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The first thing that allows us to doubt the official version is that Furmanov was not an eyewitness to the death of Vasily Ivanovich. When writing the novel, he used the memories of the few surviving participants in the battle in Lbischensk. At first glance, this is a reliable source. But to understand the picture, let’s imagine that battle: blood, a merciless enemy, mutilated corpses, retreat, confusion. You never know who drowned in the river. Moreover, not a single surviving soldier with whom the author spoke confirmed that he saw the corpse of the division commander, then how can one say that he died? It seems that Furmanov, deliberately mythologizing Chapaev’s personality when writing the novel, created generalized image heroic red commander. A heroic death for the hero.

Vasily Ivanovich Chapaev

Another version was first heard from the lips of Chapaev’s eldest son, Alexander. According to him, two Hungarian Red Army soldiers put the wounded Chapaev on a raft made from half a gate and transported him across the Urals. But on the other side it turned out that Chapaev died from loss of blood. The Hungarians buried his body with their hands in the coastal sand and covered it with reeds so that the Cossacks would not find the grave. This story was subsequently confirmed by one of the participants in the events, who in 1962 sent a letter from Hungary to Chapaev’s daughter with detailed description death of the division commander.

D. Furmanov, V. Chapaev (right)

But why were they silent for so long? Maybe they were forbidden to disclose the details of those events. But some are sure that the letter itself is not a cry from the distant past, designed to shed light on the death of a hero, but a cynical KGB operation, the goals of which are unclear.

One of the legends appeared later. On February 9, 1926, sensational news was published in the Krasnoyarsk Worker newspaper: “... the Kolchak officer Trofimov-Mirsky was arrested, who killed in 1919 a prisoner who was captured and used legendary fame division chief Chapaev. Mirsky served as an accountant in an artel of disabled people in Penza.”

The most mysterious version says that Chapaev still managed to swim across the Urals. And, having released the fighters, he went to Frunze in Samara. But along the way he became very ill and spent some time in some unknown village. After recovery, Vasily Ivanovich finally made it to Samara... where he was arrested. The fact is that after the night battle in Lbischensk, Chapaev was listed as dead. He has already been declared a hero, who steadfastly fought for the ideas of the party and died for them. His example shook the country and raised morale. The news that Chapaev was alive meant only one thing - folk hero abandoned his soldiers and gave in to flight. The top management could not allow this!

Vasily Chapaev on an IZOGIZ postcard

This version is also based on the memories and conjectures of eyewitnesses. Vasily Sityaev assured that in 1941 he met with a soldier of the 25th Infantry Division, who showed him the personal belongings of the division commander and told him that after crossing to the opposite bank of the Urals, the division commander went to Frunze.

Documentary"Chapaev"

It is difficult to say which of these versions of Chapaev’s death is the most truthful. Some historians are generally inclined to believe that historical role the division commander in the Civil War is extremely small. And all the myths and legends that glorified Chapaev were created by the party for its own purposes. But, judging by the reviews of those who knew Vasily Ivanovich closely, it was real man and a soldier. He was not only an excellent warrior, but also a sensitive commander to his subordinates. He took care of them and did not hesitate, in the words of Dmitry Furmanov, to “dance with the soldiers.” And we can definitely say that Vasily Chapaev was true to his ideals to the end. It deserves respect.

Vasily Ivanovich Chapaev is one of the most tragic and mysterious figures of the Civil War in Russia. This is connected with the mysterious death of the famous red commander. Discussions continue to this day regarding the circumstances surrounding the murder of the legendary division commander. The official Soviet version of the death of Vasily Chapaev states that the division commander, who, by the way, was only 32 years old at the time of his death, was killed in the Urals by White Cossacks from the combined detachment of the 2nd division of Colonel Sladkov and the 6th division of Colonel Borodin. Famous Soviet writer Dmitry Furmanov, who at one time served as political commissar of the “Chapaev” 25th Infantry Division, in his most famous book “Chapaev”, talked about how the division commander allegedly died in the waves of the Urals.

First, about the official version of Chapaev’s death. He died on September 5, 1919 on the Ural Front. Shortly before Chapaev’s death, the 25th Infantry Division, which was under his command, received an order from the commander of the Turkestan Front, Mikhail Frunze, about active operations on the left bank of the Urals - in order to prevent active interaction between the Ural Cossacks and the armed formations of the Kazakh Alash-Orda. The headquarters of the Chapaev division was at that time in county town Lbischensk. There were also governing bodies, including the tribunal and the revolutionary committee. The city was guarded by 600 people from the divisional school; in addition, there were unarmed and untrained mobilized peasants in the city. Under these conditions, the Ural Cossacks decided to abandon a frontal attack on the Red positions and instead carry out a raid on Lbischensk in order to immediately defeat the division headquarters. The combined group of Ural Cossacks, aimed at defeating the Chapaev headquarters and personally destroying Vasily Chapaev, was led by Colonel Nikolai Nikolaevich Borodin, commander of the 6th division of the Ural Separate Army.

Borodin's Cossacks were able to approach Lbischensk without being noticed by the Reds. They succeeded in this thanks to timely shelter in the reeds in the Kuzda-Gora tract. At 3 a.m. on September 5, the division began an attack on Lbischensk from the west and north. The 2nd division of Colonel Timofey Ippolitovich Sladkov moved from the south to Lbischensk. For the Reds, the situation was complicated by the fact that both divisions of the Ural Army were mostly staffed by Cossacks - natives of Lbischensk, who had excellent knowledge of the terrain and could successfully operate in the vicinity of the town. The surprise of the attack also played into the hands of the Ural Cossacks. The Red Army soldiers immediately began to surrender, only some units tried to resist, but to no avail.

Local residents - Ural Cossacks and Cossack women - also actively helped their fellow countrymen from the Borodino division. For example, the commissar of the 25th division Baturin, who tried to hide in a stove, was handed over to the Cossacks. The owner of the house where he lived reported where he had gotten into. Cossacks from Borodin's division massacred captured Red Army soldiers. At least 1,500 Red Army soldiers were killed, and another 800 Red Army soldiers remained in captivity. To capture the commander of the 25th division, Vasily Chapaev, Colonel Borodin formed a special platoon of the most trained Cossacks, and appointed the under-soldier Belonozhkin to command it. Belonozhkin’s people found the house where Chapaev lived and attacked him. However, the division commander managed to jump out the window and run to the river. Along the way, he collected the remnants of the Red Army - about a hundred people. The detachment had a machine gun and Chapaev organized the defense.

