“A detachment walked along the shore,
Walked from afar
Walked under the red banner
Regiment commander"
Even those who grew up in post-Soviet times have probably heard these lines more than once. But not everyone knows that they were taken from the “Song of Shchors”.
Nikolay Shchors During the Soviet period of history, he was included in the list of heroes of the revolution, about whose exploits children learned in elementary school, if not in kindergarten. Comrade Shchors was one of those who gave their lives in the struggle for the happiness of the working people. That is why he, like other dead revolutionaries, was not affected by the subsequent stages of the political struggle with the erasure from history of yesterday’s comrades, declared “enemies of the people.”
Nikolai Aleksandrovich Shchors (1895-1919), red commander, division commander during the Civil War in Russia. Photo: Commons.wikimedia.org
Nikolai Aleksandrovich Shchors was born on June 6, 1895 in the Chernigov region, in the village of Snovsk, Velikoschimelsky volost, Gorodnya district, according to some sources, in the family of a wealthy peasant, according to others - a railway worker.
The future revolutionary hero in his youth did not think about class battles. Kolya Shchors could well have made a spiritual career - after graduating from the parochial school, he studied at the Chernigov Theological School, and then at the Kyiv Seminary.
Shchors' life changed with the outbreak of the First World War. The failed priest graduates from military paramedic school and is appointed to the post of military paramedic of an artillery regiment on a volunteer basis. In 1914-1915 he took part in hostilities on the North-Western Front.
Second lieutenant with tuberculosis
In October 1915, his status changed - 20-year-old Shchors was assigned to active military service and transferred to a reserve battalion as a private. In January 1916, he was sent to a four-month accelerated course at the Vilna Military School, evacuated to Poltava.
By that time, the Russian army had a serious problem with officer personnel, so everyone who, from the point of view of the command, had the ability, was sent for training.
After graduating from college with the rank of ensign, Nikolai Shchors served as a junior officer of a company in the 335th Anapa Infantry Regiment of the 84th Infantry Division, operating on the Southwestern and Romanian Front. In April 1917, Shchors was awarded the rank of second lieutenant.
The commanders who sent the young soldier for training were not mistaken: he truly had the makings of a commander. He knew how to win over his subordinates and become an authority for them.
Second Lieutenant Shchors, however, in addition to officer's shoulder straps, also acquired tuberculosis during the war, for the treatment of which he was sent to a military hospital in Simferopol.
It was there that the hitherto apolitical Nicholas joined the revolutionary movement, falling under the influence of agitators.
Shchors' military career could have ended in December 1917, when the Bolsheviks, who were heading out of the war, began demobilizing the army. Nikolai Shchors also went home.
Reproduction of the plate “Song about Shchors”. The work of Palekh masters. The village of Palekh. Photo: RIA Novosti / Khomenko
Field commander
Shchors' peaceful life did not last long - in March 1918, the Chernihiv region was occupied by German troops. Shchors was among those who decided to fight the invaders with weapons in their hands.
In the very first skirmishes, Shchors shows courage and determination and becomes the leader of the rebels, and a little later the commander of a united partisan detachment created from disparate groups.
For two months, Shchors' detachment caused a lot of headaches for the German army, but the forces were too unequal. In May 1918, the partisans retreated to the territory of Soviet Russia, where they ceased military activities.
Shchors makes another attempt to integrate into civilian life by applying for admission to the medical faculty of Moscow University. However, the Civil War is gaining momentum, and Shchors accepts the offer of one of his comrades in the partisan detachment Kazimir Kwiatek re-enter the armed struggle for the liberation of Ukraine.
In July 1918, the All-Ukrainian Central Military Revolutionary Committee (VTsVRK) was formed in Kursk, which plans to carry out a large-scale Bolshevik armed uprising in Ukraine. The VTsRVK needs commanders with experience in fighting in Ukraine, and Shchors comes in handy.
Shchors is given the task of forming a regiment from among local residents in the neutral zone between German troops and the territory of Soviet Russia, which should be part of the 1st Ukrainian Insurgent Division.
Shchors copes with the task brilliantly and becomes the commander of the 1st Ukrainian Soviet Regiment, named after the assigned hetman, which he assembled Ivan Bogun, which in the documents was listed as the “Ukrainian revolutionary regiment named after Comrade Bogun.”
Rebuke of “Ataman” Shchors to “Pan-Hetman” Petliura, 1919. Photo: Commons.wikimedia.org
The commandant of Kyiv and the threat of the Petliurists
Shchors' regiment very quickly turns out to be one of the most effective combat units among the rebel formations. Already in October 1918, Shchors’s merits were noted by his appointment as commander of the 2nd brigade as part of the Bohunsky and Tarashchansky regiments of the 1st Ukrainian Soviet division.
Brigade commander Shchors, with whom the soldiers literally fall in love, conducts successful operations to capture Chernigov, Kyiv and Fastov.
On February 5, 1919, the Provisional Workers' and Peasants' Government of Ukraine appointed Nikolai Shchors as commandant of Kyiv and awarded him an honorary golden weapon.
And the hero, whom the soldiers respectfully call “dad,” is only 23 years old...
The Civil War has its own laws. Military leaders who achieve success are often people who do not have sufficient military education, very young people who captivate people not so much with their skills as with their drive, determination and energy. This is exactly what Nikolai Shchors was.
In March 1919, Shchors became the commander of the 1st Ukrainian Soviet Division and turned into a real nightmare for the enemy. Shchors' division carries out a decisive offensive against the Petliurists, defeating their main forces and occupying Zhitomir, Vinnitsa and Zhmerinka. The Ukrainian nationalists are saved from complete disaster by the intervention of Poland, whose troops support the Petliurists. Shchors is forced to retreat, but his retreat does not closely resemble the flight of other Bolshevik units.
In the summer of 1919, Ukrainian rebel Soviet units were included in the united Red Army. The 1st Ukrainian Soviet Division joins the 44th Rifle Division of the Red Army, whose chief is Nikolai Shchors.
Shchors would have been confirmed in this position on August 21 and would have stayed in it for only nine days. On August 30, 1919, the division commander died in a battle with the 7th brigade of the 2nd corps of the Petlyura Galician army near the village of Beloshitsa.
Shchors was buried in Samara, where his wife’s parents lived Frooms of Rostova. Shchors' daughter Valentina was born after her father's death.
