Civil war in the Sali steppes. A.S

Steppe hike
	The main goals of the campaign were achieved (saving the lives of the Cossacks)
Opponents
Opponents
P. Kh. Popov I. D. Popov	B. M. Dumenko F.G. Podtyolkov
Forces of the parties
At the beginning of the hike: 1110 bayonets 617 sabers 5 guns 39 machine guns In March: 3000 bayonets and sabers	Unknown
War losses
81 people (by March 1918) Unknown (small) (after March 1918)	Unknown

Steppe hike - the campaign of the Don units of the White Army in the Salsk steppes in the winter-spring of 1918 (February-May). A military operation aimed at retaining the personnel of the future Cossack army.

History

After the suicide of the ataman Kaledin on January 29, 1918, in view of the need to leave the Don under the onslaught of the Bolsheviks, a volunteer detachment was formed, headed by the marching chieftain of the Don army, Major General P. Kh. Popov (chief of staff - Colonel V. I. Sidorin), numbering 1,727 people combat strength: 1110 infantry, as well as 617 cavalry with 5 guns and 39 machine guns.

The marching chieftain Pyotr Kharitonovich Popov did not want to leave the Don and break away from his native places, so he did not join the Volunteer Army for a joint campaign in the Kuban. The Don Cossacks went to the winter quarters located in the Salsk steppes, where there was enough food and fodder for the horses. The task of this campaign was to preserve until spring a healthy and efficient core, around which the Don Cossacks could rally again and raise weapons, without interrupting the struggle against the Bolsheviks.

The campaign began with a departure from Novocherkassk on February 12 (February 25, new style) 1918. It ended with the return of some of the surviving participants also to Novocherkassk in late April - early May 1918.

This campaign ended the armed struggle of the Don Cossacks against the Red Army.

The poet Nikolai Turoverov, a participant in this campaign, wrote:

List of participants

The marching detachment included the following infantry-mounted units:

We will remember, we will remember to the grave
His cruel youth -
A smoking crest of a snowdrift
Victory and death in battle,
Longing of a hopeless rut,
Anxiety in frosty nights
And the shine of a dull shoulder strap
On the fragile shoulders of children.
We gave everything we had
You, eighteenth year,
Your Asian blizzard
Steppe - for Russia - campaign.

• The detachment of the military foreman E.F. Semiletov (which included the detachments of the army foreman Martynov, the captain Bobrov and the centurion Khopersky) - 701 people.
• The infantry was commanded by Colonel Lysenkov (hundreds - military foremen Martynov and Retivov, captain Balikhin, the captain Pashkov and Tatsin), the cavalry - the army foreman Lenivov (hundreds - by the captain Galdin and Zelenkov); detachment (equestrian) Esaul FD Nazarov - 252 people.
• Detachment of Colonel K. K. Mamantov (deputy - Colonel Shabanov), which included the detachments of Colonels Yakovlev and Khoroshilov - 205 foot and horse.
• The cadet equestrian detachment of the captain N.P.Slyusarev (assistant - captain V.S.Kryukov) - 96 people.
• Ataman's cavalry detachment of Colonel G.D. Kargalskov (deputy - military foreman M.G. Khripunov) - 92 people.
• Horse-officer detachment of Colonel Chernushenko (deputy - esaul Dubovskov) - 85 people.
• The headquarters squad of General MV Bazavov (deputy - Colonel Lyakhov, almost entirely consisted of retired generals and staff officers) - 116 people.
• The officer's combat equestrian squad of the military foreman Gnilorybov - 106 people.
• Engineering hundred of General A. N. Moller - 36 people.

Artillery was presented:

• Semiletovskaya battery (captain Shchukin) - about 60 people.
• 1st separate battery of Esaul Nezhivov - 38 people.
• 2nd separate battery of esaul Kuznetsov - 22 people.

The non-combatant part of the detachment consisted of 251 people:

• Detachment headquarters.
• Artillery control.
• Camping hospital.
• A group of members of the Army Circle and public figures.

Later, the detachment was replenished with the Kalmyks of General I.D.Popov (hundreds of Colonel Abramenkov, military sergeant major Kostryukov, podsaul Avramov and centurion Yamanov).

With the additions, the detachment grew by the end of March 1918 to 3 thousand people. In the campaign itself, the losses were small (by the end of March, 81 people were killed), but its participants were the most active champions of the war and most of them (over 1600 people) died before May 1919, and by March 1920 there were only 400 of them.

Awards

For the participants of the campaign on April 26, 1918, the Don Troops Circle established a reward - an iron cross of a semicircular profile worn on the St.George ribbon without inscriptions; on the back at the top there is a number, below - the inscription “For the steppe campaign” and the dates “1918”, “12 / II”, “5 / V”.

"In retaliation for military valor and excellent courage shown by the participants in the Steppe Campaign, the detachment of the Campaign Ataman of the Don Army General P. Kh. Popov and the unparalleled labors and hardships incurred by them, the Big Army Circle established the“ Steppe Campaign Insignia ”-“ Steppe Cross ” - read the order of the Don Ataman General A.P. Bogaevsky.

We will remember, we will remember to the grave
His cruel youth -
A smoking crest of a snowdrift
Victory and death in battle
The longing of the hopeless rut,
Anxiety in frosty nights
And the shine of a dull shoulder strap
On the fragile shoulders of children.
We gave everything we had
You, eighteenth year,
Your Asian blizzard
Steppe - for Russia - campaign.

Poet Nikolay Turoverov, participant of the campaign

On January 29 (February 11, new style), 1918, in view of the need to leave the Don under the onslaught of the Bolsheviks, a volunteer detachment was formed, led by the marching chieftain of the Don army, Major General P. Kh. Popov (chief of staff - Colonel V. I. Sidorin) numbering 1727 combat personnel: 1110 infantry, as well as 617 cavalry with 5 guns and 39 machine guns.
On January 29, the "Kaledinsky shot" sounded like a loud warning about the critical situation on the Don. The massive offensive of the Bolsheviks on the Don became the reason for a meeting of the chiefs of military units stationed in Novocherkassk on February 10, 1918. At the meeting, it was announced that Novocherkassk would be abandoned on February 12. it was not supposed to defend the Don capital. Each was asked to make his own choice - to go to the steppe or stay. According to the order of the Don Ataman General A.M. Nazarov, 1500 bayonets and checkers with 10 guns and 28 machine guns left the city of Novocherkassk under the command of the marching ataman General P. Kh. Popov (according to other sources - with 5 guns with 500 shells and 40 machine guns).
This is how the famous Steppe campaign of the Don units of the White Army began in the Salsk steppes, the purpose of which was to retain personnel for the future Cossack army. So the armed struggle of the Don Cossacks against the Red Army began. The steppe campaign ended with the return of the surviving participants back to Novocherkassk in late April - early May 1918.

The publicist Viktor Sevsky (VA Krasnushkin) subtly characterized the participants in the campaign: “The shadows of the old atamans followed them, and they, these shadows, called all free, all brave generals under the banner of the steppe generals. For they were the stewards of Kaledin's soul. "

The Don campaign exerted a moral, psychological and patriotic influence on those who fought against the Bolsheviks. “The very fact of the existence of the Steppe Detachment said that the Cossacks had not died, had not been strangled, they were fighting for their existence. This thought instilled courage, eliminated apathy, discouragement, slavish submission, called for struggle, for heroism, this explains the speed with which the uprising began, - states the Don politician K. Kaklyugin. - Moreover, when the uprisings began, exactly where the "Steppe Detachment" roamed, the marching chieftain became the center of the movement, the central power. He helps and promotes the uprising. Cossacks and farms adjoin the uprising, where the Steppe Detachment appears ... "
On April 11, the Provisional Don government announced in an order: “After a difficult campaign in the village of Razdorskaya, a marching ataman, Major General Pyotr Kharitonovich Popov, arrived at the head of his detachment. The Provisional Don government, in complete unity with the valiant command of the Don Army, decided for the good of the cause and the success of the struggle against rapists over the Don Cossacks - to transfer the high command and the fullness of military power to the marching chieftain, Major General P. Kh. Popov.
The Provisional Don government, elected and endowed with the confidence of the insurgent Cossacks, reserves, until the Don Salvation Circle is convened, full civilian power and supreme control over all issues related to the success of the struggle against the Bolsheviks. The Don Salvation Circle must be convened immediately upon the liberation of the Don capital from the Bolsheviks. "
General P. Kh. Popov took command and formed three military groupings: the Northern - from his partisans, led by Semiletov, and from the former "Don Army" - the Zadonskaya, led by General PT Semyonov, and the Southern - from the Zaplavskaya group, headed by Colonel S. V. Denisov, who previously held the post of chief of staff of the Don Army.

General P. Kh. Popov did not want to leave the Don, to leave his native places and for this reason did not join the Kuban campaign of the Volunteer Army. The Don Cossacks went to the winter quarters located in the Salsk steppes, which made it possible, without interrupting the struggle with the Bolsheviks, to maintain a combat-ready core around which the Don Cossacks would rally.

For a month and a half in the steppes, the Don partisans endured hunger and cold, having no rear and supply bases. The struggle against the Bolsheviks was bloody and merciless, but the Don land was not abandoned for a single day. The Don partisans under the command of the marching chieftain P. Kh. Popov remained a shining example and hope for the uprising of the stanitsa residents. The steppe campaign had a secret task - to rouse the Cossacks to fight for their Prisud, showing the hostile essence of Bolshevism in relation to the Cossacks. All over the Don there were uprisings, the idea of \u200b\u200ba struggle against Soviet power acquired a wide scale. In early April, the Steppe campaign ended, in the steppes there were graves of the valiant partisans, who were remembered by descendants as defenders of their native land. The living heroes of the Steppe campaign became part of the regiments of the revived Don army.
The Don partisans entered Novocherkassk on April 22, 1918, leaving behind them a 70-day march across the Don steppes. The steppe campaign became one of the glorious campaigns of the anti-Bolshevik movement, occupying a special place in the history of the Civil War. The Cossacks prepared the ground for the Volunteer Army and occupied important points for the continuation of the struggle against Bolshevism - Rostov and Novocherkassk. Returning to the capital, the Don partisans became a kind of flagship of the struggle.

In honor of the glorious Steppe campaign, a special insignia - "Steppe Cross" was established.
“In retaliation for military valor and excellent courage shown by the participants in the Steppe campaign of the detachment of the marching chieftain of the Don Army General P. Kh. Popov, and the unparalleled labors and hardships incurred by them, the Big Army Circle established the“ Insignia of the Steppe campaign ”-“ Steppe Cross ”- read order of the Don chieftain, General A.P. Bogaevsky. This award was given to those who joined the detachment no later than March 1, 1918 and stayed in it at least until April 4 (before the reorganization). Also, the insignia was passed on to the families of those killed in the Steppe campaign. Cross No. 1 was solemnly presented to P. Kh. Popov.

