Who is Chapaev? This is not just a soldier of two armies, it is a whole symbol of the era of the collapse of empires and revolutions.
He played a significant role in the Civil War on the territory of the Russian Empire. The Red Army under his leadership inflicted a heavy defeat on General Kolchak on the Eastern Front. Chapaev himself was a symbol of red Cossack courage. His image was actively used for agitation and propaganda both during the Civil War and in the Soviet Union.
Vasily Chapaev: biography
Born on January 28 (February 9), 1887 in the Kazan province. His parents were ordinary peasants. There is no exact information regarding the name of Vasily Ivanovich. As the brother of the famous Red Army recalled, the surname Chapaev was at first a nickname. Allegedly, Vasily’s grandfather worked as a foreman in a construction artel and constantly shouted to his subordinates: “Chepay! Chepay” (“take”). Since then, he was called Chapaev, which soon became a surname. This was confirmed by Chapaev Vasily Ivanovich. The nationality of “red "The Cossack is still unclear. According to some reports, his mother was a dude.
The Chapaev family was quite large. In addition to Vasily, there were six children. Parents worked hard, but still the family lived poorly. Therefore, a few years after the birth of the last child, they move to the Samara province. Vasily's father, who wanted to give his son an education, gives him to church school. At that time, she is sponsored by her cousin. Initially, parents wanted Vasily to become a priest, like some other relatives. However, in the fall of 1908, Chapaev was drafted into the army. His unit is stationed in Kiev. However, after a few months, Basil was fired. Who is Chapaev, in the Kiev military district did not know, therefore, it is impossible to determine the exact cause of such a strange decision. According to the official version, the dismissal was associated with the disease. In Soviet times, there was a popular theory according to which Vasily was expelled from the army due to political unreliability. Upon arriving home, they grant him the rank of militia warrior.
At home, Vasily works as a carpenter. Soon he will marry Pelagia Metlina, who is the daughter of a local priest. In the nine hundred and ninth year they are married. Almost immediately they move to Dimitrovgrad and live there. In the fourteenth year, the First World War begins. The imperial troops call on all military reserves, Chapaev is no exception. The biography of Vasily as a military begins precisely then.
World War I
Vasily Ivanovich mobilized in the one hundred and fifty-ninth regiment of the reserve, which was deployed in the city of Atkarsk.
There he undergoes training and retraining. Two months later he was sent to the front. He arrives in Galicia, where fierce battles unfold against the Germans and Austro-Hungarians. In the cold winter of the fifteenth, the siege of Przemysl continued. Russian troops began preparing an operation to break through the territory of Hungary. To do this, it was necessary to go to the Hungarian plain, which was hindered by the strengthening of the Austrians in the Carpathians. In mid-January, the almost simultaneous offensive of the warring parties began. The army of the German Empire planned to lift the siege of the strategically important Przemysl and go to the rear of the Russian troops.
V.I. Chapaev participated in the Carpathian operation. In the mountains persistent battles ensued. The battles took place in severe weather conditions. The passes by this time were almost completely covered with snow. Also, rarefied air affected the well-being of soldiers who grew up on the flat terrain. Chapaev was injured in one of the battles and was in hospital for some time.
The battle in the Carpathians
After heavy fighting, the Russian troops still managed to occupy the dominant heights and win tactically. However, in the spring a massive offensive by the enemy began. The German army was about to attack from East Prussia and encircle Russian troops in the Warsaw area. At this time, a significant part of the imperial army was stuck in difficult transitions in the Carpathians and could not move quickly. The Russian army was extremely poorly equipped. The Germans and Austrians showed total superiority in both heavy guns and machine guns. For example, the Germans had ninety-six machine guns, and the Russian troops had none. V.I. Chapaev was part of the retreating from Poland in 1915. This defeat leveled all the conquests of the Russian army in the campaign of the fourteenth year and in the Carpathian operation. But the most powerful was a moral blow.
Breakthrough of Russian troops
Who is Chapaev, it became known in the Belgorai regiment during the famous Brusilovsky breakthrough. In the summer of the sixteenth year, a massive Russian offensive near Lutsk began. The goal was the occupation of Galicia and Volhynia, the capture of the enemy's enemy group. After several hours of artillery preparation, the troops of the entire front went on the offensive. Already on the first day they managed to break through the first line of defense and capture many trophies. By September, the operation was completed. The Germans and Austrians lost one and a half million soldiers killed, wounded and captured. For the courage shown, Vasily Chapaev received the St. George Cross.
Homecoming
Chapaev returned home with the rank of sergeant major. For a long time he was in the hospital. At this time, changes were brewing in the country. Chapaev, like millions of Russian workers, was extremely dissatisfied with the state of affairs in the country. The standard of living was deteriorating, the social gap between the nobles and the "masses" was simply monstrous. Plus, thousands of soldiers died every day in an incomprehensible war. As a result, unrest among the people peaked in February.