Monument at Shchors' grave in Samara, erected in 1954. Photo: Commons.wikimedia.org
PR for Comrade Stalin
Oddly enough, in the 1920s the name Nikolai Shchors was familiar to few people. The rise of its popularity occurred in the 1930s, when the authorities of the Soviet Union seriously began to create a heroic epic about the revolution and the Civil War, on which new generations of Soviet citizens were to be educated.
In 1935 Joseph Stalin, presenting the Order of Lenin film director Alexander Dovzhenko, noted that it would be nice to create a heroic film about the “Ukrainian Chapaev” Nikolai Shchors.
Such a film was actually made; it was released in 1939. But even before its release, books about Shchors and songs appeared, the most famous of which was written in 1936 Matvey Blanter And Mikhail Golodny“Song about Shchors” - lines from it are given at the beginning of this material.
Streets, squares, towns and cities began to be named after Shchors, and monuments to him appeared in various cities of the USSR. In 1954, on the 300th anniversary of the reunification of Ukraine and Russia, a monument to the hero of the two nations was erected in Kyiv.
The image of Shchors successfully survived all the winds of change, right up to the collapse of the USSR, when everyone who fought on the side of the Reds was subjected to defamation.
Shchors has a particularly hard time after Euromaidan: firstly, he is a Red commander, and everything connected with the Bolsheviks is now anathema in Ukraine; secondly, he famously crushed the Petliura formations, declared by the current Kyiv regime to be “hero-patriots”, which, of course, cannot be forgiven for him.
Shot in the back of the head
There is one mystery in the history of Nikolai Shchors that has not yet been solved - how exactly did the “Ukrainian Chapaev” die?
Reproduction of the painting “The Death of the Division Chief” (part of the triptych “Shchors”). Artist Pavel Sokolov-Skalya. Central Museum of the Armed Forces of the USSR. Photo: RIA Novosti
The classic version says: Shchors was killed by a bullet from a Petlyura machine gunner. However, among people close to Shchors, there was persistent talk that he died at the hands of his own people.
In 1949, the year of the 30th anniversary of the death of Shchors, in Kuibyshev (as Samara was called during this period), the remains of the hero were exhumed and his ceremonial reburial took place in the central cemetery of the city.
The results of the examination of the remains, carried out in 1949, were classified. The reason was that the examination showed that Shchors was shot in the back of the head.
In the 1960s, when this data became known, the version that Shchors was eliminated by his comrades became very widespread.
True, it will not be possible to habitually blame Comrade Stalin for this, and the point is not only that it was the “leader and teacher” who launched the campaign to glorify Shchors. It’s just that in 1919 Joseph Vissarionovich was solving completely different problems and did not have the influence necessary for such actions. And in principle, Shchors could not do anything to interfere with Stalin.
Was Shchors “ordered” by Trotsky?
Another matter Lev Davidovich Trotsky. At that time, the second person in Soviet Russia after Lenin, Trotsky was busy forming a regular Red Army, in which iron discipline was imposed. Uncontrollable and too obstinate commanders were disposed of without any sentimentality.
The charismatic Shchors belonged precisely to that category of commanders whom Trotsky did not like. Shchors' subordinates were first of all devoted to the commander, and only then to the cause of the revolution.
Among those who could carry out the order to eliminate Shchors, the name of his deputy was named Ivan Dubovoy, as well as the authorized Revolutionary Military Council of the 12th Army Pavel Tankhil-Tankhilevich, subordinate GRU founding father Semyon Aralov.
According to this version, during the ensuing firefight with the Petliurists, one of them shot Shchors in the back of the head, then passing it off as enemy fire.
Most arguments are put forward against Ivan Dubovoy, who personally bandaged Shchors’ fatal wound and did not allow the regimental paramedic to examine it. It was Dubovoy who became the new division commander after the death of Shchors.
In the 1930s, Dubovoy managed to write a book of memories about Shchors. But in 1937, Dubovoy, who rose to the position of commander of the Kharkov Military District, was arrested, accused of a Trotskyist conspiracy and executed. For this reason, he could not object to the accusations made in the 1960s.
If we proceed from the version that Shchors was shot to get rid of the “unsystematic” commander, it turns out that Trotsky was very dissatisfied with him. But the facts say otherwise.
Shortly before the death of its commander, Shchors' division stubbornly defended the Korosten railway junction, which made it possible to organize the planned evacuation of Kyiv before the army offensive Denikin. Thanks to the resilience of Shchors' fighters, the retreat of the Red Army did not turn into a full-scale disaster for it. As already mentioned, nine days before his death, Trotsky approved Shchors as commander of the 44th division. It is unlikely that this will be done in relation to a person whom they are going to get rid of in the very near future.
Reproduction of the painting “N. A. Shchors with V.I. Lenin.” 1938 Author Nikita Romanovich Popenko. Kyiv branch of the Central Museum of V.I. Lenin. Photo: RIA Novosti / Pavel Balabanov
Fatal ricochet
What if the murder of Shchors was not an “initiative from above”, but a personal plan of Dubovoy’s ambitious deputy? This is also hard to believe. If such a plan had surfaced, Dubovoy would have lost his head - either from Shchors’ fighters, who adored the commander, or from the anger of Trotsky, who extremely disliked such actions carried out without his own approval.
There remains one more option, quite plausible, but not popular among conspiracy theorists - Divisional Commander Shchors could have become a victim of a bullet ricochet. At the place where everything happened, according to eyewitnesses, there were enough stones that could have caused the bullet to bounce off them and hit the back of the red commander’s head. Moreover, the ricochet could have been caused either by a shot from the Petliurists or by a shot from one of the Red Army soldiers.
In this situation, there is also an explanation for the fact that Dubovoy himself bandaged Shchors’ wound, not letting anyone in to see it. Seeing that the bullet hit the back of the head, the deputy division commander was simply scared. Ordinary soldiers, having heard about the bullet in the back of the head, could easily deal with the “traitors” - there were plenty of such cases during the Civil War. Therefore, Dubovoy hastened to transfer his anger towards the enemy, and quite successfully. Enraged by the death of their commander, Shchors' soldiers attacked the positions of the Galicians, forcing them to retreat. At the same time, the Red Army soldiers did not take prisoners that day.
It is hardly possible today to establish for certain all the circumstances of the death of Nikolai Shchors, and this is not of fundamental importance. The Red commander Shchors long ago took his place in the history of the Civil War in Ukraine, and a song about him entered folklore, regardless of how historians evaluate his personality.
A little less than a hundred years after the death of Nikolai Shchors, the Civil War is raging again in Ukraine, and the new Shchors are fighting to the death with the new Petliurists. But, as they say, this is a completely different story.
