Russian empire
Ukrainian SSR
held the position of division commander
Nikolai Shchors on a postcard from IZOGIZ, USSR
Nikolay Aleksandrovich Shchors(May 25 (June 6) - August 30) - second lieutenant, red commander, division commander during the Civil War in Russia. Member of the Communist Party since 1918, before that he was close to the Left Social Revolutionaries.
Biography
Youth
Born and raised in the village of Korzhovka, Velikoschimel volost, Gorodnyansky district, Chernigov province (with - the city of Snovsk, now the regional center of Shchors, Chernigov region of Ukraine). Born into the family of a wealthy peasant landowner (according to another version, from the family of a railway worker).
Civil War
In September 1918, he formed the 1st Ukrainian Soviet Regiment named after. Bohuna. In October - November he commanded the Bogunsky regiment in battles with German interventionists and hetmans, from November 1918 - the 2nd brigade of the 1st Ukrainian Soviet division (Bogunsky and Tarashchansky regiments), which captured Chernigov, Kiev and Fastov, repelling them from the troops of the Ukrainian Directory .
On August 15, 1919, the 1st Ukrainian Soviet Division under the command of N. A. Shchors was merged with the 44th Border Division under the command of I. N. Dubovoy, becoming the 44th Infantry Division. On August 21, Shchors became its chief, and Dubova became the deputy chief of the division. The division consisted of four brigades.
The division that stubbornly defended the Korosten railway junction, which ensured the evacuation of Kyiv (on August 31, the city was taken by the Volunteer Army of General Denikin) and a way out of the encirclement of the Southern Group of the 12th Army.
Death studies
The official version that Shchors died in battle from a bullet from a Petlyura machine gunner began to be criticized with the beginning of the “thaw” of the 1960s.
Initially, researchers blamed the murder of the commander only on the commander of the Kharkov Military District, Ivan Dubovoy, who during the Civil War was Nikolai Shchors’s deputy in the 44th division. The 1935 collection “Legendary Division Commander” contains the testimony of Ivan Dubovoy: “The enemy opened strong machine-gun fire and, I especially remember, one machine gun showed “daring” at the railway booth... Shchors took binoculars and began to look at where the machine-gun fire was coming from. But a moment passed, and the binoculars fell from Shchors’ hands to the ground, and Shchors’s head too...” The head of the mortally wounded Shchors was bandaged by Dubovoy. Shchors died in his arms. “The bullet entered from the front,” writes Dubovoy, “and came out from the back,” although he could not help but know that the entrance bullet hole was smaller than the exit hole. When Bohunsky Regiment nurse Anna Rosenblum wanted to change the first, very hasty bandage on the head of the already dead Shchors to a more accurate one, Dubovoy did not allow it. By order of Dubovoy, the body of Shchors without medical examination sent to prepare for burial. It was not only Dubovoy who witnessed the death of Shchors. Nearby were the commander of the Bohunsky regiment, Kazimir Kvyatyk, and the representative of the Revolutionary Military Council of the 12th Army, Pavel Tankhil-Tankhilevich, sent with an inspection by a member of the Revolutionary Military Council of the 12th Army, Semyon Aralov, Trotsky’s protégé. He was twenty-six years old, born in Odessa, graduated from high school, spoke French and German. In the summer of 1919 he became a political inspector of the Revolutionary Military Council of the 12th Army. Two months after the death of Shchors, he left Ukraine and arrived on the Southern Front as a senior censor-controller of the Military Censorship Department of the Revolutionary Military Council of the 10th Army.
The exhumation of the body, carried out in 1949 in Kuibyshev during reburial, confirmed that he was killed at close range with a shot to the back of the head. Near Rovno, Shchorsovite Timofey Chernyak, commander of the Novgorod-Seversky regiment, was later killed. Then Vasily Bozhenko, the brigade commander, died. He was poisoned
“A detachment walked along the shore,
Walked from afar
Walked under the red banner
Regiment commander"
Even those who grew up in post-Soviet times have probably heard these lines more than once. But not everyone knows that they were taken from the “Song of Shchors”.
Nikolay Shchors in the Soviet period of history he was included in the list of heroes of the revolution, about whose exploits children learned in primary school, if not yet kindergarten. Comrade Shchors was one of those who gave their lives in the struggle for the happiness of the working people. That is why he, like other dead revolutionaries, was not affected by subsequent stages political struggle with the erasure from history of yesterday’s comrades, declared “enemies of the people.”
Nikolai Aleksandrovich Shchors (1895-1919), red commander, division commander during the Civil War in Russia. Photo: Commons.wikimedia.org
Nikolai Aleksandrovich Shchors was born on June 6, 1895 in the Chernigov region, in the village of Snovsk, Velikoschimelsky volost, Gorodnya district, according to some sources, in the family of a wealthy peasant, according to others - a railway worker.
The future revolutionary hero in his youth did not think about class battles. Kolya Shchors could well have made a spiritual career - after graduating from the parochial school, he studied at the Chernigov Theological School, and then at the Kyiv Seminary.
Shchors' life changed with the outbreak of the First World War. The failed priest graduates from military paramedic school and is appointed to the post of military paramedic of an artillery regiment on a volunteer basis. In 1914-1915 he took part in hostilities on the North-Western Front.
Second lieutenant with tuberculosis
In October 1915, his status changed - 20-year-old Shchors was assigned to active duty. military service and transferred as a private to a reserve battalion. In January 1916, he was sent to a four-month accelerated course at the Vilna Military School, evacuated to Poltava.
By that time, the Russian army had a serious problem with officer personnel, so everyone who, from the point of view of the command, had the ability, was sent for training.
After graduating from college with the rank of ensign, Nikolai Shchors served as a junior officer of a company in the 335th Anapa Infantry Regiment of the 84th Infantry Division, operating on the Southwestern and Romanian Front. In April 1917, Shchors was awarded the rank of second lieutenant.
The commanders who sent the young soldier for training were not mistaken: he truly had the makings of a commander. He knew how to win over his subordinates and become an authority figure for them.
Second Lieutenant Shchors, however, in addition to officer's shoulder straps, also acquired tuberculosis during the war, for the treatment of which he was sent to a military hospital in Simferopol.
It was there that the hitherto apolitical Nicholas joined the revolutionary movement, falling under the influence of agitators.
Shchors' military career could have ended in December 1917, when the Bolsheviks, who were heading out of the war, began demobilizing the army. Nikolai Shchors also went home.
Reproduction of the plate “Song about Shchors”. The work of Palekh masters. The village of Palekh. Photo: RIA Novosti / Khomenko
Field commander
Shchors' peaceful life did not last long - in March 1918, the Chernihiv region was occupied by German troops. Shchors was among those who decided to fight the invaders with weapons in their hands.
In the very first skirmishes, Shchors shows courage and determination and becomes the leader of the rebels, and a little later the commander of a united partisan detachment created from disparate groups.
For two months, Shchors' detachment caused a lot of headaches for the German army, but the forces were too unequal. In May 1918, the partisans retreated into the territory Soviet Russia, where military activities cease.
Shchors makes another attempt to integrate into civilian life by submitting documents for admission to Faculty of Medicine Moscow University. However, the Civil War is gaining momentum, and Shchors accepts the offer of one of his comrades in the partisan detachment Kazimir Kwiatek re-enter the armed struggle for the liberation of Ukraine.
