The name of Sergei Lazo was known to everyone in the USSR. The story of his heroic life and death was taught in schools and universities, poems and songs were written about him, plays were staged and films were made, streets and streets were named after him. settlements, houses of culture and recreation, monuments with his sculptures decorated public gardens and parks. Little was known about his glorious life, but everyone remembered his terrible death...
Soviet textbooks and history books civil war gave the official version of the death of Sergei Lazo: the White Guards threw him, along with Vsevolod Sibirtsev and Alexei Lutsky, into the furnace of a steam locomotive, and they burned there for the cause of the revolution. For some reason, the remaining details varied. At the hands of which White Guards the Red commander and his comrades died, where, at what station, how they ended up there - this was no longer of interest to anyone. But in vain. Upon closer examination, the story reveals itself to be very interesting.
From romanticism to Bolshevism
Sergei Lazo was born in 1894 in Bessarabia, and died 26 years later, far away for the sake of utopian idea communism. Coming from a wealthy noble family, he received a decent education at the Physics and Mathematics Department of Moscow State University, but at the beginning of the First World War he was mobilized. In 1916, with the rank of ensign, he was sent to Krasnoyarsk, where he joined the Socialist Revolutionary Party. This was no coincidence: as contemporaries say, from childhood Lazo was distinguished by maximalism and a heightened sense of justice - to the point of romanticism.
In the spring of 1917, the 20-year-old romantic came to Petrograd as a deputy from the Krasnoyarsk council and saw Lenin for the only time in his life. Sergei really liked the leader’s radicalism, and he became a Bolshevik. Returning to Krasnoyarsk, Lazo led a rebellion. In October 1917, the commissioner of the Provisional Government telegraphed from there to St. Petersburg: “The Bolsheviks occupied the treasury, banks and all government institutions. The garrison is in the hands of Ensign Lazo.”
Ataman Semyonov was too tough for him
I wonder how this young ensign commanded his armies? According to Soviet historical science, in 1918, when the party sent Lazo to Transbaikalia, he successfully defeated Ataman Semenov there. In fact, everything was completely different.
Lazo fought with Semenov for six months, but could not defeat him. He pushed him back to Manchuria several times, but then the chieftain again went on the offensive and drove Lazo north. And in the summer of 1918, squeezed between Semyonov and the Czechoslovaks, Lazo fled from Transbaikalia. He could not defeat the chieftain in principle. Semyonov was a significant figure in Dauria and enjoyed the authority and support of the population, but no one knew Lazo there. And the Lazo army had a negative rating because of its... criminal nature. Lazo's detachments were staffed by proletarians, lowlifes and, most importantly, criminals from the Chita prison, whom the Bolsheviks released on the condition that they would go over to the side of the revolution. The "thieves" caused a lot of trouble for Lazo himself, carrying out unauthorized "requisitions" from the population, but he had to put up with this - every person counted.
Bandera and the princess
Two female commissars served in the Lazo detachment. The personality of one of them, Nina Lebedeva, is very remarkable. The adopted daughter of the former governor of Transbaikalia was an adventurer by nature. As a high school student she joined the Socialist Revolutionary Party, participated in left-wing terror, and then went over to the anarchists. Lebedev and commanded the Lazo detachment, which consisted of a criminal element. Small in stature, wearing a leather jacket, with a huge Mauser at her side, she communicated with the gang exclusively through a hairdryer. Former partisans recalled how she walked in front of her disheveled formation and delivered a speech, peppering it with such obscenities that even seasoned criminals shook their heads and clicked their tongues.
The second commissar was her direct opposite. Olga Grabenko, a beautiful, black-browed Ukrainian, according to the recollections of her colleagues, Lazo really liked. He began to court her, and they got married. But the young people were not lucky. The very next day after the wedding, the detachment was surrounded. Sergei and Olga abandoned their army and tried to hide in Yakutsk, but, having learned that a white coup had taken place there, they went to Vladivostok.
It doesn’t matter where to partisan
In Primorye, the White Guards and interventionists were in power, so Lazo arrived in Vladivostok illegally. However, this soon became known, and a large sum was promised for his capture. Ataman Semenov gave money for the head of the old enemy. When the Vladivostok bloodhounds began to step on Lazo’s heels, the Bolsheviks sent him deep into the region to work in partisan detachments. What exactly did Lazo do among the partisans? official history kept silent, but the memories of local residents give an interesting picture.
