On February 9, 1887, Vasily Chapaev, the most famous Red commander of the Civil War, was born. Although during his lifetime he was not very famous and did not particularly stand out among other commanders, after his death he unexpectedly became one of the main heroes of the war. The cult of Chapaev reached such a scale in the Soviet Union that it seemed as if he was the most successful and outstanding commander of that war. The feature film released in the 30s finally cemented the legend about Chapaev, and its characters became so popular that they are still the protagonists of many jokes. Petka, Anka and Vasily Ivanovich firmly entered into Soviet folklore, and the legend about them obscured their real personalities. Life found out the true story of Chapaev and his associates.
Chepaev
Vasily's real name was Chepaev. He was born with this last name, this is how he signed his name, and this last name appears in all documents of that time. However, after the death of the red commander, they began to call him Chapaev. This is exactly what it is called in the book of Commissar Furmanov, on the basis of which the famous Soviet film was later filmed. It is difficult to say what caused this change of name; perhaps it was a mistake or carelessness of Furmanov, who wrote the book, or a deliberate distortion. One way or another, he went down in history under the name Chapaev.
Unlike many Red commanders who were engaged in illegal underground work even before the revolution, Chapaev was a completely trustworthy person. Coming from a peasant family, he moved to the provincial town of Melekess (now renamed Dimitrovgrad), where he worked as a carpenter. He was not involved in revolutionary activities, and after being called up to the front at the beginning of the First World War, he was in very good standing with his superiors. This is clearly evidenced by three (according to other sources, four) soldiers' St. George Crosses for bravery and the rank of sergeant major. In fact, this was the maximum that could be achieved with only a rural parochial school behind him - to become an officer, one had to study further.
During the First World War, Chapaev served in the 326th Belgorai Infantry Regiment under the command of Colonel Nikolai Chizhevsky. After the revolution, Chapaev also did not immediately become involved in the turbulent political life, remaining on the sidelines for a long time. Only a few weeks before the October Revolution, he decided to join the Bolsheviks, thanks to which he was chosen by activists to be the commander of a reserve infantry regiment stationed in Nikolaevsk. Soon after the revolution, the Bolsheviks, who were experiencing an acute shortage of loyal personnel, appointed him military commissar of the Nikolaev district. His task was to create the first detachments of the future Red Army in his region.
On the civil fronts
In the spring of 1918, an uprising against Soviet power broke out in several villages of the Nikolaev district. Chapaev was involved in its suppression. It happened like this: an armed detachment led by a formidable leader came to the village and an indemnity was imposed on the village in money and bread. In order to win the sympathy of the poorest residents of the village, they avoided paying indemnities; in addition, they were actively encouraged to join the detachment. Thus, from several scattered detachments that arose spontaneously (actually autonomous, under the command of local batek-atamans), collected in local villages, two regiments appeared, consolidated into the Pugachev brigade led by Chapaev. It was named in honor of Emelyan Pugachev.
Due to its small size, the brigade mainly acted using guerrilla methods. In the summer of 1918, the white units retreated in an orderly manner, leaving Nikolaevsk, which was occupied by Chapaev’s brigade practically without resistance and was immediately renamed for this occasion to Pugachev.
After this, on the basis of the brigade, the 2nd Nikolaev Division was formed, into which mobilized local residents were brought together. Chapaev was appointed commander, but after two months he was recalled to Moscow to the General Staff Academy for advanced training.
Chapaev did not like studying; he repeatedly wrote letters asking to be released from the academy. In the end, he simply left it in February 1919, having spent about 4 months studying. In the summer of that year, he finally received the main appointment that made him famous: he headed the 25th Infantry Division, later named after him.
It is worth noting that with the emergence of the Soviet legend about Chapaev, a tendency arose to somewhat exaggerate his achievements. The cult of Chapaev grew to such an extent that it could seem as if he, almost single-handedly with his division, defeated the White troops on the Eastern Front. This is, of course, not true. In particular, the capture of Ufa is attributed almost solely to the Chapaevites. In fact, in addition to Chapaev’s, three more Soviet divisions and one cavalry brigade took part in the assault on the city. However, the Chapaevites really distinguished themselves - they were one of two divisions that managed to cross the river and occupy a bridgehead.
Soon the Chapaevites took Lbischensk, a small town not far from Uralsk. It was there that Chapaev would die two months later.
Chapaevites
The 25th Rifle Division, commanded by Chapaev, had a very bloated staff: it numbered more than 20 thousand people. At the same time, no more than 10 thousand were actually combat-ready. The remaining half consisted of rear and auxiliary units that did not participate in the battles.
A little-known fact: some of the Chapaevites, some time after the death of the commander, participated in a rebellion against Soviet power. After the death of Chapaev, part of the soldiers of the 25th division was transferred to the 9th cavalry division under the command of Sapozhkov. Almost all of them were peasants and were acutely worried about the food appropriation system that had begun, when special detachments completely requisitioned grain from the peasants, and not from the richest, but from everyone in a row, dooming many to starvation.
The surplus appropriation system had a significant impact on the rank and file of the Red Army, especially on the natives of the most grain-producing regions, where it was most cruel. Dissatisfaction with the Bolshevik policies caused a number of spontaneous protests. In one of them, known as the Sapozhkov uprising, some former Chapaevites took part. The uprising was quickly suppressed, several hundred active participants were shot.
Death of Chapaev
After occupying Lbischensk, the division dispersed throughout the surrounding settlements, and the headquarters was located in the town itself. The main combat forces were located several tens of kilometers from the headquarters, and the retreating white units could not counterattack due to the significant superiority of the red ones. Then they planned a deep raid on Lbischensk, having found out that the division’s practically unguarded headquarters was located there.
A detachment of 1,200 Cossacks was formed to participate in the raid. They had to travel 150 kilometers across the steppe at night (airplanes patrolled the area during the day), pass all the main combat units of the division and unexpectedly attack the headquarters. The detachment was headed by Colonel Sladkov and his deputy, Colonel Borodin.
For almost a week, the detachment secretly reached Lbischensk. In the vicinity of the city, they captured a red convoy, thanks to which the exact location of Chapaev’s headquarters became known. A special detachment was formed to capture him.
In the early morning of September 5, 1919, the Cossacks broke into the city. The confused soldiers from the divisional school guarding the headquarters did not really offer any resistance, and the detachment moved forward at a rapid pace. The Reds began to retreat to the Ural River, hoping to escape from the Cossacks. Meanwhile, Chapaev managed to escape from the platoon sent to capture him: the Cossacks confused Chapaev with another Red Army soldier, and the division commander, firing back, was able to leave the trap, although he was wounded in the arm.
