Who was Kotovsky after the revolution. If commanders die, then someone needs it .... Personal life of Grigory Kotovsky

) - Soviet military and political figure, participant in the Civil War.

He made a career from a criminal to a member of the Allied, Ukrainian and Moldavian Central Executive Committee. Member of the Revolutionary Military Council of the USSR. Legendary hero of Soviet folklore and fiction. Father of Russian Indologist Grigory Grigorievich Kotovsky. He died under unclear circumstances from the shot of his friend Meyer Seider.

early years

Grigory Kotovsky was born on June 12 (24), 1881 in the village of Ganceshty (now the city of Hyncheshty in Moldova), in the family of a tradesman in the city of Balta, Podolsk province. In addition to him, the parents had five more children. Kotovsky's father was a Russified Orthodox Pole, his mother was Russian. Kotovsky himself claimed that he came from a gentry family that owned an estate in the Podolsk province. Kotovsky's grandfather was allegedly early dismissed for his connections with participants in the Polish national movement and went bankrupt. The father of the future commander, a mechanical engineer by education, belonged to the bourgeois class and worked as a mechanic at a distillery in the Manuk-Beev estate in Hincesti.

Grigory Kotovsky suffered from logoneurosis and was left-handed. At the age of two he lost his mother, and at sixteen - his father. Grisha's godmother Sophia Schall, a young widow, the daughter of an engineer, a Belgian citizen who worked in the neighborhood and was a friend of the boy's father, and the godfather, landowner Grigory Ivanovich Mirzoyan Manuk-Bey, grandson of Manuk-Bey Mirzoyan, took care of Grisha's upbringing. The godfather helped the young man enter the Kokorozen Agronomic School and paid for the entire boarding school. At the school, Gregory especially carefully studied agronomy and the German language, since Manuk-Bey promised to send him for "additional education" to Germany at the Higher Agricultural Courses. These hopes were not realized due to the death of the godfather in 1902.

Raider Revolutionary

According to Kotovsky himself, during his stay at the agronomic school, he became acquainted with a circle of Socialist-Revolutionaries. After graduating from an agricultural school in 1900, he worked as an assistant manager in various landlord estates in Bessarabia, but did not stay anywhere for a long time. Either he was expelled "for seducing the landowner's wife", then "for stealing 200 rubles of the master's money". For the protection of farm laborers, Kotovsky was arrested in 1902 and 1903. By 1904, leading such a lifestyle and periodically getting into prison for petty crimes, Kotovsky becomes the recognized leader of the Bessarabian gangster world. During the Russo-Japanese War in 1904, he did not appear at the recruiting station. The following year he was arrested for evading military service and determined to serve in the 19th Kostroma Infantry Regiment, stationed in Zhytomyr.

Soon he deserted and organized a detachment, at the head of which he made robbery raids - burned estates, destroyed debt receipts. The peasants provided assistance to the Kotovsky detachment, sheltered him from the gendarmes, supplied him with food, clothing, and weapons. Thanks to this, the detachment remained elusive for a long time, and legends circulated about the audacity of their attacks. Kotovsky was arrested on January 18, 1906, but was able to escape from the Chisinau prison six months later. On September 24 of the same year, he was arrested again, a year later he was sentenced to 12 years of hard labor and sent to Siberia through the Yelisavetograd and Smolensk prisons. In 1910 he was delivered to the Oryol Central. In 1911 he was transferred to the place of serving his sentence - to the Nerchinsk penal servitude. In hard labor, he collaborated with the authorities, became a foreman on the construction of a railway, which made him a candidate for an amnesty on the occasion of the 300th anniversary of the Romanov dynasty. However, under the amnesty, the bandits were not released, and then on February 27, 1913, Kotovsky fled from Nerchinsk and returned to Bessarabia. Hiding, working as a loader, a laborer, and then again led a group of raiders. The activity of the group acquired a particularly daring character from the beginning of 1915, when the militants switched from robbing private individuals to raiding offices and banks. In particular, they committed a major robbery of the Bendery Treasury, which brought the entire police of Bessarabia and Odessa to their feet. This is how Kotovsky was described in a secret dispatch received by district police officers and heads of detective departments:

... He speaks excellent Russian, Romanian, and Jewish, and can also speak German and almost French. Makes quite an impression intelligent person, smart and energetic. In his address, he tries to be graceful with everyone, which easily attracts the sympathy of all those who have contact with him. He can pretend to be a manager of estates, or even a landowner, a machinist, a gardener, an employee of a firm or enterprise, a representative for the procurement of products for the army, and so on. He tries to make acquaintances and relationships in the appropriate circle ... In a conversation, he noticeably stutters. He dresses decently and can act like a real gentleman. He loves to eat well...

After receiving the news of the abdication of Nicholas II from the throne, a riot broke out in the Odessa prison, and self-government was established in the prison. The provisional government announced a broad political amnesty.

Member of the First World War

With the departure of the French troops, on April 19, 1919, Kotovsky received an appointment from the Odessa Commissariat to the post of head of the military commissariat in Ovidiopol. In July 1919 he was appointed commander of the 2nd brigade of the 45th rifle division. The brigade was created on the basis of the Transnistrian regiment formed in Transnistria. After the capture of Ukraine by Denikin's troops, the Kotovsky brigade, as part of the Southern Group of Forces of the 12th Army, makes a heroic campaign behind enemy lines and enters the territory Soviet Russia. In November 1919, a critical situation developed on the outskirts of Petrograd. The White Guard troops of General Yudenich came close to the city. Kotovsky's cavalry group, along with other parts of the Southern Front, is sent against Yudenich, but when they arrive near Petrograd, it turns out that the White Guards have already been defeated. This was very useful for the Kotovites, who were practically incompetent: 70% of them were sick, and besides, they did not have winter uniforms. In November 1919, Kotovsky fell ill with pneumonia. From January 1920 he commanded a cavalry brigade of the 45th Infantry Division, fighting in Ukraine and on the Soviet-Polish front. In April 1920 he joined the RCP(b). From December 1920, Kotovsky was the commander of the 17th Cavalry Division of the Red Cossacks. In 1921 he commanded cavalry units, including suppressing uprisings of the Makhnovists, Antonovites and Petliurists. In September 1921, Kotovsky was appointed commander of the 9th Cavalry Division, in October - commander of the 2nd Cavalry Corps. In Tiraspol in 1920-1921, in the building of the former hotel "Paris", the headquarters of Kotovsky was located (now - the headquarters museum). According to the unconfirmed statement of his son, in the summer of 1925, People's Commissar Frunze allegedly intended to appoint Kotovsky as his deputy.

Murder

The funeral

The Soviet authorities arranged a magnificent funeral for the legendary commander, comparable in scope to the funeral of V. I. Lenin.

Odessa, Berdichev, Balta (then the capital of the AMSSR) offered to bury Kotovsky on their territory.

Mausoleum

The day after the murder, on August 7, 1925, a group of embalmers led by Professor Vorobyov was urgently sent from Moscow to Odessa.
The mausoleum was made according to the type of the mausoleum of N. I. Pirogov in Vinnitsa and Lenin in Moscow. August 6, 1941, exactly 16 years after the murder of the commander, the mausoleum was destroyed by the occupation forces.

The mausoleum was restored in 1965 in a reduced form.

On September 28, 2016, the deputies of the city council of Podolsk (former Kotovsk) decided to bury the remains of Grigory Kotovsky in the city cemetery No. 1.

Awards

Family

Wife - Olga Petrovna Kotovskaya, after Shakin's first husband (1894-1961). According to the published testimonies of her son, G. G. Kotovsky, Olga Petrovna, originally from Syzran, from a peasant family, a graduate of the medical faculty of Moscow University, was a student of the surgeon N. N. Burdenko; As a member of the Bolshevik Party, she volunteered for the Southern Front. She met her future husband in the autumn of 1918 on a train, when Kotovsky was catching up with the brigade after suffering typhus, and at the end of the same year they got married. Olga served as a doctor in Kotovsky's cavalry brigade. After the death of her husband, she worked for 18 years in the Kiev district hospital, as a major in the medical service.

Data

This section is an unordered list of miscellaneous facts about the subject of the article.

Please bring the information in an encyclopedic form and distribute it to the relevant sections of the article. According to the decision of the Wikipedia Arbitration Committee, lists are preferably based on secondary generalizations containing the criteria for inclusion of elements in the list.

The Great Soviet Encyclopedia in an article about G. I. Kotovsky reports that in January - March 1918 he commanded the Tiraspol detachment. In fact, the detachment was commanded by Yevgeny Mikhailovich Venediktov, who also headed the Second Revolutionary Army for a short time.
In 1939 in Romania, Ion Vetrila created the revolutionary anarcho-communist organization "Haiduki Kotovsky".
Three orders of the Red Banner and the honorary revolutionary weapon of Kotovsky were stolen by the Romanian troops from the mausoleum during the occupation. After the war, Romania officially handed over the awards of Kotovsk to the USSR.
A shaved head is sometimes referred to as a "Kotovsky haircut".

Memory

The name of Kotovsky was given to plants and factories, collective farms and state farms, steamships, a cavalry division, a partisan detachment during the Great Patriotic War.

