Where did Chapaev die and how did it happen? A clear answer to this question, alas, no. Vasily Ivanovich Chapaev - a legendary personality of the times Civil War. The life of this person, starting from a young age, is filled with mysteries and secrets. Let's try to unravel them based on some historical facts.
The Mystery of Birth
The hero of our story lived only 32 years. But what kind! Where Chapaev died and where he was buried is an unsolved mystery. Why did this happen? Eyewitnesses of those distant times differ in their testimony.
Ivanovich (1887-1919) - this is how historical reference books present the date of birth and death of the legendary commander.
It’s only a pity that history has preserved more reliable facts about the birth of this man than about his death.
So, Vasily was born on February 9, 1887 in the family of a poor peasant. The very birth of the boy was marked by the mark of death: the midwife who delivered the birth of the mother of a poor family, seeing the premature baby, prophesied his quick death.
The grandmother came out to the stunted and half-dead boy. Despite the disappointing forecasts, she believed that he would pull through. The baby was wrapped in a piece of cloth and warmed near the stove. Thanks to the efforts and prayers of his grandmother, the boy survived.
Childhood years
Soon the Chapaev family is in search of better life moves from the village of Budaiki, in Chuvashia, to the village of Balakovo, Nikolaev province.
Things went a little better for the family: Vasily was even sent to study science at the parish educational institution. But the boy was not destined to receive a full education. In a little more than 2 years, he only learned to read and write. The training ended after one incident. The fact is that in parochial schools it was the practice to punish students for misconduct. Chapaev did not escape this fate either. In the cold winter, the boy was sent to a punishment cell with practically no clothes. The guy did not intend to die from the cold, so when it was no longer bearable to endure the cold, he jumped out of the window. The punishment cell was very high - the guy woke up with broken arms and legs. After this incident, Vasily did not go to school anymore. And since education was closed for the boy, his father took him to work, taught him carpentry, and they built buildings together.
Vasily Ivanovich Chapaev, whose biography grew with new and incredible facts every year, was remembered by his contemporaries after another incident. It was like this: during work, when it was necessary to install a cross on the very top of a newly built church, showing courage and skill, Chapaev Jr. took on this task. However, the guy could not resist and fell from enormous height. Everyone saw a true miracle in the fact that after the fall Vasily did not have even a small scratch.
In the service of the Fatherland
At the age of 21, Chapaev began military service, which lasted only a year. In 1909 he was fired.
According to the official version, the reason was the illness of a serviceman: Chapaev was diagnosed. The unofficial reason was much more serious - Vasily’s brother, Andrei, was executed for speaking out against the tsar. After this, Vasily Chapaev himself began to be considered “unreliable.”
Chapaev Vasily Ivanovich, whose historical portrait emerges as the image of a man prone to bold and decisive actions, once decided to start a family. He got married.
Vasily's chosen one, Pelageya Metlina, was the daughter of a priest, so the elder Chapaev opposed these marriage ties. Despite the ban, the young people got married. Three children were born in this marriage, but the union broke up due to Pelageya’s betrayal.
In 1914, Chapaev was again called to serve. The First World War brought him awards: the St. George Medal and the 4th and 3rd degrees.
In addition to awards, soldier-Chapaev received the rank of senior non-commissioned officer. All achievements were gained by him during six months of service.
Chapaev and the Red Army
In July 1917, Vasily Chapaev, having recovered from his injury, joined an infantry regiment whose soldiers supported revolutionary views. Here, after active communication with the Bolsheviks, he joined the ranks of their party.
In December of the same year, the hero of our story becomes commissar of the Red Guard. He suppresses peasant uprisings and goes to study at the General Staff Academy.
For the smart commander, a new assignment will soon arrive - Chapaev is sent to the Eastern Front to fight with Kolchak.
After the successful liberation of Ufa from enemy troops and participation in the military operation to release Uralsk, the headquarters of the 25th division, commanded by Chapaev, was suddenly attacked by the White Guards. According to the official version, Vasily Chapaev died in 1919.
Where did Chapaev die?
There is an answer to this question. The tragic event occurred in Lbischensk, on But historians are still arguing about how the famous commander of the Red Guard died. There are many different legends about the death of Chapaev. A lot of “eyewitnesses” tell their truth. Still, researchers of Chapaev’s life are inclined to believe that he drowned while swimming across the Urals.
This version is based on an investigation conducted by Chapaev’s contemporaries shortly after his death.
The fact that the division commander’s grave does not exist and his remains were not found gave rise to a new version that he escaped. When the Civil War ended, rumors began to circulate among the people about the rescue of Chapaev. It was rumored that he, having changed his last name, lived in the Arkhangelsk region. The first version is confirmed by a film that was released on Soviet screens in the 30s of the last century.
