Grigory Ivanovich Kotovsky was born in 1881 in Bessarabia, in the village of Ganchesti. His father worked at a distillery. After graduating from agricultural school in 1900, the young man received the position of assistant estate manager, and then within a year three more similar positions on different estates. And he was fired from everywhere for the same reason - waste of money. Kotovsky received his first sentences for forgery of documents and theft of money.

In 1904, having learned that he was subject to conscription for the outbreak of the Russian-Japanese War, Kotovsky fled from another estate, taking the owner’s money. He was arrested and sent to the 19th Kostroma Regiment in Zhitomir. From there he deserted a short time later.

For evading military service, according to the laws of the Russian Empire, Kotovsky faced up to 10 years of hard labor. Having forged documents, in August 1905 Kotovsky committed his first armed robbery; in October he had his own gang of eight people.

A year later, the hijacker is arrested. Kotovsky’s former high school classmate, police officer Pyotr Sergeevich Chemansky, is participating in the investigation. Much later, in 1940, under the terms of a treaty with Germany, Bessarabia was torn away from Romania and became Soviet Moldova. Chemansky was arrested and shot precisely as a participant in the arrest of his former friend.

About thirty robberies were proven at the trial, the sentence was 12 years of hard labor in the Kazakovskaya prison at the Nerchinsk mines.

Six years later, Kotovsky escapes from prison and soon finds himself in Bessarabia. A qualitatively new stage in Kotovsky’s activity begins. Having restored the gang, Kotovsky begins to rob increasingly: in 1913 - six robberies, in 1914 - ten, in 1915 - more than twenty. In the summer of 1916, Kotovsky, who was arrested once again, was sentenced to death by the court. There is a war going on and the verdict must be approved by the commander of the Southwestern Front, General Brusilov. The prisoner writes a desperate letter to Nadezhda Brusilova-Zhelikhovskaya asking for pardon. Her husband replaces the death penalty with hard labor.

In March, the Russian Empire ceased to exist and on May 5, 1917, the new authorities released Kotovsky with the indispensable condition of sending him to the front. During the war he was awarded the St. George Cross, 4th degree. There is no documentary evidence of this fact, although Kotovsky’s personal courage is undeniable. It was there, at the front, that his first contacts with the Bolsheviks took place. In 1918, Kotovsky appeared in Odessa, occupied by Austro-Hungarian troops, in an illegal situation. The robberies continue now together with the gangs of the same Yaponchik, Dombrovsky, and Waldman. They talked about three trucks with gold and jewelry that disappeared on the eve of the liberation of Odessa by the Red Army.

In July 1919, Kotovsky became brigade commander in the 45th division. The backbone of the unit consisted of criminals from Bessarabia and Odessa. In the summer, Odessa was taken by the Whites, and Kotovsky’s brigade began to retreat to the rear of the Petliurists. The criminal part of the brigade commander's life ended there.

In the spring of 1920, the brigade fought with Polish and Petliura troops. In the summer of 1921, participating in the suppression of the Antonov rebellion in the Tambov region, Kotovsky received the Order of the Red Banner. In the autumn of the same year, he took command of the 9th Crimean Division, and a year later - the 2nd Cavalry Corps. With the introduction of the NEP, military consumer societies began to be created in the army. At the building there were about forty HPO shops selling firewood, soap, sausages and other things. The sugar production plant in Peregonovka was recreated, which soon became one of the best in the RSFSR. It was there that Kotovsky arranged for his old friend Meyer Seider, his future killer, to be the head of security.

Versions of Kotovsky’s murder vary: from organized by Stalin to inspired by Romanian counterintelligence, from domestic (allegedly Kotovsky hit Seider after learning about his sugar thefts) to political. According to the testimony of Grigory Abramovich Valdman, a former Odessa criminal, later a Red commander, awarded two Orders of the Red Banner, this was an accidental domestic murder. As he said, “there was a lot of drinking back then.”

Be that as it may, the authorities paid tribute to the red commander by arranging a magnificent funeral, and later even organizing a mausoleum. And, no matter how Kotovsky’s life began, his services to the Soviet regime outweighed all the crimes of his youth.

Such an ambiguous person was the legendary Grigory Ivanovich Kotovsky.

(.... - 08/06/1925) Russia

On August 7, 1925, strange information appeared in the Pravda newspaper: “Kharkov. On the night of August 6, on the state farm of the Tsupvoenpromkhoz “Chebanka”, thirty miles from Odessa, a member of the Union, Ukrainian and Moldavian Central Executive Committee, commander of the cavalry corps, Comrade Kotovsky, died untimely.” And not another word. No explanation. You might think that Kotovsky was killed on the battlefield. No, the death of the most popular commander of the civil war is still (!) shrouded in mystery...

Website: Pseudology
Article: IF COMMORDS DIE, IT MEANS SOMEONE NEEDS IT...

Shots in the night

In the summer of 1925, Grigory Ivanovich and his family rested on the Chebanka state farm. This was the first and last vacation of his life. The holiday home was designed for thirty people, but the Kotovsky family was given a small separate house by the sea.

In those days, Grigory Ivanovich swam a lot, walked with his son Grishutka, and played croquet, which was then fashionable, with other vacationers. Meanwhile, the fateful day, which so suddenly ended the biography of our hero, was inexorably approaching. And along with him, perhaps the main mystery in Kotovsky’s enchanting fate was approaching.

... A week before the end of the vacation, the family began to gather in Uman, where the headquarters of the cavalry corps was located. Two circumstances hurried him: firstly, Kotovsky received a message that the new People's Commissar of Military Affairs M. Frunze had decided to appoint him as his deputy, which means he had to go to Moscow without delay to take over matters. Secondly, the time was approaching for my wife, Olga Petrovna, to give birth (daughter Elena was born on August 11, 1925 - Author's note).

In the evening, on the eve of departure, Grigory Ivanovich was invited to a “bonfire” at the nearby Luzanovsky pioneer camp. Then he returned home, but the Red commanders who were resting next door decided to give him a farewell on the occasion of Kotovsky’s departure. However, Grigory Ivanovich, who hardly drank alcohol, was never tempted by such feasts. But how can you refuse when they ask?

Grigory Ivanovich’s wife recalled that they sat down at the table for the “send-off” only at eleven o’clock in the evening. “Kotovsky went reluctantly,” she wrote, “because he didn’t like such evenings and was tired: he told the pioneers about the liquidation of Antonov’s gang, and for him this always meant experiencing great nervous tension again.

The evening, as they say, did not go well. There were loud speeches and toasts, but Kotovsky was indifferent and unusually boring. About three hours later (that is, at about three o'clock in the morning. - Author's note) they began to disperse. Kotovsky was detained by a senior accountant of the Central Directorate of Military-Industrial Economy who had just arrived. I returned home alone and prepared the bed.

Suddenly I hear short revolver shots - one, two, and then - dead silence... I ran towards the shots... At the corner of the main building of vacationers I see Kotovsky’s body spread out, face down. I rush to the pulse - there is no pulse...”

The killer's bullet hit the aorta and death occurred instantly. Doctors will later say: if the bullet had not hit the aorta, Kotovsky’s powerful body would have survived...

Neighbors came running to hear the shots and helped carry the body onto the veranda. Everyone was at a loss: who dared to shoot Kotovsky?! They rushed to look for the killer. And suddenly, that same night, the criminal... showed up himself.

Soon after the father was carried onto the veranda, says Grigory Grigoryevich Kotovsky, and the mother was left alone by the body, Seider ran in and, falling on his knees in front of her, began to fight in hysterics: “It was I who killed the commander!..”. It seemed to my mother that he was trying to enter the room where I was sleeping, and she, blocking Seider’s path, shouted: “Get out, you bastard!” Seider quickly disappeared...

The killer was captured at dawn. However, he made no attempt to escape, and during the investigation and at trial he fully admitted his guilt.

Who is this Seider Meyer, or, as everyone called him, Majorchik Seider?

"I am your debt..."

He had nothing to do with military service and was not the commander’s adjutant, as some biographers of Kotovsky claim. His professional interests were, as they say, in a completely different department. Before the revolution, Seider ran the most respectable brothel in Odessa. This establishment survived during the days of the Provisional Government. Immediately after October, the Odessa Bolsheviks had no time for it either. By 1918, the owner of the “house” had become a wealthy man: he bought an expensive diamond necklace for his wife Rosa, a former Odessa prostitute, and saved enough money to buy a mansion overlooking the sea. But I was in no hurry to buy - there were still frequent shootings in Odessa at that time.

There were many military personnel in the occupied city: Denikin's troops, Petliurists, Polish legionnaires, English, Romanian, French, Greek soldiers and officers. And each army had its own counterintelligence. The elusive Kotovsky was of particular interest to counterintelligence officers. They knew that the famous Bessarabian was working on instructions from the underground Bolshevik Revolutionary Committee, that he participated in the release of arrested underground fighters, transported weapons taken from the invaders to the partisans on the Dniester, and carried out sabotage on the railway. Kotovsky’s daring raid on Denikin’s counterintelligence caused a lot of noise in the city...

One day at noon, a powerfully built artillery captain came to Seider’s “house.” Right from the doorway he turned to the taken aback owner:

I am Kotovsky. I need a key to your attic,” and, having received the key, he added, “you haven’t seen any captain today.” Is not it?..

Seider, hastily confirming this, escorted the uninvited guest to the stairs leading upstairs. Having hidden the “captain”, he probably spent a long time tormented by the question of whether to tell him “who should” about this or not...

At night, Kotovsky, having changed into civilian clothes, “borrowed” from Seider, and putting on a wig, which he took with him when going to the operation, went down from the attic and, saying goodbye, said:

I am your debt...

This is how the fate of Kotovsky and Seider came together in a turbulent year. In 1920, Seider lost his job - the Soviet government closed the brothel. For two years he made do with random “extra jobs”, and then, having learned where the cavalry corps of his “debtor” was stationed, he went to Uman to ask him for help.