In July 1918, the All-Ukrainian Central Military Revolutionary Committee (VTsVRK) was formed in Kursk, which plans to carry out a large-scale Bolshevik armed uprising in Ukraine. The VTsRVK needs commanders with experience in fighting in Ukraine, and Shchors comes in handy.
Shchors is given the task of forming a regiment from among local residents in the neutral zone between German troops and the territory of Soviet Russia, which should be part of the 1st Ukrainian Insurgent Division.
Shchors copes with the task brilliantly and becomes the commander of the 1st Ukrainian Soviet Regiment, named after the assigned hetman, which he assembled Ivan Bogun, which in the documents was listed as the “Ukrainian revolutionary regiment named after Comrade Bogun.”
Rebuke of “Ataman” Shchors to “Pan-Hetman” Petlyura, 1919. Photo: Commons.wikimedia.org
The commandant of Kyiv and the threat of the Petliurists
Shchors' regiment very quickly turns out to be one of the most effective combat units among the rebel formations. Already in October 1918, Shchors’s merits were noted by his appointment as commander of the 2nd brigade as part of the Bohunsky and Tarashchansky regiments of the 1st Ukrainian Soviet division.
Brigade commander Shchors, with whom the soldiers literally fall in love, conducts successful operations to capture Chernigov, Kyiv and Fastov.
On February 5, 1919, the Provisional Workers' and Peasants' Government of Ukraine appointed Nikolai Shchors as commandant of Kyiv and awarded him an honorary golden weapon.
And the hero, whom the fighters respectfully call “dad,” is only 23 years old...
The Civil War has its own laws. Military leaders who achieve success are often people who do not have sufficient military education, very young people who captivate people not so much with their skills as with their drive, determination and energy. This is exactly what Nikolai Shchors was.
In March 1919, Shchors became the commander of the 1st Ukrainian Soviet Division and turned into a real nightmare for the enemy. Shchors' division carries out a decisive offensive against the Petliurists, defeating their main forces and occupying Zhitomir, Vinnitsa and Zhmerinka. From complete disaster Ukrainian nationalists saved by the intervention of Poland, whose troops support the Petliurists. Shchors is forced to retreat, but his retreat does not closely resemble the flight of other Bolshevik units.
In the summer of 1919, Ukrainian rebel Soviet units were included in the united Red Army. The 1st Ukrainian Soviet Division joins the 44th Rifle Division of the Red Army, whose chief is Nikolai Shchors.
Shchors would have been confirmed in this position on August 21 and would have stayed in it for only nine days. On August 30, 1919, the division commander died in a battle with the 7th brigade of the 2nd corps of the Petliura Galician army near the village of Beloshitsa.
Shchors was buried in Samara, where his wife’s parents lived Frooms of Rostova. Shchors' daughter Valentina was born after her father's death.
Monument at Shchors' grave in Samara, erected in 1954. Photo: Commons.wikimedia.org
PR for Comrade Stalin
Oddly enough, in the 1920s the name Nikolai Shchors was familiar to few people. The rise in his popularity occurred in the 1930s, when the authorities Soviet Union took seriously the creation heroic epic about the revolution and the Civil War, on which new generations of Soviet citizens were to be educated.
In 1935 Joseph Stalin, presenting the Order of Lenin film director Alexander Dovzhenko, noted that it would be nice to create a heroic film about the “Ukrainian Chapaev” Nikolai Shchors.
Such a film was actually made; it was released in 1939. But even before its release, books about Shchors and songs appeared, the most famous of which was written in 1936 Matvey Blanter And Mikhail Golodny“Song about Shchors” - lines from it are given at the beginning of this material.
Streets, squares, towns and cities began to be named after Shchors, and monuments to him appeared in various cities of the USSR. In 1954, on the 300th anniversary of the reunification of Ukraine and Russia, a monument to the hero of the two nations was erected in Kyiv.
The image of Shchors successfully survived all the winds of change, right up to the collapse of the USSR, when everyone who fought on the side of the Reds was subjected to defamation.
Shchors has a particularly hard time after Euromaidan: firstly, he is a Red commander, and everything connected with the Bolsheviks is now anathema in Ukraine; secondly, he famously crushed the Petliura formations, declared by the current Kyiv regime to be “hero-patriots”, which, of course, cannot be forgiven for him.
Shot in the back of the head
There is one mystery in the history of Nikolai Shchors that has not yet been solved - how exactly did the “Ukrainian Chapaev” die?
Reproduction of the painting “The Death of the Division Chief” (part of the triptych “Shchors”). Artist Pavel Sokolov-Skalya. Central Museum of the Armed Forces of the USSR. Photo: RIA Novosti
The classic version says: Shchors was killed by a bullet from a Petlyura machine gunner. However, among people close to Shchors, there was persistent talk that he died at the hands of his own people.
In 1949, the year of the 30th anniversary of the death of Shchors, in Kuibyshev (as Samara was called during this period), the remains of the hero were exhumed and his ceremonial reburial took place in the central cemetery of the city.
The results of the examination of the remains, carried out in 1949, were classified. The reason was that the examination showed that Shchors was shot in the back of the head.
In the 1960s, when this data became known, the version that Shchors was eliminated by his comrades became very widespread.
True, it is impossible to habitually blame Comrade Stalin for this, and the point is not only that it was the “leader and teacher” who launched the campaign to glorify Shchors. It’s just that in 1919, Joseph Vissarionovich was solving completely different problems and did not have the influence necessary for such actions. And in principle, Shchors could not do anything to interfere with Stalin.
Was Shchors “ordered” by Trotsky?
Another matter Lev Davidovich Trotsky. At that time, the second person in Soviet Russia after Lenin, Trotsky was busy forming a regular Red Army, in which iron discipline was imposed. Uncontrollable and too obstinate commanders were disposed of without any sentimentality.
The charismatic Shchors belonged precisely to that category of commanders whom Trotsky did not like. Shchors' subordinates were first of all devoted to the commander, and only then to the cause of the revolution.
Among those who could carry out the order to eliminate Shchors, the name of his deputy was named Ivan Dubovoy, as well as the authorized Revolutionary Military Council of the 12th Army Pavel Tankhil-Tankhilevich, subordinate GRU founding father Semyon Aralov.
According to this version, during the ensuing firefight with the Petliurists, one of them shot Shchors in the back of the head, then passing it off as enemy fire.
Most arguments are put forward against Ivan Dubovoy, who personally bandaged Shchors’ mortal wound and did not allow the regimental paramedic to examine it. It was Dubovoy who became the new division commander after the death of Shchors.
In the 1930s, Dubovoy managed to write a book of memories about Shchors. But in 1937, Dubovoy, who rose to the position of commander of the Kharkov Military District, was arrested, accused of a Trotskyist conspiracy and executed. For this reason, he could not object to the accusations made in the 1960s.
If we proceed from the version that Shchors was shot to get rid of the “unsystematic” commander, it turns out that Trotsky was very dissatisfied with him. But the facts say otherwise.
Shortly before the death of its commander, Shchors' division stubbornly defended the Korosten railway junction, which made it possible to organize the planned evacuation of Kyiv before the army offensive Denikin. Thanks to the resilience of Shchors' fighters, the retreat of the Red Army did not turn into a full-scale disaster for it. As already mentioned, nine days before his death, Trotsky approved Shchors as commander of the 44th division. It is unlikely that this will be done in relation to a person whom they are going to get rid of in the very near future.