Film about Chapaev: myth or reality
In those years, the country needed new revolutionary heroes with an unblemished reputation. Chapaev's feat was exactly what Soviet propaganda felt necessary.
From the film we learn that the headquarters of the division commanded by Chapaev was taken by surprise by the enemies. The advantage was on the side of the White Guards. The Reds fired back, the battle was fierce. The only way to escape and survive was to cross the Urals.
While crossing the river, Chapaev was already wounded in the arm. The next enemy bullet killed him and he drowned. The river where Chapaev died became his burial place.
However, the film, which was admired by all Soviet citizens, caused indignation among Chapaev's descendants. His daughter Claudia, referring to the story of Commissar Baturin, claimed that his comrades took his father to the other side of the river on a raft.
To the question: “Where did Chapaev die?” Baturin answered: “On the bank of the river.” According to him, the body was buried in the coastal sand and disguised by reeds.
Already the great-granddaughter of the red commander initiated the search for her great-grandfather’s grave. However, these plans were not destined to come true. At the place where, according to legend, the grave should have been located, a river now flowed.
Whose testimony was used as the basis for the film script?
How Chapaev died and where, the cornet Belonozhkin told after the end of the war. From his words, it became known that it was he who fired a bullet at the sailing commander. A denunciation was written against the former cornet, he confirmed his version during interrogation, and it was the basis for the film.
Belonozhkin's fate is also shrouded in mystery. He was convicted twice and amnestied the same number of times. He lived to a very old age. He fought during World War II, lost his hearing due to shell shock, and died at the age of 96.
The fact that Chapaev’s “killer” lived to such an old age and died a natural death suggests that representatives of the Soviet government, who took his story as the basis for the film, did not themselves believe in this version.
Version of the old-timers of the village of Lbischenskaya
How Chapaev died, history is silent. We can draw conclusions by referring only to eyewitness accounts, conducting all kinds of investigations and examinations.
The version of the old-timers of the village of Lbischenskaya (now the village of Chapaevo) also has the right to life. The investigation was conducted by Academician A. Cherekaev, and he wrote down the history of the defeat of Chapaev’s division. According to eyewitnesses, the weather on the day of the tragedy was autumn-like cold. The Cossacks drove all the Red Guards to the banks of the Urals, where many soldiers actually threw themselves into the river and drowned.
The victims were due to the fact that the place where Chapaev died is considered enchanted. No one has ever managed to swim across the river there, despite the fact that local daredevils, in honor of the memory of the deceased commissioner, organize such swims every year on the day of his death.
What Cherekaev learned about Chapaev’s fate was that he was caught, and after interrogation, under guard, he was sent to Guryev to Ataman Tolstov. This is where Chapaev's trail ends.
Where is the truth?
The fact that Chapaev’s death is indeed shrouded in mystery is an absolute fact. And the answer to this question is for researchers life path the legendary division commander has yet to be recognized.
It is noteworthy that the newspapers did not report Chapaev’s death at all. Although then the death of such famous person was considered an event that was learned about from the newspapers.
They started talking about Chapaev’s death after it was published. famous film. All the eyewitnesses of his death spoke at almost the same time - after 1935, in other words, after the film was shown.
In the encyclopedia “Civil War and Military Intervention in the USSR” the place where Chapaev died is also not indicated. The official, generalized version is indicated - near Lbischensk.
Let's hope that with the power of new research, this story will one day become clearer.
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 individual person, even your favorite 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. Since, according to the author of the letter himself, in 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 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 a soldier of the 25th rifle division, who showed him the division commander’s personal belongings 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, the commander in 1934 went to Stalin's camps... 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!
Who is Chapaev? This is not just a soldier of two armies, this 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 territory Russian Empire. The Red Army soldiers 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 surname Chapaev was first a nickname. Allegedly, Vasily’s grandfather worked as a foreman in a construction team and constantly shouted to his subordinates: “Chepai! Chepai” (“take”). From then on, they began to call him Chapaev, which soon became a surname. This was confirmed by Ivanovich himself. The nationality of the “red” Cossack still unclear. According to some sources, his mother was Chuvash.
The Chapaev family was quite large. In addition to Vasily, there were six children. The parents worked hard, but the family still lived poorly. Therefore, a few years after the birth of their last child, they moved 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 was sponsored cousin father. 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 stationed in Kyiv. However, after a few months Vasily is transferred to the reserve. The Kiev Military District did not know who Chapaev was, so it is impossible to accurately determine the reason for such a strange decision. According to the official version, the dismissal was due to illness. IN Soviet era There was a popular theory that Vasily was expelled from the army due to political unreliability. Upon arrival home, he is granted 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 nine hundred and nine they got married. Almost immediately they move to Dimitrovgrad and live there. In the fourteenth year the First begins world war. All reserve military personnel are drafted into the imperial troops, and Chapaev is no exception. Vasily’s biography as a military man begins precisely then.
