Creation of komuch. The Committee of Members of the Komuch Constituent Assembly was created from

Komuch of the first composition - I. M. Brushvit, P. D. Klimushkin, B. K. Fortunatov, V. K. Volsky (chairman) and I. P. Nesterov

The Komuch of the first composition included five Socialist Revolutionaries, members of the Constituent Assembly: V.K. Volsky - chairman, Ivan Brushvit, Prokopiy Klimushkin, Boris Fortunatov and Ivan Nesterov.

The propaganda cultural and educational department of Komuch began to publish the official printed organ of the new government - the newspaper “Bulletin of the Committee of Members of the All-Russian Constituent Assembly.”

Strengthening the power of Komuch

Members of the Provisional All-Russian Government and the Council of Ministers of the Provisional All-Russian Government

Bibliography

Kappel and the Kappelites. 2nd ed., rev. and additional M.: NP "Posev", 2007 ISBN 978-5-85824-174-4

see also

Links

Additional links

• Shilovsky M. V. Provisional All-Russian Government (Directory) September 23 - November 18, 1918
• Zhuravlev V.V. State meeting. On the history of the consolidation of the anti-Bolshevik movement in eastern Russia in July - September 1918.
• Flags of state entities during the Civil War.
• Nazyrov P. F., Nikonova O. Yu. Ufa State Conference. Documents and materials.
• Lelevich G. Review of literature about the Samara Constituent Assembly / G. Lelevich // Proletarian Revolution. – 1922. – No. 7. – P.225 – 229.
• Popov F. G., For the power of the Soviets. The defeat of the Samara Constituent Assembly, Kuibyshev, 1959.
• Garmiza V.V., The collapse of the Socialist Revolutionary governments, M., 1970.
• Medvedev V.G. White regime under the red flag: (Volga region, 1918) / V.G. Medvedev. – Ulyanovsk: Publishing house SVNTs, 1998. – 220 p.
• Lapandin V.A. Committee of Members of the Constituent Assembly: power structure and political activity (June 1918 - January 1919) / V.A. Lapandin. – Samara: SCAINI, 2003. – 242 p.
• Lapandin V.A. Socialist-Revolutionary political-state formations in Russia during the civil war: a historical and bibliographic study of domestic literature 1918 – 2002. / V.A. Lapandin. – Samara: Samara Center for Analytical History and Historical Informatics, 2006. – 196 p.

Early in the morning, ninety years ago, on June 8, 1918, simultaneously with the uprising that broke out in the city, Samara was taken by storm by the Czechoslovak Corps. Thus began a short but turbulent period in the history of our city, when the power of the Committee of Members of the Constituent Assembly was established in it and Samara officially became the capital of Russia for 4 months.

During its quarter-century history, Samara three times (except for the announcement of the “Samara Republic” by the regional council in October 1993) left the subordination of Moscow - in 1670, 1773 and 1918 and twice tried on the title of capital. Once, as you know, this happened in 1941, when the famous bunker was dug here for Stalin and the government, embassies and the Bolshoi Theater moved here. Twenty-three years earlier, an event that is now forgotten, but at that time loud and significant, took place. In the summer of 1918, for four months, Samara became the capital of Russia liberated from the Bolsheviks.

As you know, the Bolsheviks lost the elections to the Constituent Assembly. Despite the fact that they took place after the October Revolution, during the voting the Bolsheviks received only 24% of the seats in the Assembly, as a result, as we know, very soon the “guard was tired” and on the opening day, January 8, 1918, the first Russian parliament elected by universal suffrage was dispersed. Of the 17 Samara deputies, the majority were members of the Socialist Revolutionary Party, the oldest and largest Russian party, which dominated zemstvos, dumas, and councils and formed the largest faction in the Constituent Assembly. On the night of January 8, at a secret meeting of the faction in the Tauride Palace, a decision was made that exactly six months later played a crucial role in the events on the Volga. It read: any group of deputies has the right to use the name of the Committee of Members of the Constituent Assembly (KOMUCH) to rebel against Soviet power.

THE EVE

Despite the “revolutionism” derived from memories of Lenin, Samara was never a Bolshevik city. The proletariat here had pronounced peasant roots, there were few unbridled deserters and propagandized front-line soldiers, mostly rear units, andThe “irresponsible” zemstvo intelligentsia was closely surrounded by a “petty-bourgeois” army of shopkeepers and merchants - future Nepmen from the Trinity Market, famous for its Black Hundred traditions. (Remember the “candle factory in Samara”?) On this fertile soil and taking into account the Socialist Revolutionaries driven underground, numerous organizations of anarchists and maximalists began to play the first fiddle in Samara, challenging the Bolsheviks for power in the city at the beginning of 1918. They occupied the best public buildings and rich mansions, led a rather unbridled lifestyle, driving around, loaded with weapons, in cars and cabs throughout the city, causing a lot of inconvenience to ordinary people, and at the same time to the Bolsheviks. According to some reports, the total number of armed anarchists in the spring of 1918 in Samara exceeded a thousand people.

The Bolsheviks repeatedly made attempts to disarm the anarchist detachments. They were taken up most actively after the May Day demonstration of 1918, at which the Socialist Revolutionaries marched under the banner of the Constituent Assembly, and the anarchists organized a rally in the column of loaders under the slogan: “Down with the commissar state!” On May 6, in the vicinity of Samara, Smorodinov’s detachment (the so-called “Northern Flying Detachment”) was disarmed. On the night of May 8, there were several more groups “that terrorized the population, committed robberies and seized state property.” Eleven machine guns and revolvers were seized. The performances of the maximalists in Samara took place against the backdrop of permanent unrest in military units and the ongoing peasant unrest in the southern districts of the province (in the suppression of which the military leadership talent of V.I. Chapaev first manifested itself) and skirmishes with the Cossacks of Ataman Dutov. All this forced the Bolsheviks to declare martial law in the province. On May 17, an anarcho-maximalist rebellion began in the city, supported by sailors and local cab drivers. The immediate reason for this was the order of the Bolshevik emergency headquarters “on the mobilization of horses for the needs of the Orenburg Front.” This caused unrest among car and dray cab drivers, which the anarchists took advantage of. By lunchtime, a huge crowd had gathered on what is now Revolution Square and the Trinity Market, rallying under the protection of a detachment of anarchists. In the afternoon, the Northern Flying, First Sailor and Third Northern detachments, as well as the anarchist Kudinsky detachment occupied the post office, telegraph office, telephone exchange, security headquarters and two police stations. Having loaded machine guns onto trucks, the rebels drove up to the prison, disarmed the guards and released two dozen criminals. All this time, local Bolsheviks sat in the Communist Club on Zavodskaya Street (now Ventsek Street), cordoning off the surrounding area with detachments of the Red Guard, among which the detachment of Chinese internationalists who arrived to help stood out extravagantly. Early in the morning of May 19, the Bolsheviks, who had received reinforcements, began an assault on the Filimonov Hotel on Revolution Square, in the rooms of which the so-called sailor detachment was located N 1. A little earlier, the detachments of Kudinsky and Smorodinov, who were holed up in Telegin’s hotel on Sobornaya Street, were disarmed. Most of the anarchists, having shot their ammunition, fled, some surrendered.

WHILE THE BOLSHEVIKS WERE BUSY

The underground officer organization of Colonel N.A. Galkin was created in early 1918 and first manifested itself during the February unrest of the 4th engineer regiment and the 3rd reserve brigade, which opened artillery fire on the Pipe Plant (now ZIM) in response to an attempt to disarm them. They were joined by soldiers of the 102nd and 143rd infantry regiments, who accepted at a garrison meeting the demand for the dissolution of the Red Guard. Unrest in the troops took place with the direct participation of the Socialist Revolutionary Party, led by former deputies of the Constituent Assembly from the Samara Council of Peasant Deputies I.M. Brushvit, B.K. Fortunatov and P.D. Klimushkin. Soon after the February events, an underground center was created in Samara, numbering more than six hundred people by May 1918, including the Social Revolutionary city squad and about two hundred militants of Colonel Galkin.

The number of people dissatisfied with the policies of the Council of Deputies increased sharply when, to the already familiar expropriations, a ten-billion tax on the bourgeoisie was added, introduced by the Bolsheviks in the spring of 1918, of which 400 million were to be collected in the Samara province. In the first weeks of April alone, 62 houses were confiscated from Samara capitalists, including 16 houses from Suroshnikov, 8 from Chelyshev, 10 from the Shikhobalovs, 12 from the Sokolovs, etc. At the beginning of March, about 12 thousand workers of the Pipe Plant received their pay; by the middle of the month, only 200 people remained at the plant. In the villages, the struggle with food detachments, confiscating grain from the peasants, intensified. The dispersal of zemstvos and dumas began everywhere. The prisons were filled with “counter-revolutionaries” - Socialist Revolutionaries and Mensheviks, with many of whom the Bolshevik leaders had been in tsarist prisons and exiles together a couple of years ago. Non-Bolshevik newspapers closed. The peace with the Germans concluded by Lenin raised another, unexpected problem.