Reproduction of the painting “N. A. Shchors with V.I. Lenin.” 1938 Author Nikita Romanovich Popenko. Kiev branch of the Central Museum of V.I. Lenin. Photo: RIA Novosti / Pavel Balabanov
Fatal ricochet
What if the murder of Shchors was not an “initiative from above”, but a personal plan of Dubovoy’s ambitious deputy? This is also hard to believe. If such a plan had surfaced, Dubovoy would have lost his head - either from Shchors’ fighters, who adored the commander, or from the anger of Trotsky, who extremely disliked such actions carried out without his own approval.
There remains one more option, quite plausible, but not popular among conspiracy theorists - Divisional Commander Shchors could have become a victim of a bullet ricochet. At the place where everything happened, according to eyewitnesses, there were enough stones that could have caused the bullet to bounce off them and hit the back of the red commander’s head. Moreover, the ricochet could have been caused either by a shot from the Petliurists or by a shot from one of the Red Army soldiers.
In this situation, there is also an explanation for the fact that Dubovoy himself bandaged Shchors’ wound, not letting anyone in to see it. Seeing that the bullet hit the back of the head, the deputy division commander was simply scared. Ordinary soldiers, having heard about the bullet in the back of the head, could easily deal with the “traitors” - there were plenty of such cases during the Civil War. Therefore, Dubovoy hastened to transfer his anger towards the enemy, and quite successfully. Enraged by the death of their commander, Shchors' fighters attacked the positions of the Galicians, forcing them to retreat. At the same time, the Red Army soldiers did not take prisoners that day.
It is hardly possible today to establish for certain all the circumstances of the death of Nikolai Shchors, and this is not of fundamental importance. The Red commander Shchors long ago took his place in the history of the Civil War in Ukraine, and a song about him entered folklore, regardless of how historians evaluate his personality.
A little less than a hundred years after the death of Nikolai Shchors, the Civil War is raging again in Ukraine, and the new Shchors are fighting to the death with the new Petliurists. But, as they say, this is a completely different story.
In September 1919, an event occurred in Samara that remained almost unnoticed by either local authorities or city residents. A tightly sealed zinc coffin was unloaded from an ordinary freight train "heater" and transported to the All Saints Cemetery, which was located here, near the station. The funeral passed quickly, and only a young woman in a mourning dress and several men in military uniform stood at the coffin. After saying goodbye, no sign remained on the grave, and it was soon forgotten. Only for many years did it become known that on that day in Samara the red commander Nikolai Aleksandrovich Shchors, who died on August 30, 1919, was buried railway station Korosten near Kyiv
From the banks of the Dnieper to the Volga
He was born on May 25 (June 6 according to the new style) 1895 in the village of Snovsk (now the city of Shchors) in the Chernigov region in Ukraine in the family of a railway worker. In 1914, Nikolai Shchors graduated from the military paramedic school in Kyiv, and then from military courses in Poltava. He was a participant in the First World War, where he first served as a military paramedic and then as a second lieutenant on the Southwestern Front.
After the October Revolution he returned to his homeland, and in February 1918 in Snovsk he created a partisan detachment to fight the German interventionists. During 1918-1919, Shchors was in the ranks of the Red Army, where he rose to the rank of division commander. In March 1919, he was for some time the commandant of the city of Kyiv.
In the period from March 6 to August 15, 1919, Shchors commanded the First Ukrainian Soviet Division. During the rapid offensive, this division recaptured Zhitomir, Vinnitsa, Zhmerinka from the Petliurists, defeated the main forces of the UPR in the Sarny - Rivne - Brody - Proskurov area, and then in the summer of 1919 defended in the Sarny - Novograd-Volynsky - Shepetivka area from the troops of the Polish Republic and the Petliurists , but was forced under pressure from superior forces to retreat to the east.
After this, on August 15, 1919, during the reorganization of the Ukrainian Soviet divisions into regular units and formations of a single Red Army, the First Ukrainian Soviet Division under the command of N.A. Shchorsa was merged with the 3rd Border Division under the command of I.N. Dubovoy, becoming the 44th Rifle Division of the Red Army. On August 21, Shchors was appointed head of the division, and Dubova was appointed deputy head of the division. It consisted of four brigades.
The division stubbornly defended the Korosten railway junction, which ensured the evacuation of Soviet employees and all supporters from Kyiv Soviet power. Moreover, on August 30, 1919, in a battle with the 7th brigade of the 2nd corps of the Galician army near the village of Beloshitsa (now the village of Shchorsovka, Korostensky district, Zhitomir region, Ukraine), while in the advanced chains of the Bohunsky regiment, Shchors was killed, and the circumstances of his death remain completely unclear to this day. At the same time, it came as a surprise to many that the body of the deceased division commander was subsequently interred not in Ukraine, where he fought, but very far from the place of his death - in Samara.
After the death of Shchors, on August 31, 1919, Kyiv was taken by the Volunteer Army of General Denikin. Despite the death of its commander, the 44th Rifle Division of the Red Army provided a way out of the encirclement of the Southern Group of the 12th Army. However, the mystery of the death of N.A. Shchorsa has since become the subject of many official and unofficial investigations, as well as the topic of many publications.
Memoirs of an eyewitness
He spoke about the death of his division commander like this:
“The enemy opened strong machine-gun fire... When we lay down, Shchors turned his head to me and said:
Vanya, look how the machine gunner shoots accurately.
After that, Shchors took binoculars and began to look at where the machine-gun fire was coming from. But a moment later the binoculars fell out of Shchors’s hands and fell to the ground, as did Shchors’s head. I called out to him:
Nikolai!
But he didn’t respond. Then I crawled up to him and began to look. I see blood appearing on the back of my head. I took off his cap - the bullet hit the left temple and exited the back of the head. Fifteen minutes later, Shchors, without regaining consciousness, died in my arms.”
The same Dubovoy, according to him, carried the commander’s body from the battlefield, after which the dead Shchors was taken somewhere to the rear. According to all sources, Dubovoy had no idea that Shchors’ body was soon sent to Samara. And in general, even at that time, the very fact that the burial of the Red commander, who died in battle in Ukraine, for some reason turned out to be thousands of kilometers from the place of his death, looked very strange. Subsequently, the authorities put forward the official version that this was done to avoid possible abuse of Shchors’ body by the Petliurists, who had previously dug up the graves of Red fighters more than once and dumped their remains in latrines.
But now there is no doubt that Samara was chosen for this purpose at the request of the widow of the deceased division commander - Fruma Efimovna Khaikina-Shchors
The fact is that it was in this city that her mother and father lived at that time, who could have looked after the grave. However, in the famine year of 1921, both her parents died. And in 1926, the All Saints Cemetery was completely closed, and Shchors’s grave, among others, was razed to the ground
However, it later became clear that for Samara the legendary red division commander was not such a stranger. As evidenced by archival materials now open to researchers, in the summer of 1918, Shchors, under the name Timofeev, was sent to the Samara province with a secret assignment from the Cheka - to organize the partisan movement in the places where the Czechoslovak troops were deployed, who at that time captured the Middle Volga region. However, it has not yet been possible to find any details about his activities in the Samara underground. After returning from the banks of the Volga, Shchors was assigned to Ukraine, to the post of commander of the 1st Ukrainian Red Division, which he held until his death.
