Chapaev was quartered, but let him go: the Cossacks attacked the Red Army soldier who appeared from the house, mistaking him for Chapaev himself, in while Chapaev jumped out the window and managed to escape. While fleeing, he was wounded in the arm by Belonozhkin's shot.
Having gathered and organized the Red Army soldiers who fled to the river in panic, Chapaev organized a detachment of about a hundred people with a machine gun and was able to throw back Belonozhkin, who did not have machine guns. However, in the process he was wounded in the stomach. According to the story of Chapaev's eldest son, Alexander, two Hungarian Red Army soldiers put the wounded Chapaev on a raft made from half a gate and transported him across the Urals. But on the other side it turned out that Chapaev died from loss of blood. The Hungarians buried his body with their hands in the coastal sand and covered it with reeds so that the Cossacks would not find the grave.
This story was subsequently confirmed by one of the participants in the events, who in 1962 sent a letter from Hungary to Chapaev’s daughter with a detailed description of the death of the division commander. The investigation carried out by the Whites also confirms these data, according to the words of captured Red Army soldiers: “Chapaev, leading a group of Red Army soldiers towards us, was wounded in the stomach. The wound turned out to be so severe that after that he could no longer lead the battle and was transported on planks across the Urals... he [Chapaev] was already on the Asian side of the river. Ural died from a wound in the stomach.”
The place where Chapaev was supposedly buried is now flooded - the river bed has changed.
In the battles for Lbischensk, the commander of the special combined detachment of the White Guard Ural Army, the head of the operation, Major General (posthumously) Nikolai Nikolaevich Borodin, also died.
Vasily Chapaev. Legendary man
Other versions of the death of Vasily Chapaev
Thanks to Furmanov’s book and especially the film “Chapaev,” the version of the death of the wounded Chapaev in the waves of the Urals has become textbook.
This version arose immediately after the death of Chapaev and was, in fact, the fruit of an assumption, based on the fact that Chapaev was seen on the European shore, but he did not swim to the Asian (“Bukhara”) shore, and his body was not found - as is clear from the conversation on a direct wire between a member of the Revolutionary Military Council of the 4th Army I.F. Sundukov and the temporary military commissar of the division M.I. Sysoykin: “Sundukov: “Comrade Chapaev, apparently, was at first lightly wounded in the arm and during the general retreat to the Bukhara side he also tried to swim across Ural, but had not yet managed to enter the water, when he was killed in the back of the head by a random bullet and fell near the water, where he remained." But there were a lot of corpses lying on the banks of the Urals; there was no comrade Chapaev. He was killed in the middle of the Urals and sank to the bottom.”
However, this is not the only version of Chapaev’s death. Nowadays, versions appear in the press that Chapaev was killed in captivity. They are based on the following.
On February 5, 1926, in the Penza newspaper “Trudovaya Pravda” an article “Man-Beast” appeared about the arrest in Penza by the OGPU of the Kolchak officer Trofimov-Mirsky, who allegedly commanded a combined detachment consisting of four Cossack regiments and operating in the zone of the red Fourth Army, distinguished himself sadistic reprisals against prisoners and, in particular, captured and hacked Chapaev and his entire staff. In Penza, Trofimov-Mirsky worked as an accountant for an artel of disabled people. Then this information appeared in Krasnaya Zvezda (under the headline “Comrade Chapaev’s killer has been arrested”) and was reprinted by a number of provincial newspapers.
Along with mass burnings alive and other episodes of brutal mass executions of prisoners, the investigation accused the 30-year-old captain of allegedly ordering the hacking of the captive Chapaev. It is further said that “during the retreat of the Chapaev division from the village of Sakharnaya towards the city of Lbischensk, Ural region at the beginning of October 1919, Trofimov-Mirsky with his troops drove into the rear of the Chapaev division 80 versts and attacked early in the morning at dawn to the headquarters of the Chapaev division in the city of Lbischensk, where, on his orders, the division commander, Comrade. Chapaev, and also all the teams located at the division headquarters in the city of Lbischensk were cut down.”
This phrase of the accusation, however, is full of contradictions to established facts: Chapaev died not in early October, but in early September, the retreat of the division did not precede Chapaev’s death, but was its consequence, Trofimov-Mirsky certainly was not and could not be the commander of the detachment that attacked Lbischensk (it is noteworthy that in the text of the note, the esaul, that is, the junior officer, is no longer assigned command of a detachment equal to a division, as the investigation initially stated), and the distance covered by the Cossacks during the raid is almost twice as large (150 versts).
Trofimov-Mirsky himself denied the accusations, admitting only that he actually came disguised as a spy to the division’s location. He claimed that he had no more than 70 people in his detachment, and with this detachment he allegedly only “hid in the Kyrgyz steppes.” Apparently, the accusations were not confirmed, because in the end, Trofimov-Mirsky was released. It is significant that this case was initiated shortly after the release of Furmanov’s sensational story “Chapaev” (1923).
Professor Alexey Litvin reports that back in the 1960s, a certain person worked as a carpenter in Kazakhstan, whom many (even veteran Chapaevites) considered to be a survivor of Chapaev, who “swimmed out, was picked up by steppe Kazakhs, suffered from typhoid fever, and then lost his memory.”
Some historians express the opinion that Chapaev’s role in the history of the Civil War is very small, and he would not be worth mentioning among other famous figures of that time, such as N. A. Shchors, S. G. Lazo, G. I. Kotovsky, if would not be the myth created from it.
According to other materials, the 25th Division played a big role in the zone of the South-Eastern Red Front in the capture of such provincial centers in the defense of Admiral Kolchak’s troops as Samara, Ufa, Uralsk, Orenburg, Aktyubinsk.
Subsequently, after the death of Chapaev, the operations of the 25th Infantry Division were carried out under the command of I. S. Kutyakov in the Soviet-Polish war.
Personal life of Vasily Chapaev:
In 1908, Chapaev met 16-year-old Pelageya Metlina, the daughter of a priest. On July 5, 1909, 22-year-old Vasily Ivanovich married a 17-year-old peasant woman from the village of Balakova, Pelageya Nikanorovna Metlina (State Archive of the Saratov Region F. 637. Op. 7. D. 69. L. 380 volume - 309.).
They lived together for 6 years and had three children. Then the First World War began, and Chapaev went to the front. Pelageya lived in his parents’ house, then went with the children to a neighbor’s conductor.
At the beginning of 1917, Chapaev went to his native place and intended to divorce Pelageya, but was satisfied with taking the children from her and returning them to their parents’ house.
Pelageya (the legal wife of Vasily Ivanovich), having learned that Vasily was no longer there, she decided to take her children. But soon, pregnant with her fifth child - the second from her partner Makar, she went across the frozen Volga to her father-in-law, but fell into the wormwood. She caught a severe cold, gave birth to a stillborn boy and died.
Soon after this, he became acquainted with Pelageya Kamishkertseva, the widow of Pyotr Kamishkertsev, a friend of Chapaev, who died of a wound during the fighting in the Carpathians (Chapaev and Kamishkertsev promised each other that if one of the two was killed, the survivor would take care of his friend’s family).