In honor of Grigory Kotovsky are named:

the city of Kotovsk in the Tambov Region,
city Kotovsk(formerly Birzula) in the Odessa region, where Kotovsky is buried (on May 12, 2016, the city of Kotovsk, Odessa region, was renamed Podolsk).
the city of Hincesti, the birthplace of Kotovsky, - from 1990 to 1990 it was called Kotovsk.
the village of Kotovskoye in the Razdolnensky district of the Republic of Crimea.
Kotovskoye village, Komrat district, Gagauzia.
The village of Kotovsky is a district of the city of Odessa.
street "Road Kotovskogo" in Odessa (renamed the Nikolaev road).
streets in dozens settlements on the territory of the former USSR.
museum to them. G. G. Kotovsky in the village of Stepanovka, Razdelnyansky district, Odessa region.
musical group - rock group "Barber named after. Kotovsky.

Monuments

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House-Museum of Kotovsky

Kotovsky in art

In the USSR, the IZOGIZ publishing house issued a postcard with the image of G. I. Kotovsky.

In cinema

"P. K. P. "(1926) - Boris Zubritsky
"Kotovsky" (1942) - Nikolai Mordvinov.
"The squadron goes west" (1965) - B. Petelin
"The last haiduk" (Moldova-film, 1972) - Valery Gataev.
"On the trail of the wolf", (1976); " Big small war", (1980) - Evgeny Lazarev.
"Kotovsky" (TV series, 2010) - Vladislav Galkin.
"The Life and Adventures of Mishka Yaponchik" (TV series, 2011) - Kirill Polukhin.

Poems and songs

Prose

Biographical story "The Golden Checker" by Roman Sef.
On the mythologized figure of Kotovsky, the character of the same name in V. Pelevin's novel "Chapaev and Emptiness" is based.
G. I. Kotovsky and the Kotovites are mentioned in the book “How Steel Was Tempered” by N. Ostrovsky.
The image of G.I. Kotovsky appears several times in the ironic novel by V. Tikhomirov "Gold in the Wind".
The writer R. Gul described him in the book “Red Marshals: Voroshilov, Budyonny, Blucher, Kotovsky” (Berlin: Parabola, 1933.)

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Notes

Literature

Sibiryakov S. G. Grigory Ivanovich Kotovsky. - M.: Publishing House of the All-Union. islands of political prisoners and exiled settlers, 1925.
Barsukov M.. - M.; L .: Land and factory, 1926.
Guy E.. - M.; L .: Young Guard, 1926.
Mezhberg N., Shpunt R.. - Odessa, 1930.
Sibiryakov S., Nikolaev A.. - M .: Young Guard, 1931.
Schmerling W.. - M.: Zhurngazobedinenie, 1937.
Skvortsov A. E. G. I. Kotovsky about physical culture // Teoriya i praktika fiz. culture. - 1950. - T. XIII. - Issue. 5. - S. 324-329.
Grigory Ivanovich Kotovsky. - M.: Military Publishing, 1951.
Bunchuk M.F. The main stages in the development of physical culture in the collective farms of the Ukrainian SSR (in the years of the pre-war five-year plans): dis. … cand. ped. Sciences / Bunchuk M. F.; Ukr. Research Institute of Pedagogy. - Kyiv, 1954.
Documents and materials for history civil war in the USSR. G. I. Kotovsky. - Kishinev, 1956.
Chetverikov B. D. Kotovsky: A novel / [Illustr.: P. S. Koretsky]. Book. 1. - M.: Military Publishing, 1961.
Chetverikov B. D. Kotovsky: A novel / [Illustr.: P. S. Koretsky]. Book. 2: Relay of life. - M.: Military Publishing House, 1964.
Chetverikov B. D. Kotovsky: Novel / Art. P. N. Pinkisevich. Book. 1: The man is a legend. - M.: Military Publishing House, 1968. - 614 p.: ill.
Chetverikov B. D. Kotovsky: Novel / Art. P. N. Pinkisevich. Book. 2: Relay of life. - M.: Military Publishing House, 1968. - 463 p.: ill.
Gul R. B. Kotovsky. Anarchist Marshal. - 2nd. - New York: Bridge, 1975. - 204 p.
Kuzmin N. P. Sword and Plow: The Tale of Grigory Kotovsky. - M .: Politizdat, 1976 (Fiery revolutionaries) - 411 s, ill. Same. - 2nd ed., corrected. -1981.- 398 p., ill.
Burin Sergey Grigory Kotovsky: Legend and true story, M.: Olympus; Smolensk: Rusich, 1999.
Savchenko V. A. Grigory Kotovsky: from criminals to heroes // . - Kharkov: AST, 2000. - 368 p. - ISBN 5–17–002710–9.
Savchenko V.A.: Kotovsky. - M.: Eksmo, 2010.
Sokolov B.V. Kotovsky. - M.: Young Guard, 2012. - ISBN 978-5-235-03552-2.
Novohatsky M.I.: - The path to the legend, "Cartya Moldovenyaske", Chisinau, 1976
Lupashko M. V. (Lupashko Mikhail) - Bessarabets: Publisher: Elena-V.I. ISBN 9789975434638 , Year: 2012 http://artofwar.ru/s/skripnik_s_w/text_0250.shtml

An excerpt characterizing Kotovsky, Grigory Ivanovich

- Yes, I will.
Rostov stood at the corner for a long time, looking at the feasters from afar. A painful work was going on in his mind, which he could not bring to the end. Terrible doubts arose in my heart. Then he remembered Denisov with his changed expression, with his humility, and the whole hospital with those torn off arms and legs, with this dirt and disease. It seemed to him so vividly that he now felt this hospital smell of a dead body that he looked around to understand where this smell could come from. Then he remembered this self-satisfied Bonaparte with his white pen, who was now the emperor, whom the emperor Alexander loves and respects. What are the severed arms, legs, murdered people for? Then he remembered the awarded Lazarev and Denisov, punished and unforgiven. He found himself thinking such strange thoughts that he was afraid of them.
The smell of Preobrazhensky food and hunger brought him out of this state: he had to eat something before leaving. He went to the hotel he had seen in the morning. In the hotel, he found so many people, officers, who, like him, arrived in civilian clothes, that he hardly managed to get dinner. Two officers from the same division as him joined him. The conversation naturally turned to the world. The officers, comrades of Rostov, like most of the army, were dissatisfied with the peace concluded after Friedland. They said that if they could hold on, Napoleon would have disappeared, that he had no crackers or charges in his troops. Nicholas ate in silence and mostly drank. He drank one or two bottles of wine. The inner work that arose in him, not being resolved, still tormented him. He was afraid to indulge in his thoughts and could not get behind them. Suddenly, at the words of one of the officers that it was insulting to look at the French, Rostov began to shout with fervor, which was not justified in any way, and therefore greatly surprised the officers.
“And how can you judge which would be better!” he shouted, his face suddenly flushed with blood. - How can you judge the actions of the sovereign, what right do we have to reason ?! We cannot understand either the purpose or the actions of the sovereign!
“Yes, I didn’t say a word about the sovereign,” the officer justified himself, who could not explain his temper to himself except by the fact that Rostov was drunk.
But Rostov did not listen.
“We are not diplomatic officials, but we are soldiers and nothing else,” he continued. - They tell us to die - so die. And if they are punished, it means that they are to blame; not for us to judge. It is pleasing to the sovereign emperor to recognize Bonaparte as emperor and conclude an alliance with him - then it must be so. Otherwise, if we began to judge and reason about everything, nothing sacred would remain that way. So we say that there is no God, there is nothing, - Nikolai shouted, striking the table, very inappropriately, according to the concepts of his interlocutors, but very consistently in the course of his thoughts.
“Our business is to do our duty, to fight and not to think, that’s all,” he concluded.
“And drink,” said one of the officers, who did not want to quarrel.
“Yes, and drink,” Nikolai picked up. - Hey, you! Another bottle! he shouted.