First World War
Vasily Ivanovich was mobilized into the one hundred and fifty-ninth reserve regiment, which was stationed in the city of Atkarsk.
There he undergoes training and retraining. Two months later he is sent to the front. They arrive in Galicia, where fierce battles take place 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 into Hungarian territory. To do this, it was necessary to reach the Hungarian Plain, which was prevented by the fortifications of the Austrians in the Carpathians. In mid-January, an almost simultaneous offensive by the warring sides began. The army of the German Empire planned to lift the siege of strategically important Przemysl and go behind the Russian troops.
V.I. Chapaev participated in the Carpathian operation. Stubborn fighting ensued in the mountains. The battles took place in difficult weather conditions. By this time the passes 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 of the Carpathians
After difficult battles, Russian troops still managed to occupy dominant heights and win tactically. However, in the spring a massive enemy offensive began. The German army was going to attack from East Prussia and encircle the Russian troops in the Warsaw area. At this time, a significant part imperial army got stuck in difficult passages 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, and Russian troops none. V.I. Chapaev was among those retreating from Poland in 1915. This defeat neutralized all the gains of the Russian army in the campaign of the fourteenth year and in the Carpathian operation. But the most severe blow was the moral blow.
Breakthrough of Russian troops
Who Chapaev was became known in the Belgorai regiment during the famous summer of the sixteenth year, a massive Russian offensive began near Lutsk. The goal was to occupy Galicia and Volyn, to capture the enemy enemy group. 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. By September the operation was completed. 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.
Returning home
Chapaev returned home with the rank of sergeant major. For a long time was in the hospital. 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 died every day in a war that no one understood. As a result, popular unrest reached its peak in February.
A revolution began in St. Petersburg. The Tsar abdicated the throne, and power passed to the Provisional Government. Vasily Ivanovich reacted positively to the new changes. In September '17 he joined the Bolshevik Party. As a person with combat experience, he was highly valued. Therefore, he is appointed commander of an infantry regiment.
Beginning of the Civil War
After Vasily showed his skills, he was appointed commissioner of the entire county. Almost autonomously he was involved in the formation of communist combat units. For quite short term 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 acted in extreme difficult conditions. The Whites did not even need to conduct thorough reconnaissance, because wherever the Reds appeared, there were people among the local population who reported on their numbers, weapons and other important information.
Red offensive
In winter, fierce battles broke out near Tsaritsyn.
General Kaledin had at his disposal selected fighters who had good combat experience behind them. And many studied military craft from childhood. But Chapaev managed to short term train peasants and workers so that they could fight on par with the military. After this, his units were included in the Special Army. As part of it, Vasily Ivanovich took personal part in the campaign against Uralsk. During the fighting he was wounded in the head. After the end of the campaign, he reorganized, dividing the guards into two regiments, which he united into a brigade under his command.
In the summer of '18 it was in full swing. Czechoslovak interventionists captured Nikolaevsk, in which less than a year ago proclaimed Soviet power at active participation Chapaev himself. Almost the entire Ural region came under the control of the whites. The Pugachev brigade (one of the regiments bore the name of Pugachev) besieged 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 entire north of Russia knew who Chapaev was. In the winter of the eighteenth year, Vasily Ivanovich studied at the academy General Staff. After this he receives the position of commissioner.
Army commander
Six months later, Chapaev commands a brigade, and a month later - a division. The troops are conducting an offensive on the Eastern Front against one of the best White generals - Kolchak. With the support of the Turkestan army, Bugulmi and Bugurslan districts were taken by the Reds. The front passed through the Ufa province. About thirty thousand soldiers began the offensive on May twenty-fifth, and by the end of June Kolchak's troops fled the province. Chapaev took part in the assault on Ufa. During the battle, he was wounded in the head by an air machine gun, but survived.
The commander of the Red Army continued to lead military operations in extremely difficult conditions. After a rapid offensive, Chapaev’s fighters pushed forward strongly and were exhausted. Therefore, in the fall of the eighteenth we stopped in Lbischensk to rest and wait for reinforcements to arrive. 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 juice 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 located forty kilometers from the city.