Igor Martynov,
military foreman, deputy chieftain of the Tambov branch
Cossack society

STEP HIKE

In January-February, the Red Army units moved from the north to Novocherkassk and Rostov, displacing the White units. The Don had to be abandoned under the pressure of those. A volunteer detachment was formed, headed by Colonel P.Kh. Popov numbering 1,700 people. The colonel took the military values, part of the military gold reserve, property of the quartermaster's warehouses and took the Cossacks from Novocherkassk to the Steppe campaign, to the Salsk steppes. Ataman knew that sooner or later the Cossacks would not accept the new power. The task of this campaign was to preserve a combat-ready core until spring, around which the Don Cossacks could rally again and raise weapons.

The march lasted three months, 16 partisan formations participated - first two, and then almost three thousand bayonets and sabers. A participant in the Steppe campaign was the Don poet Esaul N.N. Turoverov. In the detachment there were young teenagers - cadets who were part of the combat units. One of them, a pupil of the 7th grade of the Konstantinovsky Real School N.N. Evseev, died of wounds, was buried on March 26 near the village of Erketinskaya. “I don’t know why and who needs it, who sent them to death with a nauseating hand…” And they lowered him into eternal rest - into the bitter-salty land of the Kalmyk steppe. They called themselves the "Detachment of Free Don Cossacks".

I had to experience many difficulties, February either with a thaw, or with frost, fettered all living things. Participants of the Campaign described their relations with local Cossacks in the following way: “When we“ saw through ”on the Don what kind of Soviet power it was, we had to meet many atamans of villages and farms (sometimes very far away) and Kalmyks riding on horseback at the patrols of the Steppe Campaign. go blind (bareback) with a request to the gene. Popov to lead their uprising. " Separately, the lists of the personnel of the Steppe campaign included four hundreds of Kalmyk, more than 500 sabers under the command of General I.D. Popov.

A Kalmyk group of members of the Army Circle followed along with the units. The partisans were joined by the Kalmyk Cossacks from the Zadonsk villages. In the village of Vlasovskaya, a large gathering of Kalmyk clergy from all 13 villages was announced in support of the white movement. At this stage, a group of more than 500 sabers joined, which amounted to about 20% of the "Stepnyaks"; in March 1918, only up to 2000 Kalmyks fought in the white partisan detachments.

A detachment under the command of the cornet Abushi Alekseev from the village of Grabbevskaya joined the March 5 campaign. With the support of the Kalmyks-Cossacks of the Platov village ataman Abushi Sarsinov, this detachment executed several nonresident - supporters of the new government. After the departure of the Steppe Detachment, the enraged peasants retaliated against the families of the Don Kalmyks. Repression fell upon them. Esaul Badma Seldinov, centurion B.S. Bakbushev were shot in March 1918. They were escorted from Remontnaya station to Zimovniki station, executed on the way.

The whites tried to mobilize the peasants as well, but they deserted at the opportunity, scattering to their homes.

First P.Kh. Popov was able to resist only the local Red Guard detachments, in quantity and quality hardly superior to the stanitsa Cossack squads. Ataman wrote: “Here, in the wilderness, far from the railway, at rest it was supposed to give rest to the troops, to replenish detachments, to put in order the transport unit. However, the situation was different. With the appearance of partisan detachments in the Zimovniki area, the movement captured not only the Salsk district, but penetrated into the depths of the Astrakhan and Stavropol steppes. ”36 Then armored trains and echelons of Red Guards were moved against it from Tsaritsyn and Torgovaya (n / in the city of Salsk).

Armored trains on the Tsaritsyn - Tikhoretskaya line were often used, they were an effective means of fighting. For the Whites, these were General Alekseev, Forward for the Motherland, for the Reds, Fighter, Volya, Bryanskiy .37

In the second half of February 1918, on the instructions of the Kotelnikovsky Revolutionary Committee, a detachment under the command of P.A. Lomakin made his way to the Remontnaya station, where he connected with the Tsaritsyn detachment of I.V. Tulak and with Kotelnikovites. There were up to 200 soldiers under the command of V.F. Boltruchuk. On an armored train, we moved to the Grand Duke. "Stepnyaks" under the command of General M.N. Gnilorybov repulsed the offensive. Red partisans retreated to Remontnaya, P.A. Lomakin went from the station to the steppe through the farms of Maryanov and Gureev.

The Whites took the center of the Salsk district, the village of Velikoknyazheskaya. On the way, they disbanded the farm and village Soviets.

The Reds once again rallied their strength, established communications and supplies with the Tsaritsyn divisions, drove the Stepnyakov out of the Grand Duke. Those had to break out to the right bank of the Don through the villages of Burulskaya - Erketinskaya - Andreevskaya - the Korolev farm. Not far from the Savoskin farm (n / in Zimovnikovsky district), a battle with the Red Guard units took place, there were losses on both sides.

As a result, the Steppe campaign was surrounded by the Reds, under their pressure, the horse breeders were forced out of the winter quarters, and they had to move north. Moving forward with battles, the detachment reached the villages of Andreevskaya and Erketinskaya. On March 10, they occupied the village of Chunusovskaya, in Potapovskaya the detachments were joined. Here they deployed into a significant military group: commander General I.D. Popov, 5th Don Cavalry Regiment under the command of military foreman K.A. Lenivov, 6th Kalmyk cavalry regiment - Prince D.Ts. Tundutov. Detachment K.V. Sakharov concentrated in the villages of Atamanskaya, Potapovskaya, Belyaevskaya, Erketinskaya. In total, in Zadonia, the Whites formed a group of 1435 people.

It was decided to encircle and defeat the Red troops in the area of \u200b\u200bthe Gashun and Remontnaya stations. The offensive was scheduled for the night of March 13. I.D. Popova cut the railway between Remontnaya and Kotelnikovo stations. Parts of S.L. Markov attacked head-on, on the left flank of the Kalmyk regiment. The Reds surrounded by resisted for two days, I.V. Tulak was killed.

On the night of March 19, a Kalmyk arrived at the ataman, who was on reconnaissance in the area of \u200b\u200bthe villages of Erketinskaya and Andreevskaya. He said that back in the first half of March, the Andreevites raided the Kotelnikovo station to obtain weapons. The village is ready to act against the Bolsheviks at any moment. The general was visited by a "messenger" from the insurgent Cossacks of the 2nd Don District, as well as other envoys from 11 Cossack villages. They declared that they recognized in his person the supreme military power.

The participants of the Steppe campaign, the cadet Kazantsev and four partisans living there, arrived at the Moiseyev farm. The commander of the Dubovsky detachment of the Reds G.G. Markin ordered them to be arrested and taken to the Remontnaya station. The Cossacks of the surrounding farmsteads raised the alarm and began to ask for help from the villages. In the morning, 70 horsemen gathered and moved to the Repair Room. On the way, Cossacks from Zhukov and other farms joined in; by the evening of March 24, about 300 Cossacks stood at the station, demanding the release of their own. They gave in, the partisans were returned. But it was already impossible to stop the uprising. A detachment of 600 people gathered in the village of Baklanovskaya. On the way to the Remontnaya station, he was replenished with Cossacks from neighboring farms.

On April 7, the Dubovsky Revolutionary Committee was convened in the station building. The meeting was disrupted, a consolidated detachment of Cossacks approached from the direction of the Barabanshchikov farm, they surrounded the station, took Remontnaya on foot.

G.G. Markin shot back on the street near the station (in the place where a two-story residential building is now built) .38 He was hacked to death. A deputy from the Kapylkov farm, Bantiev, was seriously wounded by a saber. The Revolutionary Commissars started swimming across the Sal and fled, some to Zimovniki, some to the Grand Duke.

After the seizure of the Revolutionary Committee, it was necessary to decide its fate. The prosperous peasant Ya.I. Ocheretin and the agent for the purchase of raw hides V. Kovalenko. The deputies were driven to the Minaevsky farm and further to the Baklanovskaya stanitsa. Then the prisoners were returned to the Dubovsky farm, where a military court was held, presided over by the Cossack Pokhlyobin from the village of Tsymlyanskaya, a member of the court ataman of the Dubovsky farm D.F. Frolov. Soon a Red Guard detachment approached from the direction of Kotelnikovo, the trial did not take place, the deputies were released.

Upon learning of the Baklanovites' performance, new squads of the villages of Ternovskaya, Filippovskaya and Romanovskaya approached Remontnaya, which increased the number of rebels to 3000. They destroyed the railway, under the command of the captain G. Andrianov, seized Semichnaya. However, the villagers got tired of fighting, they held meetings and began to disperse, the indignation of the Cossacks dried up.

The uprising was preceded by a clash in the village of Tsymlyanskaya. There, a Council was elected, which seized the village property and the treasury, imposed an indemnity on the Cossacks. A Red Guard squad was formed, but the meeting held by the village adopted a resolution to disband it. A detachment of 70 people, led by Konstantin Leontyev, on April 2, began to leave for the Remontnaya station.

The Cossacks went up in the blaze. Military petty officer I.E. Golitsyn announced the beginning of the uprising. After the Reds, intelligence was sent, led by centurion G.I. Chapchikov, she was joined by fifty from the village of Efremovskaya. The path of the Red Guards was blocked by a detachment from the Sadkov farm, headed by the sergeant-major Efrem Popov. The Cossacks now had more than 150 sabers, they were armed with pikes, checkers, and very few rifles.

On April 8, the squad was driven to a low meadow place, about two miles from the railway, between the farmsteads of Kravtsov and Shcheglov. Seeing the hopelessness of their situation, and the cartridges were running out, the vigilantes dropped their rifles, threw out the white flag. But the Cossacks attacked from all sides, checkers flashed and did their fatal deed. The Red Guardsman Fevralyov, seeing his wife's brother among the Cossacks, threw himself on his horse's neck, shouting: "Brother, save, save!" But the blade with a whistle interrupted the death cry. A Cossack from the Shcheglov farm killed the commander of the detachment K.M. Leontyev. It was all over in a few minutes. Only two managed to survive. At night, the Cossacks returned to their homes, and near the Shcheglova Zhirov farm a mound of a mass grave without a cross grew, 66 people were buried. Currently, there is a monument on this site.

After the defeat of the Tsymlyanskaya squad, the Cossack uprising began to spread again through the villages of the 1st and 2nd Don districts. Under the command of Colonel S.K. Borodin and Esaul G. Andrianov on April 8, the village of Baklanovskaya blazed up, the Cossacks got in touch with the partisans.

At this time, the "Stepnyaks" continued to move with battles, they were forced out by the Reds from the village of Burulskaya. On April 8, the main forces of the partisans, led by Kalmyk guides, headed to Erketinskaya. In order not to interrupt communication, Kalmyk patrols were sent. By the evening we settled down in the village, a hundred of cavalry officers occupied B.S. Bakbushev. Junker detachment of the esaul N.P. Slyusarev (96 people), Ataman detachment of Colonel G.D. Kargalsky (92 people) and the detachment of K.K. Mamontov occupied the village of Andreevskaya. The Kalmyk hundreds of General I.D. Popova, commanders: 1st hundred Colonel D.L. Abramenkov, 2nd hundred military sergeant major S. Kostryukov, 3rd hundred drove up P.M. Avramov, 4th hundred centurion Yamanov. 39

P.Kh. Popov received a letter from Colonel A.I. Boyarinov from Nizhne-Kurmoyarskaya stanitsa, in which it was reported: the right-bank villages are ripe for an uprising, the partisans need to hurry beyond the Don to raise them. The defense of the village of Erketinskaya was entrusted to the military foreman E.F. Semiletov.