TV journalist Mikhail Voznesensky told me one of these stories. In the late 1970s, a regional TV group filmed another story about the red commander. TV crews came to Sergeevka, where the old man who saw Lazo lived. We set up the camera: well, grandfather, come on. And grandfather gave it!
"Yeah... I was a kid then. And I came to our village Lazo. Well, all of us, the boys, came running, sat down on the fence, waiting. The partisans were gathered and called Lazo. He went out onto the porch. Tall, in an overcoat, a hat - in ! Checker - in! And he pushed the speech..."
Do you remember what he said, grandfather?
How come I don’t remember? I remember! He said: “Partisans, fuck your mother, they’re good at robbing men!”
Fatal mistake
At the beginning of 1920, when it became known about the fall of Kolchak in Siberia, the Vladivostok Bolsheviks decided to overthrow Kolchak’s governor, General Rozanov. Lazo himself insisted on this. As it became clear later, this was the biggest mistake of Lazo and his associates.
Storming Vladivostok, which was filled with Japanese troops at that time, was akin to suicide. Nevertheless, on January 31, 1920, several hundred partisans occupied the city according to the well-known scheme: station, post office, telegraph. General Rozanov fled by ship to Japan. At first, the interventionists remained only observers. They were calm: the Japanese were in the city, but different estimates, there were 20-30 thousand, and the Reds were only a couple of thousand. Under these conditions, Lazo made another fatal mistake: he intended to proclaim in Vladivostok Soviet power. His comrades barely persuaded him not to do this, but then Lazo’s old friends - anarchists and his former commissar Nina Lebedeva - intervened in the course of events...
In February 1920, a detachment of anarchists under the command of Yakov Tryapitsyn and Lebedeva occupied Nikolaevsk-on-Amur. They proclaimed the Far Eastern Soviet Republic, and Tryapitsyn declared himself dictator. Then the red thugs began building communism “in a separate area.” This was expressed in the fact that Tryapitsyn’s fighters (among them were criminals from Lazo’s detachment) carried out a total confiscation of property and executions of the “bourgeoisie,” which included everyone who did not look like a complete ragamuffin.
The frightened inhabitants requested help from the command of the Japanese garrison stationed in Nikolaevsk. In response, Tryapitsyn’s thugs carried out a bloody reign of terror in the city, slaughtering all Japanese, including civilians, and then began the “complete destruction of the enemies of the people.” The interventionists urgently sent troops to Nikolaevsk, but when they approached the city, they discovered only a conflagration. The anarchists burned Nikolaevsk and shot everyone who did not want to retreat with them. The “Nicholas bathhouse” frightened the Japanese so much that without warning they came out against the partisans in all the cities of Primorye and the Amur region...
Arrest and disappearance
Lazo knew about the events in Nikolaevsk, but... did nothing to prevent the Japanese from attacking and even take care of his own safety. True, he carried with him false documents in the name of Warrant Officer Kozlenko, but this did not help - they knew him well by sight. This speaks of anything, but not of his talent as a commander and politician. He was and remained a romantic from the revolution, who knew how to make bright speeches that ignited the crowd. No more...
The Japanese offensive took place on the night of April 4-5, 1920. Almost all Bolshevik leaders and partisan commanders were arrested. Lazo was captured right in the building of the former Kolchak counterintelligence office on Poltavskaya, 6 (now Lazo, 6). He went there at night, already aware of the Japanese offensive, to destroy important documents. He was kept there for several days, on Poltavskaya, but on April 9, together with Sibirtsev and Lutsky, he was taken towards Gnily Ugol. Olga Lazo rushed to the Japanese headquarters, but she was told that “Warrant Officer Kozlenko has been transferred to the guardhouse on Begovaya” (building on Fadeev Street). She went there, but Sergei was not there. He disappeared.
The mystery of death
Rumors about the deaths of Lazo, Lutsky and Sibirtsev began to spread only a month later, in May 1920, and already in June they began to talk about it as a fact. Soon concrete information appeared. Italian captain Clempasco, an employee of the Japan Chronicle (he was not only a journalist, but also an intelligence officer, communicated with Japanese officers, and therefore the information transmitted to him has high degree authenticity), said that Lazo was shot on Egersheld and his corpse was burned. This message was reprinted by many newspapers and distributed by world news agencies.