Raid of the White Cossacks
The white Colonel Borodin decided to take advantage of the weakness of the Chapaevsky garrison. Under the cover of darkness on the last day of summer, his detachment, consisting of selected fighters, left Kalyonoy and went on a raid. The Red Army soldiers 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 4th, Borodin’s detachment quietly approached the city. The commander of the Red Army, Chapaev, was in Lbischensk at that time. At dawn, the Cossacks attacked the city. The surprise factor worked - panic began. The Red Army soldiers tried to organize resistance in the chaos. The battle lasted about six hours.
Death
Many were captured. But some managed to break through to the Ural River. They tried to swim to the other side, despite the current. Chapaev was among them. 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 through when a 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 soldiers who buried the glorious commander were afraid that the whites would find the burial place.
Memory
After the end of the Civil War, thanks to Soviet propaganda, Chapaev became one of its most striking symbols. Several films were made about him, many songs and poems were written. The image of a dashing red Cossack became an element of folklore. In jokes, Chapaev became something like Lieutenant Rzhevsky.
The monument to Chapaev, already made of stone, stands in many cities of the post-Soviet space.
The first thing that the sergeant major of the Belgorai Infantry Regiment, Vasily Ivanovich Chapaev, heard about the young revolutionary republic that was born in Petrograd in the spring of 1917 was that it had adopted a decree allowing divorces. “A revolution is a good thing,” Chapaev approved and, having secured a vacation, went home to his wife to get a divorce... Divisional commander Chapaev’s weakness was cars. He had a scarlet Stever, confiscated for the benefit of the revolution from some bourgeois, a blue Packard, captured from Kolchak, and a yellow luxury high-speed Ford.
This miracle of the American automobile industry developed a speed unimaginable at that time - 50 kilometers per hour! And it was equipped like a cart - the machine gun looked out through a hole cut in the rear window. About half a dozen Red Army soldiers were crowded into the cabin along with the division commander, and more than once Chapaev’s crazy Ford, ahead of not only the main forces of the division, but also the vanguard, and even the reconnaissance sent ahead, alone burst into some White Cossack village and opened desperate fire. It happened that Vasily Ivanovich and his handful of fighters were already drinking tea in a hut hastily equipped as a headquarters, when his powerful but slow-moving division was pulled up to the liberated village - by the way, an infantry division, and not at all a cavalry division, as in the film “Chapaev”.
And Vasily Ivanovich himself, contrary to the image created in the movies by the Vasilyev brothers, did not like horse riding and “did not feel horses,” as his own father, Ivan Stepanovich Chapaev, who served as a groom in the division, repeatedly reprimanded him. Once, returning from battle, Vasily Ivanovich abandoned the team in the yard, without bothering to order that it be unharnessed. And then, as luck would have it, there was no felt under the saddles, and the horses’ backs were worn until they bled. Ivan Stepanovich looked, frowned, and went to the headquarters hut, playing with his whip as he walked. The division commander endured his father’s hand-made “science” meekly, and then stood on his knees for another hour, saying: “Daddy, I’m sorry, I stupidly overlooked it!” And no one in the division was surprised by such a thing...
Down with women! More and more relatives, neighbors, relatives of neighbors and neighbors of relatives served with Chapaev. This division was something like a small but militant peasant nomadic republic - with its own arable land, mills, bakeries, furniture factories and even schools, which Vasily Ivanovich established at each company: in addition to arithmetic and penmanship, the law of God was taught there. Chapaev himself was devout like a peasant, and on the eve of the battle he bowed to the ground before the icon.
The house where Vasily Chapaev was born. Now a museum
The morals in the division were patriarchal. “For looting and robbery, they will be beaten with whips, and then driven away. Officers for playing toss for money will be demoted to privates. For leaving a unit to fornicate in a neighboring village - arrest for three days,” read Vasily Ivanovich’s order. Alas! The latter measure often had to be resorted to. After all, what was sorely lacking in Chapaev’s small state was women! At first, the soldiers and commanders took their wives with them, but they quickly started a quarrel about “whose husband is more important.” And the division commander decided to send all the women to the rear.
And still, strife over women in the division did not stop. The officers went out of their way to place their wives in positions at headquarters and thus save them from “deportation.” As a result, the staff of typists, stenographers and telegraphists was so swollen that the whites joked: “Obviously, the Bolsheviks write a lot.”
Vasily Ivanovich himself lived as a bob. Not out of asceticism - he was simply catastrophically unlucky in his personal life. And all because once in my life I didn’t listen to my father...
Vasily Chapaev and his father - Ivan Stepanovich Chapaev
Two Pelagia. The sixth child in the family of a village carpenter, Vasily was born very premature and, according to legend, spent the first months of his life warming up in his father’s fur mitten on the stove. At the age of twelve he had to leave his native village of Budaiki (now within the boundaries of Cheboksary) and go to the city to serve a merchant. That merchant beat him for his honesty - God-fearing Vasya refused to cheat and overcharge his customers.