And Kotovsky helped him - in 1922, Seider became the head of security at the Peregonovsky sugar factory, located near Uman. Being a practical man, not without organizational skills and a commercial spirit, Seider helped Kotovsky organize the life of the cavalry corps: the Kotovites, for example, prepared leather, took it to Ivanovo, where they exchanged it for fabric, from which they then sewed uniforms in their own workshops.

That ill-fated August, Seider arrived in Chebanka in a car called from Uman by Kotovsky. Seider motivated his visit by saying that he wanted to help the commander’s family prepare for the return trip. It is possible that Grigory Ivanovich knew in advance about Seider’s arrival and did not interfere with it, because nothing foreshadowed trouble...

In a word, the relationship between Kotovsky and Seider before the tragic events in Chebank was normal. And, apparently, Seider was grateful to Grigory Ivanovich for getting a job - for the former brothel owner, this, frankly speaking, was great luck, because in those years there were thousands of unemployed people queuing at the labor exchanges, and by 1925 According to official statistics alone, there were already one and a half million of them.

Good is usually paid for with good. So what prompted Seider to commit a crime?

Maximum versions and minimum clarity

The case of Kotovsky’s murder was assigned to the investigator of the Odessa provincial court, Egorov. The defendant often changed his testimony, often putting forward completely ridiculous motives for his crime. At first, Seider said that he committed the murder out of... jealousy. It is curious that Egorov considered it necessary to state at the very beginning of the investigation: “The rumors circulating in ordinary circles about the allegedly romantic motives for the murder are completely untrue and are refuted by numerous testimony of witnesses.” In Russia, it has long been customary to react to such statements something like this: aha, that means something happened! There is no smoke without fire!

But what exactly could have happened? Didn’t Seider at one time lay claim to the hand and heart of Olga Shakina, who preferred Kotovsky to him? This is obvious nonsense. Although, according to Olga Petrovna herself, in the thirties the political department of the Red Army spread rumors of this kind for some reason.

Even more ridiculous is the version that Kotovsky allegedly injured himself. According to a certain witness who was allegedly present at the aforementioned “seeing off”, on the night of August 6, Kotovsky was sitting at the table with some young stranger. And the military man sitting opposite looked rather expressively at our hero’s passion. Suddenly Kotovsky pulled out a revolver and threatened to shoot the impudent man. But then the corps commander’s adjutant intervened and began to take the revolver from him. Kotovsky resisted, pulled the weapon towards himself and, in the end, accidentally touched the trigger with his finger. And the fatal bullet pierced his heart. This, of course, is also obvious nonsense. Seider was not Kotovsky’s adjutant, and the murder did not occur during the feast: all the witnesses testified that the company had already gone home by that time.

During the investigation, there were many more similar rumors, according to which Grigory Ivanovich died not because of someone’s ill will, but simply due to a misunderstanding. Therefore, someone simply needed to hide the real reasons for the murder.

Behind closed doors...

For some reason, the trial of Seider took place only a year later, in August 1926, although the circumstances of the case - from the point of view of the authorities - hardly required such a long delay. In the courtroom, Seider again changed his testimony, telling the jury that he killed Kotovsky because he did not promote him, although he had repeatedly asked the commander to do so. And oddly enough, this ridiculous version was accepted by the court as the basis.

Seider was sentenced to ten years. But for some reason, the accusations of collaboration with the Romanian secret service (Siguranza), which were charged against Seider not only during the investigation, but also at the trial itself, in particular in the prosecutor’s indictment, disappeared from the verdict!

It is curious that in the same building, at the same time as Seider, a criminal who robbed a dental technician was tried, and the court sentenced him to death. And Seider, who killed Kotovsky himself, to ten years...

After the court session closed, investigator Egorov approached Kotovsky’s wife and asked: “Olga Petrovna, you are probably dissatisfied with the verdict?” Kotovskaya replied: “History will judge us...”.

As for Seider, everything that happened next was rather strange. Seider served his sentence in the Kharkov pre-trial detention center, and soon he - essentially an illiterate person - was already in charge of the prison club, having received the right to freely leave prison for the city. And then something completely incredible happened: in 1928, when Seider had not been in prison for even three years, they suddenly decided to release him “for exemplary behavior.” Seider gets a job as a wagon coupler for the railroad. However, the days of the killer Kotovsky were already numbered...

Death of the only witness

In the fall of 1930, the 3rd Bessarabian Cavalry Division, stationed in Berdichev, celebrated its anniversary - a decade of combat. The Kotovites, veterans of the division, were invited to the celebration and maneuvers on the occasion of the anniversary. Among them is Olga Petrovna Kotovskaya [Shakina], who, as a doctor in her husband’s cavalry brigade, walked hundreds of fiery miles along the roads of the civil war.

One evening, three Kotovo residents, with whom she was well acquainted, came to her and told her that Seider had been sentenced to death. Olga Petrovna categorically objected: under no circumstances should Mayorchik be killed, because he is the only witness to the murder of Grigory Ivanovich, whose mystery has not been solved... Not being sure that her arguments convinced the guests, Olga Petrovna told the division commander Mishuk about this visit. She also contacted the division’s political department with a demand to prevent Seider’s murder...

Olga Petrovna’s fears were not in vain. Soon Kotovsky’s widow was informed that the “sentence” had been carried out. Seider's corpse was found near the Kharkov train station, on the railroad bed. Having killed the wagon coupler, the executors threw him onto the tracks to simulate an accident, but the train was late, and Seider’s corpse was not mutilated.

Subsequently, it was possible to establish that the murder was committed by three cavalrymen. However, today only the names of two are known - Strigunov and Waldman. The third executor of the sentence remained in the shadows of history. None of the participants in Seider's execution were harmed - they were simply not wanted.

The question arises: “why?” After all, the Bessarabian division knew about the impending assassination attempt. Information about this, apparently, was transferred where it should be. Who then blocked her path to the regional police department, which was investigating the emergency on the Kharkov railway?

We will not find answers to all our questions if, like the Odessa court, we look for the motives for the murder of Kotovsky only in the killer himself. Although the main conclusion is more than obvious. Seider was not only not the only, but also not the most important criminal. By shooting Kotovsky, he was fulfilling someone else's evil will. But whose?

Who could freely manipulate the investigators and judges involved in Seider’s “case”? Who could have classified the materials of the trial of Kotovsky's killer so secretly that they have not yet seen the light of day? Who vetoed the publication of information that would at least somehow lift the veil of secrecy about the tragedy in Chebank? The answer suggests itself: only people who had enormous and essentially unlimited power could do this...

There would be a question, but there will always be bidders...

There is a strange pattern in Kotovsky’s death. People who emerge unharmed from battles, from clouds of dangers and adventures, most often find death at the hands of a sent killer.

Yes, it was difficult to officially liquidate Kotovsky, who was popular among the people - by declaring, for example, an enemy, a traitor, etc. In ten years, the obedient Soviet people will meekly believe in not such miracles, but then, in 1925, this had not yet come into use. Therefore, the powers that be in that world had to act differently.

Today there is no longer any doubt that Grigory Ivanovich was destroyed by order “from above” and that Kotovsky’s death is directly related to his appointment to the post of Deputy People’s Commissar of Military Affairs of the USSR.

In the first half of the twenties, Stalin sought to establish a one-man dictatorship. And this, in particular, implied absolute control, first of all, over the armed forces, which the newly-minted leader of all times and peoples intended to subordinate to pawns obedient to him, like Voroshilov and Budyonny.

Trotsky, being one of the organizers of the Red Army during the Civil War, had already been removed from its leadership by that time. Frunze took his place at the head of the army, but his fate was predetermined: less than three months after the mysterious death of Kotovsky, under equally vague circumstances, Frunze also went to the next world.

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

Let's compare all these facts: Trotsky was removed from the leadership of the army, and then expelled from the country - Frunze was physically liquidated - Voroshilov, Budyonny and similar “sixes” became the head of the Red Army. Let us also recall the destruction in the second half of the thirties of the “obstinate” army leaders: Tukhachevsky, Yakir, Uborevich, Egorov, Blucher, Gamarnik and many others. All this testifies to Stalin’s desire to subjugate the army by removing undesirable, progressive people from its leadership. Needless to say, Corps Commander Kotovsky, with his freedom-loving, fair, uncompromising and restless character, clearly did not fit into the outline of the military-political solitaire being played out.

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

Needed - for whom? One thing is obvious - whoever disliked Frunze was also dangerous to Kotovsky, whom the new People's Commissar appointed as his deputy. Who could have organized the murder of Kotovsky? Those on whose path Frunze stood. In the mid-20s, when the internal party struggle intensified and two main opposing sides emerged, represented by Stalin and Trotsky, another one arose, associated with the names of Frunze and Dzerzhinsky. Both were carried away by sudden death. Frunze highly valued Kotovsky's military talent and promoted him to the highest echelon of military leadership. He was not forgiven for this.

It should be noted that they tried to find a “peptic ulcer” in Kotovsky. Allegedly, her symptoms were discovered in Kyiv. Grigory Ivanovich was urgently summoned to Moscow and admitted to the same hospital where Frunze would soon be taken. For two weeks, the doctors persistently and stubbornly searched for a reason for the operation. Fortunately, they didn't find it. Unlike Frunze, Kotovsky’s body was truly iron. Then they started another plan. And they played it like clockwork. The results exceeded all expectations.

Today it becomes clear that the murder of Seider, committed at the hands of the Kotovites, was not without the participation of the same unknown conductors involved in the elimination of Kotovsky. Having done his dirty deed, the killer of the corps commander had to die. This is why he was released from prison so quickly. An accident is a banal ending not only to this villainous plan. Kotovtsev, according to the same plan, was simply provoked to take this step. That is why neither Strigunov nor Waldman were punished for their actions.

