Admiral Kolchak: Western intelligence agent and traitor (1 photo). Admiral Kolchak: Western intelligence agent and traitor The most terrible epidemics that changed history

In recent years, against the background of an active study of the punitive policy and political investigation bodies of the Bolshevik dictatorship during the Civil War, the backlog in the study of the system of political control of the White movement has become more and more noticeable. In this direction, especially in relation to the authorities of A.V. Kolchak, only the first steps are being taken.

Accordingly, the documents created in the bowels of the white political control bodies have not yet become the subject of special study, although they are unique sources reflecting the internal political situation in the territories occupied by the white armies. In this regard, Kolchak's counterintelligence was especially "unlucky", whose documents were seized by units of the Red Army and were kept secretly for a long time. In the 60s. they began to be studied by historians, but the rigid ideological framework did not allow them to reveal their information potential. At present, despite the mass declassification of documents and ideological pluralism, they still remain outside the field of view of specialists.

The importance of a comprehensive study of the documents of white institutions that collected and analyzed information about the political moods of the population lies also in the fact that in the historical literature the presentation of events that took place in the Kolchak rear is often mainly illustrative and fragmentary and relies little on a specific factual base. Meanwhile, there are still many unresolved problems in the history of the Civil War in the East of Russia. In particular, the question has not yet been clarified why the peasantry of Siberia, who did not know serfdom, gave preference to the Bolshevik regime, in which mass executions of hostages, indemnities and seizures of surpluses, and sometimes the entire supply of grain, and merciless reprisals against those who resist were obligatory elements.

Under the authority of the Supreme Ruler A.V. Kolchak, which existed in Siberia for more than a year, an extensive system of political investigation was created, in which the leading role belonged to the army counterintelligence agencies. From the first days after the November 1918 coup, the military was the force in whose hands real political, administrative and judicial power was concentrated. The priority of military authorities over civilian ones was explained by the fact that even before the fall of Soviet power in all major cities from Kansk to Chelyabinsk, there were underground officer organizations that formed the backbone of the emerging West Siberian Army in June 1918. In the future, the constant internal political struggle in the government prevented the Council of Ministers from focusing on military issues, so the main headquarters and the army command were given the opportunity to solve them independently. The military felt independent of the government.

Initially, the West Siberian (since July - Siberian) army included several volunteer regiments, in July the formation of the Steppe Siberian and Central Siberian corps began, consisting exclusively of intellectuals and officers. The size of the army grew, new corps were formed. For their recruitment and supply, as well as the "protection of state order", the entire territory of the Urals, Siberia and Transbaikalia was divided into five corps regions, in which the institution of "commissioners for the protection of state order" was introduced.

Attempts to establish bodies in the army to combat espionage and political anti-government speeches began from the very first days of its formation. The counterintelligence agencies that existed even before the overthrow of Soviet power under secret officer organizations, after the coup, were transformed into intelligence departments at the headquarters of garrisons, corps, commanders of the troops of corps regions and performed the functions of both military intelligence and military-political counterintelligence. They exercised control over the political mood of workers and prisoners of war, arrested leaders of the Soviet government, Bolsheviks and Red Army soldiers.

In parallel, at the initiative of the Provisional Siberian Government, similar structures were also formed at the headquarters of the Siberian Army. According to personal negotiations with the representative of the Provisional Siberian Government Lindberg in June 1918, political cases were transferred to the Special Purpose Detachment at the headquarters of the army commander, and criminal cases were subject to the conduct of the criminal police. On July 10, Army Commander A.N. Grishin-Almazov announced the creation of a military control department at the headquarters of the Siberian Army. The department was headed by the captain of the Czechoslovak troops, Zaichek, who was given the right, depending on the situation, to establish departments and points in the cities and corps of Western Siberia. In September, the General Staff of the War Ministry defined the tasks of military control "in relation to existing conditions", which boiled down to "detection of enemy spies and their organizations, as well as persons and organizations supporting Soviet power or working against the revival and liberation of Russia." Until September 1918, the military control department of the Siberian Army operated on the basis of the "Temporary Regulations on the Rights and Duties of Land and Naval Counterintelligence Officers" dated June 17, 1917. However, in practice, the activities of Captain Zaichek's military control in the summer - autumn of 1918 were mainly directed to solve organizational and legal issues, while similar structures at the headquarters of the corps of the Siberian Army were directly involved in political control over the population during this period.

In July - September 1918, the Siberian army liberated almost the entire Urals, Siberia and the Far East from the Bolsheviks. In connection with the further centralization of command and control, the post of Supreme Commander-in-Chief of all the land and sea forces of Russia was introduced, and the reorganization of the military department system began. The Headquarters of the Supreme Commander-in-Chief was created, which, together with other units, constituted the Headquarters of the Supreme Commander-in-Chief. On the agenda was the transformation of the military control system. On November 29, 1918, the Central Department of Military Control was created at the Headquarters, whose task was to unify the activities of the entire counterintelligence service in the territory liberated from the Bolsheviks. The military control of the Siberian army merged into the newly created structure. Colonel Zlobin headed the Central Department until the end of 1919. During the reorganizations of 1919, the department was renamed several times and changed its subordination, but retained the functions of the leading body of counterintelligence and military control of the army, and later rear counterintelligence

After the coup of Admiral A.V. Kolchak and his appointment as Supreme Ruler and Supreme Commander-in-Chief of all land and sea forces of Russia, the process of reorganization of all army structures began. During the winter of 1918/19. armed forces were created, including the Western, Siberian, Orenburg and Ural armies, numbering up to 400 thousand people, including about 30 thousand officers, on the font - 130 - 140 thousand bayonets and sabers. The military districts were restored.

During this period, attempts to establish the work of the military control service of the Headquarters met with stubborn resistance from the departments formed by Captain Zaychek, as well as those that arose independently. The system of organs and their subordination was extremely complex and confusing, which did not allow for systematic reporting.

Therefore, the process of creating a coherent system of counterintelligence agencies in the army and rear districts required additional reorganizations: in February, a network of branches was established at the headquarters of the Siberian, Western and Orenburg armies, and at the headquarters of the 2nd Army Siberian Separate Corps, at the headquarters of the corps that are part of armies, as well as in the theater of operations - a network of local institutions (points). Strict vertical subordination and the procedure for providing information were established. The heads of departments were obliged to submit reports on the results of their activities in copies to the head of the counterintelligence department at the headquarters of the Supreme Commander-in-Chief and the head of the Central Counterintelligence Directorate at the General Staff of the Military Ministry.

In early March, by order of the Minister of War, the organs of the counterintelligence service were restored in all districts in relation to the Provisional Regulations of June 17, 1917. The leadership of their activities was entrusted to the head of the Information Department of the General Staff. The Provisional Regulations on Military Counterintelligence in the Internal Districts, issued on March 26, 1919, determined their relationship with the counterintelligence of the active army and navy. The leadership of the entire land counterintelligence - the general one was assigned to the chief of the General Staff, the nearest - to the head of the Information Department. Until May 1919, the War Ministry, through the counterintelligence part of the Informative Department of the General Staff, carried out general leadership and coordination of political control bodies in the rear military districts and controlled the activities of the Counterintelligence Department of the Headquarters of the Supreme Commander in the army.

After major successes near Perm at the end of 1918 and the successful spring offensive of the army of A.V. Kolchak advanced to the Volga, approaching Kazan and Samara. Government of A.V. Kolchak, who claimed to be the all-Russian, began to create a state apparatus of an all-Russian scale, to serve the entire country. During this period, the formation of a system of political investigation in the structure of the Ministry of Internal Affairs began. On March 7, the Supreme Ruler approved the decision of the Council of Ministers on the establishment of a Special Department of State Protection and relevant local departments under the Department of Militia of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. In the provinces (regions) and districts, special forces were created. However, due to the extremely low salaries and the lack of personnel in general, this work was delayed and practically nowhere was completed. At the same time, the status of the administrative bodies of the provinces was significantly upgraded. At the head of the provinces (oblasts) and districts were governors. In the front line, the position of the chief commander of the region with the functions of the governor-general was introduced. In fact, the civil administration of the front line fell into direct dependence on the commander of the army stationed in this area.

The functions of special departments and local administration included the task of informing the Ministry of the Interior about the political situation in the areas entrusted to them. Based on the data obtained, a general summary was compiled and sent to the central bodies of military control and counterintelligence of the army for familiarization. In turn, at the direction of the Chief of the General Staff (later the Headquarters of the Supreme Commander-in-Chief), similar reports were sent to the Ministry of Internal Affairs, compiled according to the data of the military censorship bureau and counterintelligence.

By the spring of 1919, a cumbersome system of civil and military administration had been created, the functions of which were often duplicated. For this reason, an attempt was made to somewhat streamline the system of political investigation of the army and the Ministry of Internal Affairs.

On April 18, 1919, by order of the Chief of Staff of the Supreme Commander-in-Chief, the “Temporary Regulations on Counterintelligence and Military Control Service in the Theater of Operations” were approved, which regulated the activities of the counterintelligence of the army in the field. The general leadership of it was entrusted to the quartermaster general under the Supreme Commander. So, it was the duty of the counterintelligence agencies located in the military area to monitor the military personnel, while also observing the civilian population. All information obtained was to be reported to the chief of staff of the army for an operational decision. The military control bodies, on the other hand, were called upon to serve the rest of the army's area, fighting mainly against the civilian population, while also monitoring military personnel. This division of functions was explained by the ongoing civil war and subsequently it was supposed to limit the work of counterintelligence only to the fight against spies and their organizations, and military control, as ensuring state order and public peace, was supposed to be transferred to the Ministry of Internal Affairs.

The counterintelligence unit with the counterintelligence department of the Headquarters of the Supreme Commander-in-Chief became the central registration and reporting body, in which all the material coming from the branches of the active army was to be concentrated and systematized. The procedure for compiling reports, keeping diaries of external surveillance and the frequency of reporting, organizing a card file, forming clerical files and informing the same bodies from which the information was received, with generalized information related to the organization, methods and techniques of enemy espionage, was established.

In April - May, the organization of a network of branches and points in the army and military districts was completed, systematic reporting was established, according to which the head of the Information Department of the General Staff of the Military Ministry compiled an overview of the political moods of various segments of the population, the activities of political parties and public organizations.

The constant rivalry between the Headquarters of the Supreme Commander and the Ministry of War led to a new reorganization of the central military administration and the concentration of all power in the Headquarters. Issues of counterintelligence and military control began to be in charge of the Office of the 2nd Quartermaster General, which included the Department of Counterintelligence and Military Control and the Registration Department. This had a negative impact on the analysis and generalization of information about the political situation in the region, since the new procedure for compiling reports focused on registering information about the subversive activities of the enemy, therefore, all information related to the direct political moods of the population, mainly continued to come from the branches and points of the army and districts, was included in the review summary in small numbers.

In order to directly inform the government about the political moods of the population in the summer of 1919, information offices were created under the armies, but their activities in terms of collecting and analyzing information about the moods of the population were not widely spread.

