Revolutionary events, which took place in Russia from February to October 1917, actually destroyed a huge empire and led to the outbreak of the Civil War. Seeing such a difficult situation in the country, the remnants of the tsarist army decided to unite their efforts to restore reliable power in order to carry out military operations not only against the Bolsheviks, but also to defend the Motherland from the encroachments of an external aggressor.

Formation of the Volunteer Army

The merger of the units took place on the basis of the so-called Alekseevskaya organization, the beginning of which falls on the day of the arrival of the general. It was in his honor that this coalition was named. This event took place in Novocherkassk on November 2 (15), 1917.

A month and a half later, in December of the same year, a special meeting was convened. Moscow deputies headed by the generals took part in it. In essence, the question of the distribution of roles in command and control of troops between Kornilov and Alekseev was discussed. As a result, it was decided to transfer all the military power to the first of the generals. The formation of units and bringing them to full combat readiness were entrusted to the General Staff, headed by Lieutenant General S. L. Markov.

On the Christmas holidays, the troops were ordered to take over command of the army of General Kornilov. From that moment on, she officially became known as the Volunteer.

Situation on the Don

It's no secret that the newly created army of General Kornilov was in dire need of support. Don Cossacks... But she never got it. In addition, the Bolsheviks began to tighten the ring around the cities of Rostov and Novocherkassk, while Volunteer army rushed around inside him, desperately resisting and suffering huge losses. Having lost support from the Don Cossacks, the commander-in-chief of the troops, General Kornilov, on February 9 (22), decided to leave the Don and go to the village of Olginskaya. So the Ice Campaign of 1918 began.

In the abandoned Rostov, there remained a lot of uniforms, cartridges and shells, as well as medical warehouses and personnel - everything that the small army needed so much, guarding the approaches to the city. It should be noted that at that time neither Alekseev nor Kornilov had yet resorted to forced mobilization and confiscation of property.

Stanitsa Olginskaya

The ice campaign of the Volunteer Army began with its reorganization. Arriving at the village of Olginskaya, the troops were divided into 3 infantry regiments: Partisan, Kornilov shock and Consolidated officer. A few years later, they left the village and moved towards Yekaterinodar. This was the first Kuban Ice campaign, which passed through Khomutovskaya, Kagalnitskaya and Yegorlykskaya stanitsa. For a short time, the army entered the territory of the Stavropol province, and then re-entered the Kuban region. Throughout their journey, the volunteers constantly had armed clashes with units of the Red Army. Gradually the ranks of the Kornilovites thinned, and every day they became fewer and fewer.

Unexpected news

On March 1 (14), Yekaterinodar was occupied by the Red Army. The day before, Colonel V.L. Rumors that the Reds had occupied Yekaterinodar reached Kornilov a day later, when the troops were at the Vyselki station, but they did not attach much importance to them. After 2 days in the village Korenovskaya, which was occupied by volunteers as a result of a stubborn battle, they found one of the numbers Soviet newspaper... It was reported there that the Bolsheviks had indeed occupied Yekaterinodar.

The news received completely devalued the Kuban Ice campaign, for which hundreds of human lives were wasted. General Kornilov decided not to lead his army to Yekaterinodar, but to turn south and cross the Kuban. He planned to give rest to his troops in the Circassian villages and Cossack mountain villages and wait a little. Denikin called this decision of Kornilov a "fatal mistake" and, together with Romanovsky, tried to dissuade the army commander from this venture. But the general was unshakable.

Combining troops

On the night of March 5-6, the Ice campaign of Kornilov's army continued southward. After 2 days, the volunteers crossed the Laba and went to Maykop, but it turned out that in this area every farm must be taken with a fight. Therefore, the general turned sharply to the west and, crossing the Belaya River, rushed to the Circassian auls. Here he hoped not only to give rest to his army, but also to unite with the Kuban troops of Pokrovsky.

But since the colonel did not have fresh data on the movement of the Volunteer Army, he stopped making attempts to break through to Maikop. Pokrovsky decided to turn to and join up with the troops of Kornilov, who had already managed to leave there. As a result of this confusion, the two armies - the Kuban and the Volunteer - tried to find each other at random. And finally, on March 11, they succeeded.

Stanitsa Novodmitrievskaya: Ice hike

It was March 1918. Exhausted by daily multi-kilometer marches and weakened in battles, the army had to go through the viscous black soil, as the weather suddenly turned bad, and it began to rain. It was replaced by frost, so the soldier's greatcoats, swollen from the rain, literally froze. In addition, it became sharply colder and a lot of snow fell in the mountains. The temperature dropped to -20 ⁰С. As participants and eyewitnesses of those events later told, the wounded, who were transported on carts, by the evening had to break off with bayonets from the thick ice crust formed around them.

I must say that on top of everything, in mid-March there was also a fierce clash, which went down in history as a battle at the village of Novodmitrievskaya, where the soldiers of the Consolidated Officer Regiment distinguished themselves. Later, under the name "Ice Campaign", there was a battle, as well as the previous and subsequent transitions along the steppe covered with an ice crust.

Signing a contract

After the battle at the village of Novodmitrievskaya, the Kuban military formation proposed to include it in the Volunteer Army as an independent combat force. In exchange, they promised to assist in the replenishment and supply of troops. General Kornilov immediately agreed to such conditions. The ice campaign continued, and the size of the army increased to 6 thousand people.

The volunteers decided to go to the capital of the Kuban - Yekaterinodar again. While the staff officers were developing a plan for the operation, the troops were reorganized and rested, while repelling the numerous attacks of the Bolsheviks.

Yekaterinodar

The ice campaign of Kornilov's army was drawing to a close. On March 27 (April 9), volunteers crossed the river. Kuban and began to storm Yekaterinodar. The city was defended by a 20,000-strong Red army, commanded by Sorokin and Avtonomov. The attempt to capture Yekaterinodar failed, and in 4 days General Kornilov was killed by a random shell as a result of another battle. Denikin took over his duties.

It must be said that the Volunteer Army fought in conditions of complete encirclement with the forces of the Red Army several times superior. The losses of the now Denikinites amounted to about 4 hundred killed and 1.5 thousand wounded. But, despite this, the general still managed to withdraw the army from the encirclement behind

On April 29 (May 12), Denikin, with the remnants of his army, went to the south of the Don region to the Gulyai-Borisovka - Mechetinskaya - Yegorlytskaya area, and the next day Kornilov's Ice Campaign, which later became a legend of the White Guard movement, was completed.

Siberian crossing

In the winter of 1920, under the onslaught of the enemy, the retreat of the Eastern Front, which was commanded, began. It should be noted that this operation took place, like the campaign of Kornilov's army, in the most difficult climatic and weather conditions. A horse-and-foot crossing with a length of about 2 thousand km passed along the route from Novonikolaevsk and Barnaul to Chita. Among the servicemen of the White Army, he received the name "Siberian Ice Campaign".

This difficult transition began on November 14, 1919, when parts of the White Army left Omsk. Troops led by V.O. Kappel retreated along the Transsib, transporting the wounded in echelons. The Red Army was literally on their heels. In addition, the situation was further complicated by the numerous mutinies that broke out in the rear, as well as attacks from various bandit and partisan detachments. To top it all off, the transition was also aggravated by the Siberian severe frosts.

At that time, the railway was controlled by the Czechoslovak Corps, so the troops of General Kappel were forced to leave the carriages and transfer to sledges. After that, the White Army became a gigantic sled train.

When the White Guards approached Krasnoyarsk, a garrison revolted in the city under the leadership of General Bronislav Zinevich, who made a peace treaty with the Bolsheviks. He tried to persuade Kappel to do the same, but was refused. In early January 1920, several skirmishes took place, after which more than 12 thousand White Guards bypassed Krasnoyarsk, crossed the Yenisei River and went further east. Approximately the same number of soldiers chose to surrender to the city garrison.

Leaving Krasnoyarsk, the army was divided into columns. The first was commanded by K. Sakharov, whose troops marched along the railway and the Siberian highway. The second column continued its Ice campaign under the leadership of Kappel. She moved first along the Yenisei, and then along. This passage turned out to be the most difficult and dangerous. The fact is that p. Kahn was covered with a layer of snow, and under it flowed water from non-freezing springs. And this is 35-degree frost! The military had to move in the dark and constantly fall into openings, completely invisible under the thickness of the snow. Many of them, freezing, remained lying, and the rest of the army moved on.

During this transition, it turned out that General Kappel froze his legs, falling into the wormwood. He underwent surgery to amputate his limbs. In addition, from hypothermia, he fell ill with pneumonia. In mid-January 1920, the Whites captured Kansk. On the twenty-first day of the same month, the Supreme Ruler of Russia Kolchak was handed over to the Bolsheviks by the Czechs. After 2 days, the already dying man gathered the council of the army headquarters. It was decided to take Irkutsk by storm and free Kolchak. On January 26, Kappel died, and General Voitsekhovsky led the Ice Campaign.

Since the advance of the White Army to Irkutsk was somewhat delayed due to constant fighting, Lenin took advantage of this, who issued an order for the execution of Kolchak. It was enforced on February 7th. Upon learning of this, General Voitsekhovsky abandoned the now senseless assault on Irkutsk. After that, his troops crossed Lake Baikal and to the station. Mysovaya loaded all the wounded, sick and women with children into the trains. The rest continued their Great Siberian Ice Trek to Chita, which is about 6 hundred kilometers. They entered the city in early March 1920.

When the transition was completed, General Voitsekhovsky established a new order - "For the Great Siberian campaign." It was awarded to all officers and soldiers who participated in it. It is worth noting that the members of the Kalinov Most music group vividly reminded about this historic event several years ago. "Ice Campaign" was the title of their album, completely dedicated to the retreat of Kolchak's army in Siberia.

From the memoirs of real participants in the battle for the village of Lezhanka on February 21, 1918

Denikin A.I. Essays on the Russian Troubles. Volume 2
CHAPTER XIX. FIRST CUBAN HIKE.

“In the village of Lezhanke, a Bolshevik detachment with artillery blocked our way.
It was a clear, slightly frosty day.
The officer regiment marched in the vanguard. Old and young; colonels on platoons.
There has never been such an army. Ahead - the assistant to the regiment commander, Colonel Timanovsky walked with a wide step, leaning on a stick, with an invariable pipe in his teeth; wounded many times, with severely damaged vertebrae of the spine ... One of the companies is led by Colonel Kutepov, the former commander of the Preobrazhensky regiment. Dry, strong, with his cap thrown back to the back of his head, tucked up, gives orders in short abrupt phrases. There are many beardless youth in the ranks - carefree and cheerful. Markov galloped along the column, turned his head towards us, said something that we did not hear, "smashed" one of his officers on the move and flew to the headquarters.

A dull shot, a high, high burst of shrapnel. Started.
The officer regiment turned around and went on the offensive: calmly, without stopping, straight to the village. Hidden behind the ridge. Alekseev arrives. Let's go ahead with him. A vast panorama opens up from the ridge. The wide-spread village is surrounded by lines of trenches. A Bolshevik battery is standing near the church itself and is scattering shells randomly along the road. Rifle and machine-gun fire more and more often. Our chains stopped and lay down: along the front there was a swampy, unfrozen river. We'll have to bypass.

To the right, the Kornilovsky regiment moved around. After him galloped a group of horsemen with an unfolded tricolor flag ...

Kornilov!

In the ranks - excitement. All eyes are directed to where the figure of the commander can be seen ...