The son of a corps commander, Grigory Grigoryevich Kotovsky, now a leading researcher at the Institute of Oriental Studies, and Deputy Secretary General of the World Federation of Scientists, has been trying for many years to unravel the mystery of his father’s death. However, oddly enough, all the documents filed in the case of Kotovsky’s murder are still (!) stored in Russian special storage facilities. It would seem that 75 years have already passed, the repressive Stalinist regime has long sunk into oblivion, the Land of the Soviets has safely rested in peace, and the mystery of the murder of one of the most outstanding commanders of the civil war is still classified as “top secret.”

However, Kotovsky’s son has no doubt that his father’s death is one of the first political murders in the country after the October Revolution

Grigory Grigorievich provides a lot of evidence in support of his conclusion. So, in 1936, his mother, Olga Petrovna, was a participant in the congress of wives of the command staff of the Red Army, which was held in the Kremlin. During a reception in honor of the congress participants, Marshal Tukhachevsky approached Olga Petrovna and said that a book had been published in Warsaw, the author of which, a Polish officer, claimed that Kotovsky was killed by the Soviet government itself.

In 1949, Grigory Grigorievich found this book in the library of the University of Warsaw. The publication was dedicated not only to his father, but also to some other prominent Soviet military leaders, and it actually said that Kotovsky was killed by the Soviet government, since he was a direct, independent person, and, having enormous popularity among the people, could well lead not only military units, but also the masses of the population of Right Bank Ukraine. Obviously, the corps commander’s son believes today, Tukhachevsky made his mother understand: Kotovsky’s murder was of a political nature.

In 1946, Grigory Grigorievich accidentally met with a military investigator he knew. At the end of the 20s, this investigator, who served in Kyiv during his military service, often visited the Kotovsky family. From him, Grigory Ivanovich’s son learned that in the top-secret archive of the state security agencies he became acquainted with the Kotovsky case. It turns out that even during his father’s life, in the 20s, intelligence information about Grigory Ivanovich was received in Moscow! The investigator, however, was very evasive in his answers to Kotovsky’s son’s questions and did not say anything more.

Monuments don’t tell anything...

To emphasize its innocence in the murder of Kotovsky, the USSR government gave him a magnificent funeral. The funeral ceremony was distinguished by an unusually heightened solemnity, close to that which surrounded Lenin’s funeral that had taken place a year and a half earlier.

In Odessa, which knew Kotovsky so well, the corps commander was buried pompously. The body arrived at the Odessa station solemnly, surrounded by a guard of honor, the coffin was buried in flowers and wreaths. In the columned hall of the district executive committee, “wide access to all workers” was opened to the coffin. And Odessa lowered the mourning flags. In the cantonment towns of the 2nd Cavalry Corps, a 20-gun salute was fired. On August 11, 1925, a special funeral train delivered the coffin with Kotovsky’s body to Birzulu (now the city of Kotovsk, Odessa region. - Author’s note).

Prominent military leaders S.M. Budyonny, A.I. Egorov came from Moscow to provincial Birzula, where in 1919 Kotovsky began his journey as commander of the regular Red Army, prominent military leaders S.M. Budyonny, A.I. Egorov came from Kiev, the commander of the troops of the Ukrainian Military District I. E. Yakir and one of the leaders of the Ukrainian government - A. I. Butsenko.

Already on the day of Kotovsky’s death, Frunze sent a telegram to the headquarters of the corps commanded by the deceased, calling Grigory Ivanovich “the best combat commander of the entire Red Army.” Other official orders and appeals were carried out in the same spirit, in particular from the governments of the Ukrainian and Moldavian SSR.

And Stalin, who then still faced a difficult struggle for unconditional leadership in the party and the state, some time later said about our hero: “The bravest among our modest commanders and the most modest among the brave - this is how I remember Comrade Kotovsky.”

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

However, the apotheosis of perpetuating the memory of Kotovsky was... the mausoleum of the legendary hero of the civil war. Needless to say, the decision to build it was made at the highest level.

Mausoleum number three

Of course, the information that there was such a mausoleum will become a kind of sensation for most readers. Indeed, in none of the numerous bibliographical and documentary-fiction publications about Kotovsky (even in recent years) there is even a hint of the corps corps mausoleum that existed in the 30s.

The newly minted bibliographers end their story about Grigory Ivanovich something like this: “we bowed down at Kotovsky’s open grave...”. Of course, one can blame the authors for insufficient study of the topic, understatement, or rather, for banal ignorance.

But this is not the main thing. The important thing is that there really was no grave, but there was just a mausoleum like Pirogov’s near Vinnitsa or Lenin’s on Red Square.

And only live communication with Grigory Ivanovich’s relatives and a creative business trip to the city of Kotovsk made it possible to dot all the i’s.

So, on August 7, 1925, literally the next day after the murder of Kotovsky, a group of embalmers, led by Professor Vorobyov, was urgently sent from Moscow to Odessa. Having arrived at the site, the scientists immediately got to work. And after a few days the work was successfully completed.

At first, the mausoleum consisted only of an underground part. In a specially equipped room at a shallow depth, a glass sarcophagus was installed, in which Kotovsky’s body was preserved at a certain temperature and humidity. Next to the sarcophagus, on satin pads, Grigory Ivanovich's awards were kept - three Orders of the Red Banner of Battle. And a little further away, on a special pedestal, there was an honorary revolutionary weapon - an inlaid cavalry saber. In 1934, a fundamental structure with a small platform and bas-relief compositions telling about the heroic events of the past civil war was erected above the underground part.

On holidays and revolutionary celebrations, military parades and demonstrations were held at the mausoleum. Workers had access to Kotovsky's body. At the foot of the mausoleum, a reception for pioneers took place, and the recruits, swearing allegiance to the Motherland, swore to be as brave and fearless as the legendary corps commander Kotovsky.

At the beginning of August 1941, Kotovsk was captured first by German and then by Romanian troops. The occupation was so swift that the authorities did not have time to organize the evacuation of the sarcophagus with Kotovsky’s body, as was done in Moscow. It is well known that Lenin’s embalmed body remained in Tyumen for almost the entire war.

By a tragic coincidence, Kotovsky’s mausoleum was destroyed by the Romanians on August 6, 1941, exactly 16 years after the murder of the corps commander. Having broken the sarcophagus and violated the body, the invaders threw Kotovsky’s remains into a freshly dug trench along with the corpses of executed local residents.

Some time later, workers at the railway depot, led by the head of the repair shops, Ivan Timofeevich Skorubsky, opened the trench and reburied the dead, and Kotovsky’s remains were collected in a bag and kept until 1944.

Grigory Ivanovich’s awards also suffered a tragic fate. Three Orders of the Red Banner of Battle and honorary revolutionary weapons were stolen by Romanian troops. However, after the war, Romania officially transferred them to the USSR. And today the awards of the legendary corps commander are kept in the Museum of the Soviet Army in Moscow.

After the liberation of Kotovsk, a special commission headed by the former first secretary of the city party committee, Botvinov, conducted an examination of the remains of the corps commander and decided to rebury them. A monument-crypt was installed in the surviving underground part of the mausoleum. Kotovsky's remains were placed in a sealed zinc coffin. On top of the monument-crypt was draped with the usual dictation, on which was installed a portrait of Grigory Ivanovich, painted by an amateur artist. Kotovsky’s pantheon was in such a pitiful state for almost twenty years.

But, thank God, the public rebelled, outraged by the careless attitude towards the memory of the hero of the civil war. The leadership of the Moldavian SSR came up with an official proposal to rebury Kotovsky’s remains on its territory. A major scandal was brewing, so Ukraine took active and decisive action. The necessary materials and means were immediately found.

On December 26, 1965, the grand opening of the monument, built according to the design of the Odessa architect Protsenko, took place. In the ground part of the monument-crypt, made of granite and marble, a bust of Grigory Ivanovich was installed. On the rear side, they equipped an entrance to the underground part of the memorial complex, which is a small hall, the walls of which are lined with white marble. The cover for the zinc coffin was made of red and black velvet with gold tassels at the Tiraspol weaving factory.

To this day, the monument-crypt of Kotovsky has not undergone significant changes. However, the underground part of the memorial has long been in need of major repairs. Groundwater, which lies very close to the surface of the earth in Kotovsk, floods the crypt almost every spring, destroying marble slabs, floors and metal doors.

Unfortunately, the monument, which is de jure under the protection of the state, is de facto abandoned to the mercy of fate. Of course, everything can be attributed to the eternal lack of funds in the city budget. But is it really possible to treat history this way? To our history. Are you and I really going to become like those Ivans who don’t remember their kinship?

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

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

early years

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

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

Revolutionary Raider

According to Kotovsky himself, during his stay at the agronomy school he became acquainted with a circle of Socialist Revolutionaries. After graduating from the agricultural school in 1900, he worked as an assistant manager at various landowner estates in Bessarabia, but did not stay anywhere for long. Either he was kicked out “for seducing the landowner’s wife,” or “for stealing 200 rubles of the owner’s money.” For protecting farm laborers, Kotovsky was arrested in 1902 and 1903. By 1904, leading such a lifestyle and periodically ending up in prison for minor criminal offenses, Kotovsky became the recognized leader of the Bessarabian gangster world. During the Russo-Japanese War in 1904, he did not show up at the recruiting station. The following year he was arrested for evading military service and assigned to serve in the 19th Kostroma Infantry Regiment, stationed in Zhitomir.

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

...Speaks excellent Russian, Romanian, and Jewish, and can also speak German and almost French. He gives the impression of a completely intelligent person, smart and energetic. He tries to be graceful with everyone, which easily attracts the sympathy of everyone who communicates with him. He can pass himself off as an estate manager, or even a landowner, a machinist, a gardener, an employee of a company or enterprise, a representative for the procurement of food for the army, and so on. Tries to make acquaintances and relationships in the appropriate circle... In conversation he noticeably stutters. He dresses decently and can act like a real gentleman. Loves to eat well and gourmet...