In 1808, Emperor Alexander traveled to Erfurt for a new meeting with Emperor Napoleon, and in high Petersburg society they talked a lot about the greatness of this solemn meeting.
In 1809, the proximity of the two rulers of the world, as Napoleon and Alexander were called, reached the point that when Napoleon declared war on Austria that year, the Russian corps went abroad to assist their former enemy Bonaparte against their former ally, Austrian emperor; to the point that in high society they talked about the possibility of a marriage between Napoleon and one of the sisters of Emperor Alexander. But, in addition to external political considerations, at that time the attention of Russian society with particular vivacity was drawn to the internal transformations that were being carried out at that time in all parts of the state administration.
Meanwhile, life, the real life of people with their essential interests of health, illness, work, recreation, with their own interests of thought, science, poetry, music, love, friendship, hatred, passions, went on, as always, independently and without political closeness or enmity with Napoleon Bonaparte, and beyond all possible transformations.
Prince Andrei lived without a break for two years in the countryside. All those enterprises on estates that Pierre started and did not bring to any result, constantly moving from one thing to another, all these enterprises, without showing them to anyone and without noticeable labor, were carried out by Prince Andrei.
He had in the highest degree that practical tenacity that Pierre lacked, which, without scope and effort on his part, gave movement to the cause.
One of his estates of three hundred souls of peasants was listed as free cultivators (this was one of the first examples in Russia), in others corvée was replaced by dues. In Bogucharovo, a learned grandmother was issued to his account to help women in childbirth, and the priest taught the children of peasants and yards to read and write for a salary.
One half of the time Prince Andrei spent in the Bald Mountains with his father and son, who was still with the nannies; the other half of the time in the Bogucharovo monastery, as his father called his village. Despite the indifference he showed to Pierre to all the external events of the world, he diligently followed them, received many books, and to his surprise noticed when fresh people from Petersburg, from the very whirlpool of life, came to him or to his father, that these people, in the knowledge of everything that happens in the external and domestic politics, far behind him, sitting without a break in the village.
In addition to classes on estates, in addition to general studies in reading a wide variety of books, Prince Andrei was at that time engaged in a critical analysis of our last two unfortunate campaigns and drawing up a project to change our military regulations and decrees.
In the spring of 1809, Prince Andrei went to the Ryazan estates of his son, whom he was the guardian of.
Warmed by the spring sun, he sat in the carriage, looking at the first grass, the first leaves of the birch, and the first puffs of white spring clouds scattered across the bright blue of the sky. He did not think about anything, but looked cheerfully and senselessly around.
We passed the ferry on which he spoke with Pierre a year ago. We passed a dirty village, threshing floors, greenery, a descent, with the remaining snow near the bridge, an ascent along washed-out clay, a strip of stubble and a shrub that was greening in some places, and drove into a birch forest on both sides of the road. It was almost hot in the forest, the wind could not be heard. The birch tree, all covered with green sticky leaves, did not move, and from under last year's leaves, lifting them, the first grass and purple flowers crawled out green. Scattered in some places along the birch forest, small spruce trees with their coarse eternal greenery unpleasantly reminded of winter. The horses snorted as they rode into the woods and became more sweaty.
The footman Peter said something to the coachman, the coachman answered in the affirmative. But it was not enough for Peter to see the coachman's sympathy: he turned on the goats to the master.
- Your Excellency, how easy! he said, smiling respectfully.
- What!
“Easy, your highness.
"What he says?" thought Prince Andrew. “Yes, it’s true about spring,” he thought, looking around. And then everything is already green ... how soon! And birch, and bird cherry, and alder is already beginning ... And the oak is not noticeable. Yes, here it is, the oak.
There was an oak at the edge of the road. Probably ten times older than the birches that made up the forest, it was ten times thicker and twice as tall as each birch. It was a huge oak tree in two girths with broken branches, which can be seen for a long time, and with broken bark, overgrown with old sores. With his huge clumsy, asymmetrically spread, clumsy hands and fingers, he stood between the smiling birches, an old, angry and contemptuous freak. Only he alone did not want to submit to the charm of spring and did not want to see either spring or the sun.
"Spring, and love, and happiness!" - this oak seemed to be saying, - “and how you don’t get tired of the same stupid and senseless deceit. Everything is the same, and everything is a lie! There is no spring, no sun, no happiness. There, look, crushed dead firs are sitting, always the same, and there I spread my broken, peeled fingers, wherever they grew - from the back, from the sides; as you have grown, so I stand, and I do not believe your hopes and deceptions.
Prince Andrei looked back at this oak tree several times as he drove through the forest, as if he was expecting something from him. There were flowers and grass under the oak, but he still, frowning, motionless, ugly and stubbornly, stood in the middle of them.
“Yes, he is right, this oak is a thousand times right,” thought Prince Andrei, let others, young ones, again succumb to this deception, and we know life, our life is over! A whole new series of thoughts, hopeless, but sadly pleasant in connection with this oak, arose in the soul of Prince Andrei. During this journey, it was as if he thought over his whole life again, and came to the same calming and hopeless conclusion that he had no need to start anything, that he should live his life without doing evil, without worrying and desiring nothing.

On guardian affairs of the Ryazan estate, Prince Andrei had to see the district marshal. The leader was Count Ilya Andreevich Rostov, and Prince Andrei went to him in mid-May.
It was already a hot spring. The forest was already all dressed up, there was dust and it was so hot that when driving past the water, I wanted to swim.
Prince Andrei, gloomy and preoccupied with thoughts about what and what he needs to ask the leader about business, drove up along the alley of the garden to the Rostovs' Otradnensky house. To the right, from behind the trees, he heard a female, cheerful cry, and saw a crowd of girls running towards the intersection of his carriage. Closer in front of the others, a black-haired, very thin, strangely thin, black-eyed girl in a yellow cotton dress, tied with a white handkerchief, from under which strands of combed hair broke out, ran up to the carriage. The girl was shouting something, but recognizing the stranger, without looking at him, she ran back with a laugh.
Prince Andrei suddenly felt pain from something. The day was so good, the sun was so bright, everything around was so cheerful; but this thin and pretty girl did not know and did not want to know about his existence and was contented and happy with some kind of her own, stupid, but cheerful and happy life. “Why is she so happy? what is she thinking! Not about the military charter, not about the arrangement of the Ryazan dues. What is she thinking? And why is she happy? Prince Andrei involuntarily asked himself with curiosity.
Count Ilya Andreevich in 1809 lived in Otradnoye just as before, that is, taking over almost the entire province, with hunts, theaters, dinners and musicians. He, like any new guest, was glad to Prince Andrei, and almost forcibly left him to spend the night.
During the boring day, during which Prince Andrei was occupied by the senior hosts and the most honorable of the guests, with whom the house of the old count was full on the occasion of the approaching name day, Bolkonsky looked several times at Natasha, who was laughing and having fun between the other young half of society, kept asking himself: “What is she thinking? Why is she so happy!
In the evening, left alone in a new place, he could not sleep for a long time. He read, then put out the candle and lit it again. It was hot in the room with the shutters closed from the inside. He was annoyed with this stupid old man (as he called Rostov), who had detained him, assuring him that the necessary papers in the city had not yet been delivered, he was annoyed with himself for having stayed.
Prince Andrei got up and went to the window to open it. As soon as he opened the shutters, the moonlight, as if he had been waiting at the window for a long time, burst into the room. He opened the window. The night was crisp and unmovingly bright. Right in front of the window was a row of trimmed trees, black on one side and silvery lit on the other. Under the trees there was some kind of juicy, wet, curly vegetation with silvery leaves and stems in some places. Further behind the black trees there was a kind of roof shining with dew, to the right a large curly tree, with a bright white trunk and branches, and above it an almost full moon in a bright, almost starless, spring sky. Prince Andrei leaned against the window and his eyes rested on this sky.
Prince Andrei's room was on the middle floor; they also lived in the rooms above it and did not sleep. He heard a woman speak from above.
“Just one more time,” said a female voice from above, which Prince Andrei now recognized.
- When are you going to sleep? answered another voice.
“I won’t, I can’t sleep, what should I do!” Well, the last time...
Two female voices they sang some kind of musical phrase that was the end of something.
- Oh, what a delight! Well, now sleep, and the end.
“Sleep, but I can’t,” answered the first voice, approaching the window. She apparently leaned completely out of the window, because the rustling of her dress and even breathing could be heard. Everything was quiet and petrified, like the moon and its light and shadows. Prince Andrei was also afraid to move, so as not to betray his involuntary presence.
– Sonya! Sonya! – the first voice was heard again. - Well, how can you sleep! Yes, look what a beauty! Ah, what a delight! Wake up, Sonya, - she said almost with tears in her voice. “There has never been such a lovely night, never.
Sonya reluctantly answered something.
- No, look at that moon! ... Oh, what a charm! You come here. Darling, dove, come here. Well, see? So I would squat down, like this, I would grab myself under my knees - tighter, as tight as possible - you have to strain. Like this!
- All right, you're going to fall.
There was a struggle and Sonya's dissatisfied voice: "After all, the second hour."
Oh, you're just ruining everything for me. Well, go, go.
Everything fell silent again, but Prince Andrei knew that she was still sitting there, he sometimes heard a quiet stir, sometimes sighs.
- Oh my god! My God! what is it! she suddenly cried out. - Sleep like sleep! and slammed the window.
“And it doesn’t matter to my existence!” thought Prince Andrei while he listened to her conversation, for some reason waiting and fearing that she would say something about him. “And she again! And how on purpose! he thought. Such an unexpected confusion of young thoughts and hopes, which contradicted his whole life, suddenly arose in his soul, that he, feeling unable to understand his state of mind, immediately fell asleep.