The general decided to move to the village of Andreevskaya and there to cross the Sal River. There were no crossings on the river. The "Stepnyakov" had a wagon train of the wounded and sick, a quartermaster, detachment wagons. In the spring of that year, there was a strong flood, Sal spread widely. The commander of the crossing was appointed military K.A. Lenivova.

The Reds learned that the whites' headquarters was now in Erketinskaya, and the Andreevskaya Stanitsa Cossack squad joined them. We made a decision to move to the village. We hid in the Tsagan hotun, then along the Bolshoi Gashun bank we went to the outskirts, the khurul is already visible. The red partisans from the Gashun station arrived in time, the detachment of G.N. Skibs, entered into battle with a group of E.F. Semiletova.

Having left the village of Erketinskaya, the Whites took up a position three versts from Andreevskaya. A detachment of junkers who left B. Bakbushev's winter quarters joined. Andreevskie Cossacks provided assistance, with their participation more than a dozen rafts on barrels were built, for the construction of which they mobilized nonresident villages. The crossing lasted all day on April 8. The battery, having crossed the Sal River, took up a firing position at the village cemetery. Until about 2 o'clock in the afternoon, when the crossing of the convoys ended, E.F. Semiletov repulsed the attacks of the Reds, and then began to withdraw the units subordinate to him from the battle, ferrying them across the river to Andreevskaya. The last, until dusk, were Kalmyk hundreds on the left bank, who, together with the cadets, repeatedly launched attacks. Under cover of four guns, they swam over Sal.

The Reds left Erketinskaya. Having missed the Stepnyakovs, they headed for the Ilyinka settlement. During this period of the war, most of the Red Guard detachments withdrew from the struggle, in the best traditions of the peasant wars, they did not want to leave their homes. They were not eager to fight: "the cadets are running, and there is no need to fight."

All the forces of the whites were concentrated in the village of Andreevskaya, the village squad joined them. The ataman intended, moving to the Don, to cut the railway and stay for 1-2 days in the Korolev farm. To ensure the safety of the passage of the partisans, the chieftain ordered the cadet detachment N.P. Slyusarev to blow up the roadbed at the Semichnaya station at nightfall. On April 10, the chieftain's horse detachment occupied the Remontnaya station, the 2nd separate battery of E.A. Kuznetsova fought off the battleship and for a short time also entered Remontnaya.

On April 13, they concentrated in the farmsteads of Minaev and Korolev. In Korolev P.Kh. Popov conferred with the leaders of the local rebels. They asked to strike with all their might at Kotelnikovo, where it was possible to capture artillery guns and many other weapons. But the general tried to reach the Don and cross to the right bank.

The majority of the Campaign Ataman's detachment consisted of officers and junkers, while the Cossacks still had strong anti-officer sentiments. For all their fighting qualities, the insurgent Cossacks, having liberated their village, did not want to go further, and it was not possible to raise them to pursue the enemy. Among the rebels, rallies began, the squads melted away, they began to leave for their farms, practically nothing remained of the detachment of the village of Baklanovskaya. Remaining with P.Kh. Popov's forces began to cross the Don at the Krivsky farm and the village of Nizhne-Kurmoyarskaya. So the Steppe campaign ended, 28 battles in 80 days. Then the ataman organized the overgrown forces, sent his "Stepnyaks" and the remnants of personnel regiments from the village of Nizhne-Kurmoyarskaya to Novocherkassk, where the detachment joined the Don Army. A year later, all the participants in the campaign were awarded the sign "Steppe Cross" Out of two thousand, 610 people survived, by March 1920, 400 survived.

The blizzard swept the paths and paths of the small steppe army.

IN COLOVERTY

Tsaritsyn defended himself four times in two years. The Zadonsk steppes witnessed the advance of huge masses of people to Tsaritsyn and back. The civil war in the summer and autumn of 1918 is a struggle for communications. The direction of operations through the station Remontnaya - Semichnaya each time was, if not decisive, then in any case one of the main ones. It was here, on the Kotelnikovo - Velikoknyazheskaya line, that there was a junction, a significant area of \u200b\u200bintersection of the interests of the warring parties. The natural boundary - the railway bridge across the Sal River - was of the utmost importance. From a tactical point of view, Remontnaya station was the southern gateway to Tsaritsyn.

In the spring and summer of 1918, the situation in the troops, both white and red, was uncertain. On one side or another, there were cases of refusal to follow orders, leaving positions. According to the recollections of the Campaign Ataman, some of the stanitsa squads, which opposed the Bolsheviks, thwarted the planned operation to force the march to the right-bank Don: “The Cossacks held a meeting and went to their villages, abandoning their positions. No convictions of the chiefs of the detachments affected them ... "

It was the same with the Reds. When the commander of the Southern Front decided to leave Zadonia and transfer the detachments, concentrating them on the defense of Tsaritsin, the commander (as in the order) G.K. Shevkoplyasov replied: "The Red Army men of the front, having learned about the transfer of troops to the northern front, do not trust the chiefs, as there are already cases that the Martyninites wanted to shoot Sitnikov, who had been elected to them and commanded them for more than six months."

Only by 1919 did everything fall into place. There was nowhere to run.

According to the laws of the Time of Troubles, a large number of impudent people were born, in the past convicted for cases that were not at all of a political nature. A typical product of the revolution is scum on the crest of events. Before the capture of Rostov in 1918 by German troops, the city underwent a spontaneous and devastating plunder: banks, shops, arsenals were opened. Weapons, state treasures, gold, expensive goods were loaded into echelons without taking into account. These trains moved to Tsaritsyn along the Vladikavkaz branch. Black banners were raised. In early June, the transports of Chernyak, Berezka, Gulyai-Gulyaiko passed through the Remontnaya station.

The most incredible rumors reached about the anarchists, the legends about the Marusya detachment were especially popular. In a narrow circle, on the thieves' "raspberries" she was called Murka. There were also other Nikiforovs, there is still debate about which of them is the prototype of the "heroine" of thieves' songs. On the way to Tsaritsyn, Marusya learned that Petrenko and Chernyak were disarmed. She did not tempt fate, tried to hide on the dusty tracts of the Salsk steppes. The journey was short, we stumbled upon a Red Army patrol patrol from S.A. Sitnikov. The detachment was completely destroyed, Marusya was shot. She was brought in a leather uniform to the station Semichnaya for identification, and here she was buried among the graves of 13 anarchists who died in the battle near Meliorativnoye - Kotelnikovo.42 Either it was the same “Murka”, or another, from Odessa-mother, an eternal competitor Rostov-dad, - history is silent.

At the Semichnaya station and the patrols, five echelons stood in the morning on May 13, the anarchists did not want to surrender their weapons. They shot a Cossack from the Dubovsky farm Stefan Baklanov. One of the echelons was fired upon by the Reds, several dozen more people were killed and wounded. Detachment of the anarchist P.K. The foreman with all the weapons passed to the red, was assigned to strengthen the garrison of the Semichnaya station.

The front line between the opposing sides became increasingly clear. The right bank of the Don became the starting position of the Volunteer Army and the Don Army, the left bank bristled with bayonets from partisan detachments and Red Guard squads. Detachment P.A. Lomakin, operating in the area of \u200b\u200bthe villages of Atamanskaya and Andreevskaya, defended the region from the east, a detachment of P.Z. Chesnokov in the area of \u200b\u200bthe villages of Verkhne-Kurmoyarskaya and Nagavskaya took the blows from the right side of the Don. In the area of \u200b\u200bthe Semicheskaya station, T. Lobashevsky's detachment, together with the anarchists, covered Kotelnikovo from the south. Only in the Kotelnikovsky sector were 3,500 red bayonets and sabers under arms.

On the night of June 12, 1918, two hundred Kalmyk volunteers under the command of Esaul B. Seldinov took the village of Vlasovskaya (Bembyakhinskaya) and the Gashun station. The partisan period of the formation of units of White Kalmyk-Cossacks here ended, they joined the regular units of the Don army.

At this time, White took Novocherkassk. Atamans A. Sarsinov from the village of Platovskaya and A.A. Alekseev from Grabbevskaya, with the support of B. Ulanov, a member of the Military Government, obtained permission to form a Zyungar (Kalmyk) regiment in the Salsky district. The idea received the assistance of the military chieftain P.N. Krasnova.

The ancient homeland of the Kalmyks of Zyungaria (Dzungaria), and the regiment was named in memory of the distant homeland. "Kalmyk" - not because the whites formed a purely national regiment, there were many other donors in it. This name was received for the merits of the Don Kalmyks in the Steppe campaign. The regiment was organized in the village of Konstantinovskaya, had five hundred, consisted of the Cossacks of Platovskaya, Burulskaya and Grabbevskaya and other villages that were in the Steppe campaign. 43 A.A. Alekseev commanded the 4th hundred regiment, and was also involved in the supply and uniforms of the regiment. The cornet P.B. served in the Zyungar regiment. Abushinov from the village of Chunusovskaya. One of the first baptisms of the Zyungars was the battle of the units of Major General I.F. Bykadorov against the red detachments, which took place on July 9 near Chunusovskaya.

Subsequently, the regiment became known as the 80th DKP, fought in the Don region as part of the K.K. Mamontov against the red detachments of G.K. Shevkoplyasova. According to the memoirs of the ataman G.D. Balzanov, it was one of the most reliable white Don regiments, the only one in the Don army that went through the entire Civil War without disbanding, reorganizing and changing the name, was able to cross to the Crimea after the Novorossiysk catastrophe A.I. Denikin.

Then, from seven Kalmyk villages, including Chunusovskaya, Potapovskaya, Erketinskaya, Colonel A.A. Alekseev and esaul B. Seldinov in the village of Vlasovskaya formed the 3rd Don Kalmyk regiment. The regiment was dressed in blue trousers with yellow stripes, a khaki shirt, a cap with a black plush rim and a yellow top. The banner depicts the ancient Kalmyk god of war "Yamandag" on a dark chestnut horse. The banner was personally presented by the Lama to all the Don Kalmyks, MB. Bormanzhinov. At present, the banner is kept in the Novocherkassk Museum of the History of the Don Cossacks.

The first commander was the military sergeant major Suvorov. After he was wounded, the regiment took over the esaul (then through the rank of colonel) N.P. Slyusarev. An English officer described him in his memoirs: "Their colonel, a youthful man with one of the most cruel and self-confident faces that I have ever seen, was of the European type, albeit of Kalmyk blood, which showed its presence in the dark complexion and narrow, slanting eyes." ...

In total, six Kalmyk regiments fought in units of the Armed Forces of the South of Russia. Most of the Don Kalmyks-Cossacks sided with the White movement, about 5,000 in total. Astrakhan and Stavropol Kalmyks did not seek to participate in hostilities.44

There were also Kalmyks in the Red Army. In the Zadonsk steppes, groups of Red Kalmyks were formed under the leadership of K.E. Ilyumzhinov, Kh.B. Kanukova, E.A. Basanova, M.D. Shapsukova, O. I. Gorodovikov. They subsequently joined the regular units.