And along the main road, Lieutenant Colonel Mionchinsky's cadets are quite openly bringing their guns right into the chain under the fire of enemy machine guns; soon battery fire caused a noticeable movement in the ranks of the enemy. The offensive, however, is delayed ...
The officer regiment could not stand the long languor: one of the companies threw itself into the cold, sticky mud of the river and wade to the arc bank. There is confusion, and soon the whole field is already littered with people running in panic, carts rushing about, the battery gallops.
The officer regiment and Kornilovsky, who came out to the village from the west through the dam, are pursued.

We enter the village as if it were extinct. The streets are strewn with corpses. Eerie silence. And for a long time its silence is disturbed by the dry crackle of rifle shots: the Bolsheviks are being "liquidated" ... There are many of them ...
Who are they? Why would they, "mortally tired of the 4-year war", go back into battle and to their death? The regiment and the battery that had abandoned the Turkish front, the violent village freemen, the human scum of Lezhanka and the surrounding villages, the outside working element, who, together with the soldiers' ranks, had long ago taken possession of all gatherings, committees, councils and terrorized the entire province; maybe peaceful men, forcibly taken by the Soviets. None of them understands the meaning of the struggle. And the idea of ​​us as "enemies" is somehow vague, unclear, created by furiously growing propaganda and unreasonable fear.

- "Cadets" ... Officers ... want to turn to the old ...

Member of the Rostov Council, p. D. Menshevik Popov, wandering just these days along the Vladikavkaz railway. road, parallel to the movement of the army, with these words he painted the mood of the population:

"... In order not to help in one way or another the troops of Kornilov in the fight against the revolutionary armies, the entire adult male population left their villages for more remote villages and railway stations. Roads ... -" Give us weapons so that we can defend ourselves from the cadets "- this is there was a common cry of all the peasants who came here ... The crowd eagerly caught news from the "front", commented on them in a thousand ways, the word "cadet" passed from mouth to mouth. purely "who spoke" educated "fell under the suspicion of the crowd" Cadet "is the embodiment of all evil that can destroy the hopes of the masses for better life; the "Cadets" may prevent the peasants from taking the land and dividing it up; "Cadet" is an evil spirit standing in the way of all the aspirations and hopes of the people, and therefore it is necessary to fight against it, it must be destroyed "* 161.

This undoubtedly exaggerated definition of the hostile attitude towards the "Cadets", especially in the sense of "universality" and the activeness of its manifestation, emphasizes, however, the main feature of the mood of the peasantry - its groundlessness and confusion. There was no "politics" in it, no "Constituent Assembly", no "republic", no "tsar"; even the land issue in itself here, in the Don region, and especially in the free Stavropol steppes, did not have any particular acuteness. We, against our will, simply fell into a vicious circle of common social struggle: here and then everywhere, where the Volunteer Army passed, a part of the population was more prosperous, prosperous, interested in restoring order and normal living conditions, secretly or openly sympathized with it; the other, who built her well-being - deserved or undeserved - on timelessness and anarchy, was hostile to her. And there was no way to break out of this circle, to instill in them the true goals of the army. Business? But what can a passing army give to the edge, forced to wage bloody battles even for the right to exist. In a word? When the word runs into an impenetrable wall of mistrust, fear or servility.

However, the gathering of Lezhanka (and later others) was prudent - decided to let the "Kornilov army" pass. But strangers came - Red Guards and soldiers' echelons, and the flourishing villages and stanitsas were stained with blood and the glow of fires ...
At the house set aside for the headquarters, on the square, with two volunteer sentries on the flanks, stood a line of captured officers - artillerymen of the Bolshevik division quartered in Lezhanka.

There she is new tragedy Russian officers! ..

Volunteer units marched past the prisoners through the square, one after another. Contempt and hatred in the eyes of the volunteers. Curses and threats are heard. The faces of the prisoners are deathly pale. Only the proximity of the headquarters saves them from reprisals.
General Alekseev. He excitedly and indignantly rebukes the captured officers. And from his lips a heavy swear word breaks. Kornilov decides the fate of the prisoners:

Committed to the field trial.

Excuses are common: "I did not know about the existence of the Volunteer Army" ... "I did not fire" ... "They forced me to serve by force, did not let them out" ... "They kept my family under supervision" ...
The field court found the charge unproven. In fact, he did not acquit, but forgave.This first sentence was accepted in the army calmly, but caused a double attitude towards itself.
The officers entered the ranks of our army. "

Suvorin B.A. "FOR THE HOMELAND"

"Gen. Kornilov decided to avoid the battle until the connection with the Kuban group, which we achieved, unfortunately, much later. All clashes with the Bolsheviks up to Yekaterinodar, despite their enormous numerical superiority and the cumbersomeness of our convoy, ended for THEM P to detain us at the border of the Don and the Stavropol province, but the result was terrible for them.Our losses were 1 killed (by an accidental hit) and 20 wounded, all in the officer company Kutepov, whom the chief of staff General Romanovsky did not like, who was later killed in Constantinople, and did not want to transfer a more responsible position.BOLSHEVIKS, who were completely unable to use their artillery, almost without officers, abandoned by their commissars and superiors, lost more than 500 people.

In this village - Lezhanka, for the first time I saw all the horror of the fratricidal, merciless war. At the beginning of the battle, when for the first time I saw the explosions of the Bolshevik artillery, when I imagined that there, on the other side of the river, in a cheerful, sunlit village, with the bell towers of Orthodox churches rising to the sky, some brutal people sat down, dreaming of our extermination , it became somehow creepy in my soul.
For what, I thought? Because we do not follow the corrupt Bolshevik Lenin, the Jew Bronstein, because we want to see again our homeland great and happy?
These corpses of Russian people, scattered along the streets of a large village, it was all horrible. The terrible specter of the civil war, which I had to face face to face, had a painful effect on me. Then I had to see a lot, a lot of blood, but the human mechanism is so arranged that nothing in the world is stronger than habit, and even the horrors of the civil war did not impress the accustomed nerves.
The next, this time serious and fierce resistance, the Bolsheviks put up near Korenevskaya stanitsa. Here our little army did not have a rabble in front of it, as in Lezhanka. Here, for the first time, our units suffered serious losses.
The most difficult thing for the command was our wounded. They had to be carried along terrible roads under the most difficult conditions, with almost no organized assistance.
It was impossible to leave the wounded, it meant to doom them to certain and painful death. This was the case with the wounded left during the departure from Novocherkassk and Rostov. where the Bolshevik servants of hospitals, up to and including nurses, killed all the wounded with extraordinary outrages. The same fate befell the wounded and the sisters of mercy, who were left near Yekaterinodar.
How our wounded and sick suffered, what torments they had to endure in these shaking carts, without care, without good dressings, without serious medical assistance.
Once at night on one of the most difficult crossings on terrible mud, almost without a road. along the flooded streams, I followed the wagon train with the wounded. A young cadet was being carried ahead. He was not seriously injured, but his blood poisoning had already begun. There was nothing to think about the operation. All night long he screamed in pain. There was nowhere to go from his cry and it seems to me this terrible night, bush, water all around, bumps, exhausted from the horse's strength, and this terrible continuous cry is heard. In the morning he passed away.
Another time I overtook a wounded man in a wagon: on top of the overcoat that covered him lay a revolver, as he explained, in order to shoot the driver if he noticed that he wanted to leave him and shoot himself.
No matter how heavy the suffering was in any war, in the war against those who had lost all notion of mercy, in the fratricidal massacre, the position of the wounded was infinitely more difficult.
Those medical personnel who dedicated themselves to caring for them, those women of mercy who had to helplessly watch over the slow painful death of these unfortunate young people, unable to somehow alleviate their fate, are worthy of admiration.
The Russian woman on this campaign showed herself at an amazing height, sharing in everything the terrible conditions of this long unprecedented feat.
As I said above, our army did not suffer a single, even partial, failure until Yekaterinodar and on the way back to the Don, but all these victories or successes did not give tangible results.
Having defeated the enemy under one village, the army, tied to its wagon train, without a hint of a base where it could stop and at least rest, could not pursue him and had to, most often without rest, move further and further forward, where it inevitably must was to meet new, many times the strongest, enemy masses.
The Bolsheviks had endless reserves, but our army could only increase its convoy of wounded and thus hinder its advance.
It took extraordinary courage and confidence in the spirit of their fighters to make this incomparable campaign among the Bolshevik ocean, and the future military historian, when they begin to study this Russian Anabasis, will more than once bow before the determination, talent, resourcefulness of leaders and an irresistible spirit a small army that was stronger than all the disappointments that inexorable fate was preparing for us at every step ... "

“Soon we got to Lezhanka, where for the first time we met the resistance of the Bolsheviks at the beginning of the campaign, the resistance that cost them so dearly.
We stopped at the priest's. It was Holy Week. Mother baked cakes. We painted eggs and we hoped to celebrate Easter well in a hospitable house. The Bolsheviks seemed indecisive and seemed to refuse to persecute.
We lived in peace. We went with the lovely sisters Engelhardt to church. We were looking for vodka and missed the new ideal - Novocherkassk, which seemed to us as wonderful as Ekaterinodar, which had disappeared from our dreams.
From the first Don village, Yegorlytskaya, one of the first to revolt, we were 25 miles away and did not understand why we weren’t going to where the rest seemed secure. And how we dreamed of rest.
So, in nothing, we survived until Holy Saturday and were quite sure that we would celebrate Easter here. But in the morning, the Bolsheviks approaching, opened fire on Lezhanka.
The shells lay down rather neatly across the village, targeting the bell tower of the church, around which the headquarters were located, gene. Denikin, gene. Alekseev and the rest of the bosses.
There were wounded. A dead horse lay in the square. I went to the regiment. Resnyansky, who came from a distant business trip. His impressions of Russia were the darkest. Russia was dying irrevocably. I sadly returned home. A dozen fathoms suddenly struck a shell and the street was empty.
We had a subdued impression of the unknown. “We had lunch and many settled down to sleep. There were about ten of us in the room. The Bolshevik artillery acted sluggishly. At that time, we were ordered to be ready in an hour, since we were leaving Lezhanka.
Guesses, assumptions showered down. So we won't see Easter!
I went to my horse to get ready to leave. As I passed through the courtyard, a shell flew low over me and struck somewhere not far behind us.
"Flight", I thought, then "shortage", and "then ..."
I did not have time to reach the stables, when a terrible crack was heard from behind me and, as if in the very house where we lived, I threw myself into it.
In an instant it seemed to me that a shell fell into our house, where about ten people were sleeping, and I was already imagining a heap of mutilated bodies.
In a narrow corridor, I met a frightened mother, her daughter, somehow slipping along the wall, and the officer's wife, who lived with them, covered in blood. All this screamed and groaned. I rushed to our room. Everyone was on their feet and no one was injured.
It turned out that the shell hit at the very window of our hostess, knocked out the frame and, fortunately, did not touch anyone. Only fragments of glass were cut by mother's guest.
After all this, everyone had no time for sleep and we were ordered to hurry. We went to the Don, to Yegorlitskaya.
Goodbye Easter cakes and red eggs!