AROUND THE WORLD IN EIGHTY DAYS

By the time of the October Revolution, there were several hundred thousand prisoners of war of the German army in Russia. Most of them were subjects of Austria-Hungary, who did not want to fight on the side of Germany and entire battalions surrendered. Among them, the 200,000-strong Czechoslovak corps, formed from volunteers for the war with the Germans on the Russian-German front, especially stood out. Their units were consolidated into two divisions located in Ukraine, armed and prepared to be sent to the front. The corps was commanded by Major General Jan Syrovoy. As a result of the October events and Russia's withdrawal from the war, half of the corps fled, about four thousand Czechs went over to the side of the Bolsheviks and joined the Red Guard. Those who remained, and according to various sources there were from 42 to 60 thousand, were given the opportunity to leave, but through Siberia and the Far East, to France to continue the fight for the freedom of Czechoslovakia on the side of the Allies. As a result, in the spring of 1918, about sixty trains of the Czechoslovak Corps filled the railway tracks from Penza to Vladivostok. The Siberian group was commanded by the former non-commissioned officer of the Austro-Hungarian army Radola Gaida, the Ural group by S.N. Voitsekhovsky, the Penza group by Colonel S. Chechek. Now it is difficult to say with certainty who was the initiator of the round-the-world trip of forty thousand armed legionnaires. Something else is known for certain. At the moment when the head units of the Corps were already preparing to board ships in Vladivostok, Leiba Trotsky gave the order, which would later cost the Bolsheviks so much, to detain the trains and begin to disarm them. The official reason for the order was the need to surrender Russia's weapons. According to another version, the disarmament of the Czechoslovaks was one of the secret points of the Brest-Litovsk Peace Treaty with Germany. Fearing the strengthening of the Entente front by Czech patriots, the Germans demanded that Russia disarm the Czechoslovak Corps and imprison its officers in concentration camps. Rumors circulating among Czechoslovaks about the betrayal of the Bolsheviks led to clashes with the Red Guard that began in April 1918. As a result of a secret meeting of officers of the First Division of the Czechoslovak Corps, held on April 13 in Kirsanov, it was decided to stop handing over weapons and demand from the authorities the unhindered passage of trains to the east. On May 25, the Revolutionary Military Council issued the famous order for the forced disarmament of all units of the Czechs, which served as a signal for the uprising of the Corps throughout railway from Penza to Transbaikalia.

TRANSFORMATION INTO “BELOCHEKHOV”

It should be noted that (few people know this) the definition of “whites” included in the subtitle appeared only after the Civil War in emigrant literature. Neither the officers of the Volunteer Army of Kornilov and Denikin, nor the Kolchak or Wrangelites, much less the Kappelites and fighters of the People's Army KOMUCH (who fought under the red banner) or the Czechoslovak Corps called themselves any “whites” or “white Czechs.”

According to an agreement with the Soviet government, the Czechoslovak Corps undertook the obligation not to interfere in internal Russian affairs and to maintain neutrality. As a result, the attempts of numerous underground organizations operating on the Volga and Siberia to draw the well-armed and highly disciplined Corps into the fight against the Bolsheviks were unsuccessful for a long time. After Trotsky's order, the situation changed. On May 20, in Penza, the Bolsheviks sent a detachment of Magyars (Hungarians) to disarm parts of the Corps. The latter circumstance terribly offended the national pride of the Czechs, and they demanded that their command fight back. In response to insubordination, the Bolsheviks opened artillery fire on the Czech trains. From that moment on, the lagging parts of the corps began to be pulled up and concentrated around the headquarters of the First Division. After the arrival of the echelon that had left the Rtishchevo station fighting, about four thousand Czechoslovaks accumulated in Penza. On May 29, the Czechoslovak Corps took the city and, after holding it in its power for three days, went east.

The created situation caused terrible panic among the Bolsheviks. They turned out to be completely unprepared for the quick and decisive actions of the Czech command and hastily began to mobilize their forces. On May 29, the Czechs reached Syzran, occupied the station, captured warehouses with weapons, artillery, disarmed the Red Guard and stopped 70 miles from Samara. On May 30, Samara was declared under siege.

Initially, the Czechs did not set as their goal the capture and retention of the cities of the Council of Deputies. They were only interested in railway stations. The only demand put forward by the Czech command to the Soviets was: unhindered passage of trains to the east to connect with the main forces of the Czechoslovak Corps. Their abandonment of Penza seemed to speak in favor of this. The actions of the Bolsheviks in early June show that they did not give up hope that the Czech troops would not linger on the Volga. However, the logic of armed conflict increasingly moved them away from a position of neutrality. The events on the Volga brought into action the anti-Bolshevik underground. Already on June 1, a representative of the Samara underground center, Ivan Brushvit, was at the location of the Czech troops. As the Czechoslovak trains approach, mobilization begins in Samara. Every “comrade” who came to the Communist Club on Zavodskaya (now temporarily Ventsek) Street no longer had the right, according to the decision of the Headquarters, to leave it. (For this reason, all the office work of Soviet institutions did not have time to be removed from the city). On the right bank of the Samara River, workers began to dig trenches, and guns were installed on Khlebnaya Square.

At the time of the Czech uprising, the Samara provincial organization of the Bolsheviks numbered 6.5 thousand members, of which 3.5 thousand were in Samara. The Czech forces were estimated from 5 to 7 thousand people. The Bolshevik headquarters issued an ultimatum to the Czech command: passage of corps echelons through Samara was possible only if they surrendered their weapons. Obviously, the Bolsheviks continued to underestimate the seriousness of the situation. On June 2, the Czechs took the city of Ivashchenkovo ​​(modern Chapaevsk) and Bezenchuk. Having established contact with the Samara underground, they began to prepare for the assault on the city, detailed plan which was compiled by Colonel Galkin.

“UNDER THE SENTIENT GUIDANCE OF COMRADE KUIBYSHEV”

That same night, despite Headquarters’ assurances of an impending victory, the entire gold reserve of the Republic, stored in Samara (about 57.5 million in gold coins and 30 million in banknotes), under the protection of Mitrofanov’s detachment, was taken out by ship to Kazan. The operation was led by Commissioners Idlis, Levin and Struppe. The commissars did not deny themselves the use of the “property of the republic”: a certain commissar Ilyin took 50 thousand rubles “for expenses”. Commander-in-Chief Yakovlev and Chairman of the Revolutionary Committee Kuibyshev - 10 million for “expenses for the defense of Soviet power.” Obviously, they did not have time to spend everything in a week, since after their flight large sums of money were found in the apartments.

The mood of the Bolsheviks finally deteriorated after the battle at the Lipyagi station (now the Novokuibyshevsk region), during which hundreds of Red Guards died and many drowned while fleeing in the Tatyanka River. (Those killed in the battle at Lipyag and Voskresenka were buried only ten days later, on June 14. In total, 1,300 people were killed.) The next day, an event occurred that was hidden by Soviet historians for a long time: the leadership of the Defense Headquarters, led by Kuibyshev, fled from the city by boat “Field Marshal Suvorov”, without even warning his comrades. Many years later, already as Chairman of the State Planning Committee of the USSR, Valeryan Kuibyshev would say in passing: “I barely managed to escape from Samara, they fired at me with machine guns, they wanted to grab me, Czech shells exploded next to me. Still managed to leave. He didn’t leave alone, he left with the leadership group of the Bolsheviks.” Having settled in Simbirsk, the escaped Headquarters began to telegraph for help to Moscow. On May 6th, it occurred to someone to call via direct line to Samara. “Comrade Teplov” answered the phone. To Kuibyshev’s surprise, it turned out that the city was still in the hands of the Reds. The Czechs do not advance, not knowing that only a small detachment, about three hundred people, led by Maslennikov, remained in Samara. The ashamed “managerial workers” decided to return and on the seventh morning the ship with the “fugitives” arrived back. However, after assessing the situation in the city, Kuibyshev returned to the ship and, presenting documents, ordered the crew to head for Simbirsk. This is where it ends " heroic deeds“from the side of a man whose name our city bore for many years (and the streets and squares still do) and whose monument with three tons of cast iron still presses on the square where the largest one, blown up by the Bolsheviks, once stood Cathedral Samara (an exact copy of the Cathedral of Christ the Savior).

QUINTA COLUMNA

The real forces of the Bolsheviks at the time of the storming of the city amounted to no more than 3 thousand people. On the night of July 7th, reinforcements from Simbirsk (450 people) and a Muslim detachment from Ufa (600 people) arrived to the Reds. They replaced the Red Army soldiers who had been lying in the trenches for three days.

Immediately after the defeat of the Reds near Lipyaga, riots began in the city. On June 5, in broad daylight, a detachment of anarchists of 150 people, armed with machine guns, threw grenades at the guards and took possession of the prison. They released about 500 prisoners and, having destroyed the prison, disappeared. On June 6, anti-Soviet rallies and attacks on the Bolsheviks began in the city. At the same time, Colonel Galkin’s fighting squad began to operate. Demoralized by the flight of the leadership, the Bolsheviks took up a perimeter defense. For unknown reasons, the bridges across Samara and the Volga were not blown up, and the Czechs still had the opportunity to immediately break into the city. The dismantling of the rails, undertaken on the night of June 8, did not yield any results.

It rained all day on the 7th and all night in Samara. Due to poor visibility, the shooting died down somewhat. Early in the morning of June 8, having crossed the Samara River in boats, the Czechs captured the Red positions in the area of ​​the elevator on Khlebnaya Square. With the support of artillery installed in the village of Kryazh, they managed to advance into the city. At this time, under the cover of an armored train, the Czechoslovaks crushed the Red outpost at the bridge, crossed to the right bank, occupied the railway station and launched an offensive along the main highways of the city.