In the Soviet Union, his name was a legend. Streets and state farms, ships and military formations were named in his honor. Every schoolchild knew the heroic song about how “the regiment commander walked under the red banner, his head was bandaged, blood was on his sleeve, a trail of blood was spreading across the damp grass.” This commander was the famous hero of the Civil War, Nikolai Shchors. In the biography of this man, whom I. Stalin called the “Ukrainian Chapaev,” there are quite a lot of “blank spots” - after all, he even died under very strange and mysterious circumstances. This secret, which has not yet been revealed, is almost a hundred years old.
In the history of the Civil War 1918-1921. there were many iconic, charismatic figures, especially in the camp of the “winners”: Chapaev, Budyonny, Kotovsky, Lazo... This list can be continued, without a doubt including the name of the legendary red division commander Nikolai Shchors. Poems and songs were written about him, a huge historiography was created, and 60 years ago the famous feature film by A. Dovzhenko “Shchors” was shot. There are monuments to Shchors in Kyiv, which he courageously defended, Samara, where he organized the partisan movement, Zhitomir, where he crushed the enemies of Soviet power, and near Korosten, where his life was cut short. Although a lot has been written and said about the legendary commander, the history of his life is full of mysteries and contradictions, which historians have been struggling with for decades. The biggest secret in the biography of division commander N. Shchors is connected with his death. According to official documents, the former second lieutenant of the tsarist army, and then the legendary red commander of the 44th Infantry Division, Nikolai Shchors, died from an enemy bullet in the battle near Korosten on August 30, 1919. However, there are other versions of what happened...
Nikolai Shchors, a native of Snovsk Gorodnyanskosh district, during his short life, and he lived only 24 years, accomplished a lot - he graduated from a military paramedic school in Kyiv, took part in the First World War (after graduating from the cadet school in Poltava, Shchors was sent to the Southwestern Front as a junior company commander), where after difficult months of trench life he developed tuberculosis. Throughout 1918-1919. the former ensign of the tsarist army made a dizzying career - from one of the commanders of the small Semenovsky Red Guard detachment to the commander of the 1st Ukrainian Soviet Division (from March 6, 1919). During this time, he managed to be the commander of the 1st Regular Ukrainian Regiment of the Red Army named after I. Bogun, the commander of the 2nd Brigade of the 1st Ukrainian Soviet Division, the commander of the 44th Streltsy Division and even the military commandant of Kyiv.
In August 1919, Shchors's 44th Streltsy Division (which included the 1st Ukrainian Soviet Division), which was part of the 12th Army, held positions at the strategically important railway junction in the city of Korosten, west of Kyiv. With their last strength, the fighters tried to stop the Petliurists, who were trying to take possession of the city at any cost. When on August 10, as a result of a raid by the Don Cavalry Corps of General Mamontov, the Cossacks broke through the Southern Front and moved towards Moscow along its rear, the 14th Army, which took the main blow, began to hastily retreat. Between the whites and the reds there now remained only Shchors's division, which was pretty battered in battle. However, it was clear to everyone that Kyiv could not be defended; it was considered only a matter of time. The Reds had to hold out in order to evacuate institutions, organize and cover the retreat of the 12th Army of the Southern Front. Nikolai Shchors and his fighters managed to do this. But they paid a high price for this.
On August 30, 1919, division commander N. Shchors arrived at the location of the Bogun brigade near the village of Beloshitsa (now Shchorsovka) near Korosten and died on the same day from a fatal wound to the head. The official version of the death of N. Shchors looked like this: during the battle, the division commander watched the Petliurists with binoculars, while simultaneously listening to the reports of the commanders. His fighters went on the attack, but suddenly an enemy machine gun “came to life” on the flank, the burst of which pinned the Red Guards to the ground. At that moment, the binoculars fell out of Shchors’ hands; he was mortally wounded and died 15 minutes later in the arms of his deputy. Witnesses to the fatal wound confirmed the heroic version of the death of their beloved commander. However, from them, in an unofficial setting, came the version that the bullet was fired by one of their own. Who benefited from this?
In that last battle, next to Shchors in the trench there were only two people - assistant division commander I. Dubova and another rather mysterious person - a certain P. Tankhil-Tankhilevich, a political inspector from the headquarters of the 12th Army. Major General S.I. Petrikovsky (Petrenko), who at that time commanded the cavalry 44th brigade of the division, although he was nearby, ran up to Shchors when he was already dead and his head was bandaged. Dubovoy claimed that the division commander was killed by an enemy machine gunner. However, it is surprising that immediately after Shchors’ death, his deputy ordered the dead man’s head to be bandaged and forbade the nurse, who came running from a nearby trench, to unbandage it. It is also interesting that the political inspector lying on the right side of Shchors was armed with a Browning. In his memoirs, published in 1962, S. Petrikovsky (Petrenko) cited Dubovoy’s words that during the shootout Tankhil-Tankhilevich, contrary to common sense, shot at the enemy from a Browning gun. One way or another, after the death of Shchors, no one saw the staff inspector again; traces of him were lost already in early September 1919. It is interesting that he got to the front line of the 44th division under unclear circumstances by order of S.I. Aralov, a member of the Revolutionary Military Council of the 12th Army, as well as the head of the intelligence department of the Field Headquarters of the Revolutionary Military Council of the Republic. Tankhil-Tankhilevich was a confidant of Semyon Aralov, who hated Shchors “for being too independent.” In his memoirs, Aralov wrote: “Unfortunately, persistence in personal appeal led him (Shchors) to premature death.” With his intractable character, excessive independence, and disobedience, Shchors interfered with Aralov, who was the direct protege of Leon Trotsky and therefore was endowed with unlimited powers.
There is also an assumption that Shchors’ personal assistant I. Dubova was an accomplice in the crime. General S.I. Petrikovsky insisted on this, to whom he wrote in his memoirs: “I still think that it was the political inspector, not Dubovoy, who fired. But without the assistance of Dubovoy, the murder could not have happened... Only relying on the assistance of the authorities in the person of Deputy Shchors Dubovoy, on the support of the Revolutionary Military Council of the 12th Army, the criminal [Tankhil-Tankhilevich] committed this terrorist act... I knew Dubovoy 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 an accomplice. But he didn’t have the courage to prevent the murder.”
Some researchers argue that the order to liquidate Shchors was given by the People's Commissar and head of the Revolutionary Military Forces, L. Trotsky, who loved to purge the Red Army commanders. The version associated with Aralov and Trotsky is considered by historians to be quite probable and, moreover, consistent with the traditional perception of Trotsky as the evil genius of the October Revolution.