In the evening we went out in a roundabout way along a river.
Now I have maps in front of me and with the help of a notebook I try to remember this passage. After all, that was three years ago. Three years of trials, and how much I went through during this time.
I have not found detailed map- ten versts, which would show me our way; but as I unroll their disobedient scrolls, I am reminded of other places, other hopes. All these are pieces of Russia, great, united, which have left us, and in this cursory glance at the cold map, speckled with names, sometimes dear, sometimes associated with difficult memories, longing captures the heart. We were there. There, on Russian soil, we were looking for happiness, both our own and our Motherland. These paints geographic map flooded with Russian blood, and angry emigrants chatter about these people, who madly love and loved their Motherland, who did nothing to save it, except arrogant self-admiration and assessing the mistakes of those who worked and died in these forgotten fields - whose graves we have never we will not find.
Was it really all in vain, but self-righteous reasoning and vulgarity of humanity, feeling itself safe, are needed?
* * *
This transition was very easy. Firstly, we went to the Don, and secondly, we were in a hurry to Matins.
Darkness fell, a crippled moon appeared in the clouds. There were no matches and we smoked in turns, so that we could light a cigarette from the latter. How we cherished this sacred fire.
And in the dark, the mills came out to us, the harbinger of housing. Everyone was in a hurry, the horses increased their speed. Huts glimmered.
Feverishly we began to look for lodgers, and everyone was drawn to the church.
It was already brightly lit.
The bright matins were already on.
I somehow tied the horse to the fence of the indicated house, let go of its girth, I ran to the church.
It was full of people. It was hot from people and candles. Sweat poured down. But what a pleasure it was to hear our great:
"Christ is Risen."
I looked at the serious, as if frightened, faces of the Cossacks, at my friends and tears of joy, tears of resurrection fled from my eyes.
“Christ is Risen,” says the priest.
"Truly Risen", the answer goes to him with a roar, and I hear it now and see these spiritualized simple faces, lit by candles and feel that wonderful, great joy that, like a hurricane, carried me away to happiness.
Yes, Christ has risen and we will be resurrected, we have already risen, and the singing of a great song, as if mournful and at the same time magical in its power, hope and clarity of salvation, squeezes the heart so joyfully that the candle trembles in his hand and tears in his eyes reflect countless lights candles and a terrible feverish joy burns in the heart, in the head.
Gene. Alekseev confesses with the priest, followed by Denikin. There is no strength to endure. I want to cry, not knowing why, and I go out, past the same bearded Cossacks with a frenzied-inspired face, from the church ... "

I. I. KAKURIN "The First Kuban General Kornilov Campaign"

"On the morning of February 21, the Volunteer Army set out from Yegorlytskaya to the village of Lezhanka in the Stavropol province, located 22 versts to the south. An Officer regiment with a battery was in the vanguard. The enemy, seeing a chain going in the water, opened fire on it. General Markov was attacking from one of his companies. The Reds could not withstand the attack and were rushing to the village, pursued by our fire. This battle was clearly reflected in our lack of cavalry: there was neither good reconnaissance nor vigorous pursuit of the enemy. And in other battles we felt this.
On this day, General Kornilov sent an officer's patrol of the officers of the 6th Don Cossack Regiment of 15 checkers under the command of Lieutenant Colonel Ryasnyansky to the marching chieftain Popov with a new proposal to join the Volunteer Army. Lieutenant Colonel Ryasnyansky overtook the detachment of the marching chieftain in the village of Velikoknyazheskaya and gave the order, but General Popov again categorically refused to leave the Don region.
On February 22, the army rested in the village of Lezhanka, half abandoned by the inhabitants. The killed officers were buried with military honors in the local cemetery. Generals Alekseev and Kornilov escorted them to their place of eternal rest.
On the morning of February 23, the army set out from Lezhanka to the Plosskaya village of the Kuban region ... "

I. I. KAKURIN "The First Kuban General Kornilov Campaign"
(Return to Lezhanka - I.U.'s note)

On April 17, General Denikin expelled the 1st Cavalry Regiment from the Ploss Egorlytskaya Regiment, which included the Life Cossacks: podzauli S. Krasnov and F. Rykovsky, cornet N. Lyakhov and brothers S. and G. Chekunov, assistant G. Migulin and Cossack Kharlamov. In the afternoon, the army moved from Ploss to the village of Lezhanka, Stavropol province, which she remembered from the battle on February 21. This time the village met us without any resistance and with the population, who had not abandoned their homes.
April 18th. The day passed calmly in Lezhanka. The volunteers were in a good mood: they got out of the encirclement, united with the rebels; the army was replenished by the Kubans, and General Pokrovsky formed a horse detachment of several hundred. There was a distant rumble of artillery fire - then the Donets were fighting the Reds near the village of Zaplavskaya, located 14 versts from Novocherkassk. In the evening, reinforced guards with machine guns were posted.
On April 19, before dawn, part of the Officer's regiment was put on carts and drove off in a northeastern direction. It was ordered to drive the Reds out of the village of Lopanka, located 15 miles away.
There was a counter battle, and with a swift blow the enemy was overturned and the village was occupied. At night, the units returned to Lezhanka.
On April 20, the 2nd and the cavalry brigades urgently went to the aid of the Don people in Gulyai-Borisovka in the rear of the Reds, who were advancing on the Don villages of Yegorlytskaya and Mechetinskaya. The 1st brigade and the cavalry detachment of General Pokrovsky remained in Lezhanka, and with them the entire field hospital of the army with 500 wounded and the baggage train. After passing 15 versts, the advance units of the 2nd brigade came into contact with the enemy, and after the first clashes with the Reds, the latter stopped their attack on Mechetinskaya and began to hastily retreat to the Gulyai-Borisovka settlement. It was already night, and General Bogaevsky with the brigade stopped pursuing, stopping to rest in a large farm. Colonel Glazenap's 1st Cavalry Regiment was ordered to advance towards Mechetinskaya after the liberation of Yegorlytskaya. The enemy, noticing the exit of a large column from Lezhanka, launched an energetic offensive against the village from the east and south. There was an overwhelming mass of them. The 1st brigade took up positions with a thin chain and, letting the enemy go a thousand steps, forced him to lie down with strong fire. Then the brigade went over to the attack, supported by mobile machine-gun batteries on carts, and put him to flight along the entire front. The brigade pursued the Reds for several miles. Night has come.
The units that had moved forward were ordered to withdraw to the village and set up reinforced guards. The losses in the Officers' Regiment were serious, up to 50 people. The regiment commander, General Borovsky, was also wounded.
After resting on the farm, the 2nd brigade of General Bogaevsky set out at about 10 o'clock in the evening and, having walked for several hours in complete silence, at dawn on April 21 attacked the Gulyai-Borisovka settlement with the Kornilov regiment, which was marching in the vanguard. Apparently, the enemy did not expect us to appear. From the outer huts, indiscriminate shooting began, which soon ceased. A commotion arose throughout the entire settlement. The chains of the Kornilovites, led by Colonel Kutepov, burst into it. Catching and extermination of the enemy began in the courtyards. The prisoners were herded to the square at the edge of the settlement. Soon there were more than 300 of them from the partisans of General Kazanovich. Here, for the first time since the beginning of the campaign, an order was received from General Bogaevsky, in case of Holy Saturday, not to shoot prisoners. But the harsh reality forced the court-martial to treat some of them more severely.
On Holy Saturday, General Erdeli's cavalry entered Yegorlytskaya, where they were greeted by the Cossacks with banners and icons. The volunteer army joined up with the insurgent donors of the southern villages. The army now has a rear, and in the first half of the day the entire field hospital and the wagon train of the 1st brigade left Lezhanka in the rear, to the village of Yerlytskaya, in a roundabout way. The wagon train left Lezhanka under fire from enemy artillery.
The shelling began in the morning and gradually intensified. The deployment of the red infantry was visible. Then all this mass went on the offensive. The fight was fierce. The brigade of General Markov could hardly hold back the advance of the superior enemy forces. Repeatedly the Officer and Kuban Rifle Regiments, supported by mobile machine-gun batteries on carts, here and there went over to counterattacks, but the Reds, pushing back in other places, supported by reserves, continued to advance. A stubborn battle was going on at the very outskirts of the village, at the cemetery. The Reds seized a brick factory and threatened to cut the road to Yegorlytskaya, an engineering company was sent to restore the situation - the last reserve of General Markov, numbering 80 people, and half a company of 50 people was removed from the neighboring area. With an immediate attack, the Reds were knocked out of the brick factory and fled, leaving two machine guns and a lot of cartridges in place. Along the entire front, the Red offensive began to fizzle out. Only in the evening were the Reds finally thrown back from the village to their starting position... Having set up guards, parts of the brigade settled in houses on the outskirts. In the last battle, units of the brigade suffered significant losses - up to 80 people, of which 7 were killed by the Officer Regiment; The engineering company lost 8 officers killed and over 20 wounded. Once again, a camp infirmary was formed with the brigade with 150 wounded. In the evening, at the end of the battle, the army headquarters moved from Lezhanka to Yerlytskaya.
April 22. The first day of Holy Easter passed calmly in the 1st brigade in Lezhanka. On a bright holiday, the volunteers had to bury their comrades-in-arms in the same cemetery where the first four victims of the beginning of the campaign were buried earlier. The cavalry celebrated a bright holiday in Yegorlytskaya. The brigade of General Bogaevsky calmly greeted the bright day in Gulyai-Borisovka. In the evening of that day, the column of the 1st brigade on carts set off on the road to Yegorlytskaya, crossed the bridge over the Yegorlyk River, the river that the Officer's Regiment wade on on February 21, but soon turned off the road to the right towards the Farewell railway siding. At dusk, the regiment's tail was suddenly fired upon by a machine-gun truck that bumped into it, but one artillery shot was enough to make the truck hastily disappear.

V.E. Pavlov "Markovites in battles and campaigns for Russia in the liberation war of 1917-1920" Volume 1, Paris, 1962 (Collection)