Chapaev managed to organize a defense, stopping some of the fleeing soldiers. About a hundred people with several machine guns recaptured the headquarters from the Cossack platoon that had occupied it, but by this time the main forces of the detachment had arrived at the headquarters, receiving captured artillery. It was impossible to defend the headquarters under artillery fire; in addition, in the shootout, Chapaev was seriously wounded in the stomach. Command was assumed by the division chief of staff Novikov, who covered a group of Hungarians who were transporting the wounded Chapaev across the river, for which they built a kind of raft from boards.
The division commander was able to be transported to the other side, but on the way he died from blood loss. The Hungarians buried it right on the shore. In any case, Chapaev’s relatives adhered to this version, which they knew directly from the Hungarians themselves. But since then, the river has changed its course several times, and, most likely, the burial is already hidden under water.
However, one of the few surviving witnesses to the events, Chief of Staff Novikov, who managed to hide under the floor in the bathhouse and wait for the Reds to arrive, claimed that the White detachment had completely surrounded the headquarters and cut off all escape routes, so Chapaev’s body must be looked for in the city. However, Chapaev was never found among the dead.
Well, according to the official version, canonized in literature and cinema, Chapaev drowned in the Ural River. This explains the fact that his body was not found...
Chapaev and his team
Thanks to the film and book about Chapaev, orderly Petka, Anka the machine gunner and Commissar Furmanov became integral companions of Chapaev the legend. During his lifetime, Chapaev did not stand out too much, and even a book about him, although it did not go unnoticed, still did not cause a sensation. Chapaev became a real legend after the release of a film about him in the mid-30s. By this time, through the efforts of Stalin, a kind of cult of dead heroes of the Civil War had been created. Although in those days there were plenty of living participants in the war, many of whom played a big role in it, in the conditions of the struggle for power it was unwise to create an additional halo of glory for them, therefore, as a kind of counterbalance to them, the names of the fallen commanders began to be promoted: Chapaev, Shchors, Lazo .
The film about Chapaev was created under the personal patronage of Stalin, who even supervised the writing of the script. So, at his insistence, the romantic line between Petka and Anka the machine gunner was introduced into the film. The leader liked the movie, and the film was expected to have the widest possible release; it was shown in cinemas for several years, and there was, perhaps, not a single Soviet person who did not watch the film at least once. The film is replete with historical inconsistencies: for example, Kappel’s officer regiment (which never had one), dressed in the uniform of the Markov division (which fought on a completely different front), goes into a psychic attack.
Nevertheless, it was he who cemented the myth about Chapaev for many years. Chapaev, dashing on horseback with a sword drawn, was reproduced on millions of postcards, posters and cards. But the real Chapaev, due to a hand injury, could not ride a horse and traveled everywhere by car.
The relationship between Chapaev and Commissioner Furmanov was also far from ideal. They often quarreled, Chapaev complained about the “commissar power,” and Furmanov was dissatisfied with the fact that the division commander had his eyes on his wife and had absolutely no respect for the political work of the party in the army. Both repeatedly wrote complaints against each other to their superiors; their relationship can hardly be characterized as anything other than hostile. Furmanov was indignant: “I was disgusted by your dirty courtship of my wife. I know everything, I have the documents in my hands where you pour out your love and boorish tenderness.”
As a result, this is what saved Furmanov’s life. A month before the death of the headquarters in Lbischensk, he was transferred to Turkestan after another complaint, and Pavel Baturin, who died along with everyone else on September 5, 1919, became the new commissar of the division.
Furmanov served next to Chapaev for only four months, but this did not stop him from writing an entire book in which the real Chapaev was turned into a powerful mythological image of a commander “from the plow”, who did not graduate from universities, but would defeat any educated general.
By the way, Furmanov himself was not such a convinced Bolshevik: before the revolution, he sided with the anarchists and defected to the Bolsheviks only in mid-1918, when they began to persecute the anarchists, and he oriented himself in time to the political situation and changed camps. It is also worth noting that Furmanov not only turned Chepaev into Chapaev, but also changed his last name (during the war years he bore the last name Furman, which is what he is called in all documents of that time). Having taken up writing, he Russified his last name.
Furmanov died of meningitis three years after the book was published and never saw Chapaev’s triumphant march through the Soviet Union.
Petka also had a very real prototype - Pyotr Isaev, a former senior non-commissioned officer of the musical team of the imperial army. In reality, Petka was not a simple orderly, but the commander of a communications battalion. At that time, signalmen were in a special position and were a kind of elite due to the fact that the level of their knowledge was inaccessible to illiterate infantrymen.
There is also no clarity with his death: according to one version, he shot himself on the day of the death of the headquarters in order not to be captured, according to another, he died in battle, according to the third, he committed suicide a year after Chapaev’s death, at his funeral. The most likely version is the second.
Anka the machine gunner is a completely fictional character. There was never such a girl in the Chapaev division, and she is also absent from Furmanov’s original novel. She appeared in the film at the insistence of Stalin, who demanded that the heroic role of women in the Civil War be reflected, and in addition, add a romantic line. Anna Steshenko, the wife of Commissar Furmanov, is sometimes cited as the prototype of the heroine, but she worked in the cultural education of the division and never took part in hostilities. Also sometimes mentioned is a certain nurse, Maria Sidorova, who brought cartridges to the machine gunners, and allegedly even fired from a machine gun, but this is also doubtful.
Posthumous fame
A decade and a half after his death, Chapaev gained such fame that in terms of the number of objects named in his honor, he stood on a par with the highest-ranking party figures. In 1941, the popular Soviet hero was resurrected for the sake of propaganda, filming a short video about how Chapaev swam to the shore and called on everyone to the front to beat the Germans. To this day, he remains the most recognizable character of the Civil War, even despite the collapse of the USSR.
Name: Vasiliy Chapaev
Age: 32 years old
Place of birth: Budaika village, Chuvashia
Place of death: Lbischensk, Ural region
Activity: Chief of the Red Army
Marital status: Was married
Vasily Chapaev - biography
September 5 marks the 97th anniversary of his death Vasily Chapaeva- the most famous and at the same time the most unknown hero of the civil war. His true identity is hidden under a layer of legends created both by official propaganda and the popular imagination.
Legends begin with the very birth of the future division commander. Everywhere they write that he was born on January 28 (old style) 1887 in the family of a Russian peasant Ivan Chapaev. However, his surname does not seem Russian, especially in the “Chepaev” version, as Vasily Ivanovich himself wrote it. In his native village of Budaika, the majority of Chuvash people lived, and today the residents of Chuvashia confidently consider Chapaev-Chepaev as one of their own. True, neighbors argue with them, finding Mordovian or Mari roots in the surname. The hero’s descendants have a different version - his grandfather, while working on a timber rafting site, kept shouting to his comrades “chapay”, that is, “catch on” in the local dialect.
But no matter who Chapaev’s ancestors were, by the time of his birth they had long been Russified, and his uncle even served as a priest. They wanted to direct young Vasya to the spiritual path - he was small in stature, weak and unsuitable for hard peasant labor. Church service provided at least some opportunity to escape from the poverty in which the family lived. Although Ivan Stepanovich was a skilled carpenter, his loved ones constantly subsisted on bread and kvass; out of six children, only three survived.