By the age of twenty-one, Vasily returned home safely and began to work as a carpenter with his father and brothers. They marched with gangs throughout the Samara province and the neighboring Ural district (later Chapaev would fight in the same places and would be able to navigate there without any map). That spring of 1908, the Chapaevs contracted to build a temple in Samara itself. There two miraculous events happened to Vasily. The first is that, while installing a cross on the dome, he could not resist and fell from a twenty-meter height to the ground, but remained unharmed - except for a tiny scar above his upper lip, which he covered by growing a lush mustache. And secondly, he fell mortally in love with a worker from a Samara confectionery factory, sixteen-year-old Pelageya Metlina.
Ivan Stepanovich did not approve of his son’s choice: “Is this a woman? White-handed city girl! All he knows how to do is put candy in boxes.” But Pelageya had such brilliant black cherry eyes, such a mischievous smile, such curly, silky hair, and also a voice - ringing, ringing, like a bell... In a word, Chapaev could not resist.
Sergeant Major Chapaev with his wife Pelageya Nikanorovna, 1916
Vasily and Pelageya lived in perfect harmony for seven years. Children were born one after another. “The spitting image of a black-eyed mother bitch,” Chapaev admired, watching his wife fuss with two babies, already carrying a third under her heart. And then the happiness ended: it was 1915, and Vasily was taken to the war. He served as a scout for two years. He rose to the rank of non-commissioned officer, was wounded three times, shell-shocked a dozen times, became a full St. George Knight for courage and military talent, that is, he had the St. George Crosses of the 1st, 2nd and 3rd degree, as well as the St. George medal with a bow.
Meanwhile, Pelageya became sad, became a fool, and began to openly get confused with her neighbor, which is what the father wrote to his son at the front. But Vasily did not manage to divorce his unfaithful, but still beloved wife that time - when he arrived on vacation, he looked at Pelageya and immediately forgave her everything. To celebrate, we went to the photographer and took a picture: the gallant Cavalier of St. George with his beautiful wife... And then the vacation ended, Vasily Ivanovich went to the front, and Pelageya took up her old ways. It ended with her completely leaving for her lover, abandoning her children: Arkasha, who had barely learned to walk, three-year-old Klava and four-year-old Sashka. And Pelagein’s lover left seven children for his paralyzed wife (they were later fed by the compassionate Chapaev).
Since then, Vasily Ivanovich saw his unfaithful wife only once, and then by accident - he was riding in a chaise, she was walking along the road towards him. Chapaev got off the box, caught up with Pelageya, grabbed her hand: “Come back, I ask you by Christ God!” Meanwhile, in his chaise, another wife was already sitting - also, by a strange coincidence, Pelageya. And just as dissolute!
Children of Vasily Chapaev in 1922
Teach a scientist. Chapaev had a friend at the front - Pyotr Kameshkertsev. They immediately agreed: if one is killed, the other will then take care of his family. Peter was killed at the very end of the war in the Carpathians. And true to his word, Chapaev went to the village of Berezovo to look for Peter’s widow Pelageya Efimovna and two daughters - Olympias and Vera. He found it and wanted to take the girls home with him, and Pelageya Kameshkertseva, an elderly, big-boned woman, said: “Why, take us all together.”
Having become a division commander, Vasily Ivanovich settled his wife and five children (three of his own, two adopted) in the village of Klintsovka, at the division’s artillery warehouse. Once every three or four weeks he came to visit them on leave from the front, as if from a carpenter’s apprenticeship. And each time he sent a telegram ahead of himself to the head of the art warehouse, Georgy Zhivolozhinov. They say, tell Pelageya in advance, let her bake pies, wash the hut, comb the children’s hair. And one day the telegraph malfunctioned, and Chapaev came home as a surprise. The door to the bedroom was locked. Vasily Ivanovich tugged and tugged, called: “Polya, it’s me!”... He didn’t even have time to understand anything when they started shooting from behind the door. It turned out that Zhivolozhinov had been secretly visiting Chapaev’s wife for a long time. Vasily Ivanovich spat and left. And Zhivolozhinov, out of fear, fled from the division to Serov’s gang...
Since then, Chapaev seemed to be looking for death. He traveled without security, walked at full length through the trenches, and, most importantly, became impudent with his superiors.
Vasily Chapaev often sought death himself...