FIGHT AT THE VILLAGE LAYER

February 21 / March 6. In the morning, the Volunteer Army set out from the village of Yegorlytskaya to the village of Lezhanka, Stavropol province, 22 miles away. In the vanguard, as before, are the Officer Regiment with the battery of Colonel Mionchinsky and the Technical Company. General Markov, overtaking his units, greeted everyone and galloped forward with his orderlies. There is no snow at all, but the thick, sticky, black earth mass makes the trip difficult. We made a halt, then a second one. It was known that Lezhanka was occupied by the Reds, and, in particular, there were units of the 39th Infantry Division. Hence, a fight is inevitable.
From somewhere along the column of the Officer Regiment, an order is transmitted:
- Company commanders to the regiment commander!
Everyone is watching where the commanders go. Slightly off the road, everyone sees General Markov and Colonel Timanovsky. Colonel Plokhinsky, Colonel Lavrentyev, Colonel Kutepov, Captain Dudarev, Colonel Kandyrin are walking towards them, Colonel Mionchinsky and Colonel Gershelman are riding up. What are they talking about there? But - "this is the master's business." The meeting is over, and all its participants go to their units and give orders.
And finally ... platoons separate from the vanguard 4th company and go to the left of the road, followed by the whole company. From the 1st company, one platoon goes forward along the road, the other to the right - to the topographic ridge along which the road runs. To the left the cavalry is trotting away, soon disappearing behind the chain of mounds.
When the marching outposts had retreated about a verst, the regiment in the column moved forward. General Markov is well ahead. Everything is quiet. What's ahead? Where is the enemy? - Can not see. Only behind the bend in front of the terrain is the top of the bell tower of the village of Lezhanki visible.
Suddenly, a small white cloud from a burst of shrapnel appears over a pillar high in the sky. Another, third ... Finally, there are no more of them. And all the cranes. The regiment begins to deploy into battle formation, to the left of its Technical Company. And all the shrapnel continues to "give cranes": from the side of Lezhanka the battery is shooting, and it shoots very badly.
The companies quickly reached the ridge, from where the terrain begins to descend to the Srednii Yegorlyk River, on the opposite bank of which the village is located. Barely noticing the appearance of the chains, the Reds opened rifle and machine-gun fire. The distance is too great (about 2 versts), and their shooting is invalid. Without removing their rifles from their belts and without adding a step, the companies move towards rapprochement. Colonel Timanovsky is walking along the road with a pipe in his mouth, leaning on a stick.
The distance is getting smaller, and more and more bullets fly past our ears. Ahead, the whole situation is already clearly visible: a strip of reeds, behind them vegetable gardens and red trenches on them, behind the gardens is a village. The step involuntarily intensifies, which then turned into a run, in order to quickly reach the reeds and hide from the eyes of the enemy. But - Lieutenant Kromm's platoon was ordered to stop and company machine guns to open fire. On this platoon, the main force of the enemy's fire is concentrated, inflicting losses on him.
At this time, over the vegetable gardens on the other side of the river, several shrapnel from Colonel Mionchinsky's battery are torn with amazing accuracy, forcing the Reds to weaken their fire. The head platoons reach the reeds without loss. A shower of fire knocks down the tops of the reeds over the heads of the officers who stop there.
At the bridge, General Markov, Colonel Timanovsky. They aim 2nd Company in a lightning attack on the bridge; to the left of the 4th, to the right of the 3rd and 1st companies must support the attack of the 2nd company, trying to force the river by all possible means.
But at this time, the 3rd platoon of the 1st company, staff captain Zgrivets, having reached and hiding in the reeds, did not stop, but continued to move forward. Spreading the reeds with their hands, drowning in the water, the officers of the platoon, having passed a 2-3-sap belt of reeds, found themselves in clear water. There were only 20 paces to the reeds of the opposite bank; water only to the waist. But the position of the platoon was created tragically: the shallow Yegorlyk had a muddy bottom, above the knees, legs went into the mud. The traffic slowed down a lot. The Reds, seeing a chain running through the water, opened fire on it. Everyone had one thought: to get to the reeds of the opposite bank as soon as possible. We walked with difficulty; some tried to swim ... But, at last, there was another shore; again hidden from the eyes of the enemy and there is a support - the reeds. Forward!
Coming out of the reeds, the platoon attacked the Reds, ten paces away. The Reds did not offer any resistance: they were seized by panic, and they rushed to run. The officers covered their escape route to the village with corpses with bayonets and point-blank shots. In front of the platoon and to the left of it, crowds of Reds fled to the road from the bridge to the village. Here two horsemen galloped up to them ... in uniform. One of them, who turned out to be a warrant officer of the Varnavinsky regiment, shouted:
- Comrades! Get ready for the Cathedral Mountain! The cadets are storming the bridge.
A volley - and both fall dead (later, returning to the Don again, the officers saw in the village cemetery among fresh graves one with the inscription: "Baron, ensign Boris Nikolaevich Lisovsky. Killed by Kaledin's gang on February 21, 1918").
Having run out onto the road, the platoon splits up: two squads chase the Reds running into the village, the other two turn left to meet those fleeing from the river ... The Reds did not expect to meet officers in their rear ...
At this moment, General Markov attacked the bridge. At the moment the officers were on the other side. To the left, the 4th company partly wade the river and overturned the Reds. To the right, the 3rd company, partly ford, partly on boats that were on the river, also crossed over to the other side. General Markov ran with the lead platoon along the road to the village after the running Reds. And suddenly he stopped in bewilderment when he saw the officers of the 1st company in front of him.
- Where did you come from? - he asked. He had not expected such a maneuver by the 3rd platoon of the 1st company.
Here General Markov gave the order: the 1st company to continue pursuing the enemy along the village street leading from the bridge; 3rd company to bypass the village on the right; 2nd and 4th are on the left. Seeing that the officers were collecting prisoners, he shouted:
- Do not deal with prisoners. Not a minute delay. Forward!
Meanwhile, the squads of the 3rd platoon continued their pursuit on the street of the village. The further they ran forward in dashing and swift pursuit, the thicker the Reds were in front of them. The latter ran like chickens in front of a car. The officers fired on the run at close range, stabbed ...
Here they are on the cathedral mountain ... A church in the middle of the square and ... a four-gun battery with servants scurrying about near the guns; the guns are firing. Lieutenant Uspensky is ahead, followed by others. They attack the battery. The servants run away, only a few people remain, among them three in officer's shoulder straps ... They "surrendered".
The 3rd company bypasses the village on the right. A red battery is firing at the windmills. But she manages to shoot, leaving only the charging box.
Before the 2nd company, bypassing on the left, the Reds disappeared into the village. Even more to the left, the horse detachment of Colonel Gershelman and the mounted scouts of the 1st battery, sent there by General Markov, are galloping around the village.
The village was taken.
***
The head squads of the 3rd platoon of the 1st company stopped on the square, empty from the Reds, and there was no strength to continue the pursuit. The entire 1st company is approaching.
General Markov galloped up to the 4th company. Seeing the prisoners, he shouted:
- What the hell did you get them for?
Rides to the 2nd company. All is well, and he is in a hurry to the church square. Rapid gunfire echoes from behind.
“Find out what's the matter,” he orders the orderly.
The orderly returned with a report: "Shooting at your command, Your Excellency!"
On the square, the captured artillerymen were brought to General Markov, among them the commander of the battery. The officers see that General Markov is beside himself with anger, and they hear his excited voice:
- You are not the captain! Shoot!
But General Kornilov drove up:
- Sergey Leonidovich! An officer cannot be shot without trial. To bring to justice! (The next day, the captive officers were tried. Since their crime was obvious, they were not acquitted, but ... they were forgiven and poured into the army unit). /… /
***
The losses of the Officer Regiment were expressed in the number of 4 killed (all of Lieutenant Kromm's platoons) and several wounded. Insignificant losses, the enormous success of the first battle and the delight of the officers with their commander instilled in everyone confidence in the further successes of the regiment and the army.
Few cartridges were used up in battle, but great amount... It was very regretful that mountain-type guns were captured, the shells of which were unnecessary for the army.
February 22 / March 7. The army rested in the village of Lezhanka, half abandoned by the inhabitants. They fled because they believed the stories of the Reds about the atrocities perpetrated by the "cadets". During the day, a considerable part of those who fled returned to their homes, which they found completely intact and not looted. The embarrassment was great when the volunteers did not demand, but asked and paid for everything. Only people of military age did not return to the village, fearing that they would be mobilized, and those who tied themselves to service with the Reds.
On this day, in the presence of Generals Alekseev, Kornilov, Denikin, Markov and others, a funeral service was held for the four killed officers in the village church.
We accompanied them with military honors to their grave in the village cemetery. The last lithium was served, and then General Alekseev spoke with tears in his eyes about our first victims of the campaign, about our future doom. General Kornilov carefully examined the closed graves and said to us: "Remember, gentlemen, where we buried them: maybe loved ones will look for these lonely graves."
February 23 / March 8. In the morning, the Volunteer Army set out from the village of Lezhanki and soon entered the Kuban region. Colonel Glazenap's cavalry detachment a little earlier set out in a southeastern direction to the village of Belaya Glina in order to divert the attention of the Reds from the true direction of the army's movement. The officer regiment with the 1st battery this time marched in the rearguard. The weather was wonderful, the road was completely dry; it was easy to walk. The columns of the units went in exemplary order.
General Markov galloped along the column of the Officers' Regiment. The companies quickly "took the leg." Passing the 4th company, he suddenly asked loudly:
- Fourth company, what is this formation?
Before Captain Dudarev had time to answer, the whole company said:
- Three to the right, Your Excellency!
This cavalry formation was inherited by the entire company from its main component, the Shock Division of the Cavalry Division. In response, there was a reply from General Markov:
- I'll show you! Infantry, and on the right, three ...
And since General Markov rode off further, without "showing" anything, the company went through the entire further campaign in a cavalry formation "on the right, three at a time."
Having made a twelve-verst transition without fatigue, the army stopped in the first Kuban village of Plosskaya, settling there in apartments. Immediately everyone was struck by the sharp opposite of what happened in the village of Lezhanka: the village was not abandoned by the inhabitants, and the Cossacks greeted them warmly and cordially, they did not feel fear of the army that had come. Only 12 versts separated two different characters, two psychologies - the Cossack and the peasant. And this despite the fact that the peasants of Stavropol did not live poorer than the Cossacks.
But the officers did not want to think about this, they were busy putting themselves in order in anticipation of a quick and, apparently, a plentiful delicious lunch. They saw how the efficient Cossacks cooked food. Chickens were particularly affected; officers had to catch them "according to all the rules of military art" and not always successfully; the officers were especially helpless in "killing" chickens: the Cossacks and Cossacks did it with amazing dexterity and without any "weapons." Curiosities and laughter! The Cossacks resolutely refused to take money for treats.
There is a special revival in the Technical Company: Ensign Schmidt, dressed in a Circassian coat, was mistaken by the Cossacks for the Grand Duke Nikolai Nikolaevich. However, the similarities are really striking. He, as well as those who are with him, were given special respectful attention and hospitality. The Cossacks were not discouraged either now or later.
There was even such a case later: one officer, going up to Warrant Officer Schmidt, said in his ear:
- Your Imperial Highness, I recognize you! - To this Schmidt also quietly answered him:
- Well, shut up!