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

Member of the First World War

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

Murder

Funeral

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

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

Mausoleum

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

The mausoleum was restored in 1965 in a reduced form.

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

Awards

see also

• List of three-time holders of the Order of the Red Banner until 1930

Family

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

Data

This section is an unordered list of various facts about the subject of the article. Please bring the information into an encyclopedic form and distribute it to the appropriate sections of the article. According to the decision of the Wikipedia Arbitration Committee, lists are preferably based on secondary summaries containing criteria for inclusion of elements in the list.

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

Memory

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

The following were named in honor of Grigory Kotovsky:

• the city of Kotovsk in the Tambov region,
• city Kotovsk(formerly Birzula) in the Odessa region, where Kotovsky is buried (on May 12, 2016, the city of Kotovsk, Odessa region, was renamed Podolsk).
• the city of Hincesti, Kotovsky’s birthplace, was called Kotovsk.
• the village of Kotovskoye in the Razdolnensky district of the Republic of Crimea.
• Kotovskoe village, Comrat region, Gagauzia.
• The village of Kotovskogo is a district of the city of Odessa.
• street "Kotovsky road" in Odessa (renamed Nikolaevskaya road).
• streets in dozens of settlements in the territory of the former USSR.
• museum named after G. G. Kotovsky in the village of Stepanovka, Razdelnyansky district, Odessa region.
• musical group - rock group “Barber named after. Kotovsky.

Monuments

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Kotovsky House-Museum

Kotovsky in art

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

In cinema

• "P. K.P. "(1926) - Boris Zubritsky
• “Kotovsky” (1942) - Nikolai Mordvinov.
• “The squadron goes west” (1965) - B. Petelin
• “The Last Haiduk” (Moldova-film, 1972) - Valery Gataev.
• “On the Wolf's Trail”, (1976); “The Big Small War”, (1980) - Evgeny Lazarev.
• “Kotovsky” (TV series, 2010) - Vladislav Galkin.
• “The Life and Adventures of Mishka Yaponchik” (TV series, 2011) - Kirill Polukhin.

Poems and songs

Prose

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

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Notes

Literature

• Sibiryakov S. G. Grigory Ivanovich Kotovsky. - M.: Publishing House of the All-Union. islands of political prisoners and exiled settlers, 1925.
• Barsukov M.. - M.; L.: Land and Factory, 1926.
• Guy E.. - M.; L.: Young Guard, 1926.
• Mezhberg N., Shpunt R.. - Odessa, 1930.
• Sibiryakov S., Nikolaev A.. - M.: Young Guard, 1931.
• Shmerling V.. - M.: Zhurngazobedinenie, 1937.
• Skvortsov A. E. G. I. Kotovsky about physical culture // Theory and practice of physical science. culture. - 1950. - T. XIII. - Vol. 5. - pp. 324-329.
• Grigory Ivanovich Kotovsky. - M.: Military Publishing House, 1951.
• Bunchuk M. F. The main stages of the development of physical culture on collective farms of the Ukrainian SSR (during the pre-war five-year plans): dis. ...cand. ped. Sciences / Bunchuk M. F.; Ukr. Research Institute of Pedagogy. - Kyiv, 1954.
• Documents and materials on the history of the civil war in the USSR. G. I. Kotovsky. - Kishinev, 1956.
• Chetverikov B. D. Kotovsky: Novel / [Ill.: P. S. Koretsky]. Book 1. - M.: Military Publishing House, 1961.
• Chetverikov B. D. Kotovsky: Novel / [Ill.: P. S. Koretsky]. Book 2: Relay of Life. - M.: Voenizdat, 1964.
• Chetverikov B. D. Kotovsky: Novel / Art. P. N. Pinkisevich. Book 1: The man of legend. - M.: Voenizdat, 1968. - 614 p.: ill.
• Chetverikov B. D. Kotovsky: Novel / Art. P. N. Pinkisevich. Book 2: Relay of Life. - M.: Voenizdat, 1968. - 463 p.: ill.
• Gul R.B. Kotovsky. Anarchist marshal. - 2nd. - New York: Bridge, 1975. - 204 p.
• Kuzmin N.P. Sword and Plow: The Tale of Grigory Kotovsky. - M.: Politizdat, 1976 (Fiery revolutionaries) - 411 p., ill. Same. - 2nd ed., rev. -1981.- 398 p., ill.
• Burin Sergey Grigory Kotovsky: Legend and reality, M.: Olimp; Smolensk: Rusich, 1999.
• Savchenko V. A. Grigory Kotovsky: from criminals to heroes // . - Kharkov: AST, 2000. - 368 p. - ISBN 5–17–002710–9.
• Savchenko V. A.: Kotovsky. - M.: Eksmo, 2010.
• Sokolov B.V. Kotovsky. - M.: Young Guard, 2012. - ISBN 978-5-235-03552-2.
• Novokhatsky M.I.: - Path to legend, “Cartea Moldovenasca”, Chisinau, 1976
• Lupashko M.V. (Lupashko Mikhail) - Bessarabets: Publisher: Elena-V.I. ISBN 9789975434638, Year: 2012 http://artofwar.ru/s/skripnik_s_w/text_0250.shtml

Links

• Belyaev A., Denisenko D.// Independent newspaper. - 01/20/2001.
• Fomin Alexander.(Russian) . Pseudologiya (14.08.2003). Retrieved February 28, 2009. .
• Oleg Konstantinov.(Russian) . TIMER (01/25/2010). .
• (Russian) . Odesskiy.com. - Detailed biography of Kotovsky Grigory Ivanovich: the story of his life..
• (Russian) . tmbv.info. .

Excerpt characterizing Kotovsky, Grigory Ivanovich

- Yes, I’ll come in.
Rostov stood at the corner for a long time, looking at the feasters from afar. A painful work was going on in his mind, which he could not complete. Terrible doubts arose in my soul. Then he remembered Denisov with his changed expression, with his humility, and the whole hospital with these torn off arms and legs, with this dirt and disease. It seemed to him so vividly that he could now smell this hospital smell of a dead body that he looked around to understand where this smell could come from. Then he remembered this smug Bonaparte with his white hand, who was now the emperor, whom Emperor Alexander loves and respects. What are the torn off arms, legs, and killed people for? Then he remembered the awarded Lazarev and Denisov, punished and unforgiven. He caught himself having such strange thoughts that he was frightened by them.
The smell of food from the Preobrazhentsev and hunger brought him out of this state: he had to eat something before leaving. He went to the hotel he had seen in the morning. At the hotel he found so many people, officers, just like him, who had arrived in civilian dress, that he had to force himself to have dinner. Two officers from the same division joined him. The conversation naturally turned to peace. The officers and comrades of Rostov, like most of the army, were dissatisfied with the peace concluded after Friedland. They said that if they had held out any longer, Napoleon would have disappeared, that he had no crackers or ammunition in his troops. Nikolai ate in silence and mostly drank. He drank one or two bottles of wine. The internal work that arose in him, not being resolved, still tormented him. He was afraid to indulge in his thoughts and could not leave them. Suddenly, at the words of one of the officers that it was offensive to look at the French, Rostov began to shout with vehemence, which was not justified in any way, and therefore greatly surprised the officers.
– And how can you judge what would be better! - he shouted with his face suddenly flushed with blood. - How can you judge the actions of the sovereign, what right do we have to reason?! We cannot understand either the goals or the actions of the sovereign!
“Yes, I didn’t say a word about the sovereign,” the officer justified himself, unable to explain his temper otherwise than by the fact that Rostov was drunk.
But Rostov did not listen.
“We are not diplomatic officials, but we are soldiers and nothing more,” he continued. “They tell us to die—that’s how we die.” And if they punish, it means he is guilty; It's not for us to judge. It pleases the sovereign emperor to recognize Bonaparte as emperor and enter into an alliance with him—that means it must be so. Otherwise, if we began to judge and reason about everything, then there would be nothing sacred left. This way we will say that there is no God, there is nothing,” Nikolai shouted, hitting the table, very inappropriately, according to the concepts of his interlocutors, but very consistently in the course of his thoughts.
“Our job is to do our duty, to hack and not think, that’s all,” he concluded.
“And drink,” said one of the officers, who did not want to quarrel.
“Yes, and drink,” Nikolai picked up. - Hey, you! Another bottle! - he shouted.

