AT asily Ivanovich did not drown in the Urals, but the river became his grave
There is probably no more unique person in Russian history than Vasily Ivanovich Chapaev. His real life was short - he died at 32, but posthumous fame exceeded all conceivable and inconceivable boundaries.
Chapay's childhood
Among the real historical figures of the past, one cannot find another one who would become an integral part of Russian folklore. What to talk about if one of the varieties of checkers games is called "chapaevka".
When on January 28, 1887, in the village of Budaika, Cheboksary district, Kazan province, a sixth child was born in the family of the Russian peasant Ivan Chapaev, neither mother nor father could even think about the glory that awaits their son.
Rather, they thought about the upcoming funeral - the baby named Vassenka was born seven months old, was very weak and, it seemed, could not survive.
However, the will to live turned out to be stronger than death - the boy survived and began to grow to the delight of his parents. Vasya Chapaev did not even think about any military career - in poor Budaika there was a problem of everyday survival, there was no time for pretzels.
The origin of the family name is interesting. Chapaev's grandfather, Stepan Gavrilovich, was engaged in unloading timber and other heavy loads rafting along the Volga at the Cheboksary pier. And he often shouted "chap", "chap", "chap", that is, "hook" or "hook". Over time, the word "Chepay" stuck to him as a street nickname, and then became the official name.
It is curious that the red commander himself later wrote his surname as "Chepaev" and not "Chapaev".
The poverty of the Chapaev family drove them in search of a better life to the Samara province, to the village of Balakovo. Here, Father Vasily had a cousin who was the patron of the parish school. The boy was assigned to study, hoping that over time he would become a priest.
War gives birth to heroes
In 1908, Vasily Chapaev was drafted into the army, but a year later he was discharged due to illness. Even before joining the army, Vasily started a family by marrying the priest's 16-year-old daughter Pelageya Metlina. Returning from the army, Chapaev began to engage in a purely peaceful carpentry craft. In 1912, while continuing to work as a carpenter, Vasily moved with his family to Melekess. Until 1914, three children were born in the family of Pelageya and Vasily - two sons and a daughter.
The whole life of Chapaev and his family was turned upside down by the First World War. Drafted in September 1914, Vasily went to the front in January 1915. He fought in Volhynia in Galicia and established himself as a skilled warrior. Chapaev graduated from the First World War with the rank of sergeant major, being awarded the soldiers' St. George crosses of three degrees and the St. George medal.
In the fall of 1917, the brave soldier Chapaev joined the Bolsheviks and unexpectedly showed himself to be a brilliant organizer. In the Nikolaevsky district of the Saratov province, he created 14 detachments of the Red Guard, which took part in the campaign against the troops of General Kaledin. On the basis of these detachments, in May 1918, the Pugachevskaya brigade was created under the command of Chapaev. Together with this brigade, the self-taught commander recaptured the city of Nikolaevsk from the Czechoslovakians.
The fame and popularity of the young commander grew before our eyes. In September 1918, Chapaev led the 2nd Nikolaev Division, which instilled fear in the enemy. Nevertheless, Chapaev's tough temper, his inability to obey unquestioningly, led to the fact that the command considered it good to send him from the front to study at the General Staff Academy.
Already in the 1970s, another legendary red commander, Semyon Budyonny, while listening to jokes about Chapaev, shook his head: "I said to Vaska: study, you fool, otherwise they will laugh at you! So I didn't listen!"
Ural, Ural-river, his grave is deep ...
Chapaev really did not sit for a long time in the academy, again going to the front. In the summer of 1919, he led the rapidly becoming legendary 25th Infantry Division, in which he conducted brilliant operations against Kolchak's troops. On June 9, 1919, the Chapaevites liberated Ufa, on July 11 - Uralsk.
During the summer of 1919, Divisional Commander Chapaev managed to surprise the regular white generals with his military leadership talent. Both comrades-in-arms and enemies saw in him a real military nugget. Alas, Chapaev did not have time to really open up.
The tragedy, which is called Chapaev's only military mistake, occurred on September 5, 1919. Chapaev's division was rapidly advancing, breaking away from the rear. Parts of the division stopped to rest, and the headquarters was located in the village of Lbischensk.
On September 5, whites, up to 2,000 bayonets under the command of General Borodin, made a raid and suddenly attacked the headquarters of the 25th division. The main forces of the Chapayevites were located 40 km from Lbischensk and could not come to the rescue.
The real forces that could resist the Whites were 600 bayonets, and they engaged in a battle that lasted six hours. Chapaev himself was hunted by a special detachment, which, however, did not succeed. Vasily Ivanovich managed to get out of the house where he was quartered, collect about a hundred fighters retreating in disorder, and organize a defense.
For a long time there were conflicting reports about the circumstances of Chapaev's death, until in 1962 the daughter of the division commander Claudia received a letter from Hungary, in which two Chapaev veterans, Hungarian by nationality, who were personally present during the last minutes of the division commander's life, told what actually happened.
During the battle with the Whites, Chapaev was wounded in the head and stomach, after which four Red Army men, having built a raft from the boards, managed to ferry the commander to the other side of the Urals. However, Chapaev died of his wounds during the crossing.
The Red Army men, fearing the mockery of enemies over the body, buried Chapaev in the coastal sand, throwing branches at this place.
An active search for the grave of the divisional commander immediately after the Civil War was not carried out, because the version set forth by the 25th division commissar Dmitry Furmanov in his book "Chapaev" became canonical - as if the wounded divisional commander drowned trying to swim across the river.
In the 1960s, Chapaev's daughter tried to search for her father's grave, but it turned out that this was impossible - the riverbed of the Urals changed its course, and the bottom of the river became the final resting place of the red hero.