During the retreat of the Kolchak army in September-October 1919, the military administration was reorganized, the Headquarters was liquidated, counterintelligence was transferred to the jurisdiction of the Chief of the Military Administrative Directorate of the Eastern Front, which received the name of the local counterintelligence department. Its tasks remained the same, only somewhat more specific - the military counterintelligence was engaged in the elimination of enemy spies and agitators in the ranks of the troops, the local counterintelligence agencies were supposed to fight against the anti-state elements of the country. The agents were supposed to reach the smallest units, down to companies and squadrons, penetrate into all settlements, in parallel, finding out the attitude of the masses to the existing system. In survey reports, more attention was paid to the attitude of the population towards the warring parties. And despite the collapse of the army, the counterintelligence service functioned until the final fall of government power in January 1919.

Construction and activity in 1918 - 1919 The pyramidal structure of the counterintelligence service, which permeated with a network of institutions almost the entire territory of the Urals, Siberia, Transbaikalia and the Far East, led to the creation of an array of information materials (reports and summaries). The information material transmitted to inform the high command of the armed forces and the Supreme Ruler was a general summary of messages received from the departments and points of counterintelligence and military control, as well as supplemented by information from other sources. The desire of the heads of departments and points to go beyond the instructions and provide as much information as possible about the political situation in the areas entrusted to them, as well as the verbatim reproduction of the most vivid and apt statements from the population in relation to the government and the enemy camp, make this source unique and distinguished by a high degree reliability and information content. On the other hand, like any source, summaries and reports of departments and counterintelligence points are permeated with the political views of their compilers. All resisting segments of the population, as a rule, are referred to as "Reds" or "Bolsheviks", similarly, counterintelligence agents were inclined to characterize anti-government sentiments primarily as a "tendency towards Bolshevism."

The surviving materials of Kolchak’s counterintelligence can be divided into two main groups: documents created during the political investigation (surveillance diaries, reports, reports of departments and points, overview reports and reports of the head of the Counterintelligence Department) and investigative files on persons accused of anti-state activities and propaganda . Despite the fact that the goals and objectives of the counterintelligence were reduced mainly to the fight against the Bolshevik underground, the topics of reports and reports are much broader. They reflect the causes and nature of peasant and urban uprisings, the mood of the peasantry, workers, intelligentsia, military personnel, including foreign (Czech, Polish, American and other) units, information about the activities of the Bolshevik underground, the Socialist-Revolutionary Party, urban and Zemstvo self-government, public and other organizations. The value of the documents that arose in the course of the activities of departments and points is also increased by the fact that, when analyzing and summarizing the information received, counterintelligence officers not only checked it for reliability, but also identified the causes of fluctuations in public sentiment and the growth of anti-government speeches, without hiding the negative aspects of the activity. civil and military administrations, and sometimes, for comparison, they cited information about the actions of the enemy in the sphere of winning the sympathy of the population, methods and techniques of agitation.

The mood, causes and nature of the peasant uprisings have mainly become the subject of study of counterintelligence since the end of 1918, when the military control departments of the Siberian army were formed. Prior to this, similar information passed through the reports and reports of punitive expeditions of the army corps and representatives for the protection of public order, telegrams from the places of peasant demonstrations. The most characteristic reasons for the unrest of the peasants in the summer - autumn of 1918 in Slavgorod, Minusinsk and some other counties were considered by counterintelligence officers to be conflicts over giving recruits and collecting taxes, which arose, as a rule, due to ignorance of the goals and motives of the government. Instead of settling these problems peacefully and through agitation, punitive detachments were sent. In reports and telegrams from the places of speeches, it was noted that “the peasants are against any power that brings them violence”, they considered the peasant congress to be the highest power, which can only decide whether to give recruits and whether to collect taxes, are ready to “recognize the really people’s power, elected by the people, elected from persons known to the peasants, and not from lists. In a telegram from 16 villages of the Minusinsk district, sent from the center of the uprising, the village of Shemonaikha, the peasants demanded that the government “stop sending punitive detachments, accept their just popular demands, not act by force, but peacefully, not mix with Bolshevism, otherwise the people will stand up for their rights." Other reasons for the peasant uprisings were the abuses of the Cossack chieftains, the arrests of deserters and the fight against moonshine factories. The instigators in the latter case were, as a rule, the owners of these factories, who tried to involve as many people as possible in order to "avoid responsibility for the massacre of the police." The general goal of the uprisings was to "throw off the Cossack yoke, establish peasant rule".

Materials of the end of 1918 - 1919. about the causes, driving forces, leaders and course of the uprisings are presented mainly by summaries and reports of the heads of counterintelligence departments and points. After analyzing the general summaries and reviews compiled for the provinces of the Urals, Siberia and the Far East, one can single out the most characteristic features of the peasant uprisings, in general similar to the summer-autumn uprisings. The motives for the speeches were the atrocities of the punitive detachments, the county police and military units. The instigators and leaders were local residents: peasants, privately prosperous, teachers, front-line soldiers, students. The rebellious villages involved neighboring settlements through threats; violent mobilizations, requisitions, etc. were carried out. The bulk of the detachments, in addition to the forcibly involved peasants, consisted of deserters, young people from 16 to 25 years old. Peasants of older ages were sharply negative about the uprisings. In areas where coal mines were located or near cities, the insurgent peasants tried to establish contact with the workers and win them over to their side, which can be seen mainly from the leaflets and appeals of the peasant armies.

Kolchak counterintelligence saw one of the main reasons for the success of the insurrectionary and partisan movement in the ignorance of the population about the goals and objectives of the government and in general the absence of any information in areas located 200-300 miles from the railways, where residents did not know who Kolchak was, but who are the Bolsheviks. In the Urals, for example, the Kreyatyans believed that the power was “Cossack”.

Another no less serious reason, according to officials of counterintelligence, was the fact that Siberia did not experience the rule of the Bolsheviks in the same way as the inhabitants of European Russia experienced, for example, the Perm province, occupied only at the end of December 1918. Peasants with great distrust perceived the stories of refugees from Perm after its capture by the Red Army in the summer of 1919, about violence, hunger and requisitions, since they "remember nothing of the sort about the Bolsheviks."

In the reports of the heads of departments and points of the front and rear counterintelligence for November 1918 - March 1919. special attention was paid to the moods of various categories of peasants: old-timers, migrants, as well as those living in agricultural, mixed (peasant-factory), deaf, wooded and hard-to-reach areas. The peasants of the "grain-growing" regions, which especially managed to suffer from the Bolshevik requisitions (Perm province), during this period were almost monarchist, they were especially affected by the stories of the front-line soldiers returning to their villages about the famine and terror that reigned in Soviet Russia. Mobilization until March was successful, the old people willingly gave up their children, the general desire was to put an end to Bolshevism as soon as possible.

At the same time, already from March-April, deaf, wooded and hard-to-reach areas (Zmeinogorodsky, Zaiskansky, Semipalatinsk and Pavlodar counties) were noted in the reports, where mainly migrants lived. Those, compared, for example, with their neighboring Ust-Kamenogorsk district, are a "hornet's nest", where "dark personalities" constantly dart around and covert propaganda is carried out by hiding former figures of Soviet power. At the same time, the peasants begin to feel a shortage of labor and agricultural machinery. Thus, until May 1919, according to counterintelligence information, there were two currents in the villages: “a passive bias towards pre-revolutionary life” (old-timers) and a “tendency towards Bolshevism” (migrants of recent years, refugees from the Baltic states, colonists).

In the summer, the mood of the peasants was assessed by counterintelligence officers as indifferent or distrustful of the government, and since autumn, after the summer uprisings in the rear, as dejected. The peasants explained this by the hopeless situation in which they found themselves between two fires - punitive detachments of government troops and partisan detachments acting no less cruelly towards the “non-aligned” villages: “The Reds will come, rob, shoot whoever they need, and leave, then Kolchak, Kalmyk, Japanese come - they burn houses, kill whom they suspect, and leave. We don't know what to do."

The inability of the authorities to suppress peasant unrest led to the fact that in many villages of Siberia and the Far East in the summer and autumn self-defense units began to be organized. The peasants of other villages joined the rebels, explaining that they were forced to join the rebel areas, because otherwise they would face revenge from the partisans.

Since the autumn of 1919, after another reorganization of counterintelligence, special attention in the reports began to be paid to the mood of the population of the front line. Here, the fluctuations in the mood of the peasantry mainly depended on the behavior of the troops of one side or another passing through their villages. The peasants said: "Before, the Reds had a mess - they were persecuted, but now the Whites - they are persecuted."

On the other hand, the inhabitants of the front line, who had heard a lot about the methods of Bolshevik rule, in a number of areas were sympathetic to all the hardships of the war. The most stable anti-Bolshevik sentiments remained among the Cossacks, Tatars, Kirghiz and the Old Believers population.

In December, according to agents' reports, the authority of the government finally fell, trust in the Irkutsk, Tomsk and Yenisei provinces remained only in the Zemstvo. In the Far East, the government has not enjoyed authority since the summer, preference was given to the Constituent Assembly.

Information about the moods of the workers was developed already from the first days of the fall of Soviet power, since the military authorities saw them as potential "Bolsheviks". However, in the intelligence reports of the units of the Siberian Army, it was objectively noted that the workers were opposed to the Soviet government and were in favor of the Constituent Assembly. However, since autumn, due to falling wages and the abolition of the 8-hour day, strikes sometimes took on a political character, but were short-lived and quickly suppressed by the authorities.

The greatest activity was shown during this period by the railroad workers. In October 1918, they organized a strike with economic demands along the entire Trans-Siberian Railway, which covered up to a dozen cities. In the winter of 1918/19 they were the most active part of the workers, especially after the formation of a bloc of Socialist-Revolutionaries and Bolsheviks, who had direct influence on them.

Information about the workers for 1919, contrary to the expectations of the counterintelligence officers themselves, is striking in its scarcity and monotony. Although the work issue was initially given great importance in the reports, since, according to the head of the department of the Irkutsk branch of military control, the strikes of the miners of the Sudzhensky and Anzhersky mines could paralyze traffic along the entire Trans-Siberian railway. Since February 1919, workers' complaints about low wages have been a running theme in the reports. In general, after the suppression of the urban uprisings of the winter of 1918/19, inspired by the Bolsheviks, as well as the arrest of most trade unionists, the mood of the workers was assessed as "depressed", and serious speeches were not expected from them. Counterintelligence materials for the second half of 1919 testify that despite the further decline in living standards, strikes were carried out in rare cases and under economic demands. So, for example, when the miners of the Cheremkhov mines went on strike in the summer of 1919, the agents reported that, although the workers were unconditionally Bolshevik, there could be no demonstration due to the lack of weapons and organizers. According to agents, the governor of the Irkutsk province, Yakovlev, came to the miners and agitated them to stand up for their rights more unitedly, since, in his opinion, their actions were spontaneous.

In October - December 1919, there was also no particular activity of the workers, and armed demonstrations took place only at the immediate approach of the front, when it was obvious that the power of the Omsk government no longer existed.

The workers of the Urals, according to agents, firmly stood on the position of rejection of both the power of the Bolsheviks and the Kolchak government. In their opinion, as stated in the resolution of the congress of trade unions of the proletariat of the Urals of June 18, 1919, instead of restoring industry, it is pursuing a reactionary policy under the flag of the struggle against Bolshevism, and therefore the workers, who have endured the regime of the Bolshevik and bourgeois dictatorship on their shoulders, consider it necessary to fight for the exercise of democracy and political freedoms. And only when the front approached Yekaterinburg, all the factories of the district went on strike and the movement of workers, as the agent reported, took on a Bolshevik character.

Against this background, only the workers of Vladivostok were particularly active. The reports for January-September 1919 constantly contain information about the connections of the workers of Vladivostok with partisan detachments.