The hero of the civil war was remembered only two decades later, when Soviet moviegoers saw the feature film “Shchors.” As we now know, after the Vasiliev directors released the film “Chapayev” on the wide screen in 1934, which almost immediately became a Soviet classic, Joseph Stalin recommended that the leaders of Ukraine choose “their Chapaev” from the many heroes of the civil war, so that they would also write about him make a feature film. The choice fell on Shchors, whose career and military path looked like a model for a Red commander. But at the same time, due to the intervention of party censorship in the film "Shchors", released in 1939, little remained of true biography legendary division commander
Stalin liked the picture, and after viewing it, he asked his entourage a completely reasonable question: how is the memory of the hero immortalized in Ukraine, and what monument is erected on his grave? Ukrainian leaders grabbed their heads: for some reason this circumstance fell out of their sight. It was then that the astonishing fact emerged that Shchors had been buried two decades earlier not in Ukraine, but for some reason in Samara, which by that time had become the city of Kuibyshev. And the saddest thing was the fact that in the city on the Volga there was not only no monument to Shchors, but even traces of his grave. By that time, a cable plant had already been built on the territory of the former All Saints Cemetery.
Before the Great Patriotic War the search for Shchors's burial place was not crowned with success. However, in order to avoid the highest anger, the regional authorities immediately decided to open a Shchors memorial in Kuibyshev. At the beginning of 1941, a version of the equestrian monument prepared by Kharkov sculptors L. Muravin and M. Lysenko received approval. Its laying on the square near the railway station was scheduled for November 7, 1941, but due to the outbreak of war this plan was never implemented. Only in 1954, an equestrian statue of Shchors, designed by Kharkov residents, originally intended for Kuibyshev, was installed in Kyiv
Secret examination
The Kuibyshev authorities returned to searching for Shchors’ grave only in 1949, when, in connection with the 30th anniversary of his death, the regional party committee received a corresponding order from Moscow. Here the archivists finally got lucky. Based on the surviving documents, they identified a direct witness to Shchors' funeral - the worker Ferapontov. It turned out that in 1919, he, then still a 12-year-old boy, helped a cemetery digger dig a grave for a certain Red commander, whose name he did not know. It was Ferapontov who indicated the place where the burial could be located. The worker’s memory did not fail: after removing the layer of crushed stone, a well-preserved zinc coffin appeared to the eyes of the commission members at a depth of one and a half meters. Fruma Efimovna, the widow of Shchors, who was present at the excavations, unequivocally confirmed that the remains of her deceased husband were in the coffin.
Based on the results of the exhumation, a forensic medical examination report was drawn up, which for many decades was classified as “Top Secret”. It, in particular, says the following: “... on the territory of the Kuibyshev Cable Plant (former Orthodox cemetery), 3 meters from the right corner of the western facade of the electrical shop, a grave was found in which the body of N.A. was buried in September 1919. Shchors... After removing the lid of the coffin, the general contours of the head of the corpse with the hairstyle, mustache and beard characteristic of Shchors were clearly visible... Death of N.A. Shchorsa resulted from a through gunshot wound to the occipital and left half of the skull... The hole in the back of the head should be considered the entrance, which is indicated by the oval smooth edges of the bone defect, in the area of the occipital protuberance. The hole located in the left parietal region should be considered the exit, as indicated by the shape of the hole with a fragment of the outer bone plate... It can be assumed that the bullet is revolver in diameter... The shot was fired from back to front, from bottom to top and slightly from right to left, at close range , presumably 5-10 steps.”
From the above text it is clear why the report of the forensic medical examination of Shchors’ remains turned out to be classified for many years. After all, this document completely refutes the official version of Shchors’ death, that he was allegedly hit by a machine-gun fire. Machine guns, as you know, do not fire revolver bullets, and besides, Shchors, looking out from cover, was clearly facing the enemy, and not the back of his head. Consequently, the division commander was shot by someone who was behind him, and not at all by a Petlyura machine gunner, as was stated in the canonical memoirs and in the film about the legendary division commander. It turns out that Shchorsa removed his people at the height of the battle? But if this is so, then who did it and why?
However, eyewitnesses to the exhumation of Shchors’ burial in 1949 hardly dared to ask such questions even to themselves. And why? After all, after many years of excavations, his grave was finally found, and the day of the funeral ceremony had already been set. As a result, the legendary division commander was solemnly reburied on July 10, 1949 in the new city cemetery. The ashes of the Civil War hero were brought here on a gun carriage, and in front of a large crowd of people he was buried with full military honors. A memorial marble slab was installed on the grave. A year later, a beautiful granite obelisk with the name of the division commander was opened here. At the same time, a bust of the hero was installed at the Kuibyshevkabel plant, where Shchors’s first grave was located. And in 1953, a children’s park was opened on the territory of the former All Saints Cemetery, which was named after N.A. Shchorsa. A monument to the legendary red division commander was erected in the park
Researchers were able to address the question of the true circumstances of Shchors’ death only after the advent of the era of perestroika and glasnost. After 1985, during the declassification of documents from the civil war and the publication of memoirs of eyewitnesses of the tragedy, a version was almost immediately put forward that Shchors was liquidated on the direct orders of the military people's commissar Lev Davidovich Trotsky
But why did the successful divisional commander interfere with him so much, and interfere with him to such an extent that the people's commissar did not stop even before physically eliminating him?
Apparently, this reason could be the defiant independence of Shchors, who in many cases refused to carry out orders from his immediate leadership, and was also known for his desire for “independence” of Ukraine. A number of memoirs directly state that “Trotsky characterized Shchors as an indomitable partisan, an independentist, an opponent of regular principles, an enemy of Soviet power.”
It was at this time, at the instigation of the military people's commissar Trotsky, that a struggle began in the Red Army to strengthen unity of command and tighten discipline, primarily in the execution of orders from higher leadership. The explanation for such a campaign is quite simple. During the civil war, many “independent” armed formations joined the ranks of the Red Army, which were formed around talented self-taught military leaders promoted from the people. In addition to Nikolai Shchors, among them we can primarily name Vasily Ivanovich Chapaev, Grigory Ivanovich Kotovsky and Nestor Ivanovich Makhno
But the latter’s troops, as is known, did not fight for too long in the ranks of the Red troops. Due to constant conflicts with the higher leadership, the Makhnovists quickly broke away from the Bolsheviks, after which they switched to independent war tactics, which often went under the slogan “Beat the whites until they turn red, beat the reds until they turn white.” But the detachments of Kotovsky, Chapaev and Shchors initially opposed the White Movement. Thanks to the authority of their leaders, they were able to grow to the size of divisions in just a few months, and then operated quite successfully among other units and formations of the Red Army.
Despite their belonging to regular units and the oath taken to the Soviet Republic, anarchist tendencies were still quite strong in all the red formations that arose along the “partisan” principle. This was expressed primarily in the fact that in a number of cases, commanders elected “from below” refused to carry out those orders from higher army leadership, which, in their opinion, were given without taking into account the situation on the ground or led to the unjustified death of many Red fighters.
Therefore, it is not surprising that the military people’s commissar Trotsky, to whom all such cases of insubordination were constantly reported, with the consent of the chairman of the Council of People’s Commissars Vladimir Lenin in 1919, began the above-mentioned campaign in the Red Army to strengthen discipline and “to combat manifestations of anarchism and partisanship.” Divisional Commander Nikolai Shchors was on Trotsky’s list among the main “independents” who were to be removed from the command staff of the Red Army by any means. And now, in the context of the events of those years and in the light of all of the above, it is quite possible to recreate the true picture of the death of Divisional Commander Shchors, which, like bricks, is made up of individual materials scattered across archives and memoirs.
