It has long been known that revolutions are made by romantics. High ideals, moral principles, the desire to make the world a better and fairer place - only an incorrigible idealist can really set such goals. A similar person was Nikolai Shchors - the son of a railway worker, an officer in the tsarist army and a red commander. He lived only 24 years, but went down in the history of the country as a symbol of a fair struggle for the right to live in a happy and prosperous state.

Parents' house

A small wooden house, hidden under the crown of a large spreading maple. It was built in 1894 by Alexander Nikolaevich Shchors. In search of a better life, he moved to Snovsk from the small town of Stolbtsy in the Minsk region as a 19-year-old boy. He was drafted into the tsarist army, but after service he returned to the town he liked. Here Alexandra, one of the daughters of the Tabelchuk family, from whom Alexander Nikolaevich rented a room, was waiting for him. Next door, the newlyweds bought a plot of land and built a house on it. On June 6, their first child was born, named after his grandfather, Nikolai Shchors. The year was 1895.

My father worked on the railroad. First as a laborer, mechanic, fireman. Then he became a driver and in 1904 he passed the exam to become a driver - he drove a shunting locomotive on the Libavo-Romny Railway. By this time, four more children appeared in the house. This is how the future hero of the Civil War Shchors began his life.

Childhood

Family life was unremarkable. The father worked, and the mother did household chores and raising children. Nikolai did not cause her much trouble. The boy was smart and intelligent beyond his years. He learned to read and write at the age of six, and at the age of eight he began to attend classes with teacher Anna Vladimirovna Gorobtsova - she prepared children for admission to the railway parochial school. In 1905, Shchors began studying there. His biography could not have turned out differently - the boy had an extraordinary thirst for knowledge.

A year later, the family suffered grief - the mother died. She suffered from consumption and died in Belarus, where she had gone to visit relatives. Five children, a large farm and work on the railroad. A woman is needed in the house - this is what the elder Shchors decided. Nikolai Alexandrovich later recalled that at first he was hostile to his stepmother. But gradually their relationship improved. Moreover, my father’s new wife, her name was Maria Konstantinovna, gave birth to five children in subsequent years. The family grew, and Kolya was the eldest of the children. He graduated from school in 1909 with a certificate of merit and really wanted to continue his education.

Admission to military school

But my father had other plans. He expected that his son would go to work and help the family. To understand the events that made up Shchors’ life story, you need to imagine his immense thirst for knowledge. So strong that in the end the father gave up. The first attempt was unsuccessful. When entering the Nikolaev Naval Paramedic School, Kolya missed one point.

In a depressed state, the young man returned home - now he agreed to go to work at the railway depot. But the father unexpectedly objected. By this time, his younger brother Konstantin had also graduated from school with a good certificate. Alexander Nikolaevich gathered both sons and took them to enter the Kyiv military paramedic school. This time everything worked out well - both brothers passed the entrance exams. Having allocated one ruble each to his sons, the satisfied father left for Snovsk. For the first time, Nikolai Shchors went so far from home. A new stage of his life began.

Tsarist army officer

The learning conditions at the military school were strict, but they had a great influence on the formation of the character of the future legendary division commander of the Red Army. In 1914, a graduate of the Kyiv military school, Shchors, arrived in one of the units stationed near Vilnius. Nikolai Alexandrovich began his service as a junior paramedic. The entry of the Russian Empire into the First World War soon followed, and the 3rd Light Artillery Division, in which the volunteer Shchors served, was sent to the front line. Nikolai carries out the wounded and provides first aid. In one of the battles, the paramedic himself is wounded and ends up in a hospital bed.

After recovery, he entered the Vilnius Military School, which was evacuated to Poltava. He diligently studies military sciences - tactics, topography, trench warfare. In May 1916, warrant officer Shchors arrived at the reserve regiment, which was stationed in Simbirsk. The biography of the future division commander took sharp turns during this period of his life. A few months later he was transferred to the 335th Regiment of the 85th Infantry Division. For battles on the Southwestern Front, Nikolai Alexandrovich received the rank of second lieutenant ahead of schedule. However, unsettled trench life and bad heredity took their toll - the young officer began to develop a tuberculosis process. He was treated in Simferopol for almost six months. In December 1917, having been demobilized from the army, he returned to his native Snovsk. Thus ended the period of service in the tsarist army.

The beginning of the revolutionary struggle

In difficult times, Nikolai Shchors returned to his homeland. There was an active struggle for power between various political parties. A civil fratricidal war engulfed the Ukrainian lands, and soldiers returning from the front joined various armed formations. In February 1918, the Central Rada of Ukraine signed a peace treaty with Germany and Austria. German troops entered the country to jointly fight the Soviets.

Nikolai made his political choice at the front, when he met the Bolsheviks and understood their party program. Therefore, in Snovsk, he quickly established connections with the communist underground. On instructions from the party cell, Nikolai goes to the Novozybkovsky district, to the village of Semyonovka. Here he had to form a partisan detachment to fight German troops. The experienced front-line soldier coped well with his first important task. The united detachment he created consisted of 350-400 trained fighters and conducted military operations in the Zlynka and Klintsy area, carried out daring partisan raids on the Gomel-Bryansk railway line. At the head of the detachment was the young red commander Shchors. The biography of Nikolai Alexandrovich from that time was connected with the struggle for the establishment of Soviet power throughout Ukraine.

Retreat

The activity of the partisan detachment forced the German troops to suffer significant losses, and the German command decided to put an end to its existence. With heavy fighting, the partisans managed to escape from the encirclement and retreat to the area of ​​​​the city of Unecha, which was located on Russian territory. Here the detachment was disarmed and disbanded - as prescribed by the law.

Shchors himself went to Moscow. He always dreamed of studying and wanted to go to medical school. The revolutionary whirlpool changed the plans of the recent front-line soldier. In July 1918, the First Congress of the Bolsheviks of Ukraine took place, followed by the creation of the Party Central Committee and the revolutionary committee, whose task was to create new military units from fighters of partisan detachments - Nikolai returns to Unecha. He is tasked with forming and leading a regiment of local residents and fighters of the Dnieper partisan detachment. In September, the regiment was named after Ivan Bohun, a comrade-in-arms of Bohdan Khmelnytsky who died in the Chernigov region. In memory of these days, opposite the railway station in Unecha there is a monument to Shchors, one of the youngest commanders of the Red Army.

A detachment walked along the shore

The Bohunsky regiment numbered 1,500 Red Army soldiers in its ranks and was part of the First Insurgent Division. Immediately after formation, the Red Army soldiers began making forays behind German lines. In combat conditions, they acquired military experience and obtained weapons. Later, Nikolai Shchors became the commander of a brigade, which included two regiments - Bohunsky and Tarashchansky.

On October 23, 1918, a large-scale offensive began, the goal of which was to completely expel German troops from the territory of Ukraine. The soldiers liberated Klintsy, Starodub, Glukhov, Shostka. At the end of November, the Tarashchansky regiment entered Snovsk. The advancing Red Army soldiers quickly occupied more and more cities. In January 1919, Chernigov, Kozelets and Nizhyn were taken. The ultimate goal of the offensive was that the brigade commander was on the front line all the time. The soldiers respected him for his personal courage and caring attitude towards the soldiers. He never hid behind the backs of the Red Army soldiers and did not sit out in the rear. “Song about Shchors,” written in 1936, almost documented the soldiers’ memories of their commander.

Commandant of Kyiv

When approaching Kyiv, selected units of Petliura’s troops stood in the way of the Red Army soldiers. Shchors decides to immediately engage in battle and with two regiments, Bogunsky and Tarashchansky, attacks the positions of the numerically superior enemy. On February 1, 1919, Petliura’s troops were defeated, and Shchors’ brigade liberated the city of Brovary. After 4 days, Kyiv was taken, Shchors was appointed commandant of the capital of Ukraine. For his great contribution to the defeat of enemy troops and for personal courage, he was awarded a personalized golden weapon. In 1954, perpetuating the memory of this heroic time, a monument to Shchors will be erected in the capital of Ukraine.

The respite between battles was short-lived. The brigade again entered into hostilities and liberated Berdichev and Zhitomir. In March 19th Shchors became commander of the First Ukrainian Soviet Division. The Petliurists suffered one defeat after another. The Red Army liberated Vinnitsa and Zhmerinka, Shepetivka and Rivne. The division was replenished with recruits from among local residents, but there was a catastrophic shortage of combat commanders. On the initiative of Shchors, a military school was created, to which 300 of the most experienced Red Army soldiers with front-line experience were sent to study.

Fatal bullet

In June 1919, the Revolutionary Military Council reorganized the Ukrainian Front. Shchors' division became part of the 12th Army. The unit already had solid combat experience and glorious victories behind it. It is difficult to imagine that the division was commanded by a commander who was only 24 years old. Shchors truly had amazing military talent. But this served as the reason why superior enemy forces were advanced against his formation.

Under pressure from a numerically superior enemy, the Shchorsovites retreated to the Korosten area. On August 30, N.A. Shchors, his deputy I.N. Dubovoy and political worker Tankhil-Tankhilevich arrived at the Bogun division, which occupied positions near the village of Beloshitsa. While on the front line of defense, Nikolai Shchors was wounded in the head. I. N. Dubovoi bandaged him, but 15 minutes later the division commander died. His body was sent to Klintsy, and then to Samara, where he was buried. Thus ended the life of one of the youngest and most talented commanders of the Civil War.

