The circumstances of the death of the legendary division commander still give rise to heated debate among historians. The official version says that Chapaev died on September 5, 1919 during a surprise attack by the White Guards in Lbischensk. The wounded division commander was unable to swim across the Ural River and drowned in its waters. This version was popularized by the novel “Chapaev,” written by military commissar Dmitry Furmanov, as well as the film of the same name, which was later shot. But many, including Chapaev's family, do not agree with the official version of his death.

And, indeed, not everything is so smooth! Firstly, Furmanov himself was not an eyewitness to that terrible battle. When writing his famous novel, he used only the memories of the few surviving participants in the battle in Lbischensk. It would seem that the information is first-hand, what could be more truthful?

But imagine: night, a bloody and merciless battle, mutilated corpses around, confusion... It is unlikely that any of the fighters could clearly describe the picture of what was happening and, even more so, the fate of an individual, even his beloved commander. Moreover, not a single surviving soldier with whom the author spoke confirmed that he saw the corpse of the division commander, then how can one say that he died? More likely, he went missing.

And even a letter sent to the newspaper “Rabochiy Klich” in 1927 by a certain “T.V.Z.”, telling that this particular Red Army soldier swam across the Urals with the division commander, does not prove the fact of death. Because, according to the author of the letter himself, in the cold water, seized by a convulsion, he lost consciousness. I only woke up on the other side, Chapaev was not nearby. He may have drowned...but perhaps not!

Secondly, it is worth noting that, according to many, at the time of their joint service, Chapaev and Furmanov were people of “different calibers.” They simply did not understand each other. By the way, Chapaevites believed that in his novel Furmanov created an overly generalized image of the Red commander, not at all similar to Chapaev. To which the author replied: “It is my right to fiction.” And this is another reason for doubt!

If Furmanov could create the image of his hero, then who would forbid him to invent or slightly change his fate? It turns out that this is not a biography of Vasily Ivanovich Chapaev at all, but just a work of art, a novel based on real events. Unfortunately, we cannot find out the truth from eyewitnesses of the event. All that remains is to rely on the chronicles and documents of that time. There are many versions of the events of that fateful night circulating around the world, but only a few of them deserve attention.

A story slightly different from the official version was told by a letter written by Hungarians by nationality and Red Army soldiers of the famous 25th division, the head of which was Vasily Ivanovich Chapaev. The letter came to the division commander's daughter. The main difference was that, according to their story, the division commander did not drown in the river, but was transported to the other bank. But the national hero never managed to live to see the next day: wounded by his pursuers, he died. After which Chapaev’s body was hastily buried somewhere near Uralsk. Naturally, in such conditions, no one remembered the exact coordinates of the place, the hero’s grave was lost forever...

It’s strange in general that the letter reached Claudia, Chapaev’s daughter. And the main question is, why were they silent for so long?! Maybe they were forbidden to disclose the details of those events. But some are sure that the letter itself is not a cry from the distant past, designed to shed light on the death of a hero, but a cynical KGB operation, the goals of which are unclear.

One of the legends appeared later. On February 9, 1926, the newspaper “Krasnoyarsk Worker” published sensational news: “... Kolchak officer Trofimov-Mirsky was arrested, who in 1919 killed the captured and legendary division chief Chapaev. Mirsky served as an accountant in an artel of disabled people in Penza.”

Was the famous hero really captured?! It is known that the White command promised 50 thousand rubles in gold to the one who would bring Chapaev. Therefore, we can assume that a hunt was announced for the division commander and, most likely, the White Cossacks tried to capture him. But there is no more information or evidence for this version.

But the most mysterious version tells that Chapaev was able to swim across the Urals. And, having released the fighters, he went to Frunze in Samara. But along the way he became very ill and lay for some time in some unknown village. After recovery, Vasily Ivanovich finally made it to Samara... where he was arrested by the Red Army.