The birth of a legend
Not everyone believed in Chapaev's death. Historians who studied Chapaev's biography noted that among the veteran Chapayevites there was a story that their Chapay came out, was rescued by the Kazakhs, had typhoid fever, lost his memory, and now works as a carpenter in Kazakhstan, remembering nothing about his heroic past.
Fans of the white movement like to attach great importance to the Lbischen raid, calling it a major victory, but this is not so. Even the defeat of the headquarters of the 25th division and the death of its commander did not affect the general course of the war - the Chapaevsk division continued to successfully smash enemy units.
Not everyone knows that the Chapaevites avenged their commander on the same day, September 5. The commander of the white raid, General Borodin, who was triumphantly driving through Lbischensk after the defeat of Chapaev's headquarters, was shot by the Red Army soldier Volkov.
Historians still cannot agree on what was actually Chapaev's role as a commander in the Civil War. Some believe that he really played a prominent role, others believe that his image is exorbitantly inflated thanks to art.
Indeed, a book written by the former commissar of the 25th division Dmitry Furmanov brought Chapaev wide popularity.
During their lifetime, the relationship between Chapaev and Furmanov cannot be called simple, which, by the way, will be best reflected later in anecdotes. Chapaev's novel with Furmanov's wife Anna Steshenko led to the fact that the commissioner had to leave the division. However, Furmanov's writing talent smoothed out personal contradictions.
But the real, boundless glory of Chapaev, Furmanov, and other nowadays national heroes overtook in 1934, when the Vasiliev brothers shot the film "Chapaev", which was based on the book of Furmanov and the memories of the Chapaevites.
Furmanov himself by that time was not alive - he suddenly died in 1926 from meningitis. Anna Furmanova, the wife of the commissar and mistress of the division commander, was the author of the script for the film.
It is to her that we owe the appearance of Anka the machine gunner in the history of Chapaev. The fact is that in reality there was no such character. Its prototype was the nurse of the 25th division, Maria Popova. In one of the battles, the nurse crawled up to the wounded elderly machine gunner and wanted to bandage him, but the soldier, heated up by the battle, pointed a revolver at the nurse and literally forced Maria to take a place behind the machine gun.
The directors, having learned about this story and having the task from Stalin to show in the film the image of a woman in the Civil War, came up with a machine gunner. But Anna Furmanova insisted that her name would be Anka.
After the release of the film, Chapaev, Furmanov, Anka the machine-gunner, and the orderly Petka (in real life, Peter Isaev, who really died in the same battle with Chapaev) went to the people forever, becoming its integral part.
Chapaev is everywhere
The life of Chapaev's children developed in an interesting way. The marriage of Vasily and Pelageya actually broke up with the outbreak of the First World War, and in 1917, Chapaev took the children from his wife and raised them himself, as far as the life of a military man allowed.
Chapaev's eldest son, Alexander Vasilyevich, followed in his father's footsteps, becoming a professional military man. By the beginning of the Great Patriotic War, 30-year-old captain Chapaev was the commander of a battery of cadets at the Podolsk Artillery School. From there he went to the front. Chapaev fought in a family way, without shaming the honor of his famous father. He fought near Moscow, near Rzhev, near Voronezh, was wounded. In 1943, with the rank of lieutenant colonel, Alexander Chapaev took part in the famous battle at Prokhorovka.
Alexander Chapaev completed his military service with the rank of Major General, holding the post of Deputy Chief of Artillery of the Moscow Military District.
The youngest son, Arkady Chapaev, became a test pilot, worked with Valery Chkalov himself. In 1939, 25-year-old Arkady Chapaev died while testing a new fighter.
Chapaev's daughter, Claudia, made a party career and was engaged in historical research dedicated to her father. The true story of Chapaev's life became known largely thanks to her.
Studying the life of Chapaev, one is surprised to discover how closely the legendary hero is connected with other historical figures.
For example, the writer Yaroslav Hasek, the author of The Adventures of the Good Soldier Schweik, was a fighter in the Chapaevsk division.
The head of the trophy team of the Chapaevsk division was Sidor Artemyevich Kovpak. In the Great Patriotic War, the name of this commander of a partisan unit will terrify the Nazis.
Major General Ivan Panfilov, whose division's resilience helped to defend Moscow in 1941, began his military career as a platoon commander in an infantry company of the Chapayev Division.
And the last thing. Water is fatally connected not only with the fate of divisional commander Chapaev, but also with the fate of the division.
The 25th Infantry Division existed in the ranks of the Red Army until World War II, and took part in the defense of Sevastopol. It was the fighters of the 25th Chapaevsk division who stood to the last in the most tragic, last days of the city's defense. The division was completely destroyed, and so that its banners did not fall to the enemy, the last surviving soldiers drowned them in the Black Sea.
Vasily Ivanovich Chapaev. Hero of the Civil War and Soviet mythology. He was the threat of the white generals and the headache of the red commanders. Self-taught commander. The hero of numerous anecdotes that have nothing to do with real life, and a cult film on which more than one generation of boys grew up.
Biography and activities of Vasily Chapaev
He was born on February 9, 1887 in the village of Budayka, Cheboksary district, Kazan province, into a large peasant family. Of the nine children, four died at an early age. Two more died as adults. Of the three remaining brothers, Vasily was middle, studied at a parish school. His cousin uncle was in charge of the parish.
Vasily had a wonderful voice. He was promised a career as a singer or a priest. However, the violent temper opposed. The boy ran home. Nevertheless, his religiosity remained in him, and it was surprisingly combined later with the post of a red commander, who, it seems, was obliged to be an ardent atheist.
His formation as a military man began in the years. He went from private to sergeant major. Chapaev was awarded three St. George crosses and one St. George medal. In 1917, Chapaev joined the ranks of the Bolshevik Party. In October of the same year, he was appointed commander of the Nikolaev Red Guard detachment.