Obviously, some of the Czech detachments were already in the city, having crossed by boat to the dacha areas a day or two before the attack of the main forces. This is indirectly evidenced by numerous inscriptions in Czech, carved on rocks in the area of ​​the Silicate Ravine (not far from the present-day Ladya), dating back to June 7, 1918 and surviving to this day. At the moment of the assault on the city, targeted fire began to be fired at the Red positions from windows and attics. This is where Colonel Galkin's plan came into effect. Sensing the imminent defeat of the Reds, his fighters were joined by numerous volunteer assistants from ordinary people, who staged a real hunt for the Bolsheviks retreating to the piers. By 8 am, Czech troops had completely captured the city. The last center of resistance remained the Communist Club, in which there was a small detachment of Bolsheviks led by A.A. Maslennikov and N.P. Teplov. At about 9 am Maslennikov came out of the Club with a white flag. He said that if the Czech command guarantees the Bolsheviks protection from crowd violence, they are ready to surrender.

There is a photograph in the book of memoirs published in Samara in 1919. It depicts a representative gentleman with a beard, wearing a bowler hat and pince-nez. He walks past a crowd of onlookers along the street, leading a small detachment of about twenty people. He holds a large white banner in his hands. The caption under the photo reads: " Surrender of the Communist Club. Ahead is T.V. Maslennikov with a white flag"

« A LITTLE INEVITABLE WORRY"

The surrendered communists were led to the station. All the way, Maslennikov carried a white flag, from time to time getting hit in the head with a staff. At the railway commandant's office, the former chairman of the city executive committee had to prove to the Czech officer that he was “a Great Russian, not a Jew.” “Great Russian Jew, or Jewish Great Russian,” the officer summed up.

It was not for nothing that the detainees feared the Czechs less than the wrath of the townsfolk. The Samara residents poured out onto the street (according to eyewitnesses, mostly women) literally tore to pieces in the area of ​​the Trinity Market, repelling the famous sadist (after whom, of course, this street was later named) from the Czech patrol, who was caught by the Czechs, the chairman of the revolutionary tribunal, Franz Wenzek, and the head of the city executive committee, I. P. Shtyrkina. Hastily assembled detachments combed the streets and conducted searches in the apartments of the Bolsheviks. Armed patrols detained anyone suspicious. Commissar Schultz, detained near the police building on Saratovskaya Street, tried to pay off the Czechs with a bribe of 40 thousand rubles, but was shot dead. In total, more than a hundred people were shot on the day of the capture of Samara. The corpses lay on the streets of the city for several days until, as a result of a special order, they were removed.

At the corner of Sobornaya (Molodogvardeyskaya) and L. Tolstoy, crowds of onlookers lined up to look at the captured Red Army soldiers, in a long line being escorted from the Volga to the railway station. Near the Circus Olympus (now the Philharmonic) a column of Czech soldiers was greeted with applause. They had lilac branches attached to their bayonets. In his speech to the townspeople, their officer said that the goal of the Czechoslovak Corps was to unite with the homeland, and the troops “will pass Samara, causing the inhabitants only a little inevitable concern.” On Revolution Square (Alekseevskaya) the crowd uncovered the boarded-up monument to Alexander II . At 11 o’clock a rally of thousands took place here, at which the word “KOMUCH” was heard for the first time.

FOR YOUR AND OUR FREEDOM

Still underground, five members of the Constituent Assembly - I.M. Brushvit, P.D. Klimushkin, V.K. Volsky, B.K. Fortunatov and N.P. Nesterov created the “Samara Committee of Members of the Constituent Assembly.” Three days before the capture of Samara, they distributed responsible positions, formed departments, police, and designated premises for their institutions. On June 8, together with the Czech command, they arrived at the city government building and announced that power in the city was passing into the hands of the Committee of Members of the Constituent Assembly. All members of the Constituent Assembly (except the Bolsheviks) were invited to come to Samara to form an all-Russian government. Deputy from the Tver province Vladimir Volsky, who was in Samara, was elected chairman of KOMUCH. With his first order, KOMUCH restored local self-government bodies to full rights, dissolved the Soviets and called new elections for them. The seizure of power by the Committee did not yet mean that Bolshevism was over. In the first days of the liberation of Samara, no one could guarantee that the Czechoslovak Corps would not abandon the city, as happened with Penza.

The motives that forced the units of Colonel Chechek, who took (and left) Penza, Kuznetsk, Syzran and finally ended up in Samara, to stop moving east are not known exactly. Later sources a posteriori Chechek is credited with depending on the instructions of the Entente, which made the corps an “obedient instrument of intervention.” Of course, the decision was made not without the influence of representatives of the French government Jeannot, Guinet and Comeau, who in the first days after the capture of Samara held active consultations with the Czech command in the person of Colonel Chechek, Captain Medek and Doctor Vlassak. But the map of military operations in May 1918 partly speaks against this version. It clearly shows that the Samara group of Colonel Chechek was cut off from the main forces of the corps at least twice - in the Ufa region and in the Chita region. The Japanese landed in Vladivostok and cut off the corps' path to their homeland by sea. For a detachment of eight thousand to make their way to the Czech Republic to the west through Soviet Russia and German-occupied Ukraine would be madness. For reasons of self-preservation, the Czechoslovakians had to take care of a strong rear. For this purpose, on June 10, 1918, the Czech command decided to suspend the movement “until KOMUCH completes the formation of his army.” “Brother Colonel” had no choice but to raise a glass to “Your and our freedom!” at the banquet arranged by KOMUCH for the officers of the first division.

TERRITORY OF THE COMMITTEE OF MEMBERS OF THE CONSTITUENT ASSEMBLY

When it became known that the Czechs would not leave Samara, general rejoicing began in the city. The fate of Penza, which after the departure of the Czechs was subjected to the cruelest terror of the Bolsheviks, left no doubt that Samara would suffer a different fate. The Red detachments retreating to Simbirsk under the command of the future “hero” of the civil war G.D. Guy (real name Guy Bzhishkyants) could return at any time. However, fortune was not on their side in the first months. During the summer of 1918, the Whites completely liberated the area east of Samara from the Bolsheviks; they captured Ufa, Yekaterinburg, and Chelyabinsk. At the same time, there were battles in Siberia and Transbaikalia, and by the end of August Vladivostok was united with Samara. The power of KOMUCH with its capital in Samara extended to Samara, part of the Saratov, Simbirsk, Kazan, Ufa provinces, the territories of the Orenburg and Ural Cossack troops. Challenging the Siberian White Guard governments' right to all-Russian power, KOMUCH had good reasons. By July 1918, more than 70 members of the dispersed Constituent Assembly had gathered in Samara, and by September their number was close to a hundred. Among those who arrived in the capital of anti-Bolshevik Russia were the famous Socialist Revolutionaries V.M. Chernov, N.D. Avksentyev, “grandmother of the Russian revolution” E.K. Breshko-Breshkovskaya, Ataman A.I. Dutov. Among the Samara deputies of the Constituent Assembly, KOMUCH included Vasily Arkhangelsky, Boris Fortunatov, Prokop Klimushkin, Ivan Brushvit, Pavel Maslov, Fedor Belozerov and Egor Lazarev. Their “colleagues”, also members of the Constituent Assembly, Comrades Maslennikov and Kuibyshev, of course, were not invited to participate. One of them was sent to Omsk on the so-called “death train”, the other was already a commissar for Tukhachevsky.

As soon as Samara received the status of the temporary capital of Russia, all kinds of foreign consulates began to come here (they even had to create a department of foreign affairs). Among the “consuls” one Italian especially stood out. He found himself a uniform with huge epaulettes, gathered about a dozen dubious Italians around him, pranced with them on horseback through the streets and announced that he had created an “Italian battalion.”

KOMUCH's financial well-being was mainly based on loans. The bourgeoisie was reluctant to part with their savings, preferring to transfer them to “more reliable Siberia.” Immediately after the liberation of the city, KOMUCH convened a meeting of representatives of banks and commercial and industrial circles and informed them of the return of property nationalized by the Soviets. A Financial Council was created under the leadership of A.K. Ershova, D.G. Markelychev and L.A. von Vacano, who collected about 30 million rubles by subscription among the bourgeoisie in support of KOMUCH. After the capture of Kazan by the Kappelites, gold reserves were delivered to Samara Russian Republic(650 million rubles in gold). In July, fixed prices for bread were abolished, as a result trade picked up, and bread became somewhat cheaper. True, freedom of trade also had another side: due to the difference in prices between the territory of KOMUCH and Soviet Russia, speculation reached enormous proportions. The committee even approved a special commission to combat speculation, which exposed a certain citizen named Akopyants, who made 300 thousand in net income from the resale. Surprisingly, but true: there was a trade exchange between KOMUCH and the Soviets, which neither side was interested in stopping. The borders were quite “transparent” and until September 1918, passage through the front was relatively free. On both lines, entire convoys participated in supplying the population. Steamships plying between Astrakhan and Kazan freely passed through Czech-occupied Samara. A kind of competition between the Bolshevik Cheka and Samara counterintelligence was to catch “spies” among their passengers.