As part of the red formations formed on the Don, at first there was one Kalmyk national unit - the cavalry detachment of the battalion of the 37th rifle division, on the basis of which two squadrons of the 2nd Kalmyk regiment were formed. In June 1919, in the village of Denisovskaya, the 1st Separate Kalmyk Cavalry Regiment was formed under the command of the Kalmyk V.A. Khomutnikov.

Soon their leaders became prominent figures of the new government. Oka Gorodovikov - the commander of the 2nd Cavalry Army, Kirsan Ilyumzhinov - the brigade commander, Vasily Khomutnikov - the regiment commander, Kharti Kanukov - the political commissar of the division.

The trouble with the Kalmyks was that during the Civil War, whites often used the steppe dwellers in special operations. In “Quiet Don” it is said: “At noon, a punitive detachment of Sali Cossacks-Kalmyks entered Tatarsky. Some of the farmers must have seen Panteley Prokofievich making his way home; an hour after the punitive detachment entered the farm, four Kalmyks galloped to the Melekhov base. "

In the struggle against desertion, the Kalmyks were again on the ridge of events, and detachments were assembled from them to search for and punish them. And again at M.A. Sholokhova: “Fourteen captured deserters were awaiting trial. The trial was short and merciless. The elderly esaul, who presided over the sessions, asked the defendant for his surname, name, patronymic, rank and unit number, found out how long the defendant had been on the run, then in an undertone threw a few phrases with the members of the court - an armless cornet and a mustache and puffy-faced, eaten away on light bread sergeant - and announced the verdict. Most of the deserters were sentenced to corporal punishment with rods, which the Kalmyks performed in an uninhabited house specially designated for this purpose. "

That did not add a positive attitude towards the Kalmyk Cossacks.

Each side continued to grow. The Salsk group of Reds, leaving the stations Dvoinaya, Kuberle, Gashun, retreated to the area of \u200b\u200bthe village of Dubovsky. Having blown up the railway bridge across the Sal River, the Reds created a defensive fortified area to the left of the Sadkov and Drumshchik farms. Also in the Remontnaya - Dubovskoye area, the Don-Stavropol equestrian-consolidated brigade G.I. Kolpakov with a large baggage of bread. Near the Repair Brigade met with the forces of the Red Army. Thus, the village of Dubovskoye temporarily became the center of the organization of defense against the advancing white troops. To the north, with a base at Kotelnikovo, the First Kotelnikovskaya Socialist Division was formed:

1. Detachment P.A. Lomakin was manned up to a regiment stationed in the area of \u200b\u200bthe villages of Atamanskaya and Andreevskaya, with the task of protecting the approaches to the Kotelnikovskaya defense from the steppe side.

2 ... T. Lobashevsky's regiment was at the Semichnaya station with the task of providing cover at the junction with the Salsk group of forces.

3. Detachment P.K. A steiger of 185 sabers was removed from the combat forces of T. Lobashevsky and relocated from the Semichnaya station to Kotelnikovo.

In the Salsk detachment of the Reds, there were 9000 infantrymen, 1300 horsemen, 30 machine guns, 18 guns, 3 armored trains.

It was at this time that the famous tachanka was born. The first documentary mention is found in the memoirs of F.I. Nefyodov: “In the detachment, an order was soon issued with the following content: to select several carts, put Maxim machine guns on them, choose better, faster horses, experienced riders, instruct Nefedov (that is, me) to teach them the correct installation of machine guns, firing at high speed. ”45 This happened in June, when a regiment was being formed, which was at that time in the Ilyinka settlement. Perhaps the first mention of the use of a cart and refers to the battle near the village of Romanovskaya (May 1918), but the red units were equipped with this innovation precisely on the territory of the Dubovsky district. And the cars N.I. Makhno appeared later; Batko fought its first battles in September, raiding German farms and estates.

The commander of the 2nd battalion, Pyotr Chesnokov, a former sergeant of the 22nd Cossack regiment, at the age of 24 already had experience in organizing military control. In the village of Nagavskaya, a hundred Cossack regiment was located, in which P.Z. Chesnokov. While trying to go over to the side of the Reds, most of the hundred were knocked out by the White. Learning of this, at the beginning of June the sergeant took his former colleagues, with whom he served in this regiment, and, deciding to take revenge, went to Nagavskaya. The detachment was surrounded by whites, a resident of the Aldobul farm Seraphim K.

White offered P.Z. Chesnokov to go to their service, but he refused. The military-field court of the village of Nizhne-Kurmoyarskaya of the 1st Don District, consisting of: chairman, commander of the 4th cavalry detachment, Colonel A.V. Golubintsev, the jury Kapkanov and Rozgin decided to betray P.Z. Chesnokov capital punishment by hanging. On June 11, a gallows was erected on the "Krestov" mountain, which is near the Krivsky farm. The colonel approached the commander of the red detachment:

- This is the hill, Chesnokov, from which you fired at us in March. Admire her ... one last time.

To which Chesnokov replied:

- My cause is right.

Now former colleagues have become enemies. Forgotten years of joint service. The presentation for the award for the sergeant-major, which was personally signed by the commander of the 22nd Don Cossack regiment A.V. Golubintsev.

As if there was no solemn awarding ceremony in Mogilev when General A.A. Brusilov personally introduced P.Z. Chesnokov to Nicholas II as a Russian hero, awarded the St. George Crosses of the 3rd and 4th degree, the St. George Medal of the 4th degree, 47 medals "In commemoration of the 300th anniversary of the reign of the House of Romanov", "100th anniversary of the Battle of Borodino". And what was the price of the brave intelligence officer for the "Georgies" in 1918? It is still unknown which of them was right and who was guilty.

The corpse of P.Z. The authorities did not allow Chenokov to be filmed, but the next day the body disappeared, he was secretly transported to his native farm of the Ostrovnaya Nagavskaya village, where he was buried. When the whites occupied the farm, the body was thrown out of the grave. The Reds returned and buried the commander again.

Colonel A.D. Antonov took command of the detachment bearing his name, made up of the Cossacks of the Baklanovskaya, Nagavskaya, Verkhne- and Nizhne-Kurmoyarsk villages. The offensive of Colonel V.I. Tapilin to Remontnaya took place on June 28, it was not possible to take the station, the fighting was suspended until the arrival of reinforcements.

For the Reds, the main thing was the unification of partisan commanders from scattered detachments into regular units of the Red Army. At the suggestion of the central leadership, they all united in Kuberle and moved to Zimovniki. As a result of the reorganization, the partisan detachments of the Salsk district joined the 10th Red Army, the Don Soviet Infantry Division (division chief G.K. Shevkoplyasov).

At first, the Reds lacked cavalry. In the spring in Zadonia, a cavalry squadron was formed from the fighters of partisan detachments, then a division, and in June the horsemen were consolidated into the 1st Socialist Peasant Cavalry Regiment. B.M. was appointed commander. Dumenko, and S.M. Budyonny as his deputy. The regiment numbered about a thousand sabers, for a long time, by the standards of the war, it was stationed in the Ilyinka settlement, was part of the Don Rifle Division.

K.E. Voroshilov took command of the Tsaritsyn Front. Chairman of the newly formed Military Council of the North Caucasus Military District I.V. Stalin, K.E. Voroshilov and military commander of the North Caucasus Military District A.E. Snesarev on July 15, 1918 arrived at the Remontnaya station. A meeting of the headquarters was held, which took place in the station house.49 According to the recollections of old-timers, now this is house No. 3 on Zheleznodorozhnaya Street (perhaps it was a building that did not survive).

The task was to organize defense along the right bank of the Sal River. At the meeting, the question of disbanding the soldiers' committees was raised. They began to interfere with the organization of new army units. As a result of the disputes, it was decided to leave the political fighters in the divisions, and to dissolve the committees.

After spending two weeks in the Remontnaya area, in early August 1918 I.V. Stalin followed to Kotelnikovo.

The Zadonsk corps surrounded the Reds in Bolshaya Martynovka. At a meeting of the headquarters in Remontnaya, it was decided that it was necessary to help the partisans who were surrounded.

The forces of the cavalry regiment B.M. Dumenko was ordered to attack parts of White. From Ilyinka at one in the morning on July 29, the regiment made a raid, the commander of the Tsaritsyn front K.E. Voroshilov followed with the regiment. In Kuteinikovo and Ilovaiskaya, three hundred Cossacks who were there suddenly attacked, hacked to pieces about 100 horsemen. A detachment of Red Kalmyks under the command of O.I. Gorodovikov.

The Whites launched an offensive on Tsaritsyn on August 4, they crossed the Don south of the village of Kurmoyarskaya and, moving eastward, captured the Remontnaya station. Thus, the 1st Don Rifle Division of the Reds, which remained on the defensive line in Zimovniki, cut off the route of movement to the north to join the units of the 10th Army. The division began to move north along the railroad to fight its way to the main force. It was difficult, but the only way to escape.

Using a break in hostilities, a new unit was formed in the Ilyinka settlement - the 1st Don Soviet Socialist Cavalry Brigade, consisting of two cavalry regiments, a Special Reserve Cavalry Division and a four-battery artillery battalion. The brigade commander - B.M. Dumenko, his assistant was again appointed S.M. Budyonny. The brigade commander at that time was 29 years old, and at the age of 30 he already commanded a cavalry corps.

During the withdrawal of the Red division to the Gashun station and further to Remontnaya, they were joined by an echelon of Black Sea sailors en route from Tikhoretsk to Tsaritsyn. From the side of the village of Vlasovskaya, on August 12, the whites began an offensive, their detachment wedged into the defense of the Reds, installed guns and machine guns, and took control of the approaches to the bridge. The battle for the bridge lasted four days, the Reds repulsed the attacks, took Vlasovskaya.

The sailors recalled the formation of the Kalmyk regiments to the Vlasov Cossacks. Once immersed in greenery and orchards, it was all burned out, only the ashes with protruding pipes remained. Wooden houses with all outbuildings for livestock, barns for storing grain, everything was set on fire. A year later, the village was rebuilt, but according to Kalmyk beliefs it was impossible to build in the old place, new houses were erected one and a half kilometers from the former location.

White responded in kind. Report: “On Popov’s economy, the girls from the village of Zavetnoye raped and tortured eight souls by cadets. In the farmsteads of the Ilyinsky volost, they took 5,000 rubles from citizen Sergeev, bread, and in addition, four girls from 12 to 18 years old were raped ... ”Regiment commander Lobashevsky, his assistant Inin.51

In Zimovniki, the 1st Don Rifle Division did not defend for long. She began to retreat to the village of Dubovskoye, took up defenses along the right bank of the Sal River. In the south, the steppe group of white troops of General P.Kh. Popov, to the west of Tsaritsyn, units of Major General K.K. Mamontov, northwest of Tsaritsyn, the troops of Major General A.P. Fitzkhelaurov.

Thus, the Reds were threatened with encirclement. On the right bank of the Sal River, the 1st Don Division of the Reds took up defense, the 1st Cavalry Regiment was located in the Ilyinka settlement. Squadron G.S. Maslakov was quartered in the farm Barabanshchikov. A battle took place near the Verkhnezhirov farm, the Reds lost 220 people, of which 80 were prisoners.