In 1919, Chapaev settled Kamishkertseva with her children (Chapaev’s children and Kamishkertsev’s daughters Olympiada and Vera) in the village. Klintsovka at the division’s artillery depot, after which Kamishkertseva cheated on Chapaev with the head of the artillery depot, Georgy Zhivolozhnov. This circumstance was revealed shortly before Chapaev’s death and dealt him a strong moral blow.
Pelageya Kameshkertseva dreamed of becoming Chapaev’s real wife, but she never could. She blamed her appearance for everything, complained about her thick legs, rough hands with short fingers, and did not understand that she had a monogamous husband. Out of grief, she decided to take revenge on Vasily in her own way - to cheat on him too. Her boyfriend Zhivolozhinov took custody of his children after Chapaev’s death, but he himself could not stand them. Over time, he abandoned his aging partner. After this, the unfortunate Pelageya lost her mind. Periodically treated in psychiatric clinics, she lived until 1961.
Pelageya Kamishkertseva - lover of Vasily Chapaev (center)
In the last year of his life, Chapaev also had affairs with a certain Tanka the Cossack (the daughter of a Cossack colonel, with whom he was forced to separate under moral pressure from the Red Army) and the wife of Commissar Furmanov, Anna Nikitichnaya Steshenko, which led to an acute conflict with Furmanov and was the reason for his recall Furmanov from the division shortly before Chapaev’s death.
Chapaev's daughter Claudia was sure that it was Pelageya Kamishkertseva who destroyed him. She spoke about the circumstances of the family drama as follows: “Dad comes home one day - he looks, and the door to the bedroom is closed. He knocks, asks his wife to open it. And she has Georgiy. Father screams, and then Zhivolozhnov starts shooting through the door. His soldiers were with dad, they went around the house with on the other hand, they broke the window and started firing with a machine gun. The lover jumped out of the room and started shooting with a revolver. My father and I miraculously escaped.".
Chapaev, according to her, immediately went back to division headquarters. Soon after this, Pelageya decided to make peace with her common-law husband and headed to Lbischensk, taking little Arkady with her. However, she was not allowed to see Chapaev. On the way back, Pelageya stopped at the white headquarters and reported information about the small number of forces stationed in Lbischensk.
According to K. Chapaeva, she heard Pelageya boasting about this already in the 1930s. However, it should be noted that since the population of Lbischensk and the surrounding area, consisting of Ural Cossacks, completely sympathized with the whites and maintained contact with them, the latter were intimately aware of the situation in the city. Therefore, even if the story of Pelageya Kamishkertseva’s betrayal is true, the information she provided was not of particular value. There is no mention of this report in the White Guard documents.
Alexander Vasilievich(1910-1985) - officer, went through the entire Great Patriotic War. He retired with the rank of major general. The last position was deputy commander of artillery of the Moscow Military District. Raised three children. Died in March 1985.
Klavdiya Vasilievna(1912-1999) - Soviet party worker, known as a collector of materials about her father.
After the death of her father and the death of his parents, Claudia found herself literally on the street. She lived with thieves in the slums, was dystrophic, and as a result of a raid she ended up in an orphanage. Her stepmother took her only in 1925 to go with her to set up a boarding house. At the age of 17, Claudia left her for Samara, got married, gave birth to a son, and entered the construction institute. During the Great Patriotic War, she worked in the Saratov regional party committee. After the war she became a people's assessor. She retired due to illness and asked the government for permission to work in the state archives, devoting the rest of her life to researching the history of her legendary father. She died in September 1999.
Arkady Vasilievich(1914-1939) - military pilot, member of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee since 1932, died near Borisoglebsk during a training flight in a fighter.
At the age of 18 he was elected to the All-Russian Central Executive Committee. In Borisoglebsk he graduated from a flight school and, together with him, developed schemes for new test flights.. Later, having learned that they did not believe him and were suspected of organizing the death of Chkalov in order to take his place, that his own wife spied on him and wrote denunciations to various authorities, Arkady did not endured the shame. He went on his last flight in an excited state, having completed the flight program, made another farewell coup and dived into the swamp. The crashed plane was found three days later.
Chapaev did not immediately become a legend: the death of the division chief during the Civil War was not something exceptional. The Chapaev myth took shape over several years. The first step towards the glorification of the 25th division commander was the novel by Dmitry Furmanov, where Chapaev was shown as a genius and, despite his simplicity, excessive gullibility and tendency to self-praise, a real folk hero.
The myth of the invincible commander and “father to soldiers” finally took shape in the mid-1930s. The film by brothers (in fact, namesakes) Georgy and Sergei Vasiliev encountered some obstacles along the way. The directors had to prove to the cinematic authorities the need to create a sound (and not silent) film; the script was reworked according to the wishes of the country's main moviegoer, who “recommended” introducing a romantic motif into the film: the relationship between Petka and Anka the machine gunner.
Such attention to the film was not accidental: cinema was the most important way of propaganda and instilling the “correct” worldview among the masses. The fate of the release or ban of films was decided at the highest level, during their preview by members of the Politburo. On November 4, 1934, the party Areopagus watched Chapaev.
“When the tape ended, I.V. stood up and, turning to me, said: “You can be congratulated on your luck. Great, smart and tactfully made... The film will have great educational value. It is a good holiday gift. I.V. and others praised the work as brilliant, truthful and talented,” wrote party cinema curator Boris Shumyatsky.
Vasily Chapaev in culture and art:
In 1923, the writer Dmitry Furmanov, who served as a commissar in Chapaev’s division, wrote a novel about him "Chapaev". In 1934, based on the materials of this book, the directors Vasilyev brothers staged a film of the same name, which gained enormous popularity in the USSR. The main role - Chapaev - was played by the actor.
Chapaev's success was deafening: in two years more than 40 million viewers saw him, and Stalin watched him 38 (!) times in a year and a half. The lines at the box office turned into demonstrations.
However, this popularity also has a downside. In the conditions of Soviet society, folklore developed largely in defiance of official propaganda, profaning its basic dogmas and images. This is exactly what happened with the image of Chapaev and other characters in Furmanov’s book and the Vasilievs’ film. As a result, the commander Vasily Ivanovich, his orderly Petka, commissar Furmanov and machine gunner Anka were among the most popular.
stills from the film "Chapaev"
At the beginning of the Great Patriotic War, director V. Petrov shot a short propaganda film “Chapaev is with us,” which revived folk heroes. The cast is the same as that of the Vasilievs. The legendary hero was not killed, but swam safely to the other side of the Urals. And his living orderly Petka throws a cloak over his shoulders and leads the white horse. And Chapai tells the Red Army soldiers on all fronts what a hero can say to those who are “four steps away from heroism.”
The development of folk images continues in modern Russian literature (Viktor Pelevin, “Chapaev and Emptiness”) and popular culture (the “Petka” series of computer games).