After the night battle in Lbischensk, Chapaev was listed as dead. The party leadership declared the division commander a hero who steadfastly fought for the ideas of the party and died for them. The story of Chapaev’s heroic death stirred the public, raised their military spirit and gave them strength. The news that Chapaev was alive meant only one thing - the national hero abandoned his soldiers and succumbed to flight. The top management could not allow this!

This version is also based on the memories and conjectures of eyewitnesses. Vasily Sityaev assured that in 1941 he met with a soldier of the 25th Infantry Division, who showed him the personal belongings of the division commander and told him that after crossing to the opposite bank of the Urals, the division commander went to Frunze.

Another piece of evidence can hardly be called real, but there is no evidence to the contrary, so it deserves attention.

In 1998, journalists published a scandalous article! Allegedly, one of the Red Army soldiers in his old age accidentally met with the division commander; he lived under a different name. The reason for this was his arrest by Frunze and the subsequent “information blockade”. After a report from an unknown person that Chapaev had revealed himself, he headed to Stalin’s camps in 1934... Exhausted by life, he eventually found himself in a home for the disabled. Only one thing is surprising: how did a person who survived so many upheavals live to be 111 years old? And why, after the death of the leader, did he not even try to contact his relatives?

There are many versions of Chapaev’s death; it is difficult to say which one is true. Some historians are generally inclined to believe that the historical role of the division commander in the Civil War is extremely small. And all the myths and legends that glorified Chapaev were created by the party for its own purposes. But, according to reviews from those who knew him quite closely, he was a real person! He not only had an excellent knowledge of military affairs, but was also attentive to his subordinates and took care of them in every possible way. He did not hesitate, in the words of Dmitry Furmanov, to “dance with the fighters”; he was honest and true to his ideals to the end. He was a true folk hero!

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Which river was called Yaik before 1775?

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On what river is the city of Chapaev located?

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Which river banks are located - the right one in Europe, the left one in Asia?

River in Russia, flows into the Caspian Sea

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On which river is the city of Orsk?

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Based on books and films, we tell jokes about him. But the real life of the red division commander was no less interesting. He loved cars and argued with the teachers at the military academy. And Chapaev is not his real name.

Hard childhood

Vasily Ivanovich was born into a poor peasant family. The only wealth of his parents was their nine eternally hungry children, of whom the future hero of the Civil War was the sixth.

As the legend goes, he was born premature and warmed up in his father’s fur mitten on the stove. His parents sent him to seminary in the hope that he would become a priest. But when one day the guilty Vasya was put in a wooden punishment cell in only his shirt in the bitter cold, he ran away. He tried to become a merchant, but he couldn’t - he was too disgusted by the basic trading commandment: “If you don’t cheat, you won’t sell, if you don’t sell, you won’t make money.” “My childhood was dark and difficult. I had to humiliate myself and starve a lot. From an early age I hung around strangers,” the division commander later recalled.

"Chapaev"

It is believed that Vasily Ivanovich’s family bore the surname Gavrilovs. “Chapaev” or “Chepai” was the nickname given to the division commander’s grandfather, Stepan Gavrilovich. Either in 1882 or 1883, he and his comrades loaded logs, and Stepan, as the eldest, constantly commanded - “Chepai, chapai!”, which meant: “take, take.” So it stuck to him - Chepai, and the nickname later turned into a surname.

They say that the original “Chepai” became “Chapaev” with the light hand of Dmitry Furmanov, the author of the famous novel, who decided that “it sounds better this way.” But in surviving documents from the time of the Civil War, Vasily appears under both options.

Perhaps the name “Chapaev” appeared as a result of a typo.

Academy student

Chapaev's education, contrary to popular opinion, was not limited to two years of parish school. In 1918, he was enrolled in the military academy of the Red Army, where many soldiers were “herded” to improve their general literacy and learn strategy. According to the recollections of his classmate, the peaceful student life weighed on Chapaev: “The hell with it! I'll leave! To come up with such nonsense - fighting people at their desks! Two months later, he submitted a report asking to be released from this “prison” to the front.