According to another assumption, the death of N. Shchors was also beneficial to the “revolutionary sailor” Pavel Dybenko, a more than well-known personality. Alexandra Kollontai’s husband, an old party member and friend of Lenin, Dybenko, who at one time held the post of head of Tsentrobalt, provided the Bolsheviks with detachments of sailors at the right time. Lenin remembered and appreciated this. Dybenko, who had no education and was not distinguished by special organizational skills, was constantly promoted to the most responsible government posts and military positions. He failed with invariable success wherever he appeared. First he missed P. Krasnov and other generals, who, having gone to the Don, raised the Cossacks and created a white army. Then, commanding a sailor detachment, he surrendered Narva to the Germans, after which he not only lost his position, but also lost his party card. Failures continued to haunt the former Baltic sailor. In 1919, holding the position of commander of the Crimean Army, local People's Commissar for Military and Naval Affairs, as well as head of the Revolutionary Military Council of the Crimean Republic, Dybenko surrendered Crimea to the Whites. Soon, however, he led the defense of Kyiv, which he mediocrely failed and fled from the city, leaving Shchors and his fighters to their fate. Returning to his possible role in the murder of Shchors, it should be noted that as a person who came from poverty and managed to get a taste of power, Dybenko was panicky afraid of another failure. The loss of Kyiv could be the beginning of his end. And the only person who knew the truth about how Dybenko “successfully” defended Kyiv was Shchors, whose words could be listened to. He knew all the vicissitudes of these battles thoroughly and, moreover, had authority. Therefore, the version that Shchors was killed on the orders of Dybenko does not seem so incredible.
But this is not the end. There is another version of the death of Shchors, which, however, hardly casts doubt on all the previous ones. According to her, Shchors was shot by his own security guard out of jealousy. But in the collection “Legendary Division Chief,” published in September 1935, in the memoirs of Shchors’ widow, Fruma Khaikina-Rostova, the fourth version of his death is given. Khaikina writes that her husband died in a battle with the White Poles, but does not provide any details.
But the most incredible assumption associated with the name of the legendary division commander was expressed on the pages of the Moscow weekly Sovremennik, popular during “perestroika and glasnost”. An article published in 1991 in one of its issues was truly sensational! It followed from it that the division commander Nikolai Shchors... did not exist at all. The life and death of the Red commander is supposedly another Bolshevik myth. And its origins began with the famous meeting of I. Stalin with artists in March 1935. It was then that the head of state allegedly turned to A. Dovzhenko with the question: “Why do the Russian people have the hero Chapaev and a film about the hero, but the Ukrainian people do not have such a hero?” Dovzhenko, of course, instantly understood the hint and immediately began working on the film. As Sovremennik claimed, the unknown Red Army soldier Nikolai Shchors was appointed as a hero. To be fair, it should be noted that there really was a meeting between the Soviet leadership and cultural and artistic figures in 1935. And it was precisely from 1935 that the all-Union fame of Nikolai Shchors began to actively grow. The Pravda newspaper wrote about this in March 1935: “When director A.P. Dovzhenko was awarded the Order of Lenin at a meeting of the Presidium of the USSR Central Executive Committee and he was returning to his place, he was overtaken by Comrade Stalin’s remark: “You have a duty - the Ukrainian Chapaev.” . Some time later, at the same meeting, Comrade Stalin asked questions to Comrade Dovzhenko: “Do you know Shchors?” “Yes,” answered Dovzhenko. “Think about him,” said Comrade Stalin.” There is, however, another – absolutely incredible – version, which was born in “around the cinema” circles. A legend still roams the corridors of GITIS (now RATI) that Dovzhenko began filming his heroic-revolutionary film not at all about Shchors, but about V. Primakov, even before the latter’s arrest in 1937 in the case of the military conspiracy of Marshal Tukhachevsky. Primakov was the commander of the Kharkov Military District and was part of the party and state elite of Soviet Ukraine and the USSR. However, when the investigation into the Tukhachevsky case began, A. Dovzhenko began to re-shoot the film - now about Shchors, who could not possibly have been involved in conspiracy plans against Stalin for obvious reasons.
When the Civil War ended and memoirs of participants in the military and political struggle in Ukraine began to be published, the name of N. Shchors was always mentioned in these stories, but not among the main figures of the era. These places were reserved for V. Antonov-Ovseenko as the organizer and commander of the Ukrainian Soviet armed forces and then the Red Army in Ukraine; corps commander V. Primakov, who proposed the idea of creating and commanded units and formations of the Ukrainian “red Cossacks” - the first military formation of the Council of People's Commissars of Ukraine; S. Kosior, a high party leader who led the partisan movement in the rear of the Petliurites and Denikinites. All of them in the 1930s. were prominent party members, held high government positions, and represented the USSR in the international arena. But during the Stalinist repressions of the late 1930s. these people were mercilessly destroyed. The country learned about who I. Stalin decided to fill the empty niche of the main characters in the struggle for Soviet power and the creation of the Red Army in Ukraine in 1939, when Dovzhenko’s film “Shchors” was released. The very next day after its premiere, the leading actor E. Samoilov woke up popularly famous. At the same time, no less fame and official recognition came to Shchors, who died twenty years earlier. A hero like Shchors, young, brave in battle and fearlessly killed by an enemy bullet, successfully “fit” into the new format of history. However, now the ideologists have a strange problem when there is a hero who died in battle, but there is no grave. For official canonization, the authorities ordered an urgent search for the burial of Nikolai Shchors, which no one had ever remembered before.
It is known that at the beginning of September 1919, Shchors’ body was taken to the rear - to Samara. But only 30 years later, in 1949, the only witness to the rather strange funeral of the division commander was found. He turned out to be a certain Ferapontov, who as a homeless boy helped the guard of the old cemetery. He told how, late in the autumn evening, a freight train arrived in Samara, from which they unloaded a sealed zinc coffin, which was a great rarity at that time. Under cover of darkness, maintaining secrecy, the coffin was brought to the cemetery. After a short “funeral meeting,” a three-time revolver salute sounded and the grave was hastily covered with earth and a wooden tombstone was installed. The city authorities did not know about this event and no one looked after the grave. Now, 30 years later, Ferapontov led the commission to the burial place... on the territory of the Kuibyshev Cable Plant. Shchors' grave was discovered under a half-meter layer of rubble. When the hermetically sealed coffin was opened and the remains were exhumed, the medical commission conducting the examination concluded that “the bullet entered the back of the head and exited through the left parietal bone.” “It can be assumed that the diameter of the bullet was a revolver... The shot was fired at close range,” the conclusion wrote. Thus, the version of the death of Nikolai Shchors from a revolver shot fired from a distance of just a few steps was confirmed. After a thorough examination, the ashes of N. Shchors were reburied in another cemetery and finally a monument was erected. The reburial was carried out at a high government level. Of course, materials about this were kept for many years in the archives of the NKVD and then the KGB under the heading “Secret”; they were made public only after the collapse of the USSR.