The official version says that it was during this retreat that Chapaev died. None of the Cossacks, however, could find his body, even despite the promised reward for “Chapay’s head.” What happened to the division commander? According to one version, he drowned in the Ural River. According to another, the wounded Chapaev was placed on a raft by two Hungarian Red Army soldiers and transported across the river. However, during the crossing, Chapaev died from loss of blood. The Hungarian Red Army soldiers buried him in the sand and covered the grave with reeds.

By the way, Colonel Nikolai Borodin himself also died in Lbischensk, and on the same day as Vasily Chapaev. When the colonel was driving down the street in a car, Red Army soldier Volkov, who was hiding in a haystack and served as a guard for the 30th air squadron, shot the commander of the 6th division in the back. The colonel's body was taken to the village of Kalyony in the Ural region, where he was buried with military honors. Posthumously, Nikolai Borodin was awarded the rank of major general, so in many publications he is referred to as “General Borodin,” although during the assault on Lbischensk he was still a colonel.

In fact, the death of a combat commander during the Civil War was not something extraordinary. However, in Soviet time a kind of cult of Vasily Chapaev was created, who was remembered and revered much more than many other prominent Red commanders. Who, for example, besides professional historians - specialists in the Civil War today, does the name of Vladimir Azin, the commander of the 28th Infantry Division, who was captured by the whites and was brutally killed (according to some sources, even torn alive, being tied to two trees or, according to another version, two horses)? But during the Civil War, Vladimir Azin was no less famous and successful commander than Chapaev.

First of all, let us remind you that during the Civil War or immediately after its end, he died whole line red commanders, the most charismatic and talented, who were very popular “among the people”, but were very skeptically perceived by the party leadership. Not only Chapaev, but also Vasily Kikvidze, Nikolai Shchors, Nestor Kalandarishvili and some other Red military leaders died under very strange circumstances. This gave rise to a fairly widespread version that the Bolsheviks themselves were behind their deaths, who were dissatisfied with the “deviation from the party course” of the listed military leaders. And Chapaev, and Kikvidze, and Kalandarishvili, and Shchors, and Kotovsky came from Socialist Revolutionary and anarchist circles, which were then perceived by the Bolsheviks as dangerous rivals in the struggle for leadership of the revolution. The Bolshevik leadership did not trust such popular commanders with the “wrong” past. They were associated by party leaders with “partisanship,” “anarchy,” and were perceived as people incapable of obeying and very dangerous. For example, Nestor Makhno was also a Red commander at one time, but then he again opposed the Bolsheviks and turned into one of the most dangerous opponents of the Reds in Novorossiya and Little Russia.

It is known that Chapaev had repeated conflicts with the commissars. Actually, due to conflicts, Dmitry Furmanov, by the way, himself a former anarchist, left the 25th division. The reasons for the conflict between the commander and the commissar lay not only in the “managerial” plane, but also in the sphere intimate relationships. Chapaev began to show too persistent signs of attention to Furmanov’s wife Anna, who complained to her husband, and he openly expressed his dissatisfaction with Chapaev and quarreled with the commander. An open conflict began, which led to Furmanov leaving his post as division commissar. In that situation, the command decided that Chapaev was a more valuable cadre as a division commander than Furmanov as a commissar.

It is interesting that after Chapaev’s death, it was Furmanov who wrote a book about the division commander, largely laying the foundation for the subsequent popularization of Chapaev as a hero of the Civil War. Quarrels with the division commander did not prevent his former commissar from maintaining respect for the figure of his commander. The book “Chapaev” became Furmanov’s truly successful work as a writer. She attracted the attention of all the young Soviet Union to the figure of the red commander, especially since in 1923 the memories of the Civil War were very fresh. It is possible that if not for Furmanov’s work, Chapaev’s name would have suffered the same fate as the names of other famous Red commanders of the Civil War - only professional historians and residents of his native places would have remembered him.

Chapaev was survived by three children - daughter Claudia (1912-1999), sons Arkady (1914-1939) and Alexander (1910-1985). After the death of their father, they remained with their grandfather, the father of Vasily Ivanovich, but he soon died too. The division commander's children ended up in orphanages. They were remembered only after Dmitry Furmanov’s book was published in 1923. After this event, the former commander of the Turkestan Front, Mikhail Vasilyevich Frunze, became interested in Chapaev’s children. Alexander Vasilyevich Chapaev graduated from technical school and worked as an agronomist in the Orenburg region, but after military service in the army he entered the military school. By the time the Second World War began, he served with the rank of captain at the Podolsk Artillery School, went to the front, after the war he served in artillery in command positions and rose to the rank of major general, deputy commander of the artillery of the Moscow Military District. Arkady Chapaev became a military pilot, commanded an aviation unit, but died in 1939 as a result of an airplane accident. Klavdia Vasilievna graduated from the Moscow Food Institute, then worked in party work.

Meanwhile, another version, contradicting the official one, appeared about the circumstances of the death of Vasily Chapaev, or more precisely, about the motives for revealing the location of the red commander. It was voiced back in 1999 to the correspondent of “Arguments and Facts” by Vasily Ivanovich’s daughter, 87-year-old Klavdiya Vasilievna, still alive at that time. She believed that the culprit in the death of her father, the famous division commander, was her stepmother, the second wife of Vasily Ivanovich Pelageya Kameshkertsev. Allegedly, she cheated on Vasily Ivanovich with the head of the artillery warehouse, Georgy Zhivolozhinov, but was exposed by Chapaev. The division commander staged a harsh showdown with his wife, and Pelageya, out of revenge, brought the whites to the house where the red commander was hiding. At the same time, she acted out of momentary emotions, without calculating the consequences of her action and, most likely, simply without thinking with her head.