Films about Vasily Chapaev:
“Chapayev” (film, 1934) (in the role of Chapaev -);
“Song about Chapaev” (cartoon, 1944);
“Chapaev is with us” (propaganda film, 1941) (in the role of Chapaev - Boris Babochkin);
“The Tale of Chapaev” (cartoon, 1958);
"Chapay's Eaglets" (film, 1968);
“Chapaev and Emptiness” (book, 1997);
“The Politburo Cooperative, or It Will Be a Long Farewell” (film, 1992) (in the role of Chapaev - Vasily Bochkarev);
“Park of the Soviet period” (film, 2006). In the role of Chapaev -;
“The Passion for Chapai” (TV series, 2012). Starring - ;
“Chapaev-Chapaev” (2013 film), directed by Viktor Tikhomirov, in the role of Chapaev;
“Kill Drozd” (TV series, 2013). In the role of Chapaev -;
“Temporary Man” (TV series, 2014), 3rd film “Save Chapai” (episodes 5 and 6). In the role - Denis Druzhinin;
“Little Buddha’s Little Finger” / “Chapaev and Emptiness” (Buddha’s Little Finger, 2015) (as Chapaev Andre Hennicke).
Songs about Chapaev:
“Song about Chapaev” (music: A. G. Novikov, lyrics: S. V. Bolotin, performed by: P. T. Kirichek);
“Hero Chapaev walked through the Urals” (lyrics: M. A. Popova, performed by: Red Banner Song and Dance Ensemble of the Soviet Army);
“The Death of Chapaev” (music: Yu. S. Milyutin, lyrics: Z. Aleksandrova, performed by: A. P. Korolev);
“Chapai remained alive” (music: E. E. Zharkovsky, lyrics: M. Vladimov, performed by: BDH);
“Chapai” (music and lyrics: Ilya Prozorov, performed by: group “Neboslov”);
"IN. I. Ch.” (music and lyrics: performed by: group “Front”);
“Snack from Chapaev” (music and lyrics: Sergei Stus: performed by: group “Narcotic Comatosis”).
Books about Chapaev:
Along the battle path of Chapaev. Brief guide. - Kuibyshev: Publishing house. gas. "Red Army Man", 1936;
Essay about V. Chapaev. V. A. Ivanova, V. I. Chapaev Museum in Cheboksary;
D. A. Furmanov. Chapaev;
Arkady Severny. Tragic Night". A play in one act. From the heroic history of the 25th Red Banner Order of Lenin Chapaev Division.. - M.: Iskusstvo, 1940;
Timofey Timin. Genes of the Scipios. Page 120 pp.: Chapaev - real and imaginary. M., “Veteran of the Fatherland”, 1997;
Khlebnikov N. M., Evlampiev P. S., Volodikhin Y. A. Legendary Chapaevskaya. - M.: Knowledge, 1975;
Vitaly Vladimirovich Vladimirov. Where V.I. Chapaev lived and fought: travel notes, 1997;
Victor Banikin. Stories about Chapaev. - Kuibyshev: Kuibyshev Book Publishing House, 1954;
Kononov Alexander. Stories about Chapaev. - M.: Children's literature, 1965;
Alexander Vasilievich Belyakov. Flying through the years. - M.: Voenizdat, 1988;
Evgenia Chapaeva. My unknown Chapaev. - M.: Corvette, 2005;
Sofia Mogilevskaya. Chapayonok: a story. - M.: Detgiz, 1962;
Mikhail Sergeevich Kolesnikov. All hurricanes in the face: a novel. - M.: Voenizdat, 1969;
Mark Endlin. Chapaev in America and others - Smeshanina (s.i.), 1980;
Alexander Markin. The adventures of Vasily Ivanovich Chapaev behind enemy lines and on the front of love. - M.: Publishing house "Mik", 1994;
Eduard Volodarsky. Passion for Chapai. - M.: Amphora, 2007;
V. Pelevin. Chapaev and Emptiness. - M.: Amphora.
The circumstances of the death of the legendary division commander still give rise to heated debate among historians. The official version says that Chapaev died on September 5, 1919 during a surprise attack by the White Guards in Lbischensk. The wounded division commander was unable to swim across the Ural River and drowned in its waters. The popularization of this version was facilitated by the novel “Chapaev”, written by military commissar Dmitry Furmanov, as well as the film of the same name filmed later. But many, including Chapaev's family, do not agree with the official version of his death.
And, indeed, not everything is so smooth! Firstly, Furmanov himself was not an eyewitness to that terrible battle. When writing his famous novel, he used only the memories of the few surviving participants in the battle in Lbischensk. It would seem that the information is first-hand, what could be more truthful?
But imagine: night, a bloody and merciless battle, mutilated corpses around, confusion... It is unlikely that any of the fighters could clearly describe the picture of what was happening and, even more so, the fate of an individual, even his beloved commander. Moreover, not a single surviving soldier with whom the author spoke confirmed that he saw the corpse of the division commander, then how can one say that he died? More likely, he went missing.
And even a letter sent to the newspaper “Rabochiy Klich” in 1927 by a certain “T.V.Z.”, telling that this particular Red Army soldier swam across the Urals with the division commander, does not prove the fact of death. Because, according to the author of the letter himself, in the cold water, seized by a convulsion, he lost consciousness. I only woke up on the other side, Chapaev was not nearby. He may have drowned...but perhaps not!
Secondly, it is worth noting that, according to many, at the time of their joint service, Chapaev and Furmanov were people of “different calibers.” They simply did not understand each other. By the way, Chapaevites believed that in his novel Furmanov created an overly generalized image of the Red commander, not at all similar to Chapaev. To which the author replied: “It is my right to fiction.” And this is another reason for doubt!
If Furmanov could create the image of his hero, then who would forbid him to invent or slightly change his fate? It turns out that this is not a biography of Vasily Ivanovich Chapaev at all, but just a work of art, a novel based on real events. Unfortunately, we cannot find out the truth from eyewitnesses of the event. All that remains is to rely on the chronicles and documents of that time. There are many versions of the events of that fateful night circulating around the world, but only a few of them deserve attention.
A story slightly different from the official version was told by a letter written by Hungarians by nationality and Red Army soldiers of the famous 25th division, the head of which was Vasily Ivanovich Chapaev. The letter came to the division commander's daughter. The main difference was that, according to their story, the division commander did not drown in the river, but was transported to the other bank. But the national hero never managed to live to see the next day: wounded by his pursuers, he died. After which Chapaev’s body was hastily buried somewhere near Uralsk. Naturally, in such conditions, no one remembered the exact coordinates of the place, the hero’s grave was lost forever...
It’s strange in general that the letter reached Claudia, Chapaev’s daughter. And the main question is, why were they silent for so long?! Maybe they were forbidden to disclose the details of those events. But some are sure that the letter itself is not a cry from the distant past, designed to shed light on the death of a hero, but a cynical KGB operation, the goals of which are unclear.
One of the legends appeared later. On February 9, 1926, the newspaper “Krasnoyarsk Worker” published sensational news: “... Kolchak officer Trofimov-Mirsky was arrested, who in 1919 killed the captured and legendary division chief Chapaev. Mirsky served as an accountant in an artel of disabled people in Penza.”
Was the famous hero really captured?! It is known that the White command promised 50 thousand rubles in gold to the one who would bring Chapaev. Therefore, we can assume that a hunt was announced for the division commander and, most likely, the White Cossacks tried to capture him. But there is no more information or evidence for this version.
But the most mysterious version tells that Chapaev was able to swim across the Urals. And, having released the fighters, he went to Frunze in Samara. But along the way he became very ill and lay for some time in some unknown village. After recovery, Vasily Ivanovich finally made it to Samara... where he was arrested by the Red Army.