Like many commanders of the Civil War, Nikolai Shchors was only a “bargaining chip” in the hands of the powers that be. He died at the hands of those for whom their own ambitions and political goals were more important than human lives. These people did not care that, left without a commander, the division had practically lost its combat effectiveness. As the hero of the Civil War and former member of the Revolutionary Military Council of the Ukrainian Front E. Shadenko said, “Only enemies could tear Shchors away from the division in whose consciousness he was rooted. And they tore it off."
V. M. Sklyarenko, I. A. Rudycheva, V. V. Syadro. 50 famous mysteries of the history of the 20th century
December 11th, 2013
This is how the country has known Nikolai Shchors since the mid-1930s. IZOGIZ postcard.
In the Soviet Union, his name was a legend. All over the country, schoolchildren in class learned a song about how “the regiment commander walked under the red banner, his head was wounded, there was blood on his sleeve...” It is about Shchors, the famous hero of the Civil War. Or, in modern terms, a field commander who fought on the side of the Bolsheviks.
Under the Democrats, the attitude towards Shchors changed. Today's schoolchildren have heard practically nothing about him. And those who are older know that the “red division commander” was a Ukrainian from Snovsk (now the city of Shchors, Chernigov region). After the outbreak of the First World War, he completed accelerated officer courses and was promoted to the Southwestern Front with the rank of ensign. He rose to the rank of second lieutenant.
After the establishment of Soviet power, Shchors became the commander of the First Red Ukrainian Regiment.
It is difficult to judge his leadership talents: in the first major clash with the regular Denikin army, Shchors was defeated and died in October 1919 at the Beloshnitsa station. He was twenty-four years old.
But that's not the whole story...
On the same days, another legendary painter, Vasily Chapaev, died in the Urals, surviving Shchors by five days. He became more famous - rather because the film “Chapaev” with the brilliant Boris Babochkin came out earlier and was more talented than the film “Shchors”. (you can see it at the end of the post)
This, in sum, is a short and fragmentary assessment of the personality of Nikolai Shchors, gleaned from Moscow publications.
SHOT IN THE BACK OF THE HEAD
That's what writes Matvey SOTNIKOV: I learned about the fate of Shchors from his maternal grandson, Alexander Alekseevich Drozdov. He had solid journalistic experience, the rank of lieutenant colonel and twenty-one years of service in the KGB. He spent eight of them in Tokyo, combining the work of a journalist under the roof of a Komsomolskaya Pravda correspondent and a Soviet intelligence officer. Then he returned home, in the 1988-1990s he worked as the executive editor of Komsomolskaya Pravda, and then headed the newspaper of the Russian parliament - the weekly Rossiya.
Once, when we were on a business trip in Kyiv, Drozdov began to talk about Shchors and some family legends, and already in Moscow he showed materials on this topic. So in my mind the image of the “Ukrainian Chapaev” (Stalin’s definition) received a new interpretation.
... Nikolai Shchors was buried at the Orthodox All Saints Cemetery in Samara - away from Ukraine. Before this, the body, without an autopsy or medical examination, was transported to Korosten, and from there by funeral train to Klintsy, where a farewell ceremony for relatives and colleagues with the division commander took place.
Shchors was transported to his final resting place by freight train in a zinc coffin. Previously, in Klintsy, the body was embalmed. The doctors dipped him into a cool solution of table salt. They buried him at night, hastily. In fact, secretly, avoiding publicity.
Shchors’ common-law wife, an employee of the Cheka, Frum Khaikina, wrote in 1935: “...The soldiers, like children, cried at his coffin. These were difficult times for the young Soviet republic. The enemy, sensing that death was imminent, made last desperate efforts. The brutal gangs brutally dealt with not only living fighters, but also mocked the corpses of the dead. We could not leave Shchors to be desecrated by the enemy... The political department of the army forbade burying Shchors in threatened areas. We went north with the coffin of our comrade. A permanent guard of honor stood at the body, laid in a zinc coffin. We decided to bury him in Samara" (collection "Legendary Division Commander", 1935).
The reason why the command took such measures became known only in 1949 after the exhumation of the body. It was thirty years since the death of Shchors. The surviving veterans sent a letter to Moscow in which they were indignant at the disappearance of the commander’s grave. The Kuibyshev authorities received a scolding, and in order to smooth over the blame, they urgently created a commission that got down to business.
The first attempt to find Shchors’ burial was made in the spring of 1936; excavations were carried out by the NKVD Directorate for a month. The second attempt took place in May 1939, but it also turned out to be unsuccessful.
The place where the grave was located was indicated by a random witness to the funeral - citizen Ferapontov. In 1919, while still a street boy, he helped the cemetery watchman. Thirty years later, on May 5, he led members of the commission to the territory of the cable plant and there, after a long period of calculation, he indicated the approximate square where the search should be conducted. As it turned out later, Shchors’ grave was covered with a half-meter layer of rubble.
The commission found that “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. Shchors was buried in September 1919.”
On July 10, 1949, the coffin with the remains of Shchors was moved to the main alley of the Kuibyshev cemetery, a few years later a granite monument was built on the grave, to which wreaths and flowers were laid on the red days of the calendar. Pioneers and Komsomol members came here, who did not suspect that the truth about his death was buried along with the remains of Shchors.
Monument to Nikolai Shchors in Kiev.
Let's turn to the official document: “At the first moment after the lid of the coffin was removed, the general contours of the head of the corpse with the hairstyle, mustache and beard characteristic of Shchors were clearly visible. The mark left by the gauze bandage in the form of a wide sinking strip running across the forehead and along the cheeks was also clearly visible on the head. Immediately after the lid of the coffin was removed, before the eyes of those present, the characteristic features, due to the free access of air, began to change quickly and turned into a shapeless mass of a monotonous structure...”