On that fateful day in August 1919, after a number of orders from higher army leadership were not carried out, a member of the Revolutionary Military Council of the 12th Army, Semyon Ivanovich Aralov, Trotsky’s confidant, was sent to Shchors for inspection.
Even earlier, he had twice tried to remove from the post of commander this “indomitable partisan” and “enemy of the regular troops,” as he called Shchors at headquarters, but was afraid of a revolt of the Red Army soldiers. Now, after an inspection trip that lasted no more than three hours, Aralov turned to Trotsky with a convincing request - to find a new division chief, but not from the locals, because “the Ukrainians are all kulak-minded.” In a coded response, Trotsky ordered him to “carry out a strict purge and refreshment of the command staff in the division. A conciliatory policy is unacceptable. Any measures are good, but you need to start from the head.”
Head bandaged, blood on my sleeve
In 1989, Rabochaya Gazeta, published in Kyiv, reported exactly what measures were taken to eliminate Shchors. Then she published downright sensational material - excerpts from the memoirs of Major General Sergei Ivanovich Petrikovsky, written back in 1962, but then never published for reasons of Soviet censorship
At the end of August 1919, he commanded the Separate Cavalry Brigade of the 44th Army - and, it turns out, he also accompanied the division commander to the front line.
As can be seen from Petrikovsky’s memoirs, Comrade Aralov went on a new inspection trip to Shchors not alone, but together with the political inspector of the Revolutionary Military Council of the 12th Army, Pavel Samuilovich Tankhil-Tankhilevich (his portrait has not survived). Researchers call this person more than mysterious. He was next to Shchors at the time of his death, and immediately after his death he left for army headquarters. At the same time, in his memoirs, Petrikovsky claims that the shot that killed Shchors was heard after the Red artillery smashed into pieces a railway box, behind which there was an enemy machine gunner.
“When the enemy machine gun fired,” the general writes, “the Dubovoys lay down near Shchors on one side, and the political inspector on the other. I have not yet established who is on the right and who is on the left, but this no longer matters significantly. I still think that it was the political inspector who fired, and not Dubovoy...
I think that Dubovoy became an unwitting accomplice, perhaps even believing that it was for the benefit of the revolution. How many such cases do we know!!! I knew Dubovoy, and not only from the Civil War. He seemed to me an honest man. But he also seemed weak-willed to me, without any special talents. He was nominated, and he wanted to be nominated. That's why I think he was made complicit. But he didn’t have the courage to prevent the murder.
Bandaged dead man's head Shchorsa was right there on the battlefield, Dubovoy himself personally. When Bohunsky Regiment nurse Anna Rosenblum suggested bandaging it more carefully, Dubovoy did not allow her. By order of Dubovoy, Shchors’ body was sent for burial without a medical examination... Dubovoy could not help but know that the bullet “exit” hole is always larger than the entry hole...”
Thus, according to all the data, it turns out that Shchors received a revolver bullet in the back of his head precisely from Tanhilevich, and this happened at the moment when he began to look at the location of Petlyura’s troops through binoculars. It is also clear from the memoirs that the above-mentioned Ivan Dubovoy became an involuntary witness to this shot, but he hardly wanted the death of the division commander - he was later forced to remain silent. And while he was trying to bandage Shchors and pull his body out of the battlefield, Aralov and his assistant, as already mentioned, left the division’s location and went back to headquarters. Subsequently, traces of the performers were lost somewhere on the fronts, and Dubovoy was accused of treason to the Motherland in 1937 and was soon shot.
For most experts, it seems obvious that Shchors, during the troubled times of the civil war, became one of the many victims of the struggle for power in the Soviet military-political elite. At the same time, historians believe that another red division commander, Vasily Chapaev, who for Trotsky was also one of the adherents of “partisanship,” could soon share his fate, but just then his “timely” death happened in the waters of the Ural River. And although during the perestroika years versions were repeatedly put forward that the death of Chapaev, like Shchors, was set up by Trotsky’s inner circle, no real evidence was found for these assumptions.
The mysterious deaths of a number of Red commanders during the civil war and immediately after it are one of the darkest pages Soviet history, which we are unlikely to ever be able to read to the end. We can only hope that this will someday be done thanks to the efforts of researchers working with materials from archives that were classified as secret just recently
Valery EROFEEV.
The mystery of the death of the legendary division commander N.A. Shchorsa: a look through the years
IN last years in means mass media Publications constantly appear that examine the origins of the deaths of people famous in the recent past: M.V. Frunze, M. Gorky, S.A. Yesenina, V.V. Mayakovsky and others. At the same time, the majority of authors are trying not so much to establish the truth as to present readers with a certain sensation.
The story of the death of Nikolai Aleksandrovich Shchors1 did not escape similar approaches. Journalists, not bothering to look for opportunities to give a scientific, objective assessment of the materials at their disposal, began to claim that Shchors was killed by his own people. At the same time, some considered Shchors’ killers to be a certain traitor, others considered the division commander’s associates, whom he did not please in some way. The direct perpetrator of the murder was called the political inspector of the Revolutionary Military Council of the 12th Army P.S. Tankhil-Tankhilevich, accomplice - deputy Shchors I.N. Dubovoy2, and the organizer was a member of the Revolutionary Military Council of the 12th Army S.I. Aralov3, who allegedly disoriented L.D. Trotsky in relation to the personality of Shchors. There were also those who considered Trotsky himself to be the direct organizer of the murder of the division commander and regarded this as a counter-revolutionary act4.
The main argument underlying all these versions was the location of the gunshot entrance hole in the occipital region, which is traditionally associated among ordinary people with a shot in the back of the head. The arguments cited included the confession of Dubovoy, who was repressed in 1937, and the fact of Shchors’s burial in Samara, allegedly in order to hide real reasons his death and erase his memory.
Even a non-specialist understands that in combat conditions, while in a trench, a person can at some moments be facing the enemy with any area of the body, including his back. How confessions were obtained in 1937 is also no secret today. From the testimony of F.E. Rostova5 it follows that the decision to bury Shchors’ body in Samara was not made by I.N. Dubov, as some authors write about this, and by the Revolutionary Military Council of the army out of fear of desecration of his grave, as happened with the grave of brigade commander V.N. Bozhenko6. The decision to be buried in Samara may have been influenced by the fact that in May-June 1918, Shchors, on instructions from the Central Committee of the RCP(b), organized a partisan movement in the Samara and Simbirsk (now Ulyanovsk region) provinces under the name Timofeev. According to some reports, he even participated in the liberation of Samara from the White Czechs. There were other arguments allegedly indicating an attempt on Shchors’s life (the wound was caused by a revolver bullet, the shot was fired from a parabellum from a distance of 5-10 or 8-10 steps), which, however, when compared with archival documents now stored in the State Archives of Samara region (GASO) turned out to be untrue7.