TWO THOUSAND FOR “COMMISSIONER”

On July 10, a Czech detachment carried out a much-noisy search in the Jewish cooperative canteen “Bund”, during which the officer, instead of a mandate, presented a revolver, declaring that “all Jews are Bolsheviks.” The outrage in the newspapers made no impression on the Czechs. If KOMUCH protested against his unauthorized arrests, he was informed that the charges were brought on behalf of the First Division of Czechoslovak troops. Those arrested were usually taken to counterintelligence, commanded by Captain Glinka, in whose vocabulary, according to legend, there was only one word: “Rostshelich!” (shoot). Counterintelligence was located in the house of the merchant Kurlina (corner of Krasnoarmeyskaya and Frunze). There is still a lot of conflicting information about this building. According to some information included in textbooks, Bolshevik prisoners were tortured and shot here. In accordance with this, during the Soviet years, in the basement of the house there was an exhibition of White Guard dungeons, which, if desired, can be seen today. According to another version, the so-called “bullet marks” in one of the basement rooms appeared there long before the capture of Samara by the Czechs and are explained by the presence of an anarcho-maximalist shooting gallery here in 1917. Supporters of this version point to the location of the traces characteristic of formal shooting, as well as the lack of practical need for the Czechs to use their own building for executions, and then lift the corpses from the basement along a steep staircase, secretly take them out at night, etc., instead of simply take it out into an open field and “slam” it, which at that time there were no problems with. The memoirs of former counterintelligence prisoners say that the basement of Kurlina’s house was used by the Czechs as a pre-trial detention cell. In 1918, it was half filled with old furniture, on which detainees sat while waiting to be called for interrogation.

In general, the actions of the White Bohemian counterintelligence under the command of Captain Glinka and the commandant of the city of Rebendy are a favorite topic of Bolshevik sources about KOMUCH. By the way, they also provide information about the unspoken fee for the release of prisoners. So, acting through a certain attorney Semenenko, it was possible to release the detainee for 1000 rubles. For the release of the “commissar” Semenenko took twice as much. The prison, over which Messrs. Izvekov, Klimov and Georgievsky alternately commanded, received no less attention from Bolshevik historians. The latter, as they say, ran away from work a week before the Reds arrived. The current medical dormitory Institute on Artsybushevskaya when it was a prison on Ilyinskaya was designed for 800 places. In the summer of 1918, there were more than 2,000 prisoners, mostly Red Guards captured near Lipyaga. The regime, according to the Bolsheviks themselves, “was tolerable. Those arrested themselves elected cell leaders who monitored the even distribution of Red Cross parcels in the kitchen; visits with relatives were allowed twice a week.” The situation changed only after a note fell into the hands of the authorities, in which one of the prisoners asked to bring him, among other things, a revolver to prison. After this incident, personal visits were canceled and were now allowed only through double bars (previously they were on the stairs), a general search was carried out in the prison, and the guard was reinforced. After the Reds captured Kazan, a regiment of soldiers was stationed in the bathhouse opposite the prison; Czechs began to stand guard.

RED CITY

KOMUCH's political physiognomy was that of the Socialist Revolutionaries. With its first decrees, the committee abolished private ownership of land, guaranteed the safety of peasant crops, and consolidated the redistribution of land that had occurred in the village. In essence, this was a confirmation of the norms of the Socialist Revolutionary “Law on Land”, adopted by the Constituent Assembly, and stolen by the Bolsheviks in the plagiarized “Decree on Land”. KOMUCH recognized the decisions of the Peasant Samara Provincial Congresses on land. In addition, special resolutions protected the rights of trade unions, prohibited lockouts, and confirmed the validity of Soviet labor legislation. A decision was made prohibiting landlords from evicting workers from the apartments they occupied. The socialist direction of the Samara government most of all irritated the officers of the so-called “People's Army”, many of whom were monarchists. Some even, not wanting to serve the Social Revolutionaries, went to Siberia or the Don, to the Volunteer Army, despite the fact that crossing the fronts was unsafe. Interestingly, the official flag of KOMUCH, like the Bolsheviks, was a red flag (how did they distinguish each other?!). When visiting Cossacks and officers asked the Socialist Revolutionaries “what kind of rag is hanging over your building?!”, They, embarrassed, answered that it was the banner of the revolutionary war with Germany. On August 13, a detachment of Cossacks under military foreman Annenkov arrived in Samara. After the “appropriate” dinner at the National, the head of the detachment, a staff captain, with two cadets found himself near the residence of KOMUCH, the Naumov mansion (now the Palace of Pioneers). Noticing the red flag, he called Commandant Kvitko, tore down the banner and arrested the officer who had been sent to arrest him. The officers of the People's Army celebrated the Czech holiday - St. Day - no less colorfully. Vyacheslav (September 28). During a gala dinner given to them at the National Hotel, they got drunk and gave the Czechs and Socialist-Revolutionaries “a monarchical brawl and a formal demonstration.” The contradictions between KOMUCH and the army officers reached the point that in some “pro-monarchy” parts the committee’s appeals had to be distributed illegally. Even the chairman of the Constituent Assembly and “peasant minister” Viktor Chernov, who arrived in Samara, was forced to remain under house arrest for some time, since KOMUCH was afraid of the reaction of the officers and the bourgeoisie to the appearance of the famous revolutionary in the city. Having entered KOMUCH, Chernov never received any responsible positions in it.

In KOMUCH itself there were many people who considered the government’s socialist course to be too soft in the conditions of the civil war. “The idea of ​​the arrival of business people was ripe, even if they were inclined to react,” wrote one of the leaders of KOMUCH E.E. in his diary. Lazarev. The anniversary of the Kornilov movement was widely celebrated in the Samara press. An example for many was the tough course of the Siberian government, which considered Samara a “red city” and fenced off KOMUCH in every possible way, right up to the customs border. “It’s strange to talk about a united Russia,” wrote Samara’s “Volga Day” in September 1918, “and to see regions being related to each other as sovereign powers, each having its own ministry of foreign affairs, its own ambassadors, customs borders and other attributes. It’s strange to talk about a united Russia and be governed by governments that are separate from each other, often becoming quite tense, almost hostile relations. This situation has a hard impact on all aspects of life, on the entire work of revival great Russia. There is now the so-called “territory of the Constituent Assembly,” that is, the Volga region, there are regions of Cossack troops, there are the mountainous Urals, Siberia, Bashkurdistan, Alash-Orda and some other strange and unexpected, mythical or fictitious regions in the roles of either autonomies or whether sovereign units. The desire for self-determination of these groups is too well known for one to hope for their beneficial role in the creation of a national Russian strong government. There is no Russia, there is no Russian state and there is no Russian nation... It is necessary to renounce Alash-Orda, from Bashkurdistan, from the Socialist-Revolutionary Party and remember that Moscow and Kyiv, Sevastopol and Petrograd are still ahead, in a word, remember that great Russia that was , which the revolution killed, and which must be created again at any cost.”

LAST BREATH

In the summer of 1918, Samara felt like a capital city for the first time. Famous politicians and deputies of the Constituent Assembly walked the streets, foreign delegations came, and in August a congress of all zemstvos and cities of Russia liberated from the Bolsheviks was held here. The somewhat stabilized situation allowed KOMUCH to restore local self-government over a large area, open several dozen schools and hospitals, and even restart the Sergievsky resort destroyed by the Bolsheviks. On August 11, the University was opened in Samara, existing, with a break, after 1927 and until now. In the anonymous “Notes of a White Guard,” published in 1923 in Berlin, there is the following description of Samara in the summer of 1918. “Goods appeared in stores, food products were traded everywhere. At the market and in the shops one could see both white bread and butter at very inexpensive prices. The harvest of 1918 was very good, and therefore there was no shortage of products during free trade. The feeling of being able to walk freely around the city, to be on equal terms with other citizens, after the orders of the Soviet of Deputies was exceptional, and anyone who has not experienced this contrast between moral suppression and external, at least, freedom... will probably not understand what they were experiencing at that moment.”

THERE, IN THE DISTANCE, BY THE RIVER, BAYONETS GLOWED

According to military historian N.N. Kakurin, in July 1918, the People's Army of KOMUCH consisted of four infantry regiments, two officer battalions, two hundred Cossacks and forty-three guns. The Czechoslovak forces were estimated at 34 thousand people and 33 guns, including a division in Western Siberia. The basis of the People's Army was made up of officers from the underground organization of Colonel Galkin and a detachment of Lieutenant Colonel Kappel of the General Staff. In the first days after the capture of Samara, 800 officers enlisted in the ranks of the KOMUCH army, and by August their number exceeded 5,000. The pride of the people's army was the battalion of Lieutenant Colonel (later Lieutenant General) Vladimir Oskarovich Kappel (whose ashes were recently miraculously found in Harbin and transferred from China in Donskoy Monastery, where he was buried between Denikin and Ivan Ilyin). He was distinguished by amazing tenacity and fearlessness, causing genuine respect even among the Reds. The name of Colonel Kappel is known to the Soviet audience from the famous “psychic attack” from the film “Chapaev”, where, looking at the officers walking with cigars in their teeth to the beat of drums, one Chapaevite says significantly: “Kappel’s men!”, and another utters the sacramental phrase: “They are going beautifully! “Intellectuals!” In fact Kappel had no officer battalions. It was in the South, under Denikin, that there was a surplus of officers. But in the East, and under Kolchak, there was always a shortage of commanders, and separate officer units simply never existed. Although, indeed, officers arriving in Samara most often asked to see Kappel, and at one time the famous terrorist Boris Savinkov even served in his detachment. The non-canonical image of gold chasers in black uniforms was completed by a large group of Samara and Syzran volunteer workers.