But the Bolsheviks were not satisfied with this version of the death of the Red commander, and they decided to invent a more beautiful one. A year and a half later, in September 1921, a certain locomotive driver “suddenly” showed up, who in May 1920 allegedly saw at the Ussuri station (now Ruzhino) how the Japanese handed over three bags to the Cossacks from Bochkarev’s detachment. From there they pulled out people “who looked like comrades Lazo, Lutsky and Sibirtsev” and tried to push them into the locomotive firebox. They resisted and a fight broke out (?!). Then the Bochkarevites got tired of it, and they shot the prisoners and put them in the furnace already dead.
This story has been told a thousand times, but its author has never been named. Apparently, it never happened, because this thriller was clearly invented to order and therefore does not stand up to any criticism. Firstly, a hefty man like Lazo was, plus two more of his associates, there was no way the three of them could fit through or fit into the firebox of a steam locomotive made in the 1910s. Secondly, the writers did not bother to agree on which station all this took place. The nameless driver indicated the Ruzhino station, but then the Muravyevo-Amurskaya (now Lazo) station appeared from somewhere in the historical literature. And why did the Japanese need to hand over Lazo and his friends to the Bochkarevites and then take them hundreds of kilometers to places that were infested with partisans? No one explained this - the Bolsheviks were not interested in details.
Subsequently, another historical incident arose: in the 1970s, a steam locomotive was installed in Ussuriysk, in the furnace of which Lazo was allegedly burned. They did it in such a hurry that on the pedestal there ended up... an American locomotive from the 1930s.
P.S. There is a methodological justification for the birth of the myth about Sergei Lazo. The legend of his death fit well into the scheme of the civil war drawn by Soviet historians: the best of heroes always die, and the more terrible the death of a hero, the more instructive his example is for posterity.
Lazo Sergei Georgievich, Soviet military leader, leader and organizer of the partisan movement in Far East in the Civil War 1917-22. From the nobles.
He studied at the St. Petersburg Institute of Technology, then at the Faculty of Physics and Mathematics of Moscow University (participated in the work of revolutionary student circles), after mobilization he graduated from the Alekseevsky Infantry School (1916) in Moscow. On military service since 1916. From December 1916 he served in the 15th Siberian Reserve Rifle Regiment in Krasnoyarsk, where he joined one of the factions of the Socialist Revolutionary Party. During the February Revolution of 1917, he was elected chairman of the soldiers' section of the Krasnoyarsk Council, a delegate to the 1st All-Russian Congress of Soviets of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies in Petrograd (June 1917). He created a Red Guard detachment in Krasnoyarsk, with which he seized power in the city in October/November 1917, becoming the head of the garrison and military commandant. In December 1917, he suppressed the performance of cadets, Cossacks, officers and students in Irkutsk. Since the beginning of 1918, a member of Centrosiberia. In 1918 he joined the Red Army and the Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks), from February 1918 commander Soviet troops in Transbaikalia, who fought with the troops of Ataman G.M. Semenov. Since the fall of 1918, a member of the underground Far Eastern Regional Committee of the RCP (b) in Vladivostok, organized partisan movement, directed against the Supreme Ruler of Russia, Admiral A.V. Kolchak. Since the spring of 1919, commander of the partisan detachments of Primorye, since November, head of the military department of the regional committee of the RCP (b). Organizer of the coup in Vladivostok in January 1920, during which the chief commander of the Amur region, General S.N. Rozanov, was overthrown and the government of the Primorsky Regional Zemstvo Government, controlled by the Bolsheviks, was formed. Since January 1920, Lazo has been a member of the Revolutionary Military Council and the Dalburo of the Central Committee of the RCP (b). After the so-called Nikolaev incident of 1920 (in March in Nikolaevsk, a partisan detachment under the command of anarchist Ya. Tryapitsyn destroyed the Japanese garrison and the city was burned), 4-5.4.1920, Japanese troops seized power in Vladivostok, and Lazo and other members RVS was arrested. According to the official Soviet version, at the end of May Lazo, together with A.N. Lutsky and V.M. Sibirtsev, the Japanese took him to the Muravyovo-Amurskaya (now Lazo) station of the Ussuri Railway and handed him over to the Semyonov Cossacks, who, after torture, burned them alive in a locomotive firebox . According to another version, distributed in May 1920 by an employee of the newspaper “Japan Chronicle”, Italian captain Klempasko, Lazo was shot on the Egersheld (the cape and the district of the same name in Vladivostok), and his corpse was burned.