Of course, such a version could not be voiced in Soviet times. After all, she would have cast doubt on the created image of the hero, showing that in his family there were passions that were not alien to “mere mortals,” such as adultery and subsequent female revenge. At the same time, Klavdia Vasilievna did not question the version that Chapaev was transported across the Urals by Hungarian Red Army soldiers, who buried his body in the sand. This version, by the way, does not in any way contradict the fact that Pelageya could get out of Chapaev’s house and “surrender” his location to the whites. By the way, Pelageya Kameshkertseva herself was already placed in a psychiatric hospital in Soviet times, and therefore even if her guilt in the death of Chapaev was revealed, they would not hold her accountable. The fate of Georgy Zhivolozhinov was also tragic - he was placed in a camp for agitating the kulaks against Soviet power.

Meanwhile, the version about the wife being a cheater seems unlikely to many. Firstly, it is unlikely that the whites would talk to the wife of the red commander, much less believe her. Secondly, it is unlikely that Pelageya herself would have dared to go to the whites, as she might have feared reprisals. It’s another matter if she was a “link” in the chain of betrayal of the division commander, which could be organized by his haters from the party apparatus. At that time, a rather tough confrontation was planned between the “commissar” part of the Red Army, oriented towards Leon Trotsky, and the “commander” part, to which the entire glorious galaxy of red commanders who came from the people belonged. And it was Trotsky’s supporters who could, if not directly kill Chapaev with a shot in the back while crossing the Urals, then “substitute” him for the Cossacks’ bullets.

The saddest thing is that Vasily Ivanovich Chapaev, a truly military and honored commander, no matter how you treat him, in late Soviet and post-Soviet times completely undeservedly became a character completely stupid jokes, humorous stories and even TV shows. Their authors mocked tragic death this person, over the circumstances of his life. Chapaev was portrayed as a narrow-minded person, although it is unlikely that such a character as the hero of jokes could not only lead a division of the Red Army, but also tsarist time rise to the rank of sergeant major. Although the sergeant major is not an officer, only the best of the soldiers who are capable of command, the most intelligent, and in war time- and brave. By the way, Vasily Chapaev received the ranks of junior non-commissioned officer, senior non-commissioned officer, and sergeant major during the First World War. In addition, he was wounded more than once - near Tsumanya his arm tendon was broken, then, returning to duty, he was wounded again - by shrapnel in his left leg.

The nobility of Chapaev as a person is fully demonstrated by the story of his life with Pelageya Kameshkertseva. When Chapaev's friend Pyotr Kameshkertsev was killed in battle during the First World War, Chapaev gave his word to take care of his children. He came to Peter's widow Pelageya and told her that she alone could not take care of Peter's daughters, so he would take them to the house of his father, Ivan Chapaev. But Pelageya decided to get along with Vasily Ivanovich herself, so as not to be separated from the children.

Sergeant Major Vasily Ivanovich Chapaev graduated from the First world war, having survived battles with the Germans. And the Civil War brought him death - at the hands of his fellow countrymen, and maybe those whom he considered comrades-in-arms.

How did Chapaev die?

How did Chapaev die?

Vasily Ivanovich Chapaev- one of the most tragic and mysterious figures of the Civil War in Russia. This is connected with the mysterious death of the famous red commander. Discussions continue to this day regarding the circumstances surrounding the murder of the legendary division commander.

The official Soviet version of the death of Vasily Chapaev states that the division commander, who, by the way, was only 32 years old at the time of his death, was killed in the Urals by White Cossacks from the combined detachment of the 2nd division of Colonel Sladkov and the 6th division of Colonel Borodin. The famous Soviet writer Dmitry Furmanov, who at one time served as political commissar of the “Chapaev” 25th Infantry Division, in his most famous book “Chapaev” talked about how the division commander allegedly died in the waves of the Urals.

First, about the official version of Chapaev’s death. He died on September 5, 1919 on the Ural Front. Shortly before Chapaev’s death, the 25th Infantry Division, which was under his command, received an order from the commander of the Turkestan Front, Mikhail Frunze, about active operations on the left bank of the Urals - in order to prevent active interaction between the Ural Cossacks and the armed formations of the Kazakh Alash-Orda.

The headquarters of the Chapaev division was at that time in the district town of Lbischensk. There were also governing bodies, including the tribunal and the revolutionary committee. The city was guarded by 600 people from the divisional school; in addition, there were unarmed and untrained mobilized peasants in the city. Under these conditions, the Ural Cossacks decided to abandon a frontal attack on the Red positions and instead carry out a raid on Lbischensk in order to immediately defeat the division headquarters.

The combined group of Ural Cossacks, aimed at defeating the Chapaev headquarters and personally destroying Vasily Chapaev, was led by Colonel Nikolai Nikolaevich Borodin, commander of the 6th division of the Ural Separate Army. Borodin's Cossacks were able to approach Lbischensk without being noticed by the Reds. They succeeded in this thanks to timely shelter in the reeds in the Kuzda-Gora tract.

At 3 a.m. on September 5, the division began an attack on Lbischensk from the west and north. The 2nd division of Colonel Timofey Ippolitovich Sladkov moved from the south to Lbischensk. For the Reds, the situation was complicated by the fact that both divisions of the Ural Army were mostly staffed by Cossacks - natives of Lbischensk, who had excellent knowledge of the terrain and could successfully operate in the vicinity of the town. The surprise of the attack also played into the hands of the Ural Cossacks. The Red Army soldiers immediately began to surrender, only some units tried to resist, but to no avail.

Local residents - Ural Cossacks and Cossack women - also actively helped their fellow countrymen from the Borodino division. For example, the commissar of the 25th division Baturin, who tried to hide in a stove, was handed over to the Cossacks. The owner of the house where he lived reported where he had gotten into. Cossacks from Borodin's division massacred captured Red Army soldiers. At least 1,500 Red Army soldiers were killed, and another 800 Red Army soldiers remained in captivity. To capture the commander of the 25th division, Vasily Chapaev, Colonel Borodin formed a special platoon of the most trained Cossacks, and appointed the under-soldier Belonozhkin to command it.