Strange story

In 1949, when the remains of N.A. Shchors were reburied, a previously unknown detail was revealed. The deadly bullet was fired from a short-barreled weapon and entered the back of the head of the fearless division commander. It turns out that Shchors died at the hands of a man who was behind him at a close distance. Various versions have emerged - death at the hands of the “Trotskyists” and even revenge of the Bolsheviks on an intractable and popular commander among the troops.

The name of N.A. Shchors was not forgotten, and his exploits were immortalized by many monuments, names of streets and cities. People still hear the “Song about Shchors” - a courageous and selfless man who, until the last minute of his life, believed in the possibility of building a just and honest state.

Shchors Nikolai Alexandrovich in the Bryansk region

N.A. Shchors, as a remarkable organizer and commander of the first detachments of the Red Army, began his activities in the Novozybkovsky, Klintsovsky, Unechsky districts, which in 1918 were part of Ukraine.

When the Austro-German troops, which included the 41st Corps, began to attack Novozybkov from Gomel, dozens of Red Guard and partisan detachments of workers and peasants, led by communists, rose up to meet them: One of these detachments led by N. A. Shchors arrived in the village of Semyonovka, Iovozybkovsky district. Having united with the Semyonovsky partisan detachment, Shchors attempted to detain the Germans in Zlynka.

After a difficult battle under the command of Shchors, a small group of fighters died down. But that didn't stop him. Having replenished the detachment in Novozybkov with the help of the city party organization with new volunteers, Shchors continued the fight against aeyevYaiii. occupation of Amtam. Holding back their advance, he fought back from Novo-Zybkov to Klintsy and further to Unecha - to the border of Soviet Russia,

After the very first battles with the Germans, Shchors realized that it was impossible to fight the enemy’s regular troops, armed to the teeth, “with small scattered small partisan detachments. He began to create regular units of the Red Army from the partisan detachments.

In September 1918, in Unecha, he organized from the partisan masses the First Ukrainian Soviet Insurgent Regiment named after Bohun (Bogunsky Regiment). Shchors was preparing the regiment for an offensive to support the growing popular uprising in Ukraine. At the same time, he established contact with partisan detachments operating in the forests of the Chernigov region. Through Shchors, help came from Soviet Russia to the struggling Ukraine.

Not far from the location of the Bohunsky regiment, several more rebel regiments were simultaneously formed from partisan detachments. In the village of Seredina-Buda, Kiev carpenter Vasily Bozhenko formed the Tarashchansky regiment. And in the forests east of Novgorod-Seversk the Novgorod-Seversky regiment was formed. All these regiments later united into the First Ukrainian Insurgent Division.

The revolution in Germany changed the situation somewhat. A delegation of soldiers from the German garrison arrived in Unecha, at the headquarters of the Bohunsky regiment. Lyshchichy, bypassing her command, began negotiations on the evacuation of her units. A meeting was held at Unecha station, which was attended by delegates, local communists, soldiers of the Bohunsky regiment and other military units. Shchors sent a telegram to Moscow addressed to V.I. Lenin, V which he reported that the delegation with music, banners, and the Bogunsky regiment in full combat strength set off on the morning of November 13 for a demonstration beyond the demarcation line of the village. Lyschichy and Kustichy Vryanovy, where representatives from German units arrived from.

No longer relying on their soldiers, the German command began hastily replacing them with Russian White Guards and Ukrainian nationalists. The strangler of freedom, Petliura, swam out onto the sienna again. This created a great danger for the revolution. A quick offensive against the enemies of the Russian and Ukrainian peoples was necessary.

At this time, a powerful popular uprising began in Ukraine. November 11 Council of People's Commissars chaired by V.Y. Lenin gave the command of the Red Army a directive: to begin an offensive within ten days to support the rebellious workers and peasants in Ukraine. On November 1, on the initiative of V. I. Lenin, the Ukrainian Revolutionary Military Council was created under the chairmanship of I. V. Stalin, and on November 19 it was sent order to attack Kiev. By this time, in the neutral zone, the Ukrainian Insurgent Army was formed from separate units and partisan detachments, consisting of two divisions. Following the instructions of Lenin and Stalin, despite the opposition of the Trotskyist traitors, this army quickly went on the offensive. First Ukrainian A division from the Unecha area was advancing on Kiev, led by Shchors' Bohunsky regiment, and Bozhenko's Tarashchansky regiment, which was subordinate to Shchors as the brigade commander, was in a ledge to the left of it.

How. As soon as Shchors went on the offensive, volunteers again flocked to him from all sides. Almost every village fielded a platoon or company of rebels who had been waiting for Shchors for a long time. Shchors reported: “The population everywhere welcomes you joyfully. There is a large influx of volunteers, who are vouched for by the Councils and Committees of the Poor.”

The Bohuntsy advanced to Klintsy, where the 106th German Regiment was concentrated for evacuation, without a fight. In Klintsy, a trap was being prepared for Shchors. The German command openly announced the evacuation of troops, but secretly armed the urban bourgeoisie and the Haidamaks. Shchors moved the regiment into the city, counting on the neutrality of the Germans, but when the first and third battalions of the Bohuntsy entered Klintsy, the Germans, who had calmly let them through, suddenly struck in the rear. Shchors quickly turned his battalions against the Germans and with a swift blow cleared his way back. The Bohunsky regiment retreated to its original positions. The insidiousness of the German command forced Shchors to change tactics. He ordered the first battalion of the Tarashan regiment, which had already occupied Ogarodub, to immediately turn to the Svyatets junction and, going to the rear of the Germans, cross the Klintsy-Novozybkov railway. Maneuver

Shchorsa turned out to be successful, - Now the Germans were trapped. The Klintsrva garrison of the invaders was surrounded. The German soldiers refused to obey their officers and laid down their arms. Thus ended the attempt of the invaders to delay the advance of Shchors. German-; the command was forced to negotiate. evacuation. The meeting took place in the village of Turosna. The Germans pledged to clear Klintsy on December 11 and leave bridges, telephones and telegraphs completely intact along the way of their retreat. A hasty evacuation began in Klintsy. tion. The Germans, selling weapons, left Ukraine; Gaidamaki, having lost the support of the occupiers, fled from the city. Shchors telegraphed to division headquarters: “Klintsy is occupied by revolutionary troops at 10 o’clock in the morning. The workers greeted the troops with banners, bread and salt, and shouts of “Hurray.”

From Klintsy, the Germans retreated by rail to Novozybkov - Gomel. Every day the retreat of the invaders became hasty and disorderly. On December 25 in Novozybkov, the rear German outpost fled when the Red Army units approached, leaving their weapons. Shchors' troops occupied Novozybkov, Zlynka and other settlements - the western part of the Bryansk Territory. The threat to Bryansk has passed.

In Unecha, Novozybkov, Zlynka, buildings where the headquarters of units of the Bogunsky regiment were located have survived to this day; and in Klintsy a house has been preserved where the coffin with the body of the legendary division commander N.A. Shchors, who was killed near Korosten, stood. There is a memorial plaque on the house. In Klintsy and Novozybkov, workers erected monuments to N. and A. Shchors.

The name of Nikolai Aleksandrovich Shchors, a hero of the civil war, a talented commander of the Red Army, is dear and close to the working people of our region. In the Bryansk region, he began his activities as an organizer and commander of the first detachments of the Red Army.
N. A. Shchors was born in the village of Snovsk (now Shchors) in the Chernigov province in the family of a railway driver. He received his primary education at the Snovskaya railway school. In 1910 he entered the military paramedic school in Kyiv. The end of school coincided with the beginning of the First World War. Shchors serves as a military paramedic, and after graduating from ensign school in 1915, as a junior officer on the Austrian front. In the fall of 1917, after being discharged from the hospital, Shchors came to his native Snovsk, where he contacted the underground Bolshevik organization, and in March 1918, Shchors went to the village of Semyonovna to form a rebel Red Guard detachment.
In February 1918, the governments of Germany and Austria-Hungary began their occupation of Ukraine. German troops occupied the western districts of our region. The arrival of N. A. Shchors with a detachment in the Bryansk region was of great importance in organizing resistance to the German occupiers.
In September 1918, N.A. Shchors, on behalf of the Central Ukrainian Military Revolutionary Committee, formed in the Unecha region from individual rebel detachments the 1st Ukrainian Soviet Regiment named after Bohun, a brave associate of B. Khmelnitsky. Party organizations of the Bryansk region actively participated in the formation of the regiment. The workers of Starodub, Klintsov, Novozybkov, and Klimova went to N. Shchors. In October, the Bohunsky regiment already numbered over one and a half thousand bayonets.
In November 1918, revolution broke out in Germany. Bohuntsy fraternize with soldiers of German garrisons in the border strip near the village. The Lyshchichi send a telegram to V.I. Lenin. A reply telegram from the leader arrives in Unecha: “Thank you for the greeting... I am especially touched by the greeting of the revolutionary soldiers of Germany.” Having further indicated what measures should be taken for the immediate liberation of Ukraine, V. I. Lenin writes: “Time is running out, not a single hour can be lost...”
At the end of November 1918, the Bohunsky and Tarashchansky regiments went on the offensive. On December 13, the Bohuntsy liberated the city of Klintsy; on the 25th, Novozybkov, having occupied Zlynka, began an attack on Chernigov. On February 5, 1919, the Bohunsky regiment entered Kyiv. Here the regiment was awarded an honorary revolutionary banner, and commander Shchors was awarded an honorary golden weapon “For skillful leadership and maintenance of revolutionary discipline.”
In early March, by order of the Revolutionary Military Council, N.A. Shchors was appointed commander of the 1st Ukrainian Soviet Division, which successfully operated against the Petliurists and Belottolians near Zhitomir and Vinnitsa, Berdichev and Shepetivka, Rovno and Dubpo, Proskurov and Korosten.
By the summer of 1919, Denikin became the main enemy of the Soviet Republic, but Shchors' division remained in the West, where, in accordance with the Entente plan, the Petliurists began their offensive. The former deputy commander of the Shchors division, I.N. Dubova, writes about this difficult time: “It was near Korosten. At that time it was the only Soviet bridgehead in Ukraine where the Red Banner fluttered victoriously. We were surrounded by enemies. On the one hand, the Galician and Petliura troops, on the other, Denikin’s troops, and on the third, the White Poles squeezed a tighter and tighter ring around the division, which by this time had received the number 44.” In these difficult conditions, both in attack and defense, Shchors proved himself a master of wide, bold maneuver. He successfully combined the combat operations of regular troops with the actions of partisan detachments.
August 30 in the battle of Korosten II. A. Shchors was killed. The division commander was 24 years old. The Bolsheviks of the division decided to take Shchors’ body to the rear, to Samara (now Kuibyshev), where he was buried. Nikolai Aleksandrovich Shchors enjoyed great authority among the troops and among the population. Having joined the ranks of the Bolshevik Party in 1918, he selflessly served the party and the revolution until the end of his life.
The death of N.A. Shchors resonated with deep sorrow in the hearts of the working people of the Bryansk region. Residents of Klintsy wished to say goodbye to the ashes of their beloved hero-commander. The coffin with the body of Nikolai Alexandrovich was brought to Klintsy and installed in the house of the district party committee.
People's memory carefully preserves the image of a talented commander. In the cities of Shchors, Kyiv, Korosten, Zhitomir, Klintsy, Unecha, monuments were erected at the grave in Kuibyshev. Memorial plaques have been installed in places associated with N. Shchors’ stay in the Bryansk region.