Works: Diaries and letters. Kish., 1982.
Lit.: Gubelman M. I. S. Lazo. M., 1951; Lazo O. A. S. Lazo. M., 1965; S. Lazo. Vladivostok, 1979; S. Lazo: Memoirs and documents. 2nd ed. M., 1985; Nemirov I.I. Life is a feat. 2nd ed. Kish., 1988.
Sergei Georgievich Lazo
Lazo Sergei Georgievich (23.II.1894 - May 1920) - hero of the civil war, Soviet military leader, Member Communist Party since 1918. Born in the village of Piatra (Chisinau province, now the village of Lazo, Orhei district). He studied at the 1st Chisinau Gymnasium, then at the St. Petersburg Technological Institute; in 1914 he transferred to the Faculty of Physics and Mathematics of Moscow University. In June 1916 he was mobilized into the army and sent to Alekseevskoye military school in Moscow. In December 1916, with the rank of ensign, he was assigned to the 15th Siberian Reserve Infantry Regiment in Krasnoyarsk; here he became close to political exiles and carried out revolutionary work among the soldiers. After February Revolution 1917 elected member of the regimental committee. In March 1917, during the first plenum of the Krasnoyarsk Council, Lazo brought his company to the disposal of the Council; was elected chairman of the soldiers' section of the Council. In December 1917, Lazo participated in the liquidation of the counter-revolutionary rebellion in Irkutsk, then became the military commandant of Irkutsk. From the beginning of 1918 - a member of Centrosiberia, from February 1918 - commander of the Trans-Baikal Front. Under the leadership of Lazo, Semenov's White Guard gangs were defeated. Since the fall of 1918 - a member of the underground Far Eastern Regional Committee of the RCP (b) in Vladivostok. In the spring of 1919, he was appointed commander of the partisan detachments of Primorye. Since December 1919 - head of the military-revolutionary headquarters for the preparation of the uprising in Primorye. On the night of January 31, 1920, the White Guard power in Primorye was overthrown. Lazo was appointed a member of the Revolutionary Military Council and a member of the Dal'buro of the Central Committee of the RCP(b); did a lot of work on organizing the revolutionary army. On April 4-5, 1920, Japanese interventionists seized power in Vladivostok and arrested members of the Revolutionary Military Council. At the end of May 1920, Lazo and other members of the RVS were taken by Japanese interventionists to the Muravyevo-Amurskaya station (now Lazo station) and, after torture, were burned in a locomotive furnace.
Soviet historical encyclopedia. In 16 volumes. - M.: Soviet Encyclopedia. 1973-1982. Volume 8, KOSSALA – MALTA. 1965.
Sergei Georgievich Lazo (1894-1920) belonged to those quite prosperous young people of the upper class who were irresistibly drawn to the reorganization of the world. Coming from the nobility of the Bessarabian province, after graduating from the Chisinau gymnasium, he studied at the St. Petersburg Technological Institute and Moscow University, but most devoted time to activities in illegal student circles.
During World War I, Lazo graduated from a military school in Moscow and was promoted to officer, and in December 1916 he was assigned to the 15th Siberian reserve rifle regiment in Krasnoyarsk. Here he became close to political exiles and, together with them, began to conduct defeatist propaganda among the soldiers. In March 1917, he got the opportunity to move from words to action: he arrested the governor of Krasnoyarsk and local senior officials. According to their own political views Lazo was then a left Socialist-Revolutionary internationalist (according to the revolutionary terminology of that time, “internationalist” meant defeatist) and in this capacity headed the soldiers’ section of the Krasnoyarsk Soviet of Deputies. However, he quickly became friends with the Bolsheviks and together with them prepared a coup. He created a Red Guard detachment in Krasnoyarsk and in November 1917 seized power in the city. Standing guard over the “conquests of the revolution” in Siberia, Lazo brutally suppressed the resistance of the cadets in Omsk and the December 1917 uprising of cadets, Cossacks, officers and students in Irkutsk, where he became a military commandant. He was also the initiator of the destruction of the “group of monarchists” in Tobolsk (that is, people who sympathized with those imprisoned there Royal family), as well as the suppression of anti-Soviet protests in Solikamsk.