Belonozhkin’s people found the house where Chapaev lived and attacked him. However, the division commander managed to jump out the window and run to the river. Along the way, he collected the remnants of the Red Army - about a hundred people. The detachment had a machine gun and Chapaev organized the defense. The official version says that it was during this retreat that Chapaev died. None of the Cossacks, however, could find his body, even despite the promised reward for “Chapay’s head.” What happened to the division commander? According to one version, he drowned in the Ural River. According to another, the wounded Chapaev was placed on a raft by two Hungarian Red Army soldiers and transported across the river.

However, during the crossing, Chapaev died from loss of blood. The Hungarian Red Army soldiers buried him in the sand and covered the grave with reeds. By the way, Colonel Nikolai Borodin himself also died in Lbischensk, and on the same day as Vasily Chapaev. When the colonel was driving down the street in a car, Red Army soldier Volkov, who was hiding in a haystack and served as a guard for the 30th air squadron, shot the commander of the 6th division in the back.

The colonel's body was taken to the village of Kalyony in the Ural region, where he was buried with military honors. Posthumously, Nikolai Borodin was awarded the rank of major general, so in many publications he is referred to as “General Borodin,” although during the assault on Lbischensk he was still a colonel. In fact, the death of a combat commander during the Civil War was not something extraordinary. However, in Soviet times, a kind of cult of Vasily Chapaev was created, who was remembered and revered much more than many other prominent Red commanders.

Who, for example, besides professional historians - specialists in the history of the Civil War today, does the name of Vladimir Azin, the commander of the 28th Infantry Division, who was captured by the whites and was brutally killed (according to some sources, even torn alive, being tied to two trees or, according to another version, to two horses)? But during the Civil War, Vladimir Azin was no less famous and successful commander than Chapaev.

First of all, let us recall that during the Civil War or immediately after its end, a number of Red commanders died, the most charismatic and talented, who were very popular “among the people,” but were very skeptically perceived by the party leadership. Not only Chapaev, but also Vasily Kikvidze, Nikolai Shchors, Nestor Kalandarishvili and some other Red military leaders died under very strange circumstances. This gave rise to a fairly widespread version that the Bolsheviks themselves were behind their deaths, who were dissatisfied with the “deviation from the party course” of the listed military leaders.

And Chapaev, and Kikvidze, and Kalandarishvili, and Shchors, and Kotovsky came from Socialist Revolutionary and anarchist circles, which were then perceived by the Bolsheviks as dangerous rivals in the struggle for leadership of the revolution. The Bolshevik leadership did not trust such popular commanders with the “wrong” past. They were associated by party leaders with “partisanship,” “anarchy,” and were perceived as people incapable of obeying and very dangerous.

For example, Nestor Makhno was also a Red commander at one time, but then he again opposed the Bolsheviks and turned into one of the most dangerous opponents of the Reds in Novorossiya and Little Russia. It is known that Chapaev had repeated conflicts with the commissars. Actually, due to conflicts, Dmitry Furmanov, by the way, himself a former anarchist, left the 25th division. The reasons for the conflict between the commander and the commissar lay not only in the “managerial” plane, but also in the sphere of intimate relationships.

Chapaev began to show too persistent signs of attention to Furmanov’s wife Anna, who complained to her husband, and he openly expressed his dissatisfaction with Chapaev and quarreled with the commander. An open conflict began, which led to Furmanov leaving his post as division commissar. In that situation, the command decided that Chapaev was a more valuable cadre as a division commander than Furmanov as a commissar. It is interesting that after Chapaev’s death, it was Furmanov who wrote a book about the division commander, largely laying the foundation for the subsequent popularization of Chapaev as a hero of the Civil War.

Quarrels with the division commander did not prevent his former commissar from maintaining respect for the figure of his commander. The book “Chapaev” became Furmanov’s truly successful work as a writer. She attracted the attention of the entire young Soviet Union to the figure of the Red commander, especially since in 1923 the memories of the Civil War were very fresh. It is possible that if not for Furmanov’s work, Chapaev’s name would have suffered the same fate as the names of other famous Red commanders of the Civil War - only professional historians and residents of his native places would have remembered him. Chapaev was survived by three children - daughter Claudia (1912-1999), sons Arkady (1914-1939) and Alexander (1910-1985). After the death of their father, they remained with their grandfather, the father of Vasily Ivanovich, but he soon died too. The division commander's children ended up in orphanages.

They were remembered only after Dmitry Furmanov’s book was published in 1923. After this event, the former commander of the Turkestan Front, Mikhail Vasilyevich Frunze, became interested in Chapaev’s children. Alexander Vasilyevich Chapaev graduated from technical school and worked as an agronomist in the Orenburg region, but after military service in the army he entered a military school. By the time the Second World War began, he served with the rank of captain at the Podolsk Artillery School, went to the front, after the war he served in artillery in command positions and rose to the rank of major general, deputy commander of the artillery of the Moscow Military District.

Arkady Chapaev became a military pilot, commanded an aviation unit, but died in 1939 as a result of an airplane accident. Klavdia Vasilievna graduated from the Moscow Food Institute, then worked in party work. Meanwhile, another version, contradicting the official one, appeared about the circumstances of the death of Vasily Chapaev, or more precisely, about the motives for revealing the location of the red commander.

It was voiced back in 1999 to the correspondent of “Arguments and Facts” by Vasily Ivanovich’s daughter, 87-year-old Klavdiya Vasilievna, still alive at that time. She believed that the culprit in the death of her father, the famous division commander, was her stepmother, the second wife of Vasily Ivanovich Pelageya Kameshkertsev. Allegedly, she cheated on Vasily Ivanovich with the head of the artillery warehouse, Georgy Zhivolozhinov, but was exposed by Chapaev. The division commander staged a harsh showdown with his wife, and Pelageya, out of revenge, brought the whites to the house where the red commander was hiding.

At the same time, she acted out of momentary emotions, without calculating the consequences of her action and, most likely, simply without thinking with her head. Of course, such a version could not be voiced in Soviet times. After all, she would have cast doubt on the created image of the hero, showing that in his family there were passions that were not alien to “mere mortals,” such as adultery and subsequent female revenge. At the same time, Klavdia Vasilievna did not question the version that Chapaev was transported across the Urals by Hungarian Red Army soldiers, who buried his body in the sand. This version, by the way, does not in any way contradict the fact that Pelageya could get out of Chapaev’s house and “surrender” his location to the whites.