After the night battle in Lbischensk, Chapaev was listed as dead. The party leadership declared the division commander a hero who steadfastly fought for the ideas of the party and died for them. The story of Chapaev’s heroic death stirred the public, raised their military spirit and gave them strength. The news that Chapaev was alive meant only one thing - the national hero abandoned his soldiers and succumbed to flight. The top management could not allow this!
This version is also based on the memories and conjectures of eyewitnesses. Vasily Sityaev assured that in 1941 he met with a soldier of the 25th Infantry Division, who showed him the personal belongings of the division commander and told him that after crossing to the opposite bank of the Urals, the division commander went to Frunze.
Another piece of evidence can hardly be called real, but there is no evidence to the contrary, so it deserves attention.
In 1998, journalists published a scandalous article! Allegedly, one of the Red Army soldiers in his old age accidentally met with the division commander; he lived under a different name. The reason for this was his arrest by Frunze and the subsequent “information blockade”. After a report from an unknown person that Chapaev had revealed himself, he headed to Stalin’s camps in 1934... Exhausted by life, he eventually found himself in a home for the disabled. Only one thing is surprising: how did a person who survived so many upheavals live to be 111 years old? And why, after the death of the leader, did he not even try to contact his relatives?
There are many versions of Chapaev’s death; it is difficult to say which one is true. Some historians are generally inclined to believe that the historical role of the division commander in the Civil War is extremely small. And all the myths and legends that glorified Chapaev were created by the party for its own purposes. But, according to reviews from those who knew him quite closely, he was a real person! He not only had an excellent knowledge of military affairs, but was also attentive to his subordinates and took care of them in every possible way. He did not hesitate, in the words of Dmitry Furmanov, to “dance with the fighters”; he was honest and true to his ideals to the end. He was a true folk hero!
Based on books and films, we tell jokes about him. But the real life of the red division commander was no less interesting. He loved cars and argued with the teachers at the military academy. And Chapaev is not his real name.
Difficult childhood
Vasily Ivanovich was born into a poor peasant family. The only wealth of his parents was their nine eternally hungry children, of whom the future hero of the Civil War was the sixth.
As the legend goes, he was born premature and warmed up in his father’s fur mitten on the stove. His parents sent him to seminary in the hope that he would become a priest. But when one day the guilty Vasya was put in a wooden punishment cell in only his shirt in the bitter cold, he ran away. He tried to become a merchant, but he couldn’t - he was too disgusted by the basic trading commandment: “If you don’t cheat, you won’t sell, if you don’t sell money, you won’t make money.” “My childhood was dark and difficult. I had to humiliate myself and starve a lot. From an early age I hung around strangers,” the division commander later recalled.
"Chapaev"
It is believed that Vasily Ivanovich’s family bore the surname Gavrilovs. “Chapaev” or “Chepai” was the nickname given to the division commander’s grandfather, Stepan Gavrilovich. Either in 1882 or 1883, he and his comrades loaded logs, and Stepan, as the eldest, constantly commanded - “Chepai, chapai!”, which meant: “take, take.” So it stuck to him - Chepai, and the nickname later turned into a surname.
They say that the original “Chepai” became “Chapaev” with the light hand of Dmitry Furmanov, the author of the famous novel, who decided that “it sounds better this way.” But in surviving documents from the times of the Civil War, Vasily appears under both options.
Perhaps the name “Chapaev” appeared as a result of a typo.
Academy Student
Chapaev's education, contrary to popular opinion, was not limited to two years of parish school. In 1918, he was enrolled in the military academy of the Red Army, where many soldiers were “herded” to improve their general literacy and learn strategy. According to the recollections of his classmate, the peaceful student life weighed on Chapaev: “The hell with it! I'll leave! To come up with such an absurdity - fighting people at their desks! Two months later, he submitted a report asking to be released from this “prison” to the front.
Several stories have been preserved about Vasily Ivanovich’s stay at the academy. The first says that during a geography exam, in response to an old general’s question about the significance of the Neman River, Chapaev asked the professor if he knew about the significance of the Solyanka River, where he fought with the Cossacks. According to the second, in a discussion of the Battle of Cannes, he called the Romans “blind kittens,” telling the teacher, a prominent military theorist Sechenov: “We have already shown generals like you how to fight!”
Motorist
We all imagine Chapaev as a courageous fighter with a fluffy mustache, a naked sword and galloping on a dashing horse. This image was created by folk actor Boris Babochkin. In life, Vasily Ivanovich preferred cars to horses.
Back on the fronts of the First World War, he was seriously wounded in the thigh, so riding became a problem. So, Chapaev became one of the first Red commanders who switched to a car.
He chose his iron horses very meticulously. The first, the American Stever, was rejected due to strong shaking; the red Packard that replaced it also had to be abandoned - it was not suitable for military operations in the steppe. But the red commander liked the Ford, which pushed 70 miles off-road. Chapaev also selected the best drivers. One of them, Nikolai Ivanov, was practically taken to Moscow by force and made the personal driver of Lenin’s sister, Anna Ulyanova-Elizarova.
Women's cunning
The famous commander Chapaev was an eternal loser on the personal front. His first wife, the bourgeois Pelageya Metlina, whom Chapaev’s parents did not approve of, calling him a “city white-handed woman,” bore him three children, but did not wait for her husband from the front - she went to a neighbor. Vasily Ivanovich was very upset by her action - he loved his wife. Chapaev often repeated to his daughter Claudia: “Oh, how beautiful you are. She looks like her mother."
Chapaev’s second companion, although already a civilian, was also named Pelageya. She was the widow of Vasily’s comrade-in-arms, Pyotr Kamishkertsev, to whom the division commander promised to take care of his family. At first he sent her benefits, then they decided to move in together. But history repeated itself - during her husband’s absence, Pelageya began an affair with a certain Georgy Zhivolozhinov. One day Chapaev found them together and almost sent the unlucky lover to the next world.
When the passions subsided, Kamishkertseva decided to go to war, took the children and went to her husband’s headquarters. The children were allowed to see their father, but she was not. They say that after this she took revenge on Chapaev by revealing to the whites the location of the Red Army troops and data on their numbers.
fatal water
The death of Vasily Ivanovich is shrouded in mystery. On September 4, 1919, Borodin’s troops approached the city of Lbischensk, where the headquarters of Chapaev’s division with a small number of fighters was located. During the defense, Chapaev was severely wounded in the stomach; his soldiers put the commander on a raft and transported him across the Urals, but he died from loss of blood. The body was buried in the coastal sand, and the traces were hidden so that the Cossacks would not find it. Searching for the grave subsequently became useless, as the river changed its course. This story was confirmed by a participant in the events. According to another version, Chapaev drowned after being wounded in the arm, unable to cope with the current.
“Or maybe he swam out?”
Neither Chapaev's body nor grave could be found. This gave rise to a completely logical version of the surviving hero. Someone said that due to a severe wound he lost his memory and lived somewhere under a different name.
Some claimed that he was safely transported to the other side, from where he went to Frunze, to be responsible for the surrendered city. In Samara he was put under arrest, and then they decided to officially “kill the hero,” ending his military career with a beautiful end.
This story was told by a certain Onyanov from the Tomsk region, who allegedly met his aged commander many years later. The story looks dubious, since in the difficult conditions of the civil war it was inappropriate to “throw away” experienced military leaders who were highly respected by the soldiers.