Documents related to the study of the remains of N.A. Shchorsa, from 1949 to 1964 were kept in the archives of the city committee of the CPSU. In September 1964, almost all of them were sent to the Kuibyshev (now Samara) Bureau of Forensic Medicine (BSME) to prepare answers to the questions set out in the request of the director of the State Memorial Museum N.A. Shchorsa8. Subsequently, in 1997, documents sent to the BSME were discovered in the personal archive of forensic expert N.Ya. Belyaev, who participated both in the study of Shchors’ remains and in the preparation of responses to the museum in 1964. In 2003, all documents were transferred to the State Archive of the Samara Region. We do not know why the documents were not requested by the archive earlier. Another document is “Act of exhumation and medical examination of the remains of the corpse of A.N. Shchorsa" appeared in the State Social Society in December 1964 after it was transferred here from the archives of the CPSU Civil Code. The first author of this article for a long time worked together with N.Ya. Belyaev, and it was to him that the archival documents were transferred after the death of N.Ya. Belyaeva.
As you know, Nikolai Aleksandrovich Shchors, at that time the commander of the 44th Infantry Division, which was part of the 12th Army, died on August 30, 1919 near Korosten, near the village of Beloshitsa, which is 100 km north of Zhitomir (Ukraine). His body was transported to the city of Klintsy (now Bryansk region), and burial took place on September 14, 1919 at the city (formerly All Saints) cemetery in Samara (from 1935 to 1991 - Kuibyshev). Cemetery in 1926-1931 was closed, part of its territory was occupied by a cable factory, and the grave was lost. However, after the war, the need arose to clarify the cause of the death of the legendary division commander, and they began to look for his burial place. These attempts were only successful in May 1949.
On May 16, 1949, the grave was dug up, but permission to open the coffin required an appeal from the executive committee of the Kuibyshev City Council and the regional committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks to the Secretary of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks G.M. Malenkov. On July 5, 1949, at 1:30 p.m., the coffin with the remains was removed and taken to the premises of the then city forensic medical examination, where on the same day a forensic medical examination took place by a commission of 6 people chaired by the head of the city health department K.P. . Vasiliev in order to establish the identity of the remains of N.A. Shchors. The question of the possible circumstances of the gunshot wound to the skull identified during the examination of the remains did not arise.
No reports on the activities of the commission were published. Those who were aware of this also remained silent.
Now, considering the data from both the primary and other documents that contain a description of the study of the remains, we have to admit that the research conducted left much to be desired. Thus, during the examination of the skull, the orientation of the length of the hole in the occipital bone; the cranial vault was not separated and the features of damage to the internal bone plate were not studied; The thickness of the skull bones was not measured, especially in the area of damage, which did not meet the requirements of paragraphs. 26, 57 and 58 of the “Rules for Forensic Medical Examination of Corpses” (1928), which were also in force in 19499.
Omitting details of the study that are not related to the topic of this article, we present a verbatim description of the damage to the skull bones presented in the report: “... in the area of the tubercle of the occipital bone, 0.5 cm to the right of it, there is an irregular oval-oblong hole measuring 1.6 x 0.8 cm with fairly smooth edges. From the upper edge of this hole to the left, rising slightly upward, through the left temporal bone, there is a crack that does not reach the posterior edge of the left zygomatic bone. In the area of the left parietal bone, on the line connecting the mastoid processes, 5 cm below the sagittal suture, there is a round hole 1 x 1 cm with a detachment of the outer plate 2 cm in diameter. From this hole in front and down to the external auditory opening, cracks extend, forming a closed area of irregular quadrangular shape measuring 6 x 3.5 cm. The distance between the holes in the bones of the skull in a straight line is 14 cm. When the soft tissues of the head were removed, bone fragments separated, forming hole in the skull."
During the study, photographs were taken of the remains in the coffin and separately of the head. The photographs were attached to a document entitled “Forensic Medical Report”, drawn up by three representatives of the above-mentioned commission: the head of the department topographic anatomy and operative surgery of Kuibyshev State medical institute(KSMI) doctor medical sciences, Professor I.N. Askalonov; forensic experts, assistants of the Department of Forensic Medicine of KSMI N.Ya. Belyaev and V.P. Golubev. All are specialists with extensive experience in practical and teaching work.
This document contains verbatim data from the report on the nature of damage to the skull bones, excluding information about the formation of a hole in the skull after removal of soft tissue, and ends with conclusions from 5 points.
The first paragraph states the cause of death: “Death of Shchors N.A. followed from a through gunshot wound to the occipital and left half of the skull with damage to the brain substance, as indicated by the damage to the bones of the skull described above.”
The second paragraph, in a presumptive form (“apparently”), speaks of the weapon from which Shchors was mortally wounded: “... either from a short-barreled weapon of the “revolver” type or from a combat rifle.” There are no substantiations for this judgment.
The third paragraph deals with the location of the entrance and exit holes: “The hole in the occipital region should be considered the entrance, as evidenced by the fairly smooth edges of the bone defect in the area of the occipital protuberance. The hole located in the left parietal region should be considered the exit hole, as indicated by the shape of the hole with detachment of the outer bone plate.”
The fourth paragraph of the conclusions contains an indication of the direction of the shot (“back to front, bottom to top and slightly from right to left”) and the area of brain damage—“cerebellum, occipital lobes brain and left hemisphere" - "along the bullet channel."
The first part of this paragraph about the direction of the shot was formulated contrary to known scientific data about the non-identity of such concepts as direction wound channel and the direction of the shot, since the direction of the firing channel does not always coincide with the external direction of the bullet’s flight. Experienced forensic doctors, especially teachers of forensic medicine, could not help but know about this.
In the last, fifth point, experts pointed out the impossibility of determining the distance of the shot.
In 1964, based on these documents, a 4-page response was prepared to the director of the State Memorial Museum N.A. Shchors to his requests dated August 6 and September 16, 1964, received by the 1st Secretary of the Kuibyshev City Committee of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) L.N. Efremova. The response was prepared by forensic experts N.Ya. Belyaev and V.P. Golubev, as well as the head of the Kuibyshev BSME N.V. Pichugina.
The preamble of the document states that the director of the museum is sent a “Forensic medical report...” and photographs of the skull of the deceased. It was also pointed out that it was impossible to determine the caliber of the bullet and the presence of its casing, “because... when examining the exhumed corpse of Shchors special research there was no impact on the bullet casing.”
From the point of view of information content, photographs of Shchors’ skull are of greatest value, since of all the surviving materials they are the only ones that do not represent subjective descriptions and opinions, but are an objective reflection of the wound Shchors received. True, the photographs have a number of significant drawbacks: there is no scale bar or any other object that allows you to determine the scale; the selected angles make it difficult to determine the exact location of the damage. Nevertheless, it was the study of photographs of Shchors’ skull that allowed us to take a fresh look at the nature of the gunshot wound, which became fatal. At the same time, there was no doubt about the experts’ conclusion that on Shchors’ skull there is precisely gunshot wound, as well as conclusions regarding the location of the inlet and outlet openings. However, the shape and dimensions of the outlet described in the report, in our opinion, are, to put it mildly, incorrect. Thus, the act states: “After photographing the remains of the corpse in the coffin and a separate photograph of the head, medical checkup head, and after separating the soft coverings of the head along with the hair, the following was discovered...” The photographs show that already during photographing, some of the bone fragments around the exit hole separated. Most likely, experts studied and described the skull after their separation. In such cases, to restore the original picture and detailed description it is necessary to re-match the fragments. Perhaps this was not done. In any case, only this, in our opinion, can explain the description of the exit hole they presented: “a round hole measuring 1 x 1 cm.” Fortunately, one of the photographs captured the exit gunshot hole on Shchors’ skull before the separation of the largest fragment.