Without a professional military education, Chapaev quickly moved to the forefront of a new generation of military leaders. Natural intelligence, intelligence, cunning, and organizational talent helped him in this. The mere presence of Chapaev at the front contributed to the fact that the White Guards began to bring additional units to the front. He was either loved or hated.
Chapaev on horseback or with a saber, on a cart is a stable image of Soviet mythology. In fact, due to a severe injury, he simply could not physically move on horseback. I rode a motorcycle or a carriage. Repeatedly asked the leadership to provide several vehicles for the needs of the entire army. Chapaev often had to act at his own peril and risk, over the head of the command. Often, the Chapaevites did not receive reinforcements and provisions, they were surrounded and broke out of it with bloody battles.
Chapaev was sent to take an accelerated course at the Academy of the General Staff. From there, he was rushing back to the front with all his might, seeing no use in the subjects taught for himself. After staying at the Academy for only 2-3 months, Vasily Ivanovich returns to the Fourth Army. He is assigned to the Aleksandro-Gaevskaya group on the Eastern Front. Frunze favored him. Chapaev was determined as the commander of the 25th division, with which he passed the remaining roads of the civil war until his death in September 1919.
The recognized and almost the only biographer of Chapaev is the writer D. Furmanov, who was sent to the Chapayev division as a commissar. It was from Furmanov's novel that Soviet schoolchildren learned about both Chapaev himself and his role in the civil war. However, the main creator of the Chapaevskaya legend was Stalin personally, who gave the order to shoot the famous film.
In fact, personal relations between Chapaev and Furmanov did not develop initially. Chapaev was unhappy that the commissar had brought his wife with him, and, perhaps, also had certain feelings for her. Furmanov's complaint to the army headquarters about Chapaev's tyranny remained without movement - the headquarters supported Chapaev. The Commissioner received another appointment.
Chapaev's personal life is a separate story. Pelageya's first wife abandoned him with three children and fled with her lover-conductor. The second was also called Pelageya, she was the widow of Chapaev's late friend. She subsequently also left Chapaev. In the battles for the village of Lbischenskaya, Chapaev died. The White Guards failed to take him alive. He was ferried to the other side of the Urals, already dead. He was buried in the coastal sand.
- The surname of the legendary commander was written in the first syllable through the letter "e" - "Chepaev" and was later transformed into "a".
Who is Chapaev? This is not just a soldier of two armies, it is a whole symbol of the era of the collapse of empires and revolutions.
He played a significant role in the Civil War in the Russian Empire. The Red Army under his leadership inflicted a heavy defeat on General Kolchak on the Eastern Front. Chapaev himself was a symbol of red Cossack courage. His image was actively used for agitation and propaganda both during the Civil War and in the Soviet Union.
Vasily Chapaev: biography
Born on January 28 (February 9) 1887 in the Kazan province. His parents were ordinary peasants. There is no exact information regarding the name of Vasily Ivanovich. As the brother of the famous Red Army soldier recalled, the name Chapaev was at first a nickname. Allegedly, Vasily's grandfather worked as a foreman in a construction artel and constantly shouted to his subordinates: "Chepay! Chepay" "(" take it "). Since then they began to call him Chapaev, which soon became a surname. Ivanovich himself confirmed this. Nationality of the" red "Cossack is still unclear According to some sources, his mother was a Chuvash.
The Chapaev family was quite large. In addition to Vasily, there were six children. Parents worked hard, but still the family lived in poverty. Therefore, a few years after the birth of their last child, they move to the Samara province. Vasily's father, who wanted to give his son an education, sends him to a church school. At that time, she is sponsored by her father's cousin. Initially, the parents wanted Vasily to become a priest, like some other relatives. However, in the fall of 1908, Chapaev was drafted into the army. His unit is based in Kiev. However, after a few months, Vasily was fired. The Kiev Military District did not know who Chapaev was, so it is impossible to pinpoint the reason for such a strange decision. According to the official version, the dismissal was due to illness. In Soviet times, there was a popular theory that Vasily was expelled from the army due to political unreliability. Upon arrival home he is awarded the rank of militia warrior.
At home, Vasily works as a carpenter. Soon he marries Pelagia Metlina, who is the daughter of a local priest. In the nine hundred and ninth year, they get married. Almost immediately they move to Dimitrovgrad and live there. In the fourteenth year, the First World War begins. All military reserves are called up to the imperial troops, Chapaev is no exception. Vasily's biography as a military man begins just then.
World War I
Vasily Ivanovich was mobilized into the one hundred fifty-ninth regiment of the reserve, which was stationed in the city of Atkarsk.
There he undergoes training and retraining. Two months later he was sent to the front. They arrive in Galicia, where fierce battles are unfolding against the Germans and Austro-Hungarians. In the cold winter of the fifteenth, the siege of Przemysl continued. Russian troops began preparing an operation to break through to Hungarian territory. To do this, it was necessary to enter the Hungarian Plain, which was hampered by the fortifications of the Austrians in the Carpathians. In mid-January, the opposing sides launched an almost simultaneous offensive. The army of the German Empire planned to lift the siege of strategically important Przemysl and go to the rear of the Russian troops.
V. I. Chapaev took part in the Carpathian operation. Stubborn battles started in the mountains. The battles took place in the most difficult weather conditions. The passes by this time were almost completely covered with snow. It also affected the well-being of soldiers who grew up on flat terrain. Chapaev was wounded in one of the battles and was in the hospital for some time.