In September 1919, an event occurred in Samara that remained almost unnoticed by either local authorities or city residents. A tightly sealed zinc coffin was unloaded from an ordinary freight train "heater" and transported to the All Saints Cemetery, which was located here, near the station. The funeral passed quickly, and only a young woman in a mourning dress and several men in military uniform stood at the coffin. After saying goodbye, no sign remained on the grave, and it was soon forgotten. Only for many years did it become known that on that day in Samara the red commander Nikolai Aleksandrovich Shchors, who died on August 30, 1919, was buried at the Korosten railway station near Kiev

From the banks of the Dnieper to the Volga

He was born on May 25 (June 6 according to the new style) 1895 in the village of Snovsk (now the city of Shchors) in the Chernigov region in Ukraine in the family of a railway worker. In 1914, Nikolai Shchors graduated from the military paramedic school in Kyiv, and then from military courses in Poltava. He was a participant in the First World War, where he first served as a military paramedic and then as a second lieutenant on the Southwestern Front.

After the October Revolution he returned to his homeland, and in February 1918 in Snovsk he created a partisan detachment to fight the German interventionists. During 1918-1919, Shchors was in the ranks of the Red Army, where he rose to the rank of division commander. In March 1919, he was for some time the commandant of the city of Kyiv.

In the period from March 6 to August 15, 1919, Shchors commanded the First Ukrainian Soviet Division. During the rapid offensive, this division recaptured Zhitomir, Vinnitsa, Zhmerinka from the Petliurists, defeated the main forces of the UPR in the Sarny - Rivne - Brody - Proskurov area, and then in the summer of 1919 defended in the Sarny - Novograd-Volynsky - Shepetivka area from the troops of the Polish Republic and the Petliurists , but was forced under pressure from superior forces to retreat to the east.

After this, on August 15, 1919, during the reorganization of the Ukrainian Soviet divisions into regular units and formations of a single Red Army, the First Ukrainian Soviet Division under the command of N.A. Shchorsa was merged with the 3rd Border Division under the command of I.N. Dubovoy, becoming the 44th Rifle Division of the Red Army. On August 21, Shchors was appointed head of the division, and Dubova was appointed deputy head of the division. It consisted of four brigades.

The division stubbornly defended the Korosten railway junction, which ensured the evacuation of Soviet employees and all supporters of Soviet power from Kyiv. Moreover, on August 30, 1919, in a battle with the 7th brigade of the 2nd corps of the Galician army near the village of Beloshitsa (now the village of Shchorsovka, Korostensky district, Zhitomir region, Ukraine), while in the advanced chains of the Bohunsky regiment, Shchors was killed, and the circumstances of his death remain completely unclear to this day. At the same time, it came as a surprise to many that the body of the deceased division commander was subsequently interred not in Ukraine, where he fought, but very far from the place of his death - in Samara.

After the death of Shchors, on August 31, 1919, Kyiv was taken by the Volunteer Army of General Denikin. Despite the death of its commander, the 44th Rifle Division of the Red Army provided a way out of the encirclement of the Southern Group of the 12th Army. However, the mystery of the death of N.A. Shchorsa has since become the subject of many official and unofficial investigations, as well as the topic of many publications.

Memoirs of an eyewitness

He spoke about the death of his division commander like this:

“The enemy opened strong machine-gun fire... When we lay down, Shchors turned his head to me and said:

Vanya, look how the machine gunner shoots accurately.

After that, Shchors took binoculars and began to look at where the machine-gun fire was coming from. But a moment later the binoculars fell out of Shchors’s hands and fell to the ground, as did Shchors’s head. I called out to him:

Nikolai!

But he didn’t respond. Then I crawled up to him and began to look. I see blood appearing on the back of my head. I took off his cap - the bullet hit the left temple and exited the back of the head. Fifteen minutes later, Shchors, without regaining consciousness, died in my arms.”

The same Dubovoy, according to him, carried the commander’s body from the battlefield, after which the dead Shchors was taken somewhere to the rear. According to all sources, Dubovoy had no idea that Shchors’ body was soon sent to Samara. And in general, even at that time, the very fact that the burial of the Red commander, who died in battle in Ukraine, for some reason turned out to be thousands of kilometers from the place of his death, looked very strange. Subsequently, the authorities put forward the official version that this was done to avoid possible abuse of Shchors’ body by the Petliurists, who had previously dug up the graves of Red fighters more than once and dumped their remains in latrines.

But now there is no doubt that Samara was chosen for this purpose at the request of the widow of the deceased division commander - Fruma Efimovna Khaikina-Shchors

The fact is that it was in this city that her mother and father lived at that time, who could have looked after the grave. However, in the famine year of 1921, both her parents died. And in 1926, the All Saints Cemetery was completely closed, and Shchors’s grave, among others, was razed to the ground

However, it later became clear that for Samara the legendary red division commander was not such a stranger. As evidenced by archival materials now open to researchers, in the summer of 1918, Shchors, under the name Timofeev, was sent to the Samara province with a secret assignment from the Cheka - to organize the partisan movement in the places where the Czechoslovak troops were deployed, who at that time captured the Middle Volga region. However, it has not yet been possible to find any details about his activities in the Samara underground. After returning from the banks of the Volga, Shchors was assigned to Ukraine, to the post of commander of the 1st Ukrainian Red Division, which he held until his death.

The hero of the civil war was remembered only two decades later, when Soviet moviegoers saw the feature film “Shchors.” As we now know, after the Vasiliev directors released the film “Chapayev” on the wide screen in 1934, which almost immediately became a Soviet classic, Joseph Stalin recommended that the leaders of Ukraine choose “their Chapaev” from the many heroes of the civil war, so that they would also write about him make a feature film. The choice fell on Shchors, whose career and military path looked like a model for a Red commander. But at the same time, due to the intervention of party censorship in the film “Shchors,” which was released in 1939, little remains of the true biography of the legendary division commander

Stalin liked the picture, and after viewing it, he asked his entourage a completely reasonable question: how is the memory of the hero immortalized in Ukraine, and what monument is erected on his grave? Ukrainian leaders grabbed their heads: for some reason this circumstance fell out of their sight. It was then that the astonishing fact emerged that Shchors had been buried two decades earlier not in Ukraine, but for some reason in Samara, which by that time had become the city of Kuibyshev. And the saddest thing was the fact that in the city on the Volga there was not only no monument to Shchors, but even traces of his grave. By that time, a cable plant had already been built on the territory of the former All Saints Cemetery.

Before the Great Patriotic War, the search for Shchors' burial place was not crowned with success. However, in order to avoid the highest anger, the regional authorities immediately decided to open a Shchors memorial in Kuibyshev. At the beginning of 1941, a version of the equestrian monument prepared by Kharkov sculptors L. Muravin and M. Lysenko received approval. Its laying on the square near the railway station was scheduled for November 7, 1941, but due to the outbreak of war this plan was never implemented. Only in 1954, an equestrian statue of Shchors, designed by Kharkov residents, originally intended for Kuibyshev, was installed in Kyiv

Secret examination

The Kuibyshev authorities returned to searching for Shchors’ grave only in 1949, when, in connection with the 30th anniversary of his death, the regional party committee received a corresponding order from Moscow. Here the archivists finally got lucky. Based on the surviving documents, they identified a direct witness to Shchors' funeral - the worker Ferapontov. It turned out that in 1919, he, then still a 12-year-old boy, helped a cemetery digger dig a grave for a certain Red commander, whose name he did not know. It was Ferapontov who indicated the place where the burial could be located. The worker’s memory did not fail: after removing the layer of crushed stone, a well-preserved zinc coffin appeared to the eyes of the commission members at a depth of one and a half meters. Fruma Efimovna, the widow of Shchors, who was present at the excavations, unequivocally confirmed that the remains of her deceased husband were in the coffin.