White sharply intensified hostilities. The corps commander, Major General K.K. Mamontov forces 12,000 bayonets and sabers from the right bank of the Don hit the Vladikavkaz railway in the rear of the Reds. The left flank from the west fell on the Remontnaya station, the Whites launched an attack on Kotelnikovo. It was from three sides: from the farms of Mayorsky, Semichny, Nagolny. With up to 45,000 bayonets and sabers, 150 guns, the Don army struck two blows: between Zhutovo - Kotelnikovo and Kotelnikovo - Remontnaya. Detachment of Colonel P.S. Polyakov, numbering up to 10,000 bayonets and sabers, had the task of striking from the south, from the Velikoknyazheskaya area.

About 7000 Reds retreated to Tsaritsyn. Cut off from the main forces, covering the city from the steppe side, P.A. Lomakin fought with Kalmyk units advancing from the side of the villages of Atamanskaya and Andreevskaya. Strong battles began at the Remontnaya station, the whites captured three guns and 21 machine guns. But the Reds brought three armored cars, two armored trains and infantry from Tsaritsyn here. The Whites retreated to Zimovniki, where the front stabilized for a while, then they left this station too.

Then another white offensive. From the bend of the Don, from the farmsteads of Baklanovsky and Maloluchensky, hundreds of Colonel V.I. Tapilina, attacking from the west, overcame a forty-kilometer blind road and on August 4, 1918 broke into Remontnaya.52

From August 25 to September 2, during the offensive of the Don Army, as a result of the battles near Chunusovskaya - Andreevskaya, there were again heavy losses on both sides.

After the raid and encirclement, the Martyno-Orlovsky detachment of the Reds went to the Zimovniki station, where it was reorganized into a rifle regiment of the 1st Don Infantry Division. However, the route of movement for connection with the units of the 10th Army was already cut off, the whites blocked the railway bridge. The detachment was again trapped, with thousands of refugees. This huge mass moved on foot, on carts, in train trains. It was hot, and clouds of dust hung over the roads. People and animals suffered from heat and thirst, and were exhausted from hunger. In addition to the fighters of the division, all able-bodied people, even women and children, took part in the work to restore it. Finally the bridge was rebuilt, the refugees broke through to the north. The armored train "Chernomorets" destroyed the support bulls of the railway bridge by shelling.

The way to salvation is on Tsaritsyn, but the village of Dubovskoye was occupied by whites. They had to break through, they decided to do it bypassing the village of Andreevskaya, where they were not expected. B.M. Dumenko, to divert his eyes, threw two squadrons at the Drummerschik farm. In Andreevskaya, opposite the stanitsa church, the main forces of the regiment crossed the Sal. From there we set off on an accelerated march to Ilyinka, familiar places. In the settlement, they found an advanced guard of the whites, they learned that in Dubovsky up to three hundred whites, two Plastun regiments were holding a railway bridge, in the village itself one and a half regiments, Cossacks and Kalmyks. The group was headed by Colonel V.I. Tapilin.

We decided to attack with two flanks. CM. Budyonny moved in two squadrons to the right, to the Remontnaya station. The main forces of the regiment marched under the Salsk yars (past the current subsidiary farm and the laboratory of the SPTU) to a depression near Staraya Dubovka, disguised themselves behind the Tatarsky (Ibragimov) barrow.

Looking from the mound, the regiment commander saw how the white cavalry advanced from the side of the Yerikovsky farm. In a head-on collision, lava on the lava, machine guns, which were removed from the carts in time, said the final word. G.S. Maslakov knocked the Whites off the bridge with his squadrons. About the results of the battle in the book "Clouds go to the wind" V.V. Karpenko wrote: “The black wind seemed to have passed through the steppe. Bodies, bodies in the most incredible poses. "

There are many graves left on both sides of the railway, on both sides of Sal. How many Cossacks and Red Guards, peasants and volunteers, how many of them died on the salty land of the Don region ...

The civil war was reaping its harvest. According to P.N. Krasnova "the quiet steppe beyond the Don became like the prairies of America, the time of its conquest." A.I. Denikin: "The power as such was in the hands of any armed man who assumed the right to execute and pardon at his own discretion."

The bloody wheel began to increase in speed, the war took on the most atrocious forms of mutual extermination and destruction. Memories of a combatant: “Sometimes you stab with a bayonet, stop for a minute and think: am I a man or a beast? We are losing our human image ... Do not judge us ... In a big war, we remember bayonet fights every bit. One, two, three - and enough ... Years to talk about them. Do you know what's going on here? This is hell. Here is something from which you can die, having seen once. We do not die, because we are accustomed to and completely killed the person in ourselves. For five months in a row, daily, hourly, we march in bayonet formation. Only bayonet, nothing else. You see, for five months to see every day, or even 2-3 times a day, an enemy a few steps away from himself shooting at close range, to stab several people in a fit of frenzy, to see torn stomachs, ruined intestines, heads separated from their bodies, to hear deaths screams and groans ... This is indescribable, but this, you must understand, is so awful. Sometimes, when you are insanely tired, there is no thought in your head, and your nerves tremble like strings, you really want this bayonet or bullet. It doesn't matter if it's too early or too late ... Is it possible to survive in this war? No, don't judge. We are jackals and this damned war is a jackal. "

The intensity of mutual hatred reached such a scale that any reconciliation was impossible. Each side began to adhere to the position of jus talionis - the right to retaliation. Not everyone accepted the Cossack proverb: a real warrior is one who has mercy.

In a fit of revenge, not everyone lost their heads. The Cossacks of the village of Andreevskaya attacked a detachment of T. Lobashevsky passing by, and lost 15 people. During the analysis, one of the old men proposed to shoot two Ukrainians for each killed Cossack. But the commander of the farm hundreds, Pluzhnikov, objected: “Well, it turns out,” he said, “today we will shoot the Ukrainians, and tomorrow the Reds will come and start shooting the Cossacks. I will not allow this to anyone. " The old men pursed their lips, the Cossacks standing in the ranks supported Pluzhnikov.

Following the execution of P.Z. Chesnokov, the Reds captured several dozen Cossacks. After long disputes, the Kotelnikov Revolutionary Tribunal pardoned everyone.

But these are just examples. More often it was quite different ... In the Khutorsky farm (n / in Zimovnikovsky district), the Kalmyk Cossacks captured S. Litovchenko, forced him to go forward and call the partisans. While the Red Army soldiers were trying to figure out who was walking, the Kalmyks jumped up and chopped them down with sabers. S. Litovchenko, K. Narozhniy, I. Semchenko, I. Shakhaev, two brothers Apanasenko died. Next to the killed, the whites put a plaque and wrote: "Whoever takes and bury the dead will face the same death."

In the village of Atamanskaya, the Reds under the rule in the basements made a prison. They killed the ataman of the Ilovlinsky farm S.I. Kolesov and 12 more Cossacks of the Ataman yurt. The owner of the water mill L.Kh. Bykadorov was shot.55 On the hole in front of the cemetery, both the villagers and the newcomers were shot, so much so that they did not have time to bury, after mobilization from the Troilinsky farm, the men were driven to dig graves.

The village of Nagavskaya was defended by about four hundred old Cossacks. They fought to the end. In the midst of the fierce battle, some raised their hands. When the regimental commanders Barannikov and Miroshnichenko, who believed that the Cossacks were surrendering, jumped up, they were shot at point-blank range. The Reds destroyed all the Cossacks.

As they seized power, the Whites formed Commissions of Inquiry in July 1918 to investigate the cases of those arrested who were suspected of crimes. For the arrests and searches carried out, persons who were in the Red Guard were accused. These commissions transferred cases first to the newly organized People's Military Courts, and then these bodies became known as the District Military Courts. N. Ilshev was appointed chairman of the court in the 1st Donskoy district, A. Popov was appointed chairman of the Salsk Judicial-Investigative Commission in the village of Velikonyazhskaya. The Salsk District Commission in July-August conducted 230 cases, arrested 181 people.

The Reds, when they occupied Zadonia, formed the Revolutionary Tribunals. Those also had a short conversation.

The punitive measures of both sides since that time have become a regularity, a real consequence of the civil war. Modern historians characterize mutual mass repressions in the following way: “Both the Reds and the Whites bear equal responsibility for the lawlessness and repression that took place during their military confrontation.” 57

Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of the South of Russia A.I. Denikin drew attention: "the marching chieftain, who was preparing an offensive on Novocherkassk, had to send punitive expeditions to the unrepentant villages that supported the Bolsheviks more than once."

In turn, the commander of the Southern Front of the Reds Kovalev, observing the panic in the units, ordered: “For the successful collection of all able-bodied men for the front, allocate: one punitive squadron, which the front ordered not to be shy about: all those who resisted and disobeyed the orders of the working people were shot would be in place. ”By this time, all the participants in the fratricidal war realized that there was no turning back.

The Reds retreated, General I.F. Bykadorov moved troops to defeat the detached Salsk group. I.V. Stalin gave the order to send part of the Red group to the defense of Tsaritsin. But this was no longer possible. The commander of the Gashun front G.K. Shevkoplyasov reported: “I bring to your attention that, according to your order dated 02.08.1918, No. 2 / A, the troops required by you to help create the northern group cannot be given at the moment, in view of the fact that the troops of the Army entrusted to me are stretched along the line dd: Kotelnikovo station under the command of Steiger, Semichnaya station - Remontnaya under the command of Kolpakov, Gashun station, two battalions, Skiba's Salsk regiment in Zimovniki ... "

And again battles at Drumbshchikovo, Sadki: “Squadron! The horses! Checkers for battle! " For the umpteenth time, farmsteads went from white to red, from red to white. The offensive of these or those forces was changed by a panicky flight, victory - by defeat.

Along with armored trains and tanks, aircraft took part in the Civil War. Esaul V.E. Popov on September 7, 1918, on the Voisin plane, made reconnaissance of the Red positions at the Remontnaya railway station. The scout did not rise to a height of more than 600 meters, and therefore became a target for rifle and machine-gun fire. Esaul was seriously wounded, shrapnel pierced his chest. I had to transfer control to the co-pilot podvesul Zakharov. He dragged V.E. Popov in his place and continued to fight for the survivability of the apparatus. The plane barely made it to Gashun station, where it made an emergency landing. The fuselage collapsed, the first pilot was thrown out of the cockpit, and the second pilot received severe burns. The rescue of the pilots was organized by the commander of the Salsk detachment, Colonel V.I. Postovsky. An hour later, the esaul died.

White again occupied the Repair Room. IN AND. Postovsky went on the offensive further along the railway line. On the night of September 7, a detachment of military foreman A.V. Ovchinnikov, with a force of up to five hundred cavalry and infantry units with two guns, led an offensive against T. Lobashevsky's regiment, attacked the Semichnaya station, which passed from hand to hand all day. In the regiment, many personnel sympathized with the whites, in the end, one of the hundreds began to disarm the rest. White on the left flank of the defense broke through to the station and defeated the regiment. Commander T. Lobashevsky was killed in the battle, about 100 people were killed. The Whites occupied the villages of Atamanskaya and Andreevskaya with their patrols, then crossed the railway between Kotelnikovo and Remontnaya.