When Pyotr Eduardovich was asked why he gave such a strange answer, he explained that if he tried to dissuade the officer that he did not Grand Duke, the officer would not have believed him anyway, and the order of the "Grand Duke" to be silent would really have forced him not to spread this absurd rumor.
Despite the benevolent attitude of the Cossacks of the village to the volunteers and despite the fact that they indisputably shared the goals and objectives of the Volunteer Army (General Kornilov spoke with the Cossacks in almost every village), nevertheless, they did not heed the call to join the fight against the Bolsheviks. The volunteers did not expect this.
On February 24 (March 9), the army moved further in the western direction, having an Officer Regiment in the rearguard. Having made a two-hour halt in the Novo-Ivanovsky farm, I went over to an overnight stay in the village of Nezamaevskaya. Here she found a different attitude of the Cossacks both to the Bolsheviks and to herself: foreseeing or understanding what the Bolsheviks could give them, the Cossacks took up arms and gave the army replenishment - foot and horse hundreds.
February 25 / March 10. In the morning, the army is on the march again. The Czechoslovak battalion, marching in the rearguard, had to repulse the attack and inflict heavy losses on the Red cavalry detachment. For this case, General Kornilov gave the battalion a reward of 5,000 rubles.
Having passed only 15 versts, the army stopped in the village of Veselaya and settled down in apartments, which greatly surprised everyone. They began to speculate about the reasons for this. The fact that the army was already not far from the Vladikavkaz railway made us assume that it might cross this road and even with a very likely battle, and that all this could happen at night. And indeed, at about 21 o'clock the army moved on, having in the vanguard the Officer Regiment, the Technical Company, the Junker Battalion and 1 battery, under the general command of General Markov. The direction of movement was taken as before to the west, to the Sosyk station, but, having passed about ten versts, at the farm Uporny Vanguard turned sharply to the south.
In the dark, the Officer Regiment along a small country road, going down, walked down the slope, crossed the bridge over the Tikhonkaya River ... But the guns got stuck on the slope. Colonel Mionchinsky mobilized all the forces of the battery: bushes, reeds, straw ... everything falls on the hedge. The Technical Company came to her aid: the fascines were knitting, the bridge was being fastened ... Axes were knocking. Among the dull noise of the working people, the distinct, harsh voice of General Markov is heard. Finally, the guns crossed the bridge safely, but again got stuck in the second half of the gate. The Officer Company ran up. Soon the guns were on solid ground, and the vanguard moved on.
“We’ll not be lost with him and we’ll go everywhere,” they said about General Markov.
Somewhere to the right, 2-3 explosions were heard.
February 26 / March 11. Before dawn, the vanguard entered the village of Novo-Leushkovskaya and, without stopping in it, continued on its way, but this time in a westerly direction. Another 5-6 versts, and he went out onto the railway, letting the army pass by him. General Markov gave orders for the move. General Kornilov was also here.
However, the crossing of the railway by the army did not go smoothly: from the north, from the side of the Sosyk station, an armored train of the Reds approached and began shelling the crossing. It turned out that the railway track had been blown up too close, but it was soon driven away by the 1st battery, driving a mile ahead. When the last units had passed, the Officer Regiment with the battery set off after them.
Night has come.
***
It was already well after midnight, and the Officer Regiment with the battery was still on the march. The road was good, but a cold wind was blowing. Fatigue made me feel. I remembered a soldier's song:
"Serve well in the infantry;
However, it was very squeamish ... "
Short stops made little relief. Sleep prevailed. Suddenly there was a long stop: ahead of him there was a delay in crossing a swampy ravine. Many fell asleep. Even General Markov's harsh hail did not immediately wake everyone up. Some paused, tidying up their tattered shoes; a short order is thrown at him:
- Get solid boots in the first battle!
There are no laggards; the column is in order. The trouble is, if "it is impatient to go to the wind" on big business: General Markov will not say anything here, but catching up with his own is not easy. General Markov cannot ride calmly: he must be everywhere. And he does not ignore the train. He knows everyone on the carts.
- What's wrong with you? - he turns to one headquarters officer.
- Bohlen, Your Excellency!
- Call the doctor and tell him to report to me about the state of health of this officer! - After the doctor's report, General Markov ordered to convey to the "patient" that "the army does not need such patients."
Finally, here is the village of Staro-Leushkovskaya, but the rearguard must wait until the whole army is drawn into it. It is a shame to be in the steppe in the cold and hungry for a day, tired of the 30-verst march. But - "yak treba, then treba".
February 27 / March 12. Only in the morning did the Officer's regiment and the battery draw into the village and stopped in the area indicated by them. Of course, some of the platoons had to immediately go to the outposts and give up hopes of rest and food.
Colonel Birkin with his squad was sent to the outpost at the mill and unexpectedly found there an outpost of 10 Kornilovites. The Kornilovites were in an agitated state ... It turned out that at night they were bumped into by a column of Reds heading for the village, and they silently dealt with it: about a hundred dead were lying on the road, and there were 5-6 captured carts with weapons. But they did not dare to be replaced, since they did not receive any notification of this, and Colonel Birkin returned to the village with his squad. He did not have to rest again: the army was already marching.
After passing another 20 versts, the army came to the village of Irklievskaya, and only here it was announced that they would spend the night, and even added - calm. The need for rest was enormous: after all, the army covered up to 50 miles in one and a half days.
February 28 / March 13. A possible day in the village was announced, and, indeed, the army stood not only all day, but also one more night. The volunteers had a good rest.
Of course, there were conversations among the officers about the topics put forward by the campaign. First of all, about the painless crossing of the Vladikavkaz railway. Everyone has one explanation: the army is led by General Kornilov. Then - where is the army going? There are disagreements here. Some are convinced, as they were convinced before the crossing of the railway: it goes to the Tikhoretskaya station and only changed the direction of the strike at it; others argue that now she is going to Yekaterinodar and that for this it is absolutely not necessary to first break the Tikhoretsk group of Reds. In one officer platoon there was a very heated debate on this issue, and the platoon commander, staff captain Zgrivets, restored peace with his usual technique: "Hey! Clean your rifles, and let's go where General Kornilov orders."
March 1 (14). In the morning, the army moved along the road to the village of Berezanskaya, with the Kornilov shock regiment with a battery in the vanguard. For some reason, the officer regiment marched in the head of the main forces, which seemed to everyone new for the campaign.
A battle began ahead and, judging by the shooting, it was serious. The column stopped.
At this time, General Kornilov, who was in the head of the column, turned to General Markov and said:
- Help the Kornilovites! If we do not shoot down the enemy before evening, we will be surrounded.
General Kornilov's anxiety was understandable: he did not think that the Reds would offer stubborn resistance to the army so far from the railway; did not allow the thought that the Kuban Cossacks would be on the side of the Reds, as happened now. It turned out that the enemy not only defends the village with large forces, but also sits in the trenches.
General Markov rode forward. Behind him is an Officer Regiment with a battery. Soon the regiment turned off the road and reorganized into a battle formation. Having reached the line of the Kornilovites, both regiments went over to the offensive. On the flank is a cavalry division.
The Reds met the regiments with fierce rifle and machine-gun fire. But the chains, without stopping, calmly, with rifles on their belts, went forward; only occasionally someone on the move fired a shot or two at an important target. The Reds could not withstand such a confident attack and, first alone, and then with their entire mass, got up and rushed to run, throwing machine guns and rifles.
Having passed the trenches of the Reds on a gentle ridge, the volunteers, 3-4 hundred steps away, saw the village where the Reds dived, hiding in buildings, gardens, vegetable gardens and in the reeds of the river crossing the village. The cavalry division bypassed the village and pursued the Reds behind it. In the village they caught those who had taken refuge; some paid with their lives, and on the village square, old Cossacks lectured their youth for helping the Reds.
The officer regiment did not stay in the stanitsa and, after the equestrian division, moved to the village Zhuravskaya occupied by it, having covered up to 30 versts a day.
The regiment's losses in battle were negligible.
March 2 (15). The entire army moved to the village of Zhuravskaya, allocating the Kornilov regiment and the cavalry division of Colonel Gershelman to occupy the Viseki station, on the Tikhoretskaya - Yekaterinodar railway. The station was taken. The cavalry division that remained on it did not blow up the railway line in the direction of Tikhoretskaya, stood carelessly and was knocked out with losses by an unexpected attack from the Reds with an armored train.
The Partisan regiment sent to restore the situation met stubborn resistance and could not take the station with a night attack. The position of the army, which now has a strong group of Reds on the flank, based on Tikhoretskaya, was difficult. To defeat the Reds in the first place in Vyselki became the first and urgent task.
March 3 (16). Before dawn, a detachment of General Markov came to the aid of the partisans: the Officer Regiment, the Technical Company and the 1st Battery; a battalion of Kornilovites was also attached to it.
Under cover of the morning fog, the detachment approached the station 2-3 versts and began to turn around. Shooting could be heard ahead. Not reaching the ridge, the officer companies met the retreating partisans, let them in and accelerated their movement to the ridge. As soon as they climbed on top of it, they collided nose to nose with the advancing dense chains of reds. From a distance of 50 paces, the officers rushed with hostility. In places there was a short hand-to-hand fight; the red ones were overturned. The distance increased rapidly: the officers' chains, continuing the offensive, pursued with red fire, but, met with the fire of many machine guns from the buildings of the village, they lay down. Meanwhile, the Reds, with the help of reserves, again went on the offensive.
General Markov was in the chain of the regiment. At that moment, a handsome Cossack, tall, with the red head of the 17th Baklanovsky regiment, galloped up to him.
- I am very glad to see you, Esaul Vlasov! - General Markov spoke loudly. Attack them as soon as possible!
- Yes, Your Excellency! - answered the esaul Vlasov, gracefully saluting, jumped into the saddle and, turning the horse abruptly, rushed to his hundred, standing in a place sheltered from bullets, in a quarry. A few minutes later, the lava of the Cossacks in 40 checkers with a boom rushed into the attack. The fire crackled and ... died down.
- Forward, run! - and with a shout of "hurray" the chain of the Officer Regiment rushed into the attack. Now again the chains were about a hundred paces from the Reds. The attack of the captain Vlasov did its job: his hundred hacked the leading part of the Reds - the sailors and their neighbors. The battery extinguished the machine-gun fire from the mill; she forced the red armored train to take cover behind the buildings of the village, and then hastily leave towards the Tikhoretskaya station. The Reds fled through the village to the east, but there they came under fire from an officer company that had bypassed the station from the north. General Kornilov was in chains at the decisive moment in the attack on the station.
The station was taken and the enemy defeated, but units of the Volunteer Army suffered heavy losses. This was the first serious and fierce battle. On the side of the Reds, in addition to the sailors (there were up to 150 people, almost all were killed), the Cossacks and units of the 39th Infantry Division participated, which explained their stubbornness. General Markov was beside himself. He was not approached with questions about accidental prisoners, and the priest, who asked for pardon for the "lost", he replied:
- Go, father! You have nothing to do here.
Esaul Vlasov also died in the horse attack. At the time of the fight with the sailors, a horse was killed under him. Esaul fell, but jumping up, he blew off the head of the shooting sailor and immediately died under the bullets of another.
- Esaul! Esaul! - shouted his Cossacks. Having hacked the sailors, they could no longer pursue the Reds: they crowded around the body of their commander and sobbed. At night, the bodies of Esaul Vlasov and other killed were buried in the cemetery of the village of Vyselki.