The photo clearly shows chips of the outer bone plate along the upper edge, the anterior and posterior ends, and along the lower edge at the posterior end, forming a kind of bracket that goes around this part of the defect. These chips characterize the rectangular part of the defect as an exit gunshot damage, and the shape of this part of the defect corresponds to the shape of the bullet profile. In place of the triangular part of the defect, located in the lower left corner of the photo, there was most likely another fragment(s) that separated before photographing.
If specialists had described and measured the rectangular part of the defect during the study, this would have allowed them to high degree the likelihood of drawing a conclusion about the alleged projectile, and, accordingly, about the weapon from which Nikolai Alexandrovich was mortally wounded.
The absence of a scale bar in the photo, as well as any other scale references, deprives us of the opportunity to draw unambiguous conclusions. However, focusing on the general dimensions of the skull, as well as on the dimensions of the defects recorded in the report (“a closed area of irregular quadrangular shape measuring 6 x 3.5 cm”, “a round hole 1 x 1 cm”), we still risked carrying out own calculations the size of the rectangular area of the bone defect.
According to our calculations, the length of the damage is 3.2 cm, the width at the anterior-inferior end is 1.1 cm, the width at the upper-posterior end is 1 cm (the latter size corresponds to the size of the hole indicated in the report). Taking into account the direction of the wound channel at the exit, the bullet moved at a rather acute angle to the parietal bone, so the size of the bone defect is most likely several more sizes bullet profile. But even taking this into account and the possible error in our calculations, the length of the bullet should have been at least 3.0 cm.
Thus, based on the already available data on the nature of the damage to Shchors’ skull, supplemented by our calculations, the bullet that fatally wounded Shchors had a diameter of about 0.8 cm (smaller size of the entrance hole) and a length of at least 3.0 cm. None of The bullets known to us used for shooting pistols of that time do not meet these parameters, primarily the length.
Most suitable characteristics has a so-called Mannlicher bullet. Its diameter is just 0.8 cm and its length is about 3.2 cm. The Mannlicher cartridge, as far as we know, was used for firing from the following rifles: Mannlicher Repetiergewehr M.1888/90, Mannlicher Repetiergewehr M.1890, Mannlicher Repetier-Karabiner M.90, Mannlicher Repetiergewehr M.1895, Mannlicher Repetier-Karabiner M.1895, Mannlicher Repetier-Stutzen M.1895, as well as for firing from the Schwarzlose MG 07/12 machine gun. All this is a weapon of so-called strong combat, and it was in service with the enemy troops10.
A bullet fired from such a weapon has a very high initial flight speed and, therefore, kinetic energy. Released at close range, it would have caused more extensive damage to the skull11.
Due to the high flight speed, the bullet, having formed an entrance hole in the bones of the skull (after which its rotation may begin), as a rule, does not have time to turn inside the skull cavity enough to exit it with its side surface.
In cases where the bullet enters the cranial cavity in a straight line, without prior rotation, round perforated fractures usually form on the skull. Experts who examined Shchors’ skull explained the elongated shape of the entrance hole by saying that “apparently, the bullet in the area of the back of the deceased’s head did not penetrate in a strictly perpendicular direction or was deformed.” In our opinion, the most probable version seems to be a ricochet, after which the bullet inevitably had to change the direction of flight and could begin to rotate even before entering the skull, and inside the cranial cavity it would only continue its previously started rotation and exit on the side surface. You should also keep in mind the possibility of a ricochet from an object located behind the victim. In this case, the shooter had to be located in front and to the side of Shchors.
The data presented indicate that the version of the murder of the legendary division commander by his own people, especially by anyone in the immediate vicinity of him, in particular by Dubov or Tankhil-Tankhilevich, has no real basis. So the question of who killed Shchors, and whether he was killed intentionally or died from a stray bullet from the enemy, remains, in our opinion, still open.
Response to article [E.A. Gimpelson and E.V. Ponomareva] “Were there murderers?”
In August 2011, an article by E. A. Gimpelson was published on the website of the Military Historical Journal under the heading “Judgments and Versions.” and Ponomareva E.V. “Were there murderers? The mystery of the death of the legendary division commander N.A. Shchors: a look through the years.” Those who are interested in this topic have noticed that the article is a significantly revised version of the publication by Gimpelson E.A. and Ardashkina A.P. “The deliberate murder of N.A. Shchors - truth or fiction?”, published in the magazine “Samara Destinies”, No. 5, 2007.
In both versions, the authors conduct a professional analysis of the results of the exhumation of the remains of N.A. Shchors on the basis of archival materials and photographs from 1949 and convincingly reject the widespread version of the deliberate murder of N.A. Shchors with a shot in the back of the head:
“The data presented indicate that the version of the murder of the legendary division commander by his own people, especially by anyone in the immediate vicinity of him, in particular Dubov or Tankhil-Tankhilevich, has no real basis. So the question of who killed Shchors, and whether he was killed intentionally or died from a stray bullet from the enemy, remains, in our opinion, still open.”
At the same time, the authors express their position, which I fully support, in terms of the assertion that many historical publications do not bother themselves with a systemic analysis and try to extract sensation from fragmentary, unverified facts or simply unfounded statements. Indeed, there are countless examples of this.
However, the conclusion that “the murder version has no real basis,” it seems to me, suffers from the same drawback - the lack of a systematic analysis. But the analysis is not only forensic, but also historical, taking into account all known facts.
First of all, I want to note that the version of premeditated murder did not come from the pen of publicists. She was born among Shchors' colleagues literally the next day after his death. But the military and political situation did not allow for a hot investigation. And it is possible that it was precisely this circumstance that prompted Shchors’ friends to embalm his body, carefully pack it and bury it far from the army and political leadership. The often stated statement that the decision to bury Shchors in Samara was made by the RVS of the 12th Army does not correspond to reality. According to RVS-12 member Semyon Aralov, the telegram about the death of division commander-44 was received only on September 8, when the funeral train was already on its way to Samara. This is confirmed by the telegram sent after him - to immediately return the cool carriage.
Attempts to initiate an investigation were made in subsequent years. This is what General Petrikovsky (Petrenko) S.I., Shchors’ colleague and friend, writes in his memoirs:
“If you figure out how the situation developed in the 1st Ukrainian. division in the summer of 1919, then murder was bound to occur (follow).”
By the way, soon after the death of division commander-44, a purge of the command staff was carried out in the division, which Petrikovsky himself fell under, being the commander of the Special Cavalry Brigade. (But he was soon picked up by Frunze and appointed military commander of the 25th Chapaev Division).
And much later in his memoirs he expressed former member RVS-12 Semyon Aralov:
“...It should be added that, as it turned out then from a conversation over a direct wire from the beginning. Headquarters of the 1st Division Comrade Kasser, Shchors did not inform the division units of their withdrawal plan and left the Zhitomir-Kyiv highway, which was extremely important for the defense of Kyiv, open to the enemy, which was regarded as failure to comply with a combat order.”
I think there is no need to remind readers what this phrase means during hostilities.
Attempts to understand the absurd death of Nikolai Shchors were made in subsequent years. But the deeper the veterans penetrated into history, the more terrible the conclusions loomed - the involvement of influential party officials. And the veterans come to the decision that there is no point in further promoting the topic of the murder of Nikolai Shchors, “... since such a version discredits our party. And they poured so much shit on us.”