When Vasya was eight years old, the family moved to the village - now the city - Balakovo, where his father found work in a carpentry artel. An uncle-priest also lived there, to whom Vasya was sent to study. Their relationship did not work out - the nephew did not want to study and, moreover, was not obedient. One winter, in severe frost, his uncle locked him in a cold barn for the night for some other offense. To avoid freezing, the boy somehow got out of the barn and ran home. This is where his spiritual biography ended before it even began.
Chapaev recalled the early years of his biography without any nostalgia: “My childhood was gloomy and difficult. I had to humiliate myself and starve a lot. From an early age I hung around strangers.” He helped his father do carpentry, worked as a sex worker in a tavern, and even walked around with a barrel organ, like Seryozha from Kuprin’s “White Poodle.” Although this may be fiction - Vasily Ivanovich loved to invent all sorts of stories about himself.
For example, he once joked that it stems from a passionate romance between a gypsy tramp and the daughter of the Kazan governor. And since there is little reliable information about Chapaev’s life before the Red Army - he did not have time to tell his children anything, there were no other relatives left, this fiction ended up in his biography, written by Chapaev’s commissar Dmitry Furmanov.
At the age of twenty, Vasily fell in love with the beautiful Pelageya Metlina. By that time, the Chapaev family had gotten out of poverty, Vasya dressed up and easily charmed the girl, who had just turned sixteen. As soon as the wedding took place, in the fall of 1908 the newlywed went into the army. He liked military science, but he didn’t like marching in formation and punching officers. Chapaev, with his proud and independent disposition, did not wait until the end of his service and was demobilized due to illness. A peaceful family life began - he worked as a carpenter, and his wife gave birth to children one after another: Alexander, Claudia, Arkady.
As soon as the last one was born in 1914, Vasily Ivanovich was again recruited as a soldier - the world war began. During two years of fighting in Galicia, he rose from private to sergeant major and was awarded the St. George Medal and four soldiers' Crosses of St. George, which spoke of extreme bravery. By the way, he served in the infantry, he was never a dashing rider - unlike Chapaev from the film of the same name - and after being wounded he could not ride a horse at all. In Galicia, Chapaev was wounded three times, the last time so seriously that after long treatment he was sent to serve in the rear, in his native Volga region.
The return home was not joyful. While Chapaev was fighting, Pelageya got along with the conductor and left with him, leaving her husband and three children. According to legend, Vasily ran for a long time after her cart, begged to stay, even cried, but the beauty firmly decided that an important railway rank suited her more than the heroic, but poor and also wounded Chapaev. Pelageya, however, did not live long with her new husband - she died of typhus. And Vasily Ivanovich married again, keeping his word to his fallen comrade Pyotr Kameshkertsev. His widow, also Pelageya, but middle-aged and ugly, became the hero’s new companion and took his children into the house in addition to her three.
After the revolution of 1917 in the city of Nikolaevsk, where Chapaev was transferred to serve, the soldiers of the 138th reserve regiment chose him as regimental commander. Thanks to his efforts, the regiment did not go home, like many others, but almost in full force joined the Red Army.
The Chapaevsky regiment found a job in May 1918, when civil war broke out in Russia. The rebel Czechoslovaks, in alliance with local White Guards, captured the entire east of the country and sought to cut the Volga artery, through which grain was delivered to the center. In the cities of the Volga region, the whites staged riots: one of them took the life of Chapaev’s brother, Grigory, the Balakovo military commissar. Chapaev took all the money from another brother, Mikhail, who owned a shop and accumulated considerable capital, using it to equip his regiment.
Having distinguished himself in heavy battles with the Ural Cossacks, who sided with the whites, Chapaev was chosen by the fighters as commander of the Nikolaev division. By that time, such elections were prohibited in the Red Army, and an angry telegram was sent down from above: Chapaev could not command the division because “he does not have the appropriate training, is infected with a delusion of autocracy, and does not carry out military orders exactly.”
However, the removal of a popular commander could turn into a riot. And then the staff strategists sent Chapaev with his division against the three times superior forces of the Samara “constituent unit” - it seemed to certain death. However, the division commander came up with a cunning plan to lure the enemy into a trap, and completely defeated him. Samara was soon taken, and the Whites retreated to the steppes between the Volga and the Urals, where Chapaev chased them until November.
This month, the capable commander was sent to study in Moscow, at the General Staff Academy. Upon admission, he filled out the following form:
“Are you an active party member? What was your activity like?
I belong. Formed 7 regiments of the Red Army.
What awards do you have?
Knight of St. George 4 degrees. The watch was handed over.
What general education did you receive?
Self-Taught."
Having recognized Chapaev as “almost illiterate,” he was nevertheless accepted as “having revolutionary combat experience.” The questionnaire data is supplemented by an anonymous description of the division commander, preserved in the Cheboksary Memorial Museum: “He was not brought up and did not have self-control in dealing with people. He was often rude and cruel... He was a weak politician, but he was a real revolutionary, an excellent communard in life and a noble, selfless fighter for communism... There were times when he could seem frivolous...”
In principle. Chapaev was the same partisan commander as Father Makhno, and he was uncomfortable at the academy. When some military expert in a military history class sarcastically asked if he knew the Rhine River. Chapaev, who fought in Europe during the German War, nevertheless answered boldly: “Why the hell do I need your Rhine? It’s on Solyanka that I have to know every bump, because we’re fighting the Cossacks there.”
After several similar skirmishes, Vasily Ivanovich asked to be sent back to the front. The army authorities complied with the request, but in a strange way - Chapaev had to create a new division literally from scratch. In a dispatch to Trotsky, he was indignant: “I bring to your attention, I am exhausted... You appointed me head of the division, but instead of the division you gave me a disheveled brigade with only 1000 bayonets... They don’t give me rifles, there are no overcoats, people are undressed " And yet, in a short time, he managed to create a division of 14 thousand bayonets and inflict a heavy defeat on Kolchak’s army, defeating its most combat-ready units, consisting of Izhevsk workers.
It was at this time, in March 1919, that a new commissar appeared in the 25th Chapaev Division - Dmitry Furmanov. This dropout student was four years younger than Chapaev and dreamed of a literary career. This is how he describes their meeting:
“Early in March, at about 5-6 o’clock, they knocked on my door. I go out:
I am Chapaev, hello!
In front of me stood an ordinary man, lean, of average height, apparently of little strength, with thin, almost feminine hands. Thin dark brown hair stuck to his forehead; a short nervous thin nose, thin eyebrows in a chain, thin lips, shiny clean teeth, a shaved chin, a lush sergeant-major mustache. Eyes... light blue, almost green. The face is matte-clean and fresh.”