From February 1918, Lazo commanded the Transbaikal Front, directed against the Cossacks, led by the esaul G.M. Semenov. He carried out repressions against the Siberian, Irkutsk, Transbaikal and Amur Cossacks. In the fall of 1918, after the fall of Bolshevik power in Siberia, he went underground and began organizing a partisan movement directed against the Supreme Ruler of Russia, Admiral A.V. Kolchak. By the summer of 1919, he united rebel groups from Transbaikalia to Pacific Ocean. These partisan detachments terrorized the local population, destroyed railways, blew up and fired at trains, killed officers, government employees, railway workers and miners in the mines.
Since December 1919, Lazo has been the head of the Military Revolutionary Headquarters for the preparation of an uprising in Primorye. In January 1920, when the Red Army occupied Siberia, this uprising succeeded; in Vladivostok, the “pink” Provisional Government of the Primorsky Regional Zemstvo Government was formed, and Lazo became a member of the Revolutionary Military Council and a member of the Far Bureau of the Central Committee of the RCP (b). On his initiative, in March of the same year, on the bridge over the Khor River near Khabarovsk, the Red partisans carried out a massacre of 120 captured officers and soldiers of the Horse-Jager Regiment, during which unarmed people were stabbed with bayonets, chopped with sabers, and their heads smashed with rifle butts. In the spring of 1920, the gangs of Yakov Tryapitsyn and Nina Lebedeva-Kiyashko, directly subordinate to Lazo, attacked Nikolaevsk-on-Amur and, in a few weeks of red terror, exterminated thousands of residents of this city, including almost the entire intelligentsia. During these operations, the Japanese garrison guarding the Japanese mission was also exterminated by the partisans. The Japanese could not forgive this: in April 1920, they arrested Lazo in Vladivostok, took him to the Muravyevo-Amurskaya station and, together with two other prominent Bolsheviks, burned him in a locomotive furnace.
Villages in the Khabarovsk and Primorsky territories and in Yakutia are named after this killer. Until recently, there was a village in Moldova called Lazo, but now it has been returned to its former name Singerei. In the Perovsky district of Moscow and the Krasnogvardeysky district of St. Petersburg there are Lazo streets.
The black book of names that have no place on the map of Russia. Comp. S.V. Volkov. M., “Posev”, 2004.
Essays:
Diaries and letters, Vladivostok, 1959.
Literature:
Sergey Lazo. Memories and documents. Sat., M., 1938; Lazo O. A., People's Hero S. Lazo, Irkutsk, 1957; Gubelman M., Lazo. 1894-1920, M., 1956.
"Fighting in Lazo's cramped stove.."
(from pioneer childhood)
Were these malicious Japanese or our Cossack women - and was there even this firebox and this locomotive... Or maybe there was no steam locomotive at all? .... So:
Sergei Georgievich Lazo
03/07/1894 [Bessarabia] - 1920, Russia
The name of Sergei Lazo was known to everyone in the USSR. The history of his heroic life and death was taught in schools and universities, poems and songs were written about him, plays were staged and films were made, streets and settlements, houses of culture and recreation were named after him, public gardens and parks were decorated with monuments with his sculptures. Little was known about his glorious life, but everyone remembered his terrible death...
Sergey Kornilov
Soviet textbooks and books on the history of the civil war gave the official version of the death of Sergei Lazo: the White Guards threw him, along with Vsevolod Sibirtsev and Alexei Lutsky, into the furnace of a steam locomotive, and they burned there for the cause of the revolution. For some reason, the remaining details varied. At the hands of which White Guards the Red commander and his comrades died, where, at what station, how they ended up there - this was no longer of interest to anyone. But in vain. Upon closer examination, the story reveals itself to be very interesting.
From romanticism to Bolshevism
Sergei Lazo was born in 1894 in Bessarabia, and died 26 years later, far away, for the sake of the utopian idea of communism. Coming from a wealthy noble family, he received a decent education at the Physics and Mathematics Department of Moscow State University, but at the beginning of the First World War he was mobilized. In 1916, with the rank of ensign, he was sent to Krasnoyarsk, where he joined the Socialist Revolutionary Party. This was no coincidence: as contemporaries say, from childhood Lazo was distinguished by maximalism and a heightened sense of justice - to the point of romanticism.
In the spring of 1917, the 20-year-old romantic came to Petrograd as a deputy from the Krasnoyarsk council and saw Lenin for the only time in his life. Sergei really liked the leader’s radicalism, and he became a Bolshevik. Returning to Krasnoyarsk, Lazo led a rebellion. In October 1917, the commissioner of the Provisional Government telegraphed from there to St. Petersburg: “The Bolsheviks occupied the treasury, banks and all government institutions. The garrison is in the hands of Ensign Lazo.”