By the way, Pelageya Kameshkertseva herself was already placed in a psychiatric hospital in Soviet times, and therefore even if her guilt in the death of Chapaev was revealed, they would not hold her accountable. The fate of Georgy Zhivolozhinov was also tragic - he was placed in a camp for agitating the kulaks against the Soviet regime. Meanwhile, the version about the wife being a cheater seems unlikely to many. Firstly, it is unlikely that the whites would talk to the wife of the red commander, much less believe her. Secondly, it is unlikely that Pelageya herself would have dared to go to the whites, as she might have feared reprisals. It’s another matter if she was a “link” in the chain of betrayal of the division commander, which could be organized by his haters from the party apparatus.

At that time, a rather tough confrontation was planned between the “commissar” part of the Red Army, oriented towards Leon Trotsky, and the “commander” part, to which the entire glorious galaxy of red commanders who came from the people belonged. And it was Trotsky’s supporters who could, if not directly kill Chapaev with a shot in the back while crossing the Urals, then “substitute” him for the Cossacks’ bullets.

The saddest thing is that Vasily Ivanovich Chapaev, a truly military and honored commander, no matter how you treat him, in the late Soviet and post-Soviet times, completely undeservedly became the character of completely stupid jokes, humorous stories and even television programs. Their authors mocked the tragic death of this man, the circumstances of his life. Chapaev was portrayed as a narrow-minded person, although it is unlikely that such a character as the hero of jokes could not only lead a division of the Red Army, but also rise to the rank of sergeant major in tsarist times.

Although a sergeant major is not an officer, only the best of the soldiers, those capable of command, the most intelligent, and in wartime, the bravest, became one. By the way, Vasily Chapaev received the ranks of junior non-commissioned officer, senior non-commissioned officer, and sergeant during the First World War. In addition, he was wounded more than once - near Tsumanya his arm tendon was broken, then, returning to duty, he again received wounded by shrapnel in the left leg. The nobility of Chapaev as a person is fully demonstrated by the story of his life with Pelageya Kameshkertseva. When Chapaev's friend Pyotr Kameshkertsev was killed in battle during the First World War, Chapaev gave his word to take care of his children.

He came to Peter's widow Pelageya and told her that she alone could not take care of Peter's daughters, so he would take them to the house of his father, Ivan Chapaev. But Pelageya decided to get along with Vasily Ivanovich herself, so as not to be separated from the children. Sergeant Major Vasily Ivanovich Chapaev graduated from the First World War with the Knight of St. George, having survived battles with the Germans. And the Civil War brought him death - at the hands of his fellow countrymen, and maybe those whom he considered comrades-in-arms.