Once, in the Nikolaevsk region, the Chapaevites stood on the low left bank of the river, and the Cossacks on the high right bank, they outnumbered the Reds by five times, and the only bridge in the entire district was theirs. Vasily Ivanovich received an order to retreat. And he publicly declared this order stupid. He ordered cattle to be collected from the villages and sent to the bridge, following a handful of Red Army soldiers. The heat was terrible, there was a column of dust, and there were also hundreds of horse and cow hooves... In general, the whites did not see it from afar and decided that Chapaev had moved the main forces to the bridge. Meanwhile, the division commander secretly forded them. And he won! Only at the army headquarters they were offended by him...
They stopped delivering ammunition to Vasily Ivanovich - he fought as a trophy. They did not give reinforcements when he was surrounded - he escaped on his own. One day, people from the Cheka came to Vasily Ivanovich - a rumor instantly spread among the fighters that they wanted to arrest “Chapai,” and half an hour later the headquarters hut was surrounded by a dense ring of armed Chapaev’s associates. Finally, a division was taken away from Vasily Ivanovich by order of the army commander - so what? He formed a new one in four days. In the end, they found an original method against the unsinkable divisional commander - he was sent to Moscow, to the General Staff Academy, to study. “Teaching someone smart only spoils them,” Chapaev sighed sadly, but still obeyed.
He arrived in the capital in a black cloak, with a cardboard suitcase in his hands. Settled into the luxurious hotel “Princely Dvor”. I conscientiously attended classes at the Academy. “Where is the Po River?” the geography teacher asked Vasily Ivanovich. Chapaev was angry: “What kind of Po? Do you know where the Solonka River is?! But there are battles there right now.”...
Chapaev's first commissar Sergei Zakharov (left) and Vasily Chapaev near the staff car at Nikolaevsk station, Eastern Front, September 1918
Two months later, Vasily Ivanovich escaped from the Academy. He could be severely punished for disobeying orders. But the matter ended in a trifle - a political commissar was sent to look after the rebellious, uncontrollable Chapaev. This was the aspiring writer Dmitry Andreevich Furmanov.
Blue Naya. In his diary, Furmanov described his first meeting with Chapaev as follows: “A typical sergeant-major appeared before me in appearance, with a long mustache, thin hair sticking to his forehead, blue-blue eyes, understanding”...
In fact, there was most likely no special understanding in Vasily Ivanovich’s gaze at that first moment of acquaintance. The fact is that, having burst into the hut to the commissar, Chapaev first saw a woman in desabilia on the bed. This was Dmitry Andreevich’s wife, Anna Nikitichna Steshenko. Furmanov, who was in love, called her Blue Naya. “Send me out within 24 hours!”, the misogynist Chapaev decreed.
And the soldier and commander Chapaev was gallant and distinguished...
Thus began the confrontation between the division commander and the political commissar, which Furmanov later described solely as political. Dmitry Andreevich sent his telegrams to his superiors, Vasily Ivanovich - his. And both demanded to send a commission. While messages were being exchanged, Anna Nikitichna did not waste any time - she set up a trench theater in the division.
The troupe, consisting mainly of Naya herself (from time to time she was joined by random actors or one of the Red Army soldiers), traveled around the brigades. The spectators were seated in an amphitheater: the first row lying down, the second sitting on benches, the third standing, and the fourth on horseback. For some time now, Vasily Ivanovich began to be often seen in the seated row of honor...
He was no longer so passionate about having Naya removed from the division’s combat position... What to do? Fell in love! It’s just that Chapaev has never met anyone like Anna Nikitichna – hair-eyed, bobbed, with heels, in a word, ladies from the capital. She flirted with him, played with him and hardly knew exactly how far she was ready to go.
Anna Steshenko with Dmitry Furmanov
Furmanov was going crazy with jealousy. He sent denunciations to his opponent to the Cheka, accusing him of anarchism, betrayal of the ideals of the revolution and even treachery: they say, the division commander is specially setting it up so that he, Furmanov, every time ends up in the most dangerous places of battle, just like the biblical King David sent to his death legal husband his Bathsheba. Dmitry Andreevich also wrote to Chapaev himself. Here are the excerpts: “K low man There’s nothing to be jealous about, and I’m certainly not jealous. Such opponents are not dangerous; many such fellows have already passed us by. ... She is really outraged by your impudence, and in her note, it seems, she quite clearly expressed her contempt for you.” Just some letter from Pushkin to Baron Heckern on the eve of the duel! Chapaev did not understand these subtleties and in response simply called Furmanov a “groom.”
Meanwhile, Vasily Ivanovich’s affairs with Anna were gradually moving forward. A great tactician, he decided to blackmail her, threatening to marry a telegraph operator, and Anna Nikitichna almost flinched. It is unknown how all this would have ended if the long-awaited commission had finally arrived at the division headquarters. It was headed by Valerian Kuibyshev, he recognized Furmanov as the culprit of the conflict and sent him out of the division - alas! - together with the “trench theater”. Frustrated, Vasily Ivanovich swore by any means, by hook or by crook, to return Naya to the division, but did not have time - after all, he only had a month and a half to live...