Regiment B.M. Dumenko tried to destroy the white rear. From Ilyinka the regiment commander walked Yablochnaya Balka to the Semicheskaya station, where a bloody battle took place. The streets of the farm were littered with corpses, and the screams of the wounded were heard everywhere. But these battles could not stop the whites.

In October, the cavalry of the 10th Army - units of Dumenko, Kovalev, Shevkoplyasov, Steiger, were cut off and taken into a ring in the Kotelnikovo area. So the encirclement of the Southern Tsaritsyn Front of the Reds ended, the path to the Volga was open, the fighting moved to the north.

In the fall, the Salsky district completely came under the control of the whites. After that, a significant number of Cossacks arrived in the Don regiments. In Velikoknyazheskaya, the power of the district chieftain of the military foreman M.N. Gnilorybova.

The bloody 1918 was ending.

A. S. Kruchinin

Steppe campaign and its meaning

“In retaliation for military valor and excellent courage shown by the participants in the Steppe Campaign of the Campaign Ataman Detachment of the Don Army General P. Kh. Popov and the unparalleled labors and hardships they incurred, the Big Army Circle established the“ Insignia of the Steppe Campaign ”[-]“ Steppe Cross ””, - read the order of the Donskoy Ataman of General AP Bogaevsky dated April 23 (all dates according to the old style) 1919. The same order determined the chronological boundaries of the campaign - from February 12 to May 5, 1918 (this was exactly the inscription on the established Cross), but a number of the provisions of the order introduced additional touches to the periodization of the campaign.

Those who joined the ranks of the detachment no later than March 1 and remained in it at least until April 4, with the exception of the ranks of the detachment who left it "without the permission of the Headquarters of the Marching Ataman" (even if this happened after April 4); in addition, the Cross could be obtained in the case of "active participation in organizing the struggle against the Bolsheviks, openly manifested no later than January 29, 1918". All these dates require brief explanations, however, quite obvious.

January 29 "Kaledinsky shot" - the suicide of the Military Ataman General A. M. Kaledin - sounded a formidable warning about the critical situation on the Don, which was subjected to a massive offensive of the "columns" of the Red Guards, Bolshevized soldiers and sailors (Commander-in-Chief VA Antonov-Ovseenko) and Cossack units of the "Donskoy Revolutionary Committee" (chairman FG Podtelkov, the actual commander of the troops - the former military petty officer N. M. Golubov).Thus, from among the "active participants" of the resistance, those who recognized the essence of Bolshevism hostile to Russia and the Cossacks were distinguished and equated to the participants of the Steppe campaign, at the very beginning of the Civil War, without waiting for the acquisition of the bitter experience of the Soviet occupation and the severe hangover that befell the Cossacks, in January 1918, who actually abandoned her elected Ataman.

Date March 1st has less unambiguous explanation. The beginning of March ("first half" of the month) dates the contemporary to the "first outbursts of active uprising" of the Cossacks, who raised uprisings against Soviet power and began to form amateur stanitsa squads and detachments, and it is possible that the order to establish the Steppe Cross implies the same circumstance. Thus, from the number of "Stepnyaks", it is as if the participants in the "outbreaks" were excluded, who fled after their suppression (the initial actions of the Cossacks were not successful) and who sought to find shelter and refuge in the Campaign Ataman's detachment rather than the possibility of continuing the struggle.

P. Kh. Popov

Finally, April 4 - the date of the retreat from Novocherkassk of the squads who had occupied it and the relocation of the base of the uprising to the village of Zaplavskaya - marks not only the formation of a new center of struggle, to which individual ranks or entire units from the Campaign Ataman's detachment could be sent, but also the appearance of an object for ... the desertion of those who, for whatever reason, did not get along with General Popov or considered a new theater fighting more for yourself preferred.

So, the wording of the order of Ataman Bogaevsky, upon close examination, lifts the veil over certain difficulties, contradictions, collisions that surrounded the Stepnyak detachment and caused an ambivalent attitude towards the campaign itself and the emergence of questions about its purpose, nature and meaning, which have not been fully resolved to this day. day.

But first, some of the circumstances of the campaign. On February 10, 1918, at a meeting of the chiefs of military units stationed in Novocherkassk, it was announced that the Don capital was not supposed to be defended from the advancing Cossacks of Golubov and that on February 12 the city would be abandoned, and the choice - to leave for the steppe or not - was offered to everyone for himself. (the next day there were cases of discussion of this information at “hundreds of meetings»). By order of the successor to the late Kaledin, Donskoy Ataman, General A.M. Nazarov (he himself, as the elected head of the Army, remained in Novocherkassk for the Bolshevik massacre), and under the command of the Campaign Ataman, General P. Kh.Popov, at four o'clock in the afternoon, 1,500 bayonets left Novocherkassk and checkers with 10 guns and 28 machine guns (according to other sources - with 5 guns with 500 shells and 40 machine guns). The qualitative composition of the detachment is given by the fact that on the eve of Kaledin's suicide in one of the partisan detachments defending Novocherkassk, according to the recollections of its member, there were “250-300 fighters, of which at least 75 percent were under the age of 17 ".

We will remember, we will remember to the grave

Your cruel youth

A smoking crest of a snowdrift

Victory and death in battle,

The longing of the hopeless rut,

Anxiety on frosty nights

Yes shine dull shoulder straps

On the fragile shoulders of children.

We gave everything we had

You, eighteenth year,

Your Asian blizzard

Steppe - for Russia - campaign, -

N. N. Turoverov

was written by a participant in the campaign, a Don officer Nikolai Turoverov, and his poems for many remained the leitmotif of ideas about those events. However, even then, in 1918, a completely different assessment sounded - not the dedication of the "Stepnyakov", there were no disagreements, but the position of their superiors and, as a consequence, the significance of the campaign as a whole.

“Whatever the explanation for the betrayal of General Popov, it was a self-evident betrayal. The results were very great for the Dobrov [Colonial] army and all its work! This insignificant person brought grievous harm to the common cause of all of Russia and the Don for the sake of shamefully petty personal motives, but he still did not remain atamans: almost losing his entire detachment in aimless walking around the winter quarters near the village of Velikoknyazheskaya, he was dismissed as one of the first the same orders of the military chieftain Krasnov, "- wrote then journalist A. A. Suvorin, laying on the command of the "Stepnyakov" was to blame for the refusal to join the Volunteer Army, which, under the command of generals L. G. Kornilov and M. V. Alekseev, was leaving on the same days in its legendary First campaign against the Kuban. General A. I. Denikin was later, in his "Sketches of the Russian Troubles", less strict with the Campaign Ataman: “Popov explained that, taking into account the mood of his troops and commanders, he could not leave his native Don and decided to wait for awakening in its steppes Cossacks. It was said about him that his ambition kept him from obeying Kornilov. For us, Don was only a part russian (italics A.I. Denikin. - A. K.) territory, for them the concept of "homeland" was bifurcated into component elements - one closer and tangible, the other distant, speculative. "

It seems that there is no need to talk about the increased ambition of the Campaign Ataman - from a young age he was "capable, but calm, melancholy-minded", he made a measured career all his life in staff and military teaching positions (from 1910 to 1918 he was the head of the Novocherkassk Cossack military school) and ambitious plans, it seems, did not differ, although here the influence of his Chief of Staff, Colonel V.I.Sidorin, whose ambitions are contemporaries rated as much higher. At the same time, General Popov's plan was not devoid of its reasons, and the general himself described it as follows in his memoirs about a meeting with the command of the Volunteer Army on February 13: “... The army will turn to the Zadonsk horse-breeding steppes and here, far from the centers of life and railways, from which at that time the red gangs did not dare to break away far, they would rest, organize themselves, fix themselves, replenish themselves in abundance with a horse train and calmly wait until the Cossacks were ill and themselves would ask for help. You won't have to wait long for this, since spring and the beginning of field work should undoubtedly bring about a radical revolution in the soul of the Cossack.

Note that in his forecast of the radicality of the "coup" Popov, in essence, was mistaken (we will see this later); but Alekseev's plan - to transfer the Volunteer Army to the Kuban - was also based on an erroneous idea of \u200b\u200bthe strong position of the Kuban Military Government and the significant strength of its armed formations (after all, it was not so much a military campaign that the First Kuban was supposed to be, but the redeployment of the Army). Therefore, the difference between the two positions was not in one degree or another of perspicacity, but in something even more significant - in the views on the strategy of the struggle.

Emphasizing "the question of the possibility of fulfilling those national tasks that our organization set itself," General Alekseev wrote to Kornilov: "... With such a decision (in agreement with the plan of the Marching Ataman. - A. K.) it is impossible not only to continue our work, but even, if necessary, and relatively painless liquidation of our business and the salvation of people who entrusted us with their fate. In the winter quarters, the detachment will very soon be compressed on the one side by the blossoming Don River, and on the other - by the Tsaritsyn - Torgovaya - Tikhoretskaya - Bataysk railway, and all the railway junctions and exits of dirt roads will be occupied by the Bolsheviks, which will completely deprive us of the opportunity to receive replenishment of people and objects supplies, not to mention the fact that staying in the steppe will put us on the sidelines of the general course events in Russia ”. Thus, even with a general “strategy of waiting” (“starvation”), Alekseev strives to preserve the opportunity for active action, while in Popov the same “strategy of waiting” essentially borders on the “strategy survival"In the hope of awakening the Don.

But it was not easy to survive. The frequently encountered word "wanderings" does not fully characterize the Steppe Campaign. “During this heroic campaign, who entered it (in a newspaper publication mistakenly“ from it ”. - A. K.) a small Cossack detachment withstood 28 battles with hordes of Reds, "said its chairman V.A.Kharlamov at a meeting of the Big Army Circle on February 24, 1919, and even if we count the words about" hordes of Reds "as rhetorical exaggeration, we have to admit that 28 battles for 80 days, that is, on average, two days for the third, is not enough at all. But the exaggeration, if there was, turned out to be not very significant: General Popov recalled how many difficulties the unfolding red agitation brought the detachment.

“Calling for help from the Stavropol and Astrakhan people to fight the“ cadets ”(the common name for whites in the mouth of the Reds. - A. K.), they (red agitators .- A. K.) said that the cadets on their way completely slaughter the entire population, not sparing even children, robbing property, burning villages and in their barbarism know no boundaries.

Such ridiculous, absolutely incredible rumors had their results: Salsk, Astrakhan, and Stavropol peasants rose up. From villages 200-300 versts from the border [of the Don Region], they hurried to the rescue of their "offended comrades" with arms in carts. […] And the calmer we were, the stronger they became, why small skirmishes and skirmishes of reconnaissance units soon turned into battles.