In addition to a sympathetic attitude towards the Bolsheviks, the agents noted that in Irkutsk and Troitsk the attitude of the workers towards the existing government had long been “benevolent”, especially after the increase in the salary of the Troitsk workers after A.V. Kolchak visited the city, and only growing speculation caused discontent. An extremely hostile attitude towards the Bolsheviks was noted among the workers who fled from Izhevsk, Votkinsk and Perm. The Permian workers who evacuated deep into Siberia in the summer of 1919 were unpleasantly struck by the "presence of Bolsheviks in all strata of society", that is, the sympathetic attitude of the population towards the authorities, about which they knew practically nothing. They said that "Siberia should be sipped bitter to tears," since under the rule of the Bolsheviks "the peasants would not have 5-10 cows."

But in general, despite the anti-government mood that prevailed among the majority of the workers, unlike the peasantry, they did not resort to active actions after the repressions that fell upon them, taking a wait-and-see attitude and becoming more active only with the approach of the Red Army.

An analysis of materials on political moods in the army shows that discontent and desertion from December 1918 were caused primarily by poor food and uniform supplies. The most staunch adherents of the Omsk government until December 1919 were the so-called "Europeans", that is, the soldiers of those areas that had been under the rule of the Bolsheviks for a long time, as well as the Cossacks. The most unreliable element in the army were the “Siberians”, who had not experienced the Bolshevik pro-dictatorship and requisitions in the summer and autumn of 1918, as well as mobilized soldiers from areas affected by the actions of punitive detachments. They did not understand the aims of the fight between the Whites and the Reds, they wished for "an early reconciliation with the Bolsheviks," they easily panicked and, when the opportunity arose, went over to the side of the Reds. The agents of counterintelligence were especially fearful of the "front-line soldiers" propagandized by the Bolsheviks during the period of the decay of the old Russian army.

The reports of departments and points of military counterintelligence, as well as special reports of the head of the counterintelligence department contain a lot of information about the activities of not only the Bolsheviks, but also other socialist parties, the Zemstvo-socialist movement and its role in destabilizing the political situation in the Kolchak rear.

Counterintelligence and military control agents of the active army also monitored the enemy's relationship with the local population, the state of discipline in the Red Army, and so on. Thus, from September 1919, according to the reports of all levels, the most important information was information about a sharp change in enemy tactics in relation to the local population: firstly, the Red Army began to pay with money for food and supplies, did not make forced requisitions, and secondly, the Bolsheviks on the territory occupied by them, they began to establish relations with the church, trying to enlist the support of the clergy, which made a particularly strong positive impression on the residents. These facts significantly influenced the attitude of the population towards the Bolsheviks, not only in rural areas, but also in cities: if before, when the Red Army units approached, many residents tried to evacuate deep into Siberia, then from September they began to stay in place. In a special analytical report by the head of the press subdepartment at the Information Department of the headquarters of the Supreme Commander-in-Chief in July 1919, devoted to "Bolshevism", it was noted that in Siberia "there is no clear idea of ​​Bolshevism, its causes, the danger to all civilized mankind" and emphasized that the population of Siberia "tried only the initial temptation, and did not taste its bitter fruits, curing forever." The author saw the advantages of the enemy in "cohesion, capacity, implementation of decisions by telegraph", and it was also emphasized that "their decisions meet the conditions of the moment, they are not constrained by any means."

Thus, counterintelligence materials allow: to take a fresh look at the picture of socio-political life in the rear of the armies of A.V. Kolchak, to determine the whole set of factors that determined the fluctuations in the mood of the population, to resolve the long-standing dispute of historians about the time of the transition of the Siberian peasantry to the side of Soviet power, to understand how the peasantry understood this power, and to understand how the popularity of this or that power depends on its ability to quickly respond to the needs of the population.

Archival documents:

Russian State Military Archive.
F. 40218 - Counterintelligence Department of the Headquarters of the Supreme Commander-in-Chief of all land and sea armed forces of Russia.

The following people worked on the program: S. Unigovskaya, S. Postriganev The program was attended by: Nikolai Sergeevich Kirmel, Candidate of Historical Sciences, Senior Lecturer in the Journalism Department of the Military University, editor of the Chekist.ru website, member of the Society for the Study of the History of Domestic Special Services; Dmitry Nikolayevich Filippov, Doctor of Historical Sciences, Professor, Corresponding Member of the Russian Academy of Missile and Artillery Sciences, full member of the Academy of Military Sciences, member of the Presidium of the Academy of Military Sciences.

The history of domestic counterintelligence has more than one century, during which time its art has gone a long way of development - from seemingly primitive operational measures to the most complex combinations. However, after the February Revolution, the structures of the political investigation of tsarist Russia were abolished, and soon the All-Russian Extraordinary Commission was formed. Many books have been written about the Cheka and films made, but not much is known about the activities of the counterintelligence of the White movement.
Creating intelligence and counterintelligence, the leaders of the White Guard relied on the experience of building the special services of the Russian Empire, which, judging by the documents and modern research, were far from perfect. Thus, the shortcomings laid down even in the autocracy were transferred to the secret services of the white governments and armies. And one more important circumstance: after the February Revolution, the gendarmerie department ceased to exist, all of its officers already enrolled in counterintelligence were subject to immediate dismissal.

Ustinov, assistant chief of counterintelligence of the Black Sea Fleet, later recalled what happened in those days: “All members of the police department and agents of the former outlying department were fired. This measure deprived counterintelligence of experienced workers, in some respects even irreplaceable. A similar situation developed in Petrograd. By order of the Naval General Staff of April 26, 1917, the Petrograd Naval KRO was reorganized, and its head, Colonel Nikolaev, was dismissed. Instead, Serebryakov, who had the rank of ensign, became the head of the department!

The leaders of the white movement, in particular, Anton Ivanovich Denikin, also did not favor the gendarmes ...

Nikolai KIRMEL: In contrast to Kolchak, who placed former gendarmes and counterintelligence officers at the head of counterintelligence agencies, Denikin placed officers of the General Staff as heads of counterintelligence, and combat officers occupied the positions of operational personnel. And who were, as they say, such combat officers? These are not those who have been associated with the army all their lives, have gone through a certain army school. Those officers had their own caste notions of honor, dignity of an officer - these officers, for the most part, died on the fronts of the First World War.

Who replenished the impoverished ranks of volunteer armies? The officers became people of peaceful professions, who had little idea of ​​the art of war and army honor. Nevertheless, these people occupied various positions in the army hierarchy and often ended up in counterintelligence.

What kind of professionalism, especially the moral code of Russian officers, could we talk about! Moreover, the Fatherland, which they were proud of and which they defended, collapsed in an instant. And in the turmoil and confusion of the chaos that engulfed the country, few people understood the political situation, who were the Reds, who were the Whites... : “Peace to the peoples!”, “All power to the councils!”, “Land to the peasants!”, “Liquidation of private property” and the like. Another thing is that these promises were not fulfilled, but that was later, and then, in civilian life, these laconic, capacious promises stirred the souls of the masses ... What did the white movement oppose to Bolshevik propaganda? "For the Great United and Indivisible Russia"? "For the monarchy"? What is it, to return the land to the landowners? In other words, speaking out against the Soviet regime, the leaders of the White movement did not have a specific program of action. They did not offer the people a formalized political ideal, and therefore could not win over a significant part of it. The primary task of the White movement was to defeat the Bolsheviks, and the fate of Russia was to be decided by the Constituent Assembly ... And this means that those who suffered from the revolution will deal with the future structure of the country: representatives of the commercial and industrial class and large landowners ... That is, everyone will be the same ... Therefore, the white regimes began to restore the old order: private property and freedom of trade. The economy was destroyed, prices jumped dozens of times, since they were freed from any state control. The White Guard governments did not have enough funds to support the state apparatus, the maintenance of the army ...

Nikolai KIRMEL: In Soviet literature, it was said a lot about what the allies supplied with everything. Yes, there were indeed deliveries of weapons, equipment, and so on, but all this, for example, did not reach the army. Because it was plundered somewhere in warehouses, sold for fabulous sums. And those, let's say in modern terms, businessmen for whom the white army, so to speak, returned them to their places, they were in no hurry to give money to the army. Here. They kept it. Even Denikin was indignant about this, being in exile ...

“Everyone demanded that the authorities protect their rights and interests, but very few were inclined to be ready to provide real assistance. - Anton Ivanovich Denikin wrote in exile. - This trait was especially terrible in relation to the attitude of the majority of the bourgeoisie to that power that restored the bourgeois system and property. Material assistance to the army and the government from the propertied classes was expressed in figures that were negligible in the full sense of the word. And while the claims of these classes were very great.

The deplorable situation of the white army forced them to engage in requisitions - food, fodder, horses, and livestock were constantly confiscated from the population. All this resulted in a real robbery of their own people. If at first whites were greeted as liberators, soon the attitude towards them changed to the opposite. By the way, later, in exile, this was recognized by the White Guards themselves.

And, as it always happens in troubled times, against the backdrop of a general decline (or maybe thanks to it) - a lot of dubious personalities, businessmen and swindlers, shamelessly lined their pockets, making fabulous fortunes ...

A distinctive feature of all state institutions in the territory controlled by the whites was the phenomenal dominance of the bureaucracy. This was due to many reasons. Firstly, the rear institutions were a refuge from being drafted into the army. Secondly, all government structures were built in advance under the all-Russian level and according to the old schemes. The demonstrative emphasis on pre-revolutionary traditions was manifested in the fact that in the areas captured by the Whites, the old spelling and the Julian calendar were in effect. Even astronomy was ignored - all the offices of the Volunteer Army in Yekaterinodar worked according to Petrograd time. The flourishing of the Denikin bureaucracy was also facilitated by the fact that in the "white south" a huge number of officials of all stripes and ranks who had fled from central Russia had accumulated. By the end of 1919, there were 8 former senators, 18 generals, 50 active state councilors, 22 state councilors, 49 marshals of the nobility in the apparatus of the Special Conference. And it is absolutely impossible to count the number of petty officials who, in an environment of devastation and high cost, were trying to get a minimum, but still guaranteed income. The constant growth of state institutions has become a serious financial burden. In order to save money, officials were given minimum salaries - from 300 to 600 rubles. At the same time, a pound of bread on the market cost about 20 rubles. But the savings on the salaries of officials turned into an unprecedented rampant corruption. For most of them, bribes have become almost the only means of supporting their families.

In Soviet times, in the course of the history of the Civil War, there was practically no information about the activities of the special services of the white movement in the fight against corruption, manifestations of smuggling in the rear of the White Guard troops ...

Dmitry FILIPPOVYKH: It can be said that, in general, the support of the activities of the troops by the White Guard special services - this topic was terra incognito until the beginning of the 90s ... At the same time, the Soviet audience still had a certain idea of ​​\u200b\u200bthe activities of the White Guard special services, at least according to the cult film in the 70s "His Excellency's Adjutant". Well, which in terms of significance was in no way inferior to such a film as "17 Moments of Spring".

A little note: the script of the film was based on a real story, the main character of which (in the film - Staff Captain Koltsov) bore the surname Makarov. The prototype of the commander of the Volunteer Army, General Kovalevsky, was also a real person, Vadim Zenonovich Mai-Maevsky, - here he is in the photograph ... The prototype of the head of counterintelligence of the Volunteer Army, Colonel Shchukin, bore the surname Shchuchkin ...