According to the memoirs of contemporaries, 37-year-old Capel was a man of rare nobility and honor. He usually did not shoot captured Red Guards, but disarmed them and released them on all four sides. Moreover, it was he who, in the general chaos of the first days of the liberation of Samara, managed to organize 350 volunteers into the Samara united detachment, which single-handedly recaptured Syzran from the Reds three days after the Czechs left. Among the numerous daring raids of Kappel’s detachment, the capture of Kazan, contrary to the order of KOMUCH, stands out. In August 1918, he turned out to be the richest man in the world. Kappel's detachment captured order in Kazan 500 tons gold, platinum and silver. These were ingots and strips of precious metal, jewelry, and church utensils. According to experts, the amount is 1 billion 300 million “gold rubles” (in prices before 1914). To transport all this treasure it took two ships. The valuables were half of the tsar's gold reserves of the then Russia. The steamships stood at the Volga pier in Kazan. On ships, the Caspian Sea and Iran were just a stone's throw away. As the White Guard played by Alexander Kaidanovsky said in the action movie “A Friend Among Strangers, a Stranger Among Our Own”: “There’s the border! Don't be a fool. this you need to own one..." Vladimir Kappel handed over the gold to the government of KOMUCH. Kappel was always a stranger to vanity. When Kappel was promoted to general, he said: “ I would be happier if they sent me a battalion of infantry instead of production.” And before his death in Siberia, after his frostbitten feet were cut off, Kappel, with a temperature in the low forties and pneumonia, mounted a horse every morning and rode around the troops, raising their morale.

Another component of the combat effectiveness of the KOMUCH army were the Cossacks of Ataman Dutov, who entered the city for the first time days after its liberation. The ataman invited to KOMUCH was given a magnificent meeting, appointing him as the chief representative in the territory of the Orenburg Cossack army and the Turgai region. Dutov immediately got down to business, and within a month KOMUCH was forced to protest against the methods by which the ataman restored order in the areas entrusted to him. The Cossacks did not really take into account the orders of the “constituent”, believing that “they are fighting not for the Socialist Revolutionaries, but against the Bolsheviks.” A little later, Dutov even turned to Omsk with a request to include Orenburg in the Siberian Republic and promised, if necessary, to arrest KOMUCH. The long-standing socialist order in the People's Army (equality of soldiers and officers, lack of insignia, etc.) was unacceptable for the majority of officers and Cossacks, and in September 1918 their mass exodus to Siberia began.

The rather strange relationship between the Russians negatively affected the reputation of KOMUCH in the eyes of the Czech command. Having already lost several thousand of their soldiers in “internal Russian affairs,” the Czechs demanded that the Russians do something themselves instead of “smiling smugly and gathering in groups, supposedly for business conversations in various committees.” The Czechs even had to issue a special appeal calling on the Russians to participate more actively in solving their own problems.

At the end of August, Lenin declared: “The salvation of not only the Russian revolution, but also the international one, on the Czechoslovak front.” In September the Reds took Kazan. The front was gradually approaching Samara.

“WHERE SHOULD A POOR PEASANT GO?”

In the fall of 1918, difficult times began for the Russian peasant. The front-line areas suffered especially, changing hands many times. In July, the Bolsheviks announced the mobilization of soldiers from the 1913-1917 conscription years throughout the Czechoslovak rear. The population was ordered to “bear full responsibility for serving the red detachments with personal labor, horses, reconnaissance, and so on.” The Bolsheviks banned rallies of those who were mobilized and introduced the trial of those who did not appear before a military court as counter-revolutionaries. The families of Komuchev conscripts were flogged and shot. At the same time, the People's Army, which had previously been built on a voluntary basis, began conscripting all those born in 1897 and 1898, then all officers under 35 years of age, all generals and “those working for defense.” However, by August 2, 1918, out of 14,440 called up for national teams, only 1,564 people showed up. The mobilized peasants were often so unreliable that they were not even given weapons.

The situation deteriorated significantly after the assassination attempt on Lenin. The Red Terror, announced after this in September 1918, also affected the newly abandoned areas. Mass executions by the Cheka of all those suspected of collaborating with the whites forced the peasantry to avoid participation in the KOMUCH army by any means. A mass exodus began from the front-line areas. Tired of the war, “entire volosts declared themselves neutral, providing equally passive assistance to both the detachments of the people’s army and the Red Guards.” Some villages took a wait-and-see attitude, sending walkers to find out “how things really are at the front.”

“THE LIBERATED VOLGA HUMMS HAPPYLY”

On September 23, the State Conference ended its work in Ufa, forming the Provisional All-Russian Government, which included three representatives of KOMUCH. Omsk was chosen as the capital of the government. On September 29, KOMUCH formed a liquidation commission. With her action the Committee was considered dissolved. The evacuation that began after this was very reminiscent of the events of early June. Only now instead of the Bolsheviks there was KOMUCH. On October 3, the Reds captured Syzran and launched an attack on Samara. Following the receipt of this news, the steamship Yaroslavna set sail from the city of Pokrovsk, Saratov province, with the Samara Revolutionary Committee on board. “The liberated Volga hums merrily, seeing off the red Soviet steamer with comrades returning after a four-month exile,” an unknown “comrade” wrote in those days.

While the “leading comrades” led by Galaktionov and Kuibyshev were preparing to arrive in Samara, preparations for the assault began in the city. Deciding not to repeat the mistakes of the Reds, the Czechs blew up the railway bridge across the Volga, and three days later - the bridge across Samara. The defense of the city was held by units of Colonel Kappel and the Czechoslovak Corps. On October 2, KOMUCH units near Ivashchenkovo ​​destroyed more than half of the International Regiment of the First Samara Division. However, after three days the city had to be abandoned. On October 6, Melekess (now Dimitrovgrad) and Stavropol (Tolyatti) were surrendered. On October 7, the assault on Samara began with units of the 24th Iron Division under the command of Guy and the First Samara Division of Zakharov. Street fighting continued for several hours. By evening, only the Czechs remained in the city, taking up defensive positions around the station and covering the retreat of the People's Army echelons. At about five in the evening they left, and the Reds entered the city, whom, as Soviet newspapers later wrote, “the workers greeted with jubilation with fighting revolutionary songs.” Throughout the night, searches and arrests of “counter-revolutionaries” who failed to leave were carried out in the city. A special commission formed by the Bolsheviks began visiting apartments and registering the property of the “fugitive bourgeoisie.” The Bolsheviks' revenge on Samara was terrible. According to eyewitnesses, the Red Army soldiers of Guy's division, sparing cartridges, threw those arrested from the roofs of houses onto the pavements, stabbed them with bayonets, and drowned them in the Volga. The day after the capture of Samara, the collection of corpses began, which littered the streets in large numbers in the area of ​​the station and the banks of the Volga and threatened the emergence of cholera. On October 9, 1918, the Gubrevkom arrived in the city from evacuation and the Cheka began working. Samara was getting used to living under the new government. Thus ended one of the most striking episodes in the centuries-old history of the city.

Several years ago in Samara, historical reconstruction clubs began to hold the “Troubleful Nights of Samara” festival, the scenario of which imitates the capture of Samara by the Reds. Of course, the boys posing as commissars in leather jackets do not throw the “white bastard” from the roofs and do not stab them with bayonets. Yes, and the Kappelites fight - in make-believe, according to the script, surrendering. Of course, it is pointless to draw conclusions about why the capture of the city by the Reds rather than the Whites (or at least two festivals - in June and October) was spontaneously chosen as a role-playing game: well, that’s what they decided. But at the level of mass consciousness, and not only in the toponymy of streets, in monuments, dates, the city still has not aligned the “pros and cons” between Chapaev and Kappel, Dutov and Ventsek in any other way. There are no heroes in the Civil War. But they are worthy of memory.

Mikhail Matveev,
Doctor of Historical Sciences,
Deputy of the Samara Provincial Duma

Photo materials:

The article is published in the 2008 edition. The article was published in various versions:

in 1998 - Matveev M. Territory of KOMUCH: //Office-Courier. – 1998. - No. 1. – P. 10-18. http://ermine.narod.ru/HIST/STAT/KOMU/sect9.html ;
“Samara Review” (“In the morning, 80 years ago... Samara was stormed by the Czechoslovak Corps: [about the events in Samara in 1918 (KOMUCH)] // Samara Review. – 1998. – June 8. – P. 4.
and in 2008 - (“Komuch made Samara the capital of Russia” // “Volga Commune” No. 120 of June 7, 2008 and No. 124 (06/11/2008).

KOMUCH - Committee of Members of the Constituent Assembly - a government created in Samara on June 8, 1918, after the capture of the city by the Czechs. initially consisted of 5 members of the Constituent Assembly (chairman - Socialist Revolutionary V.K. Volsky). He declared himself a temporary government until the convening of the Constituent Assembly on the territory of the Samara province, and later sought to give his power “all-Russian” significance, to extend it to the entire territory captured by opponents Soviet power . At the beginning of August 1918, there were 29 people in Komuch, at the beginning of September - 71, and at the end of September 97 people., denationalized banks, restored the city duma and zemstvo, allowed freedom of private trade after the creation of the Ufa Directory, Komuch was renamed the “Congress of Members of the Constituent Assembly.” The “Departmental Management Council” moved to the position of the Ufa government. November 19. After Kolchak's coup, the "Congress of Members of the Constituent Assembly" was arrested. Finally abolished on December 3, 1918.