The next day, having said goodbye to only one count, without waiting for the ladies to leave, Prince Andrei went home.
It was already the beginning of June, when Prince Andrei, returning home, drove again into that birch grove in which this old, gnarled oak struck him so strangely and memorable. The bells rang even more muffled in the forest than a month and a half ago; everything was full, shady and thick; and young firs, scattered throughout the forest, did not violate the general beauty and, imitating general character, gently green with fluffy young shoots.
The whole day was hot, somewhere a thunderstorm was gathering, but only a small cloud splashed on the dust of the road and on the succulent leaves. The left side of the forest was dark, in shadow; the right one, wet and glossy, shone in the sun, slightly swaying in the wind. Everything was in bloom; the nightingales chirped and rolled now close, now far away.
“Yes, here, in this forest, there was this oak, with which we agreed,” thought Prince Andrei. “Yes, where is he,” thought Prince Andrei again, looking at the left side of the road and without knowing it, not recognizing him, admired the oak he was looking for. The old oak, all transformed, spread out like a tent of juicy, dark greenery, was thrilled, slightly swaying in the rays of the evening sun. No clumsy fingers, no sores, no old mistrust and grief - nothing was visible. Juicy, young leaves broke through the tough, hundred-year-old bark without knots, so that it was impossible to believe that this old man had produced them. “Yes, this is the same oak tree,” thought Prince Andrei, and a causeless, spring feeling of joy and renewal suddenly came over him. All the best moments of his life were suddenly remembered to him at the same time. And Austerlitz with a high sky, and the dead, reproachful face of his wife, and Pierre on the ferry, and the girl, excited by the beauty of the night, and this night, and the moon - and all this suddenly came to his mind.
“No, life is not over at the age of 31, suddenly, Prince Andrei decided completely, without change. Not only do I know everything that is in me, it is necessary that everyone knows this: both Pierre and this girl who wanted to fly into the sky, it is necessary that everyone knows me, so that my life goes not for me alone so that they do not live so independently of my life, so that it is reflected on everyone and that they all live with me together!

Returning from his trip, Prince Andrei decided to go to Petersburg in the fall and came up with various reasons for this decision. A whole series of reasonable, logical arguments why he needed to go to Petersburg and even serve, was every minute ready for his services. Even now he did not understand how he could ever doubt the need to take an active part in life, just as a month ago he did not understand how the idea of leaving the village could come to him. It seemed clear to him that all his experiences in life must have been lost in vain and be nonsense if he had not put them to work and had not again taken an active part in life. He did not even understand how, on the basis of the same poor rational arguments, it had previously been obvious that he would have humiliated himself if now, after his lessons in life, he would again believe in the possibility of being useful and in the possibility of happiness and love. Now my mind was telling me something else. After this trip, Prince Andrei began to get bored in the countryside, his previous activities did not interest him, and often, sitting alone in his office, he got up, went to the mirror and looked at his face for a long time. Then he turned away and looked at the portrait of the deceased Lisa, who, with curls a la grecque [in Greek] fluffed up, tenderly and cheerfully looked at him from a golden frame. She no longer spoke the former terrible words to her husband, she simply and cheerfully looked at him with curiosity. And Prince Andrei, with his hands folded back, paced the room for a long time, now frowning, now smiling, rethinking those unreasonable, inexpressible in words, secret as a crime thoughts connected with Pierre, with fame, with the girl at the window, with the oak, with female beauty and love that changed his whole life. And at those moments when someone came to him, he was especially dry, sternly resolute, and especially unpleasantly logical.
- Mon cher, [My dear,] - Princess Mary used to say entering at such a moment, - Nikolushka cannot go for a walk today: it is very cold.
- If it were warm, - at such moments, Prince Andrei answered his sister especially dryly, - then he would go in one shirt, and since it is cold, you need to put on warm clothes, which are invented for this. That’s what follows from the fact that it’s cold, and not just to stay at home when the child needs air, ”he said with special logic, as if punishing someone for all this secret, illogical thing that was happening in him, inner work. Princess Marya thought in these cases about how this mental work dries men.

Prince Andrei arrived in St. Petersburg in August 1809. It was the time of the apogee of the glory of the young Speransky and the energy of the coups he carried out. In this very August, the sovereign, riding in a carriage, was thrown out, injured his leg, and remained in Peterhof for three weeks, seeing Speransky daily and exclusively. At that time, not only two decrees, so famous and alarming to society, were being prepared on the destruction of court ranks and on examinations for the ranks of collegiate assessors and state councilors, but also a whole state constitution, which was supposed to change the existing judicial, administrative and financial order of governing Russia from the state council to the volost board. Now those vague, liberal dreams with which Emperor Alexander came to the throne, and which he sought to realize with the help of his assistants Czartoryzhsky, Novosiltsev, Kochubey and Strogonov, whom he himself jokingly called comite du salut publique, were now realized and embodied. [committee of public safety.]
Now Speransky for the civilian part and Arakcheev for the military have replaced everyone together. Prince Andrei, soon after his arrival, as a chamberlain, appeared at the court and went out. The sovereign twice, having met him, did not honor him with a single word. It always seemed to Prince Andrei even before that he was antipathetic to the sovereign, that his face and his whole being were unpleasant to the sovereign. In the dry, distant look with which the sovereign looked at him, Prince Andrei found confirmation of this assumption even more than before. The courtiers explained to Prince Andrei the inattention of the sovereign to him by the fact that His Majesty was dissatisfied with the fact that Bolkonsky had not served since 1805.
“I myself know how powerless we are in our likes and dislikes,” thought Prince Andrei, and therefore there is nothing to think about personally presenting my note on the military regulations to the sovereign, but the matter will speak for itself. He passed on his note to the old field marshal, a friend of his father. The field marshal, appointing him an hour, kindly received him and promised to report to the sovereign. A few days later it was announced to Prince Andrei that he had to appear before the Minister of War, Count Arakcheev.
At nine o'clock in the morning, on the appointed day, Prince Andrei appeared in the reception room of Count Arakcheev.
Personally, Prince Andrei did not know Arakcheev and had never seen him, but everything that he knew about him inspired little respect for this man.
“He is the Minister of War, a confidant of the Sovereign Emperor; no one should care about his personal properties; he was instructed to consider my note, therefore he alone can set it in motion, ”thought Prince Andrei, waiting among many important and unimportant persons in the waiting room of Count Arakcheev.
Prince Andrey, during his mostly adjutant service, saw a lot of receptions of important persons, and the various characters of these receptions were very clear to him. Count Arakcheev had a very special character in his reception room. On the unimportant faces waiting in line for an audience in the waiting room of Count Arakcheev, a feeling of shame and humility was written; on more official faces, one general feeling of awkwardness was expressed, hidden under the guise of swagger and ridicule at oneself, at one's position and at the expected person. Some walked thoughtfully back and forth, others laughed in whispers, and Prince Andrei heard the sobriquet [mocking nickname] of Sila Andreich and the words: “uncle will ask,” referring to Count Arakcheev. One general (an important person), apparently offended by the fact that he had to wait so long, sat shifting his legs and smiling contemptuously to himself.
But as soon as the door opened, only one thing was instantly expressed on all faces - fear. Prince Andrei asked the duty officer to report about himself another time, but they looked at him with mockery and said that his turn would come in due time. After several persons were brought in and taken out by the adjutant from the minister's office, an officer was let in through the terrible door, striking Prince Andrei with his humiliated and frightened appearance. The officer's audience went on for a long time. Suddenly, the peals of an unpleasant voice were heard from behind the door, and a pale officer, with trembling lips, went out from there, and clutching his head, went through the reception room.
Following that, Prince Andrei was led to the door, and the duty officer said in a whisper: "to the right, to the window."
Prince Andrei entered a poor, tidy study and at the table saw a forty-year-old man with a long waist, with a long, short-cropped head and thick wrinkles, with frowning eyebrows over a square, green dull eyes and a hanging red nose. Arakcheev turned his head towards him without looking at him.
– What are you asking for? Arakcheev asked.
“I’m not asking anything, your excellency,” Prince Andrei said quietly. Arakcheyev's eyes turned to him.
- Sit down, - said Arakcheev, - Prince Bolkonsky?
“I don’t ask for anything, but the sovereign emperor deigned to send the note I submitted to your excellency ...
“If you please, my dear, I read your note,” Arakcheev interrupted, only saying the first words affectionately, again without looking into his face and falling more and more into a grumblingly contemptuous tone. Do you propose new military laws? There are many laws, there is no one to fulfill the old ones. Nowadays, all laws are written, it is easier to write than to do.
- I came at the behest of the Sovereign Emperor to ask Your Excellency what course you intend to give to the submitted note? said Prince Andrew courteously.
- I put a resolution on your note and sent it to the committee. I do not approve, - said Arakcheev, getting up and taking paper from the desk. - Here! - he gave to Prince Andrei.
I crossed it on paper, with a pencil, without capital letters, without spelling, without punctuation marks, it was written: "unfoundedly compiled, as an imitation written off from the French military charter and from the military article without the need of retreating."
- To which committee was the note sent? asked Prince Andrew.
- To the committee on military regulations, and I have presented your nobility as a member. Only without pay.
Prince Andrew smiled.
- I don't want to.
"Unpaid member," repeated Arakcheev. - I have the honor. Hey call! Who else? he shouted, bowing to Prince Andrei.