Ataman Semyonov was too tough for him
I wonder how this young ensign commanded his armies? According to Soviet historical science, in 1918, when the party sent Lazo to Transbaikalia, he successfully defeated Ataman Semenov there. In fact, everything was completely different.
Lazo fought with Semenov for six months, but could not defeat him. He pushed him back to Manchuria several times, but then the chieftain again went on the offensive and drove Lazo north. And in the summer of 1918, squeezed between Semyonov and the Czechoslovaks, Lazo fled from Transbaikalia. He could not defeat the chieftain in principle. Semyonov was a significant figure in Dauria and enjoyed the authority and support of the population, but no one knew Lazo there. And the Lazo army had a negative rating because of its... criminal nature. Lazo's detachments were staffed by proletarians, lowlifes and, most importantly, criminals from the Chita prison, whom the Bolsheviks released on the condition that they would go over to the side of the revolution. The "thieves" caused a lot of trouble for Lazo himself, carrying out unauthorized "requisitions" from the population, but he had to put up with this - every person counted.
Bandera and the princess
Two female commissars served in the Lazo detachment. The personality of one of them, Nina Lebedeva, is very remarkable. The adopted daughter of the former governor of Transbaikalia was an adventurer by nature. As a high school student she joined the Socialist Revolutionary Party, participated in left-wing terror, and then went over to the anarchists. Lebedev and commanded the Lazo detachment, which consisted of a criminal element. Small in stature, wearing a leather jacket, with a huge Mauser at her side, she communicated with the gang exclusively through a hairdryer. Former partisans recalled how she walked in front of her disheveled formation and delivered a speech, peppering it with such obscenities that even seasoned criminals shook their heads and clicked their tongues.
The second commissar was her direct opposite. Olga Grabenko, a beautiful, black-browed Ukrainian, according to the recollections of her colleagues, Lazo really liked. He began to court her, and they got married. But the young people were not lucky. The very next day after the wedding, the detachment was surrounded. Sergei and Olga abandoned their army and tried to hide in Yakutsk, but, having learned that a white coup had taken place there, they went to Vladivostok.
It doesn’t matter where to partisan
In Primorye, the White Guards and interventionists were in power, so Lazo arrived in Vladivostok illegally. However, this soon became known, and a large sum was promised for his capture. Ataman Semenov gave money for the head of the old enemy. When the Vladivostok bloodhounds began to step on Lazo’s heels, the Bolsheviks sent him deep into the region to work in partisan detachments. Official history is silent about what exactly Lazo did among the partisans, but the memories of local residents provide an interesting picture.
One of these stories was told by TV journalist Mikhail Voznesensky. In the late 1970s, a regional TV group filmed another story about the red commander. TV crews came to Sergeevka, where the old man who saw Lazo lived. We set up the camera: well, grandfather, come on. And grandfather gave it!
"Yeah... I was a kid then. And I came to our village Lazo. Well, all of us, the boys, came running, sat down on the fence, waiting. The partisans were gathered and called Lazo. He went out onto the porch. Tall, in an overcoat, a hat - in ! Checker - in! And he pushed the speech..."
Do you remember what he said, grandfather?
How come I don’t remember? I remember! He said: “Partisans, fuck your mother, they’re good at robbing men!”
Fatal mistake
At the beginning of 1920, when it became known about the fall of Kolchak in Siberia, the Vladivostok Bolsheviks decided to overthrow Kolchak’s governor, General Rozanov. Lazo himself insisted on this. As it became clear later, this was the biggest mistake of Lazo and his associates.
Storming Vladivostok, which was filled with Japanese troops at that time, was akin to suicide. Nevertheless, on January 31, 1920, several hundred partisans occupied the city according to the well-known scheme: station, post office, telegraph. General Rozanov fled by ship to Japan. At first, the interventionists remained only observers. They were calm: according to various estimates, there were 20-30 thousand Japanese in the city, and only a couple of thousand Reds. Under these conditions, Lazo made another fatal mistake: he set out to proclaim Soviet power in Vladivostok. His comrades barely persuaded him not to do this, but then Lazo’s old friends - anarchists and his former commissar Nina Lebedeva - intervened in the course of events...