In 1808, Emperor Alexander traveled to Erfurt for a new meeting with Emperor Napoleon, and in high society in St. Petersburg there was a lot of talk about the greatness of this solemn meeting.
In 1809, the closeness of the two rulers of the world, as Napoleon and Alexander were called, reached the point that when Napoleon declared war on Austria that year, the Russian corps went abroad to assist their former enemy Bonaparte against their former ally, the Austrian emperor; to the point that in high society they talked about the possibility of a marriage between Napoleon and one of the sisters of Emperor Alexander. But, in addition to external political considerations, at this time the attention of Russian society was especially keenly drawn to the internal transformations that were being carried out at that time in all parts of public administration.
Life, meanwhile, the real life of people with their essential interests of health, illness, work, rest, with their interests of thought, science, poetry, music, love, friendship, hatred, passions, went on as always, independently and without political affinity or enmity with Napoleon Bonaparte, and beyond all possible transformations.
Prince Andrei lived in the village for two years without a break. All those enterprises on estates that Pierre started and did not bring to any result, constantly moving from one thing to another, all these enterprises, without showing them to anyone and without noticeable labor, were carried out by Prince Andrei.
He had, to a high degree, that practical tenacity that Pierre lacked, which, without scope or effort on his part, set things in motion.
One of his estates of three hundred peasant souls was transferred to free cultivators (this was one of the first examples in Russia); in others, corvee was replaced by quitrent. In Bogucharovo, a learned grandmother was written out to his account to help mothers in labor, and for a salary the priest taught the children of peasants and courtyard servants to read and write.
Prince Andrei spent half of his time in Bald Mountains with his father and son, who was still with the nannies; the other half of the time in the Bogucharov monastery, as his father called his village. Despite the indifference he showed Pierre to all the external events of the world, he diligently followed them, received many books, and to his surprise he noticed when fresh people came to him or his father from St. Petersburg, from the very whirlpool of life, that these people, in knowledge of everything that is happening in foreign and domestic policy, they are far behind him, who sits in the village all the time.
In addition to classes on names, in addition to general reading of a wide variety of books, Prince Andrei was at this time engaged in a critical analysis of our last two unfortunate campaigns and drawing up a project to change our military regulations and regulations.
In the spring of 1809, Prince Andrei went to the Ryazan estates of his son, whom he was guardian.
Warmed by the spring sun, he sat in the stroller, looking at the first grass, the first birch leaves and the first clouds of white spring clouds scattering across the bright blue sky. He didn’t think about anything, but looked around cheerfully and meaninglessly.
We passed the carriage on which he had spoken with Pierre a year ago. We drove through a dirty village, threshing floors, greenery, a descent with remaining snow near the bridge, an ascent through washed-out clay, stripes of stubble and green bushes here and there, and entered a birch forest on both sides of the road. It was almost hot in the forest; you couldn’t hear the wind. The birch tree, all covered with green sticky leaves, did not move, and from under last year’s leaves, lifting them, the first green grass and purple flowers crawled out. The small spruce trees scattered here and there throughout the birch forest with their coarse, eternal greenness were an unpleasant reminder of winter. The horses snorted as they rode into the forest and began to fog up.
The footman Peter said something to the coachman, the coachman answered in the affirmative. But apparently Peter had little sympathy for the coachman: he turned on the box to the master.
- Your Excellency, how easy it is! – he said, smiling respectfully.
- What!
- Easy, your Excellency.
"What he says?" thought Prince Andrei. “Yes, that’s right about spring,” he thought, looking around. And everything is already green... how soon! And the birch, and the bird cherry, and the alder are already starting... But the oak is not noticeable. Yes, here it is, the oak tree.”
There was an oak tree on the edge of the road. Probably ten times older than the birches that made up the forest, it was ten times thicker and twice as tall as each birch. It was a huge oak tree, two girths wide, with branches that had been broken off for a long time and with broken bark overgrown with old sores. With his huge, clumsy, asymmetrically splayed, gnarled hands and fingers, he stood like an old, angry and contemptuous freak between the smiling birches. Only he alone did not want to submit to the charm of spring and did not want to see either spring or the sun.
“Spring, and love, and happiness!” - as if this oak tree was saying, - “and how can you not get tired of the same stupid and senseless deception. Everything is the same, and everything is a lie! There is no spring, no sun, no happiness. Look, there are the crushed dead spruce trees sitting, always the same, and there I am, spreading out my broken, skinned fingers, wherever they grew - from the back, from the sides; As we grew up, I still stand, and I don’t believe your hopes and deceptions.”
Prince Andrei looked back at this oak tree several times while driving through the forest, as if he was expecting something from it. There were flowers and grass under the oak tree, but he still stood in the midst of them, frowning, motionless, ugly and stubborn.
“Yes, he is right, this oak tree is a thousand times right,” thought Prince Andrei, let others, young people, again succumb to this deception, but we know life - our life is over! A whole new series of hopeless, but sadly pleasant thoughts in connection with this oak tree arose in the soul of Prince Andrei. During this journey, he seemed to think about his whole life again, and came to the same old reassuring and hopeless conclusion that he did not need to start anything, that he should live out his life without doing evil, without worrying and without wanting anything.

On guardianship matters of the Ryazan estate, Prince Andrei had to see the district leader. The leader was Count Ilya Andreich Rostov, and Prince Andrei went to see him in mid-May.
It was already a hot period of spring. The forest was already completely dressed, there was dust and it was so hot that driving past the water, I wanted to swim.
Prince Andrei, gloomy and preoccupied with considerations about what and what he needed to ask the leader about matters, drove up the garden alley to the Rostovs’ Otradnensky house. To the right, from behind the trees, he heard a woman's cheerful cry, and saw a crowd of girls running towards his stroller. Ahead of the others, a black-haired, very thin, strangely thin, black-eyed girl in a yellow chintz dress, tied with a white handkerchief, from under which strands of combed hair were escaping, ran up to the carriage. The girl screamed something, but recognizing the stranger, without looking at him, she ran back laughing.
Prince Andrei suddenly felt pain from something. The day was so good, the sun was so bright, everything around was so cheerful; and this thin and pretty girl did not know and did not want to know about his existence and was content and happy with some kind of separate, certainly stupid, but cheerful and happy life. “Why is she so happy? what is she thinking about! Not about the military regulations, not about the structure of the Ryazan quitrents. What is she thinking about? And what makes her happy?” Prince Andrei involuntarily asked himself with curiosity.
Count Ilya Andreich in 1809 lived in Otradnoye still as before, that is, hosting almost the entire province, with hunts, theaters, dinners and musicians. He, like any new guest, was glad to see Prince Andrei, and almost forcibly left him to spend the night.
Throughout the boring day, during which Prince Andrei was occupied by the senior hosts and the most honorable of the guests, with whom the old count's house was full on the occasion of the approaching name day, Bolkonsky, looking several times at Natasha, who was laughing and having fun among the other young half of the company, kept asking himself: “What is she thinking about? Why is she so happy!”
In the evening, left alone in a new place, he could not fall asleep for a long time. He read, then put out the candle and lit it again. It was hot in the room with the shutters closed from the inside. He was annoyed with this stupid old man (as he called Rostov), ​​who detained him, assuring him that the necessary papers in the city had not yet been delivered, and he was annoyed with himself for staying.
Prince Andrei stood up and went to the window to open it. As soon as he opened the shutters, moonlight, as if he had been on guard at the window for a long time waiting for it, rushed into the room. He opened the window. The night was fresh and still bright. Just in front of the window there was a row of trimmed trees, black on one side and silvery lit on the other. Under the trees there was some kind of lush, wet, curly vegetation with silvery leaves and stems here and there. Further behind the black trees there was some kind of roof shining with dew, to the right a large curly tree, with a bright white trunk and branches, and above it was an almost full moon in a bright, almost starless spring sky. Prince Andrei leaned his elbows on the window and his eyes stopped at this sky.
Prince Andrei's room was on the middle floor; They also lived in the rooms above it and did not sleep. He heard a woman talking from above.
“Just one more time,” said a female voice from above, which Prince Andrei now recognized.
- When will you sleep? - answered another voice.
- I won’t, I can’t sleep, what should I do! Well, last time...
Two female voices sang some kind of musical phrase that constituted the end of something.
- Oh, how lovely! Well, now sleep, and that's the end.
“You sleep, but I can’t,” answered the first voice approaching the window. She apparently leaned out of the window completely, because the rustling of her dress and even her breathing could be heard. Everything became quiet and petrified, like the moon and its light and shadows. Prince Andrei was also afraid to move, so as not to betray his involuntary presence.
- Sonya! Sonya! – the first voice was heard again. - Well, how can you sleep! Look what a beauty it is! Oh, how lovely! “Wake up, Sonya,” she said almost with tears in her voice. - After all, such a lovely night has never, never happened.
Sonya reluctantly answered something.
- No, look what a moon it is!... Oh, how lovely! Come here. Darling, my dear, come here. Well, do you see? So I would squat down, like this, I would grab myself under the knees - tighter, as tight as possible - you have to strain. Like this!
- Come on, you'll fall.
There was a struggle and Sonya’s dissatisfied voice: “It’s two o’clock.”
- Oh, you're just ruining everything for me. Well, go, go.
Again everything fell silent, but Prince Andrei knew that she was still sitting here, he sometimes heard quiet movements, sometimes sighs.
- Oh my god! My God! what is this! – she suddenly screamed. - Sleep like that! – and slammed the window.
“And they don’t care about my existence!” thought Prince Andrei as he listened to her conversation, for some reason expecting and fearing that she would say something about him. - “And there she is again! And how on purpose!” he thought. In his soul suddenly arose such an unexpected confusion of young thoughts and hopes, contradicting his whole life, that he, feeling unable to understand his condition, immediately fell asleep.

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

Returning from his trip, Prince Andrei decided to go to St. Petersburg in the fall and came up with various reasons for this decision. A whole series of reasonable, logical arguments why he needed to go to St. Petersburg and even serve were ready at his service every minute. Even now he did not understand how he could ever doubt the need to take an active part in life, just as a month ago he did not understand how the thought of leaving the village could have occurred to him. It seemed clear to him that all his experiences in life would have been in vain and would have been meaningless if he had not applied them to action and taken an active part in life again. He did not even understand how, on the basis of the same poor reasonable arguments, it had previously been obvious that he would have humiliated himself if now, after his life lessons, he again believed in the possibility of being useful and in the possibility of happiness and love. Now my mind suggested something completely different. After this trip, Prince Andrei began to get bored in the village, his previous activities did not interest him, and often, sitting alone in his office, he got up, went to the mirror and looked at his face for a long time. Then he turned away and looked at the portrait of the deceased Lisa, who, with her curls whipped up a la grecque [in Greek], tenderly and cheerfully looked at him from the golden frame. She no longer spoke the same terrible words to her husband; she simply and cheerfully looked at him with curiosity. And Prince Andrei, clasping his hands back, walked around the room for a long time, now frowning, now smiling, reconsidering those unreasonable, inexpressible in words, secret as a crime thoughts associated with Pierre, with fame, with the girl on the window, with the oak tree, with female beauty and love that changed his whole life. And at these moments, when someone came to him, he was especially dry, strictly decisive and especially unpleasantly logical.
“Mon cher, [My dear,],” Princess Marya would say when entering at such a moment, “Nikolushka can’t go for a walk today: it’s very cold.”
“If it were warm,” Prince Andrei answered his sister especially dryly at such moments, “then he would go in just a shirt, but since it’s cold, we need to put warm clothes on him, which were invented for this purpose.” This is what follows from the fact that it’s cold, and not like staying at home when the child needs air,” he said with particular logic, as if punishing someone for all this secret, illogical inner work that was happening in him. Princess Marya thought in these cases about how this mental work dries out men.