Based on the results of the exhumation, a forensic medical examination report was drawn up, which for many decades was classified as “Top Secret”. It, in particular, says the following: “... on the territory of the Kuibyshev Cable Plant (former Orthodox cemetery), 3 meters from the right corner of the western facade of the electrical shop, a grave was found in which the body of N.A. was buried in September 1919. Shchors... After removing the lid of the coffin, the general contours of the head of the corpse with the hairstyle, mustache and beard characteristic of Shchors were clearly visible... Death of N.A. Shchorsa resulted from a through gunshot wound to the occipital and left half of the skull... The hole in the back of the head should be considered the entrance, which is indicated by the oval smooth edges of the bone defect, in the area of ​​the occipital protuberance. The hole located in the left parietal region should be considered the exit, as indicated by the shape of the hole with a fragment of the outer bone plate... It can be assumed that the bullet is revolver in diameter... The shot was fired from back to front, from bottom to top and slightly from right to left, at close range , presumably 5-10 steps.”

From the above text it is clear why the report of the forensic medical examination of Shchors’ remains turned out to be classified for many years. After all, this document completely refutes the official version of Shchors’ death, that he was allegedly hit by a machine-gun fire. Machine guns, as you know, do not fire revolver bullets, and besides, Shchors, looking out from cover, was clearly facing the enemy, and not the back of his head. Consequently, the division commander was shot by someone who was behind him, and not at all by a Petlyura machine gunner, as was stated in the canonical memoirs and in the film about the legendary division commander. It turns out that Shchorsa removed his people at the height of the battle? But if this is so, then who did it and why?

However, eyewitnesses to the exhumation of Shchors’ burial in 1949 hardly dared to ask such questions even to themselves. And why? After all, after many years of excavations, his grave was finally found, and the day of the funeral ceremony had already been set. As a result, the legendary division commander was solemnly reburied on July 10, 1949 in the new city cemetery. The ashes of the Civil War hero were brought here on a gun carriage, and in front of a large crowd of people he was buried with full military honors. A memorial marble slab was installed on the grave. A year later, a beautiful granite obelisk with the name of the division commander was opened here. At the same time, a bust of the hero was installed at the Kuibyshevkabel plant, where Shchors’s first grave was located. And in 1953, a children’s park was opened on the territory of the former All Saints Cemetery, which was named after N.A. Shchorsa. A monument to the legendary red division commander was erected in the park

Researchers were able to address the question of the true circumstances of Shchors’ death only after the advent of the era of perestroika and glasnost. After 1985, during the declassification of documents from the civil war and the publication of memoirs of eyewitnesses of the tragedy, a version was almost immediately put forward that Shchors was liquidated on the direct orders of the military people's commissar Lev Davidovich Trotsky

But why did the successful divisional commander interfere with him so much, and interfere with him to such an extent that the people's commissar did not stop even before physically eliminating him?

Apparently, this reason could be the defiant independence of Shchors, who in many cases refused to carry out orders from his immediate leadership, and was also known for his desire for “independence” of Ukraine. A number of memoirs directly state that “Trotsky characterized Shchors as an indomitable partisan, an independentist, an opponent of regular principles, an enemy of Soviet power.”

It was at this time, at the instigation of the military people's commissar Trotsky, that a struggle began in the Red Army to strengthen unity of command and tighten discipline, primarily in the execution of orders from higher leadership. The explanation for such a campaign is quite simple. During the civil war, many “independent” armed formations joined the ranks of the Red Army, which were formed around talented self-taught military leaders promoted from the people. In addition to Nikolai Shchors, among them we can primarily name Vasily Ivanovich Chapaev, Grigory Ivanovich Kotovsky and Nestor Ivanovich Makhno

But the latter’s troops, as is known, did not fight for too long in the ranks of the Red troops. Due to constant conflicts with the higher leadership, the Makhnovists quickly broke away from the Bolsheviks, after which they switched to independent war tactics, which often went under the slogan “Beat the whites until they turn red, beat the reds until they turn white.” But the detachments of Kotovsky, Chapaev and Shchors initially opposed the White Movement. Thanks to the authority of their leaders, they were able to grow to the size of divisions in just a few months, and then operated quite successfully among other units and formations of the Red Army.

Despite their belonging to regular units and the oath taken to the Soviet Republic, anarchist tendencies were still quite strong in all the red formations that arose along the “partisan” principle. This was expressed primarily in the fact that in a number of cases, commanders elected “from below” refused to carry out those orders from higher army leadership, which, in their opinion, were given without taking into account the situation on the ground or led to the unjustified death of many Red fighters.

Therefore, it is not surprising that the military people’s commissar Trotsky, to whom all such cases of insubordination were constantly reported, with the consent of the chairman of the Council of People’s Commissars Vladimir Lenin in 1919, began the above-mentioned campaign in the Red Army to strengthen discipline and “to combat manifestations of anarchism and partisanship.” Divisional Commander Nikolai Shchors was on Trotsky’s list among the main “independents” who were to be removed from the command staff of the Red Army by any means. And now, in the context of the events of those years and in the light of all of the above, it is quite possible to recreate the true picture of the death of Divisional Commander Shchors, which, like bricks, is made up of individual materials scattered across archives and memoirs.

On that fateful day in August 1919, after a number of orders from higher army leadership were not carried out, a member of the Revolutionary Military Council of the 12th Army, Semyon Ivanovich Aralov, Trotsky’s confidant, was sent to Shchors for inspection.

Even earlier, he had twice tried to remove from the post of commander this “indomitable partisan” and “enemy of the regular troops,” as he called Shchors at headquarters, but was afraid of a revolt of the Red Army soldiers. Now, after an inspection trip that lasted no more than three hours, Aralov turned to Trotsky with a convincing request - to find a new division chief, but not from the locals, because “the Ukrainians are all kulak-minded.” In a coded response, Trotsky ordered him to “carry out a strict purge and refreshment of the command staff in the division. A conciliatory policy is unacceptable. Any measures are good, but you need to start from the head.”

Head bandaged, blood on my sleeve

In 1989, Rabochaya Gazeta, published in Kyiv, reported exactly what measures were taken to eliminate Shchors. Then she published downright sensational material - excerpts from the memoirs of Major General Sergei Ivanovich Petrikovsky, written back in 1962, but then never published for reasons of Soviet censorship

At the end of August 1919, he commanded the Separate Cavalry Brigade of the 44th Army - and, it turns out, he also accompanied the division commander to the front line.

As can be seen from Petrikovsky’s memoirs, Comrade Aralov went on a new inspection trip to Shchors not alone, but together with the political inspector of the Revolutionary Military Council of the 12th Army, Pavel Samuilovich Tankhil-Tankhilevich (his portrait has not survived). Researchers call this person more than mysterious. He was next to Shchors at the time of his death, and immediately after his death he left for army headquarters. At the same time, in his memoirs, Petrikovsky claims that the shot that killed Shchors was heard after the Red artillery smashed into pieces a railway box, behind which there was an enemy machine gunner.

“When the enemy machine gun fired,” the general writes, “the Dubovoys lay down near Shchors on one side, and the political inspector on the other. I have not yet established who is on the right and who is on the left, but this no longer matters significantly. I still think that it was the political inspector who fired, and not Dubovoy...

I think that Dubovoy became an unwitting accomplice, perhaps even believing that it was for the benefit of the revolution. How many such cases do we know!!! I knew Dubovoy, and not only from the Civil War. He seemed to me an honest man. But he also seemed weak-willed to me, without any special talents. He was nominated, and he wanted to be nominated. That's why I think he was made complicit. But he didn’t have the courage to prevent the murder.

Dubovoy himself personally bandaged the head of the dead Shchors right there on the battlefield. When Bohunsky Regiment nurse Anna Rosenblum suggested bandaging it more carefully, Dubovoy did not allow her. By order of Dubovoy, Shchors’ body was sent for burial without a medical examination... Dubovoy could not help but know that the bullet “exit” hole is always larger than the entry hole...”

Thus, according to all the data, it turns out that Shchors received a revolver bullet in the back of his head precisely from Tanhilevich, and this happened at the moment when he began to look at the location of Petlyura’s troops through binoculars. It is also clear from the memoirs that the above-mentioned Ivan Dubovoy became an involuntary witness to this shot, but he hardly wanted the death of the division commander - he was later forced to remain silent. And while he was trying to bandage Shchors and pull his body out of the battlefield, Aralov and his assistant, as already mentioned, left the division’s location and went back to headquarters. Subsequently, traces of the performers were lost somewhere on the fronts, and Dubovoy was accused of treason to the Motherland in 1937 and was soon shot.