Battle in the Carpathians
After heavy fighting, the Russian troops still managed to occupy the commanding heights and win tactically. However, in the spring, a massive enemy offensive began. The German army was about to attack from East Prussia and encircle the Russian forces in the Warsaw area. At this time, a significant part of the imperial army was stuck in difficult crossings in the Carpathians and could not move quickly. The Russian army was extremely poorly equipped. The Germans and Austrians had total superiority in both heavy guns and machine guns. For example, the Germans had ninety-six machine guns, while the Russian troops had none. V. I. Chapaev was part of those retreating from Poland in 1915. This defeat neutralized all the conquests of the Russian army in the campaign of the fourteenth year and in the Carpathian operation. But the most powerful was the moral blow.
Breakthrough of Russian troops
Who is Chapaev, it became known in the Belgoraisky regiment during the famous summer of the sixteenth year, a massive Russian offensive near Lutsk began. The goal was the occupation of Galicia and Volhynia, the capture of the enemy enemy grouping. After several hours of artillery preparation, the troops of the entire front went on the offensive. Already on the first day, they managed to break through the first line of defense and capture many trophies. The operation was completed by September. The Germans and Austrians lost one and a half million soldiers killed, wounded and captured. For his courage, Vasily Chapaev received the St. George Cross.
Homecoming
Chapaev returned home with the rank of sergeant major. He was in the hospital for a long time. At this time, changes were brewing in the country. Chapaev, like millions of Russian workers, was extremely dissatisfied with the state of affairs in the country. The standard of living was deteriorating, the social gap between the nobles and the "masses" was simply monstrous. Plus, thousands of soldiers were killed every day in an incomprehensible war. As a result, popular unrest peaked in February.
The revolution began in St. Petersburg. The Tsar abdicated the throne, and power passed to the Provisional Government. Vasily Ivanovich reacted positively to new changes. In September 1917 he joined the Bolshevik Party. As a person with combat experience, he was greatly appreciated. Therefore, he is appointed commander of an infantry regiment.
The beginning of the Civil War
After Vasily showed his skills, he was appointed commissar of the whole district. Almost autonomously he was engaged in the formation of fighting communist detachments. In a fairly short time, he managed to organize the Red Guard of 14 battalions. Almost from the very beginning of the war, the entire Ural region was occupied by whites. This is due to the compact residence of the Cossacks in this territory. Therefore, Chapaev's detachments operated in extremely difficult conditions. Whites did not even need to conduct a thorough reconnaissance, because wherever the Reds appeared, there were people among the local population who reported on their numbers, weapons and transmitted other important information.
Red offensive
In winter, fierce fighting broke out near Tsaritsyn.
General Kaledin had at his disposal selected fighters who had good combat experience behind them. And many have been trained in military craft since childhood. But Chapaev managed to train the peasants and workers in a short time so that they fought on a par with the military. After that, his connections were included in the Special Army. As part of it, Vasily Ivanovich took a personal part in the campaign to Uralsk. During the fighting he was wounded in the head. After the end of the campaign, he reorganized, breaking the guardsmen into two regiments, which he united into a brigade under his command.
In the summer of the eighteenth year in full swing. The Czechoslovak interventionists seized Nikolaevsk, where less than a year ago they proclaimed Soviet power with the active participation of Chapaev himself. Almost the entire Ural region came under White control. The Pugachev brigade (one of the regiments bore the name of Pugachev) laid siege to the city and, after several days of heavy fighting, recaptured it. During the battles for Nikolaevsk, the Red Army fought so desperately that many whites fled from the battlefield. After that, the whole north of Russia knew who Chapaev was. In the winter of the eighteenth year, Vasily Ivanovich is studying at the Academy of the General Staff. After that, he receives the post of commissioner.
Army commander
Six months later, Chapaev was in command of a brigade, and a month later, a division. Troops are leading an offensive on the Eastern Front against one of the best generals of the Whites - Kolchak. With the support of the Turkestan army, the Bugulmi and Bugurslanovsky districts were taken by the Reds. The front ran through the Ufa province. About thirty thousand soldiers launched an offensive on May 25, and by the end of June Kolchak's troops fled from the province. Chapaev took part in the assault on Ufa. During the battle, he was wounded in the head from an air machine gun, but survived.
The commander of the Red Army continued to lead the fighting in extremely difficult conditions. After a swift offensive, Chapaev's fighters strongly broke forward and were exhausted. Therefore, in the fall of the eighteenth, we stopped in Lbischensk to rest and wait for the arrival of reinforcements. All administrative military institutions are located in the city itself. However, there were very few fighters. The garrison consisted of six hundred bayonets commanded by Vasily Ivanovich Chapaev. The civil war squeezed the last juices out of the torn country. Therefore, peasants who did not know how to handle weapons were mobilized into the Red Army. About two thousand of these recruits were also in Lbischensk, but were not armed. The main forces of the division were stationed forty kilometers from the city.
Raid of the White Cossacks
White Colonel Borodin decided to take advantage of the weakness of the Chapaevsky garrison. Under cover of night on the last day of summer, his detachment, consisting of selected soldiers, departed from Kalyony and went on a raid. The Red Army men had four airplanes at their disposal. They were doing reconnaissance around the city.
However, the pilots were mobilized from the local population, and, apparently, sympathized with the whites. Therefore, on September 4, Borodin's detachment imperceptibly approached the city. The commander of the Red Army, Chapaev at that time was in Lbischensk. At dawn, the Cossacks attacked the city. The surprise factor worked - panic began. In the chaos, the Red Army tried to organize resistance. The fight lasted about six hours.
Death
Many were captured. But some managed to break through to the Ural River. They tried to swim across to the other side, despite the current. Among them was Chapaev. The hero of the Civil War was seriously wounded in the stomach, but still continued to fight. According to the official version, after the arrival of the main part of the Cossacks, he ran to the river. He was almost halfway there when the bullet hit him in the head. He died as soon as he reached the shore. The monument to Chapaev was simple - made of reeds and algae. The Red Army men burying the glorious commander were afraid that the whites would find a burial.