In the novel “Chapaev,” which Furmanov published in 1923, Chapaev generally appears at first as an unattractive character and, moreover, a real savage in the ideological sense - he spoke “for the Bolsheviks, but against the communists.” However, under the influence of Furmanov, by the end of the novel he becomes a convinced party member. In reality, the division commander never joined the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks), not trusting the party leadership too much, and it seems that these feelings were mutual - the same Trotsky saw in Chapaev a stubborn supporter of the “partisanism” he hated and, if necessary, could well have shot him, as commander of the Second Cavalry Army of Mironov.
Chapaev’s relationship with Furmanov was also not as warm as the latter tried to show. The reason for this is the lyrical story at the headquarters of the 25th, which became known from Furman’s diaries, which were recently declassified. It turned out that the division commander began to quite openly court the commissar’s wife, Anna Steshenko, a young and pretty failed actress. By that time, Vasily Chapaev’s second wife had also left him: she cheated on the division commander with a supply officer. Having once arrived home on leave, Vasily Ivanovich found the lovers in bed and, according to one version, drove them both under the bed with shots over their heads.
On the other hand, he simply turned around and went back to the front. After this, he flatly refused to see the traitor, although later she came to his regiment to make peace, taking with her Chapaev’s youngest son, Arkady. I thought I would pacify my husband’s anger with this - he adored children, during a short rest he played tag with them and made toys. As a result, Chapaev took the children, giving them to be raised by some widow, and divorced his treacherous wife. Later, a rumor spread that she was the culprit in Chapaev’s death, since she had betrayed him to the Cossacks. Under the weight of suspicion, Pelageya Kameshkertseva went crazy and died in a hospital.
Having become a bachelor, Chapaev turned his feelings to Furmanov’s wife. Having seen his letters with the signature “Chapaev, who loves you,” the commissioner, in turn, wrote an angry letter to the division commander, in which he called him “a dirty, depraved little man”: “There is nothing to be jealous of a low person, and I, of course, was not jealous of her, but I was I am deeply outraged by the impudent courtship and constant pestering that Anna Nikitichna repeatedly told me about.”
Chapaev’s reaction is unknown, but soon Furmanov sent a complaint to the front commander Frunze about the “offensive actions” of the division commander, “reaching assault.” As a result, Frunze allowed him and his wife to leave the division, which saved Furmanov’s life - a month later Chapaev, along with his entire staff and the new commissar Baturin, died.
In June 1919, the Chapaevites took Ufa, and the division commander himself was wounded in the head while crossing the high-water Belaya River. The Kolchak garrison of thousands fled, abandoning ammunition warehouses. The secret of Chapaev’s victories was the speed, pressure and “little tricks” of the people’s war. For example, near Ufa, he is said to have driven a herd of cattle towards the enemy, raising clouds of dust.
Deciding that Chapaev had a huge army, the whites began to flee. It is possible, however, that this is a myth - the same as those from time immemorial that have been told about Alexander the Great or. It’s not without reason that even before the popular cult in the Volga region, fairy tales were written about Chapaev - “Chapai flies into battle in a black cloak, they shoot at him, but he doesn’t care. After the battle, he shakes his cloak - and from there all the bullets come out intact.”
Another tale is that Chapaev invented the cart. In fact, this innovation first appeared in the peasant army, from which it was borrowed by the Reds. Vasily Ivanovich quickly realized the advantages of a cart with a machine gun, although he himself preferred cars. Chapaev had a scarlet Stever confiscated from some bourgeois, a blue Packard and a miracle of technology - a yellow high-speed Ford that reached speeds of up to 50 km per hour. Having installed on it the same machine gun as on the cart, the division commander used to almost single-handedly knock out the enemy from captured villages.
After the capture of Ufa, Chapaev's division headed south, trying to break through to the Caspian Sea. The division headquarters with a small garrison (up to 2000 soldiers) remained in the town of Lbischensk; the remaining units went forward. On the night of September 5, 1919, a Cossack detachment under the command of General Borodin quietly crept up to the city and surrounded it. The Cossacks not only knew that the hated Chapai was in Lbischensk, but also had a good idea of the balance of power of the Reds. Moreover, the horse patrols that usually guarded the headquarters were for some reason removed, and the division's airplanes, conducting aerial reconnaissance, turned out to be faulty. This suggests a betrayal that was not the work of the ill-fated Pelageya, but of one of the staff members - former officers.
It seems that Chapaev still did not overcome all his “frivolous” qualities - in a sober state, he and his assistants would hardly have missed the approach of the enemy. Waking up from the shooting, they rushed to the river in their underwear, shooting back as they went. The Cossacks fired after. Chapaev was wounded in the arm (according to another version, in the stomach). Three fighters took him down a sandy cliff to the river. Furmanov briefly described what happened next, according to eyewitness accounts: “All four rushed in and swam. Two were killed at the same moment, as soon as they touched the water. The two were swimming, they were already close to the shore - and at that moment a predatory bullet hit Chapaev in the head. When the companion, who had crawled into the sedge, looked back, there was no one behind: Chapaev drowned in the waves of the Urals...”
But there is another version: in the 60s, Chapaev’s daughter received a letter from Hungarian soldiers who fought in the 25th division. The letter said that the Hungarians transported the wounded Chapaev across the river on a raft, but on the shore he died from loss of blood and was buried there. Attempts to find the grave led nowhere - the Urals had changed its course by that time, and the bank opposite Lbischensk was flooded.
Recently an even more sensational version appeared - Chapaev was captured, went over to the side of the whites and died in exile. There is no confirmation of this version, although the division commander could indeed have been captured. In any case, the newspaper “Krasnoyarsky Rabochiy” reported on March 9, 1926 that “Kolchak’s officer Trofimov-Mirsky was arrested in Penza, who admitted that he killed in 1919 the head of the division, Chapaev, who was captured and enjoyed legendary fame.”
Vasily Ivanovich died at 32 years old. Without a doubt, he could have become one of the prominent commanders of the Red Army - and, most likely, would have died in 1937, like his comrade-in-arms and first biographer Ivan Kutyakov, like many other Chapaevites. But it turned out differently - Chapaev, who fell at the hands of his enemies, took a prominent place in the pantheon of Soviet heroes, from where many more significant figures were erased. The heroic legend began with Furmanov's novel. “Chapaev” became the first big work of the commissar who went into literature. It was followed by the novel “The Mutiny” about the anti-Soviet uprising in Semirechye - Furmanov also observed it personally. In March 1926, the writer's career was cut short by sudden death from meningitis.
The writer's widow, Anna Steshenko-Furmanova, fulfilled her dream by becoming the director of the theater (in the Chapaev division she headed the cultural and educational part). Out of love either for her husband or for Chapaev, she decided to bring the story of the legendary division commander to life on stage, but in the end the play she conceived turned into a film script, published in 1933 in the magazine “Literary Contemporary”.