For most experts, it seems obvious that Shchors, during the troubled times of the civil war, became one of the many victims of the struggle for power in the Soviet military-political elite. At the same time, historians believe that another red division commander, Vasily Chapaev, who for Trotsky was also one of the adherents of “partisanship,” could soon share his fate, but just then his “timely” death happened in the waters of the Ural River. And although during the perestroika years versions were repeatedly put forward that the death of Chapaev, like Shchors, was set up by Trotsky’s inner circle, no real evidence was found for these assumptions.

The mysterious deaths of a number of Red commanders during the Civil War and immediately after it are one of the darkest pages of Soviet history, which we are unlikely to ever be able to read to the end. We can only hope that this will someday be done thanks to the efforts of researchers working with materials from archives that were classified as secret just recently

Valery EROFEEV.

The mystery of the death of the legendary division commander N.A. Shchorsa: a look through the years

In recent years, publications have constantly appeared in the media examining the origins of the deaths of people famous in the recent past: M.V. Frunze, M. Gorky, S.A. Yesenina, V.V. Mayakovsky and others. At the same time, the majority of authors are trying not so much to establish the truth as to present readers with a certain sensation.

The story of the death of Nikolai Aleksandrovich Shchors1 did not escape similar approaches. Journalists, not bothering to look for opportunities to give a scientific, objective assessment of the materials at their disposal, began to claim that Shchors was killed by his own people. At the same time, some considered Shchors’ killers to be a certain traitor, others considered the division commander’s associates, whom he did not please in some way. The direct perpetrator of the murder was called the political inspector of the Revolutionary Military Council of the 12th Army P.S. Tankhil-Tankhilevich, accomplice - deputy Shchors I.N. Dubovoy2, and the organizer was a member of the Revolutionary Military Council of the 12th Army S.I. Aralov3, who allegedly disoriented L.D. Trotsky in relation to the personality of Shchors. There were also those who considered Trotsky himself to be the direct organizer of the murder of the division commander and regarded this as a counter-revolutionary act4.

The main argument underlying all these versions was the location of the gunshot entrance hole in the occipital region, which is traditionally associated among ordinary people with a shot in the back of the head. As arguments, they cited the confessional testimony of Dubovoy, who was repressed in 1937, and the fact of Shchors’s burial in Samara, allegedly in order to hide the true reasons for his death and erase his memory.

Even a non-specialist understands that in combat conditions, while in a trench, a person can at some moments be facing the enemy with any area of ​​the body, including his back. How confessions were obtained in 1937 is also no secret today. From the testimony of F.E. Rostova5 it follows that the decision to bury Shchors’ body in Samara was not made by I.N. Dubov, as some authors write about this, and by the Revolutionary Military Council of the army out of fear of desecration of his grave, as happened with the grave of brigade commander V.N. Bozhenko6. The decision to be buried in Samara may have been influenced by the fact that in May-June 1918, Shchors, on instructions from the Central Committee of the RCP(b), organized a partisan movement in the Samara and Simbirsk (now Ulyanovsk region) provinces under the name Timofeev. According to some reports, he even participated in the liberation of Samara from the White Czechs. There were other arguments allegedly indicating an attempt on Shchors’s life (the wound was caused by a revolver bullet, the shot was fired from a parabellum from a distance of 5-10 or 8-10 steps), which, however, when compared with archival documents now stored in the State Archives of Samara region (GASO) turned out to be untrue7.

Documents related to the study of the remains of N.A. Shchorsa, from 1949 to 1964 were kept in the archives of the city committee of the CPSU. In September 1964, almost all of them were sent to the Kuibyshev (now Samara) Bureau of Forensic Medicine (BSME) to prepare answers to the questions set out in the request of the director of the State Memorial Museum N.A. Shchorsa8. Subsequently, in 1997, documents sent to the BSME were discovered in the personal archive of forensic expert N.Ya. Belyaev, who participated both in the study of Shchors’ remains and in the preparation of responses to the museum in 1964. In 2003, all documents were transferred to the State Archive of the Samara Region. We do not know why the documents were not requested by the archive earlier. Another document is “Act of exhumation and medical examination of the remains of the corpse of A.N. Shchorsa" appeared in the State Social Society in December 1964 after it was transferred here from the archives of the CPSU Civil Code. The first of the authors of this article worked for a long time with N.Ya. Belyaev, and it was to him that the archival documents were transferred after the death of N.Ya. Belyaeva.

As you know, Nikolai Aleksandrovich Shchors, at that time the commander of the 44th Infantry Division, which was part of the 12th Army, died on August 30, 1919 near Korosten, near the village of Beloshitsa, which is 100 km north of Zhitomir (Ukraine). His body was transported to the city of Klintsy (now Bryansk region), and burial took place on September 14, 1919 at the city (formerly All Saints) cemetery in Samara (from 1935 to 1991 - Kuibyshev). Cemetery in 1926-1931 was closed, part of its territory was occupied by a cable factory, and the grave was lost. However, after the war, the need arose to clarify the cause of the death of the legendary division commander, and they began to look for his burial place. These attempts were only successful in May 1949.

On May 16, 1949, the grave was dug up, but permission to open the coffin required an appeal from the executive committee of the Kuibyshev City Council and the regional committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks to the Secretary of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks G.M. Malenkov. On July 5, 1949, at 1:30 p.m., the coffin with the remains was removed and taken to the premises of the then city forensic medical examination, where on the same day a forensic medical examination took place by a commission of 6 people chaired by the head of the city health department K.P. . Vasiliev in order to establish the identity of the remains of N.A. Shchors. The question of the possible circumstances of the gunshot wound to the skull identified during the examination of the remains did not arise.

No reports on the activities of the commission were published. Those who were aware of this also remained silent.

Now, considering the data from both the primary and other documents that contain a description of the study of the remains, we have to admit that the research conducted left much to be desired. Thus, during the examination of the skull, the orientation of the length of the hole in the occipital bone was not indicated; the cranial vault was not separated and the features of damage to the internal bone plate were not studied; The thickness of the skull bones was not measured, especially in the area of ​​damage, which did not meet the requirements of paragraphs. 26, 57 and 58 of the “Rules for Forensic Medical Examination of Corpses” (1928), which were also in force in 19499.

Omitting details of the study that are not related to the topic of this article, we present a verbatim description of the damage to the skull bones presented in the report: “... in the area of ​​the tubercle of the occipital bone, 0.5 cm to the right of it, there is an irregular oval-oblong hole measuring 1.6 x 0.8 cm with fairly smooth edges. From the upper edge of this hole on the left, rising slightly upward, through the left temporal bone, there is a crack that does not reach the posterior edge of the left zygomatic bone. In the area of ​​the left parietal bone, on the line connecting the mastoid processes, 5 cm below the sagittal suture, there is a round hole 1 x 1 cm with a detachment of the outer plate 2 cm in diameter. From this hole in front and down to the external auditory opening, cracks extend, forming a closed area of ​​irregular quadrangular shape measuring 6 x 3.5 cm. The distance between the holes in the bones of the skull in a straight line is 14 cm. When the soft tissues of the head were removed, bone fragments separated, forming hole in the skull."

During the study, photographs were taken of the remains in the coffin and separately of the head. The photographs were attached to a document called “Forensic Medical Report”, drawn up by three representatives of the above-mentioned commission: the head of the Department of Topographic Anatomy and Operative Surgery of the Kuibyshev State Medical Institute (KSMI), Doctor of Medical Sciences, Professor I.N. Askalonov; forensic experts, assistants of the Department of Forensic Medicine of KSMI N.Ya. Belyaev and V.P. Golubev. All are specialists with extensive experience in practical and teaching work.

This document contains verbatim data from the report on the nature of damage to the skull bones, excluding information about the formation of a hole in the skull after removal of soft tissue, and ends with conclusions from 5 points.

The first paragraph states the cause of death: “Death of Shchors N.A. followed from a through gunshot wound to the occipital and left half of the skull with damage to the brain substance, as indicated by the damage to the bones of the skull described above.”

The second paragraph, in a presumptive form (“apparently”), speaks of the weapon from which Shchors was mortally wounded: “... either from a short-barreled weapon of the “revolver” type or from a combat rifle.” There are no substantiations for this judgment.

The third paragraph deals with the location of the entrance and exit holes: “The hole in the occipital region should be considered the entrance, as evidenced by the fairly smooth edges of the bone defect in the area of ​​the occipital protuberance. The hole located in the left parietal region should be considered the exit hole, as indicated by the shape of the hole with detachment of the outer bone plate.”

The fourth paragraph of the conclusions contains an indication of the direction of the shot (“back to front, from bottom to top and slightly from right to left”) and the area of ​​brain damage — “the cerebellum, the occipital lobes of the brain and the left hemisphere” — “along the bullet channel.”

The first part of this paragraph about the direction of the shot was formulated contrary to well-known scientific data about the non-identity of such concepts as the direction of the wound channel and the direction of the shot, since the direction of the gun channel does not always coincide with the external direction of flight of the bullet. Experienced forensic doctors, especially teachers of forensic medicine, could not help but know about this.

In the last, fifth point, experts pointed out the impossibility of determining the distance of the shot.

In 1964, based on these documents, a 4-page response was prepared to the director of the State Memorial Museum N.A. Shchors to his requests dated August 6 and September 16, 1964, received by the 1st Secretary of the Kuibyshev City Committee of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) L.N. Efremova. The response was prepared by forensic experts N.Ya. Belyaev and V.P. Golubev, as well as the head of the Kuibyshev BSME N.V. Pichugina.