Prince Andrey arrived in St. Petersburg in August 1809. This was the time of the apogee of the glory of the young Speransky and the energy of the revolutions he carried out. In this very August, the sovereign, while riding in a carriage, fell out, injured his leg, and remained in Peterhof for three weeks, seeing daily and exclusively with Speransky. At this time, not only two so famous and alarming decrees were being prepared on the abolition of court ranks and on examinations for the ranks of collegiate assessors and state councilors, but also an entire state constitution, which was supposed to change the existing judicial, administrative and financial order of government of Russia from the state council to the volost board. Now those vague, liberal dreams with which Emperor Alexander ascended the throne were being realized and embodied, and which he sought to realize with the help of his assistants Chartorizhsky, Novosiltsev, Kochubey and Strogonov, whom he himself jokingly called comite du salut publique. [committee of public safety.]
Now everyone has been replaced by Speransky on the civil side and Arakcheev on the military side. Prince Andrei, soon after his arrival, as a chamberlain, came to the court and left. The Tsar, having met him twice, did not honor him with a single word. It always seemed to Prince Andrei that he was antipathetic to the sovereign, that the sovereign was unpleasant about his face and his whole being. In the dry, distant look with which the sovereign looked at him, Prince Andrei found confirmation of this assumption even more than before. The courtiers explained to Prince Andrey the sovereign's lack of attention to him by the fact that His Majesty was dissatisfied with the fact that Bolkonsky had not served since 1805.
“I myself know how much we have no control over our likes and dislikes,” thought Prince Andrei, and therefore there is no need to think about personally presenting my note on the military regulations to the sovereign, but the matter will speak for itself.” He conveyed his note to the old field marshal, a friend of his father. The field marshal, having appointed an hour for him, received him kindly and promised to report to the sovereign. A few days later it was announced to Prince Andrey that he had to appear before the Minister of War, Count Arakcheev.
At nine o'clock in the morning, on the appointed day, Prince Andrei appeared in the reception room of Count Arakcheev.
Prince Andrei did not know Arakcheev personally and had never seen him, but everything he knew about him inspired him with little respect for this man.
“He is the Minister of War, the confidant of the Emperor; no one should care about his personal properties; he was instructed to consider my note, therefore he alone can give it a go,” thought Prince Andrei, waiting among many important and unimportant persons in the reception room of Count Arakcheev.
Prince Andrei, during his mostly adjutant service, saw a lot of adopted important persons and the different characters of these adopted ones were very clear to him. Count Arakcheev had a very special character in his reception room. A sense of shame and humility was written on the unimportant faces waiting in line for an audience in Count Arakcheev’s reception room; on the more official faces one common feeling of awkwardness was expressed, hidden under the guise of swagger and ridicule of oneself, one’s position and one’s expected face. Some walked thoughtfully back and forth, others laughed in whispers, and Prince Andrei heard the sobriquet [mocking nickname] of Andreich’s forces and the words: “uncle will ask,” referring to Count Arakcheev. One general (an important person), apparently offended that he had to wait so long, sat crossing his legs and smiling contemptuously at himself.
But as soon as the door opened, all the faces instantly expressed only one thing - fear. Prince Andrei asked the duty officer to report about himself another time, but they looked at him with ridicule and said that his turn would come in due time. After several persons were brought in and out by the adjutant from the minister’s office, an officer was let in through the terrible door, striking Prince Andrei with his humiliated and frightened appearance. The officer's audience lasted a long time. Suddenly, peals of an unpleasant voice were heard from behind the door, and a pale officer, with trembling lips, came out of there, grabbed his head, and walked through the reception area.
Following this, Prince Andrei was led to the door, and the attendant said in a whisper: “to the right, to the window.”
Prince Andrei entered a modest, neat office and at the desk saw a forty-year-old man with a long waist, a long, short-cropped head and thick wrinkles, with frowning eyebrows over brown, dull green eyes and a drooping red nose. Arakcheev turned his head towards him, without looking at him.
-What are you asking for? – Arakcheev asked.
“I don’t... please, your Excellency,” said Prince Andrei quietly. Arakcheev's eyes turned to him.
“Sit down,” said Arakcheev, “Prince Bolkonsky?”
“I’m not asking for anything, but the Emperor deigned to forward the note I submitted to your Excellency...”
“Please see, my dear, I read your note,” Arakcheev interrupted, saying only the first words affectionately, again without looking him in the face and falling more and more into a grumpily contemptuous tone. – Are you proposing new military laws? There are many laws, and there is no one to enforce the old ones. Nowadays all laws are written; it is easier to write than to do.
“I came by the will of the Emperor to find out from your Excellency what course you intend to give to the submitted note?” - Prince Andrey said politely.
“I have added a resolution to your note and forwarded it to the committee.” “I don’t approve,” said Arakcheev, getting up and taking a paper from the desk. - Here! – he handed it to Prince Andrey.
On the paper across it, in pencil, without capital letters, without spelling, without punctuation, was written: “unfoundedly composed as an imitation copied from the French military regulations and from the military article without the need of retreating.”
– Which committee was the note sent to? - asked Prince Andrei.
- To the committee on military regulations, and I submitted a proposal to enroll your honor as a member. Just no salary.
Prince Andrei smiled.
- I don’t want to.
“Without a salary as a member,” Arakcheev repeated. - I have the honor. Hey, call me! Who else? - he shouted, bowing to Prince Andrei.

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

Introduction

Grigory Ivanovich Kotovsky (June 12 (24), 1881 - August 6, 1925) - Soviet military and political figure, participant in the Civil War. Member of the Union, Ukrainian and Moldavian Central Executive Committee. Member of the Revolutionary Military Council of the USSR. Father of the Russian Indologist Grigory Grigorievich Kotovsky. He died under unclear circumstances from a shot from his subordinate.

1. Biography

1.1. Family

Grigory Kotovsky was born on June 12 (24), 1881 in the village of Gancheshti (now the city of Hincesti in Moldova), in the family of a factory mechanic. Besides him, his parents had five more children. Kotovsky's father was a Russified Orthodox Pole, his mother was Russian. On his father's side, Grigory Kotovsky came from an old Polish aristocratic family that owned an estate in the Kamenets-Podolsk province. Kotovsky’s grandfather was dismissed early for his connections with participants in the Polish national movement. Later he went bankrupt, and Grigory Kotovsky’s father, a mechanical engineer by training, was forced to move to Bessarabia and join the philistine class.

1.2. Childhood and youth

According to Kotovsky’s own recollections, as a child he loved sports and adventurous novels. Since childhood, he was distinguished by his athletic build and had the makings of a leader. He suffered from logoneurosis. At two years old, Kotovsky lost his mother, and at sixteen, his father. The care of Grisha's upbringing was taken upon himself by his godmother Sophia Schall, a young widow, the daughter of an engineer, a Belgian citizen who worked in the neighborhood and was a friend of the boy's father, and his godfather, the landowner of Manuk Bay. Manuk Bey helped the young man enter the Kukuruzen Agricultural School and paid for the entire boarding school. At the school, Gregory studied agronomy and the German language especially carefully, since Manuk Bey promised to send him for “additional training” to Germany at the Higher Agricultural Courses. These hopes were dashed by the death of Manuk Bey in 1902.

Criminal and revolutionary activities

According to Kotovsky himself, during his stay at the agronomy school he became acquainted with a circle of Socialist Revolutionaries. After graduating from the agricultural school in 1900, he worked as an assistant manager at various landowner estates in Bessarabia, but did not stay anywhere for long - he was either kicked out for theft, or for having a love affair with a landowner, or he went into hiding, taking the owner’s money given to him, by 1904, leading This lifestyle and periodically ending up in prison for minor criminal offenses, Kotovsky becomes the recognized leader of the Bessarabian gangster world. . During the Russo-Japanese War in 1904, he did not show up at the recruiting station. In 1905, he was arrested for evading military service and sent to the 19th Kostroma Infantry Regiment, stationed in Zhitomir.

Soon he deserted and organized a detachment, at the head of which he carried out predatory raids - he burned estates, destroyed debt receipts, and robbed the population. The peasants provided assistance to Kotovsky’s detachment, sheltered it from the gendarmes, and supplied it with food, clothing, and weapons. Thanks to this, the detachment remained elusive for a long time, and legends circulated about the audacity of the attacks they carried out. Kotovsky was arrested on January 18, 1906, but was able to escape from the Chisinau prison six months later. A month later - on September 24, 1906 - he was arrested again, and in 1907 he was sentenced to 12 years of hard labor and sent to Siberia through the Elisavetograd and Smolensk prisons. In 1910 he was delivered to the Oryol Central. In 1911, he was transferred to the place of serving his sentence - to the Nerchinsk penal servitude. He escaped from Nerchinsk on February 27, 1913 and returned to Bessarabia. He hid, working as a loader, a laborer, and then again led a combat group. The group’s activities took on a particularly daring character from the beginning of 1915, when the militants moved from robbing individuals to raiding offices and banks. In particular, they committed a major robbery of the Bendery treasury, which raised the entire police of Bessarabia and Odessa to their feet.