While waiting for notification of his enrollment as a member of the committee, Prince Andrei renewed his old acquaintances, especially with those persons who, he knew, were in power and might be needed by him. He now experienced in Petersburg a feeling similar to that which he experienced on the eve of the battle, when he was tormented by restless curiosity and irresistibly drawn to higher spheres, to where the future was being prepared, on which the fate of millions depended. He felt from the anger of the old people, from the curiosity of the uninitiated, from the restraint of the initiates, from the haste and concern of everyone, from the innumerable number of committees and commissions, the existence of which he learned again every day, that now, in 1809, preparations were being made here in Petersburg, some kind of huge civil battle, of which the commander-in-chief was an unknown to him, mysterious and seemed to him a brilliant person - Speransky. And the most vaguely known case of transformation to him, and Speransky - the main figure, began to interest him so passionately that the matter military regulations very soon it began to pass in his mind to a secondary place.
Prince Andrei was in one of the most favorable positions in order to be well received in all the most diverse and highest circles of the then Petersburg society. The party of reformers cordially received and lured him, firstly because he had a reputation for intelligence and great erudition, and secondly because by setting the peasants free he had already made himself a reputation as a liberal. The party of old dissatisfied, just like the son of their father, turned to him for sympathy, condemning the transformation. The sorority, the world, welcomed him, because he was a rich and noble fiancé, and almost a new face with a halo of a romantic story about his imaginary death and the tragic death of his wife. In addition, the general voice about him of all who knew him before was that he changed a lot for the better in these five years, softened and matured, that there was no former pretense, pride and mockery in him, and there was that calmness that purchased over the years. They started talking about him, they were interested in him and everyone wanted to see him.
The next day after visiting Count Arakcheev, Prince Andrei was at Count Kochubey's in the evening. He told the count his meeting with Sila Andreich (Kochubey called Arakcheev so with the same vague mockery that Prince Andrei noticed in the reception room of the Minister of War).
- Mon cher, [My dear,] even in this matter you will not bypass Mikhail Mikhailovich. C "est le grand faiseur. [Everything is done by him.] I'll tell him. He promised to come in the evening ...
- What does Speransky care about military regulations? asked Prince Andrew.
Kochubey, smiling, shook his head, as if surprised at the naivety of Bolkonsky.
“We talked about you the other day,” Kochubey continued, “about your free ploughmen…
- Yes, it was you, prince, who let your men go? - said Catherine's old man, contemptuously turning to Bolkonsky.
- The small estate did not bring income, - answered Bolkonsky, so as not to irritate the old man in vain, trying to soften his act before him.
- Vous craignez d "etre en retard, [Afraid to be late,] - said the old man, looking at Kochubey.
“I don’t understand one thing,” the old man continued, “who will plow the land, if they are given freedom? It is easy to write laws, but difficult to manage. It's all the same as it is now, I ask you, count, who will be the head of the chambers, when will everyone have their exams?
“Those who will pass the exams, I think,” answered Kochubey, crossing his legs and looking around.
- Here Pryanichnikov serves me, a nice man, a gold man, and he is 60 years old, will he go to exams? ...
“Yes, it’s difficult, since education is very little widespread, but ...” Count Kochubey did not finish, he got up and, taking Prince Andrei by the hand, went towards the incoming tall, bald, blond man, about forty, with a large open forehead and an extraordinary, strange whiteness of an oblong face. The newcomer was wearing a blue tailcoat, a cross around his neck and a star on the left side of his chest. It was Speransky. Prince Andrei immediately recognized him and something trembled in his soul, as happens at important moments in life. Whether it was respect, envy, expectation, he did not know. The whole figure of Speransky had a special type, by which one could now recognize him. In no one of the society in which Prince Andrei lived did he see this calmness and self-confidence of awkward and stupid movements, in no one did he see such a firm and at the same time soft look of half-closed and somewhat moist eyes, he did not see such a firmness of an insignificant smile , such a thin, even, quiet voice, and, most importantly, such a delicate whiteness of the face and especially the hands, somewhat wide, but unusually plump, tender and white. Prince Andrei saw such whiteness and tenderness of the face only among soldiers who had been in the hospital for a long time. It was Speransky, the state secretary, the speaker of the sovereign and his companion in Erfurt, where he met and spoke with Napoleon more than once.

ROBIN HOOD REVOLUTION!

June 24, 1881 was born Grigory Ivanovich Kotovsky - a hero of the Civil War, an outstanding military organizer, commander of the cavalry corps of the Red Army.

Know the Soviet people that you are the descendants of fearless warriors!
Know, Soviet people, that the blood of great heroes flows in you,
Those who gave their lives for their Motherland, without thinking about the benefits!
Know and honor the Soviet people the exploits of grandfathers and fathers!

place of birth: s. Gancheshty, Bessarabian Governorate, Russian Empire
Place of death: state farm Chebanka, Odessa region, Ukrainian SSR, USSR
Type of troops: cavalry
Years of service: 1918-1925
Commanded: 2nd Cavalry Corps

Kotovsky Grigory Ivanovich- Soviet military and political figure, participant in the Civil War. Member of the Union, Ukrainian and Moldovan Central Executive Committee. Member of the Revolutionary Military Council of the USSR.

Grigory Kotovsky was born June 12 (24), 1881 in the village of Ganceshty (now the city of Hincheshty in Moldova), in the family of a factory mechanic. In addition to him, the parents had five more children. Kotovsky's father was a Russified Orthodox Pole, his mother was Russian. On the line of his father, Grigory Kotovsky came from an old Polish aristocratic family, who owned an estate in the Kamenetz-Podolsky province. Kotovsky's grandfather was early dismissed for his connections with members of the Polish national movement. Later, he went bankrupt, and the father of Grigory Kotovsky, a mechanical engineer by education, was forced to move to Bessarabia and move into the bourgeois class.

According to the memoirs of Kotovsky himself, as a child, he loved sports and adventure novels. From childhood, he was athletic and had the makings of a leader. He suffered from logoneurosis. At the age of two, Kotovsky lost his mother, and at sixteen, his father. Grisha's godmother Sofia Schall, a young widow, the daughter of an engineer, a Belgian citizen who worked in the neighborhood and was a friend of the boy's father, and the godfather, the landowner Manuk-Bey, took care of Grisha's upbringing. Manuk-Bey helped the young man enter the Kukuruzen Agricultural School and paid for the entire boarding school. At the school, Gregory especially carefully studied agronomy and the German language, since Manuk-Bey promised to send him for "additional education" to Germany at the Higher Agricultural Courses. These hopes were not realized due to the death of Manuk Bey in 1902. Kotovsky wrote that at the school he "showed the features of that stormy, freedom-loving nature, which later unfolded in full breadth ... haunting school mentors."

After graduating from agricultural school in 1900 he worked as assistant manager and manager of the estate.

Kotovsky was arrested for defending farm laborers in 1902 and 1903. During his stay at the agronomic school, he became acquainted with socialist-revolutionary circles and 17-year-old went to jail for the first time. During the Russo-Japanese War in 1904, he did not appear at the recruiting station. In 1905 he was arrested for evading military service and sent to the 19th Kostroma Infantry Regiment stationed in Zhytomyr.

Soon he deserted and organized a detachment, at the head of which he made robbery raids - he burned estates, destroyed debt receipts, robbed landlords and distributed the loot to the poor. The peasants provided assistance to the Kotovsky detachment, sheltered him from the gendarmes, supplied him with food, clothing, and weapons. Thanks to this, the detachment remained elusive for a long time, and legends circulated about the audacity of their attacks.

Kotovsky was arrested on January 18, 1906, but was able to escape six months later from the Chisinau prison. A month later, on September 24, 1906, he was again arrested, and in 1907 he was sentenced to 12 years of hard labor and sent on a stage to Siberia through the Elisavetograd and Smolensk prisons. In 1910 he was delivered to the Oryol Central. In 1911 he was transferred to the place of serving his sentence - to the Nerchinsk penal servitude. Fled from Nerchinsk on February 27, 1913 and returned to Bessarabia. Hiding, working as a loader, laborer, and then again led the battle group. The activity of the group acquired a particularly daring character from the beginning of 1915, when the militants switched from robbing private individuals to raiding offices and banks. In particular, they committed a major robbery of the Bendery Treasury, which brought the entire police of Bessarabia and Odessa to their feet.

In September 1915, in Odessa, Kotovsky and his comrades-in-arms broke into the apartment of the cattle merchant Holstein and offered to contribute 10 thousand rubles to the fund for the destitute, “since many Odessa old women and babies do not have the means to buy milk.” Aron Holstein had such impudence, as they say in Odessa, that he offered the children only 500 rubles for milk. The people's defenders, of course, blazed with noble anger and robbed the host and his guest, Baron Steiberg, of 8,838 rubles. At that time, the whole city could drink milk with this money.

I used violence and terror to take away valuables from the rich exploiter... and handed them over to those who... created these riches. I, not knowing the party, was already a Bolshevik.

June 25, 1916 arrested again, sentenced by the Odessa Military District Court to death. But after a few days he took an exceptionally subtle and inventive move. The Odessa Military District Court was subordinate to the commander of the Southwestern Front, General A. A. Brusilov, and it was Brusilov who had to approve the death sentence against him. Kotovsky wrote a touching letter to Brusilov's wife, which shocked the sensitive woman, and the execution was first postponed, and later replaced with indefinite hard labor. After receiving the news of the abdication of Nicholas II from the throne, a riot broke out in the Odessa prison, and self-government was established in the prison.