Soon, young filmmakers with the same names, Georgy and Sergey Vasilyev, decided to film a film based on the script. Already at the initial stage of work on the film, Stalin intervened in the process, always keeping film production under his personal control. Through the film bosses, he conveyed a wish to the directors of “Chapaev”: to complement the picture with a love line, introducing into it a young fighter and a girl from the people - “a kind of pretty machine gunner.”
The desired fighter became a glimpse of Petka Furmanov - "Little thin Black Mazik." There was also a “machine gunner” - Maria Popova, who actually served as a nurse in the Chapaev division. In one of the battles, a wounded machine gunner forced her to lie down behind the Maxim trigger: “Press it, otherwise I’ll shoot you!” The lines stopped the Whites' attack, and after the battle the girl received a gold watch from the division commander's hands. True, Maria’s combat experience was limited to this. Anna Furmanova didn’t have that either, but she gave the heroine of the film her name - and that’s how Anka the Machine Gunner appeared.
This saved Anna Nikitichna in 1937, when her second husband, the red commander Lajos Gavro, the “Hungarian Chapaev,” was shot. Maria Popova was also lucky - after seeing Anka in the cinema, a pleased Stalin helped her prototype make a career. Maria Andreevna became a diplomat, worked in Europe for a long time, and along the way wrote a famous song:
Chapaev the hero was walking around the Urals.
He was eager to fight with his enemies like a falcon...
Go ahead, comrades, don’t dare retreat.
Chapaevites bravely got used to dying!
They say that shortly before Maria Popova's death in 1981, a whole delegation of nurses came to her hospital to ask if she loved Petka. “Of course,” she answered, although in reality it was unlikely that anything connected her with Pyotr Isaev. After all, he was not a boy-guarantor, but a regiment commander, an employee of the Chapaev headquarters. And he died, as they say, not while crossing the Urals with his commander, but a year later. They say that on the anniversary of Chapaev’s death, he got drunk half to death, wandered to the shore of the Urals, and exclaimed: “I didn’t save Chapai!” - and shot himself in the temple. Of course, this is also a legend - it seems that literally everything that surrounded Vasily Ivanovich became legendary.
In the film, Petka was played by Leonid Kmit, who remained “an actor of one role,” like Boris Blinov - Furmanov. And Boris Babochkin, who played a lot in the theater, was first and foremost Chapaev for everyone. Participants in the Civil War, including Vasily Ivanovich’s friends, noted his 100% fit into the image. By the way, at first Vasily Vanin was appointed to the role of Chapaev, and 30-year-old Babochkin was to play Petka. They say that it was the same Anna Furmanova who insisted on the “castling”, who decided that Babochkin was more like her hero.
The directors agreed and generally hedged their bets as best they could. In case of accusations of excessive tragedy, there was another, optimistic ending - in a beautiful apple orchard, Anka plays with the children, Petka, already the division commander, approaches them. Chapaev’s voice is heard behind the scenes: “Get married, you’ll work together. The war will end, life will be wonderful. Do you know what life will be like? There’s no need to die!”
As a result, this suspense was avoided, and the film by the Vasilyev brothers, released in November 1934, became the first Soviet blockbuster - huge queues lined up at the Udarnik cinema, where it was shown. Entire factories marched there in columns, carrying the slogans “We are going to see Chapaev.” The film received high awards not only at the First Moscow Film Festival in 1935, but also in Paris and New York. The directors and Babochkin received the Stalin Prize, the actress Varvara Myasnikova, who played Anna, received the Order of the Red Banner of Labor.
Stalin himself watched the film thirty times, not much different from the boys of the 30s - they entered the cinema halls over and over again, hoping that someday Chapai would emerge. Interestingly, this is what ultimately happened - in 1941, in one of the propaganda film collections, Boris Babochkin, famous for his role as Chapaev, emerged unharmed from the waves of the Urals and set off, calling soldiers behind him, to beat the Nazis. Few people saw this movie, but the rumor about the miraculous resurrection finally cemented the myth about the hero.
Chapaev's popularity was great even before the film, but after it it turned into a real cult. A city in the Samara region, dozens of collective farms, and hundreds of streets were named after the division commander. His memorial museums appeared in Pugachev (formerly Nikolaevsk). Lbischensk, the village of Krasny Yar, and later in Cheboksary, within the city limits of which was the village of Budaika. As for the 25th division, it received the name Chapaev immediately after the death of its commander and still bears it.
The nationwide popularity also affected Chapaev’s children. His senior commander, Alexander, became an artillery officer, went through the war, and rose to the rank of major general. The younger one, Arkady, went into aviation, was a friend of Chkalov and, like him, died before the war while testing a new fighter. The faithful keeper of her father’s memory was her daughter Claudia, who, after the death of her parents, almost died of hunger and wandered around orphanages, but the title of daughter of a hero helped her make a party career. By the way, neither Klavdia Vasilyevna nor her descendants tried to fight the anecdotes about Chapaev that passed from mouth to mouth (and now published many times). And this is understandable: in most jokes Chapai appears as a rude, simple-minded, but very likeable person. The same as the hero of the novel, film and all official myth.
Each era gives birth to its heroes. The 20th century in the history of our country is a lot of social upheavals - several revolutions and wars. One of them was a civil war, in which different worldviews of different social strata collided. Among the heroes who defended the interests of the young Soviet Republic, there is a truly unique personality - Vasily Ivanovich Chapaev.
By today's standards, he was a young man, because at the time of his death he was only 32 years old. Vasily Ivanovich Chapaev was born on January 28, 1887 in the Chuvash village of Budaika, which was located in the Cheboksary district of the Kazan province. In the Russian family of peasant Ivan Chapaev, he was the sixth child. He was born prematurely and was very weak. Therefore, the parents could hardly imagine what a heroic fate awaited their tiny Vasenka.
The large family was very poor and, in search of a better life and earnings, moved to relatives in the Samara province and settled in the village of Balakovo. Here Vasily went to a parish school in the hope that he could become a priest. But this did not happen. But he married the priest’s young daughter, Pelageya Metlina. Soon he was drafted into the army. After serving for a year, Vasily Chapaev was discharged due to health reasons.
Returning to his family, he began working as a carpenter until the disaster struck in 1914. By this time, the family of Vasily and Pelageya already had three children. In January, Vasily Chapaev goes to the front and proves himself a skillful and brave warrior. For his bravery and courage he was awarded three St. George Crosses and the St. George Medal. Sergeant Major Vasily Chapaev graduated from the First World War as a full Knight of St. George.
In the fall of 1917, he chose the side of the Bolsheviks and proved to be an excellent organizer. In the Saratov province, he creates 14 Red Guard detachments, which participate in the battles against General Kaledin. In May 1918, the Pugachev brigade was formed from these detachments, and Chapaev was appointed to command it. This brigade, under the control of a self-taught commander, recaptures the city of Nikolaevsk from the Czechoslovaks.