Forensic experts determined that the damage to the skull was “inflicted by a bullet from a rifled firearm.” It entered the back of the head and came out at the crown. And here’s the most important thing: “The shot was fired at close range, presumably 5-10 steps.”
Consequently, Shchors was shot by someone who was nearby, and not at all by a Petlyura machine gunner, as was reproduced many times in “canonical” books and a feature film. Is it really... someone else?
DUBOVOY AND KVIATEK
Now is the time to turn to the memories of eyewitnesses of that battle. In 1935, the collection “Legendary Divisional Commander” was published. Among the memories of relatives and friends is the testimony of the man in whose arms Shchors died - Ivan Dubovoy, assistant commander of the Kyiv Military District.
He reports: “August 1919 comes to mind. I was appointed deputy division commander of Shchors. It was near Korosten. At that time it was the only bridgehead in Ukraine where the red flag fluttered victoriously. We were
surrounded by enemies: on the one hand, the Galician-Petliura troops, on the other, Denikin’s troops, on the third, the White Poles squeezed a tighter and tighter ring around the division, which by this time had received the number 44.”
And further: “Shchors and I arrived at Bongardt’s Bogun brigade. In the regiment commanded by Comrade. Kwiatek (now commander-commissar of the 17th Corps). We arrived at the village of Beloshitsy, where our soldiers were lying in a chain, preparing for an attack.”
“The enemy opened strong machine-gun fire,” says Dubovoy, “and, I remember, one machine gun in particular showed “daringness” at the railway booth. This machine gun forced us to lie down, because the bullets literally dug the ground around us.
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.”
So, we see that the man in whose arms Shchors died is deliberately lying, misleading readers about the direction of the bullet’s flight. Such a free interpretation of the facts makes you think.
The commander of the 2nd rank, Ivan Dubovoy, was shot in 1937 on the then standard charge of “treason to the Motherland.” The collection “Legendary Divisional Commander” ended up on a special storage shelf.
During the investigation, Dubovoy made a shocking confession, saying that the murder of Shchors was his doing. Explaining the motives for the crime, he stated that he killed the division commander out of personal hatred and the desire to take his place himself.
The interrogation report dated December 3, 1937 records: “When Shchors turned his head towards me and said this phrase (“the Galicians have a good machine gun, damn it”), I shot him in the head with a revolver and hit him in the temple. The then commander of the 388th Infantry Regiment, Kvyatek, who was lying next to Shchors, shouted: “They killed Shchors!” I crawled to Shchors, and he died in my arms, 10-15 minutes later, without regaining consciousness.”
In addition to the confession of Dubovoy himself, similar accusations were made against him on March 14, 1938 by Kazimir Kvyatek, who wrote a statement from Lefortovo prison addressed to the People's Commissar of Internal Affairs Yezhov, where he indicated that he directly suspected Dubovoy of the murder of Shchors.
Despite such revelations, no one brought charges against Dubovoy for the murder of Shchors. Moreover, the confession had no consequences at all and remained on the shelves of state security archives for many years.
ANOTHER CANDIDATE
Researcher Nikolai Zenkovich, one of the leading specialists in historical mysteries, spent a lot of time searching for the printed works of the former commander of the Bohunsky regiment. No traces. And suddenly, when it seemed that the last hope had disappeared, in the file of the Ukrainian newspaper “Communist” for March 1935, the persistent historian discovered a small note signed by the person in question.
So, Kazimir Kvyatek writes: “On August 30, at dawn, the enemy launched an attack on the left flank of the front, covering Korosten... The headquarters of the Bohunsky regiment was then in Mogilny. I went to the left flank to the village of Beloshitsa. I was warned by phone that the regiment headquarters in the village. Mogilnoye arrived to the chief of the division, Comrade. Shchors, his deputy comrade. Dubovoy and the representative of the Revolutionary Military Council of the 12th Army, Comrade. Tankhil-Tankhilevich. I reported the situation over the phone... After a while, Comrade. Shchors and those accompanying him drove up to us at the front line... We lay down. Comrade Shchors raised his head and took the binoculars to take a look. At that moment an enemy bullet hit him..."
In March 1989, the newspaper Radyanska Ukraina directly pointed to the criminal who shot Shchors with the approval of the Revolutionary Military Council of the 12th Army. The authors of the publication managed to get some information about him. Tankhil-Tankhilevich Pavel Samuilovich. Twenty six years old. Originally from Odessa. Dandy. Graduated from high school. He spoke French and German quite well. 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 hastily disappears from Ukraine and appears on the Southern Front, already as a senior censor-controller of the Military Censorship Department of the Revolutionary Military Council of the 10th Army.
The investigation was continued by Rabochaya Gazeta, published in Kyiv. She published downright sensational material - excerpts from the memoirs of Major General Sergei Ivanovich Petrikovsky (Petrenko), written back in 1962, but not published for reasons of Soviet censorship. At the time of Shchors’s death, he commanded the Separate Cavalry Brigade of the 44th Army - and, it turns out, he also accompanied the division commander to the front line.
“On August 30,” the general reports, “Shchors, Dubovoy, myself and the political inspector from the 12th Army were going to leave for units along the front. Shchors' car appears to have been repaired. We decided to use mine... We left on the 30th in the afternoon. In front are Kasso (the driver) and me, in the back seat are Shchors, Dubovoy and the political inspector. Shchors decided to stay at the site of the Bogun brigade. We agreed that I would go by car to Ushomir and send a car from there to pick them up. And then they will come to Ushomir in the cavalry brigade and take me back to Korosten.
Arriving in Ushomir, I sent a car for them, but a few minutes later the field telephone reported that Shchors had been killed... I rode on horseback to Korosten, where he was taken.
The driver Kasso was taking the already dead Shchors to Korosten. In addition to Dubovoy and the nurse, a lot of people were attached to the car, obviously commanders and soldiers.
I saw Shchors in his carriage. He was lying on the sofa, his head limply bandaged. For some reason, Dubovoy was in my carriage. He gave the impression of an excited man, repeated several times how Shchors’s death occurred, became thoughtful, and looked out the window of the carriage for a long time. His behavior then seemed normal to me for a man next to whom his comrade was suddenly killed. There was only one thing I didn’t like... Dubovoy began to tell the story several times, trying to give a humorous touch to his story, when he heard the words of the Red Army soldier lying on the right: “What kind of bastard is shooting with a live gun?..” A spent cartridge case fell on the Red Army soldier’s head. The political inspector fired from the Browning, according to Dubovoy. Even when parting for the night, he again told me how the political inspector fired at the enemy at such a great distance...”