The provisional government announced a broad political amnesty. In May 1917, Kotovsky was released on parole. and sent to the army on the Romanian front. There he became a member of the regimental committee of the 136th Taganrog Infantry Regiment. In November 1917, he joined the Left SRs and was elected a member of the Soldiers' Committee of the 6th Army. Then Kotovsky, with a detachment attached to him, was authorized by Rumcherod to establish new order in Chisinau and its environs.

In January 1918 Kotovsky led the detachment, covering the departure of the Bolsheviks from Chisinau. In January-March 1918 he commanded a cavalry group in the Tiraspol detachment. In March 1918, the Odessa Soviet Republic was liquidated by the Austro-German troops who entered Ukraine within the framework of the Kiev Ukrainian Central Rada and the Moscow Bolsheviks. Brest Peace. The Kotovsky detachment was disbanded. Kotovsky himself went into hiding. With the departure of the Austro-German interventionists, on April 19, 1919, Kotovsky received an appointment from the Odessa Commissariat to the post of head of the military commissariat in Ovidiopol. In July 1919 he was appointed commander of the 2nd brigade of the 45th rifle division (the brigade was created on the basis of the Pridnestrovian regiment). In November 1919, Kotovsky fell ill with pneumonia. From January 1920 he commanded a cavalry brigade of the 45th Infantry Division, fighting in Ukraine and on the Soviet-Polish front. In April 1920 he joined the RCP(b).

From December 1920, Kotovsky was the head of the 17th Cavalry Division. In 1921 he commanded cavalry units, including suppressing uprisings of the Makhnovists, Antonovites and Petliurists. In September 1921, Kotovsky was appointed head of the 9th Cavalry Division, and in October 1922, commander of the 2nd Cavalry Corps. In the summer of 1925, the People's Commissar Frunze appoints Kotovsky as his deputy. Grigory Ivanovich did not have time to take office.

Among the musicians of the orchestra of the 2nd cavalry corps. 1923

In the Uman region, where the core of the corps was located, the commander rented sugar factories, supplying the Red Army with sugar. He controlled the meat trade and the supply of meat to the Workers 'and Peasants' Red Army in the southwest of the Ukrainian SSR. All this began to bring a good income, especially after the introduction of the gold ruble. Under the corps, a military-consumer society was created with subsidiary farms and workshops: they sewed boots, suits, blankets. G.I. Kotovsky proved to be not only a talented military leader, but also a strong business executive. His corps was self-supporting.

The scope of economic activity is evidenced by the fact that Kotovsky created and controlled mills in 23 villages. He organized the processing of old soldier's uniforms into woolen raw materials. Profitable contracts were signed with linen and cotton factories. The divisions had state farms, breweries, butcher shops. Hops, which were grown on the fields of Kotovsky at the state farm, were bought by merchants from Czechoslovakia for 1.5 million gold rubles a year.

Wife of Grigory Ivanovich - Olga Petrovna Kotovskaya, after Shakin's first husband (1894-1961). According to the published testimonies of her son, G. G. Kotovsky, Olga Petrovna, originally from Syzran, from a peasant family, a graduate of the medical faculty of Moscow University, was a student of the surgeon N. N. Burdenko, being a member of the Bolshevik Party, she volunteered for the Southern Front. She met her future husband in the autumn of 1918 on a train, when Kotovsky was catching up with the brigade after suffering typhus, and at the end of the same year they got married. Olga served as a doctor in Kotovsky's cavalry brigade. After the death of her husband, she worked for 18 years in the Kiev district hospital, as a major in the medical service.

But on the night of August 6, 1925 Soviet people shocked by the news Kotovsky was shot while relaxing at the state farm Chebanka (on the Black Sea coast, 30 km from Odessa). Documents on the case of the murder of Kotovsky are in Russian special stores classified as "top secret".

“I knew Comrade Kotovsky as an exemplary party member, an experienced military organizer and a skilled commander.

I remember him especially well on the Polish front in 1920, when Comrade Budyonny was breaking through to Zhitomir in the rear of the Polish army, and Kotovsky led his cavalry brigade on desperately bold raids on the Kiev army of the Poles. He was a storm of the White Poles, for he knew how to “crush” them like no one else, as the Red Army soldiers used to say then.

The bravest among our modest commanders and the most modest among the brave - this is how I remember Comrade Kotovsky. Eternal memory and glory to him. — I. Stalin

From me:

I draw your attention to the fact that the Internet space is packed to capacity with a huge number of fakes about the life and death of G.I. Kotovsky. You see how they throw mud at everyone prominent people who took an active part in the creation of the first people's state in the history of mankind. You see how the internal and external enemy pours a tub of psychological dirt on the creator of the USSR V.I. Lenin and Generalissimo I.V. Stalin.

Enemies of the USSR are still afraid of the memory of these great people. G.I. Kotovsky is one of those people. He is one of the outstanding commanders of the Red Army during the Civil War and intervention. He raised a free but hungry people to fight against the interventionists, white bandits and led them to victory.

For those who are interested in fate outstanding military leader The Red Army during the Civil War and intervention I offer for viewing x / f "Kotovsky" 1942 release who, in my opinion, can be trusted. Until 1953, feature films about heroes were made in the USSR, documented adhering to their biography.

Kotovsky 1942:

135 years have passed since the birth of the red commander Grigory Kotovsky

No matter how they called Grigory Kotovsky: Bessarabian Robin Hood, Ataman of hell, red commander. He was feared, loved and mythologized. After his death in 1925, the body was embalmed. But if almost everyone knows about the Moscow mausoleum of Vladimir Lenin, as well as about the tomb of the outstanding surgeon Nikolai Pirogov on the outskirts of Vinnitsa, then few have heard of the mausoleum of Grigory Kotovsky. It is located in the Odessa region, in the former Kotovsk (in the old way - Birzula, and in a completely new way, since May 12 of this year - Podolsk).

The real age of Grigory Kotovsky became known only after his death, since he constantly distorted his biography. Starting from origin - "from the nobility", ending with a non-existent nationality - "Bessarabian". Kotovsky was born in 1881 in the town of Gancheshty, Chisinau district, in the family of a distillery mechanic (owned by the well-born Bessarabian prince Manuk-Bey). His father Ivan Nikolaevich and mother Akulina Romanovna raised six children.

Having written a year before his death his own "short revolutionary biography", Kotovsky recalled that " was a weak boy, nervous and impressionable. Suffering from childhood fears, often at night, breaking out of bed, he ran to his mother, pale and frightened, and lay down with her. Fell off a roof at the age of five and has been a stutterer ever since. IN early years lost his mother… Since then, Grisha suffered from epilepsy, mental disorders, and fears. The care of the boy's upbringing was taken over by his godmother Sophia Schall. And after the death of his father, his godfather, the landowner Manuk-Bey, also took care of his upbringing. With their help, the orphan entered the Chisinau real school. Once unattended, Grigory skipped classes and behaved as hooligans, for which he was expelled from the school three months later. The godfather placed the ward in an agricultural school (Kotovsky graduated from it in 1900), again paying the entire pension. The main sciences are agronomy and the German language.

The teenager's passion was sports and reading. He imagined himself either as the famous robber of Sherwood Forest, Robin Hood, or as a pirate with a black beard, or as Tarzan. He began to engage in barbell and wrestling and very quickly became the strongest among his peers. He showed an iron character and a tendency to subordinate everyone to his will. He was respected and feared. " Gregory,- recalled the sister of Kotovsky Sofia, - beat anyone who dared to mock his stuttering."

To get a diploma from the school, he had to go through a six-month practice. In the estate of the landowner Skopovsky, Kotovsky became an assistant manager. Fluent in Russian, Moldavian, Jewish, German the handsome intern liked the young wife of the owner, and soon they began to secretly meet. Upon learning of this, the deceived Skopovsky, of course, expelled the "young impudent man."

Later, Kotovsky more than once recalled how he acted as a “trainee in agriculture” in the economy of the landowner Cantacuzino, where “ peasants worked 20 hours a day". Here he repeated his "feat" - he seduced the owner's wife. The landowner ordered to beat the "intern" to a pulp, undress and throw him naked from the estate. So no one humiliated Kotovsky. After a while, he took revenge on the offender: he killed him, burned the estate and fled ...

Hiding in the forests, he put together a gang of 12 people, which soon caused panic throughout Bessarabia. Newspapers in the south of what was then Russia wrote about Kotovsky in the same way that Pushkin wrote about Dubrovsky: "The robberies, one more remarkable than the other, followed one after the other." The landowners abandoned their estates in fear, moving to Chisinau.

Once, as archival materials testify, the police drove the peasants arrested for unrest to the Chisinau prison, but in the forest the Kotovites suddenly attacked the detachment, the peasants were released, none of the guards were touched, only in the book of the senior escort there was an entry: “Grigory Kotovsky released the prisoners.”