For the most part, the battles were not as stubborn as those that the Volunteer Army had to endure in the First Kuban campaign, but for the small detachment of "Stepnyaks" the severity was quite proportional. The transitions were also not easy. “Evening is coming soon, and I can't take a break from yesterday's march ... 55 miles! It is easy to pronounce this figure, but it is not a joke to pass it in one “sitting” ... My body aches unbearably, my legs are rubbed and swollen ... Now these are not legs, but some kind of logs! To move them, you need to make a great effort, which gives off pain in every joint ... "- complains the officer -" Stepnyak "- and what could we say about those young associates, whose habit of hard and dirty military work could only be partially compensated youth and enthusiasm. “Two words about our detachment ... - writes the same author. - A small number of people (with all the "cocktail parties", the cook and his assistant did not reach such an insignificantnumbers like 50), - he could combine the spirit of a whole regiment ... At least, such shameless fun, such jokes and such a friendly laugh at a time when your heart aches and sucks in your stomach, - I still I have never watched in my life ... It is difficult to explain why and why the partisans of the same detachment had so much fun ... Maybe because each of they, taken separately, were not even 17-18 years old? [...] I am almost inclined to think that my comrades-in-arms were so young that they did not want to think about the danger they were exposed to, and with all the ardor and youthful fervor characteristic of adolescence and youth, they responded to the call of the bosses and went into the foggy distance to defend the Motherland ... "

E. F. Semiletov

But for this, the bosses had to possess the necessary charm to inspire their subordinates. And in them, obviously, there was some kind of hidden strength and faith in the work they had begun, since not only the Campaign Ataman with his “epic calmness” (“not with his single gesture, not one movement, not even his appearance [...] - he was not never betrayed his true feelings "), but also his closest assistant, the commander of the largest of the detachments, military sergeant major E. F. Semiletov, in which the observer noted “A distant, aloof, intent gaze,” became the idols of the partisans.

“The partisan Vasily Chernetsov was fabulous, all from the drunken wind.

And Semiletov is calm and suitable for a young Esaul as a father.

However, young people went to him, and they followed him, impetuous, dashing.

In his detachment, high school students danced lezginka to the trembling of balalaika.

He had Chinese in his detachment.

Shango-captain, - said the yellow-faced.

The future deacons of power, priests of the stanitsa, - forgetting about the troparions and censers, - the seminarians went to Semiletov, "wrote the publicist Viktor Sevsky (V.A. Krasnushkin) about him, reflecting on the" secret of charm "of the leaders of the" Stepnyaks "and coming to conclusion:

“They were followed by the shadows of the old chieftains, and they, these shadows, called under the banner of the steppe generals all free, all brave.

For they were the stewards of Kaledin's soul. "

Most of the Cossack authors agree on the same. “The very fact of the existence of the Steppe Detachment said that the Cossacks had not died, not strangled, they were fighting for their existence. This thought instilled courage, eliminated apathy, discouragement, slavish submission, called for struggle, for heroism, this explains the speed with which the uprising began, "states the Don politician K. Kaklyugin. - “Moreover, when the uprisings began, exactly where the“ Steppe Detachment ”roamed, the Campaign Ataman became the center of the movement, the central power. He helps and promotes the uprising. Cossacks and farms adjoin the uprising, where the Steppe Detachment appears ... ”But in this assessment, along with a fair grain, there is also a clear exaggeration.

Not only the scale of the uprising and the strength (number, armament) of the rebels should not be exaggerated, but their very spirit was far from being so sacrificial and heroic. So, a number of stanitsa squads, self-mobilized and opposed the Bolsheviks, according to Popov's recollections, simply thwarted the planned operation on March 30: “... The Cossacks held a meeting and went to their villages, abandoning their positions. No convictions of the chiefs of the detachments acted on them, and the warning of the marching chieftain (Popov himself. - A. K.) that in this way they will bring the Reds to their villages and bring upon their homes and families all the horror of their demonic anger and destruction. " Soberness, as you can see, was very relative, and it was no coincidence that General Denikin drew attention to the fact that already in April "the marching chieftain, preparing an offensive on Novocherkassk, had to send punitive expeditions to the unrepentant villages that supported the Bolsheviks, even in the immediate vicinity of the chieftain's headquarters."

So, the emotional impact on the Cossacks hardly reached the level that its leaders hoped for, and moreover, they said that “General Popov, arriving in the village of Nizhne-Kurmoyarskaya, under the impression of losing faith in the possibility of a Cossack recovery and uprising, 1st April gave the order to disperse his detachment, as a result of which part of the partisans with weapons dispersed, "and even the autonomous actions of the cavalry detachment of Colonel K. K. Mamantov was explained by the fact that he “decided to separate from the main forces of the Campaign Ataman” (Popov denied this). And yet, having gone through this crisis moment, the "Stepnyaks" survived as a combat-ready formation and provided substantial support to the Zaplavskaya group of rebels.

Formed in Zaplavskoy "Provisional Don Government" headed by the captain G. P. Yanov, having entered into contact with the Headquarters of the Campaign Ataman, announced in an order dated April 11:

“After a difficult campaign, Major General Pyotr Kharitonovich Popov, the Campaign Ataman, arrived at the head of his detachment to the village of Razdorskaya.

The Provisional Don Government in complete unity with the valiant Command of the Don Army (this name was adopted by the armed formations of the Provisional Government. - A. K.) decided for the good of the cause and the success of the struggle against rapists over the Don Cossacks - to transfer the High Command and the fullness of military power to the Marching Ataman Major General P. Kh. Popov.

The Provisional Don Government, elected and invested with the confidence of the insurgent Cossacks, reserves, until the Don Salvation Circle is convened, full civil power and supreme control over all issues related to the success of the struggle against the Bolsheviks.

The Don Salvation Circle must be convened immediately upon the liberation of the Don capital from the Bolsheviks. "

Having assumed general command, General Popov formed three military groupings from the units at his disposal: Northern - from its partisans, led by Semiletov, and from the former "Don Army" - Zadonskaya, led by General P.T.Semenov, and Southern - from the Zaplavskaya group, led by Colonel S.V. Denisov, before that who held the post of Chief of Staff of the Don Army; The Army Commander, General KS Polyakov, was left out of work, which was later blamed on the Campaign Ataman. The sympathies and statements of Popov, who, according to the memoirs of a contemporary, divided all the Don officers into the following categories did not warm up: “1) heroes who left with the Campaign Ataman and thus fulfilled their duty to the Motherland, 2) criminals who remained on February 12 in Novocherkassk and thanks to this, they did not fulfill their duty to the region, and therefore, deserved only one punishment, and 3) middle officers who left Novocherkassk on April 4 "(if such a classification really took place, and was not an invention of the memoirist, then we have to admit that Subsequently, the Campaign Ataman significantly softened his reproaches to those who "remained on February 12 in Novocherkassk" - some of them could even, as we know, claim to be awarded the Steppe Cross).

Despite the numerical superiority of the rebels, their qualitative composition left much to be desired: a participant in the events notes that “the Southern Group of Cossacks of the insurgent villages [-] up to 6 1/2 thousand fighters [-] 2-2 1/2 times outnumbered the detachment The marching Ataman (Northern Group), but in terms of combat capability it was incomparably weaker: after the abandonment of Novocherkassk, the “heartbeat” was not restored, "and the main strategic task was to strike the center of the formation of the miners' Red Guard, Aleksandrovsk-Grushevsky, Popov entrusted to his tried-and-true partisans, who, with the relative passivity of Denisov's group (“With the exception of a few combat episodes, the Southern Group remained a present and not an active force in the development of the planned operation”) fulfilled their duty : “... The main task is mastering Aleksandro-Grushevsky (so in the primary source. - A. K.) - The steppe detachment had to solve almost on its own, which led to a delay in the operation, repeated attacks and unnecessary losses among the partisans.

M. G. Drozdovsky

However less as a result of combined actions with the participation of the approaching detachment of Colonel M.G. Drozdovsky (who was completing his legendary campaign from the Romanian Front to join the Volunteer Army), it was possible to repel the red threat from the coal basin and liberate Novocherkassk (April 23), where the congress met on April 28 representatives from the insurgent villages and military units, which declared itself the "Don Salvation Circle". Having made a decision to restore the ataman rule, the Circle on May 3 elected General P. N. Krasnov as the Army Ataman; On the 4th, Krasnov officially took power, and on the 5th announced the formation of a new government ("The Council of Managers of Departments of the Government of the Great Don Host"), and the last date, as we know from the inscription on the Steppe Cross, became the end date of the Steppe campaign.

How can you characterize its results? Obviously, the Steppe Detachment failed to fully inspire the Cossacks and rouse them to fight by the mere fact of its existence, although, of course, it played a certain role in this capacity. In general, the nature of the Civil War is such that "popular movements" (uprisings, demonstrations, etc.), as experience shows, do not achieve success, no matter how courageous and combat-ready their contingent is, if regular forces do not come to the rescue, and the detachment The marching Ataman was such a force, despite his partisan character, and here his role and significance are undeniable. And the Steppe campaign, like the rest of the First Campaigns, acquires even greater significance if we move from considering earthly and material problems to the spiritual level.

Indeed, Kornilov and Alekseev hoped to find a base in the Kuban for the struggle - but they met fierce resistance from the Red troops; the goal of the campaign - Ekaterinodar - was achieved, but it almost became the grave of the entire Volunteer Army, which escaped from the hardest battles with significant losses, of which the first we will call the death of Kornilov. Drozdovsky's detachment moved to join the "Kornilov" volunteers, but not only did he come to the Don too late, when the Volunteer Army had already left him, he also suffered significant losses in the first serious battle, and the result of the battle was initially perceived simply as defeat. The steppe detachment was on the verge of scattering, and although hopes for a "Cossack awakening" were partially fulfilled, the forms of this "awakening" were significantly different from those that Popov and his associates drew for themselves ... But over all these labors and privations, battles and campaigns, it seemed the sacred motto is burning - the Vangelic commandment: enduring to the end, that one will be saved.

“The Lord will not leave us,” General Alekseev said in the days of the First Kuban campaign to a silent question addressed to him about the fate of the Army. Words, strange and even pitiful in the mouth of a strategic commander, were great and necessary for the Christian Leader in such terrible years as the Troubles of the 20th century became for Russia. And no matter how controversial or futile the earthly calculations on which the First Campaigns were based, the Campaigns themselves forever entered history as a great feat of the Spirit.

October 4th, 2016

We will remember, we will remember to the grave
His cruel youth -
A smoking crest of a snowdrift
Victory and death in battle,
The longing of the hopeless rut,
Anxiety in frosty nights
And the shine of a dull shoulder strap
On the fragile shoulders of children.
We gave everything we had
You, eighteenth year,
Your Asian blizzard
Steppe - for Russia - campaign.

Nikolay Turoverov - participant of the campaign.

Before proceeding to summing up the results of the first round of the struggle in the Civil War in southern Russia, it is necessary to dwell on the Steppe campaign of the Don Cossacks under the command of the marching chieftain, Major General P.Kh. Popov. Which, as studies have shown, was a pivotal action for many subsequent events. Although in its scope and heroism it is lost in the eyes of other more famous campaigns of this kind: "Ice" and "Drozdovsky". In addition, it is very indicative of local sentiment. Indeed, where else will you hear about the Chinese Cossacks (!), Children storming the Red positions head-on, and you will find out what “Jesus machine gunners” are. The participants in this campaign, by analogy with the "volunteers", I will call "steppe dwellers" (although this is not accepted from the point of view of historiography, where they are considered partisans).