Why didn't the telegraph work?“I’m expecting a disaster any day now. It does not happen only due to the sluggishness of the white command. The headquarters in Lbischensk is exposed along with warehouses and convoys,” wrote Vasily Ivanovich, when, by order of his superiors, his division was scattered throughout Ural district, so between the brigades there were 100-200 versts.
Chapaev, Furmanov (top), Chapaev's assistant Pyotr Isaev (“Petka”, bottom left) and Semyon Sadchikov
Chapaev, commander of the 2nd Nikolaevsky Soviet regiment Ivan Kutyakov, commander of the Bubenets battalion and commissar Semennikov, 1918
...Be that as it may, on the night of September 5, three thousand Chapaev fighters stood to the death against a twelve thousand-strong detachment of whites. There was still hope for the military talent of Vasily Ivanovich, who more than once found a way out of the most hopeless situations. But at about five in the morning a stray White Guard bullet hit the division commander in the stomach, and he lost consciousness. The soldiers began to retreat randomly...
About Petka and Anka the machine gunner. Thousands of Soviet boys watched the film “Chapaev” a hundred times, desperately hoping: maybe this time the division commander will not drown in the Urals? But in fact, Chapaev most likely did not drown...
…When the Vasiliev brothers’ film was brought to Budapest in the late 40s, two old Hungarians contacted the Soviet embassy. In 1919, they served in the Chapaev division as part of a small Hungarian revolutionary detachment. Their story sounded quite plausible: they said that they personally tried to save the seriously wounded division commander by laying him on the gate and transporting him across the Urals. And on the other side they saw that Vasily Ivanovich was dead, and dug a grave in the loose sand with their hands. So there is a mistake in the film! “Comrades, but Chapaev is not just historical figure, this is a myth!” they told the veterans. They did not agree and got excited. They were arrested at the exit from the embassy...
...And yet historians do not undertake to say exactly how Vasily Ivanovich died. Officially, until recently, he was listed as missing in action. Both the Reds and the Whites tried to find his body, and a huge reward was promised. Pelageya Efimovna was summoned to Moscow several times for identification - in vain. And my father, Ivan Stepanovich Chapaev, went to fortune tellers, and they unanimously assured that Vasily was alive. Afterwards, rumors spread that the archives contained protocols of the interrogation of Chapaev by counterintelligence of the Ural Cossacks. Allegedly, the whites captured the seriously wounded Vasily Ivanovich, came out and began to persuade him to come over to their side. But Chapaev refused and was shot. Supporters of this version believe that it was precisely upon learning that the whites had shot Vasily Ivanovich that he best friend– Pyotr Isaev committed suicide...
... Pyotr Semenovich Isaev - the same “orderly Petka”, known from Furmanov’s story, the film of the Vasilyev brothers, as well as from countless folk jokes, in fact, did not serve as an orderly at all, but as the head of a communications battalion and was the same age as Chapaev. And, indeed, on September 5, 1920, at the wake of the division commander, he poured himself a glass of vodka, drank it, and said: “Sorry, Vasily Ivanovich!” and put a bullet in the forehead. Further - more. In 1934, after watching the painting “Chapaev,” Isaev’s widow hanged herself. A barely literate village woman, she took everything that was shown on the screen at face value - including Petka’s love with Anka the machine gunner...
...By the way, there was never any Anka in the division at all. But there was a nurse, Maria Andreevna Popova, on whom a wounded machine gunner once pointed a revolver and thus forced her to lie down at the machine gun and shoot at the enemies, which Maria Andreevna later recalled with a shudder for many years. She became Anka only in honor of Anna Nikitishna. After Furmanov’s death (and Dmitry Andreevich died in 1930 from very suspicious meningitis), Naya became the full owner of his literary heritage and, naturally, was invited as a consultant to the filming of Chapaev. It was she who advised to revive the plot with a fictional romantic line - real love dramas, which abounded in the life of Vasily Ivanovich, were not suitable for myth-making...
Pelageya Kamishkertseva (in the center), Alexander Chapaev (far left), Arkady Chapaev (standing behind Kamishkertseva), Klavdiya Chapaeva (to the right of Kamishkertseva)
How Chapaev’s sons saved Zhivolozhnov. As for both Pelagia, their fate is unenviable. The first, in the twenties, when famine was raging in the south of Russia, remembered abandoned children. The boys lived with their stepmother and did not live in poverty. But the daughter Claudia went to her grandmother and grandfather, and when they died, she was left alone. That year, cases of cannibalism were not uncommon; children were especially defenseless. So the mother began to rush to her daughter in the city of Balakovo from her new home in Syzran. It was a frosty February, Pelageya was in labor, and her partner, worried about her and not wanting to let her go, took all the shoes from the house. I had to walk barefoot on the ice of the Volga for tens of kilometers. In a word, Pelageya caught a cold and, having briefly seen her daughter, died.