Dmitry FILIPPOVYKH: So, this film shows well the moment when the counterintelligence of the Volunteer Army tried to fight various kinds of violations - smuggling, theft on railway transport, in principle, everything related to the logistics of the army in the field. In the counterintelligence prison, those detained for certain offenses were kept - railway workers, an official, and it is probably easy to recall the plot when a counterintelligence officer who came in asked: why are you in prison? ..

FRAGMENT from the film "His Excellency's Adjutant".

Dmitry Filippov: But all this concerned train crews. But, in addition to the train brigades, in the chambers of counterintelligence of the Volunteer Army, and, in principle, counterintelligence and Denikin's army and Yudenich's army and Kolchak's army, and Wrangel's army, there were not only members of train brigades. There were also dishonest officials who were tried to be held accountable by the authorities responsible for maintaining law and order in the rear of the army in the field...

The activities of counterintelligence - an institution that played a significant role in the days of white dictatorships - were not limited only to the fight against the Bolshevik underground, sabotage and sabotage ... This division of the White Guard special services was also charged with the fight against corruption in the rear of the army. Bribery and speculation affected all layers in the days of white power. For speculation, the legal adviser of the "Special Meeting", the commandant of Novocherkassk, and many other rear commanders were put on trial. When, on the eve of the surrender of Odessa, General Schilling tried to stop the bacchanalia that had engulfed the city and ordered the closure of a number of restaurants, a rumor immediately spread that he was a secret shareholder of the Golden Fish restaurant and thus sought to remove competitors.

A special Klondike for bribery were railway stations and ports in the south of Russia, where military supplies were received from abroad ...

Nikolai KIRMEL: Captains of sea and river vessels, they transported anyone, anyone, for money. And smugglers, and Bolshevik emissaries, Bolshevik agents, presenting them even in the form of ship crews. It was also beneficial for the captain - to receive, as they say, money for the transportation of smuggled persons, or smuggled goods.

In 1923, in Moscow, at the State Publishing House, from the materials of the White Guard press, Georgy William's book "The Decay of the Volunteers or the Defeated" was published. Essayist, poet, translator Georgy Yakovlevich William fled abroad after the revolution, and then returned to fight the Bolsheviks. After the defeat of Denikin, he again ended up in exile, where he wrote his memoirs about what he saw with his own eyes in civilian life ... The Soviet state-political leadership decided to publish a hostile White émigré author only for the purpose of propaganda ... But, be that as it may, information William claim to be objective for one simple reason - they were written by a person who sympathizes with the white movement ... So, the events in which the author was a direct participant took place in Novorossiysk. There were only a few days left before the collapse of Denikin's army... The last commandant of the Novorossiysk railway junction told Georgy William about this episode... At that moment, when Denikin's troops were still fighting bloody battles with the troops of the Red Army, in their rear on the railway transport, some tricksters were making money for themselves states...

Dmitry FILIPPOVYKH: In a conversation with a former guards colonel who was the commandant of the Novorossiysk railway junction, the author learns that the previous military commandant practically did not care about the supply of weapons, military equipment, equipment for the army, but was engaged in commerce. For a moderate bribe, he transported manufactory, silk gloves, stockings, perfumes. It was enough to load one box of shrapnel into such an echelon so that the train received the status of a letter train and actually passed non-stop to where it needed to go. But not at the forefront.

By the way, the first thing William heard when he arrived in Novorossiysk was: “They drove the Reds away - and how many of them were laid down, the passion of the Lord! - and began to direct their orders. Liberation has begun. At first the sailors were frightened<...>they drove them out behind the pier, forced them to dig a ditch for themselves, and then they would lead them to the edge and from the revolvers one by one. And then now into the ditch. So do you believe how crayfish they moved in this ditch until they fell asleep. And then, in this place, the whole earth moved: therefore, they didn’t finish it off, so that it would be disrespectful to others. ”

The real Mecca for crooks and swindlers during the years of the Civil War was the port city of Novorossiysk. No wonder the organs of Denikin's counterintelligence were concentrated here. So in October-month of 1919, Colonel Mergin, a representative of the special department of the General Staff of the Military Directorate under the Black Sea Military Governor, reported to his superiors that the local hub was full of wagons not sent to their destination ...

Nikolai Kirmel: In this case, the reason for the delays was the sabotage of workers and artisans who prevented the sending of shells to the front. But in this case, the sabotage of the workers may have been connected with the Bolsheviks, who thus tried to prevent the necessary equipment from being sent to the front in order to facilitate the task of the Red Army. But at the same time, the cars standing at the stations were mostly plundered ...

The head of the Novorossiysk counterintelligence point, Captain Musienko, was one of the few who was able to complete the investigation of abuses at the Novorossiysk railway junction. He ensured that many officials involved in bribery were held accountable. The fact, unfortunately, is almost a single one ...

Nikolai KIRMEL: In particular, he managed to prevent the illegal export of food products to Georgia. So, on December 13, 18, counterintelligence officials detained a certain Tselinsky, who was trying to hide from mobilization. Also from Georgia, from the permission illegally issued by the commander of the military port for the export of almost 300 pounds of flour.

That is, one part of the army fought, as they say, not sparing their lives, and at that time those who had access to material values ​​were diligently enriching themselves. The saddest thing is that Captain Musienko and honest officers like him were not only not encouraged by the command, on the contrary, they paid a lot for their valiant work ...

Nikolai KIRMEL: “Shtrenko received permission in Yekaterinodar for 150 wagons of flour to be exported to Georgia. Primak - for 560 pounds of pasta in Sukhumi. How to proceed?". So he asks, but instead of making some decision about the conclusion, he was called to the phone around midnight, the Black Sea military governor, Major General Kutepov, and accused of careerism. Those. these positions at the top were so, one might say, strong that they tried in various ways to put pressure on those people through the top leadership in order to prevent some sort of fight against crime.

As a result, without any explanation, Captain Musienko was removed from his post ...

The apogee of corruption was the sale under Wrangel of the Russian merchant fleet - under the guise of scrap metal. The situation in the rear was absolutely the same in all the white armies: Kolchak, Wrangel, and Yudenich ...

The part of the Kornilov division that survived the defeat was urgently evacuated to Marseilles ... In this regard, one of the participants in the White movement recalled a curious fact ...

Dmitry FILIPPOVYKH: There were 400 people left in the division, who retreated. But, when they were loaded for evacuation, it turned out that there were already three thousand people in the Kornilov division. Maybe somewhere a participant in fierce battles makes some inaccuracy, but the fact remains. Three thousand people in the Kornilov division turned out to be only due to the fact that the rear states were swollen so much that it was a good feeder for those who wanted to sit out away from the front, save their lives, line their pockets with money unjustly received from smuggling and from transporting smuggled goods. goods.

The rear was characterized by low mobilization readiness and the absence of trained operational reserves. The quartermaster and medical services functioned generally unsatisfactorily, which could not but affect the morale of the troops at the front. Speculation, looting, embezzlement, protectionism flourished in the rear of the army. General Boris Alexandrovich Shteifon testified: “At a time when volunteer units were bleeding in permanent, heavy battles, an unsettled, depraved rear inflicted heavier blows on the front than the red enemy.” Anton Ivanovich Denikin shared his opinion: “The armies overcame incredible obstacles, fought heroically, meekly suffered heavy losses and liberated vast territories step by step from the power of the Soviets. This was the front side of the struggle, its heroic epic.

The "troubadour of the white army" liberal press was also indignant at the moral decay of the rear, "Homeric revels" for fabulous sums during the bloodshed at the front. The Tomsk newspaper Sibirskaya Zhizn wrote in July 1919 that the propertied classes, calling on the people to patriotism, must first set an example for them by their own behavior.

Against the backdrop of bloody battles, repressions, hunger, someone frantically burned their lives in restaurants and at card tables ... Newspapers were full of notes about drunken brawls ... The press did not ignore the fight against corruption. The case of the fraudulent embezzlement of diamonds by the head of the capital's criminal police, Sukhodolsky, the case of the Minister of Food and Supply Zefirov of concluding transactions that were unprofitable for the treasury for the purchase of imported tea, dubbed "tea panama", and the case of the chief head of military communications, General Kasatkin, were of particular resonance. harboring fraud on the railways, nicknamed "carriage Panama". A logical question: why was the counterintelligence of the White movement unable to restore order in the rear?

Nikolai Kirmel: Because the same counterintelligence was corrupt. They had such a business. If the army was robbing the population, then the way of doing business for counterintelligence was to catch the Bolsheviks. Those. someone was caught on something and demanded money for their release. Those who had money, and the Bolsheviks did, they were released. Those who did not have money could be attributed to the innocent victims.

The memoirs of another champion of the white cause, Zinovy ​​Arbatov, who lived in Yekaterinoslav during the Denikin era, are quite consistent with William’s memoirs: no incriminating material. These people disappeared, and when their corpses fell into the hands of relatives or other close persons, counterintelligence, for which the victim was listed, gave a stereotypical answer: "Killed while trying to escape" ... There was no one to complain to. Governor Shchetinin, together with the head of the district, Stepanov, having taken all the State guards from the city, went to hunt for living people in the forests of the Pavlograd district ... the governor with guards drove hundreds of peasants who had fled from mobilization to the edge of the forest, and mowed them down with machine-gun fire.

By the way, counterintelligence then existed in great abundance - in all military units, in transport, personal counterintelligence of large white generals.

"Wild" counterintelligence agencies emerged and operated, not obeying anyone. For the most part, they were engaged in blackmail, extortion, or even simply raids and robberies. Counterintelligence turned into a real mafia, from the blows of which even the highest ranks of the Volunteer Army were not immune.

Dmitry FILIPPOVICH: But this paradox that private bodies, yes, counterintelligence ones, were created, this led precisely to the fact that if these private bodies managed to requisition something, including smuggling, then it became the property of the regiment that hid these requisitions from a division or division that hid these requisitions or what they managed to do, get, get from the corps, the corps hid from the front, or rather from the army, and so on. In short, there was complete autonomy in the activities of these counterintelligence units.

In April 1920, Denikin resigned his rank of commander-in-chief and, together with his chief of staff, General Romanovsky, left for Constantinople. Here, in the building of the Russian embassy, ​​Romanovsky was killed by an unknown officer. The name of the killer was revealed only many years later - it turned out to be a certain lieutenant Kharuzin. As it became known, Kharuzin in 1919 was in one of the "wild" counterintelligence - the "special purpose detachment" of captain Baranov.

And again, let us turn to the notes of the counterintelligence investigator Captain Ustinov about the facts of corruption and moral decay of the White Guard special services...

Dmitry FILIPPOVICH: Here he writes that a special counterintelligence was formed in the port, leaving Odessa was prohibited without special permission. Thousands of unfortunate people who accidentally got stuck in Odessa during the last evacuation hurried back to their homes and besieged the ship. But counterintelligence with weapons in their hands blocked their path. More quick-witted, so as not to live in Odessa, they immediately paid counterintelligence on the ship, and thus avoided vain, long ordeals. Port counterintelligence thus recruited hundreds of thousands. It was some kind of legalized robbery of those leaving.

In 1919 alone, the composition of the Odessa counterintelligence changed three times! It didn't help... The requisitions continued.