There was a case: a village burned down near Chisinau. A few days later, a stately brunette with a sharp chin, elegantly dressed in a fur coat with a beaver collar, drove up to the entrance of the house of a large local usurer in a phaeton. The arrived gentleman was received in the waiting room by the daughter of the usurer: "Daddy is not at home." "Maybe you'll let me wait?" - "Please". In the living room, Kotovsky charmed the young lady with his witty conversation and fine manners. And when the father appeared on the threshold, the young man introduced himself: "Kotovsky." The owners are hysterical, begging not to kill. But Kotovsky reassures his daughter and explains to the usurer that it is necessary to help the victims of the fire: "I think you will not refuse to immediately give me a thousand rubles to transfer to them." A thousand rubles was handed to him. Leaving, he left in the young lady's album, full of provincial poems, an entry: “Both the daughter and the father made a very nice impression. Kotovsky.

Kotovsky acted with such risk that it seemed that he was about to be captured. Where there! The landowner Negrush boasted among his acquaintances in Chisinau that he was not afraid of Kotovsky: he had a bell built into the floor of his office, and the wire was stretched to the neighboring police station. Kotovsky appeared to Negrush in broad daylight, ordered jokingly: “Feet up!” and demanded money.

Dexterity, strength, animal instinct were combined in Kotovsky with great courage. The “robber nobleman” was never a bandit out of self-interest. In February 1906, Kotovsky was arrested. At the trial, he held himself proudly, called himself Robin Hood and said that he acted "in his own justice." Sentence - 12 years hard labor. In the cell of the Chisinau prison, women actively visited him. One of the admirers secretly brought opium cigarettes, a pistol, a hacksaw hidden in the bread, and a thin silk rope. Kotovsky gave the cigarettes to the guards, sawed through the grate one night and escaped. The police reports cited a "portrait of a criminal." It was pointed out that Kotovsky is left-handed and usually, having two pistols, begins to shoot with his left hand. A distinctive feature is tattooed eyelids (points in the form of a figure eight). This, according to the researchers, testified to his belonging to the highest hierarchy of the gangster world. Already being a red commander, Kotovsky wanted to get rid of these tattoos, but it didn’t work out ...

Soon he was arrested again, sent by stage to the north of Russia. There Grigory, together with other prisoners, is building the Amur railway and works at the Nerchinsk mines. In 1913, having killed two guards, he flees. Two years later, 32-year-old Kotovsky appears in Odessa and becomes a threat to the criminal capital Russian Empire. Gregory is being searched for in safe houses, and he lives in front of everyone in the best hotel in the city "Bessarabia". Before each raid, he carefully makes up and each time goes to work in a new image. He even visits theaters, sticking on his beard and mustache.

During one of the raids in 1916, Kotovsky, nicknamed the Ataman of Hell, is ambushed. The military district court sentenced him to death by hanging. Goes First World War. All death sentences must be approved by the commander of the southwestern front, General Brusilov. Kotovsky writes a petition for clemency, but he does not address it to the general, but to his wife, Mrs. Brusilova. She reads this message of repentance, and she feels sorry for the handsome bandit. As a result, Brusilov replaced the execution with life imprisonment.

* Grigory Ivanovich on vacation with his son Grisha. 1923

When the Civil War began, Kotovsky asked to be sent to the front. Surprisingly, the “life-sentenced” is released into the wild. As evidenced archival documents, Grigory organized an auction at the Odessa Opera House, putting his "revolutionary shackles" on it. During this action, the young Leonid Utyosov represented the hero with a reprise: “Kotovsky appeared, the bourgeois was alarmed!”

The power in Odessa was constantly changing, the city became either “red” or “white”. Kotovsky organized a sabotage squad, which, having connections with the Bolshevik, anarchist and Left SR underground, actually obeyed no one and acted at its own peril and risk. Together with the people of Mishka Yaponchik, the Kotovites smashed competitors, "bombed" stores, warehouses, cash desks, attacked the local prison and freed the prisoners. Their joint action was the uprising of revolutionaries and bandits in Moldavanka at the end of March 1919.

- Literally a day or two before the arrival Soviet power together with several henchmen, Kotovsky made a daring sortie - he took out on three trucks from the local branch of the State Bank all the cash and jewelry available there,- the historian, academician, author of the books "Gangster Odessa" Victor Feitelberg-Blank told the author of these lines. — Kotovsky then handed over the stolen gold and diamonds (at our exchange rate to about $100 million) to the party, which they credited him with. Note that the fate of this wealth is unknown. Until now, in the south of the Odessa region, in the Kherson region, as well as in Bessarabia, there are enthusiasts seeking to find the treasures of Kotovsky.

Since the spring of 1919, Grigory Ivanovich has been in command of the Tiraspol detachment, fighting on the side of the Bolsheviks. In July, he became the commander of one of the brigades of the 45th Infantry Division, and participated in the defense of Petrograd. Since January 1920, he was a brigade commander, fighting in the Caucasus, Ukraine and on the Soviet-Polish front. In April of the same year, he joined the CPSU (b).

Kotovsky was recognized as the "Best Red Commander" (his units did not lose a single battle), became a holder of three orders of the Red Banner of War and the owner of an honorary revolutionary weapon - an inlaid cavalry saber.

On October 31, 1922, at the suggestion of a friend, Mikhail Frunze, Kotovsky was appointed commander of the Second Cavalry Corps. Here, the new corps commander openly went into business, creating a military-consumer cooperation with subsidiary farms and workshops at the corps. The scope of Kotovsky as a businessman is evidenced by the fact that the sugar factories of the horse corps processed 300 thousand pounds of sweet product annually. The divisions had state farms, breweries, butcher shops. Hops grown on the fields of the auxiliary state farm were bought by Czech merchants for 1.5 million gold rubles a year. Later, Kotovsky organized the Bessarabian agricultural commune in the Vinnitsa region.

He dreamed of "gathering" all the lands of Bessarabia, even those that belonged to Romania. But he was categorically forbidden to aggravate the political situation. In the summer of 1925, an angry 44-year-old commander leaves his corps and, together with his pregnant wife and son, goes on vacation to the village of Chabanka near Odessa.

There Kotovsky receives a telegram from Moscow: People's Commissar Frunze appoints him his deputy. On the eve of his departure for Moscow, on the evening of August 5, he is invited to a celebration. Returning at two o'clock in the morning, Grigory Ivanovich meets his acquaintance Seider Meyer near the house where he stayed with his family. He held out his hand, and in response a shot rang out.

The killer was detained, tried, but not shot, but sentenced to ten years in prison, of which he served only three, after which he was released "for exemplary behavior." (True, Meyer did not live long in freedom: the Kotovites settled scores with him.)

Modern historians claim that it was this murder that became the first custom-made in the USSR. In the mid-1920s, Stalin began to consolidate his personal power. He managed to remove from the leadership of the main competitor - Leon Trotsky. But Frunze and Kotovsky still remained among the most independent commanders. Two months after the death of Kotovsky, Frunze died - on the operating table, under unclear circumstances.

The day after the assassination of Kotovsky, on August 7, 1925, a group of specialists headed by Professor Vladimir Vorobyov was sent from Moscow to Odessa to embalm Kotovsky's body (Vorobiev embalmed Lenin's body). At the same time, in the center of Birzula, in the city park, a mausoleum was erected by decision of the government.

* The wife of commander Kotovsky Olga at the coffin of her husband

In 1941, the Nazis blew up the tomb, smashed the sarcophagus, and the embalmed body (locals claim that a Romanian officer cut off Kotovsky's head with a saber) was thrown into a trench along with the corpses of the executed local residents. On the same night, the workers of the railway depot dug out the remains of Kotovsky and hid them in the attic, after dousing them with alcohol, which was scarce in wartime.

After the liberation of the city, a monument-crypt was equipped in the surviving underground part of the mausoleum. The remains were placed in a sealed zinc coffin with a small window. At the end of 1965 there was Grand opening a new mausoleum, above which is a monument of granite and marble with a bust of a red commander.

Disputes are still ongoing - whether the real Kotovsky lies in the mausoleum. There is an opinion that his body was still lost in 1941. You can find out the truth if you conduct a DNA examination. However, none of Kotovsky's heirs demanded to do so. Excursions to the museum-crypt are not carried out due to its emergency condition. In the city, which until recently was called Kotovsk, they do not know what to do with the mausoleum. As Anatoly Korchevoi, the first deputy mayor, explained, the crypt officially does not fall under the law on decommunization. Therefore, local authorities turned to the Ministry of Culture for recommendations and clarifications on what to do with this relic.

Grigory Kotovsky Soviet military and political figure, commander of the Red Army June 24, 1881 - August 6, 1925.

Grigory Ivanovich Kotovsky was born on (12) June 24, 1881 in the family of a factory mechanic in the village of Ganceshty (now the city of Hincheshty in Moldova). Gregory's father was a Russified Orthodox Pole from an old Polish aristocratic family, who owned an estate in the Kamenetz-Podolsk province, his mother was Russian.

Already in childhood, the biography of Kotovsky differed from his peers. He grew up as a strong, athletic boy. And when he lost his mother (at 2 years old) and father (at 16), he began to be brought up by his godmother Sophia Schall.
Gregory entered the Kukuruzensky Agricultural School, where he became close to the Socialist-Revolutionaries. After graduating from college, he worked in various estates of the province as an assistant manager. But he did not stay anywhere for a long time because of his tough temper, addiction to theft. So Kotovsky Grigory in his biography eventually became a famous person in gangster circles. In 1905 he was arrested for not showing up to fulfill his military duties (in 1904 the Russo-Japanese War began). Kotovsky was sent to the front, but he deserted, and besides that, he gathered and began to lead a detachment that robbed the landowners, their estates, and distributed everything received to the poor. For a long time, Gregory could not be caught, the peasants supported his detachment, hiding from the gendarmes.