On June 25, 1916, he was arrested again and sentenced to death by the Odessa Military District Court. But within a few days he made an exceptionally subtle and inventive move. The Odessa Military District Court was subordinate to the commander of the Southwestern Front, the famous General A. A. Brusilov, and it was Brusilov who had to approve the death sentence over him. Kotovsky wrote a touching letter to Brusilov’s wife, by which the sensitive woman was shocked, and the execution was first postponed and later replaced with indefinite hard labor. After receiving the news of the abdication of Nicholas II from the throne, a riot occurred in the Odessa prison, and self-government was established in the prison. The provisional government announced a broad political amnesty. In May 1917, Kotovsky was paroled and sent to the army on the Romanian front. There he became a member of the regimental committee of the 136th Taganrog Infantry Regiment. In November 1917, he joined the Left Social Revolutionaries and was elected a member of the soldiers' committee of the 6th Army. Then Kotovsky, with a detachment devoted to him, was authorized by Rumcherod to establish new orders in Chisinau and its environs.

2. Civil War

Poems about Kotovsky

He's too fast
To be called lightning,
He's too hard
To be known as a rock...

In January 1918, Kotovsky led a detachment that covered the Bolshevik retreat from Chisinau. In January-March 1918, he commanded a cavalry group in the Tiraspol detachment. In March 1918, the Odessa Soviet Republic was liquidated by Austro-German troops that entered Ukraine after a separate peace concluded by the Ukrainian Central Rada. Kotovsky's detachment was disbanded. Kotovsky himself went underground. With the departure of the Austro-German troops, on April 19, 1919, Kotovsky received an appointment from the Odessa Commissariat to the post of head of the military commissariat in Ovidiopol. In July 1919, he was appointed commander of the 2nd brigade of the 45th rifle division (the brigade was created on the basis of the Pridnestrovian regiment). In November 1919, Kotovsky came down with pneumonia. From January 1920, he commanded the cavalry brigade of the 45th Infantry Division, fighting in Ukraine and on the Soviet-Polish front. In April 1920 he joined the RCP(b).

Since December 1920, Kotovsky has been the head of the 17th Cavalry Division. In 1921, he commanded cavalry units, including suppressing the uprisings of the Makhnovists, Antonovites and Petliurists. In September 1921, Kotovsky was appointed head of the 9th Cavalry Division, and in October 1922 - commander of the 2nd Cavalry Corps. In Tiraspol in 1920-1921, Kotovsky’s headquarters (now the headquarters museum) was located in the building of the former Paris Hotel. There, according to legend, Kotovsky celebrated his wedding. In the summer of 1925, People's Commissar Frunze appointed Kotovsky as his deputy. Grigory Ivanovich did not have time to take office.

3. Murder

Kotovsky was shot on August 6, 1925 while on vacation at the Chebanka state farm (on the Black Sea coast, 30 km from Odessa) by Meyer Seider, nicknamed Majorik, who was Mishka Yaponchik’s adjutant in 1919. According to another version, Seider had nothing to do with military service and was not an adjutant of the “criminal authority” of Odessa, but was the former owner of an Odessa brothel. Documents related to the murder of Kotovsky are kept in Russian special storage facilities and are classified as “top secret.”

Meyer Seider did not hide from the investigation and immediately reported the crime. In August 1926, the killer was sentenced to 10 years in prison. While imprisoned, he almost immediately became the head of the prison club and received the right to freely enter the city. In 1928, Seider was released with the wording “For exemplary behavior.” He worked as a coupler on the railway. In the fall of 1930, he was killed by three veterans of Kotovsky's division. Researchers have reason to believe that all competent authorities had information about the impending murder of Seider. Seider's killers were not convicted.

4. Funeral

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

The body arrived at the Odessa station solemnly, surrounded by a guard of honor, the coffin was buried in flowers and wreaths. In the columned hall of the district executive committee, “wide access to all workers” was opened to the coffin. And Odessa lowered the mourning flags. In the cantonment towns of the 2nd Cavalry Corps, a 20-gun salute was fired. On August 11, 1925, a special funeral train delivered the coffin with Kotovsky’s body to Birzulu.

Prominent military leaders S. M. Budyonny and A. I. Egorov arrived at Kotovsky’s funeral in Birzulu; the commander of the Ukrainian Military District, I. E. Yakir, and one of the leaders of the Ukrainian government, A. I. Butsenko, arrived from Kiev.

5. Mausoleum

The day after the murder, August 7, 1925, a group of embalmers, led by Professor Vorobyov, was urgently sent from Moscow to Odessa. A few days later, the work of embalming Kotovsky’s body was completed.

The mausoleum was made according to the type of the mausoleum of N.I. Pirogov near Vinnitsa and Lenin in Moscow. At first, the mausoleum consisted only of an underground part.

In a specially equipped room at a shallow depth, a glass sarcophagus was installed, in which Kotovsky’s body was preserved at a certain temperature and humidity. Next to the sarcophagus, on satin pads, Grigory Ivanovich's awards were kept - three Orders of the Red Banner of Battle. And a little further away, on a special pedestal, there was an honorary revolutionary weapon - an inlaid cavalry saber.

In 1934, a fundamental structure with a small platform and bas-relief compositions on the theme of the Civil War was erected above the underground part. Just like at Lenin's mausoleum, parades and demonstrations, military oaths and admission to pioneers were held here. Workers were given access to Kotovsky’s body.

In 1941, during the Second World War, the retreat of Soviet troops did not allow the evacuation of Kotovsky’s body. At the beginning of August 1941, Kotovsk was first occupied by German and then Romanian troops. On August 6, 1941, exactly 16 years after the murder of the corps commander, the occupying forces smashed Kotovsky’s sarcophagus and violated the body, throwing Kotovsky’s remains into a freshly dug trench along with the corpses of executed local residents.

Workers at the railway depot, led by the head of the repair shops, Ivan Timofeevich Skorubsky, opened the trench and reburied the dead, and Kotovsky’s remains were collected in a bag and kept until the end of the occupation in 1944.

The mausoleum was restored in 1965 in a reduced form.

6. Awards

Kotovsky was awarded three Orders of the Red Banner and an Honorary Revolutionary Weapon - an inlaid cavalry saber.

7. Interesting facts

In 1939, in Romania, Ion Vetrilă created the revolutionary anarcho-communist organization “Haiduki Kotovski”.

When Soviet troops occupied Bessarabia in 1940, a police officer was found, convicted and executed, who in 1916 caught Grigory Kotovsky - the former police officer Hadzhi-Koli, who in 1916 carried out his official duty to capture a criminal. As Kotovsky’s biographer Roman Gul noted, “for this ‘crime’ only the Soviet judicial system could sentence a person to death.” :204

Three Orders of the Red Banner of Battle and Kotovsky's honorary revolutionary weapon were stolen by Romanian troops from the mausoleum during the occupation. After the war, Romania officially transferred the Kotovsky awards to the USSR. The awards are kept in the Central Museum of the Armed Forces in Moscow.

A shaved head is sometimes called a “Kotovsky haircut.” This name comes from the movie

8. Memory

8.1. Toponomics

Kotovsky's name was given to plants and factories, collective and state farms, steamships, a cavalry division, and a partisan detachment during the Second World War.

They bear the name Kotovsky

Settlements:

• Kotovsk - from 1940 to 1990 a city in Moldova, now Hincesti, Kotovsky’s birthplace.

  Kotovsk (Birzula) is a city in the Odessa region of Ukraine, where Kotovsky was buried.

  Kotovsk is a city in the Tambov region of Russia.

  Kotovskogo village - district of Odessa

  Kotovskoye is a village in the Razdolnensky district of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea.

  Kotovskoe village, Comrat district, Gagauzia, Republic of Moldova

Streets in many cities of the former USSR:

• Kotovsky street, Voronezh.

  Kotovsky street, Perm.

  Kotovsky street, Makhachkala. The Republic of Dagestan

  Kotovskogo Street Comrat Gagauzia Republic of Moldova

  Kotovsky Street in Ivangorod (Leningrad region).

  Kotovsky Street in Krasnodar.

Kotovskogo Street in Komsomolsk-on-Amur.

Kotovsky Street in Lipetsk.

Kotovsky Street in Bar, Vinnytsia region. (Bar (city, Ukraine))

Kotovsky Street in Berdichev.

Kotovsky Street in Khmelnitsky Ukraine

Kotovsky Street in Bryansk.

Kotovsky Street in Gelendzhik.

Kotovsky Street in Nikolaev.

Kotovskogo Street in Novosibirsk.

Kotovsky Street in Tomsk.

Kotovsky Street in Novorossiysk.

Kotovskogo Street in Novocherkassk.

Kotovskogo Street in Ulyanovsk.

Kotovsky Street in Karasuk.

Kotovsky Street in Kyiv.

Kotovsky Street in Zaporozhye.

Kotovsky Street in Kherson.

Kotovsky Street in Cherkassy.

Kotovsky Street in the city of Belgorod-Dnestrovsky.

Kotovskogo Street in Saratov.

Kotovsky Street (Saransk, Mordovia)

Kotovskogo Street (Nikolsk, Penza region)

Kotovsky Street in Gomel (Republic of Belarus).

Kotovskogo Street in Ryazan

Kotovsky Street in Abakan

In Zhitomir.

Kotovskogo Street in St. Petersburg on the Petrograd side.

Kotovskogo Street in Petrozavodsk

Directions from Kotovsky to Klin (Moscow region)

In Tyumen

In Minsk

In Izmail

In Tiraspol

In Aktyubinsk (Kazakhstan)

In Bendery

In Lugansk (Ukraine)

In Kolomna (Moscow region)

In Reutov (Moscow region)

In Sergiev Posad (Moscow region)

In Tomsk

In Urzuf (Donetsk region, Ukraine)

In Gornyak (Donetsk region, Ukraine)

in Kamensk-Uralsky (Sverdlovsk region)

Descent of Kotovsky in Sevastopol.

Until the early 90s, one of the central streets in Chisinau was named after Kotovsky, later renamed Hincesti Street, now Alexandri Street.