The popularity and glory of the young Red commander grew literally before our eyes, and at the same time Chapaev barely knew how to read and was completely unable, or did not want, to obey orders. The actions of the 2nd Nikolaev Division, led by Chapaev, instilled fear in the enemies, but often smacked of partisanship. Therefore, the command decided to send him to study at the newly opened Academy of the General Staff of the Red Army. But the young commander could not sit at the training table for long and returned to the front.
In the summer of 1919, under his command, the 25th Rifle Division carried out successful operations against Kolchak's White Guards. At the beginning of June, Chapaev's division liberated Ufa, and a month later the city of Uralsk. The professional military men who led the White Guard troops paid tribute to the leadership talents of the young Red Guard commander. Not only his comrades-in-arms, but also his opponents saw him as a real military genius.
Chapaev was prevented from truly revealing the commander's talent by his early death, which was led to by a tragedy caused by a military mistake, the only one in the military career of Vasily Ivanovich Chapaev. This happened on September 5, 1919. Chapaev's division advanced and broke away from the main forces. Having stopped for a night's rest, the division headquarters settled down separately from the division units. White Guards under the command of General Borodin, numbering up to 2,000 bayonets, attacked the headquarters of the Chapaevsky division.
Wounded in the head and stomach, the division commander was able to organize the Red Guards, who were retreating in disarray, for defense. But completely disproportionate forces forced us to retreat. The soldiers transported the wounded commander across the Ural River on a raft, but he died from his wounds. Chapaev was buried in the coastal sand so that his enemies would not violate his body. Subsequently, the burial site could not be found.
The Chapaev division continued to successfully crush enemies even after the death of its commander. For many, it will be a discovery that the later famous Czech writer Jaroslav Hasek, the famous partisan commander Sidor Kovpak, and Major General Ivan Panfilov, whose fighters glorified themselves during the defense, fought in the ranks of the Chapaevsky division.
Vasily Chapaev was born on January 28 (February 9), 1887 in the village of Budaika, Cheboksary district, Kazan province, into a Russian peasant family. Vasily was the sixth child in the family of Ivan Stepanovich Chapaev (1854-1921).
Some time later, in search of a better life, the Chapaev family moved to the village of Balakovo, Nikolaev district, Samara province. Ivan Stepanovich enrolled his son in a local parish school, the patron of which was his wealthy cousin. There were already priests in the Chapaev family, and the parents wanted Vasily to become a clergyman, but life decreed otherwise.
In the fall of 1908, Vasily was drafted into the army and sent to Kyiv. But already in the spring of the following year, for unknown reasons, Chapaev was transferred from the army to the reserve and transferred to first-class militia warriors. According to the official version, due to illness. The version about his political unreliability, because of which he was transferred to the warriors, is not confirmed by anything. Before the World War, he did not serve in the regular army. He worked as a carpenter. From 1912 to 1914, Chapaev and his family lived in the city of Melekess (now Dimitrovgrad, Ulyanovsk region) on Chuvashskaya Street. Here his son Arkady was born. At the beginning of the war, on September 20, 1914, Chapaev was called up for military service and sent to the 159th reserve infantry regiment in the city of Atkarsk.
Chapaev went to the front in January 1915. He fought in the 326th Belgorai Infantry Regiment of the 82nd Infantry Division in the 9th Army of the Southwestern Front in Volyn and Galicia. Was wounded. In July 1915 he graduated from the training team, received the rank of junior non-commissioned officer, and in October - senior officer. He finished the war with the rank of sergeant major. For his bravery, he was awarded the St. George Medal and soldiers' St. George Crosses of three degrees.
I met the February revolution in a hospital in Saratov; On September 28, 1917 he joined the RSDLP(b). He was elected commander of the 138th reserve infantry regiment stationed in Nikolaevsk. On December 18, the district congress of Soviets elected him military commissar of the Nikolaev district. In this position he led the dispersal of the Nikolaev district zemstvo. Organized the district Red Guard of 14 detachments. He took part in the campaign against General Kaledin (near Tsaritsyn), then (in the spring of 1918) in the campaign of the Special Army to Uralsk. On his initiative, on May 25, a decision was made to reorganize the Red Guard detachments into two Red Army regiments: them. Stepan Razin and them. Pugachev, united in the Pugachev brigade under the command of Chapaev. Later he took part in battles with the Czechoslovaks and the People's Army, from whom he recaptured Nikolaevsk, renamed Pugachev in honor of the brigade. On September 19, 1918, he was appointed commander of the 2nd Nikolaev Division. From November 1918 to February 1919 - at the Academy of the General Staff. Then - Commissioner of Internal Affairs of the Nikolaev district. From May 1919 - brigade commander of the Special Aleksandrovo-Gai Brigade, from June - head of the 25th Infantry Division, which participated in the Bugulma and Belebeyevskaya operations against Kolchak's army. Under the leadership of Chapaev, this division occupied Ufa on June 9, 1919, and Uralsk on July 11. During the capture of Ufa, Chapaev was wounded in the head by a burst from an aircraft machine gun.
Vasily Ivanovich Chapaev died on September 5, 1919 as a result of a deep raid by the Cossack detachment of Colonel N. N. Borodin (1192 soldiers with 9 machine guns and 2 guns), which culminated in an unexpected attack on the well-guarded (about 1000 bayonets) and located in the deep rear of the city of Lbischensk (now the village of Chapaev, West Kazakhstan region of Kazakhstan), where the headquarters of the 25th division was located.
In 1908, Chapaev met 16-year-old Pelageya Metlina, the daughter of a priest. On July 5, 1909, 22-year-old Vasily Ivanovich Chepaev married a 17-year-old peasant woman from the village of Balakova, Pelageya Nikanorovna Metlina (State Archives of the Saratov Region F.637. Op.7. D.69. L.380ob-309.). They lived together for 6 years and had three children. Then the First World War began, and Chapaev went to the front. Pelageya lived in his parents’ house, then went with the children to a neighbor’s conductor.
At the beginning of 1917, Chapaev went to his native place and intended to divorce Pelageya, but was satisfied with taking the children from her and returning them to their parents’ house. Soon after this, he became friends with Pelageya Kamishkertseva, the widow of Pyotr Kamishkertsev, a friend of Chapaev, who died of a wound during the fighting in the Carpathians (Chapaev and Kamishkertsev promised each other that if one of the two was killed, the survivor would take care of his friend’s family). In 1919, Chapaev settled Kamishkertseva with her children (Chapaev’s children and Kamishkertsev’s daughters Olympiada and Vera) in the village. Klintsovka at the division’s artillery depot, after which Kamishkertseva cheated on Chapaev with the head of the artillery depot, Georgy Zhivolozhinov. This circumstance was revealed shortly before Chapaev’s death and dealt him a strong moral blow. In the last year of his life, Chapaev also had affairs with a certain Tanka the Cossack (the daughter of a Cossack colonel, with whom he was forced to separate under moral pressure from the Red Army) and the wife of Commissar Furmanov, Anna Nikitichnaya Steshenko, which led to an acute conflict with Furmanov and was the reason for his recall Furmanov from the division shortly before the death of Chapaev
Chapaev, according to her, immediately went back to division headquarters. Soon after this, Pelageya decided to make peace with her common-law husband and headed to Lbischensk, taking little Arkady with her. However, she was not allowed to see Chapaev. On the way back, Pelageya stopped at the white headquarters and reported information about the small number of forces stationed in Lbischensk. According to K. Chapaeva, she heard Pelageya boasting about this already in the 1930s. However, it should be noted that since the population of Lbischensk and the surrounding area, consisting of Ural Cossacks, completely sympathized with the whites and maintained contact with them, the latter were intimately aware of the situation in the city. Therefore, even if the story of Pelageya Kamishkertseva’s betrayal is true, the information she provided was not of particular value. There is no mention of this report in the White Guard documents.