Materials from the website of A.V. were used. Kvakina http://akvakin.narod.ru/

List of members of the Constituent Assembly

Abramov Vasily Semenovich (Romanian Front).

Brushvit Ivan Mikhailovich (Samara province).

Burevoy Konstantin Stepanovich(1888-1934), member of the Constituent Assembly: Voronezh No. 3 Social Revolutionaries.

Burov Kozma Semenovich, member of the Founding. Assembled.

Bylinkin, Arseniy Sergeevich(1887-1937), member of the Constituent Assembly: Romanian Front No. 3 Social Revolutionaries and the Council of Peasants' Deputies.

Volsky Vladimir Kazimirovich(1877-1937), member of the Constituent Assembly: Tver No. 3 Social Revolutionaries and the Council of Peasant Deputies.

Gendelman Mikhail Yakovlevich(1881-1938), member of the Constituent Assembly: Ryazan No. 3 Social Revolutionaries and the Council of Peasant Deputies.

Devizorov Alexey Alekseevich(1884-1937), member of the Constituent Assembly: Altai No. 1 Social Revolutionaries and the Council of Peasants' Deputies.

Dutov Alexander Ilyich(1879-1921), member of the Constituent Assembly: Orenburg No. 2 Orenburg Cossack Army.

Evdokimov Kuzma Afanasyevich(1892-1937), member of the Constituent Assembly: Tobolsk district. No. 6 - Social Revolutionaries and the congress of the CD. S. Peganovskoe (Ishim district). From peasants. Teacher. Eser. Participant in the meeting of the Council on January 5. In 1918 it was part of Komuch. During the years of Stalin’s “purges” he was repressed. (Sources: GA RF. F. 1781 - Office of the All-Russian Commission for Elections to the Constituent Assembly, on. 1, no. 50; Land and Freedom. Kurgan, 1917, October 13; http://socialist.memo.ru/).

Zdobnov Nikolay Vasilievich(1888-1942), member of the Constituent Assembly: Perm No. 2 Social Revolutionaries and the Council of Peasant Deputies.

Zenzinov Vladimir Mikhailovich(Petrograd province).

Inyrev Denis Ivanovich

Klimushkin Prokopiy Diomidovich(Samara province).

Kolosov Evgeny Evgenievich, Founding member. Assembled.

Kondratenkov Georgy Nikitich(Tambov province).

Kotelnikov Dmitry Pavlovich, member of the Founding Collection

Krivoshchekov Alexander Ivanovich(Orenburg province).

Krol Moisey Aronovich, member of the Constituent Assembly.

Lazarev Egor Egorovich(Samara province).

Lindberg Mikhail Yakovlevich, member of the Constituent Assembly.

Lyubimov Nikolai Mikhailovich, member of the Constituent Assembly.

Markov Boris Dmitrievich(Tomsk province).

Markov Boris Dmitrievich, member of the Constituent Assembly.

Maslov Pavel Grigorievich(Samara province).

Matushkin Vyacheslav Alexandrovich(01/27/1888, Chesmensky village, Verkhneuralsky district, Orenburg province - ?), member of the Constituent Assembly: Orenburg district. No. 2 - Orenburg Cossack army. Troitsk From the Cossacks, the son of a centurion. He graduated from the Trinity Gymnasium with a silver medal, and studied at the Faculty of Physics and Mathematics of Kazan University. In 1918 a member of Komuch. (Source: List of students of the Imperial Kazan University for the 1905-1906 academic year. Kazan, 1905; for the 1908-1909 academic year. Kazan, 1908; for the 1910-1911 academic year. Kazan, 1910; for the 1914-1915 academic year. Kazan, 1914.,1908-1909).

Minin Alexander Arkadevich(Saratov province).

Mikhailov Pavel Yakovlevich, member of Vseros. Established Assembled.

Mukhin Alexey Fedorovich, member of Vseros. Established Collection

Nesterov Ivan Petrovich(Minsk province).

Nikolaev Semyon Nikolaevich(Kazan province).

Omelkov Mikhail Fedorovich, member of the Constituent Assembly.

Podvitsky Viktor Vladimirovich(Smolensk province).

Pochekuev Kirill Tikhonovich(1864-1918), member of the Constituent Assembly: Simbirsk No. 2 Congress of Peasant Deputies and Social Revolutionaries.

Rakov Dmitry Fedorovich(1881-1941), member of the Constituent Assembly: Nizhny Novgorod No. 3 Social Revolutionaries and the Council of Peasants' Deputies.

Rogovsky Evgeniy Frantsevich(1888-1950), member of the Constituent Assembly: Altai No. 2 Social Revolutionaries and the Council of Peasant Deputies.

Semenov Fedor Semenovich(1890-1973) (Lisienko Arseny Pavlovich), member of the Constituent Assembly: Tomsk No. 2 Socialist Revolutionaries.

Sukhanov Pavel Stepanovich(1869-?), Member of the Constituent Assembly: Tobolsk No. 6 Congress of Peasant Deputies and Social Revolutionaries.

Teregulov Gumer Khalibrakhmanovich(1883-1938), member of the Constituent Assembly: Ufa No. 1 Muslim National Council.

Tukhvatulin Fatykh Nasretdinovich(1894-1938), member of the Constituent Assembly: Perm No. 9 Bashkir Tatar group.

Fakhretdinov, Gabdul-Ahad-Rizaetdinovich(1892-1938), member of the Constituent Assembly: Orenburg Orenburg No. 9 Bashkir Federation.

Committee of Members of the All-Russian Constituent Assembly (abbreviated Komuch or KOMUCH listen)) - the first anti-Bolshevik all-Russian government of Russia, organized on June 8, 1918 in Samara by members of the Constituent Assembly who did not recognize the dispersal of the Assembly by the decree of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee on January 6, 1918.

Komuch of the first composition

The Komuch of the first composition included five Socialist Revolutionaries, members of the Constituent Assembly: Vladimir Volsky - chairman, Ivan Brushvit, Prokopiy Klimushkin, Boris Fortunatov and Ivan Nesterov.

The propaganda cultural and educational department of Komuch began to publish the official printed organ of the new government - the newspaper “Bulletin of the Committee of Members of the All-Russian Constituent Assembly”.

Strengthening the power of Komuch

In the territory where, with the help of the Czechs, it was possible to overthrow the Bolsheviks, Komuch temporarily proclaimed himself the supreme power in Russia on behalf of the All-Russian Constituent Assembly until the latter convened again. Subsequently, the Committee expanded significantly due to the entry into it of another group of former members of the Constituent Assembly (mainly Socialist Revolutionaries) who moved to Samara. At the end of September 1918, there were already 97 people in Komuch. By this time, the executive power of Komuch was concentrated in the hands of the “Council of Department Managers” chaired by Evgeniy Rogovsky (at the same time managing the state security department).

Thus, by August 1918, the “territory of the Constituent Assembly” extended from west to east for 750 versts (from Syzran to Zlatoust, from north to south - 500 versts (from Simbirsk to Volsk). The power of KOMUCH extended to Samara, part of Saratov, Simbirsk, Kazan and Ufa provinces, the power of KOMUCH were recognized by the Orenburg and Ural Cossacks.

Also in July, Komuch invited representatives of the Kazakh “Alash-Orda” led by Alikhan Bukeikhanov and Mustafa Shokai to Samara and concluded a military-political alliance with them against the Reds.

Relying on the accumulated military forces loyal to Komuch, the following measures were taken: an eight-hour working day was officially established, workers' meetings and peasant gatherings were allowed, factory committees and trade unions were preserved. Komuch abolished all Soviet decrees, returned plants, factories and banks to their former owners, proclaimed freedom of private enterprise, restored zemstvos, city dumas and other pre-Soviet institutions. Oscillating between red and white ideology, Komuch either publicly declared his intention to nationalize the land, or provided landowners with the opportunity to return all land plots confiscated from them in favor of the peasants, and even reap the harvests of 1917. Komuch sent paramilitary expeditions into rural areas to protect the property of landowners and wealthy peasants (in Soviet terminology, kulaks), and to recruit and, later, mobilize men into the People's Army.

Fall of Komuch

In the subsequent failures of the People's Army, the main role was played by the complete lack of reserves, not prepared by the Socialist Revolutionary leadership of Komuch, despite the time that Kappel gave them with his first successes on the Volga, despite the opportunities that the vast territories under the control of Komuch provided in terms of mobilization .

The reform to introduce the corps system into the People's Army was a complete failure, due to the collapse of mobilization measures, which, in turn, failed due to the ongoing and irreversible decline in the authority of Komuch and, as a consequence, the decomposition of the social support of power. The positions of the Volga working class were especially irreconcilable. Thus, the resolution of the general meeting of artisans and workers of the Samara depot workshops read:

On July 6, 1918, a large meeting of protesting railway workers took place in Samara, who were so hostile to Komuch that the city commandant was even forced to call in the troops.