Denikin, after analyzing the mistakes and miscalculations in the domestic policy of the period of his reign, bitterly admitted: “None of the governments has been able to create a flexible and strong apparatus that can swiftly and quickly overtake, force, act, force others to act. The Bolsheviks also did not capture the soul of the people, they also did not become a national phenomenon, but they were infinitely ahead of us in the pace of their actions, in energy, mobility and ability to coerce. We, with our old methods, old psychology, old vices of the military and civil bureaucracy, with the Petrine table of ranks, could not keep up with them.

Nikolai KIRMEL: The Bolsheviks knew what they wanted, what they wanted, and mobilized all the power of the state repressive apparatus, in particular the Cheka, they subjugated the people. Somewhere with slogans, somewhere with force, somewhere with some promises. As we know after the Civil War, there were uprisings that were suppressed for a long time. The Whites did not create a flexibly controlled state apparatus subordinate to the iron will, and did not attract the people with ideas.

Wrangel's periodically issued orders threatened bribe-takers and embezzlers of public funds, "undermining the foundations of the destroyed Russian statehood", hard labor and the death penalty, which he introduced in October 20th. However, they did not have any deterrent effect. The reasoning of the semi-official press that "a meager salary, high cost, families - all this is not an excuse for bribery" was just as ineffective as the campaign under the slogan "Taking a bribe now means trading in Russia!", which appealed to the patriotic feelings of officials.. .




Kolchak.By the time of my arrival, it was observed that in the seemingly smallest detachments special bodies were being created - counter-intelligence. The creation of these bodies was completely unauthorized, since counter-intelligence can only be at the headquarters of the corps. Such detachments can only have reconnaissance squads, but counter-intelligence, as an organ sent to fight the enemy, can exist only at the headquarters of the corps. Meanwhile, counter-intelligence existed in all such detachments, especially in such detachments that were created on their own. Where subsequently military units were created on the basis of all the rules of organization, they, of course, did not exist, but in all independently formed detachments there was counterintelligence.

These counter-intelligence organs carried out arbitrarily police and mainly political work, which consisted in tracking down, identifying and arresting the Bolsheviks. It must be said that these counter-intelligence organs for the most part consisted of people who were completely unprepared for such work, volunteers, and the grounds on which the actions of the counter-intelligence organs were carried out were completely arbitrary, not provided for by any rules. As a rule, all counter-intelligence agencies should be in close contact with the prosecutor's office and in all cases are obliged to act, notifying it. Here, however, there was no connection with the prosecutor's office, and the very concept of "Bolshevik" was so vague that anything could be summed up under it.

What were the reasons for this? From conversations with officers, I got the impression that these bodies were modeled after those that existed in Siberia under Soviet rule. During the Bolshevik rule in Siberia, in a number of points along the railway there were such outposts that controlled passengers on trains and immediately arrested them if they turned out to be counter-revolutionaries. According to this type, these detachments also created similar organs in themselves. They were completely arbitrarily engaged in inspecting trains, and when they found someone who, in their opinion, was involved in Bolshevism or was suspected of it, they arrested them. Such phenomena existed along the entire line of the railway. After my arrival there, when this picture became clear, I talked with the commanders of the detachments and said that, in essence, counter-intelligence should be only in my headquarters, since the existing counter-intelligence interfere with each other and spoil the whole thing. To this I was quite reasonably answered that we are fighting, and what we did to us, we will do, too, since there is no other guarantee that we will not all be cut. We will fight in the same way as our opponent fought us. We were persecuted all along the way, and where we are, we are obliged to secure ourselves in the same way from the penetration of persons who are our enemies. Therefore, although such counterintelligence agencies were never officially listed, in fact they continued to function. In those detachments that were subordinate to me, mine managed to arrange the case in such a way that I and the prosecutor were immediately informed about the arrest being made. The arrested persons were transferred to the prosecutor's supervision, and there a quick investigation of the case was carried out.

I remember a significant number were arrested for completely unfounded reasons. When this was found out, they were released. But those persons who were personally known to these units, of course, were not extradited, and the military units dealt with them on their own completely arbitrarily. In those cases where there was only suspicion, they fulfilled this requirement and handed it over to the prosecutor's supervision, which carried out the investigation, which for the most part did not lead to any results. I had counter-intelligence at the headquarters, but counter-intelligence at the detachments acted completely independently.

Formally, they never existed, and thus any unit could say that it had no counter-intelligence. From the point of view of all military officials, it was a means of struggle. They said: "We are defending ourselves, we are fighting and we consider it necessary to apply the same measure that was used against us." It must be said that there were many stories in Harbin about the activities of these bodies. I don’t know how fair they were, but it was a complete nightmare that stood along the entire railway line, both on the part of the Bolsheviks and on the part of those who fought against them. For me, as a new person, these stories seemed absolutely incredible. At first I did not believe them and considered them more in words, but then, of course, I got to know each other closely and saw that the most severe mutual persecution was going on all the time on the railway, both from those areas where the Bolsheviks were in charge, and in those areas where their opponents were in charge. . The methods of struggle were the same.

Alekseevsky.When the facts of unauthorized searches, arrests and executions were established, were measures taken to bring the perpetrators to justice and accountability?

Kolchak.Such things never gave rise to prosecution - it was impossible to find out who and when did it. Such things have never been done openly. Usually it happened like this: several armed persons, officers and soldiers entered the car, were arrested and taken away. Then the arrested persons disappeared, and it was impossible to establish who and when did it.

Alekseevsky.But after all, in Harbin itself or at the station. Harbin had certain police units, and they carried an external police service, which was to prevent such unauthorized actions. Were measures taken to make the external militia master of the situation at the station?

Kolchak.This was not done at the central station. There were occasional cases of arrests in the city. For the most part, this happened along the line of the road, but in Harbin itself it was relatively rare, since there was a station commandant, there were military guards, and there was a well-known guard of the station. I will cite a case that I had to face, which occurred on the second day of my arrival and consisted of the following. The chief of police in Harbin at that time was von Arnold, who was attached to the office of Horvath. On the morning of that day, he called me by phone and told me in French that on the road from Harbin to the slaughterhouses (the only highway) the body of the murdered teacher Umansky was found, that the prosecutor had already been informed about this, that he and the investigator had gone to the place and were carrying out inquiry. “I will come to you and tell you everything in detail.”

Some time later, he personally came to me and said that he strongly suspects that this murder was committed by former pupils of the Khabarovsk corps. Cadets of the Khabarovsk corps were everywhere - in the detachments of Semenov, Orlov, Kalmykov and others. Umansky recently arrived here, did nothing, and, obviously, his murder is in connection with the accusations that were made against him that, being , he handed over to the Bolsheviks the cadets and their parents, allegedly participating in counter-revolutionary conspiracies, due to which a mass of people died. The senior pupils of the corps who fled from Khabarovsk swore that they would take revenge on him. "That's all I suspect," said von Arnold, "the rest is up to the investigating authorities."

The investigation seemed to have produced well-known traces, and, in the end, the investigator went to Orlov's detachment. But, of course, they didn't let him in. The prosecutor came to me and said that they wanted to inspect the entire premises of the detachment, the barracks, cars, etc., but that they were not allowed to go there. I immediately issued an order by telephone not only to admit, but also to render full assistance to the judicial authorities in the examination and search, which they intended to carry out. This was followed by the answer that it would be done, and that they would be admitted. After a while I had them, and I asked what the results were. They replied: "None, there are strong suspicions, but nothing definite can be established."

Of course, the most important thing was to establish who left the barracks in the evening and during the night. As a rule, exact lists of the discharged are kept in the units, but in the detachment there was nothing of the kind. People were dismissed simply by the officer on duty, who let them go. There were no books, no lists, and no detachment was kept. Therefore, it was impossible to establish the fact which people were outside the barracks, and all the work of the prosecutor did not lead to anything. Near the bridge where the body was found, a fresh trace of a car was found on which, apparently, the body was brought, but no characteristic signs was not established - neither the tires nor the size of the car. There are plenty of such cars in Harbin, and therefore their inspection in the barracks did not give any results. This incident happened during the first days of my stay there.

The second case was this. One evening, when I was sitting in my carriage and studying, I was informed that a young lady had come and asked me to take her in. I told her to come to me. She enters and rushes to me with a request to save her husband, an officer who was arrested on the street of Harbin by an officer of the Semenov detachment. “I know he was arrested on the orders of Semyonov's assistant, who is his personal enemy. He is ordered to be arrested and taken to Hailar, and whoever is taken to Hailar does not come back. I'm sure he will be killed and only you can save him." I believed that, first of all, Harbin was part of the territory in which I had control, and such arrests without my knowledge were contrary to basic military discipline. Semyonov could disregard me, but in Harbin he could not, of course, arrest an officer without my permission. Then I knew very well that it was completely useless to talk in this case. So I called the guard, called two officers and said: “Probably tonight, a convoy with an arrested officer will appear at the train that is supposed to depart for Hailar. Arrest them all and bring them to me."

The officer was escorted by four soldiers and one officer. I also sent half a company, 20 - 30 people who were hidden at the station. When a convoy with an arrested officer entered the station, they were surrounded and told: "By order of the commander of the troops, you are under arrest." They saw that it was useless to resist, since the forces were much larger, they obeyed and were brought to me. I called the head of the Semyonov detachment to my place. He told me: “Your Excellency, I am a subordinate, I was ordered by my superior to do this, and I had to do it. I can neither justify nor prove why I did it. I received an order from my superior to deliver to Hailar and I can't say anything more. I carried out the order given to me, and everything else is unknown to me.

Then I released the convoy, but kept the arrested officer with me. I called him and said: "The only way to save you is to arrest you so that you can be under my protection."

I did just that and sent him to the guardhouse in the Oryol detachment. At the same time, I ordered to ensure that no one except his wife could penetrate him, in case of an attempt to take him by force, to act with weapons. He sat in this way for some time, then I handed him over to Horvath, who released him after a while (I then left for Vladivostok). Here is a way to deal with this influence, but it was only possible when you knew about it. If his wife had not come to me, I would not have known anything about it. Are there few officers traveling with soldiers? At first glance, it is difficult to know whether the arrested person is being led or is simply walking with them. As for what Kalmykov did, these were absolutely fantastic stories. For example, I personally know that arrests were made there that were not entirely political in nature, arrests of a purely criminal nature. There was, for example, a proper hunt for opium dealers. But the lines of the Chinese railway. roads were constantly driven with opium smuggling, a lot of people, women and men, smuggling opium, which was very expensive. Here, very often it is no longer counter-intelligence, but simply enterprising people, under the guise of political arrest, tracked down these merchants, arrested them, took away opium and killed, and if this was discovered, they referred to the fact that they were Bolshevik agents or spies.

Of course, these were not the Bolsheviks, they were just predators who were engaged in the transport of opium, which gave them a lot of money. They were systematically hunted. This was done by soldiers and individuals. Usually a bunch of soldiers entered the car, declared to such an opium dealer: “Bolshevik spy”, arrested him, pulled out the opium and then killed him, and sold the opium.

Alekseevsky.Could you give a few examples from Kalmykov's activities, about which you say that it exceeded everything that was done then?

Kolchak.He had a big story and I don't know how it worked out. This happened some time before my departure. Kalmykov caught a Swedish or Danish citizen, a representative of the Red Cross, near Pogranichnaya, whom he recognized as some kind of Bolshevik agent. He hanged him, taking all the money from him, a large sum of several hundred thousand. Horvat's demand to send the arrested person to Harbin, the measures taken by the consul, did not help anything. The scandal was of a wild nature, since nothing could justify it. The Croatian was extremely disturbed by this case, but nothing could be done. They didn't even get the money. It was a case of uniform robbery. Such phenomena along the line of the railway existed, and it was almost impossible to fight them.