When the first gymnasium in the city of Balakovo, Saratov region, following the example of the Rossiya TV channel, conducted their survey “The Name of Balakov,” they were very surprised: in first place was... Chapaev. Already almost forgotten by the official country, the hero civil war alive in people's memory! And not only because in Balakovo there is his house-museum, a street named after him, not only because there is a story about him great amount jokes. It’s just that young people (and not only) always admire courageous, strong and fair people. And this is exactly what Vasily Ivanovich was, whose years of childhood, youth and maturity fell on the Balakovo period of his biography. It is no coincidence that even during Chapaev’s life, during the years of the Civil War, legends were formed about him.
And today the identity of the legendary red commander causes a lot of controversy. Either they are trying to challenge his talent as a genius military leader, explaining Chapaev’s numerous victories by chance, or they are calling him almost an anarchist, who rushed with his troops between the Volga and the Urals, obeying no one. And in one of the recent publications, the ardent Bolshevik was presented as a deeply religious person and was almost offered to be canonized (!):
"Raised in Orthodox family, seasoned in war, Chapaev carried his sincere faith in God throughout his entire life. He knew many prayers by heart and asked the Lord for help before every serious matter. He prayed in the trenches of the First World War and on the fronts of the Civil War. Even after becoming a division commander, before each battle he kicked everyone out of his room so that he could say prayer alone.
Only God's help can be explained by his constant, amazing victories over opponents who were many times superior to the Chapaevites in numbers and weapons. Perhaps this is the main discovery that the hero’s great-granddaughter gives us on the occasion of the anniversary of her main ancestor. Trust in the Lord God, calling on Him for help in difficult circumstances more than made up for the lack of education that is so diligently shown to us in feature film, books and anecdotes about Chapaev. Their authors did not understand at all, or concealed for political reasons, what was the secret of the invincibility of this unlearned commander. And he was in the righteousness and power of God. Truly “blessed are the poor in spirit”... division commanders.”
But the most mysterious and mysterious still remains his death.
It is believed that Vasily Ivanovich Chapaev died on September 5, 1919. The White Guards attacked the headquarters of his division in Lbischensk early in the morning. According to the official version, which was reflected in the Vasilyev brothers’ film “Chapaev,” Chapaev’s sentries fell asleep, so the White Guard attack was unexpected. In fact, everything was not like that.
Already in his famous story “Chapaev” Dmitry Furmanov asks the question: “it still remains surprising and unsolved: who took the divisional school off guard on that fateful night? Chapaev did not give such an order to anyone.” And in the essay “The Lbischenskaya Drama,” which was written a year earlier than the story, the writer-commissar had another question: why “didn’t they notice” the Cossacks approaching Lbischensk?
the reconnaissance pilots who flew on the eve of the tragedy, or the mounted reconnaissance, which was tasked with exploring the steppe as deeply as possible?
The “truth” was discovered by the daughter of the legendary division commander (chief of the division), Klavdiya Vasilyevna. Having studied a huge number of documents, she came to the conclusion that the command of the 4th Army was to blame for the death of Chapaev. His inept, and perhaps deliberate, actions led to Chapaev’s headquarters in Lbischensk being isolated from his regiments, which were scattered dozens of miles from each other. Any White Guard unit would have broken through into such a “hole.” “A catastrophe could happen any day now,” Chapaev warned the army staff the day before the Lbischensk tragedy and, having learned that enemy patrols had appeared nearby, he ordered his troops to be on full combat readiness. And these guys are only 200-300 fighters from the training team, and even practically without weapons. Try to fight! And yet the Chapaevites gave the enemies a real fight!
According to the official version, the wounded Chapai, who was fleeing by swimming through the Urals, was caught by an enemy bullet in the middle of the river. However, when the Reds entered Lbischensk, they found neither witnesses to the death of the division commander nor his body. Thinking that he had been carried downstream, the command even announced a reward of 10 thousand rubles in gold for the one who found the hero. But alas...
In the early 60s. XX century Klavdia Vasilievna received a strange letter from Soviet officer, who served in Hungary. He wrote that after watching the film “Chapaev” in the cinema, two Hungarians approached him and said that Vasily Ivanovich did not die like that. According to them, when the division commander was wounded three times (in the arm, in the head and in the stomach), Commissar Baturin, who took command, ordered the commander to be transported to the other side of the Urals at any cost. In one of the courtyards, the gate was removed from its hinges, the seriously wounded Chapaev was placed on it, like on a raft, and, accompanied by four soldiers (these two Hungarians were allegedly among them), they were sent across the river. But during the crossing, Vasily Ivanovich died. The Chapaevites buried him on the shore so that the White Guards would not violate the body of their beloved commander. After such news, Klavdia Vasilievna tried to find her father’s body and went to Lbischensk. But it turned out that the Urals had changed its course, and the grave, if there was one, was most likely washed away.
And during the so-called perestroika (80-90s of the XX century) in some means mass media Another version was published: Chapaev, for his obstinacy and people’s love for him, was arrested by his own people. They, after many years, having kept the hero in dungeons, shot him. This option was voiced quite recently, in the spring of 2008, in one of the television “series” of “The Battle of Psychics,” when clairvoyants were given the task of finding out from Chapaev’s belongings how he died.
And the imagination of a certain Vladimir Savchenko ran wild even more. In his story “The Fifth Dimension”, he put another, completely absurd “version” into the mouth of the “Chapaevite father”:
“He wasted his division there. Gave the Cossacks the opportunity to behead the headquarters. He barely escaped by swimming across the Ural River and hid in the reeds, wounded, until we recaptured Lbischensk... Well, we found him wounded in the reeds, barely alive. To the hospital, of course. Out of the division, of course. They wanted to put him on trial: they don’t let you do something like that in war, so that he would have his headquarters, the head of the division, destroyed. But... they hushed it up taking into account past merits. After recovery, I heard, he was assigned to a regiment. Not in twenty-five, of course. And then, to tell the truth, I lost sight of him. They said he fought on the Don, then in Central Asia- and not bad. Then, in 1930, I saw his book “With Kutyakov in the Ural steppes”…”
Comments, as they say, are unnecessary. It is enough to clarify that it was Kutyakov who wrote the book “With Chapaev in the Ural Steppes,” and everything immediately becomes clear. But an ignorant person would certainly perceive (and, perhaps, perceive) these words as “discovery”, “truth”. The only “excuse” for the author is that this story is fantastic and was published in the “Golden (!) Shelf of Fantasy” series.
And Chapaev’s great-granddaughter Evgenia is convinced that her great-grandfather died in battle, but she has repeatedly stated in her interviews that he was simply handed over to the whites: “At one fine moment, the Soviet government got in the way of Chapai, and he had to be stopped at any cost so that the revolution did not go along an unplanned channel.” Evgenia is trying to prove that Chapaev’s headquarters was deliberately left without cover. However, in her opinion, allegedly based on the memories of her grandmother, the daughter of the legendary division commander Claudia Vasilievna, his common-law wife is also to blame for Chapaev’s death:
“Pelageya became interested in the head of the artillery depot, Georgy Zhivolozhinov. Zhivozhinov rushed between the whites and the reds, just like Furmanov: whoever wins, we’ll join him. At that time, he seemed to be for the Reds and could not stand Chapaev. But fame flew across the country not about him, but about Chapaev. Envy led Zhivolozhinov to the idea of ​​seducing common-law wife Vasily Ivanovich - Pelageya. And he began to visit her in the absence of Vasily Ivanovich. One day Chapaev came home from the front on leave and found his opponent in his house. His machine gunner Mikhail Zhivaev broke out a window and began firing a machine gun on top of the bed with his lovers. Pelageya immediately covered herself with Chapaev’s youngest son. Chapaev left for the front on the same day. The next day, Klavdia Vasilievna recalled, Pelageya took youngest son Chapaeva Arkady and went to the front to make peace with him. The son was allowed to see his father, but unfaithful wife sent on their way. Pelageya got angry and on the way back she stopped at the Whites’ headquarters and said that Chapaev’s headquarters was not covered at all and the soldiers had training rifles... So Pelageya took revenge on her husband purely in a woman’s way. By the way, when Chapaev died, Zhivolozhinov continued to live with Pelageya, taking his children into his care as a guardian. They say that when the family sat down at the table, he took a revolver and shot off the ends of the children’s hair - such was his hatred of Chapaev, which he transferred to his children.”
At the instigation of Evgenia, this news spread like a fan through the media - “Chapaev died due to his wife’s betrayal.”
And in last years“White Guard” versions of Chapaev’s death also appeared.
The article “Chapayev – destroy!” was posted on the website of the educational, methodological, informational and organizational portal of military-patriotic education “Styag”. Author Sergei Balmasov calls the defeat of Chapaev’s headquarters in Lbischensk “one of the most outstanding and amazing victories of the White Guards over the Bolsheviks.” He even states that this “special operation... should go down in the history of military art.”
Balmasov claims that, “according to the most conservative estimates, during the Battle of Lbischen the Reds lost at least 2,500 killed and captured, and the total losses of the Whites amounted to only 118 people: 24 killed and 94 wounded.” The same article states that “the trophies taken in Lbischensk turned out to be huge. Ammunition, food, equipment for 2 divisions, a radio station, machine guns, cinematographic devices, 4 airplanes were captured.” But these figures do not fit in with the data that has been replicated many times by various publications, including those that are sympathetic to the fighters against Soviet power:
“The Reds there were 300 cadets of the division school, the headquarters and political department of the division, signalmen,” reports Valery Shambarov in the book “White Guard”.
In addition, according to Balmasov, “at the head of the detachment total number 1192 people with 9 machine guns and 2 guns were supplied by combat general N.N. Borodin." Shambarov claims that the White Guard detachment consisted of only 300 sabers, one gun and one machine gun and defeated the Chapaevites only thanks to an unexpected attack. And another “researcher” attributes the “merit” in the destruction of Chapaev not to Borodin at all, but to a certain Colonel M.I. Izergin, " finest hour“Which “was the Lbischensky raid of units of the 1st Ural Corps, planned by him and carried out under his leadership, which ended with the defeat of the headquarters of the 25th Red Infantry Division located in Lbischensk and the death of division commander Chapaev.”
All these “true” stories are nothing more than fiction or distortion of facts. This is indicated by the fact that they mention Chapaev’s assistant Pyotr Isaev, who allegedly saved the division commander. But, firstly, in fact, Isaev was never Chapaev’s adjutant. First, he served as commander of a communications battalion, then as regimental commissar, and finally, he was entrusted with special assignments: for example, delivering a report to army headquarters. And secondly, Isaev was not in Lbischensk that night. His life ended tragically later: he could not forgive himself for not being with Chapaev in last minutes his life and committed suicide.
The testimony of another White Guard, a certain Nikolai Trofimov-Mirsky, is closer to the truth. They for a long time were stored in secret archive NKVD-KGB-FSB and were published only in 2002 - in the Parliamentary Gazette. Trofimov-Mirsky admitted that Chapaev did not drown, but, on his orders, was hacked to pieces with swords. And then the Cossacks burned about three hundred Red Army soldiers in a barn. This partly explains why Chapaev’s body was not found.
This “version,” by the way, echoes the oral memories of some Chapaevites. When in 1934 the Vasiliev brothers’ film Chapaev, which became a world bestseller, was released on the country’s screens, many of those who fought under the legendary division commander were outraged fiction screenwriters and directors. First of all, they didn’t like that Chapaev was portrayed as a tramp, semi-literate and sloppy. Their commander was different: he was always smart, disciplined and demanded the same from his subordinates. And he was, as they say, a strategist from God. Despite his parochial education, he thought big, like a real commander. It was not for nothing that he had St. George's crosses of all degrees and was considered practically invincible.
Among the dissatisfied Chapaevites was Arkhip Mayorov. A native of the village. Maloye Perekopnoye (a village not far from Balakovo), he created a detachment of Red Guards in his native village, liberated Samara from the White Czechs, and after the death of Chapaev, he led the vanguard of his 25th division. Mayorov did not believe that Chapaev could succumb to panic and retreat: the cadets could, but Chapaev could not. He told his niece Maria, who served for many years in the Balakovo police, that when the Reds, two days after the tragedy, entered Lbischensk, they saw that in the building where the Chapaev headquarters was located, there was blood everywhere, the furniture was all scattered and chopped up. This means that there was a real hand-to-hand battle going on here: Chapaev and his staff fought until their last breath...
However, by that time official version The death of the hero had already taken shape, and no one was going to find out the truth. And how will you find out if there are no witnesses left?..
By the way, when they learned about the death of Chapaev in Balakovo, the local executive committee, firstly, decided to bury the hero in his second homeland and sent a certain Rachkin for the body of the “leader of the Balakovo proletariat”, and, secondly, proposed to file a petition with the center to rename the city Balakovo to Chepaev (then the division commander's surname was written with an "e"). For preliminary expenses, 2 thousand rubles were even allocated from local departments. However, Chapaev’s body was not found, and the city was not renamed.
But the hero’s name was given to his division. By order of the RVS (Revolutionary Military Council) of the Turkfront on September 10 (according to other sources, October 4), 1919.
Chapaev became a symbol of the courageous and selfless struggle for a bright future. And not only in the USSR. In 1937-39, for example, the international battalion named after Chapaev was organized in the Spanish People's Army, which heroically fought against the fascist invaders. In this battalion a song was composed:

Franco and Hitler, destruction awaits you.
Here we are - a faithful stronghold of Spain!
After all, Chapaev’s son is each of us!

With the name of Chapaev they went on the attack during the Great Patriotic War. To boost morale Soviet people and to further strengthen his faith in victory, a short film “Chapaev is with us” was urgently shot, in which Chapaev (actor Babochkin) sails out of the Urals, puts on his famous burka and goes to beat the fascists.
This desire to “revive” your favorite heroes, to immortalize them, is characteristic of any nation. Couldn't get around like this special attention and Chapaeva. In 1938 in the village. In Kurilovka, Kuibyshev region (now Samara), a fairy tale was written down that ends with these words: “Chapayev survived and changed his nickname, he began to call himself not Chapaev, but something else. For your mistake, it means that there is no shame in public. And now, people say, Chapaev is alive, he has become a big boss, so fair and kind.”
And in Balakovo they always remembered their fellow countryman. Even before the film appeared (at the beginning of 1934), the Balakovites came up with a proposal to organize a fundraiser for the construction of a squadron of Red Partisan aircraft, including an aircraft named after V.I. Chapaev, and raise money for a monument, restore the house in which he lived, installing on it memorial plaque.
But the city council took up the matter only two years later. Then local residents And public organizations Various documents, household items and carpentry tools used by Chapaev were collected. The authorities restored the house and surrounded it with a fence, but did not manage to create a full-fledged museum: the war began.
It officially opened only in 1948. True, in the house in which not Chapaev lived, but his parents, after the death of their son.
This was immediately “forgotten” in Soviet times, and in 1969 a memorial plaque was installed on the house with the inscription “Vasily Ivanovich Chapaev lived in this house from 1897 to 1913.” This discrepancy between real and book biography became the reason for the fact that during the period of “democratic transformations” of the late 80-90s. XX century an attempt was made to overthrow the hero from his pedestal. In Balakovo, a huge building, built next to Chapaev’s house for a full-fledged museum, was given over to a communications center. But this attempt failed miserably. To destroy the myths of the past, we need to replace them with something. But there is nothing to replace it yet. Therefore, Chapaev still remains a legend that will be attractive to researchers for a long time.