Simultaneously with the announcement of mobilization, the Socialist Revolutionary leadership of Komuch returned to its old idea about reliance on the peasantry. To consolidate the peasantry around Komuch and successfully carry out mobilization, the government organized the convening of village assemblies, volost and district peasant congresses. The results turned out to be stunning for the Social Revolutionaries: the peasantry expressed that they did not want to take part in the Civil War, the gatherings decided not to give recruits and not even pay taxes if they went to wage war! Having been mobilized, peasants and workers refused to fight against the Bolsheviks, at the first opportunity they fled to their homes or surrendered to the Reds, bandaging their officers. Cases of open disobedience have become more frequent in the army. On September 8, two regiments located in Samara refused to go to the front. To pacify them, they had to call in 3 armored cars, a machine gun team and cavalry - the soldiers were forced to lay down their arms only under the threat of execution. On September 18, despite the threat of execution, an entire echelon of troops refused to march. There were frequent reports of executions for desertion of the 14th Ufa Regiment stationed in Samara, where cases of Bolshevik agitation were constantly noted. The performance of the 3rd Samara Regiment, which consisted mainly of workers, was especially harshly suppressed, the reason for which was the unsuccessful attempt in this regiment and in the 1st St. George Battalion to release colleagues from the guardhouse who were arrested for desertion. As General Lyupov, who was in the city at that time, recalled, every third person was called out of the ranks and shot; Later, another 900 recruits were shot here for refusing to go to the front.

see also

• List of members of the Constituent Assembly included in KOMUCH

Notes

1. Flags and banners of non-Bolshevik state entities in the East of Russia (1918-1925) according to memoirs and historiography.
2. K. M. Alexandrov. About the Civil War
3. All-Russian Constituent Assembly
4. ISBN 978-5-85824-174-4 - P. 41.
5. Tukhachevsky's 1st Army, consisting of 7 thousand bayonets and 30 guns, as well as the Volskaya Division from the 4th Army. In Kazan, under the personal leadership of the commander of the Eastern Front, Vatsetis, the 5th was concentrated Soviet army consisting of 6 thousand soldiers, 30 guns, 2 armored trains, 2 airplanes and 6 armed ships.
6. Kappel and the Kappelites. 2nd ed., rev. and additional - M.: NP "Posev", 2007. - ISBN 978-5-85824-174-4 - P. 641.

Created in Samara on June 8, 1918. It initially included five members of the Constituent Assembly: I. M. Brushvit, V. K. Volsky, P. D. Klimushkin, I. P. Nesterov, B. K. Fortunatov. Later, he united about a hundred members of the Constituent Assembly who came to Samara together with its chairman V. M. Chernov. The political leadership of Komuch was carried out by the right-wing Social Revolutionaries. Then the Menshevik I.M. Maisky headed the labor department. The People's Army of Komuch was also commanded by Colonel V.O. Kappel. The main military force was the legionnaires of the Czechoslovak corps. B.V. Savinkov fought for Komuch near Kazan with members of the “Union for the Defense of the Motherland and Freedom.” The first orders of the Samara Komuch announced the overthrow of the Bolshevik government and the restoration of city dumas and zemstvos. In connection with this, by the decision of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee of June 14, 1918, the right Socialist Revolutionaries and Mensheviks were expelled from the Soviets of all ranks. On July 12, 1918, Komuch declared it unacceptable for the Bolsheviks and Left Socialist-Revolutionaries to join the Komuch as parties that rejected the Constituent Assembly. Komuch considered himself a continuator of the policy of the Provisional Government and considered resigning his powers before the Constituent Assembly, which would elect an “all-Russian government.” Komuch’s appeal on June 8, 1918 stated that the coup “was carried out in the name of the great principle of democracy and independence of Russia.”

There was a lot of demagogic in Komuch’s declarative appeals and orders. A. S. Soloveychik, a participant in the Komuchev movement, wrote a little later, justifying his actions: in Samara there was a struggle with the Bolsheviks in words, but in reality “a new Ministry of Security was created public order and security carried out intensive surveillance of volunteer officers, cadets and the bourgeoisie and turned a blind eye to the Bolsheviks.” He was echoed by K.V. Sakharov, a Kolchakite, a future Russian fascist abroad: “Both during the existence of the Samara government and during the Directory, all his efforts were aimed not at fighting the Bolsheviks, but precisely at the opposite goal: to recreate a single socialist front, in other words - to reconciliation with the Bolsheviks through a compromise solution. One of the first concerns of the new government was the establishment of a special secret police to fight the counter-revolution on the right.”

But in fact... Samara, June 8, 1918, the day the city was captured by legionnaires and Komuchevites. On this very first day, the chairman of the revolutionary tribunal F.I. Ventsek, the head of the housing department of the city executive committee I.I. Shtyrkin, the popular proletarian poet and playwright, mechanic A.S. Konikhin, communist workers Abas Aleev, E. I. Bakhmutov, I. G. Tezikov, member of the youth agitation group Y. M. Dlugolensky, employee of the board for the formation of the Red Army Shultz, Red Guard Maria Wagner and others. Worker P. D. Romanov paid with his life for trying to help a wounded Red Army soldier. On the same day, more than 100 captured Red Army soldiers and Red Guards were shot. Armed patrols, following instructions from the crowd, shot people suspected of Bolshevism right on the street. Order No. 3 of Komuch proposed that all persons suspected of participation in the Bolshevik uprising be brought to the city security headquarters, and 66 people were immediately arrested “on suspicion of Bolshevism.”

Simbirsk, July 26, 1918, suicide letter from I.V. Krylov, chairman of the revolutionary tribunal, from prison to his wife about the children: “I love them madly, but life turned out differently.” He, too, was a Bolshevik, and he was not the only one who was shot in Simbirsk based on his position and party affiliation.

Kazan was captured by the Komuchevites and legionnaires on August 6, 1918. Terror immediately overwhelmed the city. P. G. Smidovich shared his impressions: “It was truly an unbridled revelry of the winners. Mass executions not only of responsible Soviet workers, but also of everyone who was suspected of recognizing Soviet power, were carried out without trial - and the corpses lay on the streets for days on end.” A. Kuznetsov, eyewitness: “On Rybnoryadskaya Street,” he recalled, “I saw the first victims of the battle - the defenders of these barricades who died gloriously. The first - a sailor, strong, strong, with his arms spread wide, lay on the sidewalk. He was completely disfigured. In addition to gunshot wounds (the White Guards fired explosive bullets), there were bayonet wounds and marks from blows to the head with a rifle butt. Part of the face was pressed in, imprinting the butt. It was clearly visible that the wounded were brutally finished off... It was like a feast of savages celebrating a funeral feast on the corpses of the vanquished.”

The victims of Komuchev's terror were Colonel Ruanet, who went over with the soldiers to the side of the Bolsheviks, Chairman of the Provincial Council and Committee of the RCP (b) Ya. S. Sheinkman, Commissioner of the Tatar-Bashkir Commissariat under the People's Commissariat of the RSFSR and Chairman of the Central Muslim Military Collegium, member of the Constituent Assembly Mullanur Vakhitov, the leader of the Bondyuzh Bolsheviks and the first chairman of the Yelabuga district Council of Deputies S. N. Gassar, the Commissioner of Justice of Kazan M. I. Mezhlauk, the representative of the Samara party organization Khaya Khataevich, the organizers of the working detachments brothers Egor and Konstantin Petryaev, the trade union worker A. P. Komlev and many other.

One can reproach Soviet historiography for the fact that its conclusions are illustrated by the facts of terror against the Bolsheviks, first of all, and not by the numerous victims of the non-party population of the country. But the fact remains: representatives of democracy and socialist parties killed first of all those with whom they had recently been in tsarist exile and prison. They declared themselves as a “third” force operating between the “two Bolshevisms” (the dictatorships of the Bolsheviks and generals), but this did not exclude their punitive actions against everyone who, from their point of view, violated their right to build their own “popular” state. That is why Kolchak in June 1918, in an interview, declared his support for the Constituent Assembly, as this would help save Russia from the Bolsheviks. And in August 1918, Kolchak continued: “A civil war, of necessity, must be merciless. I order the commanders to shoot all captured communists. Now we are relying on bayonets. Military dictatorship is the only effective system of power."

This is probably why, before other departments, after seizing power in Samara, the Komuchites created a state security department (counterintelligence), which became part of the internal affairs department (headed by Deputy Chairman of Komuch P.N. Klimushkin). Volunteer officers, deserters of the Red Army, were invited to work in this department, on the recommendation of former secret police or zemstvo employees. The number of employees in different cities ranged from 60 to 100, including paid agents. All institutions were obliged to provide counterintelligence with “unquestioning and full cooperation.”

The former manager of Komuch’s affairs, J. Dvorzhets, who later went over to the side of the Soviet government, admitted that “terror and work, which even the people’s socialist Khrunin refused, was required, inspired and led by the Socialist Revolutionary, a member of the Constituent Assembly and Minister Klimushkin, who worked friendly and successfully with the corresponding requirement of the headquarters (represented by General Galkin), chief of staff and security Kovalenko." Already in August, the territory under the jurisdiction of Komuch was covered with a network of military courts, and the punitive authorities were separated into a special department of state security headed by E. F. Rogovsky. According to Komuch's order of June 20, 1918, citizens were subject to trial for espionage, for rebellion against the power of Komuch (inciting an uprising), for the deliberate destruction or damage of weapons, military equipment, food or fodder, for damage to communications or transport, for rendering resistance to the police or any other authorities, for possession of weapons without appropriate permission. Citizens guilty of “spreading unfounded rumors” and “pogrom agitation” were also put on trial. In September 1918, suffering defeat at the front, Komuch announced an order to take emergency measures to maintain public order. According to this order, an emergency military court was established, which imposed only one sentence - the death penalty. At the same time, Czech and Serbian counterintelligence were operating in the cities.