***
Already in complete twilight, the Officer's Regiment, the Technical Company and the 1st Battery settled down for the night in the village of Vyselki station and the nearby village of Suvorovskaya. General Markov ordered to rest "as it should" and, in addition, to all of them sew on white headdresses, so that in battle it would be easier to distinguish one's own from red. Those units of the detachment that stopped in the village of Suvorovskaya were ordered not to pay for food, as repression for the participation of the Cossacks of this village on the side of the Reds.
The partisan regiment and the battalion of the Kornilovites, with the capture of the station, went to join the main forces of the army in the village of Zhuravskaya.
Everyone knows about the Yekaterinodar volunteer units. A few days ago, these units were defeated here and retreated to Yekaterinodar. But the fact of the existence of a volunteer detachment in Yekaterinodar was now indisputable, and the path to Yekaterinodar did not seem difficult: the Reds would be squeezed on both sides and would not interfere with the union of the army with the Kuban detachment.

V.E. Pavlov "Markovites in battles and campaigns for Russia in the liberation war of 1917-1920" Volume 1. Paris, 1962 (Collection)
Markovites in the First Campaign of the Volunteer Army.
(Return to Lezhanka. Approx. - I.U.)

BATTLES AT THE VILLAGE LEZHANKA

April 19 / May 2. Before dawn, part of the regiment was put on carts and drove off in a northeastern direction. It was ordered to drive the Reds out of the village of Lopanka, located 15 miles away. There was a counter battle, and with a swift blow the enemy was overturned and the village was occupied. At night, the units returned to Lezhanka.
April 20 / May 3. The 2nd and the Horse Brigades urgently went to the aid of the Don people, who were forced to leave the villages of Yegorlytskaya and Mechetinskaya. In Lezhanka, the 1st brigade and the Horse detachment of General Pokrovsky remained, and with them the entire field hospital of the army with 1,500 wounded and the baggage train.
Soon a Red attack on the village from the east and south was discovered. There was an overwhelming mass of them. General Markov gave the order to prevent the enemy from breaking into the village and crushing it. The entire brigade took up positions in a rare chain. Issued 30 rounds per person. In addition, General Markov ordered in the regiments to keep some of the machine guns on carts, to make up mobile machine-gun batteries, ready to move forward, if possible, on the flanks of the enemy's chains, to hit them with flank fire, than to facilitate the infantry's transition to a counteroffensive. This was the first time in the army of organizing such batteries.
The enemy was approaching. He had a mile away from the village when he opened fire on the move. Several of his guns fired at the chains of the 1st brigade. These machine guns, jumping out ahead of their chains, were filled with fire. He was answered with rare rifle and cannon fire.
But now the enemy had to go the last 1000 steps, when the strong fire of the defenders forced him to lie down. Another moment, and machine-gun batteries flew forward, opening fire from a distance of 500-600 steps, sprinkling fire on the flanks. The enemy is in confusion, and the loud "hurray" of the brigade that has gone over to the attack puts him to flight along the entire front. With only part of its forces, the brigade pursued the Reds for several miles.
With the end of the pursuit, the enemy stopped and began to put himself in order. Its batteries fired at the advanced units of the regiment. The 4th company stopped 2-3 versts from the village on the line of large stacks of straw and sheds with agricultural machines. Shrapnel tore over her, inflicting casualties on her. Several seriously injured were carried into sheds where the bullets were not nearly as dangerous. Unfortunately, one shell hit the shed and lit the hay in it. The fire spread so quickly that they did not have time to take all the wounded out of the shed. Three of them died in the flames.
Night has come. The units advancing forward were ordered to withdraw to the village and set up strong guards.
Losses in the Officers' Regiment were serious: up to 50 people. The regiment commander, General Borovsky, was also wounded in the head. By order of General Markov, the regiment was received by Colonel Doroshevich.
April 21 / May 4. Holy Saturday. A joyful message came: the 2nd Infantry and Horse Brigades defeated the Reds near the village of Gulyai-Borisovka and forced them to hastily withdraw from the village of Yegorlytskaya and clear the village of Mechetinskaya. So, the Volunteer Army joined up with the rebellious donors of the southern villages, which became subordinate to General Denikin. Now the territory of the army was no longer limited to the territory of one village or village. The army now has a rear, and in the first half of the day the entire field hospital left for the rear, to the village of Yegorlytskaya. Together with the infirmary, the wagon train of the entire 1st brigade was also sent. The wagon train left the village under fire from enemy artillery.
The shelling began in the morning and gradually intensified. At the same time, the deployment of the red infantry was seen on a much larger front than in the previous days, and covering the village from the north-east and south-west. Then all this mass went on the offensive. The captured prisoners in the clashes of the advanced units said that at the rally last night it was decided at all costs to take Lezhanka in order to celebrate the holidays there.
The fight was fierce. Machine guns on carts and the 1st battery repeatedly jumped forward, shooting the Reds almost point-blank. Repeatedly the Officer's and Kuban regiments went over to counterattacks here and there, but the Reds, pushing back in other places, supported by reserves, continued to advance. A stubborn battle was going on at the very outskirts of the village, at the cemetery. The Reds seized a brick factory and threatened to cut the road to the village of Yegorlytskaya. To restore the situation, the Engineering Company was sent - the last reserve of General Markov. 80 people who supported part of the Officer Regiment could not break the enemy's resistance of 500 people and lay down. I had to remove half a company of 50 people from the neighboring area. With an immediate attack, the Reds were knocked out of the brick factory and fled, leaving 2 machine guns and a lot of cartridges in place.
Along the entire front, the Red offensive began to fizzle out. General Markov ordered the Engineering Company "to go to the village of Lopanka on an Easter visit," but the general situation in front of the village forced him to cancel the order. Only in the evening were the Reds finally thrown back from the village.
This time the Reds did not stay in full view of the village, but retreated to the villages from which they came. Having set up guards, parts of the brigade settled in houses on the outskirts. The dream of many to visit the church at Bright Z Matrenia did not come true. Nothing was prepared for the Easter table, since in the morning the household officials, together with the wagon train, left for the village of Yegorlytskaya. We only talked about what the residents had treated.
In the last battle, units of the brigade suffered significant losses - up to 80 people, of which 7 were killed, the Officers' Regiment lost; The engineering company lost 8 officers alone and over 20 wounded. Once again, a field hospital was formed with the brigade with no less than 160 wounded.
The commander of the Officer Regiment, Colonel Doroshevich, was also wounded. General Markov appointed Colonel Khovansky to command the regiment.
In the evening, at the end of the battle, the army headquarters left Lezhanka for the village of Yegorlytskaya.
April 22 / May 5. 1st day of Holy Easter. Before dawn, units of the brigade prepared for a possible offensive by the Reds, but the latter did not appear: they decided to celebrate. So the Russian people, who fought the battle yesterday, rested today and celebrated the day of Holy Easter at a distance of fifteen or twenty versts from each other.
The residents had a sad holiday: they were afraid of the departure of the volunteers and the arrival of the Reds. It was sad for the volunteers too: on the Bright Resurrection of Christ, they had to bury their comrades-in-arms. They were buried in the same cemetery where the first four victims of the beginning of the campaign were buried earlier.
General Markov walked around his units and congratulated them on the holiday. They shouted "hurray" to him. He also visited the wounded, who for a while forgot their pains when they saw their beloved boss. He joked about 4 wounded 4 companies:
- Why are you substituting your legs and arms? (two were wounded in the legs and two in the arms). And I don’t expose myself to bullets at all.
General Markov caused a smile even among the seriously wounded. One officer was wounded in the stomach right through and vomited blood. The general came up.
- Well? Injured? - The wounded man smiled, nodded his head.
- I can see from your eyes that you will recover!
This smile of a mortally wounded man, this incident is remembered. The wounded man has indeed recovered.
It was difficult to find a name for General Markov that would appreciate him in its entirety. He is both the "Comforter Angel", as in the described case, he and the "Guardian Angel", as he was called in the army train, the threat of which he was, he is both the "God of War" and "General Kornilov's Epee".
In the evening of that day, the brigade lined up on the northern area of ​​the village, and it was announced to it that it was leaving the village. The column on carts set off on the road to the village of Yegorlytskaya, crossed the bridge over the Yegorlyk River, the river that the Officer's Regiment once ford, but soon turned off the road to the right. In the twilight, the regiment's tail was suddenly fired upon by a truck with a machine gun that ran into it. But one cannon shot was enough to make the truck hastily disappear.
April 23 / May 6. 2nd day of Holy Easter. At dawn, the brigade approached the Farewell junction on the Torgovaya - Bataysk railway. The demolition men sent to the Celina station blew up the path there, and the brigade at that time thoroughly destroyed it at the junction. Having completed this task, she moved to the village of Yegorlytskaya, where she arrived even before dark, having covered up to 50 versts a day.
The meeting and reception by the villagers of the volunteers who came to their homes were sincerely joyful, with wide hospitality. Now their attitude towards the volunteers was not at all indifferent, as it was two months ago. They confessed to their delusion. And this happened exactly two months later, as General Kornilov told them then. The old Cossack man proudly declared that his two sons, who had previously served in the Imperial Guard, were now "beating the Bolsheviks." All this made the volunteers happy and strengthened the Easter mood.
April 24 / May 7. 3rd day of Holy Easter. During the night, all the ranks of the brigade slept peacefully and woke up in a cheerful and joyful state. Wasting no time, we scattered around the village to meet and worship with their acquaintances and friends. Everyone rushed to the field hospital to visit and congratulate the wounded comrades-in-arms. "Christ is Risen! - Truly Risen!" - was heard throughout the village.
In the afternoon, rumors spread about the performance. It's a shame! But the cheerful mood remained. At the evening roll call and prayer, it was announced: early in the morning, the brigade will perform on carts. Do not take any things with you, but stock up on cartridges. So, back on the hike, but, as if, for a short time. Where and for what purpose? General Markov would give a short and definite answer to these questions: "This does not concern you!"
Only 7 officers of the Engineering Company, led by Lieutenant Colonel Aleksandrov, learned about the upcoming mission of the campaign, whom the general summoned to him and told them:
- Engineers! You are entrusted with a serious task, on which the success of our raid on the triangle of stations depends: Krylovskaya - Sosyka-Yeiskaya and Sosyka-Vladikavkazskaya. You must make your way to the rear of the Reds and, near the Khutorskaya junction on the railway to Yeisk, thoroughly blow up the railroad bed and cut the telephone and telegraph wires. We need everything that is at these three stations to fall into our hands. On the night of April 27 (May 10), you must carry out this order, and in the morning I will take over the Reds. Three guides and a hundred Circassians are given to help you. Detailed orders were given to Lieutenant Colonel Aleksandrov.
At night, the detachment set off.
April 25 / May 8. At 6 o'clock in the morning, the 1st Infantry and Cavalry Brigades set out in a southwest direction. All day shaking on carts and arrival at the village of Nezamaevskaya. The trek is about 65 versts. Overnight stay.
The Cossacks asked General Markov to leave the detachment to protect their village, to which he suggested that they organize themselves for protection, and even better - join the brigade. They hesitated.
April 26 / May 9. In the morning, General Markov toured the units and announced the task given to the army:
- We're going to stock up on combat provisions. The 2nd brigade will attack the Krylovskaya station. 1st in the center, at the Sosyka-Vladikavkazskaya and Sosyka-Yeiskaya stations; Horse - to the left, at the Leushkovskaya station. The goal is to capture everything that the Reds have at these 4 stations. Combat provisions are necessary due to the massive influx into the ranks of the army of the Kuban Cossacks.
From the village of Nezamaevskaya, the 1st and the Horse Brigades went in different directions. Having traveled about 30 versts, the 1st brigade stopped, not reaching a few versts to the Sosyka-Vladikavkazskaya station. Departures from the Circassian cavalry division attached to the brigade reported that the station was engaged in large enemy forces with an armored train.
According to the disposition of the army headquarters, the attack of the three brigades should begin simultaneously with dawn the next day.
With the onset of night, the 1st brigade began to deploy into battle formation: the Officer's regiment - to attack the station Sosyka-Vladikavkazskaya, Kubansky - to the left of it; With the occupation of this station, the brigade should, stepping forward with its left shoulder, advance on the Sosyka-Yeiskaya station.
***
The detachment of Lieutenant Colonel Aleksandrov during April 25 and 26 (May 8 and 9), by hidden routes, very carefully approached the Vladikavkaz railway north of Sosyk station. On the night of the 27th (May 10), he crossed the road and approached his destination. Leaving the Circassians and guides some 300 meters away from the railway, the officers crawled to the track and set to work. After a short time - the command: "Crawl away". The canvas has two left. Next command: "Set fire". There were violent explosions. And at that moment, just a few steps from the place of the explosion, the officers saw the silhouette of a stopped armored train. Another moment, and a machine-gun burst rushed over them: apparently, the Reds noticed the fleeing ones. At dawn, the detachment took the direction of the rumble of the battle that had begun and safely joined the brigade.
April 27 / May 10. Shortly before dawn, the 1st company was ordered to demonstrate the offensive. The company shot down the Red outpost, but, having approached the railway at 200 steps, was met with grape-shot and machine-gun fire of an armored train. She lay down and at that moment was attacked by the red infantry from the flanks. In a fierce battle, the company’s resistance was broken, and it began to withdraw. The Reds pursuing her were stopped by machine-gun fire from battery and company machine guns. Shooting flared up along the entire front.
As soon as daybreak began, the Officer Regiment went on the offensive. In front of the railway, unable to overcome the strongest enemy fire, he lay down, but a few minutes later, when the 1st battery drove off the armored train, and on the left the Kuban people were already hurrying, he shot down the Reds, occupied the station and, without stopping at it , launched an offensive along the railway in a northern direction. The Reds retreated, no longer offering resistance, and soon completely dispersed.
General Markov with the Circassian division, not paying attention to the fleeing Reds, galloped to the Sosyka-Yeiskaya station. At both stations, several echelons of "combat provisions" were captured, which were immediately loaded onto the carts on which the brigade was traveling, while the Officer Regiment continued to move north. An armored train of the Reds managed to slip through the Krylovskaya station before it was occupied by the 2nd brigade.
There was a moment of alarm: a large column of infantry and cavalry was approaching Sosyka station from the east. It turned out that these were the Cossacks of the village of Nezamaevskaya, who were going to join the brigade. There were over 500 of them. General Denikin, who arrived at the station, assigned them all to replenishment in the 1st brigade, and weapons were immediately issued to them.
Meanwhile, the Officer Regiment occupied the village of Pavlovskaya, joyfully greeted by the residents. General Markov asked them to immediately disperse to their homes, since the village would not be held, which caused the residents to exclaim: "What will happen to us now?" General Markov ordered the release of several dozen prisoners captured here.
By evening, the Kuban regiment came to the Pavlovskaya stanitsa, and at night the whole brigade moved further north.
On April 28 (May 11), she came to the village of Novo-Mikhailovskaya, 6-7 versts west of Krylovskaya station, occupied with a fierce battle by the 2nd brigade, but still fighting to the north of it. A few hours later, the entire 1st brigade set out at the station, but did not stay there, but proceeded east through the village of Yekaterinovka to the village of Novo-Pashkovskaya, where it settled down for the night. The 2nd brigade followed her.
April 29 / May 12. The brigade moved to the village of Gulyai-Borisovka and on April 30 returned to Yegorlytskaya.
Units from the "raid on Sosyka" returned tired, but vigorous. Great success was achieved and trophies were obtained, the "military provisions" needed for the army. The 2nd brigade even captured two guns. For the first time, the Volunteer Army led an offensive at a front of 30 miles.
Losses in the Officer Regiment were large: about 100 people, of which one 1st company accounted for 27 killed and 44 wounded, more than half of its composition. The regiment commander, Colonel Khovansky, the third commander since April 20 (May 3), was also wounded.
On April 27 (May 10), Colonel Timanovsky took over command of the regiment. General Markov parted with his inseparable assistant, remaining, however, his closest superior.
April 30 (May 13) - the date of the end of the Kornilov, Ice, 1st Kuban campaign of the Volunteer Army.