Memory
After the end of the Civil War, thanks to Soviet agitation, Chapaev became one of its most striking symbols. Several films have been shot about him, many songs and poems have been written. The image of a dashing Red Cossack became an element of folklore. In the jokes, Chapaev became something like Lieutenant Rzhevsky.
A monument to Chapaev, already made of stone, stands in many cities of the post-Soviet space.
etc .: 1887-02-09
soviet military leader, Civil War hero
Version 1 (surnames Chapaev, Chapaikin, Chapkin, Chepaykin)
The grandfather of the Soviet commander, working as a senior on timber rafting, loved to shout at the slow crewmen: 'Chepay!', That is, hook the log with a hook. So they called him - Chepay or Chapay. His children and grandchildren, including Vasily Ivanovich, became the Chapaevs. (F) In Dahl's dictionary, chapat - take, grab, grab, or push, bend.
In Veselovsky's Onomasticon there is Chapkin Job, the cellarer of the Spaso-Prilutsky Monastery,
Version 2. History of the origin of the surname Chapaev
It turns out that the surname of the national favorite, the commander of the civil war, Vasily Ivanovich Chapaev, is from the verb chapat, i.e. ‘Grab’: “Don’t drink for me!” - they said in the old days.
Version 3
The famous surname comes from the verb chap- grab, grab. "Don't mess with our girl!" - in the old days the parents and brothers of the very ardent boyfriend were chilling.
Chapaev Vasily Ivanovich (1887-1919) - participant of the civil war. Since 1918. commanded a detachment, a brigade and the 25th rifle division, which played a significant role in the defeat of A.V. Kolchak's troops in the summer of 1919. Killed in battle.
The image of Chapaev is captured in the novel by D.A. Furmanov and in the famous film.
Version 4
The famous surname Chapaev is derived from the nickname Chapay, which is etymologically related to the dialect verb "chapat", that is, "grab, grab." "Don't mess with our girl!" - chilled in the old days the parents and brothers of an overly ardent boyfriend. It is possible that the nickname was ironic and emphasized the shortcomings, bad habits of a person.
In addition, in some dialects, the word "chap" was widespread - "flail, threshing, splitting, part of a weaving machine." In this case, the nickname refers to the so-called "professional" naming conventions containing an indication of human activities. Based on this, it can be assumed that Chapay was called the master of making chaps and other tools needed in the household. Chapaev, eventually got the surname Chapaev.
It is well known that the legendary participant in the Civil War bore this name. Vasily Ivanovich Chapaev (1887-1919). Since 1918 he commanded a detachment, a brigade and the 25th rifle division, which played a significant role in the defeat of A.V. Kolchak's troops in the summer of 1919. Vasily Ivanovich Chapaev died in battle, but his image is forever captured in the famous novel by D.A. Furmanov and the equally popular movie "Chapaev".
Name: Vasiliy Chapaev
Age: 32 years
Place of Birth: the village of Budayka, Chuvashia
A place of death: Lbischensk, Ural region
Activity: Chief of the Red Army
Family status: Was married
Vasily Chapaev - biography
September 5 marks 97 years since the death Vasily Chapaeva - the most famous and at the same time the most unknown hero of the civil war. His true identity is hidden under a layer of legends created by both official propaganda and the popular imagination.
Legends begin with the very birth of the future division commander. Everywhere they write that he was born on January 28 (old style) 1887 in the family of a Russian peasant Ivan Chapaev. However, his surname does not seem Russian, especially in the version "Chepaev", as Vasily Ivanovich himself wrote it. In his native village Budayke lived mainly Chuvash, and today the inhabitants of Chuvashia confidently consider Chapaev - Chepaev theirs. True, neighbors argue with them, finding Mordovian or Mari roots in the surname. The descendants of the hero have another version - his grandfather, working on timber rafting, every now and then shouted to his comrades "chepay", that is, "cling" in the local dialect.
But whoever Chapaev's ancestors were, by the time of his birth they had long been Russified, and his uncle even served as a priest. They wanted to send young Vasya to the spiritual path - he was small in stature, weak in strength and was not suitable for heavy peasant labor. The church service provided at least some opportunity to escape the poverty in which the family lived. Although Ivan Stepanovich was a skilled carpenter, his relatives constantly interrupted themselves from bread to kvass; out of six children, only three survived.
When Vasya was eight years old, the family moved to the village - now the city - Balakovo, where his father found work in a carpentry artel. There also lived an uncle, a priest, to whom Vasya was sent to study. Their relationship did not work out - the nephew did not want to study and, moreover, did not differ in obedience. Once in winter, in a bitter frost, his uncle locked him in a cold shed for some next offense. In order not to freeze, the boy somehow got out of the barn and ran home. On this, his spiritual biography ended before he could begin.
Chapaev recalled the early years of his biography without any nostalgia: “My childhood was gloomy and difficult. I had to humiliate myself and starve a lot. From an early age I roamed about strangers. " He helped his father with carpentry, worked as a sex worker in a tavern, and even walked with a barrel organ, like Seryozha from Kuprin's "White Poodle". Although this may be an invention - Vasily Ivanovich loved to compose all sorts of stories about himself.
For example, he once joked about the ardent romance of a gypsy tramp and the Kazan governor's daughter. And since there is little reliable information about Chapaev's life before the Red Army - he did not have time to tell the children anything, there was no other relative left, this invention got into his biography, written by the Chapaevsky commissar Dmitry Furmanov.
At twenty, Vasily fell in love with the beautiful Pelageya Metlina. By that time, the Chapaev family had got out of poverty, Vasya dressed up and easily charmed the girl, who had just turned sixteen. As soon as they got married, in the fall of 1908, the newlywed joined the army. He liked military science, but he didn’t like walking in formation and chipping officers. Chapaev, with his proud and independent disposition, could not endure the end of the service and was demobilized due to illness. A peaceful family life began - he worked as a carpenter, and his wife, one after another, gave birth to children: Alexandra, Claudia, Arcadia.