Most likely, this is a myth generated by the hope that the hero was saved.
Chapaev. Did he drown in the Ural River?
Chapaev approaches Anka:
Shall we go to the Urals for a swim?
Come on, Vasily Ivanovich, come back alone at night again?
From a joke
Vasily Ivanovich Chapaev, a hero of the civil war and also of numerous anecdotes, is known to both young and old in our country.
Chapaev became widely known mainly thanks to the famous film by the Vasilyev brothers. There was a time when Furmanov’s novel “Chapaev” was studied in the school literature curriculum. Now, as far as I know, schoolchildren have a slightly different program, and they can only learn about who Vasily Ivanovich is from films. But thanks to anecdotes, Chapaev became a kind of folk hero, and, perhaps, after a while epics will be written about him, and a fourth will be added to the three heroes - on a dashing horse and a saber in his hands. Moreover, the image of Chapaev is already quite mythologized.
In the film by the Vasilyev brothers, by which we mainly judge Chapaev, very little corresponds to reality. Let's start with the fact that the film was created with the direct participation of the best friend of all filmmakers, and at the same time the leader of all peoples - Stalin. At first, the Vasilyevs filmed parts of the film where Chapaev’s commanders were played by real people who fought alongside Chapaev. But Stalin didn’t like it, he said that he never saw the film about Chapaev in these fragments. On his instructions, to awaken and cultivate patriotism, four main characters were introduced into the script: Commissar Furmanov, Commander Chapaev, one ordinary soldier Petka and the heroine Anka, to show the role of women in the civil war.
Of course, the image of Furmanov in the film is idealized, but it could not have been otherwise - after all, he is a commissar, the guiding force of the Bolshevik Party. But the real Furmanov’s quarrels with Chapaev were not because of ideology, but because of more prosaic things. For example, Furmanov brought his wife with him to the front. Chapaev demanded that she be sent away so as not to set an example for the wives of other commanders. Furmanov refused. Then they both sent telegrams to Frunze that they would no longer work with each other. In the end, the women's issue was dealt with by a commission headed by Kuibyshev, which decided to recall Furmanov and punish him.
As for Petka, Pyotr Isaev was not Chapaev’s orderly. He was a regiment commander, then a regimental commissar, and then an officer for special assignments. Anka is a fictional character. True, there was Maria Andreevna Popova in the Chapaev division, who served as the prototype for Anka. But she was not a machine gunner, but a nurse and an ammunition carrier. Only once did she have to fire a machine gun, when a wounded machine gunner not only asked, but rather forced her to do it. This is how Chapaev’s daughter Klavdiya Vasilievna tells about this story: “She carried ammunition to the front line and carried away the wounded. One day she brought belts to one of the machine gun crews. And there the machine gunner’s assistant was killed, and the machine gunner himself was seriously wounded. So he says to her: “Lie down next to me and press this button, and I will drive the machine gun with my good hand.” Maria says: “Are you crazy? I'm afraid". And she got ready to leave. And the machine gunner fired after her. He says: “The next bullet is in you.” What to do - she lay down, turned away, closed her eyes, and just shot. And they called it “Anka” because the main consultant of the film was Furmanov’s wife Anna Nikitichna.”
As for Vasily Ivanovich, although he was hot-tempered, but, according to the testimony of his daughter, he did not break stools, if only because when he was a carpenter he made them himself. Also, in one of her interviews, Klavdiya Vasilievna Chapaeva debunks the myth that Vasily Ivanovich drowned in the Ural River. In fact, several soldiers transported the seriously wounded Chapaev across the river on a raft and already on the other side they saw that the legendary division commander was dead. There, on the river bank, they dug a grave with their hands and buried Chapaev, after which the place was leveled and covered with branches so that the whites could not find him. Subsequently, the Ural changed its course, and now Chapaev’s grave is located at the bottom of the river.
Few people know that Chapaev commanded not a cavalry division at all, but a rifle division. In our minds, Chapaev is always ahead “on a dashing horse,” waving a saber. In reality, everything was somewhat different. Having a good attitude towards horses, Chapaev still preferred iron horses - at first he had a bright red Stever car, confiscated “in favor of the revolution” from some Russian capitalist, then a Packard abandoned by Kolchak’s followers, then a Ford. , which reached speeds of up to 50 km per hour, which was not bad at all at that time. And in Chapaev’s division there were not so many horses, but there was a 10-ton land battleship “Gasford”, tanks, armored cars, combat airplanes, a variety of artillery, extensive telegraph, telephone and motorcycle communications.
From the book Encyclopedic Dictionary (T-F) author Brockhaus F.A. From the book 100 great Russian films author Mussky Igor Anatolievich“CHAPAEV” “Lenfilm”, 1934 Based on materials from D.A. Furmanov and A.N. Furmanova. Script and direction by the Vasiliev brothers. Cameramen A. Sigaev and A. Ksenofontov. Artist I. Makhlis. Composer G. Popov. Cast: B. Babochkin, B. Blinov, V. Myasnikova, L. Kmit, I. Pevtsov, S. Shkurat, N. Simonov,
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From the book Great Soviet Films author Sokolova Lyudmila AnatolyevnaChapaev - a man and a film Oh, how everyone wanted him to swim... Well, come on, Vasily Ivanovich, a little more - and soon there will be solid ground under your feet. “You’re lying, you won’t take it!” - the wounded Chapai growled and rowed with all his remaining strength. And yet he drowned... And turned into
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January 10th, 2015
V. I. Chapaev, commander of the 2nd Nikolaev Soviet Regiment I. Kutyakov, battalion commander I. Bubenets and Commissar A. Semennikov. 1918
From July 15 to 25, fierce battles took place in the Usikha area between the Chapaev units and the Beluralsk army. Having overcome all the obstacles on their way, enduring thirst and hardship, feeling a lack of ammunition, the Chapaevites occupied not only Lbischensk (now the city of Chapaev in the West Kazakhstan region of Kazakhstan, the regional center of the Akzhaik region. Located 130 km south of Uralsk, on the right bank of the river . Ural.), but also the village of Sakharnaya, covering a distance of over 200 kilometers.
The Belouralsk Cossack army began to retreat south, stopping in every village. The White generals created plans for “mass cavalry attacks”, and then launched energetic preparations for a raid on Lbischensk, where Chapaev’s base and headquarters were located.
Late in the evening, some of the transport workers who had gone to the steppe for hay returned there. They reported that the Cossacks attacked them and stole the carts. This was reported to the arriving Chapaev and Baturin. Vasily Ivanovich urgently demanded to report intelligence reports and aerial reconnaissance data in the direction of the villages of Slomikhinskaya and Kazil-Ubimskaya. Chief of Staff Novikov reported that neither the mounted reconnaissance nor the reconnaissance flights of the air detachment, carried out in the morning and evening for several days, had detected the enemy. And the appearance of relatively small Cossack detachments and patrols was no longer uncommon. According to the version set out in the book by Evgenia Chapaeva (great-granddaughter of Vasily Chapaev) in the book “My Unknown Chapaev” in early September, the security of Lbischensk was not strengthened enough, since aerial reconnaissance reported that whites were nearby No.
This is what she wrote...