The Ice Crusade was not talked about in schools, especially in Soviet time but ignore these pages Russian history would mean to close our eyes to events that showed the fortitude, patriotism and talent of the warriors of the white movement, those who fought for their homeland. The history of the Volunteer Army began with the campaign to the Kuban.

1917 and the beginning of the creation of the Volunteer Army

The beginning of 1917 brought Russian Empire many shocks and changes, against the background of the events of the First World War and the absence of strong power in the country, ideas about the introduction of a military dictatorship began to arise among the army command. General of Infantry Lavr Georgievich Kornilov became the man who sought to establish strict order in the armed forces and introduce the strictest discipline, which would allow preserving the country's resources to fight the external threat.

Back in August 1917, he initiated the so-called Kornilov speech - taking advantage of the position of the Supreme Commander-in-Chief, the general made an attempt to impose his program of action on the Provisional Government and its Minister-Chairman Alexander Kerensky. The initiative was not supported, and the performance turned into a prison sentence in the city of Bykhov, Mogilev province - however, very conditional. Conclusion Kornilov served along with other allied officers, and it was then that the plan arose to create an army, which later became known as the Volunteer.

After the coup on October 25, General Dukhonin, who became the Supreme Commander-in-Chief after the flight of Kerensky, sent a telegram to Bykhovo, where the Kornilovites were kept, with a recommendation to urgently go to the Don - in order to avoid the reprisals of the Bolsheviks. On the Don, the officers hoped to enlist the support of the Cossacks and begin a struggle against the Bolsheviks.
Before his departure, General Kornilov sent a telegram to General Dukhonin: "I inform you that today I have left Bykhov and am going to the Don, so that at least an ordinary soldier there again begins a merciless struggle against the enslavers of the Motherland."... In early December, Kornilov was already in Novocherkassk.

Movement to Yekaterinodar

This is how the first Kuban campaign of the army began, led by General Kornilov. The small number of troops were called the army because they considered themselves the heiress, the successor of the Russian army. At that time, about four thousand people were among the participants in the campaign, including 122 sisters of mercy. The advance towards Yekaterinodar was accompanied by constant skirmishes and battles with units of the Red Army. The officers who took part in the campaign recalled that the enemy's numerical superiority was never less than 6-10 times, the army was constantly in the ring of the Bolshevik troops. Nevertheless, the army continued on its way - accompanied by confidence in the correctness of the struggle for the future of the country, inspired by Kornilov, waiting for help from Cossack troops Kuban.

Meanwhile, it became known about the capture of Yekaterinodar by the Red Army in March 1918. Kornilov decided to go south, to the mountains, where the army could get rest in mountain villages. March that year was extremely cold: torrential rains were replaced by frosts, from which, according to the recollections of the participants in the campaign, in the evenings it was necessary to remove the ice crust from the wounded lying on the carts with bayonets. In the mountains, the temperature dropped to 20 degrees below zero, snowfalls began. Actually, the name of the campaign, as it is believed, was fixed thanks to one of the sisters of mercy, allegedly once she said to General Markov - "This is a real ice campaign!"

General Sergei Leonidovich Markov, "General Kornilov's sword", was one of the leaders of the movement and a very charismatic figure in the Volunteer Army. The victories of the volunteers over the Bolshevik troops are often attributed by both contemporaries and historians to the general's personal courage, his ability to apply tactical skill in difficult conditions and with multiple superiority of enemy forces.

End of the Ice Crusade

After the conclusion in March 1918 of an alliance with the formations of the Kuban government, the number of the Volunteer Army increased to 6,000 people, and the Kornilovites turned back to Yekaterinodar - despite the fact that it was defended by 20,000 troops of the Red Army. On March 27, the storming of the city began, in which General Kornilov was killed by an accidental grenade. The command was taken over by General Denikin, who, thanks to all the same Markov, managed to withdraw the army beyond the Don and thus save it. By the end of April 1918, the army reached the south of the Don region and the campaign was over. Thus, the Kornilovites described the "eight", and despite the formal absence of victories in the forces of the Red Army, they nevertheless perceived the campaign as a triumph - it was then that the nucleus of the future white movement took shape.
Yekaterinodar was taken during the Second Kuban campaign in August 1918, in the same campaign General Markov died.

For participation in the Ice Campaign, a sign was issued that was highly valued by participants in the white movement - a silver crown of thorns with a silver sword, on the St. George ribbon with a rosette of flowers. The participants themselves called themselves pioneers - since it was this operation that marked the beginning of the formation of the army in the south of the country.
Among the pioneers were Yevgeny Schwartz, the future writer, poet and playwright, and Sergei Efron, the husband of Marina Tsvetaeva. In March 1918 she wrote a cycle of poems "Don" dedicated to the White Guard:
“It's not a flock of swans in the sky:
Holy White Guard Host
It melts with a white vision, melts ...
Of the old world - the last dream:
Youth - Valor - Vendee - Don. "

The defeat of the White Guards in the Civil War changed the fate of those who survived - many Foitser and their families had to

100 years ago in Russia began Civil War... It was in the South of the country that the first flames blazed - large-scale hostilities began between the Reds and Whites. The Volunteer Army was assembled on the Don under the command of General Kornilov, which later united with the Kuban Cossacks.

At the end of March 1918, the "volunteers" for the first time tried to take Yekaterinodar by storm. The very first maneuver of the whites was called the First Kuban campaign, or the Ice campaign. The permanent author of the project, Georgy Badyan, tells how the Volunteer Army was formed, why the Kuban became the first region where whites launched military activities, and what significance the Ice Campaign had for the development of the Civil War.

Why the Cossacks were evacuated from Yekaterinodar

At the beginning of February, elections were held throughout the Kuban, which only strengthened the position of the Bolsheviks formed at the end of 1917. Representatives of the Cossacks and Highlanders received the majority of votes only in the Yekaterinodar garrison. In other settlements in the area where the elections were held, the regional government turned out to be unpopular among the electorate.

Formally, the Regional Cossack Rada had allies in the struggle against the Bolshevization of the region. Throughout the year, the government received telegrams from the atamans of the villages and departments, in which they expressed their readiness to fight for their native land... In fact, this struggle manifested itself in a literal sense: local chieftains defended only their villages, establishing a regime of personal power there.

Therefore, under pressure from the intensified red detachments, members of the government in early March 1918 begin a hasty evacuation from Yekaterinodar. A government detachment of 3 thousand Cossack volunteers under the command of the young Colonel Viktor Pokrovsky left the city. Already on March 14, 1918, the forward detachments of the Red Guard occupied Yekaterinodar without a fight.

Planning in the future to take revenge and recapture the city from the Bolsheviks, the Kuban detachment began to move to join with another anti-Bolshevik force - the Volunteer Army, which moved to Yekaterinodar on February 22 (according to other sources, 23), hoping to receive support from the Cossacks there.

Icy the trip was nicknamed due to severe frosts in March 1918. According to the memoirs of contemporaries, the cold was so strong that the wounded lying on the carts had to be freed from the ice bark with bayonets in the evening.

More than half of the campaign (44 days) consisted of battles, and if we count the distance covered, the detachment traveled 1050 versts, which is more than 1120 km.

How the Volunteer Army was formed on the Don

The positions of the Bolsheviks after the October events were significantly strengthened throughout the country. Under these conditions, the most conservative elements of society, as a rule, officers of the former imperial army, went to the south of Russia - to regions that were considered prosperous. Their plans were to join forces with the local Cossacks and oppose the Bolsheviks together.

By the beginning of 1918, a situation unique for Russia had developed on the Don and Kuban. The Cossacks (especially the wealthy part of it) firmly stood for the protection of their interests, which they managed to defend after the February Revolution. Here a counter-revolutionary core was formed, to which other anti-Bolshevik forces were drawn. Novocherkassk became the place of formation of the Volunteer Army on the Don.

Mikhail Alekseev, the former chief of staff, is rightly considered the creator of the army. Supreme Commander-in-Chief.

Headquarters of the Supreme Commander-in-Chief- the body of the highest field control of the army and navy of Russia in the theater of operations during the First World War. In addition, the rate of the Supreme Commander-in-Chief designated the location of the headquarters of the Supreme Commander-in-Chief. From the beginning of the war she was in Baranovichi, from August 8, 1915 - in Mogilev.

Alekseev enjoyed great prestige among the officers: he believed that it was necessary to save the Motherland from anarchy and an external enemy, and only then engage in politics. This position, called "non-determination", was very popular among the officers, which is why many officers responded to Alekseev's call for the salvation of Russia.

From the first days of November 1917 in Novocherkassk, he managed to create a military formation based on the principles of volunteerism, which received the name "Alekseevskaya organization". The organization was created with the aim of protecting the Motherland from the Bolsheviks and Germans, and later planned the creation of an anti-Soviet state formation on the territory of the former Russian Empire. In the future, this goal will be implemented by Anton Denikin in the form of a territory controlled by the Armed Forces of the South of Russia.

How and why the Ice Campaign began

Immediately after its creation, the Volunteer Army began fighting against the red forces. On February 22, 1918, under the onslaught of the red troops, the Whites left Rostov and moved to the Kuban. The army numbered 4 thousand people, of which 148 were medical personnel. The hike lasted 80 days (from 22 February to 13 May).

As long as there is life, as long as there is strength, not all is lost. They will see a "light" flickering faintly, hear a voice calling to fight - those who have not yet woken up ... This was the whole deep meaning First Kuban campaign

Anton Denikin, an excerpt from "Sketches of Russian Troubles"

On February 25, the "volunteers" moved to Yekaterinodar, bypassing the Kuban steppe. The troops passed through the villages of Khomutovskaya, Kagalnitskaya and Yegorlykskaya, went down to the village of Ust-Labinskaya.

The troops constantly encountered the Reds, whose numbers were constantly growing. However, victories invariably remained with them - this was facilitated by professional military skills and discipline.

The initial goal of the campaign was the entry of the army into Yekaterinodar and unification with the Cossack units, which did not recognize the power of the Bolsheviks. However, on the way it became known that Yekaterinodar had already been occupied by the Bolsheviks on March 14. In the new conditions, Kornilov decided to lead the troops south - to the mountain villages, so that the detachment could rest. Before meeting with the Cossacks, they moved through the territory of the Kuban region for about a month. Only after the unification of the "volunteers" with a detachment of the Regional Government was it decided to break through to the regional capital with a fight.