As soon as the last one was born in 1914, Vasily Ivanovich was again shaved into soldiers - the world war began. For two years of fighting in Galicia, he rose to the rank from private to sergeant major and was awarded the St. George medal and four soldier St. George's crosses, which spoke of the utmost courage. By the way, he served in the infantry, a dashing rider - unlike Chapaev from the film of the same name - he never was, and after being wounded he could not ride at all. In Galicia, Chapaev was wounded three times, the last time so badly that after a long treatment he was sent to serve in the rear, in his native Volga region.
The return home was not joyful. While Chapaev was fighting, Pelageya got along with the conductor and left with him, leaving her husband with three children. According to legend, Vasily ran after her cart for a long time, begged to stay, even cried, but the beauty firmly decided that an important railway rank suited her more than the heroic, but poor and, moreover, wounded Chapaev. Pelageya, however, did not live long with her new husband - she died of typhus. And Vasily Ivanovich married again, keeping his word given to the deceased comrade Pyotr Kameshkertsev. His widow, also Pelageya, but not young and ugly, became a new companion of the hero and took his children into the house, in addition to her three.
After the 1917 revolution in the city of Nikolaevsk, where Chapaev was transferred to serve, the soldiers of the 138th reserve regiment chose him as regimental commander. Through his efforts, the regiment did not disperse to their homes, like many others, but almost completely joined the Red Army.
The Chapaevsky regiment found a job for itself in May 1918, when a civil war broke out in Russia. The revolted Czechoslovakians, in alliance with the local White Guards, captured the entire east of the country and sought to cut the Volga artery, through which bread was delivered to the center. In the cities of the Volga region, the whites staged revolts: one of them took the life of Chapaev's brother - Grigory, the Balakovo military commissar. From another brother, Mikhail, who owned a shop and accumulated considerable capital, Chapaev took all the money, putting it into the arms of his regiment.
Having distinguished himself in heavy battles with the Ural Cossacks, who sided with the whites, Chapaev was chosen by the soldiers as the commander of the Nikolaev division. By that time, such elections were banned in the Red Army, and an angry telegram was sent from above: Chapaev cannot command a division, since "he does not have the appropriate training, is infected with a mania for autocracy, and does not follow military orders exactly."
However, the removal of the popular commander could turn into a riot. And then the staff strategists sent Chapaev with his division against the three times superior forces of the Samara "constituent assembly" - it seemed, to certain death. However, the divisional commander came up with an ingenious plan to lure the enemy into a trap, and completely defeated him. Soon Samara was taken, and the Whites retreated in the steppe between the Volga and the Urals, where Chapaev chased them until November.
This month, the capable commander was sent to study in Moscow, to the Academy of the General Staff. Upon admission, he filled out a questionnaire:
“Do you belong to the number of active party members? How was your activity expressed?
I belong. Formed 7 regiments of the Red Army.
What awards do you have?
George Cavalier of 4 degrees. The watch was handed over.
What general education did you get?
SamoUchka ".
Having recognized Chapaev as "almost illiterate", he was nevertheless accepted as "having revolutionary combat experience." These questionnaires are supplemented by an anonymous description of the divisional commander preserved in the Cheboksary Memorial Museum: “He was not raised and did not have restraint in dealing with people. He was often rude and cruel ... He was a weak politician, but he was a real revolutionary, a wonderful communard in life and a noble selfless fighter for communism ... There were times when he could seem frivolous ... "
Basically. Chapaev was the same partisan commander as Makhno's father, and he was uncomfortable at the academy. When some military expert in a class on military history sarcastically asked if he knew the Rhine River. Chapaev, who fought in Europe during the German War, nevertheless boldly replied: “Why the hell is your Rhine to me? It is on Solyanka that I have to know every bump, because we are fighting there with the Cossacks. "
After several such skirmishes, Vasily Ivanovich asked to be sent back to the front. The army authorities complied with the request, but in a strange way - Chapaev had to create a new division literally from scratch. In the dispatch to Trotsky, he was indignant: “I bring to your attention, I am exhausted ... You appointed me the head of the division, but instead of the division you gave me a disheveled brigade, in which there are only 1000 bayonets ... they don’t give me rifles, no greatcoats, people are naked ". And yet, in a short time, he managed to create a division of 14 thousand bayonets and inflict a heavy defeat with Kolchak's army with it, defeating its most combat-ready units, consisting of Izhevsk workers.
It was at this time, in March 1919, that a new commissar appeared in the 25th Chapaevsk division - Dmitry Furmanov. This drop-out student was four years younger than Chapaev and dreamed of a literary career. This is how he describes their meeting:
“Early in March morning, at 5-6 o'clock, they knocked on me. I go out:
I am Chapaev, hello!
Before me stood an ordinary man, lean, of medium height, apparently of little strength, with thin, almost female hands. Fluid dark blond hair stuck to her forehead; short nervous thin nose, thin eyebrows in a chain, thin lips, shiny clean teeth, shaved chin, lush Feldwebel mustache. Eyes ... light blue, almost green. The face is dull-clean, fresh. "
In the novel "Chapaev", which Furmanov published in 1923, Chapaev appears at first as an unattractive character and, moreover, a real savage in an ideological sense - he advocated "for the Bolsheviks, but against the communists." However, under the influence of Furmanov, by the end of the novel, he becomes a convinced party member. In reality, the divisional commander never joined the CPSU (b), not trusting the party elite too much, and it seems that these feelings were mutual - the same Trotsky saw in Chapaev a stubborn supporter of the "partisanship" he hated and, on occasion, could well have shot him, as commander of the Second Cavalry Army of Mironov.