In February 1920, a detachment of anarchists under the command of Yakov Tryapitsyn and Lebedeva occupied Nikolaevsk-on-Amur. They proclaimed the Far Eastern Soviet Republic, and Tryapitsyn declared himself dictator. Then the red thugs began building communism “in a separate area.” This was expressed in the fact that Tryapitsyn’s fighters (among them were criminals from Lazo’s detachment) carried out a total confiscation of property and executions of the “bourgeoisie,” which included everyone who did not look like a complete ragamuffin.
The frightened inhabitants requested help from the command of the Japanese garrison stationed in Nikolaevsk. In response, Tryapitsyn’s thugs carried out a bloody reign of terror in the city, slaughtering all Japanese, including civilians, and then began the “complete destruction of the enemies of the people.” The interventionists urgently sent troops to Nikolaevsk, but when they approached the city, they discovered only a conflagration. The anarchists burned Nikolaevsk and shot everyone who did not want to retreat with them. The “Nicholas bathhouse” frightened the Japanese so much that without warning they came out against the partisans in all the cities of Primorye and the Amur region...
Arrest and disappearance
Lazo knew about the events in Nikolaevsk, but... did nothing to prevent the Japanese from attacking and even take care of his own safety. True, he carried with him false documents in the name of Warrant Officer Kozlenko, but this did not help - they knew him well by sight. This speaks of anything, but not of his talent as a commander and politician. He was and remained a romantic from the revolution, who knew how to make bright speeches that ignited the crowd. No more...
The Japanese offensive took place on the night of April 4-5, 1920. Almost all Bolshevik leaders and partisan commanders were arrested. Lazo was captured right in the building of the former Kolchak counterintelligence office on Poltavskaya, 6 (now Lazo, 6). He went there at night, already aware of the Japanese offensive, to destroy important documents. He was kept there for several days, on Poltavskaya, but on April 9, together with Sibirtsev and Lutsky, he was taken towards Gnily Ugol. Olga Lazo rushed to the Japanese headquarters, but she was told that “Warrant Officer Kozlenko has been transferred to the guardhouse on Begovaya” (building on Fadeev Street). She went there, but Sergei was not there. He disappeared.
The mystery of death
Rumors about the deaths of Lazo, Lutsky and Sibirtsev began to spread only a month later, in May 1920, and already in June they began to talk about it as a fact. Soon concrete information appeared. The Italian captain Clempasco, an employee of the Japan Chronicle (he was not only a journalist, but also an intelligence officer, communicated with Japanese officers, and therefore the information conveyed to him has a high degree of reliability), said that Lazo was shot on Egersheld, and his corpse was burned. This message was reprinted by many newspapers and distributed by world news agencies.
But the Bolsheviks were not satisfied with this version of the death of the Red commander, and they decided to invent a more beautiful one. A year and a half later, in September 1921, a certain locomotive driver “suddenly” showed up, who in May 1920 allegedly saw at the Ussuri station (now Ruzhino) how the Japanese handed over three bags to the Cossacks from Bochkarev’s detachment. From there they pulled out people “who looked like comrades Lazo, Lutsky and Sibirtsev” and tried to push them into the locomotive firebox. They resisted and a fight broke out (?!). Then the Bochkarevites got tired of it, and they shot the prisoners and put them in the furnace already dead.
This story has been told a thousand times, but its author has never been named. Apparently, it never happened, because this thriller was clearly invented to order and therefore does not stand up to any criticism. Firstly, a hefty man like Lazo was, plus two more of his associates, there was no way the three of them could fit through or fit into the firebox of a steam locomotive made in the 1910s. Secondly, the writers did not bother to agree on which station all this took place. The nameless driver indicated the Ruzhino station, but then the Muravyevo-Amurskaya (now Lazo) station appeared from somewhere in the historical literature. And why did the Japanese need to hand over Lazo and his friends to the Bochkarevites and then take them hundreds of kilometers to places that were infested with partisans? No one explained this - the Bolsheviks were not interested in details.
Subsequently, another historical incident arose: in the 1970s, a steam locomotive was installed in Ussuriysk, in the furnace of which Lazo was allegedly burned. They did it in such a hurry that on the pedestal there ended up... an American locomotive from the 1930s.
P.S. There is a methodological justification for the birth of the myth about Sergei Lazo. The legend of his death fit well into the scheme of the civil war drawn by Soviet historians: the best of heroes always die, and the more terrible the death of a hero, the more instructive his example is for posterity.
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