Let me also remind you of the famous confession of Ivan Dubovoy, made by him in 1937 in the dungeons of the NKVD. Ivan Dubovoy, quite unexpectedly and of his own free will, wrote a statement in which he confessed to the murder of Shchors, committed by him for selfish reasons, being Shchors’ deputy. But the authorities did not bother with this fact - Dubovoy was still threatened with a “tower” for anti-Soviet activities. The question arises: why did Dubovoy need to invent this story, if earlier in his memoirs he stated that “the bullet entered the temple and came out at the back of the head.” And Dubovoy was the only real witness to Shchors’ death - “he died in my arms.” Or, as they say, “there is no smoke without fire”?
For the first time, the murder of Shchors by “his own” was widely voiced by the writer Dmitry Petrovsky in 1947 in his book “The Tale of the Bogunsky and Tarashchansky Regiments”:
“No one has yet seen, except Bogengard, that the bullet that killed Shchors entered the back of his head - below the ear and exited into the temple, that it pierced him - treacherously - from behind. That the murderer, like a snake, gets entangled and moves among the ranks of those striving for vengeance.” [cit. according to the 1947 edition]
It should be noted that many veterans immediately condemned this book and demanded that it be withdrawn from circulation. The motive is the same - no one can discredit the party.
Please note that everything mentioned above refers to the period before 1949, i.e. Until the results of the exhumation appear, the version of a planned murder should not be attributed to an invention of publicists based on the Exhumation Act of 1949.
And in 1962, veterans, historians and party organs were blown up by a letter from S.I. Petrikovsky:
“...I am not writing this letter for publication. I do not consider it useful now to correct in print what has already been written. But in any Soviet or party court, I undertake to prove that Ivan Dubovoy is an accomplice in the murder or the killer of Nikolai Shchors. This letter of mine is my witness statement...”
In 1964, Petrikovsky could not be pulled out of his third heart attack. And the party bodies used force to suppress any discussions on this matter. Some materials from the investigation into Shchors’ death fell into the hands of publicists only in the late eighties. And there was a thick smell of fried food.
Now directly to the article. I am not a criminology specialist and I was impressed by the insightful and compelling analysis carried out by the authors of the article. But I still don't understand:
Or they believe that the experts of 1949 (I emphasize, it was 1949, not 1964) had some external influence, which forced them to lie a little.
In fact, there are two expert opinions. One was made in 1949 on real remains, and the second, made in 1964 from photographs and archival documents. Moreover, the 1949 conclusion contains uncompromising statements (with the exception of the type of revolver weapon and the firing distance), while the answers of the experts in 1964 are mostly vague and probabilistic. It is possible that this was due to the fact that in 1964 experts had to answer direct and quite professional questions, and they understood that something important depended on their answer, and not just idle curiosity. One thing was certain - the entrance hole was on the back of the head, and the exit hole was on the temple.
Now to the issue of rebound. Of course, the version of the authors of the article contains convincing evidence and has every right to exist, although it is probabilistic. But in this case, the legal competence of both the 1949 and 1964 experts is questionable. After all, if the experts were considering the option of a ricochet, then the Act would have a legally clear wording: “The bullet entered the back of the head and exited the temple,” and not an unambiguous statement: “The shot was fired from back to front.” Those. it was not just the bullet that entered from behind, but the shot was fired from behind, which casts doubt on the version of the ricochet. It seems like the experts had no doubts about this.
And in conclusion, a few words about the fundamental principles of the discussion. Some researchers, and I agree with them, suggest that this whole controversy - who shot, with what weapon, from where, etc. - this is an attempt to divert the question from the main thing: is Shchors’ death purposeful and does it fit into the formula “no person - no problem.” Including acts of exhumation are only indirect evidence.
1 Shchors Nikolai Aleksandrovich (May 25 (June 6), 1895, the village of Snovsk, now the town of Shchors, Chernigov region, Ukraine - August 30, 1919, the village of Beloshitsa, now the village of Shchorsovka, Zhitomir region, Ukraine). He graduated from the military paramedic school (1914) and military school(1916). Participant in the First World War, second lieutenant (1917). In the Red Army since 1918, he organized a partisan detachment that fought against the German occupiers. In May-June 1918 he was involved in organizing partisan movement in the Samara and Simbirsk provinces, in September in the Unecha region it formed the 1st Ukrainian Soviet Regiment named after. Bohuna. From November 1918 - commander of the 2nd brigade of the 1st Ukrainian Soviet division, which liberated Chernigov, Fastov, Kyiv. From February 1919 - commandant of Kyiv, from March - head of the 1st Ukrainian Soviet Division, which liberated Zhitomir, Vinnitsa, Zhmerinka from the Petliurists, defeated their main forces in the area of Sarny, Rivne, Radzivilov, Brody, Proskurov, staunchly defended in the area Novograd-Volynsky, Shepetivka, Sarny. From August 1919, he commanded the 44th Infantry Division, which stubbornly defended the Korosten railway junction, which ensured the evacuation of Soviet institutions from Kyiv and the exit from the encirclement of the Southern Group 12 A. He was awarded the Weapon of Honor by the Provisional Workers' and Peasants' Government of Ukraine.
2 The argument about Dubovoy’s involvement in the murder of Shchors was based on the prevailing opinion at that time about the constant difference in the size of the entrance and exit wounds. Dubovoy, according to his accusers, knew about this, saw the wound, but wrote that the bullet entered from the front and came out from the back (See: N. Zenkovich. Bullet from a Liver Gun // Rural Youth. 1992. No. 1. P. 52-57) ; Ivanov V. Who shot at the division commander? // Interfax Vremya - Samara and Samara newspaper dated September 5, 2001; Erofeev V. The mystery of the death of Shchors // Volga Commune. No. 234. 2009. July 4.
3 Aralov Semyon Ivanovich (1880-1969). In the revolutionary social democratic movement since 1903, member of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) since 1918. During the Civil War - member of the Revolutionary Military Council of the Republic, army, South-Western Front. In 1921-1925. - Plenipotentiary Representative in Lithuania, Turkey, then worked in the People's Commissariat of Foreign Affairs, the Supreme Council of the National Economy.
4 See: Petrovsky D.V. The story of the Bogunsky and Tarashchansky regiments. M., 1955. S. 398, 399.
5 See: “Testimony of Rostova Fruma Efimovna, wife of N.A. Shchorsa, living [at that time]: Moscow, 72, st. Serafimovicha, 2, apt. 487, tel.: 31-92-49.” The document is on two pages, at the end of it the date and place of compilation are indicated: “May 7, 1949, Kuibyshev” and Rostova’s signature. State Archives of the Samara Region (SASO). F. 651. Op. 5. D. 115.
6 Bozhenko Vasily Nazarievich (1871-1919) - hero of the Civil War, member of the Bolshevik Party from 1917, in 1918-1919. - participant in battles with German invaders and Petliurists in Ukraine. In 1918-1919 - commander of the Tarashchansky partisan regiment, then the Tarashchansky brigade in the 1st Ukrainian (44th) division N.A. Shchorsa. Bozhenko’s units took part in the liberation of the territory of Soviet Ukraine from German invaders, hetmans and Petliurists. See also: Shpachkov V. Paramedic, who became a red commander // Medical newspaper. No. 70. 2007. September 19.
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