Border Station

It was necessary to see what the police were like - the only body that could fight these phenomena. Where there is an organized police force that monitors order, it could prevent the appearance of unauthorized actions coming from no one knows who, inspection of wagons, arrests of people, etc. But no, the police that existed at that time, maybe even took part in it. I must say that at the time when I was in Harbin, the police were something amazing in their licentiousness and even outward disgrace. In Harbin, our and Chinese police were on all the streets. The Chinese, to do them justice, performed their service excellently. True, the Chinese did not interfere in anything, but in any case, the Chinese policemen made a normal impression of people standing in the east and doing business and protecting the city and personal security.

As for our police officers, they were for the most part dissolute, drunken people, absolutely unaware of any police duties. The Chinese very often (I myself had to see it) beat them, saying: "We are now the captain, you are now walking." Arnold had a small detachment, made up of old policemen, who were on duty at the station and maintained order there. In general, the police represented there one continuous nightmare.

Alekseevsky.Thus, it was not possible to take any systematic measures to ensure the safety of personal and property along the entire line of the railway with the help of detachments being formed?

Kolchak.At the time, things were just getting better. Maybe later this could be done. When later, in the autumn, I had to pass there, such phenomena no longer existed - at least no one complained. And at that time the militia, guards and guards on the railroad were in such a sad state that I am deeply convinced that the same militiamen were quietly engaged in enterprises like catching opio dealers, etc.

Alekseevsky.Have you ever thought that information about the victims of such arbitrariness, only belonging to the so-called society, reaches you and the highest government officials? An officer's wife came to you, for the wife of a worker or peasant it would be more difficult, not only in terms of physical penetration, but also in a psychological sense. Have you ever thought that such cases of arbitrariness are many times higher than the individual cases that you have heard about?

Kolchak.I think that all these cases could hardly touch the bottom, since there was no point in touching these people. At least there were no complaints from the railroad employees about any arrests or searches. Yes, this is quite understandable, since it hardly made sense for the organizers of such enterprises to arrest lower employees.

Popov.Who were massacred?

Kolchak.Mostly over those who traveled by rail, and, of course, all this work was carried out mainly in class cars. The question stood in this way, as far as I can imagine: they constantly traveled there from the Amur region, Khabarovsk on business; if there were people who were known before as involved in the Bolsheviks, then they were seized and arrested. They also seized people who were known to have a valuable cargo of opium with them. All this relates to the field of criminal acts.

Alekseevsky.When we tried to find out why counter-intelligence was formed, you answered that this was a method borrowed from the enemy. At the same time, you formed a central counter-intelligence service in your country in order to streamline all these counter-intelligence agencies. Would your central counter-intelligence also use the measures and methods that these counter-intelligence of individual detachments used?

Kolchak.If counter-intelligence discovered the existence of such Bolshevik agents, whom I would consider dangerous, then, of course, they would have to be arrested. Each of the chiefs can embark on this path, can do anything, but within the limits of legal norms. I have always stood on this point of view. You can shoot, you can do anything, but everything must be done on the basis of legal norms. Things like counter-intelligence arrests, if they were investigated and reported to the prosecutor, could be done. During all this time I personally did not have a single case of a field trial. The headquarters arrested several people who had come from Vladivostok to buy bread, and their money was taken from them. Then it was considered what kind of money it was - public or private. The public ones were handed over to the bank, while the private ones were returned. Then, as far as I remember, these people were released, since there was no evidence against them. They really belonged to the Bolshevik organization and came to buy bread, but still there was no reason to do anything with these people.

Alekseevsky.You have been told that this is a method learned by the enemy, but have you learned that this is the law?

Kolchak.No, he didn't. Undoubtedly, it was necessary to fight like that, and I considered it necessary to do it, but I did not allow this to be done by unauthorized organizations unknown to me.

Alekseevsky.The officers told you that they could be slaughtered by their enemy if they did not learn the methods of defending the enemy. I asked you whether these arrests were not more numerous among the masses of the population. In your opinion, these arrests were made mainly among passengers. Consequently, it was as if there were no Bolsheviks among the Russian population of Manchuria, there were no those aggressive forms of militant Bolshevism, as in Russia and Siberia? You should have noticed, when you referred to the need to create counter-intelligence in Maichuria, that this is only a means and a pretext for revenge on the part of the officers.

Kolchak.I repeat that there were grounds for this. Of course, it is quite understandable that when a fight is being fought, it is undesirable for enemy agents to penetrate the territory in which you are fighting. But here the question is different. Mostly it was a matter of revenge. People who made their way here with the greatest risk and danger, at least through Slyudyanka, where at least 400 officers died, people who passed through this school, of course, tracked down persons they recognized on the road, and, of course, took revenge. It was clear to me that the main motive for this activity was revenge, that all the horrors that happened along the railway line took place on the basis of revenge.

Denike.Your relationship with Semyonov is clearly illuminated here. It is not for me that the role of Horvath in relation to you and Semyonov, on the one hand, and, on the other hand, the role of Horvat in relation to Japan, is not clear.

Kolchak.The Croat kept to a strange policy of reconciliation all the time. After the secession of Semyonov, who did not recognize either Horvat or me, Horvat nevertheless, against my order, provided assistance to Semyonov. That night I had several encounters with him, as Horvath was giving certain items of equipment from the railroad stock to Semyonov, while I insisted that this transfer should not take place. This could have been done with my knowledge, but Horvath did it several times in addition to me, and this caused clashes. With regard to the Japanese, Horvat at that time adhered to the policy of not aggravating relations, although he did not work with them at all and had no connection with them.

Denike.Did he support you in everything?

Kolchak.I don't think he supported me. In connection with the attitude of Semyonov and the Japanese, I told Horvat that it was impossible to work under such conditions, that the situation that was being created in the exclusion zone excluded any possibility of preserving our position, our prestige, and in this case I saw that Horvat was working against me. He thought that I was too restless and too unrestrained, and it is possible that Horvath wanted to get rid of me.

Alekseevsky.What was Horvath's attitude towards the repressions against the Bolsheviks?

Kolchak.The Croat was deeply indignant at all this and, for his part, did everything in his power to stop it. When this story happened at Kalmykov with a Swedish citizen, Horvath imposed a ban on the weapons that were intended for the Kalmykov detachment and stayed at the station. Harbin to influence him. But this weapon belonged to the Japanese, and, in the end, he had to release it.

Alekseevsky.So, he was a man who, if he tried to fight the Bolsheviks, then within the limits of legal norms? Was he more decisive than you in this sense: did he hold you back, or did you hold him back?

Kolchak.In this regard, we did not differ. Croat all the time stood on the point of view of the legal norms of the struggle. In general, I cannot speak about his struggle with the Bolsheviks, since at that time the struggle was only being prepared. With regard to the railroad workers, who were directly subordinate to him, he tried to adhere to a strange policy of reconciliation, appeasement and satisfaction of all the demands that were put forward by the railroad workers. Thus, the measures he took were always extremely humane . He tried to achieve everything with goodness, by smoothing out sharp corners; he talked constantly with the workers and brought much comfort to their midst. As far as I know, there was only one strike, when the trains were stopped, and my train was declared free for movement, and I rode perfectly. The strike was ended, as far as I remember, without any reprisals on the part of Horvath.

Alskseevskiy.Now continue your story.

Kolchak.I realized that my return was undesirable. At this time, an intervention was being prepared, i.e. entry of foreign troops into our territory. In all likelihood, the impression left on the Japanese was that I would interfere in this matter. Therefore they wanted me not to interfere in the affairs of the East.

Alekseevsky.Have you heard rumors that in parallel with the power of Derber there is the power of the regional zemstvo? What was your attitude towards these three organizations of power?

Kolchak.From the information that I had, I could know more or less definitely only the composition of the Derber government, since I was standing next to them in Harbin in the cars. As far as the Primorsky Zemstvos are concerned, initially I only had information in an erroneous order. During the formation of these governments, I could only use sources from newspapers that were in Japan. On this occasion, I spoke with Dudorov, our agent in Tokyo, who presented me with a whole series of orders and resolutions that were made by these three authorities in the East. I must say that the Zemstvo seemed to me the only serious body that was doing its own thing, since all the acts that were presented by other government organizations were only in the nature of a political struggle. I got the idea that there was a struggle for power between all these organizations, and one organization canceled the decision of the other. Meanwhile, the Zemstvo issued a number of resolutions of a businesslike nature. Therefore, I got the impression that the Zemstvo is the only authority that can create anything in the East, since it develops work of a purely business nature.

I was deeply impressed by the disarmament of Colonel Tolstoy's detachment then taking place. I saw that the Horvath government could not do anything, and that, consequently, it did not have the strength. The Allies ruled in Vladivostok. The Czechs, for example, did not allow Khrzheshatitsky's detachment to enter Nikolsk-Ussuriysk, detaining it at Grodekovo. It was clear to me that Horvath and his government were not masters in the East and were not in a position to issue any orders. Allies are in charge there, and only the Zemstvo remains the only business apparatus. I received more detailed information after I sent one of the officers accompanying me, Vuich, to Vladivostok to collect information and draw a picture, since the newspapers gave the impression of complete chaos and confusion, and it was difficult to understand anything. In essence, this determined my attitude towards these governments. I had no connection with them and was not even interested in them, since at that time I was at a resort. I decided that now the domination of the allies has come, who will dispose, without even considering us.

Alekseevsky.What impression did the very act of declaring Horváth himself supreme ruler make on you?

Kolchak.I believed that of all the people who were in the Far East, Horvath was the only one who could claim this, since he had long been in the East as the head of the exclusion zone, was known to everyone in the East, and if he tried to form government power there, then, thank God, there was no one else to do it. I was not at all surprised by this, since Horvath was the only authoritative person who could do this.

Alekseevsky.This presupposes a certain premise in your frame of mind that one-man power is needed. After all, the supreme ruler is, in essence, a dictator.

Kolchak.I thought that it is necessary to bring the Far East to some kind of order , therefore, I considered it completely backward if Horvath extended his power, except for the right-of-way, to the adjoining Primorsky region. I thought it was only natural that Horvath was trying to improve management. In any case, I did not think that this was a triumph of the idea of ​​individual power.

White had to fight not only with a rifle at the ready.
Poster by artist Alexander Apsit. 1919

For many years almost nothing was said about the White Guard scouts in our country, but this does not mean at all that they did not exist. During the years of the Civil War in Russia, facts of bridge explosions, fires in ammunition and food depots, death of horses, damage to the railway track and train crashes were often recorded. As a rule, all this was not the result of criminal negligence and sloppiness (although such cases did occur), but of prepared sabotage. And they took place in the deep rear of both the Whites and their opponent.

"FRONT EDGE AGENTS"

Chekists and red military counterintelligence officers fought the anti-Bolshevik underground for more than one month, caught pests by the hand, but data on the detention, for example, of Kolchak spies who served in the headquarters of the Red Army, were not advertised. By the way, the fact that Soviet intelligence officers worked in the camp of the White Guards is known not only from books and publications in the periodical press, but also from many films shot in the USSR. Naturally, such works were not created at that time about the fighters of the secret anti-Bolshevik front, but they do not exist today. As if such people did not exist at all.