On June 8, 1918, when lynchings of party and Soviet workers began in Samara and hundreds of people died during the day, Komuch called “on pain of liability to immediately stop all voluntary executions. We propose that all persons suspected of participation in the Bolshevik uprising be immediately arrested and taken to security headquarters.” And they continued to shoot on a “legal” basis. On June 11, Komuch gave instructions to the head of the Samara prison: prepare places for one and a half thousand people. On June 26, there were 1,600 people in the prison, of which 1,200 were captured Red Army soldiers, and soon newspapers reported that the prison was overcrowded, prisoners began to be transferred to Buguruslan and Ufa prisons. And there they tried to “unload” them: at the bridge over the river every night at one or two o’clock executions were carried out.

On July 10, 1918, the Komuchevites entered Syzran, and an order immediately followed “to immediately hand over all supporters of Soviet power and all suspects. Those responsible for their concealment will be brought before a military court.” A member of Komuch, P. G. Maslov, who returned from Syzran, reported: “The military court in Syzran is in the hands of two or three people... There is a certain tendency to subordinate the entire civilian region to the sphere of their influence... They were given six death sentences in one day. At night, those arrested are taken out and shot.”

The Komuch archival fund, stored in the State Archive of the Russian Federation, contains lists of those arrested and held in prisons in Samara, Simbirsk, Ufa and other cities. A lot of them. To make room for new arrivals, those arrested, especially prisoners, were transferred to concentration camps. The transfer of 52 Red Army soldiers from the Ufa prison was reported at the end of August 1918. The Commissioner of Komuch for the Volsky and Khvalynsky districts reported at the same time: “Despite my efforts to limit arrests only necessary cases, they were practiced on a wide scale, and the places of detention in Khvalynsk were always overcrowded, although some of the most important prisoners were sent to Syzran, the need arose to set up a floating prison, which brought enormous benefits during the evacuation of Khvalynsk." "They were arrested on suspicion and denunciations, agitation against the authorities, sympathy for the Red Army soldiers. The guards divided the belongings of those arrested among themselves, and engaged in extortion.

The Social Revolutionaries tried on behalf of Komuch to establish a semblance of legality. They began to create investigative and legal commissions to consider the grounds for arrest, arresting only with the permission of Komuch. The Samara City Duma asked Komuch about the reasons for the arrests “happening randomly and chaotically in the city.” Member of Komucha Brushvit answered this frankly: “The authorities will arrest for beliefs, for those beliefs that lead to crimes.”

In the Samara prison, 16 women - wives and sisters of responsible Soviet workers - were kept as hostages. Among them were Tsyurupa, Bryukhanova, Kadomtseva, Yuryeva, Kabanova, Mukhina with her son and others. They were kept in poor conditions. At the suggestion of Ya. M. Sverdlov, they were exchanged for hostages indicated by Komuch and previously held in a Soviet prison.

Maisky stated that, despite the broad statements of the leaders of Komuch, there was no democracy in the territory under his control. The Social Revolutionaries imprisoned overcrowded prisons, flogged peasants, killed workers, and sent punitive detachments to the volosts. “It is possible that supporters of the Committee will object to me: in a situation of civil war, no state power is able to do without terror,” Maisky wrote. - I am ready to agree with this statement, but then why do the Socialist Revolutionaries so love to chat about the “Bolshevik terror” prevailing in Soviet Russia? What right do they have to this? There was terror in Samara... And the Socialist Revolutionary Party will not be able to wash its “snow-white” vestments from this terror, no matter how hard it tries.”

When the Reds advanced, the Komuchevites evacuated prisons in the so-called “death trains.” The first train, sent to Irkutsk from Samara, had 2,700 people, the second from Ufa - 1,503 people in cold freight cars. On the way - hunger, cold, executions. From the Samara train, 725 people reached the final destination, the rest died.

In 1925, P. D. Klimushkin finished writing the book “The Volga Movement and the Formation of the Directory” in Prague. He had something to comprehend, to try to understand the reasons for Komuchev’s defeat. He wrote about the practical isolation of the Socialist Revolutionaries: the peasants did not give soldiers to the army, the workers refused to obey, the army was uncontrollable, and terror did not lead to a noticeable improvement in the situation. In the Buguruslan district, seven volosts, headed by the large village of Bogorodskoye, refused to give recruits at once. To frighten the others, they surrounded the village and began firing at it from cannons and machine guns, killing a child and a woman. After this, the peasants agreed with the mobilization, but stated that Civil War they are tired and don’t want to fight anymore. Officers in the army put on shoulder straps. A group of soldiers appeared at the Socialist Revolutionary Committee and declared: “We would serve, but we are afraid that in one night we would be led to arrest the very members of the Constituent Assembly.” Hence the mass desertion. Klimushkin dwelt in detail on the brutal suppression of workers' uprisings in Kazan and Ivashchenkovo, which, he believed, “must be admitted at least for the sake of history.”

Klimushkin quoted a letter from Tolstoy, a member of the Constituent Assembly, who came to Ufa from Moscow: “... things are not going well in the army. The detachments do not receive food and make requisitions from the peasants. There are frequent cases of reprisals against peasants. The landowner's horses and cows are taken away from them, this is accompanied by flogging and terror. The officers again put on their shoulder straps and badges. All this terrifies the peasants and soldiers so much that they now sincerely want the Bolsheviks to return... When he asked why they were doing this, he was told that the Bolsheviks were still their people’s power, and there was a smell of the Tsar there. The landowners and officers will come again and beat us again. It’s better to beat him - it’s his brother.”

A.I. Denikin called Komuch a barren flower. In his opinion, “having come to power at the bayonets of the Czechoslovaks, the Committee of the Constituent Assembly - a branch of the Central Committee of the Socialist Revolutionary Party - was a reflection of the Soviet government, only duller and smaller, devoid of big names, Bolshevik scope and daring.” In this sense, Komuch’s punitive policy had much in common with the Bolshevik: punitive detachments and cruel lawlessness in treating people. The Samara newspaper “Volzhskoe Slovo” reported on June 12, 1918 that the editor was receiving letters protesting against the brutal massacre of captured Red Army soldiers. Eyewitnesses left a large number of memories of the terror that took place. Komuchevets S. Nikolaev admitted: “the regime of terror... took particularly cruel forms in the Middle Volga region.” The Komuchevites began with the arrests of Bolsheviks and Left Socialist Revolutionaries, the organization of military courts that considered the cases of those arrested in their absence for no more than two days. They quite quickly introduced extrajudicial killings, and only when these repressions began to cause general criticism a few months later, only after the beginning of their military defeats, Komuch on September 10, 1918 issued a regulation on a temporary commission “to consider cases of persons arrested extrajudicially.” " It was stipulated that the provision applies only to persons arrested in Samara. On September 16, 1918, the first meeting of this commission took place. She did not consider the question of the fate of the captured Red Army soldiers. According to the report of V.P. Denike about the editor of the newspaper “Volzhsky Den”, where the members of Komuch were called “meeting businessmen who are chasing cheap successes and encouragement of the crowd,” it was decided: no crime was found.

As the defeats at the front progressed, Komuch members intensified repression. On September 18, 1918, an “Extraordinary Court” was established in Samara from representatives of the Czechoslovaks, the People’s Army, and justice. The court met by order of the commander of the Volga Front. At that time he was Colonel V. O. Kappel (1883–1920). The regulations on the trial stated that the perpetrators were sentenced to death for rebellion against the authorities, resistance to their orders, attack on the military, damage to communications and roads, high treason, espionage, forcible release of prisoners, calls for evasion of military service and disobedience to the authorities, deliberate arson and robbery, “malicious” spreading of false rumors, speculation. The number of victims of this trial is unknown. The bulletin of the Samara security department gave very underestimated numbers of those arrested in the city: for June - 27 people, July - 148, August - 67, September - 26 people.

On September 3, 1918, workers of the Kazan Powder Plant rebelled, protesting against Komuchev’s terror in the city, mobilization into the army and the deterioration of their situation. The commandant of the city, General V. Rynkov, shot the workers with cannons and machine guns, including those arrested. On October 1, 1918, the workers of Ivashchenkov opposed the dismantling of enterprises and their evacuation to Siberia. The Komuchevites arrived from Samara, crushed the workers’ patrols and carried out brutal reprisals against the workers, sparing neither women nor children. In total, about a thousand people died at the hands of the Komuchevites.

The Komuchevites later complained: “Democracy and the Constituent Assembly did not have strength. It was defeated by two dictatorships. Obviously, in the processes of revolution the forces of dictatorships are born, but not of balanced democracy” (V.K. Volsky); “Who failed to become a strong democratic government. The then leaders of the Volga Front made a number of major and fatal mistakes” (V. Arkhangelsky). But the Komuchevites themselves, even with references to wartime conditions, carried out their punitive policy by no means democratic methods, which they admitted. Convincingly criticizing the Bolsheviks for terror and the actions of the Chekas, they acted in no less harsh ways in order to assert their power.