Chapaev's division, separated from the rear and suffering heavy losses, in early September settled down to rest in the Lbischensk area, and in Lbischensk itself the division headquarters, supply department, tribunal, revolutionary committee and other divisional institutions with a total number of almost two thousand people were located. In addition, there were about two thousand mobilized peasant transport workers in the city who did not have any weapons. The city was guarded by a division school of 600 people - it was these 600 active bayonets that were Chapaev’s main force at the time of the attack. The main forces of the division were located at a distance of 40-70 km from the city.
The Lbishchensky raid by Colonel Borodin’s detachment began on the evening of August 31. On September 4, Borodin’s detachment secretly approached the city and hid in the reeds in the backwaters of the Urals. Air reconnaissance (4 airplanes) did not report this to Chapaev, apparently due to the fact that the pilots sympathized with the whites (after the death of Chapaev, they all flew over to the side of the whites). At dawn on September 5, the Cossacks attacked Lbischensk. Panic and chaos began, some of the Red Army soldiers crowded into Cathedral Square, were surrounded there and taken prisoner; others were captured or killed while clearing the city; only a small part managed to break through to the Ural River. All prisoners were executed - they were shot in batches of 100-200 people on the banks of the Urals. Among those captured after the battle and shot was divisional commissar P. S. Baturin, who tried to hide in the oven of one of the houses. The chief of staff of the Ural White Army, Colonel Motornov, describes the results of this operation as follows:
As documents testify, for the capture of Chapaev, Borodin assigned a special platoon under the command of the guard Belonozhkin, who, led by a captured Red Army soldier, attacked the house where Chapaev was quartered, but let him go: the Cossacks attacked the Red Army soldier who appeared from the house, mistaking him for Chapaev himself, in while Chapaev jumped out the window and managed to escape. While fleeing, he was wounded in the arm by Belonozhkin's shot. Having gathered and organized the Red Army soldiers who fled to the river in panic, Chapaev organized a detachment of about a hundred people with a machine gun and was able to throw back Belonozhkin, who did not have machine guns. However, in the process he was wounded in the stomach. According to the story of Chapaev's eldest son, Alexander, two Hungarian Red Army soldiers put the wounded Chapaev on a raft made from half a gate and transported him across the Urals. But on the other side it turned out that Chapaev died from loss of blood. The Hungarians buried his body with their hands in the coastal sand and covered it with reeds so that the Cossacks would not find the grave. This story was subsequently confirmed by one of the participants in the events, who in 1962 sent a letter from Hungary to Chapaev’s daughter with a detailed description of the death of the division commander. The investigation carried out by whites also confirms these data; from the words of captured Red Army soldiers, “Chapaev, leading a group of Red Army soldiers towards us, was wounded in the stomach. The wound turned out to be so severe that after that he could no longer lead the battle and was transported on planks across the Urals... he [Chapaev] was already on the Asian side of the river. Ural died from a wound in the stomach.” The place where Chapaev was supposedly buried is now flooded - the river bed has changed.
Memory:
The Chapaevka River and the city of Chapaevsk in the Samara region were named in his honor.
In 1974, the Chapaev Museum was opened in Cheboksary near his birthplace.
In the city of Pugachev, Saratov region, there is a house-museum where Vasily Ivanovich lived and worked in 1919. The Chapaevskaya 25th Infantry Division was formed in this city.
In the village of Krasny Yar, Ufa region of the Republic of Bashkortostan, there is a house-museum named after the 25th Infantry Division in the building that housed the division headquarters and a field hospital during the liberation of Ufa.
There is a museum of V.I. Chapaev located in the village of Lbischenskaya (now the village of Chapaev, West Kazakhstan region) on the site of the division commander’s last battle, it has existed since the 1920s. It is located in the house where the headquarters of the 25th Infantry Division was located.
There is a house-museum of V. I. Chapaev located in Uralsk (West Kazakhstan region)
There is also a house-museum of V. I. Chapaev in the city of Balakovo, Saratov region (Address of the directorate: 413865, Saratov region, Balakovo, Chapaev St., 110). Founded in 1948 as a branch of the Pugachev Memorial House-Museum of V. I. Chapaev. In 1986, it became a branch of the Saratov Regional Museum of Local History. The initiators of the creation of the museum in the Chapaevs’ parental home were the Chapaevites and the Red partisans of the city of Balakovo and the region. Since this city is the second homeland of the Red Army commander V.I. Chapaev, famous during the Civil War. It was in the Sirotskaya Sloboda (former outskirts of the city of Balakovo), where the house-museum of V.I. Chapaev is now located, that his childhood and youth years passed, the formation of his personality. This memorial museum shows the peaceful period in the life of the famous division commander.
In St. Petersburg, in school No. 146 of the Kalininsky district, a museum named after V. I. Chapaev was created by teachers and students in the 1970s. Groups of students acted as tour guides. Meetings were held with veterans of the legendary 25th division. Performances were held in which school students also acted as actors.
A river cruise double-deck motor ship of Project 305 was named in honor of Vasily Ivanovich.
Project 1134A large anti-submarine ship (BOD) of the Kronstadt type
When on February 9 (January 28), 1887, in the village of Budaika, Cheboksary district, Kazan province, the sixth child was born into the family of Russian peasant Ivan Chapaev, neither mother nor father could even think about the glory that awaited their son.
Chapai's childhood.
Rather, they were thinking about the upcoming funeral - the baby, named Vasenka, was born at seven months old, was very weak and, it seemed, could not survive. However, the will to live turned out to be stronger than death - the boy survived and began to grow up to the delight of his parents.
Vasya Chapaev did not even think about any military career - in poor Budaika there was a problem of everyday survival, there was no time for heavenly pretzels.
The origin of the family surname is interesting. Chapaev’s grandfather, Stepan Gavrilovich, was unloading timber and other heavy cargoes rafted down the Volga at the Cheboksary pier. And he often shouted “chap”, “chap”, “chap”, that is, “catch” or “catch”. Over time, the word “chepai” stuck with him as a street nickname, and then became his official surname.