The general is convinced that the shot that killed Shchors came after the Red artillery smashed into pieces the railway box behind which he was located.
“When the enemy machine gun fired,” the general reports, “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 it was the political inspector, not Dubova, who fired. But without the assistance of Dubovoy, the murder could not have happened... Only relying on the assistance of the authorities in the person of Shchors’s deputy, Dubovoy, and the support of the Revolutionary Military Council of the 12th Army, did the criminal commit this terrorist act.
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 an accomplice. 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 Anatolyevna Rosenblum (she now lives in Moscow) suggested bandaging it more carefully, Dubovoy did not allow her. By order of Dubovoy, Shchors’ body was sent for farewell and burial without a medical examination...”
Obviously, Dubovoy could not help but know that the bullet “exit” hole is always larger than the “entrance” hole. That’s why, apparently, he forbade removing the bandages.
A member of the RVS of the 12th Army was Semyon Aralov, a confidant of Leon Trotsky. He twice wanted to film the “indomitable partisan” and the “enemy of the regular troops,” as Shchors was called, but was afraid of a revolt of the Red Army soldiers.
After an inspection trip to Shchors, which lasted no more than three hours, Semyon Aralov turned to Trotsky with a convincing request to find a new division chief - just not from the locals, because the “Ukrainians” are all “kulak-minded.” In a response encrypted, the Demon of the Revolution ordered a strict purge and “refreshment” of the command staff. A conciliatory policy is unacceptable. Any measures are good. You need to start from the head.
Apparently, Aralov was zealous in carrying out the instructions of his formidable master. In his manuscript “In Ukraine 40 Years Ago (1919),” he involuntarily let slip: “Unfortunately, persistence in personal behavior led Shchors to his premature death.”
Yes, about discipline. During the reorganization of the armed forces of Red Ukraine, Shchors' division was supposed to be transferred to the Southern Front. In particular, the People's Commissar of the Republic for Military and Naval Affairs Podvoisky insisted on this. Justifying his proposal in a memo addressed to the chairman of the Council of People's Commissars, Ulyanov-Lenin, dated June 15, he emphasized that, having visited units of the 1st Army, he found the only combat division on this front, Shchors, which included the most well-coordinated regiments.
Evgeny Samoilov as “Ukrainian Chapaev” Nikolai Shchors
In the Soviet Union, five monuments to the legendary division commander were erected and the same number of Shchors museums were opened. Comrade Stalin called him the “Ukrainian Chapaev”, director Alexander Dovzhenko dedicated a film to him, writer Semyon Sklyarenko - the trilogy “Road to Kyiv”, and composer Boris Lyatoshinsky - a “personalized” opera.
ORIGIN
However, the most undoubtedly famous artistic embodiment of Shchors was the work of the songwriter Mikhail Golodny (Mikhail Semyonovich Epshtein) “Song of Shchors.” People called her from the first lines: “A detachment was walking along the shore.”
The old station of Snovsk, since 1935 - the city of Shchors. Not used for its intended purpose, episodes of the film “Heavy Sand” were filmed here
After the death of the Soviet Union, the pendulum swung in the other direction. It got to the point that in 1991, one thick Moscow magazine seriously claimed that there was no trace of Shchors.
They say that the origin of the myth began with the famous meeting of Stalin with artists in March 1935. It was then, at that meeting, that the leader turned to Alexander Dovzhenko with the question: “Why do the Russian people have a hero Chapaev and a film about a hero, but the Ukrainian people do not have such a hero?”
This is how the Legend began...
A detachment walked along the shore,
Walked from afar
Walked under the red banner
Regimental commander.
The head is tied,
Blood on my sleeve
A bloody trail is spreading
On damp grass.
“Whose guys will you be,
Who is leading you into battle?
Who is under the red banner
Is the wounded man walking?
“We are sons of farm laborers,
We are for a new world
Shchors marches under the banner -
Red commander.
The time of its creation is 1936. It should be noted, however, that poetry were written a year earlier. At first the poet showed them to the composer Ivan Shishov, and he composed for them music.
Mikhail Golodny
The authors presented their song on contest. Without waiting for the results of the competition, the newspaper decided to publish it. And in the issue of July 31, 1935, under the heading “Competition for the best song,” the words and notes"Songs about Shchors' detachment."
But this song did not receive recognition. Then M. Golodny turned with his poems to the composer M. Blanter.
Mikhail Golodny
Matvey Blanter
The music composed by Blanter surprisingly coincided in mood with the figurative fabric of the poems, thanks to it the song gained wings and was sung everywhere.
The “Song about Shchors” became widespread among army amateur performance groups, which became its most important popularizers and propagandists.
Soon it was recorded on a gramophone record.
Mark Reisen
This song also owes a lot to the outstanding Soviet singer, People's Artist of the USSR Mark Osipovich Reisen. Having performed it for the first time during the celebration of the 20th anniversary of the October Revolution at the gala concert at the Bolshoi Theater, he performed with great success with her for many years, and after the war he recorded it on a record with in unison And orchestra All-Union radio governed by V. Knushevitsky.
But let's continue about our story...
"N. A. Shchors in the battle near Chernigov.” Artist N. Samokish, 1938
Shchors' father, Alexander Nikolaevich, came from Belarusian peasants. In search of a better life, he moved from the Minsk province to the small Ukrainian village of Snovsk. From here he was taken into the imperial army.
Returning to Snovsk, Alexander Nikolaevich got a job at the local railway depot. In August 1894, he married his fellow countrywoman, Alexandra Mikhailovna Tabelchuk, and in the same year he built his own house.
Shchors had known the Tabelchuk family for a long time, since its head, Mikhail Tabelchuk, led an artel of Belarusians working in the Chernihiv region. At one time it included Alexander Shchors.
Future commander Nikolai Shchors quickly learned to read and write - at the age of six he could already read and write passably. In 1905 he entered the parochial school.
And a year later, great grief happened in the Shchors family - while pregnant with their sixth child, their mother, Alexandra Mikhailovna, died of bleeding. This happened when she was in her small homeland, in Stolbtsy (modern Minsk region). She was buried there.
Six months after the death of his wife, the head of the Shchors family remarried. His new chosen one was Maria Konstantinovna Podbelo. From this marriage, Nikolai had two half-brothers, Grigory and Boris, and three half-sisters - Zinaida, Raisa and Lydia.
BUT THERE WAS NO SEMINARY!