Chapaev calmed down, but gave orders to strengthen security. Novikov, a former officer who worked as an assistant to the division chief of staff and who had recently become head of headquarters, was beyond suspicion. And the information he reported about the enemy did not correspond to reality: the enemy with large forces of cavalry was no longer far away and aimed at Lbischensk.
As they say, the enemy does not sleep... This is exactly what some people from the arriving air squad and division headquarters did. The technical capabilities of aircraft of that time and the lack of anti-aircraft weapons to combat them allowed flights at low altitudes. The pilots, who took to the air twice a day, could not fail to notice a cavalry of several thousand horsemen... Moreover, the reeds of the dry Kushum River are not a forest to hide such a mass of the enemy.
SO, PILOTS...
It is about them that special mention must be made. The fact that they were traitors became clear even then, on September 4, 1919. But few could have guessed what motivated them... Do you think it was incredible love for the abdicated Tsar Nicholas? Or fierce hatred of the Bolsheviks? YOU ARE WRONG!!!
Everything is much more prosaic - MONEY, MONEY and once again MONEY... And very big ones. 25 thousand in gold... Yes, that’s exactly what they gave for Chapaev’s head, living or dead...
There were four pilots. I will allow myself to name the names of only those who died, like Chapaev, on September 5, 1919. These are Sladkovsky and Sadovsky. And the survivors, that is, 2 pilots, divided the resulting profit and settled into a bright future.
And yet man is constructed in an incomprehensible way. Very little time will pass, the gunpowder years of the forties will come, and two traitors in civilian life will become heroes of the Soviet Union during the Patriotic War... But that’s not all. They will occupy responsible positions in the government and throughout their lives they will “cover up” the topic of the civil war and especially Chapaev. They were probably ashamed...
Information about traitorous pilots is also available in the book by I.S. Kutyakov “Vasily Ivanovich Chapaev”, published in 1935. Kutyakov Ivan Semenovich - commander of the 73rd brigade of the 25th division, after the death of V.I. Chapaev led the division, subsequently commanded the division until 1920, awarded three Orders of the Red Banner, the Order of the Red Banner of the Khorezm Republic, honorary revolutionary weapons, arrested and shot in 1938.
However, there is an opinion that the pilots did report information about the whites. On the Chronograph website, in the article “The Mystery of Chapaev’s Death,” it is written that Red aviation reconnaissance, flying over the steppe, discovered a Cossack corps in the reeds. The message about this immediately reached the army headquarters, but never went beyond its walls. A version has been put forward that perhaps there were traitors operating at the headquarters, probably from among the military experts of the tsarist army, attracted to cooperation by Lenin and Trotsky. In addition, military experts were not among those killed during the assault on Lbischensk.
However, the version of the betrayal of the pilots is refuted by the article “Chapaev - Destroy!” , from the white side, telling about the attack of the White Cossacks on Lbischensk.
It was a very grueling campaign: on September 1, the detachment stood all day in the steppe in the heat, being in a swampy lowland, the exit from which could not go unnoticed by the enemy. At the same time, the location of the special squad was almost noticed by the red pilots - they flew very close. When airplanes appeared in the sky, General Borodin ordered the horses to be driven into the reeds, the carts and cannons to be thrown with branches and armfuls of grass, and to lie down nearby. There was no certainty that the pilots had not noticed them, but they had no choice, and as night fell the Cossacks had to march at an accelerated pace to move away from the dangerous place. By the evening, on the 3rd day of the journey, Borodin’s detachment cut the Lbischensk-Slomikhinsk road, approaching Lbischensk 12 versts.
The same article talks about betrayal by the Reds, but differently:
In order not to be discovered by the Reds, the Cossacks occupied a depression not far from the village itself and sent out patrols in all directions to reconnaissance and capture the “tongues”. Ensign Portnov's patrol attacked the Red grain train, partially capturing it. The captured transporters were taken to the detachment, where they were interrogated and found out that Chapaev was in Lbischensk. At the same time, one Red Army soldier volunteered to indicate his apartment.
Another version is connected with the pilots. Mikhail Dmitruk in his article “What Chapaev prayed for” concludes that the commander died as a result of Trotsky’s machinations:
It seems that he began to strive for another, better world, where he could only enter by performing great feats, defending the Faith and the Fatherland. Hence the amazing, simply fantastic courage and heroism of Vasily Chapaev. But “the bullet fears the brave, the bayonet does not take the brave” - he had to fight a lot, terrifying his opponents, before achieving his desired goal... When Vasily Ivanovich realized that the Soviet government was engaged in the extermination of the Russian people, he began to actively interfere with this. Chapaev stopped carrying out the orders of Lev Davydovich Trotsky, as erroneous, and led the division away from unnecessary losses, which the commander-in-chief demanded. Since then, Vasily Ivanovich became dangerous to the Bolshevik leadership, because he thwarted his secret plan to drown all of Russia in blood. As a result, the division commander began to be hunted... by his superiors.
One betrayal followed another. The division headquarters was continually cut off from the main forces - so that it would be attacked by an enemy ten times larger than a handful of Chapaevites. But each time he managed to miraculously outwit and defeat his opponent.
Finally, Leon Trotsky presented Vasily Chapaev with the last “gift”: four airplanes, supposedly for reconnaissance of enemy forces, but in fact for informing the whites. The pilots cheerfully reported to the division commander that everything was calm around while huge forces of White Guards were gathering from all sides. Here his headquarters was again, as if by accident, cut off from the main forces. They cut it off when several soldiers from the training company remained with the division commander. They were doomed, but bravely accepted the battle and died heroes.
This version, of course, is delusional if only for the reason that Trotsky, although he was one of the founders of the Red Army and the People's Commissar for Military and Naval Affairs and the Chairman of the Revolutionary Military Council of the RSFSR, was not Chapaev's immediate superior. Secondly, there is no evidence that Chapaev suddenly became an opponent of the Bolshevik rule. Chapaev actually had a conflict with the commander of the 4th Army, Khvesin, who did not send reinforcements to Chapaev when he and his division found themselves surrounded. You can read about this in detail in Chapter 10 of the book “My Unknown Chapaev”.
This is what he wrote in his report to the commander of the 4th Army:
I've been waiting for two days. If reinforcements don’t come, I’ll fight my way to the rear. The division was brought to this situation by the headquarters of the 4th Army, which received two telegrams every day demanding help, and to this day there is not a single soldier. I doubt whether there is that LEAVEN at the headquarters of the 4th Army in CONNECTION WITH BURENIN FOR TWO MILLIONS. (This refers to the uncovered conspiracy at the headquarters of the 4th Army.)
I ask you to pay attention to all division commanders and revolutionary councils, if you value your comradely blood, do not shed it in vain. I WAS DECEPTED BY THE SCAM KHVESINY, COMMANDER OF THE 4TH ARMY, who told me that reinforcements were coming to me - the entire cavalry of the Ural Division and an armored vehicle and the 4th Malouzensky Regiment, with which I was given the order to attack the village. I fell in love on October 23, but not only could I not complete the task with the Malouzensky regiment, but at this time (I don’t know) where it is located.
As a result, Khvesin was removed from command of the 4th Army on November 4, 1918 - long before Chapaev’s death. What is noteworthy about this telegram is that it is addressed to the commander of the 4th Army, that is, Khvesin, and Chapaev calls Khvesin in the third person a scoundrel.