In particular, only a few researchers know anything about the employees of the organization, which was, so to speak, the “vis-a-vis” of Sibregistrupra, one of the structures of the “community” of the red special services. But after the end of the Civil War, it was the Siberian Chekists who especially noted that "the command staff of the White Guard Kolchak intelligence were talented people and good organizers, and the intelligence business was excellently staged." It was this worthy opponent who remained behind the scenes for a long time.

The struggle on the invisible front against the Reds in eastern Russia was carried out by two organizations - the Intelligence Department of Kolchak's headquarters and the Special Department for the Administration of the Council of Ministers of the Admiral's government. Experienced intellectual officers served in the Intelligence Department, the most prominent of them were Colonels Ovchinnikov and Novakovsky, Lieutenant Colonel Masyagin and others. But that is not all. In 1919, one of the leaders of Soviet military intelligence, Major General Ryabikov, went over to the Kolchak side!

True, there were just over 30 people on the staff of the Intelligence Department of the headquarters, and in addition to officers, this number included clerks, a draftsman, a coachman, and later a driver. The Kolchakites also had the Intelligence Department of the Fleet, which was headed by Senior Lieutenant Fedotov, who began his military career back in 1914 in the Baltic. There were almost three times fewer naval scouts. But the number of secret agents for various purposes among the “knights of the cloak and dagger” of the admiral exceeded three hundred people.

The most massive was the so-called "front line agency". It usually consisted of non-commissioned officers, civilians and - very rarely - officers. Women aged 16 to 60 also worked for Kolchak intelligence. The youngest agent-walker (communicator) Gleb Berezkin is also known.

These people, under the guise of civilians, penetrated the location of the forward units of the Reds and obtained the necessary information about the strength and weapons of the enemy. One of the best "front line agents" was considered a native of Novonikolaevsk (now Novosibirsk), junior non-commissioned officer Timofey Taragnov. Served in Kolchak's intelligence service and Red Army defector Salnikov, who was well versed in the situation and delivered valuable information. For zeal, an agent named Strict was noted. Behind this pseudonym was the former school teacher Modest Lukin, who led the White Guards' network of agents in the front line.

The women agents Pryamaya and Patriotka were engaged in the distribution of anti-Bolshevik leaflets in parts of the Red Army. An underground terrorist organization operated under the leadership of Stepan Ponkin. It should be noted that Ponkin, like Modest Lukin, once worked as a teacher in a gymnasium. Saboteurs on the railroad were commanded by Chaika's agent, Vitaly Kuznetsov, who worked as a land surveyor before the Civil War.

By the way, what nicknames were not given by Kolchak intelligence officers to their agents: Nimble, Tamerlane, Chechen, Service, Strakhov-13, Shar, Hat of Invisibility, Lady, Terrible-9, Kochubey-14, Gate, Rusakov-51, Isolde, Perch, Sparrow, Pushkin, Woodpecker, Grigory Rasputin. The most interesting thing is that not always female agents had a female nickname.

And one more curious moment. The agent of the most advanced age among Kolchak's intelligence agents was a man nicknamed the Quietest - a 74-year-old invalid of the Russian-Turkish war of 1877-1878. He served in one of the rear units of the Red Army.

FOR WORK IN THE DEEP REAR

The most secret and important agents of Kolchak were officers in ranks from ensign to lieutenant colonel. It was they who were entrusted with the most responsible tasks in the deep rear of the Reds.

The names of some of the most successful scouts of the Siberian Army, Admiral Kolchak, have survived to our times. For example, Lieutenant Sobolyanov, for three months of illegal work in the rear of the Reds, delivered very valuable information, which formed the basis of the report to the supreme ruler of Russia. Ensign I.A. Zhulyev, under the guise of a Red Army soldier who had escaped from captivity, legalized himself in Orenburg and in a short time established the number, armament and deployment of enemy troops. In addition, he obtained valuable staff documents.

In the spring of 1919, Lieutenant Mozolevsky, according to the documents of a Soviet worker who had escaped from captivity, led an underground intelligence and terrorist organization in Moscow. For this, upon his return to Omsk, he was promoted to lieutenant colonel. It is not known what the underground organization achieved, but just like that, Admiral Kolchak did not favor ranks.

In the summer of 1919, Lieutenant Colonel Savich, an artilleryman by military specialty, under the name of the worker Kozlov, headed an underground reconnaissance and sabotage organization in Motovilikha, near Perm. For subversive work, he received 60 thousand rubles. and it looks like he didn't waste the money. Kolchak's saboteurs did not sit idly by, and various accidents at the artillery factory can be attributed to them.

There were still quite a few other Kolchak intelligence officers, but after the defeat of the Whites, not all the archives of the central body of the secret service of the admiral reached the hands of the Chekists. Its employees managed to burn many important papers before the arrival of the Reds.

Of course, one of the prerequisites for the successful work of the agents of the supreme ruler was the presence of forged documents of impeccable quality. For a long time, a special printing house functioned under the Intelligence Department of the headquarters, which produced a wide range of products of very high printing performance. And in the intelligence school, which trained officers to work in the rear of the Reds, they taught various crafts, political literacy in the Bolshevik style and the skills necessary to pose as a Red official. They also gave acting lessons.

It is necessary to tell a little about the Special Department for managing the affairs of the Kolchak Council of Ministers. It was a very unusual intelligence organization. The department was headed by a civil official, a 25-year-old mathematician, a graduate of Moscow University, who graduated with a gold medal, Boris Deminov. There were very few people under his command - together with agents about 60 people. The task of the OSO was to collect economic and political information in the deep rear of the Reds. Specialists were the most intelligent scouts of the supreme ruler. In very rare cases, they were engaged in underground combat work. One of the heroes of this service was Frol Furasov. In addition to important economic information, he delivered 15 thousand rubles from the rear of the Reds. gold. Interestingly, for the purpose of secrecy, the OSO agents wrote their reports in English and ... Swedish.

For their work associated with mortal risk, Admiral Kolchak's scouts received very decent money for those times. The military for successful covert operations in the rear of the Reds rose in rank, usually by one or two steps. But, in addition, there were quite a few white scouts who went almost to certain death for free!

FAILURES AND CURIOSITIES

Any war is always associated with losses, including on the invisible fronts of confrontation between the special services. They were also among the scouts of the Siberian army of Admiral Kolchak. After being sent behind the front line, about 20% of the agents returned. Someone fell into the hands of security officers and red military counterintelligence officers. Equipped with large amounts of money, secret emissaries from Omsk sometimes became easy prey for bandits - deserters (both red and white) or ordinary criminals. White scouts also fell under random shelling, were seriously injured and died.

However, some agents, instead of risky activities in the rear of the Reds, went on the run with a very tidy sum of money. For example, ensign Lastukhin, an intelligence officer, received 10 thousand rubles. for underground work in Samara, rushed off to the Kazakh steppes. Another intelligence officer, ensign Kolesnichenko, preferred a peaceful stay in the city of Atbasar to fulfill his assignment in Orenburg. In July 1919, midshipman Boronin, after serious training and receiving 15 thousand rubles. did not go on a secret mission entrusted to him to the Northern Urals, but went to his relatives in Petrograd. They waited for news from him for a long time, but did not wait. It should be noted that a deserter from Kolchak's secret department was found already in 1922 on the banks of the Neva ... by local Chekists.

The staff captain Sokolov from naval intelligence, instead of getting information about the Volga military flotilla of the Reds, leaned in a completely different direction and surfaced in Vladivostok. The money intended for intelligence purposes, he used to organize petty trade. Not immediately, but the staff captain, who “confuses” the west with the east, was arrested by his own, that is, the whites, and punished according to the laws of war.

There were also recruited agents. Ekaterina Bobkova, who worked in the rear of the Bolsheviks, on her return to Omsk, was arrested by Kolchak counterintelligence for communication with the Reds and shot.

There were in the annals of Kolchak intelligence and curiosities. One of such cases was noted in the spring of 1919 in the Volga region. Scouts Captain Rex and Sergeant Major Kazantsev, during a rally in the Red regiment, infiltrated the headquarters and stole secret topographic maps. When leaving the town, the scouts found a well-guarded warehouse on the outskirts, on the gates of which there were warning inscriptions. Rex and Kazantsev realized that behind the wooden walls there was something fuel, most likely ammunition, otherwise it would not have been guarded so well. Late in the evening, without a single shot, sentries were removed, the walls were poured with kerosene and set on fire. As soon as the fire broke out, the scouts quickly left the place of the fire. They waited for an explosion for a long time, but instead they smelled burnt shag. It turned out that they did not set fire to the ammunition depot, but a warehouse with smoke and ammunition ...

Alas, not all documents of Kolchak's intelligence agencies have come down to our time. And it is quite possible that white scouts could serve in the headquarters and rear organs of the Reds for more than one year after the Civil War, who nevertheless were neutralized later by the NKVD.