Unification of the White Army with the Kuban Cossacks

The unification of forces took place on March 30, 1918 in the village of Novodmitrievskaya (now located in the Seversky district, 27 km from Krasnodar). The negotiations were attended by the heads of both anti-Bolshevik forces: generals Kornilov, Alekseev and Denikin on the part of the volunteers, on the part of the Kuban government - Nikolai Ryabovol and Luka Bych.

“The agonizingly long boring conversations began- Denikin writes, - in which one party was forced to prove elementary foundations military organization, the other, in contrast, put forward such arguments as "the constitution of the sovereign Kuban", the need for an "autonomous army" as a support for the government ...».

The regional government insisted on the creation of the Kuban army upon returning to Yekaterinodar, to which Kornilov reacted positively, convincing the Rada in advance of the inviolability of their power.

The situation itself that evening helped to reach an agreement more quickly: the Bolsheviks broke into the village and began shelling the house where the meeting was taking place. While the Cossacks were pondering the proposal made by him, General Kornilov personally took up the liquidation of the breakthrough. The Bolsheviks were expelled from the village, and the protocol was signed.

The meeting participants decided:

1. The Kuban government detachment becomes fully subordinate to General Kornilov.

2. The Legislative Council, the Military Government and the Military Ataman continue their activities, in every possible way contributing to the military measures of the Army Commander.

The storming of Yekaterinodar and the death of Kornilov

After the unification with the Kuban detachment, the number of the Volunteer Army increased to 6 thousand. Under the new conditions, General Kornilov decided to storm Yekaterinodar. The plan for the storming of Yekaterinodar, adopted by General Kornilov, was daring: he planned to catch the enemy by surprise, suddenly leading the detachment to storm from the direction of the Elizavetinskaya village.

The volunteer army from April 9 to 13, with small losses, fought against the 20,000-strong South-Eastern army of the Bolsheviks. The secret of small losses was the tactics of a constant offensive. The Whites had nowhere to retreat, so the soldiers of the detachment fought more desperately than their enemies and more often won a victory, getting off with a small number of dead. However, everything changed after an absurd accident: an accidental shell hit Kornilov's dugout, and the commander-in-chief died.

The death of Kornilov markedly demoralized the detachment, and the numerical superiority remained on the side of the Reds. In difficult moral and tactical conditions, Anton Denikin took over command. Within a month, he managed to withdraw the surviving forces to the Don, where by that time the anti-Bolshevik uprising of the Cossacks had begun.

As a result of the campaign, Yekaterinodar was never taken: about 5 thousand soldiers returned from the campaign, among whom there were about 1.5 thousand wounded, the commander-in-chief was killed. It seemed that the Volunteer Army was drained of blood, but with the growth of anti-Bolshevik uprisings in southern Russia, more and more new members joined the white movement.

A month later, the Volunteer Army, replenished with new forces, began its Second Kuban campaign, during which on August 17, not only Yekaterinodar, but the entire Kuban region with the Black Sea province was liberated from the Bolsheviks. Until the spring of 1920, Yekaterinodar continued to be one of the main white outposts in the fight against the Bolsheviks throughout Russia.

On the night of February 22-23 (from 9th to 10th according to the old style) in 1918, the famous "Ice" (First Kuban) campaign of the Volunteer Army began.

The volunteer army, formed on the initiative of General M.V. Alekseev under the command of first L.G. Kornilov (and after his death - A.I.Denikin), with fierce battles retreated from Rostov-on-Don to Yekaterinodar. This hardest, at the limit of strength, campaign became - contrary to the expectations of the triumphant Bolsheviks - the birth and baptism of fire of the White movement.

In fact, at first it was not an army, but a large officer partisan detachment: officers, cadets, cadets, students, soldiers, fighters of former shock battalions - everyone who, since November 1917, wanted and was able to get to Novocherkassk. Maria Bochkareva herself arrived - a pretty and pretty girl, whose name was the female shock battalion. First of all, children-cadets and boys-cadets with their officers rose to the defense of Russia. In all cities, where there were military schools and cadet corps, the Bolsheviks were shown worthy resistance. The Red Guards caught cadets in cities and stations railways, in carriages, on steamers, they beat them, mutilated them, threw them out of the windows on the way of trains. Many cadets and officers did not have the best fate either. The way to the Don was difficult, many came completely exhausted, hungry, torn off, having already taken the Soviet prisons and bullying, but not discouraged. They walked alone and in groups, breaking through the Bolshevik cordons ... Here everyone was mixed - both monarchists, republicans, and yesterday's revolutionary students, who, seeing "their own handiwork", literally in one day became ardent counter-revolutionaries. A small shot of the Georgievsky regiment, the Kornilovsky shock regiment, the cadet of the Mikhailovsky and Konstantinovsky artillery schools arrived from Kiev, generals Denikin, Markov, Kornilov, Lukomsky, Romanovsky and many others arrived one by one. What did the Volunteer Army give them all? A rifle and five rounds - that was the response from the volunteer registration bureau. In the first month, the volunteers received only a meager ration, starting from the second, a small salary was paid.

The issue of money was very difficult to solve. Apparently, gentlemen entrepreneurs of those distant years were not much different from the present ... Monetary Moscow gave about 800 thousand rubles and expressed "warm" sympathy, as well as a promise to give "everything" to save the Motherland.

If the cartridges still somehow got out, then the army's artillery was formed in the most original ways. So, one gun was bought from the Cossacks traveling from the front to their native lands, and the other was simply stolen, having drunk pretty Cossack servants.

The army grew, despite the disbelief in the success of many officers who remained on the sidelines, on the angry hiss from around the corner: "... we decided to play soldiers!" On December 26, 1917, General Alekseev's organization was officially renamed the Volunteer Army, the distinguishing mark of which was a white-blue-red corner worn on the left sleeve of an overcoat and tunic with the top down. The army commander is General Lavr Kornilov, the son of a Cossack, his deputy is General Anton Denikin, the son of a serf who became an officer. General Alekseev himself is the son of a super-urgent soldier.

The uprising in Rostov, the first battles with the Bolshevik Red Guard ... Not a day passed that the killed volunteers were not buried in Novocherkassk. General Alekseev, standing at the open grave, said: "I see a monument that Russia will erect to these children, and this monument should depict an eagle's nest and the eagles killed in it ..."

The army headquarters moved to Rostov, and the Bolsheviks were already pressing from all sides. It was impossible to stay on the Don.

A.I. Denikin

The night of February 9-10, 1918 - the beginning of the 1st Kuban campaign of the Volunteer Army, the beginning of an organized struggle against the oppressors of the Fatherland. Volunteers leave Rostov on a frosty and snowy night ... The lines of General Alekseev, written by a loved one, served as an answer to the agonizing question of where we were going and what lay ahead: “... We are leaving for the steppe. We can return only if there is God's mercy. But you need to light a light so that there is at least one point of light among the darkness that engulfed Russia ... ”.

So, almost "for the blue bird" was the four thousandth Volunteer Army, and this is the whole point of its first campaign, where everything was contrary to the prepared fate and common sense. Let me see this still dimly flickering candle of the sacred struggle of all Russia! There has never been such an army in the history of mankind. With rifles on their belts, with miserable belongings in duffel bags, two former commanders-in-chief of the Imperial Army, former commanders of the fronts, ranks of high headquarters, corps commanders, colonels and officers, cadets and cadets, women shock girls and Rostov schoolgirls walked in a column through the deep snow.

History has preserved for us the first composition of this small army: 36 generals, 242 staff officers (190 of them are colonels), 2078 chief officers (captains - 215, staff captains - 251, lieutenants - 394, second lieutenants - 535, warrant officers - 668), 1,067 privates (including cadets and cadets of the senior classes - 437), volunteers - 630 (364 non-commissioned officers and 235 soldiers, including 66 Czechs). The medical staff consisted of 148 people - 24 doctors and 122 nurses. A wagon train with refugees followed with the army.

A short stop in the village of Olginskaya. General Kornilov reorganizes the army and promotes cadets to warrant officers, and senior cadets to field cadets. Army composition:

1. Consolidated Officer Regiment;
2. Kornilov shock regiment;
3. Partisan regiment;
4. Special Junker Battalion;
5. Czechoslovak Engineering Battalion;
6. Technical company;
7. Two cavalry divisions;
8. Artillery battalion (eight guns);
9. General Kornilov's convoy

There are very few cartridges, a meager treasury, catastrophically few shells, the enemy is outnumbered everywhere, but go ahead!

S.L. Markov

Heavy fighting and continuous march. Everything is taken in battle - shells, cartridges, food ... The direction of the campaign is determined - to take the capital of the Kuban Yekaterinodar. From the village of Olginskaya to Yegorlytskaya, 88 versts, they walked in six days, and then - the Stavropol province, seized by Bolshevism.

On March 15, the army approached the village of Novodmitrievskaya. It was here that the second name of the campaign was born - Ice, and the most vivid memories of each pioneer are associated with this battle. It rained all night the night before and the next morning. People were soaked to the skin and kneaded deep mud ... By noon the wind blew and snow began to fall. Ahead is a river, and beyond it is a village. The officer regiment of General Markov began a long crossing on the croup of horses. And the weather is changing again - the wind is stronger, frost and blizzard hit. Everything quickly overgrown with an ice crust, clothes, which had become a shell, fettered any movement ... The fallen people could no longer get up ...

Markov found himself with his regiment alone in front of the village. The rest of the units were just being ferried. The question stood squarely - to freeze in the field or to take the village and save the army. Markov rushed to the attack. The frozen officers, clutching rifles in their numb hands, falling into a mess of mud and snow, rose again to meet the murderous fire of the Reds. The village was taken.

In one of the battles, the Officer Company heard female voice: “Girls! Bring the machine gun here! " The company laughed involuntarily, but with a short laugh, realizing the seriousness of this peculiar order. Yes, they were shock women of the women's battalions, others in the rank of ensigns with crosses on their chests. They continued to serve Russia and without hesitation left with the army on the 1st Kuban campaign.

The army receives the first reinforcements from the Kuban (including Kiev cadets), its number increases to six thousand people. On March 27 we approached Yekaterinodar.

March 31, 7.30 a.m. One of the red artillery shells flew into the headquarters room, where General Kornilov was sitting at the table ... The news of his death spread very quickly. General Denikin takes over the army. On the same day, in the evening, the volunteers leave. Maneuvering brilliantly, Denikin leads the army out of the most difficult situations... On April 25, a detachment of a Kiev-born officer, Colonel Mikhail Drozdovsky, joins, having fought 1200 miles from the distant Romanian front.

On April 30, 1918, having overcome 1050 versts with battles, the army returned to the Don and settled down to rest in the villages of Mechetinskaya and Yegorlytskaya. Of the 80 days of the campaign, 44 were in battles, up to 400 people were lost killed, 1,500 wounded were taken out, left with four thousand, and returned with five thousand.

By order of General Denikin, a special sign was installed for all participants in the campaign: a crown of thorns with a sword on St. George ribbon and with a rosette of national colors on it. Now at the disposal of the Russian General Military Union (formed by General Wrangel in 1924) there is a unique list of participants in the campaign, awarded with this badge.

The fates of the participants in the campaign developed in different ways. Most died in the further struggle, someone experienced the full brunt of the emigre life, someone died in the army of General Franco, already fighting against the Spanish communists. Many became young and famous military leaders - generals Turkul, Manstein (from Kiev), Kharzhevsky, Kutepov. The pioneers have always remained a kind of "cementing" composition of all white parts. Until their death, their motto was: “Everything for Russia! Nothing for yourself! "