It is curious that the Red commander himself subsequently wrote his last name exactly as “Chepaev”, and not “Chapaev”.
The poverty of the Chapaev family drove them in search of a better life to the Samara province, to the village of Balakovo. Here Father Vasily had a cousin who lived as a patron of the parish school. The boy was assigned to study, hoping that over time he would become a priest.
War gives birth to heroes.
In 1908, Vasily Chapaev was drafted into the army, but a year later he was discharged due to illness. Even before joining the army, Vasily started a family, marrying the 16-year-old daughter of a priest, Pelageya Metlina. Returning from the army, Chapaev began to engage in purely peaceful carpentry. In 1912, while continuing to work as a carpenter, Vasily and his family moved to Melekess. Until 1914, three children were born into the family of Pelageya and Vasily - two sons and a daughter.
The whole life of Chapaev and his family was turned upside down by the First World War. Called up in September 1914, Vasily went to the front in January 1915. He fought in Volhynia in Galicia and proved himself to be a skilled warrior. Chapaev ended the First World War with the rank of sergeant major, being awarded the soldier's St. George Cross of three degrees and the St. George Medal.
In the fall of 1917, the brave soldier Chapaev joined the Bolsheviks and unexpectedly showed himself to be a brilliant organizer. In the Nikolaev district of the Saratov province, he created 14 detachments of the Red Guard, which took part in the campaign against the troops of General Kaledin. On the basis of these detachments, the Pugachev brigade was created in May 1918 under the command of Chapaev. Together with this brigade, the self-taught commander recaptured the city of Nikolaevsk from the Czechoslovaks.
The fame and popularity of the young commander grew before our eyes. In September 1918, Chapaev led the 2nd Nikolaev Division, which instilled fear in the enemy. Nevertheless, Chapaev’s tough temperament and his inability to obey unquestioningly led to the fact that the command considered it best to send him from the front to study at the General Staff Academy.
...Already in the 1970s, another legendary Red commander Semyon Budyonny, listening to jokes about Chapaev, shook his head: “I told Vaska: learn, you fool, otherwise they will laugh at you! Well, I didn’t listen!”
The Ural, the Ural River, its grave is deep...
Chapaev really did not stay long at the academy, once again going to the front. In the summer of 1919, he headed the 25th Rifle Division, which quickly became legendary, as part of which he carried out brilliant operations against Kolchak’s troops. On June 9, 1919, the Chapaevites liberated Ufa, and on July 11, Uralsk.
During the summer of 1919, Divisional Commander Chapaev managed to greatly surprise the career white generals with his military leadership talent. Both comrades and enemies saw in him a real military nugget. Alas, Chapaev did not have time to truly open up.
The tragedy, which is called Chapaev’s only military mistake, occurred on September 5, 1919. Chapaev's division was rapidly advancing, breaking away from the rear. Units of the division stopped to rest, and the headquarters was located in the village of Lbischensk.
On September 5, the Whites, numbering up to 2,000 bayonets under the command of General Borodin, carried out a raid and suddenly attacked the headquarters of the 25th division. The main forces of the Chapaevites were 40 km from Lbischensk and could not come to the rescue.
The real forces that could resist the Whites were 600 bayonets, and they entered into a battle that lasted six hours. Chapaev himself was hunted by a special detachment, which, however, was not successful. Vasily Ivanovich managed to get out of the house where he was quartered, gather about a hundred fighters who were retreating in disarray, and organize a defense.
There was conflicting information about the circumstances of Chapaev's death for a long time, until in 1962 the division commander's daughter Claudia received a letter from Hungary, in which two Chapaev veterans, Hungarians by nationality, who were personally present at the last minutes of the division commander's life, told what really happened.
During the battle with the Whites, Chapaev was wounded in the head and stomach, after which four Red Army soldiers, having built a raft from boards, managed to transport the commander to the other side of the Urals. However, Chapaev died from his wounds during the crossing.
The Red Army soldiers, fearing that their enemies would mock his body, buried Chapaev in the coastal sand, throwing branches over the place.
There were no active searches for the division commander’s grave immediately after the Civil War, because the version outlined by the commissar of the 25th division Dmitry Furmanov in his book “Chapaev” became canonical - that the wounded division commander drowned while trying to swim across the river.
In the 1960s, Chapaev’s daughter tried to search for her father’s grave, but it turned out that this was impossible - the course of the Urals changed its course, and the river bottom became the final resting place of the red hero.
The birth of a legend.
Not everyone believed in Chapaev’s death. Historians who studied the biography of Chapaev noted that there was a story among Chapaev veterans that their Chapai swam out, was rescued by the Kazakhs, suffered from typhoid fever, lost his memory and now works as a carpenter in Kazakhstan, remembering nothing about his heroic past.
Fans of the white movement like to attach great importance to the Lbishchensky raid, calling it a major victory, but this is not so. Even the destruction of the headquarters of the 25th division and the death of its commander did not affect the general course of the war - the Chapaev division continued to successfully destroy enemy units.
Not everyone knows that the Chapaevites avenged their commander on the same day, September 5th. The commander of the White raid, General Borodin, who was victoriously driving through Lbischensk after the defeat of Chapaev’s headquarters, was shot by the Red Army soldier Volkov.
Historians still cannot agree on what Chapaev’s role as a commander in the Civil War actually was. Some believe that he actually played a significant role, others believe that his image has been exaggerated by art.
Indeed, Chapaev gained wide popularity from a book written by the former commissar of the 25th division, Dmitry Furmanov.
During their lifetime, the relationship between Chapaev and Furmanov could not be called simple, which, by the way, is best reflected later in anecdotes. Chapaev's affair with Furmanov's wife Anna Steshenko led to the fact that the commissioner had to leave the division. However, Furmanov's writing talent smoothed out personal contradictions.
But the real, boundless glory of Chapaev, Furmanov, and other now popular heroes overtook in 1934, when the Vasilyev brothers shot the film “Chapaev,” which was based on Furmanov’s book and the memories of the Chapaevites.
Furmanov himself was no longer alive by that time - he died suddenly in 1926 from meningitis. And the author of the film’s script was Anna Furmanova, the commissar’s wife and the division commander’s mistress.
It is to her that we owe the appearance of Anka the Machine Gunner in the history of Chapaev. The fact is that in reality there was no such character. Its prototype was the nurse of the 25th division, Maria Popova. In one of the battles, a nurse crawled up to a wounded elderly machine gunner and wanted to bandage him, but the soldier, heated by the battle, pointed a revolver at the nurse and literally forced Maria to take a place behind the machine gun.
The directors, having learned about this story and having an assignment from Stalin to show in the film the image of a woman during the Civil War, came up with a machine gunner. But Anna Furmanova insisted that her name would be Anka.
After the release of the film, Chapaev, Furmanov, Anka the machine gunner, and orderly Petka (in real life, Pyotr Isaev, who actually died in the same battle with Chapaev) went into the people forever, becoming their integral part.