Chapaev's relationship with Furmanov was also not as warm as the latter tried to show. This stems from the lyrical story at the headquarters of the 25th, which became known from the recently declassified Furmanov diaries. It turned out that the divisional commander began quite openly courting the wife of the commissar Anna Steshenko, a young and pretty failed actress. By that time, the second wife of Vasily Chapaev left him: she cheated on the divisional commander with a supplier. Arriving home once on a visit, Vasily Ivanovich found the lovers in bed and, according to one version, drove both under the bed with shots over their heads.
On the other, he just turned around and drove back to the front. After that, he flatly refused to see the traitor, although later she came to his regiment to reconcile, taking with her the youngest Chapayev's son Arkady. I thought to humble my husband's anger with this - he adored children, during a short rest he played tag with them, made toys. As a result, Chapaev took the children, giving them to be raised by some widow, and divorced the treacherous wife. Later, a rumor spread that it was she who became the culprit of Chapaev's death, since she had betrayed him to the Cossacks. Under the yoke of suspicion, Pelageya Kameshkertseva lost her mind and died in a hospital.
Becoming a bachelor, Chapaev turned his feelings to Furmanov's wife. Seeing his letters with the signature “Chapaev, who loves you,” the commissar, in turn, wrote an angry letter to the division commander, in which he called him “a dirty, depraved man”: “There is nothing to be jealous of a low man, and I, of course, was not jealous of her, but I was I am deeply outraged by the impudent courting and constant harassment that Anna Nikitichna has repeatedly told me about ”.
Chapaev's reaction is unknown, but soon Furmanov sent a complaint to the front commander Frunze about the "offensive actions" of the division commander, "reaching the level of assault." As a result, Frunze allowed him and his wife to leave the division, which saved Furmanov's life - a month later, Chapaev, along with his entire staff and the new commissar Baturin, died.
In June 1919, the Chapayevites took Ufa, and the division commander himself was wounded in the head when crossing the high-water Belaya River. The thousands of Kolchak garrison fled, leaving ammunition depots. The secret of Chapaev's victories was speed, onslaught and "little tricks" of the people's war. For example, under the same Ufa, as they say, he drove a herd of cattle to the enemy, which raised clouds of dust.
Deciding that Chapaev had a huge army, the whites rushed to flee. It is possible, however, that this is a myth - the same one that from time immemorial told about Alexander the Great or. No wonder, even before the nationwide cult in the Volga region, fairy tales were composed about Chapaev - “Chapay flies into battle in a black cloak, they shoot at him, and at least he has something. After the battle he will shake the cloak - and from there all the bullets will be intact and will get enough sleep. "
Another tale is that Chapaev invented the cart. In fact, this innovation first appeared in the peasant army, from which it was borrowed by the Reds. Vasily Ivanovich quickly realized the merits of a carriage with a machine gun, although he himself preferred cars. Chapaev had a scarlet "stever" confiscated from some bourgeois, a blue "Packard" and a miracle of technology - a yellow high-speed "Ford", which developed a speed of up to 50 km per hour. Having installed on it the same machine gun as on a cart, the division commander, it happened, almost single-handedly knocked out the enemy from the captured villages.
After the capture of Ufa, Chapaev's division headed south, trying to break through to the Caspian. The division headquarters with a small garrison (up to 2000 fighters) remained in the town of Lbischensk, the rest of the units went ahead. On the night of September 5, 1919, a Cossack detachment under the command of General Borodin quietly crept up to the city and surrounded it. The Cossacks not only knew that Chapay, hated by them, was in Lbischensk, but also had a good idea of \u200b\u200bthe balance of forces of the Reds. Moreover, the horse patrols, usually guarding the headquarters, for some reason were removed, and the division's airplanes, leading aerial reconnaissance, turned out to be out of order. This suggests a betrayal, which was not the work of the ill-fated Pelageya, but some of the staff workers - former officers.
It seems that Chapaev did not overcome all of his "frivolous" qualities - in a sober state, he and his assistants would hardly have overlooked the approach of the enemy. Waking up from the shooting, they rushed to the river in their underwear, firing back on the move. The Cossacks fired after them. Chapaev was wounded in the arm (according to another version, in the stomach). Three soldiers led him along a sandy cliff to the river. Further, according to eyewitnesses, Furmanov briefly described: “Here all four rushed, swam. Two were killed at the same moment, as soon as they touched the water. Two swam, already at the very shore - and at that moment a predatory bullet hit Chapaev in the head. When the satellite, crawling into the sedge, looked around, there was no one behind: Chapaev drowned in the waves of the Urals ... "
But there is another version: in the 60s, Chapaev's daughter received a letter from Hungarian soldiers who fought in the 25th division. The letter said that the Hungarians ferried the wounded Chapaev across the river on a raft, but on the shore he died of blood loss and was buried there. Attempts to find the grave did not lead to anything - the Urals had by that time changed its course, and the bank opposite Lbischensk was flooded.
Recently, an even more sensational version has appeared - Chapaev was taken prisoner, went over to the side of the whites and died in exile. There is no confirmation of this version, although the divisional commander could indeed be captured. In any case, the newspaper "Krasnoyarsk Rabochy" on March 9, 1926 reported that "Kolchak's officer Trofimov-Mirsky was arrested in Penza, who admitted that he had killed in 1919 the captive and legendary division chief Chapaev".
Vasily Ivanovich died at the age of 32. Without a doubt, he could have become one of the prominent commanders of the Red Army - and, most likely, would have died in 1937, like his colleague and first biographer Ivan Kutyakov, like many other Chapayevites. But it turned out differently - Chapaev, who fell at the hands of enemies, took a prominent place in the pantheon of Soviet heroes, from where many more significant figures were wiped out. The heroic legend began with Furmanov's novel. "Chapaev" became the first big piece of the commissioner who went into literature. It was followed by the novel "Mutiny" about the anti-Soviet uprising in Semirechye - Furmanov also personally observed it. In March 1926, the career of a writer was cut short on takeoff by a sudden death from meningitis.