In 1906, Grigory Ivanovich Kotovsky, in his biography, was nevertheless arrested. He escaped from prison, and six months later he was detained again. This time he was sentenced to 12 years of hard labor. He stayed in Siberia, then in the Orlovsky Central, Nerchinsk (from where he fled in 1913). Kotovsky returned to Bessarabia, where he soon again led his group. Over time, the scope of the group's activities increased: since 1915, raids on banks, offices, and treasuries began. After the robbery of the Bendery Treasury, he was arrested and sentenced to death. But the cunning and resourcefulness of Kotovsky again allowed him to escape punishment. He was placed in the Odessa prison, from where he was released in 1917.

During the Civil War, Grigory Kotovsky participated in the defense of Petrograd, commanded a cavalry brigade, fighting in Bessarabia, Ukraine and the Soviet-Polish front. In 1921, Kotovsky commanded cavalry units, including suppressing uprisings of the Makhnovists, Antonovites and Petliurists.

In the summer of 1925, People's Commissar Frunze appointed Kotovsky as his deputy. Grigory Ivanovich did not have time to take office - he was shot dead by Meyer Seider on August 6, 1925, while on vacation at the Chebanka state farm.

The legendary commander was given a magnificent funeral, comparable in pomposity to the funeral of V.I. Lenin. A city in the Odessa region of Ukraine was named after Kotovsky, where Grigory Ivanovich was buried in a specially built mausoleum.

Documents in the case of the murder of Kotovsky are in Russian special stores under the heading "top secret". The killer was sentenced to 10 years in prison, but two years later he was released "For exemplary behavior." In the autumn of 1930, Seider was killed by three veterans of Kotovsky's division. There is reason to believe that all the competent authorities knew about the impending murder of Zayder, but the killers were not convicted.

Death of Kotovsky

There is a strange pattern in Kotovsky's death. People who emerged unscathed from battles, from a cloud of dangers and adventures, most often find death at the hands of a sent killer.
Yes, Kotovsky, popular among the people, was difficult to liquidate officially - declaring, for example, an enemy, a traitor, etc. In ten years, the obedient Soviet people will meekly believe even in such miracles, but then, in 1925, this had not yet come into use. Therefore, those in power in that world had to act differently.

Today there is no doubt that Grigory Ivanovich was destroyed by order "from above" and that the death of Kotovsky is directly related to his appointment to the post of Deputy Commissar of the USSR.

In order not to deviate too much, we will only remind readers of the main thing: Frunze was forced to undergo an operation for a stomach ulcer, which by that time had practically healed. During this operation, Frunze was given an increased dose of chloroform (this is with a obviously sick heart!) From which he died right on the operating table.

In this chain of logical constructions, the little known fact that Frunze, appointed in January 1925 as chairman of the Revolutionary Military Council and People's Commissar of the USSR, closely followed the progress of the investigation into the murder of Kotovsky. Shocked ridiculous death commander of one of the largest and important connections The Red Army, who recently became a member of the Revolutionary Military Council of the USSR and was invited to the post of Deputy People's Commissar of the Navy, Frunze, apparently, suspected something was wrong, requesting all the documents on the Zaider case to Moscow. Who knows how the investigation would have turned, what threads it would have pulled, and what names would have been named if Frunze himself had not died on the operating table in October of that year? After his death, Zayder's documents were returned back to Odessa, and no one could stop the local investigators from building a legend about Kotovsky's death that someone needed.

In memory of Grigory Ivanovich, the cities were renamed. His name was given to plants and factories, collective farms and state farms, steamships, and a cavalry division. The Central Council of the Society of Bessarabians organized a fundraiser for the creation of the Winged Kotovsky air squadron, but they managed to raise money for only one aircraft: “Let the winged Kotovsky be no less terrible for our enemies than the living Kotovsky on his horse.”

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In the Red Army, Grigory Ivanovich Kotovsky was one of the so-called "five commanders", being the right hand of Frunze. Such a serious career take-off, according to the wife of Kotovsky and his son, became the subject of envy.

- "Grigory Ivanovich was afraid!" - such a statement was made by relatives of the eminent commander at the funeral on August 12th. The son of Kotovsky, Grigory Grigoryevich, subsequently even claimed that the death of his father was the first political murder in the Land of Soviets. The authorities have conducted more than one investigation and the conclusions about the “ordered” nature of the crime have been ruled out.

Robber, romantic, revolutionary.

Grigory Ivanovich became a victim of his adjutant Meer Seider. Majorchik - that's how the killer was also called - arrived at the Chabanka collective farm near Odessa. In the house of the Kotovskys there were laid tables - the next day the divisional commander, having received a promotion, had to leave for a new duty station.

Meer Seider went out with Grigory Ivanovich on the porch to talk .... After a while, a shot was heard. Zayder's cap with traces of Kotovsky's blood was found at the crime scene. She and the body of the divisional commander were sent for forensic examination. There was a legend that after the murder, Majorik ran into the house and, falling to his knees, began to ask the wife of Grigory Ivanovich for forgiveness. The widow, perhaps, forgave Zayder, only the “Kotovites” could not do this.

In the 27th year, Majorik, who was amnestied and released, was found on the railway tracks with a severed head.

The embalmed body of Kotovsky was taken to the city of Birzulu, where a special mausoleum was built. During the occupation, it was destroyed. The invaders removed the remains of the divisional commander and threw them into a common grave. but the body did not lie there for long. The locals dug it up and kept it in a sack for three years, until the liberation of Birzula.

Now on the site of the former mausoleum stands a new one. In it rests a "man-legend".

Grigory Kotovsky: from criminals to heroes

In Odessa, one of the most populated areas of the city still bears the name of Kotovsky. And it is symbolic, in my opinion, that this area has acquired the glory of a bandit: the name obliges ... Still, after all, the "fiery revolutionary" was a bandit for fifteen years and only a revolutionary for seven and a half years! There is someone to learn from and someone to look up to ...

Was born Grigory Ivanovich Kotovsky July 12, 1881 in the town of Gancheshty, Chisinau district of Bessarabia, in the family of a distillery mechanic (this plant belonged to the noble Bessarabian prince Manuk-Bey). Father Ivan Nikolaevich and mother Akulina Romanovna raised six children.

Interestingly, Kotovsky constantly falsifies his biography. Either he indicates other years of birth - mainly 1887 or 1888, then he claims that he comes from "nobles" (in Soviet encyclopedias we read - "from the workers"). An extreme egocentrist and "narcissus", he could not come to terms with the fact that his father came from "the burghers of the city of Balta", and not from the "counts". Even after the revolution, when belonging to the nobility only harmed people, Kotovsky indicated in the questionnaires that he came from the nobility, and his grandfather was "a colonel in the Kamenetz-Podolsk province." The fact of "rejuvenation" of Grigory Ivanovich for 6–7 years, that is, that Kotovsky was born in 1881, became known only after his death in 1925.

Even in the questionnaires for joining the Communist Party, Kotovsky indicated an imaginary age, hiding the secrets of his youth. And he called a non-existent nationality - "Bessarabian", although he was connected with Bessarabia only by his place of birth. Neither the father nor the mother of Kotovsky considered themselves either Moldavians or Bessarabians. His father was obviously a Russified Orthodox Pole, possibly a Ukrainian, his mother was Russian.

Lifting the veil over his little-known childhood, Kotovsky recalled that “he was a weak boy, nervous and impressionable. Suffering from childhood fears, often at night, breaking out of bed, he ran to his mother (Akulina Romanovna), pale and frightened, and lay down with her. Fell off a roof at the age of five and has been a stutterer ever since. In his early years, he lost his mother ... ”Since then, Kotovsky suffered from epilepsy, mental disorders, and fears.

Grisha's godmother Sophia Schall, a young widow, daughter of an engineer, a Belgian citizen who worked in the neighborhood and was a friend of the boy's father, and godfather - the landowner Manuk-Bey, took care of Grisha's upbringing.

In 1895, Grisha's father died of consumption. Kotovsky writes that his father died "in poverty". This is another lie. The Kotovsky family lived in abundance, had their own house. Under the patronage and at the expense of the owner of the "Ganchesty" estate, Grigory Ivanovich Manuk-Bey, Grisha's godfather, the orphan entered the Chisinau real school in 1895, and one of the Kotovsky sisters was also granted an allowance for teaching.

During the one-year illness of Ivan Kotovsky, Manuk-Bey paid the patient a salary and paid for the visits of doctors. Grisha, being unattended, in such a large city as Chisinau, began to skip classes, hooligans, and after three months was expelled from the school.

A fellow student of Kotovsky, Chemansky, who became a policeman, recalls that the guys called Grisha "Birch" - that's what they call brave, pugnacious guys with the habits of leaders in the villages. After being expelled from the real school, Manuk-Bey arranges him for the Kokorozen Agricultural School and pays the entire pension.