Several stories have been preserved about Vasily Ivanovich’s stay at the academy. The first says that during a geography exam, in response to an old general’s question about the significance of the Neman River, Chapaev asked the professor if he knew about the significance of the Solyanka River, where he fought with the Cossacks. According to the second, in a discussion of the Battle of Cannes, he called the Romans “blind kittens,” telling the teacher, the prominent military theorist Sechenov: “We have already shown generals like you how to fight!”

Motorist

We all imagine Chapaev as a courageous fighter with a fluffy mustache, a naked sword and galloping on a dashing horse. This image was created by folk actor Boris Babochkin. In life, Vasily Ivanovich preferred cars to horses.

Back on the fronts of the First World War, he was seriously wounded in the thigh, so riding became a problem. So, Chapaev became one of the first Red commanders who switched to a car.

He chose his iron horses very meticulously. The first, the American Stever, was rejected due to strong shaking; the red Packard that replaced it also had to be abandoned - it was not suitable for military operations in the steppe. But the red commander liked the Ford, which drove 70 miles off-road. Chapaev also selected the best drivers. One of them, Nikolai Ivanov, was practically taken to Moscow by force and made the personal driver of Lenin’s sister, Anna Ulyanova-Elizarova.

Women's cunning

The famous commander Chapaev was an eternal loser on the personal front. His first wife, the bourgeois Pelageya Metlina, whom Chapaev’s parents did not approve of, calling him a “city white-handed woman,” bore him three children, but did not wait for her husband from the front - she went to a neighbor. Vasily Ivanovich was very upset by her action - he loved his wife. Chapaev often repeated to his daughter Claudia: “Oh, how beautiful you are. She looks like her mother."

Chapaev’s second companion, although already a civilian, was also named Pelageya. She was the widow of Vasily’s comrade-in-arms, Pyotr Kamishkertsev, to whom the division commander promised to take care of his family. At first he sent her benefits, then they decided to move in together. But history repeated itself - during her husband’s absence, Pelageya began an affair with a certain Georgy Zhivolozhinov. One day Chapaev found them together and almost sent the unlucky lover to the next world.

When the passions subsided, Kamishkertseva decided to go to war, took the children and went to her husband’s headquarters. The children were allowed to see their father, but she was not. They say that after this she took revenge on Chapaev by revealing to the whites the location of the Red Army troops and data on their numbers.

fatal water

The death of Vasily Ivanovich is shrouded in mystery. On September 4, 1919, Borodin’s troops approached the city of Lbischensk, where the headquarters of Chapaev’s division with a small number of fighters was located. During the defense, Chapaev was severely wounded in the stomach; his soldiers put the commander on a raft and transported him across the Urals, but he died from loss of blood. The body was buried in the coastal sand, and the traces were hidden so that the Cossacks would not find it. Searching for the grave subsequently became useless, as the river changed its course. This story was confirmed by a participant in the events. According to another version, Chapaev drowned after being wounded in the arm, unable to cope with the current.

“Or maybe he swam out?”

Neither Chapaev's body nor grave could be found. This gave rise to a completely logical version of the surviving hero. Someone said that due to a severe wound he lost his memory and lived somewhere under a different name.

Some claimed that he was safely transported to the other side, from where he went to Frunze, to be responsible for the surrendered city. In Samara he was put under arrest, and then they decided to officially “kill the hero,” ending his military career with a beautiful end.

This story was told by a certain Onyanov from the Tomsk region, who allegedly met his aged commander many years later. The story looks dubious, since in the difficult conditions of the civil war it was inappropriate to “throw away” experienced military leaders who were highly respected by the soldiers.

Most likely, this is a myth generated by the hope that the hero was saved.

This year marks the 130th anniversary of the birth of the legendary division commander Vasily Ivanovich Chapaev. Today, Ural local historians have sensational information about the life, activities and death of the red commander. They found this information in the archives of the city of Uralsk.