There is another version. Chapaev's second common-law wife was Pelageya Kamishkertseva. It is also written about in the book in chapter 4. However, Chapaev’s relationship with her did not work out - Chapaev was looking for any convenient excuse to appear at home less often. As a result, Pelageya began an affair with the head of the artillery depot, Georgy Zhivolozhinov. All the women in the area went crazy about him: he seemed to hypnotize them. Kamishkertseva also could not resist his charms. One day Vasily Ivanovich returned home... And then - everything was like in the joke about a deceived husband and an unfaithful wife. The moment was the most intimate, and one of the division soldiers accompanying Chapaev broke the window and began firing a machine gun.
Kamishkertseva quickly realized what treason threatened her with, grabbed Chapaev’s children and began to hide behind them. Vasily Ivanovich reacted more calmly to what happened and simply stopped talking to Kamishkertseva. Pelageya suffered greatly and one day, taking Chapaev’s youngest son, Arkady, she went to Vasily Ivanovich’s headquarters.
He didn't even let her in the door. And Kamishkertseva, out of anger, drove into the White headquarters and said that Chapaev’s fighters had training rifles, and the headquarters had no cover. This version is also told by Evgenia Chapaeva, but it is not voiced in her book.
So, let’s move on to the actual version of Chapaev’s death. The canonical one shown in the film is that he, wounded, drowns while crossing the Urals, escaping from the whites. There is another option, also connected with the Ural River.
In the newspaper “Bolshevik Smena” (dated April 22, 1938), Chapaev’s youngest son, Arkady, wrote an article about the death of his father. Surely he was guided by the story of one of the participants in those tragic events:
Three assault groups gradually moved towards the center of the village, disarming the resisting Chapaevites. The Cossacks were unable to cordon off the house where Chapaev was located. Chapaev managed to escape from the house, he ran down the street, the platoon commander Belonozhkin shot at him and hit him in the arm. Chapaev managed to rally a hundred soldiers with machine guns around him and rushed towards this special platoon.
He was wounded in the stomach. They laid him on a hastily knocked together raft made from half a gate. Two Hungarians (and many internationalists fought in the Chapaev division - Hungarians, Czechs, Serbs...) helped him cross the Urals. When we reached the shore, it turned out that the commander died from loss of blood. The Hungarians buried the body with their hands right on the shore in the sand and covered the grave with reeds so that the enemies would not find and abuse the deceased.
The version with the Hungarians finds further confirmation. This is what Klavdiya Chapaeva, daughter of Vasily Chapaev, remembers:
...In 1962 I received a letter from Hungary. Former Chapaevites who now lived in Budapest wrote to me. They watched the film “Chapaev” and were outraged by its content; According to their story, everything turned out completely wrong...
From the letter: “...When Vasily Ivanovich was wounded, Commissar Baturin ordered us (two Hungarians) and two more Russians to make a raft from the gate and fence and, by hook or by crook, be able to transport Chapaev to the other side of the Urals. We made a raft, but we ourselves were bleeding too. And Vasily Ivanovich was finally transported to the other side. When they rowed, he was alive, moaning... But when they swam to the shore, he was gone. And so that his body would not be mocked, we buried it in the coastal sand. They buried them and covered them with reeds. Then they themselves lost consciousness from loss of blood...”
There is another option, also connected with the Ural River. Victor Senin recalls:
In 1982, I, then a correspondent for the Pravda newspaper, had the opportunity, together with Viktor Ivanovich Molchanov (deputy editor of the Pravda information department), to visit the Ural River, where the story with Chapaev happened.
So, as local old-timers said, Chapaev swam across the river with the soldiers and hid in nearby houses. The local Cossacks handed over the division commander to the whites. Chapaev's last fight began. In that saber battle, Chapaev killed 16 soldiers. He had no equal in saber fights. They shot the division commander in the back... They wrote an essay “Chapayev’s Last Battle”, but, of course, it was not published...
In the already cited article “Chapayev - Destroy,” Chapaev’s death is also associated with the crossing of the Urals.
A special platoon assigned to capture Chapaev broke through to his apartment - headquarters. The captured Red Army soldier did not deceive the Cossacks. At this time, the following happened near Chapaev’s headquarters. The special platoon commander Belonozhkin immediately made a mistake: he did not cordon off the entire house, but immediately led his men into the headquarters courtyard. There the Cossacks saw a horse saddled at the entrance to the house, which someone was holding inside by the reins, which had been pushed through the closed door. When Belonozhkin ordered those in the house to leave, the answer was silence. Then he shot into the house through the dormer window. The frightened horse darted to the side and dragged the Red Army soldier holding him out from behind the door. Apparently, it was Chapaev’s personal orderly Pyotr Isaev. Everyone rushed to him, thinking that this was Chapaev. At this time, the second person ran out of the house to the gate. Belonozhkin shot him with a rifle and wounded him in the arm. This was Chapaev. In the ensuing confusion, while almost the entire platoon was occupied by the Red Army, he managed to escape through the gate. No one was found in the house except two typists. According to the testimony of the prisoners, the following happened: when the Red Army soldiers rushed to the Urals in panic, they were stopped by Chapaev, who rallied around a hundred soldiers with machine guns, and led them into a counterattack against Belonozhkin’s special platoon, which had no machine guns and was forced to retreat. Having knocked out the special platoon from the headquarters, the Reds settled behind its walls and began to fire back. According to the prisoners, during a short battle with a special platoon, Chapaev was wounded in the stomach a second time. The wound turned out to be so severe that he could no longer lead the battle and was transported on planks across the Urals. Sotnik V. Novikov, who was observing the Urals, saw how, against the center of Lbischensk, before the very end of the battle, someone was transported across the Urals. According to eyewitnesses, on the Asian side of the Ural River, Chapaev died from a wound in the stomach.
In addition to the conspiracy theory with Trotsky, there is another conspiracy theory around Chapaev. According to her letter to the Hungarians Claudia Chapaeva, it was organized by the KGB. Here is what Yuri Moskalenko writes on the portal shkolazhizni.ru:
Aren't you embarrassed by the fact that the letter definitely found the addressee? Even if Vasily Ivanovich had told his daughter’s name to his rescuers, and they had remembered a name that was not so simple for Hungarians, could they have hoped that three decades later, in the crucible of a terrible war, the daughter would survive and be at the same address?
According to it, the legendary division commander did not perish in the cold waters of the Urals, but safely crossed to the other side, sat in the reeds until dark, and then went to the headquarters of the 4th Army to the commander Frunze to “atone for his sins” for the defeat of the division.
There are two pieces of evidence for this. The first belongs to a certain Vasily Sityaev, who mentioned his meeting in 1941 with a colleague of the division commander, who sacredly kept the cloak and saber of the missing Chapaev. The former Chapaevite said that a platoon of Hungarians ferried him safely across the river, and the division commander released his guards to “beat the whites” and headed to Samara to see Frunze.