In 1909, Nikolai graduated from school and the following year, together with his brother Konstantin, entered the Kyiv Military Paramedic School. Her pupils were fully supported by the state.
Shchors studied conscientiously and four years later, in July 1914, he received a diploma as a medical assistant and the rights of a 2nd category volunteer.
“The whole problem was that after leaving the school, Shchors was obliged to serve at least three years as a paramedic,” reported on the UNECHAonline website. - Shchors, let us remind you, graduated from college in 1914. At the same time, as stated in a number of sources, in order to avoid the mandatory three-year paramedic service, he decided to falsify and transfer in his diploma (certificate) the date of graduation from paramedic school from 1914 to 1912, which gives him the right to be released from the status already in 1915 volunteer.
In the archives of the Unecha Museum there is an electronic copy of this certificate, from which it indeed follows that Shchors entered school on August 15, 1910 and graduated in June 1912. However, the number “2” is made somewhat unnaturally, and it looks very much like it was actually transferred from a four.”
As some sources “authoritatively” state, Shchors studied at the Poltava Teachers’ Seminary - from September 1911 to March 1915. There is a clear discrepancy. So we can conclude: Shchors did not study at the seminary, and the certificate of completion is fake.
“This version,” writes UNECHAonline, “can be supported by the fact that in August 1918, Shchors, when submitting documents for admission to the medical faculty of Moscow University, among other papers, presented a certificate of graduation from the Poltava Seminary, which, unlike from a certificate of completion of the 4th grade of a paramedic school, gave the right to enter a university.”
So this certificate, a copy of which is also available in the Unech Museum, was obviously corrected by Shchors just for presentation to Moscow University.
WHOSE BOYS WILL YOU BE?
After his studies, Nikolai was assigned to the troops of the Vilna Military District, which became front-line with the outbreak of the First World War. As part of the 3rd light artillery division, Shchors was sent to Vilna, where he was wounded in one of the battles and was sent for treatment.
Ensign of the Russian Imperial Army Nikolai Shchors
In 1915, Shchors was already among the cadets of the Vilna Military School evacuated to Poltava, where, due to martial law, they began to train non-commissioned officers and warrant officers according to a shortened four-month program. In 1916, Shchors successfully completed a course at a military school and, with the rank of ensign, served in the rear forces in Simbirsk.
In the fall of 1916, the young officer was transferred to serve in the 335th Anapa Regiment of the 84th Infantry Division of the Southwestern Front, where Shchors rose to the rank of second lieutenant.
At the end of 1917, his short military career came to an abrupt end. His health failed - Shchors fell ill (almost an open form of tuberculosis) and after short treatment in Simferopol, on December 30, 1917, he was discharged due to his unfitness for further service.
Finding himself out of work, Nikolai Shchors at the end of 1917 decided to return home. The estimated time of his appearance in Snovsk is January of the eighteenth year. By this time, colossal changes had occurred in the country, which had fallen apart. At the same time, the independent Ukrainian People's Republic was proclaimed in Ukraine.
Around the spring of 1918, the period of creation of a combat unit began, headed by Nikolai Shchors. It entered the history of the Civil War, its red chronicle, under the name of the Bohunsky Regiment.
On August 1, 1919, near Rovno, during a rebellion, under unclear circumstances, Shchorsovite Timofey Chernyak, commander of the Novgorod-Severskaya brigade, was killed.
On August 21 of the same year, the “indomitable dad” Vasily Bozhenko, commander of the Tarashchansky brigade, suddenly died in Zhitomir. It is alleged that he was poisoned - according to the official version, he died of pneumonia.
The grave of Nikolai Shchors in the city of Samara. At the Kuibyshevkabel plant, where his first grave was located, a bust of the legendary division commander was erected
Both commanders were Nikolai Shchors's closest associates.
Until 1935, his name was not widely known; even the Great Soviet Encyclopedia of the first edition did not mention him. In February 1935, presenting Alexander Dovzhenko with the Order of Lenin at a meeting of the Presidium of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee, Stalin invited the director to create a film about the “Ukrainian Chapaev.”
Do you know Shchors?
Think about it.
Soon the personal artistic and political order was masterfully executed. The main role in the film was brilliantly played by Evgeny Samoilov.
Later, several books, songs, and even an opera were written about Shchors. Schools, streets, villages and even a city were named after him. As mentioned at the beginning, Matvey Blanter and Mikhail Golodny wrote the now famous “Song about Shchors” in 1935.
In hunger and cold
His life has passed
But it was not for nothing that it was spilled
There was his blood.
Thrown back beyond the cordon
Fierce enemy
Tempered from a young age,
Honor is dear to us.
Parental home of Nikolai Shchors in Snovsk
Like many field commanders, Nikolai Shchors was just a “bargaining chip” in the hands of the powers that be. He died at the hands of those for whom their own ambitions and political goals were more important than human lives.
As former member of the Revolutionary Military Council of the Ukrainian Front E. Shchadenko said, “Only enemies could tear Shchors away from the division in whose consciousness he was rooted. And they tore it off." However, the truth about the death of Nikolai Shchors still made its way through.
or that Kolchak absolutely. And of course, in light of the current topic, I can’t help but remind you about The original article is on the website InfoGlaz.rf Link to the article from which this copy was made -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 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 divisional 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 poor 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 Semenovka. 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 associated 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 to make 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 appeared - 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.
Nikolai was born on June 6, 1895 in the Korzhovka farm, Chernigov province. The first education in the biography of Nikolai Shchors was received in 1914. Then he graduated from the Kyiv military paramedic school. Two years later he took a course at the Vilna Infantry Military School.
In his biography, Shchors took part in the First World War (paramedic, then junior officer, second lieutenant). In 1918, Nikolai organized a partisan detachment, and a month later he became the commander of the united detachment. Shchors' merits include the creation of the 1st Ukrainian Soviet Regiment. Commanding this regiment, he fought against the hetmans and Germans. In the same year, he liberated Ukrainian cities from the Ukrainian Directory and became a member of the Communist Party.
When the Provisional Workers' and Peasants' Government came to power, Shchors became the commandant of Kyiv. In 1919, in his biography, Nikolai Shchors fought against the Petliurites and liberated many cities. In August 1919, he began commanding the 44th Infantry Division. Thanks to a desperate struggle, Shchors at the head of the division helped the evacuation of Kyiv.
On August 30, 1919, Nikolai Shchors was killed. His glory and heroism were not remembered until 1935, when Stalin ordered a film about Nikolai Shchors to be made, calling him the “Ukrainian Chapaev.”
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