The preamble of the document states that the director of the museum is sent a “Forensic medical report...” and photographs of the skull of the deceased. It was also pointed out that it was impossible to determine the caliber of the bullet and the presence of its casing, “because... When examining the exhumed corpse of Shchors, no special studies were carried out on the bullet casing.”

From the point of view of information content, photographs of Shchors’ skull are of greatest value, since of all the surviving materials they are the only ones that do not represent subjective descriptions and opinions, but are an objective reflection of the wound Shchors received. True, the photographs have a number of significant drawbacks: there is no scale bar or any other object that allows you to determine the scale; the selected angles make it difficult to determine the exact location of the damage. Nevertheless, it was the study of photographs of Shchors’ skull that allowed us to take a fresh look at the nature of the gunshot wound, which became fatal. At the same time, there was no doubt about the experts’ conclusion that there was a gunshot wound on Shchors’ skull, as well as conclusions regarding the location of the entrance and exit holes. However, the shape and dimensions of the outlet described in the report, in our opinion, are, to put it mildly, incorrect. Thus, the act states: “After photographing the remains of the corpse in the coffin and a separate photograph of the head, a medical examination of the head was carried out, and after separating the soft coverings of the head along with the hair, the following was discovered...”. The photographs show that already during photographing, some of the bone fragments around the exit hole separated. Most likely, experts studied and described the skull after their separation. In such cases, to restore the original picture and a detailed description, it is necessary to re-match the fragments. Perhaps this was not done. In any case, only this, in our opinion, can explain the description of the exit hole they presented: “a round hole measuring 1 x 1 cm.” Fortunately, one of the photographs captured the exit gunshot hole on Shchors’ skull before the separation of the largest fragment.

The photo clearly shows chips of the outer bone plate along the upper edge, the anterior and posterior ends, and along the lower edge at the posterior end, forming a kind of bracket that goes around this part of the defect. These chips characterize the rectangular part of the defect as an exit gunshot damage, and the shape of this part of the defect corresponds to the shape of the bullet profile. In place of the triangular part of the defect, located in the lower left corner of the photo, there was most likely another fragment(s) that separated before photographing.

If specialists had described and measured the rectangular part of the defect during the study, this would have allowed them, with a high degree of probability, to draw a conclusion about the alleged projectile, and, accordingly, about the weapon from which Nikolai Alexandrovich was mortally wounded.

The absence of a scale bar in the photo, as well as any other scale references, deprives us of the opportunity to draw unambiguous conclusions. However, focusing on the general dimensions of the skull, as well as the dimensions of the defects recorded in the report (“a closed area of ​​an irregular quadrangular shape measuring 6 x 3.5 cm”, “a round hole 1 x 1 cm”), we still risked making our own calculations the size of the rectangular area of ​​the bone defect.

According to our calculations, the length of the damage is 3.2 cm, the width at the anterior-inferior end is 1.1 cm, the width at the upper-posterior end is 1 cm (the latter size corresponds to the size of the hole indicated in the report). Taking into account the direction of the wound channel at the exit, the bullet moved at a rather acute angle to the parietal bone, so the size of the bone defect is most likely somewhat larger than the size of the bullet profile. But even taking this into account and the possible error in our calculations, the length of the bullet should have been at least 3.0 cm.

Thus, based on the already available data on the nature of the damage to Shchors’ skull, supplemented by our calculations, the bullet that fatally wounded Shchors had a diameter of about 0.8 cm (smaller size of the entrance hole) and a length of at least 3.0 cm. None of The bullets known to us used for shooting pistols of that time do not meet these parameters, primarily the length.

The so-called Mannlicher bullet has the most suitable characteristics. Its diameter is just 0.8 cm and its length is about 3.2 cm. The Mannlicher cartridge, as far as we know, was used for firing from the following rifles: Mannlicher Repetiergewehr M.1888/90, Mannlicher Repetiergewehr M.1890, Mannlicher Repetier-Karabiner M.90, Mannlicher Repetiergewehr M.1895, Mannlicher Repetier-Karabiner M.1895, Mannlicher Repetier-Stutzen M.1895, as well as for firing from the Schwarzlose MG 07/12 machine gun. All this is a weapon of so-called strong combat, and it was in service with the enemy troops10.

A bullet fired from such a weapon has a very high initial flight speed and, therefore, kinetic energy. Released at close range, it would have caused more extensive damage to the skull11.

Due to the high flight speed, the bullet, having formed an entrance hole in the bones of the skull (after which its rotation may begin), as a rule, does not have time to turn inside the skull cavity enough to exit it with its side surface.

In cases where the bullet enters the cranial cavity in a straight line, without prior rotation, round perforated fractures usually form on the skull. Experts who examined Shchors’ skull explained the elongated shape of the entrance hole by saying that “apparently, the bullet in the area of ​​the back of the deceased’s head did not penetrate in a strictly perpendicular direction or was deformed.” In our opinion, the most probable version seems to be a ricochet, after which the bullet inevitably had to change the direction of flight and could begin to rotate even before entering the skull, and inside the cranial cavity it would only continue its previously started rotation and exit on the side surface. You should also keep in mind the possibility of a ricochet from an object located behind the victim. In this case, the shooter had to be located in front and to the side of Shchors.

The data presented indicate that the version of the murder of the legendary division commander by his own people, especially by anyone in the immediate vicinity of him, in particular by Dubov or Tankhil-Tankhilevich, has no real basis. So the question of who killed Shchors, and whether he was killed intentionally or died from a stray bullet from the enemy, remains, in our opinion, still open.

Response to article [E.A. Gimpelson and E.V. Ponomareva] “Were there murderers?”

In August 2011, an article by E. A. Gimpelson was published on the website of the Military Historical Journal under the heading “Judgments and Versions.” and Ponomareva E.V. “Were there murderers? The mystery of the death of the legendary division commander N.A. Shchors: a look through the years.” Those who are interested in this topic have noticed that the article is a significantly revised version of the publication by Gimpelson E.A. and Ardashkina A.P. “The deliberate murder of N.A. Shchors - truth or fiction?”, published in the magazine “Samara Destinies”, No. 5, 2007.

In both versions, the authors conduct a professional analysis of the results of the exhumation of the remains of N.A. Shchors on the basis of archival materials and photographs from 1949 and convincingly reject the widespread version of the deliberate murder of N.A. Shchors with a shot in the back of the head:

“The data presented indicate that the version of the murder of the legendary division commander by his own people, especially by anyone in the immediate vicinity of him, in particular Dubov or Tankhil-Tankhilevich, has no real basis. So the question of who killed Shchors, and whether he was killed intentionally or died from a stray bullet from the enemy, remains, in our opinion, still open.”

At the same time, the authors express their position, which I fully support, in terms of the assertion that many historical publications do not bother themselves with a systemic analysis and try to extract sensation from fragmentary, unverified facts or simply unfounded statements. Indeed, there are countless examples of this.

However, the conclusion that “the murder version has no real basis,” it seems to me, suffers from the same drawback - the lack of a systematic analysis. But the analysis is not only forensic, but also historical, taking into account all known facts.

First of all, I want to note that the version of premeditated murder did not come from the pen of publicists. She was born among Shchors' colleagues literally the next day after his death. But the military and political situation did not allow for a hot investigation. And it is possible that it was precisely this circumstance that prompted Shchors’ friends to embalm his body, carefully pack it and bury it far from the army and political leadership. The often stated statement that the decision to bury Shchors in Samara was made by the RVS of the 12th Army does not correspond to reality. According to RVS-12 member Semyon Aralov, the telegram about the death of division commander-44 was received only on September 8, when the funeral train was already on its way to Samara. This is confirmed by the telegram sent after him - to immediately return the cool carriage.

Attempts to initiate an investigation were made in subsequent years. This is what General Petrikovsky (Petrenko) S.I., Shchors’ colleague and friend, writes in his memoirs:

“If you figure out how the situation developed in the 1st Ukrainian. division in the summer of 1919, then murder was bound to occur (follow).”

By the way, soon after the death of division commander-44, a purge of the command staff was carried out in the division, which Petrikovsky himself fell under, being the commander of the Special Cavalry Brigade. (But he was soon picked up by Frunze and appointed military commander of the 25th Chapaev Division).

And much later, former member of the RVS-12 Semyon Aralov spoke out in his memoirs:

“...It should be added that, as it turned out then from a conversation over a direct wire from the beginning. Headquarters of the 1st Division Comrade Kasser, Shchors did not inform the division units of their withdrawal plan and left the Zhitomir-Kyiv highway, which was extremely important for the defense of Kyiv, open to the enemy, which was regarded as failure to comply with a combat order.”

I think there is no need to remind readers what this phrase means during hostilities.

Attempts to understand the absurd death of Nikolai Shchors were made in subsequent years. But the deeper the veterans penetrated into history, the more terrible the conclusions loomed - the involvement of influential party officials. And the veterans come to the decision that there is no point in further promoting the topic of the murder of Nikolai Shchors, “... since such a version discredits our party. And they poured so much shit on us.”