It finally became clear that the capital of the Don, Novocherkassk, could not be held, immediately after the Donrevkom troops went on the offensive, under the command of Golubov. In the first battle, he took prisoner Chernetsov, a violent partisan Cossack, where he was killed. Deprived of a charismatic and successful leader, the few hundreds of "Chernetsovites" could no longer be the defense of the Don capital. After only 147 people who were ready to defend the Don government responded to Kaledin's call, and the “volunteers” preparing for the evacuation simply ignored him, the latter had no choice but to put a bullet in his heart.

General-administrator P.Kh. Popov, who did not have the proper military experience, turned out to be either a talented or a successful organizer, since all the tasks of the campaign were solved with minimal losses for the Cossacks.

On the approach of the red detachments, the marching chieftain P.Kh. Popov, being previously the head of the Novocherkassk Cossack cadet school, decided to lead the opponents of Soviet power to the Don steppes. And there were 1,727 combat personnel (of which 1,110 infantry and 617 cavalry) with 5 guns and 39 machine guns. And 251 non-combatants (headquarters, artillery administration, hospital and political refugees). The wagon train was large, but, as often happens in such cases, it could not carry out the proper supply of the detachment. There were few artillery shells and rifle cartridges.

It would seem a serious force that could easily disperse the alien detachments of the Red Army and form a significant opposition to Golubov's Red Donets. But this, alas, did not reflect reality. Not only did the Cossacks themselves little want to get involved in a fratricidal war, moreover, they were distinguished by a very motley composition, where not a small part were students of the cadet school (like the “volunteers”, the hot but inexperienced youth was an active participant in the events). Here is what S.V. Mylnikov writes. in my memories:

Here is the composition of the 2-gun seven-year battery of Captain Shchukin: 8 artillery officers, 8 officers of other military specialties, 1 senior police officer, 6 cadets of the Don corps, a doctor, a lawyer, students, grammar school students, businessmen (students of a commercial school), officials and several townspeople Cossacks - only about 60 people.
A similar situation was in the detachment of F.D. Nazarov. The 3rd machine-gun detachment "maxim" consisted of two warrant officers of the Black Sea Fleet, two students, the author of memoirs (VS Mylnikov) and a chemistry teacher V.A. Grekov. When they were joined by the "centurion Chernolikhov, who was in charge of the Lewis machine gun," "a very friendly company of four former realists with their teacher and two former high school students turned out."
The seven-year-old pedestrian hundreds "consisted almost exclusively of students," and only the mounted hundreds were officers. Half of the 2 nd foot hundred were Chinese, recruited by the centurion Khopersky. They were afraid to put them on guard, since they did not know the Russian language and, "even knowing the pass, they could shoot."
In the detachment of F.D. Nazarov, approximately 30% of the fighters had experience of war with Germany, the rest were young people.

I don't know about you, but I was most impressed by the "recruited Chinese" among the free Cossacks. We know that this is the privilege of the Bolsheviks to use the international contingent in the "fight against the indigenous Russian population." But you can't erase words from a song.

Possessing a very variegated composition, Popov quite reasonably doubted the striking power of his army, so he quite correctly assessed the main task: to preserve the core of resistance until the expected uprising of the Don Cossacks. It should be noted that Popov himself, despite the rank of Major General, did not have much combat experience, remaining, above all, a good administrator. Combat operations were conducted by his chief of staff, Colonel V.I.Sidorin.

As mentioned earlier, one of the first options for conducting a campaign that arose was the unification with the Kornilov Volunteer Army. To which the latter was initially inclined, but according to the results of the exploration and persistence of Alekseev, he changed to the Kuban direction. At the same time, Popov hoped that the Don people who fought together with the "volunteers" would not leave their native land. In the end, everything happened the other way around - he still lost some of the Cossacks, who were eager for a fight, who went to Kornilov. Well, and those who were completely doubting, of whom there was also a fair amount, were offered to "spray" by giving out fake forms of the Soviet infantry regiment.

The paths of the two armies were divided. The "steppe inhabitants" did not find great feats, but they also preserved their human potential. For a detachment of 60% of young people who just broke away from the "mother's hem" - it was quite reasonable. However, this was also facilitated by the weakness of the Red detachments opposing the "steppe". The relatively hardened parts of Antonov-Ovseenko were transferred to the west to fight the Germans. The pro-Bolshevik 39th division was tied to the railway, and Golubov's Cossacks did not show any particular zeal in battles after the capture of Novocherkassk. There was still an opportunity to transfer spare regiments from Astrakhan, Tsaritsyn or Stavropol, and use the local units of the Red Guard, which, by definition, did not have the required number, or weapons, or combat stability.

A significant number of young people led to the use of a specific tactical technique on February 21 (March 6) in a battle against the Nikiforov and Dumenko detachments near the Shara-Burak farm. Cadets (including younger ones) were thrown into the forehead against the enemy's fortifications, crossing the river across a bridge flooded with water. The age of the attackers was evidenced by the fact that some of the teenagers dragged their rifles by the belt along the ground - so it was large and heavy for them. While the real attack was led by hundreds of officers on the flanks. However, there were no losses among the youth, and later they abandoned such a vicious practice, giving the cadets the right to guard the train and be the last reserve of the command.

And the first serious collision occurred at the crossing over the Manych at the Kazyonny bridge, which was defended by a detachment of Red Guards from the village of Velikoknyazheskaya. Due to circumstances, it could become a serious defeat for a detachment without a convoy and rear. Nevertheless, either full of optimism or hope for weak resistance of the red detachments led to the fact that Popov divided his detachment, sending 500 people, led by Colonel K.K. Mamantov, to the village of Platovskaya to raise the Kalmyks.

Here, the 2 nd foot hundred Semiletovites under the command of Esaul Pashkov attacked in the forehead, and the Chinese (30-40 people) fought directly for the bridge. As a result of the artillery duel, the Red battery was suppressed, and the outcome of the battle was decided by a daring throw across the bridge of the 2nd fifty seven-year men under the command of the captain Zelenkov. The Reds, having lost 2 guns and 3 machine guns, retreated. Subsequently, without a fight, they cleared the village of Velikoknyazheskaya, where the "steppe inhabitants" got serious trophies.

Based on the village, the detachment made raids on neighboring farms, and about 200 people (mostly students) joined it. The village gathering, fearing reprisals, did not support the "steppe dwellers". Affected by the proximity of the railway, which, as usual, was controlled by the Bolsheviks. However, they did not have to wait long. Already on February 27 (March 12), an armored train of the Reds appeared from Tsaritsyn's side, and fierce battles began. Despite the fact that the Bolsheviks' forces were clearly not enough, information appeared about the approach from the Torgovaya side of another enemy armored train. Therefore, Popov decided not to risk it (although he understood that from the west the forces of the Reds were bogged down in the fight against Kornilov) and ordered them to leave for the steppe.

Distinctive sign of the participants of the "Steppe campaign".

On March 4 (17), the "steppe inhabitants" retreated 60-80 versts into the depths of the steppe to the stud farm wintering houses, controlling the territory under 40 versts in diameter. Where it was decided to wait out the Cossack "neutrality", train the green youth and bother the enemy with raids, reminding him and the rest of the Cossacks of their existence.

However, the Bolsheviks, so, did not forget about them. Soon a detachment of 4,000 bayonets with 36 machine guns and 32 guns arrived from Tsaritsyn, which, however, began to sit out at the railway stations. Where the conscription of the Cossacks of the Salsk district was made in the amount of 1,500 drafts under the command of the captain Smetanin, who greatly slowed down the training of cavalry detachments, and subsequently passed to the White. Detachments of the "leader of the revolutionary Cossacks" Golubov appeared from the west, however, preferring negotiations and not rushing into battle. The Red Guard of peasant settlements was formed under the command of Kulakov and Tulak. The “steppe dwellers”, who had originally repelled the enemy with raids, began to worry. Voices rang out: to break through to Kornilov or to spray. But Popov was cold-blooded and suggested "to stay put, that soon everything will change and the Don will need the Cossacks." And he was right, although events developed with varying degrees of success.

On the same day, representatives of the peasantry arrived from Tulak to agree on the possibility of "peace" with the "cadets." At the same time, a messenger appeared from the village of Grabbaevskaya, where an uprising broke out, asking for help. Which greatly inspired the Cossacks.

And at the same time, Semiletov's detachment, reflecting a possible attack by Tulak, was ambushed, losing 70% of its composition. The total losses of the "battle at Kuryachaya Balka" were about 200 killed and wounded, and on the battlefield the "steppe inhabitants" even had to abandon the wounded. For example, in the machine-gun team, consisting of seminarians (Jesus machine gunners), of 25 people, only 6 remained.

In this regard, at a meeting on March 20 (April 2), Popov said that "sitting in the steppes is over," and they "need Don." Then he ordered to move north.At the same time, the Astrakhan and Stavropol peasants, from communication with the Cossacks, disintegrated, leaving the junction of these regions bare. The Cossacks, who arrived from Tulak's headquarters, were arrested for the peace talks - the peasants were released, and the communists were hanged.

On March 23 (April 5), the "steppe inhabitants", led by the Kalmyk guides, set off. What happened very timely, because, at last, the "Shock South Column" moved forward, finally completing the formation of its mounted units.

The Bolsheviks hung on the tail of the "steppe dwellers" until the crossing of the Sal River. Then "they went to Erketinskaya and ... disappeared." The Astrakhan and Stavropol peasants did not want to go deep into the lands of the Don Army. Golubov, anticipating the fall of Soviet power on the Don, preferred to be closer to politics in Novocherkassk, and not to knead the spring mud. Smetanin with the mobilized Cossacks walked parallel to the "steppe dwellers", but held back his detachment. For "the cadets are running, and there is no need to fight." With which, I think, the summoned Cossacks were in solidarity.

As a result, the Reds, having missed the “steppe dwellers”, retreated to the Remontnaya station, where “celebrations, drunkenness and self-demobilization for sowing work” began. The threat to the Don from the east melted away - as it had never happened.

Well, Popov's "steppe inhabitants" marched across the Don land, seized by the anti-Bolshevik uprising. On April 2 (April 15), an order was issued on the disbandment of the "Detachment of Free Don Cossacks", which were now supposed to become the backbone of a new Cossack army organized in the rebellious regions. Administrator-General Popov fulfilled his task and, a month later, asked for resignation from the post of commander of the Don Army, so that he would not play war games anymore, being engaged only in administrative activities.

V.I.Sidorin subsequently ended up at the command helm of the Don army, which, however, ended in failure. For, unable to withstand the pressure of the Reds, his 4th Don Corps, with its chaotic retreat, led the planned evacuation of Novorossiysk to a natural disaster. For which he was put on trial in Crimea (4 years of hard labor, replaced by dismissal from the ranks armed forces without the right to wear a uniform).

Despite the successful concourse of the Steppe campaign, it turned out to be another element of the collapse of the White South. Feeling their strength, the Cossacks again began to play in independence, in every possible way distanced themselves from the creation of a single military command body under the auspices of the Volunteer Army, which led to the dispersion of forces and, as a result, to the impossibility of reaching a strategic turning point in the 1919 offensive. However, more detailed conclusions will be made in the next part of the "Red and White" Moses.