Chapaev’s second wife devoted all her spiritual strength to protecting her lover from repression. Zhivolozhnov was arrested many times, but Klavdia Efimovna took Chapaev’s sons to the investigator, and they confirmed that they were being raised and fed by none other than “Uncle Georgy.” And yet, in 1929, Zhivolozhnov was deported to Karaganda, and then Pelageya Kameshkertseva went crazy with grief - she was taken to a mournful house, to Samara...
...Fortunately, none of Vasily Ivanovich’s children disappeared in this whole cycle. The eldest, Alexander, became a career military man, went through the entire Great Patriotic War and retired as a major general. Arkady became a pilot and tested fighter planes together with Valery Chkalov - and just like Chkalov, he died during testing on the eve of the war. Well, Claudia, having been pushed around in orphanages, learned and became the main collector of materials about her heroic father. And all three were united by one thing - a persistent dislike for the popularly beloved film "Chapaev", which distorted real life their father.
The children of Vasily Chapaev grew up to be worthy people
...After the release of the film, the Ural River changed its course, and now flows through the place that the old Hungarians indicated as Chapaev’s grave. So, it seems that the filmmakers were right about one thing: the legendary division commander still found his final refuge at the bottom...
It is believed that Chapaev's grave was washed away by the waters of the Ural River and lost forever. Maybe they were just looking in the wrong place?
shallow grave
Let us recall the main outline of events. Autumn 1919, Southern Urals. The headquarters and rear of the 25th Chapaev Division were located in Lbischensk, recently occupied by the Reds (now the city of Chapaev in Kazakhstan). To behead the enemy troops, the Whites carried out an unexpected flank raid on Lbischensk and captured the city on the night of September 4-5. The unequal battle lasted for 6 hours. Chapaev was wounded in the arm and with a detachment of hundreds of Red Army soldiers retreated to the Ural River. Crossing from its right bank, where Lbischensk is located, to the left meant survival. To stay is to surely die.
If you believe the most famous and most reliable version of events, then on the right bank of the river Chapaev received a second wound - in the stomach. It turned out to be fatal: the Red Army soldiers, who removed the gate leaf from its hinges instead of a raft, brought the already lifeless body of their commander to the left bank.
There, on the shore, hoping to return soon, they hastily buried Chapaev in a shallow grave, only slightly covering the body with sand and reeds so that the Cossacks would not find him.
These Red Army soldiers were Hungarians and Serbs, so the situation became clear only after World War II.
An attempt to find Chapaev's grave was made in the 50s. XX century The division commander's daughter was actively involved in the search. Klavdia Vasilievna. Equipment was used and divers were involved. But all efforts were in vain. For some reason they came to the conclusion that water had flooded the possible burial site. But is this true?
Coriolis force
To answer this question, you will have to make a small scientific digression. It is known that rivers wash away their banks not as they please, but according to the laws of nature. More precisely, due to the rotation of the Earth around its axis, an inertial phenomenon occurs, called the Coriolis force. Everything on the planet is affected by it. For example, due to the Coriolis force in the Northern Hemisphere, the right rail wears out more railways, running in the meridian direction from north to south. This force seriously affects the movement of air masses, and therefore the weather. The action of the Coriolis force on rivers is formulated by Baer's law on the erosion of the right banks of rivers in the Northern Hemisphere and the left banks in the Southern Hemisphere. The most obvious example of the operation of Baer's law is the Volga River. There, once they even had to move an entire city away from the river - precisely because of the rapid “eating up” of the right bank. At the latitude of Lbischensk, the Ural flows, one might say, next to the Volga, and all the rules of Baer’s law fully apply to it.
It turns out that the water in the Urals over time should have either remained in the same place, or even retreated from the bank where Chapaev’s burial place is located. After all, Lbischensk stands on the washed-out right bank, and the lost grave of the division commander is on the left, which, according to Baer’s law, should have survived!
But is it possible to find a small burial place after almost a century, even if it was not flooded? This seems possible if you take a metal detector as an assistant. A modern household metal detector can easily detect bullets in the ground. Considering that the burial is very shallow, it is the discovered bullets that hit Chapaev’s body (and he, remember, was wounded in the arm and stomach) that will tell the researchers his whereabouts. And it will apparently not be difficult to prove that these are the remains of the legendary division commander.