P.S. The material was written in 2011. But last year, in the Samara archive, I found a passport for this house, drawn up in 1912 for the purpose of taxing city real estate, where it is written that Ivan Stepanovich Chepaev acquired it in 1900, and there were 6 people in his family. Thus, after all, the future people's commander grew up in this small and cramped house. I decided not to amend this text. Let it be seen how, over time, on the basis of newly identified documents, historical axioms change, the proof of which, it would seem, is no longer needed.
More details about this in the article “Legend returns registration”, which is posted on my page.

We remember Chapaev from books and films, we tell jokes about him. But real life the red division commander was no less interesting. He loved cars and argued with the teachers at the military academy. And Chapaev is not his real name.

Hard childhood

Vasily Ivanovich was born in a poor peasant family. The only wealth of his parents is their nine eternally hungry children, of which future hero The Civil War was the sixth.

As the legend goes, he was born premature and warmed up in his father’s fur mitten on the stove. His parents sent him to seminary in the hope that he would become a priest. But when one day the guilty Vasya was put in a wooden punishment cell in only his shirt in the bitter cold, he ran away. He tried to become a merchant, but he couldn’t - the main trade commandment was too disgusting to him: “If you don’t deceive, you won’t sell, if you don’t weigh, you won’t make money.” “My childhood was dark and difficult. I had to humiliate myself and starve a lot. From an early age I hung around strangers,” the division commander later recalled.

"Chapaev"

It is believed that Vasily Ivanovich’s family bore the surname Gavrilovs. “Chapaev” or “Chepai” was the nickname given to the division commander’s grandfather, Stepan Gavrilovich. Either in 1882 or 1883, he and his comrades loaded logs, and Stepan, as the eldest, constantly commanded - “Chepai, chapai!”, which meant: “take, take.” So it stuck to him - Chepai, and the nickname later turned into a surname.

They say that the original "Chepai" became "Chapaev" with light hand Dmitry Furmanov, author famous novel, who decided that “it sounds better this way.” But in surviving documents from the time of the Civil War, Vasily appears under both options.

Perhaps the name “Chapaev” appeared as a result of a typo.

Academy student

Chapaev's education, despite general opinion, was not limited to two years of parochial school. In 1918 he was enrolled in military academy The Red Army, where many soldiers were “herded” to improve their general literacy and learn strategy. According to the recollections of his classmate, peaceful student life weighed on Chapaev: “The hell with it! I'll leave! To come up with such an absurdity - fighting people at their desks! Two months later, he submitted a report asking to be released from this “prison” to the front.

Several stories have been preserved about Vasily Ivanovich’s stay at the academy. The first says that during a geography exam, in response to an old general’s question about the significance of the Neman River, Chapaev asked the professor if he knew about the significance of the Solyanka River, where he fought with the Cossacks. According to the second, in a discussion of the Battle of Cannes, he called the Romans “blind kittens,” telling the teacher, the prominent military theorist Sechenov: “We have already shown generals like you how to fight!”

Motorist

We all imagine Chapaev as a courageous fighter with a fluffy mustache, a naked sword and galloping on a dashing horse. Created this image folk actor Boris Babochkin. In life, Vasily Ivanovich preferred cars to horses.

Back on the fronts of the First World War, he was seriously wounded in the thigh, so riding became a problem. So, Chapaev became one of the first Red commanders who switched to a car.

He chose his iron horses very meticulously. The first, the American Stever, was rejected due to strong shaking; the red Packard that replaced it also had to be abandoned - it was not suitable for military operations in the steppe. But the red commander liked the Ford, which pushed 70 miles off-road. Chapaev also selected the best drivers. One of them, Nikolai Ivanov, was practically taken by force to Moscow and made the personal driver of Lenin’s sister, Anna Ulyanova-Elizarova.

Women's cunning

The famous commander Chapaev was an eternal loser on the personal front. His first wife, the bourgeois Pelageya Metlina, whom Chapaev’s parents did not approve of, calling him a “city white-handed woman,” bore him three children, but did not wait for her husband from the front - she went to a neighbor. Vasily Ivanovich was very upset by her action - he loved his wife. Chapaev often repeated to his daughter Claudia: “Oh, how beautiful you are. She looks like her mother."

Chapaev’s second companion, although already a civilian, was also named Pelageya. She was the widow of Vasily’s comrade-in-arms, Pyotr Kamishkertsev, to whom the division commander promised to take care of his family. At first he sent her benefits, then they decided to move in together. But history repeated itself - during her husband’s absence, Pelageya began an affair with a certain Georgy Zhivolozhinov. One day Chapaev found them together and almost sent the unlucky lover to the next world.

When the passions subsided, Kamishkertseva decided to go to peace, took the children and went to her husband’s headquarters. The children were allowed to see their father, but she was not. They say that after this she took revenge on Chapaev by revealing to the whites the location of the Red Army troops and data on their numbers.

fatal water

The death of Vasily Ivanovich is shrouded in mystery. On September 4, 1919, Borodin’s troops approached the city of Lbischensk, where the headquarters of Chapaev’s division with a small number of fighters was located. During the defense, Chapaev was severely wounded in the stomach; his soldiers put the commander on a raft and transported him across the Urals, but he died from loss of blood. The body was buried in the coastal sand, and the traces were hidden so that the Cossacks would not find it. Searching for the grave subsequently became useless, as the river changed its course. This story was confirmed by a participant in the events. According to another version, Chapaev drowned after being wounded in the arm, unable to cope with the current.

“Or maybe he swam out?”

Neither Chapaev's body nor grave could be found. This gave rise to a completely logical version of the surviving hero. Someone said that due to a severe wound he lost his memory and lived somewhere under a different name.

Some claimed that he was safely transported to the other side, from where he went to Frunze, to be responsible for the surrendered city. In Samara he was put under arrest, and then they decided to officially “kill the hero”, ending his military career beautiful ending.

This story was told by a certain Onyanov from the Tomsk region, who allegedly met his aged commander many years later. The story looks dubious, since in the difficult conditions of the civil war it was inappropriate to “throw away” experienced military leaders who were highly respected by the soldiers.

Most likely, this is a myth generated by the hope that the hero was saved.