Already at the end of the entire White movement, baron Wrangel, locked up with the remnants of the army in the Crimea, officially announced the full private ownership of the peasants on the land by his decree. And he also created in Crimea a coalition government of various forces of the white camp, from monarchists to socialists, and he no longer blindly repeated about “one and indivisible”, recognizing the fact that the national outskirts fell away from Russia and made an alliance with Poland “Pilsudchiki”. But what could all these political maneuvers of Wrangel give if almost 100 thousand soldiers of the Red Army at Frunze attacked his 8,000-strong White Russian army at the Crimean Perekop, more than ten opponents for each fighter. If the Red Army already then fought by the method “regardless of its losses”, not sparing the mobilized men in overcoats, which by 1941 it will elevate to the absolute in its tactics: only in the frenzied assaults on Perekop in the fall of 1920, the Red Army will put almost 10 thousand of its fighters, chasing the next waves over the corpses of the dead (the whites will lose only 2 thousand people in all the battles in the Crimea). What decrees could help, what tougher actions of white counterintelligence? In such a situation, it was simply unrealistic to win. And had all these “decrees” about the land and the will of the Kornilovs been adopted back in 1917, or Denikin a year later, the final outcome of this war would certainly have been the same. For a host of other military and political reasons.
Now it is becoming fashionable to say again that whites are worthless liberals, children of the February that destroyed the country, friends of the hated West (at that time they called the Entente), that they are very far from the people, that the peasantry wove a million bast shoes for the Red Army for the promise of land, and the whites did not weaved. But do not forget how the Reds with their food detachments, the "food dictatorship" and the Cheka forced the people to "weave bast shoes" and then repaid the weaving them. Now we understand: in that situation, the chances of defeating the huge five million Red Army, which Soviet Russia supplied with all possible methods at the expense of the population being robbed, most likely, the white camp could not under any circumstances. In addition, the entire center of the country with its powerful industry always remained behind the power of Lenin, and scattered white armies tried to attack him from different outskirts of the country, moreover, not simultaneously, but in turn.
And the cruelty of the white counterintelligence here certainly could not fix the matter. And these counterintelligence agencies of Kolchak, Denikin, Miller, Yudenich themselves were not as cruel and ruthless as the Cheka of the Leninist government opposing them. And they were not even organizationally strong, like the Chekist special service or the Intelligence Agency of the Red Army. The leaders of the Cheka themselves also understood this very well and took into account the weaknesses of the white counterintelligence. By the end of the active phase of the Civil War, even the attitude within the Cheka towards white opponents on the secret front in this connection developed condescendingly contemptuously. With constant remembrance at every opportunity about the atrocities of Kolchak’s counterintelligence, more than once even in films about the Chekists, their veterans, gathering during the Second World War to the rear of the Germans, warn each other that “it will be very difficult, and the Abwehr and the Gestapo are not White Guard amateur performances” . More than once I met such a refrain from the KGB subconscious in cinema.
Of the counterintelligence agencies of the white armies or temporary secret police agencies in the territories occupied by the whites of Russia, the counterintelligence of the Volunteer Army and the secret police Osvag (Information Agency) in the territories occupied by "volunteers" are considered the most established and relatively professional in the history of the Civil War. This is not only a secret investigation in the white rear, there was also a propaganda apparatus of Denikin's in Osvaga. In fact, political and military investigation within Osvag was carried out only by the Bureau of Secret Information, headed by Patsanovsky, who was close to liberal and cadet circles. All Osvag under the Denikin regime in southern Russia was also led by a Cadet and a civilian named Chakhotin.
General Denikin himself was quite critical of his counterintelligence, shaking up its leadership several times, trying to fight the "excesses" of the vindictiveness of its employees or the corruption that flourished among his counterintelligence officers at times. In his work “National Dictatorship and Its Politics”, the white commander-in-chief of the south of Russia, Denikin himself, will speak of his then counterintelligence in this way: “I would not want to offend many righteous people who were morally languishing
in the difficult situation of our counterintelligence institutions, but I must say that these bodies, which covered the territory of the South with a dense network, were sometimes centers of provocation and organized robbery. The counterintelligence services of Kyiv, Kharkov, Odessa, and Rostov were especially "famous" in this respect. They had to be fought against, both against self-proclaimed institutions and against individuals. This is very reminiscent of Lenin's: "The Ukrainian Cheka was created too early and let in many who stuck to it." As you can see, in some ways the heads of the opposing camps of that war had similar problems with their special services, Yes, and Denikin names as examples of the most undisciplined counterintelligence the same southern cities, where the Cheka was the most "reckless" and bloody.
At times, in 1918-1920, Denikin's counterintelligence was simply powerless in confrontation with the "red" or "green" underground, with the sent intelligence officers of the Soviet Cheka and the Intelligence Agency, but got bogged down in search of conspiracies against Denikin in the white officer camp itself, especially from among the monarchists, Cossack separatists or Right SRs. In Odessa in 1919, even the head of the local Denikin counterintelligence, Colonel Kirpichnikov, was shot dead from an ambush on the street by radical white monarchists, whom he persecuted on the orders of Commander-in-Chief Denikin.
Only after Denikin was squeezed out of the leadership of the Volunteer Army in the spring of 1920, its new commander-in-chief, Baron Wrangel, and his more determined entourage cleared their counterintelligence in the last year of the white struggle in southern Russia. Instead of Colonel Astrakhantsev, who was removed from his post as head of volunteer counterintelligence, and who, when he left for emigration, took with him a significant part of the cash desk of this Denikin special service, Wrangel put the former head of the tsarist police department, Yevgeny Klimovich, at the head of counterintelligence in the Crimea. This professional political detective replaced many amateurs from army officers with employees of pre-revolutionary secret services from the Okhrana, the Department of Police and Military Intelligence of the Tsarist General Staff. In the last year of the desperate struggle of the Wrangel army, at least its rear in the Crimea turned out to be covered by this counterintelligence of Klimovich. In 1920, she liquidated the underground Crimean Revolutionary Committee of the Bolsheviks, whose leaders were executed under the "Process of the Nine", and also crushed a conspiracy in favor of the Soviets against Wrangel among his own officers, who hoped to earn the forgiveness of the Reds before the Crimean catastrophe. According to some versions, behind these double-dealing officers was the white general Slashchev, close to the commander-in-chief, who had already made secret contacts with the Soviet Cheka, and not in exile before his shocking return in 1921 to Soviet Russia. Partly thanks to the work of this counterintelligence, Klimovich managed at the end of 1920 to save the rear of Wrangel's army and save its most combat-ready part by organized evacuation to Istanbul. Klimovich and in the emigrant union ROVS was appointed by Wrangel the head of his security service, he died an emigrant in Serbia in 1930.
There was also a "Special Department" in Kolchak's counterintelligence, it was headed by another commander of the former tsarist detective, Colonel Eremin. When the Don ataman Krasnov in 1919 did not yet recognize the unified power over himself of Kolchak and Denikin and dreamed of the idea of ​​​​an independent state of the Cossacks on the Don, his "Don Army" had its own counterintelligence under the command of Colonel Dobrynin - it can also be counted in the category of white counterintelligence agencies.
There was also a “State Guard” under the short-lived regime of Komuch (Socialist-Revolutionary Committee of the Constituent Assembly on the Volga in 1918, then merged with Kolchak’s government), it was headed by a Socialist-Revolutionary officer Klimushkin. In the "State Guard" of the Komuchevites there was something like a department of political police under the command of the Social Revolutionary Rogovsky, who at the same time directed the military tribunal of the "People's Army" of the Komuchevites. These short-lived counterintelligence services of the White armies were also not ideologically homogeneous and also did not escape factional squabbling. So in the east near Kolchak, Colonel Kalashnikov, who headed counterintelligence in the 1st Siberian Army, turned out to be a Socialist-Revolutionary and became one of the main initiators of the Socialist-Revolutionary conspiracy against Kolchak in 919. So the Soviet Cheka in this regard, in contrast to the scattered and organizationally not fully developed white counterintelligence, was much more integral and internally homogeneous.
Another relatively combat-ready counterintelligence was formed in the north of Russia in the army of General Yudenich, it was also headed by Colonel Novgrebelsky, a regular gendarme from the tsarist secret police. During the offensive of Yudenich's army in 1919 on Petrograd, Novgrebelsky even created a special group from the employees of his counterintelligence, which was supposed to penetrate the city ahead of the advancing troops and seize Smolny and the building of the Petrograd Cheka on Gorokhovaya Street, not allowing the leaders of the Bolsheviks to escape retribution and Chekists. The “Gosokhrana” of the Komumchev Socialist-Revolutionaries, Kolchak’s counterintelligence officers and Yudenich’s Novgrebelsky’s counterintelligence service are also accused of cruelty towards captured Bolsheviks and their sympathizers.
In the Northern Region, under the regime of the white General Miller, there was its own military counterintelligence and security service in the rear of the Northern Army - the “Special Part”, it was led by a white officer Shabelsky, later in exile one of the most implacable Kutepov terrorists from the ROVS. This is not counting the already mentioned counterintelligence of Colonel Petrov in the almost operetta "Anglo-Slavic Legion" in the Northern Region. In other small white armies, they did not manage to create even such semi-professional counterintelligence, intelligence and counterintelligence in them were, of necessity, directly front-line units. And almost nowhere in the white camp did they create a separate body for conducting foreign intelligence behind enemy lines, with Kolchak, Denikin and Yudenich, white counterintelligence was also responsible for this activity as necessary.
In general, it has long been no secret that the cinematic and literary image of the White Guard as an ardent Black Hundred monarchist has little in common with reality. And practically the entire leadership of the White armies was in the hands of the Cadets or Socialist-Revolutionaries, and the White movement itself in the general mass defended the February Revolution, while the monarchists among its officers were a minority, often even underground and persecuted by the White counterintelligence itself. This, of course, is not about the fact that the monarchists could be atrocious in the investigation of the White movement, but the Socialist-Revolutionaries and the Cadets could not - everyone could do it in those years, for which there are a lot of examples. It’s just that this already destroys the image of the White Guard punisher, the monarchist and the Black Hundreds, familiar to Soviet propaganda. There were atrocities in the White counterintelligence, but how significant are they in the light of the “Red Terror” opposed to the White Cause?
Most of the torture and execution of Bolsheviks and their sympathizers was carried out within the walls of these institutions of the White armies, especially in the days when the White Front was already retreating under the blows of the Red units. There were also extrajudicial executions, although for the most part these counterintelligence services carried out, according to the law of their government, only arrest and investigation, then handing over the accused to military courts, no one has ever given them the right to extrajudicial executions, similar to those that the Cheka has had since the end of 1918. A military tribunal for Denikin’s or Kolchak’s is, of course, not a jury trial with good lawyers and long speeches in defense of the accused, but it is also not a slaughter of the Cheka in the basements on the basis of decrees on the “Red Terror” without any judicial procedure at all. There were in the white counterintelligence force interrogation methods, not too surprising for the brutal Civil War, but again clearly inferior to the Chekist set of such means. There were barges with commissars flooded during the retreat, but even the captured commissars and commanders of the Red Army were kept by these white counterintelligence officers for years in their prisons without being shot. The notorious “death trains” with captured Bolsheviks, who left the Volga with Kolchak’s army for Siberia, did not have the most humane regime of detention. Others arrested in them died on the way or were shot by guards, but even they were still carried along, and not shot in the KGB fashion when retreating in a dark basement.
The Bolsheviks themselves on their side of the front knew this and were well aware of the difference in the actions of the White counterintelligence and their Cheka. In 1920, when massive tortures and executions flourished daily in the network of Cheka institutions scattered across Russia, Soviet newspapers in Moscow calmly described the “atrocities of the white counterintelligence” - in the prisons of the Crimea occupied by the Wrangelites, it turns out, political prisoners protested against coarse prison clothes and meager food went on a hunger strike. This fact already eloquently shows the difference in approaches. The partisan Lazo and his two comrades, who were brutally burned in a locomotive firebox by whites from counterintelligence, are known to everyone who once went to a Soviet high school. But the fact that the officers of Ataman Semenov did this cruelty in response to the demonstrative execution of the Cheka in the spring of 1920 of 120 captive Kappel officers is known only to a few specialists in the history of that war.
At the same time, the well-known bloody episode took place on the Angara ship, which is very often exaggerated as evidence of the atrocities of the white counterintelligence and which, for the sake of impartiality, it would be wrong to keep silent. In January 1920, under the onslaught of the Reds, Kolchak’s soldiers left Irkutsk, where Admiral Kolchak himself had already fallen into a trap, and counterintelligence officers took away from prison three dozen previously arrested enemies with Colonel Skipetrov’s detachment leaving for Baikal: Bolsheviks and Left Social Revolutionaries. It seemed superfluous to take them beyond Baikal, and on the Angara ship these hostages were killed and thrown overboard into the Baikal waters, including one woman among them. There are no words, cruelty and complete lawlessness are shown here by white counterintelligence officers, from which many in the white camp turned away with disgust, blaming Colonel Skipetrov and the head of counterintelligence ataman Semenov named Sipailo, who was present during the massacre, the English officer-adviser Grant, who were in charge of the execution at the Angara. Skipetrov, even in the white camp, was then demanded to be lynched for this action, and the Czechoslovak legionnaires arrested him for investigation, but the collapsed front freed Skipetrov from responsibility and allowed him to flee into emigration in the echelon of the same Czechoslovaks. But even here we are talking about a specific case, even the number of victims on the Angara was accurately calculated - there were exactly 31 people. Do not forget that on the same days the red units victoriously drove the completely disheveled army of Kolchak east to Baikal. And throughout vast Siberia, in the polynyas on the rivers, one could easily see the corpses of the executed Cheka without any trial of Kolchak officers and soldiers, and there were not 31 of them there, but simply without counting.
(To be continued)