Chapaev did not drown!

Magazine: Secret Archives No. 1/C, summer 2017
Category: Man-legend

Where is Solyanka located?

As it turned out, Vasily Ivanovich was married twice. In 1908, Chapaev married 16-year-old Pelageya Metlina. They lived together for six years and gave birth to three children - Claudia, Alexander and Arkady. However, their family life did not work out. When the First World War began, Chapaev went to the front, and Pelageya and her children remained to live in his parents’ house. Perhaps the young woman is tired of being a straw widow, or maybe her relationship with her father-in-law and mother-in-law did not work out. Be that as it may, Pelageya took the children and left. In 1917, Chapaev visited his native place; took the children from his wife and returned them to his parents' house. Pelageya did not dare to argue...
Life with his second wife did not work out for Vasily Ivanovich either.
After some time, Chapaev adopted two children of his comrade Pyotr Kishkertsev, who died of wounds in his arms.
As for the jokes about Vasily Ivanovich, there is some truth in them. For example, when a teacher at the General Staff Academy, where Chapaev studied in 1918, asked him to show the Rhine River on the map, he answered the question with a question:
- Show me Solyanka!
- Which Solyanka? - the teacher was taken aback.
- You don’t know, but I should know. I fought there, beat white men. The time will come when this story will be studied. Mine! I don’t care where your Rhine is!

Interrogation protocol

In life, Vasily Ivanovich differed in many ways from Chapaev, the hero of the film. In the movies, he is a dashing warrior galloping on a horse, but in reality he preferred to drive a car. In the movies, he is a semi-literate man, but deeply devoted to the revolution, but in life, he is a fully educated commander. In the last frames of the film, Chapaev rushes into the waves of the Ural River in a white shirt, and according to archival documents, at that moment he was wearing a leather jacket.
As for the death of Vasily Ivanovich, one sensational document was found in the archives of Uralsk. This was the interrogation protocol of Chapaev, compiled by the White Guard counterintelligence, at the headquarters of the Ural Cossacks. Moreover, as it turned out, this protocol was drawn up some time after the legendary and tragic battle for Lbischensk (now the village of Chapaev in Kazakhstan), where the headquarters of the 25th Infantry Division was located. Documents were also found, from which it became clear: the division commander was offered to go over to the side of the whites and was even promised the rank of general.
The purpose of such a proposal is more than clear. Knowing Chapaev's high authority in the Red Army, the Whites tried to break the enemy morally. There is information about leaflets they distributed, which said that Vasily Ivanovich had gone over to their side. All these archival documents indicate that after the battle for Lbischensk, Chapaev did not drown in the river, but moved to the opposite bank, where he was captured by White Guard counterintelligence.
Vasily Ivanovich’s daughter, Klavdia Vasilievna (1912-1999), also claimed that her father did not actually drown. He was allegedly transported on the doors of a large wooden gate to the other side by four Red Army soldiers, among whom was the prototype of the legendary Petka - Pyotr Semyonovich Isaev.
A direct participant in those long-standing events, the head of the general department of the Lbischensky Revolutionary Committee, Nestor Ivanovich Zakharov, spoke for the first time about the fact that when Lbischensk was liberated from the whites, they decided to find Chapaev’s body. They searched for several days, but never found it. Then a version appeared that, wounded in the arm, he was unable to swim across the Ural River and drowned. This version has since become the “historical truth”.