Let me also remind you of the famous confession of Ivan Dubovoy, made by him in 1937 in the dungeons of the NKVD. Ivan Dubovoy, quite unexpectedly and of his own free will, wrote a statement in which he confessed to the murder of Shchors, committed by him for selfish reasons, being Shchors’ deputy. But the authorities did not bother with this fact - Dubovoy was still threatened with a “tower” for anti-Soviet activities. The question arises: why did Dubovoy need to invent this story, if earlier in his memoirs he stated that “the bullet entered the temple and came out at the back of the head.” And Dubovoy was the only real witness to Shchors’ death - “he died in my arms.” Or, as they say, “there is no smoke without fire”?

For the first time, the murder of Shchors by “his own” was widely voiced by the writer Dmitry Petrovsky in 1947 in his book “The Tale of the Bogunsky and Tarashchansky Regiments”:

“No one has yet seen, except Bogengard, that the bullet that killed Shchors entered the back of his head - below the ear and exited into the temple, that it pierced him - treacherously - from behind. That the murderer, like a snake, gets entangled and moves among the ranks of those striving for vengeance.” [cit. according to the 1947 edition]

It should be noted that many veterans immediately condemned this book and demanded that it be withdrawn from circulation. The motive is the same - no one can discredit the party.

Please note that everything mentioned above refers to the period before 1949, i.e. Until the results of the exhumation appear, the version of a planned murder should not be attributed to an invention of publicists based on the Exhumation Act of 1949.

And in 1962, veterans, historians and party organs were blown up by a letter from S.I. Petrikovsky:

“...I am not writing this letter for publication. I do not consider it useful now to correct in print what has already been written. But in any Soviet or party court, I undertake to prove that Ivan Dubovoy is an accomplice in the murder or the killer of Nikolai Shchors. This letter of mine is my witness statement...”

In 1964, Petrikovsky could not be pulled out of his third heart attack. And the party bodies used force to suppress any discussions on this matter. Some materials from the investigation into Shchors’ death fell into the hands of publicists only in the late eighties. And there was a thick smell of fried food.

Now directly to the article. I am not a criminology specialist and I was impressed by the insightful and compelling analysis carried out by the authors of the article. But I still don't understand:

Or they believe that the experts of 1949 (I emphasize, it was 1949, not 1964) had some kind of external influence that forced them to play a “little” trick.

In fact, there are two expert opinions. One was made in 1949 on real remains, and the second, made in 1964 from photographs and archival documents. Moreover, the 1949 conclusion contains uncompromising statements (with the exception of the type of revolver weapon and the firing distance), while the answers of the experts in 1964 are mostly vague and probabilistic. It is possible that this was due to the fact that in 1964 experts had to answer direct and quite professional questions, and they understood that something important depended on their answer, and not just idle curiosity. One thing was certain - the entrance hole was on the back of the head, and the exit hole was on the temple.

Now to the issue of rebound. Of course, the version of the authors of the article contains convincing evidence and has every right to exist, although it is probabilistic. But in this case, the legal competence of both the 1949 and 1964 experts is questionable. After all, if the experts were considering the option of a ricochet, then the Act would have a legally clear wording: “The bullet entered the back of the head and exited the temple,” and not an unambiguous statement: “The shot was fired from back to front.” Those. it was not just the bullet that entered from behind, but the shot was fired from behind, which casts doubt on the version of the ricochet. It seems like the experts had no doubts about this.

And in conclusion, a few words about the fundamental principles of the discussion. Some researchers, and I agree with them, suggest that this whole controversy - who shot, with what weapon, from where, etc. - this is an attempt to divert the question from the main thing: is Shchors’ death purposeful and does it fit into the formula “no person - no problem.” Including acts of exhumation are only indirect evidence.

1 Shchors Nikolai Aleksandrovich (May 25 (June 6), 1895, the village of Snovsk, now the town of Shchors, Chernigov region, Ukraine - August 30, 1919, the village of Beloshitsa, now the village of Shchorsovka, Zhitomir region, Ukraine). He graduated from military paramedic school (1914) and military school (1916). Participant in the First World War, second lieutenant (1917). In the Red Army since 1918, he organized a partisan detachment that fought against the German occupiers. In May-June 1918, he was involved in organizing the partisan movement in the Samara and Simbirsk provinces; in September, in the Unecha region, he formed the 1st Ukrainian Soviet Regiment named after. Bohuna. From November 1918 - commander of the 2nd brigade of the 1st Ukrainian Soviet division, which liberated Chernigov, Fastov, Kyiv. From February 1919 - commandant of Kyiv, from March - head of the 1st Ukrainian Soviet Division, which liberated Zhitomir, Vinnitsa, Zhmerinka from the Petliurists, defeated their main forces in the area of ​​​​Sarny, Rivne, Radzivilov, Brody, Proskurov, staunchly defended in the area Novograd-Volynsky, Shepetivka, Sarny. From August 1919, he commanded the 44th Infantry Division, which stubbornly defended the Korosten railway junction, which ensured the evacuation of Soviet institutions from Kyiv and the exit from the encirclement of the Southern Group 12 A. He was awarded the Weapon of Honor by the Provisional Workers' and Peasants' Government of Ukraine.

2 The argument about Dubovoy’s involvement in the murder of Shchors was based on the prevailing opinion at that time about the constant difference in the size of the entrance and exit wounds. Dubovoy, according to his accusers, knew about this, saw the wound, but wrote that the bullet entered from the front and came out from the back (See: N. Zenkovich. Bullet from a Liver Gun // Rural Youth. 1992. No. 1. P. 52-57) ; Ivanov V. Who shot at the division commander? // Interfax Vremya - Samara and Samara newspaper dated September 5, 2001; Erofeev V. The mystery of the death of Shchors // Volga Commune. No. 234. 2009. July 4.

3 Aralov Semyon Ivanovich (1880-1969). In the revolutionary social democratic movement since 1903, member of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) since 1918. During the Civil War - member of the Revolutionary Military Council of the Republic, army, South-Western Front. In 1921-1925. - Plenipotentiary Representative in Lithuania, Turkey, then worked in the People's Commissariat of Foreign Affairs, the Supreme Council of the National Economy.

4 See: Petrovsky D.V. The story of the Bogunsky and Tarashchansky regiments. M., 1955. S. 398, 399.

5 See: “Testimony of Rostova Fruma Efimovna, wife of N.A. Shchorsa, living [at that time]: Moscow, 72, st. Serafimovicha, 2, apt. 487, tel.: 31-92-49.” The document is on two pages, at the end of it the date and place of compilation are indicated: “May 7, 1949, Kuibyshev” and Rostova’s signature. State Archives of the Samara Region (SASO). F. 651. Op. 5. D. 115.

6 Bozhenko Vasily Nazarievich (1871-1919) - hero of the Civil War, member of the Bolshevik Party from 1917, in 1918-1919. - participant in battles with German invaders and Petliurists in Ukraine. In 1918-1919 - commander of the Tarashchansky partisan regiment, then the Tarashchansky brigade in the 1st Ukrainian (44th) division N.A. Shchorsa. Bozhenko’s units took part in the liberation of the territory of Soviet Ukraine from German invaders, hetmans and Petliurists. See also: Shpachkov V. Paramedic, who became a red commander // Medical newspaper. No. 70. 2007. September 19.

Youth

Born and raised in the village of Korzhovka, Velikoshimelsky volost, Gorodnyansky district, Chernigov province (since 1924 - the city of Snovsk, now the regional center of Shchors, Chernigov region of Ukraine). Born into the family of a wealthy peasant landowner (according to another version, from the family of a railway worker).

In 1914 he graduated from the military paramedic school in Kyiv. At the end of the year, the Russian Empire entered the First World War. Nikolai went to the front first as a military paramedic.

In 1916, 21-year-old Shchors was sent to a four-month accelerated course at the Vilna Military School, which by that time had been evacuated to Poltava. Then a junior officer on the Southwestern Front. Shchors spent almost three years as part of the 335th Anapa Infantry Regiment of the 84th Infantry Division of the Southwestern Front. During the war, Nikolai fell ill with tuberculosis, and on December 30, 1917 (after the October Revolution of 1917), Second Lieutenant Shchors was released from military service due to illness and went to his native farm.

Civil War

In February 1918, in Korzhovka, Shchors created a Red Guard partisan detachment, in March - April he commanded a united detachment of the Novozybkovsky district, which, as part of the 1st Revolutionary Army, participated in battles with the German invaders.

In September 1918, he formed the 1st Ukrainian Soviet Regiment named after. Bohuna. In October - November he commanded the Bogunsky regiment in battles with German invaders and hetmans, from November 1918 - the 2nd brigade of the 1st Ukrainian Soviet division (Bogunsky and Tarashchansky regiments), which captured Chernigov, Kiev and Fastov, repelling them from the troops of the Ukrainian Directory .

On February 5, 1919, he was appointed commandant of Kyiv and, by decision of the Provisional Workers' and Peasants' Government of Ukraine, was awarded an honorary weapon.

From March 6 to August 15, 1919, Shchors commanded the 1st Ukrainian Soviet Division, which, during a rapid offensive, recaptured Zhitomir, Vinnitsa, Zhmerinka from the Petliurists, defeated the main forces of the Petliurists in the area of ​​Sarny - Rivne - Brody - Proskurov, and then in the summer of 1919 defended itself in the area of ​​Sarny - Novograd-Volynsky - Shepetovka from the troops of the Polish Republic and the Petliurists, but was forced under pressure from superior forces to retreat to the east.

From August 21, 1919 - commander of the 44th Infantry Division (the 1st Ukrainian Soviet Division joined it), which stubbornly defended the Korosten railway junction, which ensured the evacuation of Kiev (captured by Denikin’s troops on August 31) and the exit from the encirclement of the Southern Group of the 12th army.