In St. Petersburg, the revolution began. The king abdicated, and power passed to the Provisional Government. Vasily Ivanovich reacted positively to the new changes. In September of the seventeenth year he joined the Bolshevik party. As a person with combat experience, he was very much appreciated. Therefore, he is appointed commander of the infantry regiment.
The beginning of the Civil War
After Vasily showed his skills, he was appointed commissar of the whole county. Almost autonomously engaged in the formation of militant communist units. For a fairly short period of time he managed to organize the Red Guard from 14 battalions. Almost from the very beginning of the war, the entire Ural region was occupied by whites. This is due to the compact residence of the Cossacks in this territory. Therefore, Chapaev’s detachments acted in extremely difficult conditions. The whites did not even need to conduct thorough reconnaissance, because wherever the reds appeared, there were people among the local population who reported on their numbers, weapons, and transmitted other important information.
Offensive of the red
In winter, fierce battles broke out near Tsaritsyn.
General Kaledin had at his disposal selected fighters who had a good combat experience behind them. And many have studied military craft since childhood. But Chapaev managed in a short time to train the peasants and workers so that they fought along with the military. After that, his formations were included in the Special Army. In its composition, Vasily Ivanovich took a personal part in the campaign to Uralsk. During the fighting he was wounded in the head. After the end of the campaign he carried out a reorganization, breaking the guardsmen into two regiments, which he combined into a brigade under his command.
In the summer of the eighteenth year, the Civil War was in full swing. Czechoslovak invaders captured Nikolaevsk, in which less than a year ago they proclaimed Soviet power with the active participation of Chapaev himself. Almost the entire Ural region came under the control of whites. The Pugachev brigade (one of the regiments bore the name of Pugachev) besieged the city and recaptured it after several days of heavy fighting. During the battles for Nikolaevsk, the Red Army fought so desperately that many whites fled from the battlefield. After that, the whole north of Russia knew who Chapaev was. In the winter of the eighteenth year, Vasily Ivanovich was trained at the Academy of the General Staff. After that, he receives the position of commissioner.
Army commander
Six months later, Chapaev commanded a brigade, and another month later - a division. The troops are conducting an offensive on the Eastern Front against one of the best white generals - Kolchak. With the support of the Turkestan army, the Bugulmi and Bugurslan districts were taken in red. The front passed through the Ufa province. About thirty thousand soldiers launched an offensive on May 25th, and by the end of June Kolchak’s troops fled from the province. Chapaev took part in the assault on Ufa. During the battle he was wounded in the head from an air gun, but survived.
The commander of the Red Army continued to lead the fighting in extremely difficult conditions. After a swift offensive, Chapaev’s fighters strongly broke forward and were exhausted. Therefore, in the fall of the eighteenth, we stopped in Lbischensk to rest and wait for the reinforcements to approach. All administrative military institutes are located in the city itself. However, there were very few fighters. The garrison consisted of six hundred bayonets commanded by Vasily Ivanovich Chapaev. The Civil War squeezed the last juices out of a torn country. Therefore, peasants who could not handle weapons were mobilized into the Red Army. About two thousand of these recruits were also in Lbischensk, but were not armed. The main forces of the division stood forty kilometers from the city.
White Cossack Raid
The weakness of the Chapaevsky garrison decided to take advantage of the white colonel Borodin. Under cover of night on the last day of summer, his detachment, consisting of selected fighters, left Kalyenoy and went on a raid. At the disposal of the Red Army there were four airplanes. They were doing intelligence around the city.
However, the pilots were mobilized from the local population, and, apparently, sympathized with the white. Therefore, on September 4, Borodin’s detachment quietly approached the city. The commander of the Red Army Chapaev at that time was in Lbischensk. At dawn, the Cossacks attacked the city. The surprise factor worked - panic began. The soldiers in chaos tried to organize resistance. The battle lasted about six hours.
Death
Many were captured. But some managed to break through to the Ural River. They tried to swim to the other side, despite the current. Among them was Chapaev. The Civil War hero was seriously injured in the stomach, but still continued to fight. According to the official version, after the arrival of the main part of the Cossacks, he ran to the river. He was already almost in the middle when a bullet hit him in the head. He died, barely reaching the shore. The monument to Chapaev was simple - from reeds and algae. The Red Army soldiers who buried the glorious commander were afraid that the whites would find a burial place.
Memory
After the Civil War, thanks to Soviet agitation, Chapaev became one of its most striking symbols. Several films were made about him, many songs and poems were written. The image of the dashing red Cossack became an element of folklore. In the jokes, Chapaev became someone like Lieutenant Rzhevsky.
The monument to Chapaev, already made of stone, stands in many cities of the former Soviet Union.