• Kotovskogo Street in Rzhev, Tver Region

  Kotovsky Lane in Rzhev, Tver Region

  Kotovsky Street in the city of Shchuchinsk, Akmola region, Kazakhstan

  Kotovsky Street in the city of Sokiryany, Chernivtsi region, Ukraine

  Kotovsky Street in Polotsk

Monuments

Monument to Kotovsky in Chisinau

Monument to Kotovsky in Tiraspol in the Victory Park

The authorities of Odessa were going to erect a monument to Kotovsky on Primorsky Boulevard, using the pedestal of the monument to the Duke de Richelieu, but later abandoned these plans.

Monument to Kotovsky in Berdichev on Red (Bald) Mountain*

Monument to Kotovsky in Uman *

Musical groups

Ukrainian rock band “Barber named after. Kotovsky"

8.2. Kotovsky in art

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

Song "Kotovsky"

So this is Kotovsky,
The famous Bessarabian Robin Hood.
So this is Kotovsky,
And a poet, and a gentleman, and a troublemaker.

The image of G. I. Kotovsky in cinema

“Kotovsky” (1942) - Nikolai Mordvinov.

“The Last Haiduk” (Moldova-film, 1972) - Valery Gataev.

“On the Wolf's Trail” (1977) - Evgeny Lazarev.

“Kotovsky” (2010) - Vladislav Galkin.

“Wedding in Malinovka (1967)” - the village is liberated by a detachment of Kotovsky’s division.

Poems and songs

The musical group “Forbidden Drummers” performs the song “Kotovsky” to the music of V. Pivtorypavlo and lyrics by I. Trofimov.

Ukrainian singer and composer Andriy Mykolaichuk has a song “Kotovsky”.

The Soviet poet Mikhail Kulchitsky has a poem “The worst thing in the world is to be calm,” which mentions Kotovsky.

The poet Eduard Bagritsky very clearly described G.I. Kotovsky in the poem “Duma about Opanas” (1926).

Prose

Kotovsky is one of the characters in V. Pelevin’s novel “Chapaev and Emptiness”. However, like other characters in this novel, this hero is connected more with Kotovsky from anecdotes than with a historical figure.

G.I. Kotovsky and the Kotovites are mentioned in the book “How the Steel Was Tempered” by N. Ostrovsky.

Bibliography:

Shikman A. Figures of national history. M., 1997. T. 1. P. 410

Savchenko V.A. Grigory Kotovsky: from criminals to heroes // Adventurers of the Civil War: Historical Investigation. - Kharkov: AST, 2000. - 368 p. - ISBN 5–17–002710–9

Gul R.B. Kotovsky. Anarchist marshal.. - 2nd. - New York: Bridge, 1975. - 204 p.

Grigory Ivanovich Kotovsky

Family

Grigory Kotovsky was born on June 12 (24), 1881 in the village of Ganchesti (now the city of Hincesti in Moldova), in the family of a factory mechanic. Besides him, his parents had five more children. Kotovsky's father was a Russified Orthodox Pole, his mother was Russian. Through his father, Grigory Kotovsky came from an old Polish aristocratic family that owned an estate in the Kamenets-Podolsk province. Kotovsky’s grandfather was dismissed early for his connections with participants in the Polish national movement. Later he went bankrupt, and Grigory Kotovsky’s father, a mechanical engineer by training, was forced to move to Bessarabia and join the philistine class.

Childhood and youth

According to the recollections of Kotovsky himself, as a child he loved sports and adventurous novels. Since childhood, he was distinguished by his athletic build and had the makings of a leader. He suffered from logoneurosis. At two years old, Kotovsky lost his mother, and at sixteen, his father. The care of Grisha's upbringing was taken upon himself by his godmother Sophia Schall, a young widow, the daughter of an engineer, a Belgian citizen who worked in the neighborhood and was a friend of the boy's father, and his godfather - the landowner of Manuk Bay. Manuk Bey helped the young man enter the Kokorozen Agricultural School and paid for the entire boarding school. At the school, Gregory studied agronomy and the German language especially carefully, since Manuk Bey promised to send him for “additional training” to Germany at the Higher Agricultural Courses. These hopes were dashed by the death of Manuk Bey in 1902.

Revolutionary activities

After graduating from agricultural school in 1900, he worked as an assistant manager and estate manager. For protecting farm laborers, Kotovsky was arrested in 1902 and 1903. While at the agronomy school, he became acquainted with Socialist Revolutionary circles and, at the age of 17, went to prison for the first time. During the Russo-Japanese War in 1904, he did not show up at the recruiting station. In 1905 he was arrested for evading military service and sent to the Kostroma Infantry Regiment.

Soon he deserted and organized a gang, at the head of which he carried out predatory raids - he burned estates, destroyed debt receipts, robbed landowners and distributed the loot to the poor. The peasants provided assistance to Kotovsky’s detachment, sheltered it from the gendarmes, and supplied it with food, clothing, and weapons. Thanks to this, his squad remained elusive for a long time, and legends circulated about the audacity of the attacks he carried out. Kotovsky was arrested several times, and in 1907 he was sentenced to 12 years of hard labor. He fled from Nerchinsk in 1913 and returned to Bessarabia. He hid, working as a loader and laborer. At the beginning of 1915, he again led an armed detachment in Bessarabia.

In 1916, the Odessa Military District Court sentenced Kotovsky to death. Thanks to the intervention of General Brusilov's wife, the execution was first postponed and later replaced with indefinite hard labor. In May 1917, Kotovsky was conditionally released and sent to the army on the Romanian front. There he becomes a member of the regimental committee of the 136th Taganrog Infantry Regiment. In November 1917 he joined the Left Social Revolutionaries and was elected a member of the 6th Army Committee.

Poems about Kotovsky

He's too fast
To be called lightning,
He's too hard
To be known as a rock...

Civil War

In January-March 1918 he commanded the Tiraspol detachment, and from July 1919 - one of the brigades of the 45th Infantry Division. In November 1919, as part of the 45th division, he took part in the defense of Petrograd. From January 1920 he commanded a cavalry brigade, fighting in Bessarabia, Ukraine and on the Soviet-Polish front. In April 1920 he joined the RCP(b).

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

Stalin about Kotovsky

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

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

The bravest among our modest commanders and the most modest among the brave - this is how I remember Comrade Kotovsky.

Eternal memory and glory to him..."

From volume 8 of the collected works of J.V. Stalin in 16 volumes, also published in the newspaper “Communist” (Kharkov) No. 43, February 23, 1926.

Murder

Kotovsky was shot dead on August 6, 1925 while on vacation at the Chebank state farm by Meyer Seider, nicknamed Majorik, who was Mishka Yaponchik’s adjutant in 1919. According to another version, Seider had nothing to do with military service and was not the commander’s adjutant, but was the former owner of an Odessa brothel. Documents related to the murder of Kotovsky are kept in Russian special storage facilities and are classified as “top secret.”

Meyer Seider did not hide from the investigation and immediately reported the crime. In August 1926, the killer was sentenced to 10 years in prison. While imprisoned, he almost immediately became the head of the prison club and received the right to freely enter the city. In 1928, Seider was released with the wording “For exemplary behavior.” He worked as a coupler on the railway. In the fall of 1930, he was killed by three veterans of Kotovsky's division. Researchers have reason to believe that all competent authorities had information about the impending murder of Seider. Seider's killers were not convicted.

Funeral

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

The body arrived at the Odessa station solemnly, surrounded by a guard of honor, the coffin was buried in flowers and wreaths. In the columned hall of the district executive committee, “wide access to all workers” was opened to the coffin. And Odessa lowered the mourning flags. In the cantonment towns of the 2nd Cavalry Corps, a 20-gun salute was fired. On August 11, 1925, a special funeral train delivered the coffin with Kotovsky’s body to Birzulu.

Prominent military leaders S. M. Budyonny and A. I. Egorov arrived at Kotovsky’s funeral in Birzulu; the commander of the Ukrainian Military District, I. E. Yakir, and one of the leaders of the Ukrainian government, A. I. Butsenko, arrived from Kiev.

Mausoleum

The day after the murder, on August 7, 1925, a group of embalmers, led by Professor Vorobyov, was urgently sent from Moscow to Odessa. A few days later, the work of embalming Kotovsky’s body was completed.

The mausoleum was made according to the type of the mausoleum of N.I. Pirogov near Vinnitsa and Lenin in Moscow. At first, the mausoleum consisted only of an underground part.

In a specially equipped room at a shallow depth, a glass sarcophagus was installed, in which Kotovsky’s body was preserved at a certain temperature and humidity. Next to the sarcophagus, on satin pads, Grigory Ivanovich's awards were kept - three Orders of the Red Banner of Battle. And a little further away, on a special pedestal, there was an honorary revolutionary weapon - an inlaid cavalry saber.

In 1934, a fundamental structure with a small platform and bas-relief compositions on the theme of the Civil War was erected above the underground part. Just like at Lenin's mausoleum, parades and demonstrations were held here, military oaths and admission to pioneers were held. Workers had access to Kotovsky's body.

In 1941, during the Second World War, the retreat of Soviet troops did not allow the evacuation of Kotovsky’s body. At the beginning of August 1941, Kotovsk was first occupied by German and then Romanian troops. On August 6, 1941, exactly 16 years after the murder of the corps commander, the occupation forces smashed Kotovsky’s sarcophagus and violated the body, throwing Kotovsky’s remains into a freshly dug trench along with the corpses of executed local residents.

Workers at the railway depot, led by the head of the repair shops, Ivan Timofeevich Skorubsky, opened the trench and reburied the dead, and Kotovsky’s remains were collected in a bag and kept until the end of the occupation in 1944. The mausoleum was restored in 1965 in a reduced form. Kotovsky's body is kept in a closed coffin with a small window.

Awards

Kotovsky was awarded three Orders of the Red Banner and an Honorary Revolutionary Weapon - an inlaid cavalry saber.

According to wikipedia.org