On August 30, 1919, while in the advanced chains of the Bohunsky regiment, in a battle against the 7th brigade of the II Corps of the UGA near the village of Beloshitsa (now the village of Shchorsovka, Korostensky district, Zhitomir region, Ukraine), Shchors was killed under unclear circumstances. He was shot in the back of the head at close range, presumably from 5-10 steps away.

Shchors' body was transported to Samara, where it was buried in the Orthodox All Saints Cemetery (now the territory of the Samara Cable Company). According to one version, he was taken to Samara, since the parents of his wife Fruma Efimovna lived there.

In 1949, the remains of Shchors were exhumed in Kuibyshev. On July 10, 1949, in a solemn ceremony, Shchors’ ashes were reburied on the main alley of the Kuibyshev city cemetery. In 1954, when the three-hundredth anniversary of the reunification of Russia and Ukraine was celebrated, a granite obelisk was installed on the grave. Architect - Alexey Morgun, sculptor - Alexey Frolov.

Death studies

The official version that Shchors died in battle from a bullet from a Petlyura machine gunner began to be criticized with the beginning of the “thaw” of the 1960s.

Initially, researchers accused only the commander of the Kharkov Military District, Ivan Dubovoy, of the commander’s murder, who during the Civil War was Nikolai Shchors’s deputy in the 44th division. The 1935 collection “Legendary Division Commander” contains the testimony of Ivan Dubovoy: “The enemy opened strong machine-gun fire and, I especially remember, one machine gun showed “daring” at the railway booth... Shchors took binoculars and began to look at where the machine-gun fire was coming from. But a moment passed, and the binoculars fell from Shchors’ hands to the ground, and Shchors’s head too...” The head of the mortally wounded Shchors was bandaged by Dubovoy. Shchors died in his arms. “The bullet entered from the front,” writes Dubovoy, “and came out from the back,” although he could not help but know that the entrance bullet hole was smaller than the exit hole. When Bohunsky Regiment nurse Anna Rosenblum wanted to change the first, very hasty bandage on the head of the already dead Shchors to a more accurate one, Dubovoy did not allow it. By order of Dubovoy, Shchors’ body was sent for preparation for burial without a medical examination. It was not only Dubovoy who witnessed the death of Shchors. Nearby were the commander of the Bohunsky regiment, Kazimir Kvyatyk, and the representative of the Revolutionary Military Council of the 12th Army, Pavel Tankhil-Tankhilevich, sent with an inspection by a member of the Revolutionary Military Council of the 12th Army, Semyon Aralov, Trotsky’s protégé.

The probable perpetrator of the murder of the red commander is Pavel Samuilovich Tankhil-Tankhilevich. He was twenty-six years old, he was born in Odessa, graduated from high school, spoke French and German. In the summer of 1919 he became a political inspector of the Revolutionary Military Council of the 12th Army. Two months after the death of Shchors, he left Ukraine and arrived on the Southern Front as a senior censor-controller of the Military Censorship Department of the Revolutionary Military Council of the 10th Army.

The exhumation of the body, carried out in 1949 in Kuibyshev during reburial, confirmed that he was killed at close range with a shot to the back of the head. Near Rovno, Shchorsovite Timofey Chernyak, commander of the Novgorod-Seversky regiment, was later killed. Then Vasily Bozhenko, the brigade commander, died. He was poisoned in Zhitomir (according to the official version, he died in Zhitomir from pneumonia). Both were Nikolai Shchors's closest associates.

Memory

• A monument was erected at Shchors’ grave in Samara.
• Equestrian monument in Kyiv, erected in 1954.
• In the USSR, the IZOGIZ publishing house published a postcard with the image of N. Shchors.
• In 1944, a USSR postage stamp dedicated to Shchors was issued.
• The village of Shchorsovka, Korosten district, Zhitomir region, bears his name.
• The urban-type settlement of Shchorsk in the Krinichansky district of the Dnepropetrovsk region is named after him.
• Streets in the cities are named after him: Chernigov, Balakovo, Bykhov, Nakhodka, Novaya Kakhovka, Korosten, Moscow, Dnepropetrovsk, Baku, Yalta, Grodno, Dudinka, Kirov, Krasnoyarsk, Donetsk, Vinnitsa, Odessa, Orsk, Brest, Podolsk, Voronezh, Krasnodar, Novorossiysk, Tuapse, Belgorod, Minsk, Bryansk, Kalach-on-Don, Konotop, Izhevsk, Irpen, Tomsk, Zhitomir, Ufa, Yekaterinburg, Smolensk, Tver, Yeisk, Bogorodsk, Tyumen, Buzuluk, Saratov, Lugansk, Ryazan Belaya Church, children's park in Samara (founded on the site of the former All Saints Cemetery), Shchors Park in Lugansk.

• Until 1935, the name of Shchors was not widely known; even TSB did not mention him. In February 1935, presenting Alexander Dovzhenko with the Order of Lenin, Stalin invited the artist to create a film about the “Ukrainian Chapaev,” which was done. Later, several books, songs, even an opera were written about Shchors; schools, streets, villages and even a city were named after him. In 1936, Matvey Blanter (music) and Mikhail Golodny (lyrics) wrote “Song about Shchors”:

• When the body of Nikolai Shchors was exhumed in Kuibyshev in 1949, it was found well preserved, practically incorrupt, although it had lain in a coffin for 30 years. This is explained by the fact that when Shchors was buried in 1919, his body was previously embalmed, soaked in a steep solution of table salt and placed in a sealed zinc coffin.

Russian empire
Ukrainian SSR

held the position of division commander

Nikolai Shchors on a postcard from IZOGIZ, USSR

Nikolay Aleksandrovich Shchors(May 25 (June 6) - August 30) - second lieutenant, red commander, division commander during the Civil War in Russia. Member of the Communist Party since 1918, before that he was close to the Left Social Revolutionaries.

Biography

Youth

Born and raised in the village of Korzhovka, Velikoschimel volost, Gorodnyansky district, Chernigov province (with - the city of Snovsk, now the regional center of Shchors, Chernigov region of Ukraine). Born into the family of a wealthy peasant landowner (according to another version, from the family of a railway worker).

Civil War

In September 1918, he formed the 1st Ukrainian Soviet Regiment named after. Bohuna. In October - November he commanded the Bogunsky regiment in battles with German interventionists and hetmans, from November 1918 - the 2nd brigade of the 1st Ukrainian Soviet division (Bogunsky and Tarashchansky regiments), which captured Chernigov, Kiev and Fastov, repelling them from the troops of the Ukrainian Directory .

On August 15, 1919, the 1st Ukrainian Soviet Division under the command of N. A. Shchors was merged with the 44th Border Division under the command of I. N. Dubovoy, becoming the 44th Infantry Division. On August 21, Shchors became its chief, and Dubova became the deputy chief of the division. The division consisted of four brigades.

The division that stubbornly defended the Korosten railway junction, which ensured the evacuation of Kyiv (on August 31, the city was taken by the Volunteer Army of General Denikin) and a way out of the encirclement of the Southern Group of the 12th Army.

Death studies

The official version that Shchors died in battle from a bullet from a Petlyura machine gunner began to be criticized with the beginning of the “thaw” of the 1960s.

Initially, researchers blamed the murder of the commander only on the commander of the Kharkov Military District, Ivan Dubovoy, who during the Civil War was Nikolai Shchors’s deputy in the 44th division. The 1935 collection “Legendary Division Commander” contains the testimony of Ivan Dubovoy: “The enemy opened strong machine-gun fire and, I especially remember, one machine gun showed “daring” at the railway booth... Shchors took binoculars and began to look at where the machine-gun fire was coming from. But a moment passed, and the binoculars fell from Shchors’ hands to the ground, and Shchors’s head too...” The head of the mortally wounded Shchors was bandaged by Dubovoy. Shchors died in his arms. “The bullet entered from the front,” writes Dubovoy, “and came out from the back,” although he could not help but know that the entrance bullet hole was smaller than the exit hole. When Bohunsky Regiment nurse Anna Rosenblum wanted to change the first, very hasty bandage on the head of the already dead Shchors to a more accurate one, Dubovoy did not allow it. By order of Dubovoy, Shchors’ body was sent for preparation for burial without a medical examination. It was not only Dubovoy who witnessed the death of Shchors. Nearby were the commander of the Bohunsky regiment, Kazimir Kvyatyk, and the representative of the Revolutionary Military Council of the 12th Army, Pavel Tankhil-Tankhilevich, sent with an inspection by a member of the Revolutionary Military Council of the 12th Army, Semyon Aralov, Trotsky’s protégé. He was twenty-six years old, born in Odessa, graduated from high school, spoke French and German. In the summer of 1919 he became a political inspector of the Revolutionary Military Council of the 12th Army. Two months after the death of Shchors, he left Ukraine and arrived on the Southern Front as a senior censor-controller of the Military Censorship Department of the Revolutionary Military Council of the 10th Army.

The exhumation of the body, carried out in 1949 in Kuibyshev during reburial, confirmed that he was killed at close range with a shot to the back of the head. Near Rovno, Shchorsovite Timofey Chernyak, commander of the Novgorod-Seversky regiment, was later killed. Then Vasily Bozhenko, the brigade commander, died. He was poisoned