How heroes were created

Why weren’t these sensational materials made public earlier and only reached us now? Chelyabinsk scientist Mikhail Mashin, who worked more than 25 years ago in the archive with documents and directly read the interrogation protocol of Chapaev, wrote down all this amazing information in his special notebook. After finishing work in the archive, according to the then existing rules, the notebook was taken away from him for viewing. Naturally, they didn’t return it back. And soon the interrogation protocol itself mysteriously disappeared from the archive. The machine was asked to forget about what he read there and not to make it public under any circumstances. And what threatened at that time the refusal to fulfill the request of the “authorities” was well understood by everyone.
Most likely, the Soviet government really wanted Vasily Ivanovich Chapaev to forever remain a hero for his people. After all, a real hero, according to the official views of those years, cannot and should not be captured. And to make it impossible to reverse this story, the documents were removed from the archive.
The version of the life and death of the legendary division commander, convenient for the authorities, lasted for many decades. Entire generations have grown up listening to the story of Chapaev. The new version presented here is most likely more reliable, although not so romantic. But, despite this, the death of Vasily Ivanovich in the dungeons of the White Guard counterintelligence did not become any less heroic. This man will never cease to be a national hero for our people.

Petka

Vasily Chapaev was born on January 28 (February 9), 1887 in the village of Budaika, Cheboksary district, Kazan province, into a Russian peasant family. Vasily was the sixth child in the family of Ivan Stepanovich Chapaev (1854-1921).

The division commander’s brother, Mikhail Ivanovich, spoke about the origin of the surname “Chapaev”:

Some time later, in search of a better life, the Chapaev family moved to the village of Balakovo, Nikolaev district, Samara province. Ivan Stepanovich enrolled his son in a local parish school, the patron of which was his wealthy cousin. There were already priests in the Chapaev family, and the parents wanted Vasily to become a clergyman, but life decreed otherwise.

In the fall of 1908, Vasily was drafted into the army and sent to Kyiv. But already in the spring of the following year, for unknown reasons, Chapaev was transferred from the army to the reserve and transferred to first-class militia warriors. According to the official version, due to illness. The version about his political unreliability, because of which he was transferred to the warriors, is not confirmed by anything. Before the World War, he did not serve in the regular army. He worked as a carpenter. From 1912 to 1914, Chapaev and his family lived in the city of Melekess (now Dimitrovgrad, Ulyanovsk region) on Chuvashskaya Street. Here his son Arkady was born. At the beginning of the war, on September 20, 1914, Chapaev was called up for military service and sent to the 159th reserve infantry regiment in the city of Atkarsk.

Chapaev arrived at the front in January 1915. He fought in the 326th Belgorai Infantry Regiment of the 82nd Infantry Division in the 9th Army of the Southwestern Front in Volyn and Galicia. Was injured. In July 1915 he graduated from the training team, received the rank of junior non-commissioned officer, and in October - senior. He finished the war with the rank of sergeant major. For his bravery, he was awarded the St. George Medal and soldiers' St. George Crosses of three degrees.

I met the February revolution in a hospital in Saratov; On September 28, 1917 he joined the RSDLP(b). He was elected commander of the 138th reserve infantry regiment stationed in Nikolaevsk. On December 18, the district congress of Soviets elected him military commissar of the Nikolaev district. In this position he led the dispersal of the Nikolaev district zemstvo. Organized a district Red Guard of 14 detachments. He took part in the campaign against General Kaledin (near Tsaritsyn), then (in the spring of 1918) in the campaign of the Special Army to Uralsk. On his initiative, on May 25, a decision was made to reorganize the Red Guard detachments into two Red Army regiments: them. Stepan Razin and them. Pugachev, united in the Pugachev brigade under the command of Chapaev. Later he took part in battles with the Czechoslovaks and the People's Army, from whom he recaptured Nikolaevsk, which was renamed Pugachev in honor of the brigade. On September 19, 1918, he was appointed commander of the 2nd Nikolaev Division. From November 1918 to February 1919 - at the Academy of the General Staff. Then - Commissioner of Internal Affairs of Nikolaevsky District. From May 1919 - brigade commander of the Special Aleksandrovo-Gai Brigade, from June - head of the 25th Infantry Division, which participated in the Bugulminsky and Belebeyevsky operations against Kolchak's army. Under the leadership of Chapaev, this division occupied Ufa on June 9, 1919, and Uralsk on July 11. During the capture of Ufa, Chapaev was wounded in the head by a burst from an aircraft machine gun.