The writer's widow, Anna Steshenko-Furmanova, fulfilled her dream by becoming the director of the theater (in the Chapayev division, she led the cultural and educational part). Out of love, either for her husband, or for Chapaev, she decided to embody the story of the legendary division commander on stage, but in the end the play she conceived turned into a screenplay published in 1933 in the Literary Contemporary magazine.
Soon, young film directors with the same names Georgy and Sergei Vasiliev decided to shoot fshm according to the script. Already at the initial stage of the work on the film, Stalin intervened in the process, always keeping the film production under his personal control. Through the cinema bosses, he conveyed to the directors of "Chapaev" a wish: to supplement the picture with a love line, introducing into it a young fighter and a girl from the people - "a kind of pretty machine gunner."
Sought fighter became Melk mentioned in Furmanov Petka - "little skinny chernomazik". There was also a "machine gunner" - Maria Popova, who actually served in the Chapaevsk division as a nurse. In one of the battles, a wounded machine-gunner forced her to lie down behind the “maxim” trigger: “Press, or I'll shoot you!” The queues stopped the attack of the whites, and after the battle the girl received a gold watch from the hands of the division commander. True, Maria's combat experience was limited to this. Anna Furmanova did not have such a thing, but she gave the heroine of the film her name - and this is how Anka the machine gunner appeared.
This saved Anna Nikitichna in 1937, when her second husband, the red commander Lajos Gavro, "Hungarian Chapaev", was shot. Maria Popova was also lucky - seeing Anka in the cinema, a pleased Stalin helped her prototype to make a career. Maria Andreevna became a diplomat, worked in Europe for a long time, and along the way wrote a famous song:
Chapaev the hero walked around the Urals.
He fought with his enemies with a falcon ...
Go ahead, comrades, do not dare to retreat.
Chapaevites are boldly accustomed to dying!
They say that shortly before the death of Maria Popova in 1981, a whole delegation of nurses came to her hospital to ask if she loved Petka. “Of course,” she replied, although in reality she was unlikely to have anything to do with Pyotr Isaev. After all, he was not a boy-messenger, but a regiment commander, an employee of the Chapaevsky headquarters. And he died, as they say, without crossing the Ural with his commander, but a year later. They say that on the anniversary of Chapaev's death, he got drunk half to death, came to the Ural shore, exclaimed: "I did not save Chapay!" -and shot himself in the temple. Of course, this is also a legend - it seems that literally everything that surrounded Vasily Ivanovich became legendary.
In the film, Petka was played by Leonid Kmit, who remained an "actor of the same role," as did Boris Blinov - Furmanov. And Boris Babochkin, who played a lot in the theater, was for everyone first of all Chapaev. Participants in the Civil War, including friends of Vasily Ivanovich, noted his one hundred percent hit in the image. By the way, in the beginning Vasily Vanin was appointed for the role of Chapaev, and 30-year-old Babochkin was to play Petka. They say that the same Anna Furmanova insisted on "castling", who decided that Babochkin was more like her hero.
The directors agreed and generally insured themselves as best they could. In case of accusations of excessive tragedy, another, optimistic ending was made - in a beautiful apple orchard Anka plays with the children, Petka, already the division commander, approaches them. Chapaev's voice sounds off-screen: “Get married, you will work together. The war will end, life will be magnificent. Do you know what life will be like? Don't die! "
As a result, this tangle was avoided, and the film by the Vasiliev brothers, released in November 1934, became the first Soviet blockbuster - huge queues lined up at the Udarnik cinema, where it was shown. Whole factories were marching there in columns, carrying the slogans "We are going to watch Chapaev." The film won high awards not only at the First Moscow Film Festival in 1935, but also in Paris and New York. The directors and Babochkin received Stalin awards, the actress Varvara Myasnikova, who played Anna, received the Order of the Red Banner of Labor.
Stalin himself watched the picture thirty times, not much different from the boys of the 30s - they repeatedly entered the cinemas, hoping that someday Chapay would come out. It is interesting that in the end this happened - in 1941, in one of the propaganda film collections, Boris Babochkin, famous for the role of Chapaev, appeared unharmed from the waves of the Urals and went, calling the soldiers behind him, to beat the Nazis. Few have seen this movie, but the rumor of the miraculous resurrection has finally consolidated the myth of the hero.
Chapaev's popularity was great before the film, but after it turned into a real cult. A city in the Samara region, dozens of collective farms, hundreds of streets were named after the divisional commander. His memorial museums appeared in Pugachev (formerly Nikolaevsk). Lbischensk, the village of Krasny Yar, and later in Cheboksary, within the city limits of which the village of Budaika was. As for the 25th division, it received the name Chapaev immediately after the death of its commander and still bears it.
The nationwide popularity also affected the children of Chapaev. His senior ssh Alexander became an officer - an artilleryman, went through the war, rose to the rank of major general. The youngest, Arkady, went to the aviation, was a friend of Chkalov and, like him, died before the war while testing a new fighter. The daughter of Claudia, who, after the death of her parents, almost starved to death, became the faithful keeper of her father's memory, wandered around orphanages, but the title of the hero's daughter helped her make a party career. By the way, neither Klavdia Vasilievna, nor her descendants tried to fight the jokes about Chapaev that were passed from mouth to mouth (and now already published many times). And this is understandable: in most of the anecdotes, Chapay appears as a rude, rustic person, but very handsome. The same as the hero of the novel, the film and the entire official myth.