The second evidence is much “fresh” and began to “walk” immediately after the crisis of 1998, when one of the division veterans “sold” a “sensational” fact to journalists, saying that he met Vasily Ivanovich already gray-haired and blind, but with a different last name. The division commander said that, having released the Hungarians, he wandered to Samara, but on the way he became seriously ill and spent three weeks resting on one of the farms in the steppe. And then he spent a certain amount of time under Frunze’s arrest. By that time, the division commander was already on the list of those who died heroically, and the party leadership considered it more useful to use Chapaev as a legend than to announce a miraculous “resurrection.” There was a reason for this - if the Red Army had learned that the legendary division commander had killed his personnel, and he himself had escaped from the whites - this would have cast a shameful stain on the entire “worker-peasant army”.
In a word, the division commander was declared an “information” blockade, and when he “let slip” in 1934, he was hidden in one of Stalin’s camps. And only after the death of the leader of the peoples was he released and placed in a home for the disabled. By that time he was no longer dangerous: who would believe the old man’s ravings? Yes, in any madhouse you can find not just Chapaev, but two or three Napoleons and Marat and Robespierre. And even more so, he would hardly have lived to see 1998 - at that time he should have already turned 111 years old!
And this “version” is very similar to the story of Yuri Alekseevich Gagarin, who supposedly did not die in March 1968, but was safely hidden in the KGB basements because he allegedly saw a cloud with angels next to the Moon...
Well, the author of this text himself denied this conspiracy theory. As we see, Chapaev, like any legendary personality, is surrounded by legends regarding the circumstances of his death. Moreover, the soil for legends is fertile - after all, Chapaev’s body was never found.
On the website centrasia.ru, Gulmira Kenzhegalieva outlines the version according to which Chapaev was captured:
Academician Alexey Cherekaev cites the story of the death of the Chapaev division, which he heard from the mouths of old-timers: “The Chapaevites, who were in the village of Lbischenskoye, were driven by the Cossacks to the Urals with whoops, whistles and shots into the air. Many threw themselves into the river and immediately drowned. It was already September, the water was cold. It’s difficult for even an experienced Cossack to swim across, but here are men, and even in clothes.” Almost every year, on September 5, the day of remembrance of the national hero, the village boys tried to swim across the Urals from Krasny Yar, working with both one hand and two hands. Even from Moscow at one time a team of special swimmers came. But no one has ever managed to cross the river in this exact place.
Local old-timers told Cherekaev what actually happened to Chapaev: “He was caught and interrogated. Then, together with the staff chests, they were loaded into carts, transported by ferry across the Urals and sent under escort towards Guryev. Ataman Tolstov was there.” Further traces of Chapaev are lost. They said that the protocols of his interrogations are in Australia, where General Tolstov moved. Academician Cherekaev, who at one time worked as an adviser to the USSR Embassy in Australia, tried to get to these documents. But the descendants of the White Guard Tolstoy did not even want to show them. So it is unknown whether they really exist or whether this is another legend about Chapaev.
And finally, there is another version of the circumstances of Chapaev’s death, also related to his captivity. It was outlined in an article by Leonid Tokar in the newspaper “Your Privy Councilor” No. 13 (29) dated November 5, 2001. According to this version, Chapaev, along with his headquarters, was captured by the Whites and killed. Read it at the link if you are interested in its entirety.
So, the novel “Chapaev” was written by Furmanov in 1923. It would seem that everything that is written in the novel is an axiom. However, the existing ambiguities and inconsistencies in the history of the death of V.I. Chapaev allow us to conclude that the commander of the 25th division died on the territory of Lbischensk, and not while swimming across the Urals.
To clarify the facts stated in the articles, I turned to official sources.
First of all, if a legendary or well-known person dies, then the central newspapers must invariably report his death. However, when studying the central press for September-October 1919, no mention of Chapaev’s death was found. Newspapers wrote about the deaths of commanders, commissars of regiments and divisions, but not a single line about Chapaev. This is all the more strange because, according to the data of the “Soviet Military Encyclopedia” (3), by a decree of the Turkestan Front of September 10, 1919, the twenty-fifth rifle division was named after V.I. Chapaev. Everything is explained quite simply. Vasily Ivanovich was the only commander of the 25th division who died in the civil war. The earliest publication of the novel “Chapaev” that I found dates back to 1931, and all the memories of eyewitnesses date back to 1935 at the earliest, that is, after the release of the film “Chapaev”. Only a few eyewitnesses have been identified. Another interesting fact. The further from the events of those years, the more eyewitnesses of Chapaev’s death appear, the more textbook these memories become. ...
… If you read the memoirs of eyewitnesses, it becomes clear that you can only trust the memories of I.S. Kutyakov, who writes about everything from the words of the only surviving commander - the chief of staff of the division Novikov. Kutyakov at this moment was the head of the 25th division and directly reconstructed the course of events that occurred in Lbischensk. In September 1919, D.A. Furmanov was in the political department of the 4th Army and could write his novel only from the words of Kutyakov and Novikov. The memories of the rest of the division’s fighters should be approached with a huge amount of skepticism. Thus, having read the memoirs of the chief in charge of organizing the division’s supply of flour, Kadnikov, and a division fighter, Maksimov, the only ones who were interviewed as a witness to the death of Chapaev in 1938 (10), one gets the impression that Vasily Ivanovich Chapaev moved around the city as he wanted and was in many places at the same time . Well, how can you trust the words of a person who says: “The shooting was carried out at random, in the direction from which explosive “dum-dum” bullets were flying in a thick rain” (11).
The chief of staff of the Ural White Army, Colonel Motornov, describes the events in Lbischensk as follows: “Lbischensk was taken on September 5 with a stubborn battle that lasted 6 hours. As a result, the headquarters of the 25th division, the instructor school, and divisional institutions were destroyed and captured. Four airplanes, five cars and other military spoils were captured” (12).
After the capture of the city, the Whites carried out brutal reprisals against the captured soldiers and commanders of the 25th Division. The Cossacks shot in batches of 100-200 people. At the sites of executions, many suicide notes were found on scraps of newspaper and smoking paper. On September 6, the 73rd brigade of the 25th division liberated the city from the whites. The Reds were in the city for only a few hours. At this time, a search for Chapaev’s body was organized, but it did not bring any results. In the bathhouse, under the floor, they found Chief of Staff Novikov, seriously wounded in the leg. He reported everything that happened in Lbischensk. The fact of the search proves that Chapaev died in the city, and not while crossing the river. Otherwise, why was it necessary to look for his body among the dead in the city? Moreover, in total, up to five thousand people died in the Lbischensk area. In his novel, D.A. Furmanov writes that there are three huge pits behind the village (read Lbischensky) - they are filled to the top with the corpses of those executed.
The capture and subsequent death of Chapaev is also supported by the fact that even according to eyewitnesses there are several versions of his death. Only those Chapaevites who were on the square could say whether Chapaev went to the Urals, but they all died. The only surviving chief of staff, Novikov, saw Chapaev there the entire time he was on the square. Novikov simply could not see Chapaev’s death while crossing the Urals, since he hid under the floor of the bathhouse so as not to be destroyed by the whites.
Additional information can be provided by the materials of Trofimov-Mirsky’s investigative case, which should be kept in the archives of the Penza FSB.
Based on the above, we can confidently say that the unidentified body of Vasily Ivanovich Chapaev was buried in one of the mass graves in the city of Lbischensk (now Chapaev)«.
The original article is on the website InfoGlaz.rf Link to the article from which this copy was made -