Vasily Ivanovich Chapaev died on September 5, 1919 as a result of a deep raid by the Cossack detachment of Colonel N. N. Borodin (1192 soldiers with 9 machine guns and 2 guns), which culminated in an unexpected attack on the well-guarded (about 1000 bayonets) and located in the deep rear of the city of Lbischensk (now the village of Chapaev, West Kazakhstan region of Kazakhstan), where the headquarters of the 25th division was located.

Circumstances of death

Chapaev's division, separated from the rear and suffering heavy losses, in early September settled down to rest in the Lbischensk area, and in Lbischensk itself the division headquarters, supply department, tribunal, revolutionary committee and other divisional institutions with a total number of almost two thousand people were located. In addition, there were about two thousand mobilized peasant transport workers in the city who did not have any weapons. The city was guarded by a division school of 600 people - it was these 600 active bayonets that were Chapaev’s main force at the time of the attack. The main forces of the division were located at a distance of 40-70 km from the city.

As documents testify, for the capture of Chapaev, Borodin assigned a special platoon under the command of the guard Belonozhkin, who, led by a captured Red Army soldier, attacked the house where Chapaev was quartered, but let him go: the Cossacks attacked the Red Army soldier who appeared from the house, mistaking him for Chapaev himself, in while Chapaev jumped out the window and managed to escape. While fleeing, he was wounded in the arm by Belonozhkin's shot. Having gathered and organized the Red Army soldiers who fled to the river in panic, Chapaev organized a detachment of about a hundred people with a machine gun and was able to throw back Belonozhkin, who did not have machine guns. However, in the process he was wounded in the stomach. According to the story of Chapaev's eldest son, Alexander, two Hungarian Red Army soldiers put the wounded Chapaev on a raft made from half a gate and transported him across the Urals. But on the other side it turned out that Chapaev died from loss of blood. The Hungarians buried his body with their hands in the coastal sand and covered it with reeds so that the Cossacks would not find the grave. This story was subsequently confirmed by one of the participants in the events, who in 1962 sent a letter from Hungary to Chapaev’s daughter with a detailed description of the death of the division commander. The investigation carried out by whites also confirms these data; from the words of captured Red Army soldiers, “Chapaev, leading a group of Red Army soldiers towards us, was wounded in the stomach. The wound turned out to be so severe that after that he could no longer lead the battle and was transported on planks across the Urals... he [Chapaev] was already on the Asian side of the river. Ural died from a wound in the stomach." The place where Chapaev was supposedly buried is now flooded - the river bed has changed.

In the battles for Lbischensk, the commander of the special combined detachment of the White Guard Ural Army, the head of the operation, Major General (posthumously) Nikolai Nikolaevich Borodin, also died.

Alternative versions of death

However, thanks to Furmanov’s book and especially the film “Chapayev,” the version of the death of the wounded Chapaev in the waves of the Urals has become textbook. This version arose immediately after the death of Chapaev and was, in fact, the fruit of an assumption, based on the fact that Chapaev was seen on the European shore, but he did not swim to the Asian (“Bukhara”) shore, and his body was not found - as is clear from the conversation via direct wire between a member of the Revolutionary Military Council of the 4th Army I.F. Sundukov and the temporary military commissar of the division M.P. Sysoikin:

The role of Chapaev in the history of the Civil War

Some authors express the opinion that Chapaev’s role in the history of the Civil War is very small, and he would not be worth mentioning among other famous figures of that time, such as N. A. Shchors, S. G. Lazo, G. I. Kotovsky, if would not be the myth created from it. According to other materials, the 25th Division played a big role in the zone of the South-Eastern Red Front in the capture of such provincial centers in the defense of Admiral Kolchak’s troops as Samara, Ufa, Uralsk, Orenburg, Aktyubinsk. Subsequently, after the death of Chapaev, the operations of the 25th Infantry Division were carried out under the command of