The famous revolutionary Dybenko Pavel Efimovich was born on February 28, 1889 in the small Chernigov village Lyudkovo. His parents were ordinary peasants of central Russia. The social and material situation of the family left an imprint on the life path of the boy. He received primary education in a rural school. Then followed three years in a city school. Further study for the peasant son was simply not affordable.
Pavel Efimovich Dybenko began working at the age of 17. In Lithuanian Novoaleksandrovsk, he joined the local treasury. However, for a long time the young man did not stay there. He was fired due to revolutionary hobbies. In 1907, the young man made a fateful decision and joined the Bolshevik circle (in the party formally since 1912). On the eve of the first Russian revolution, however, underground organizations continued their activity.
Navy Service
Since 1908, Pavel Efimovich Dybenko lived in Riga. In 1911, he began serving in the Baltic Fleet. The need to pay off military duty did not appeal to Dybenko - he tried to hide, but the evader was arrested and forcibly sent to a recruiting station. So the young Bolshevik became a sailor. The place of his service was the island of Kotlin, where the city of Kronstadt was located.
Dybenko visited the crews of several ships, in particular the training ship "Dvina" and the battleship "Emperor Pavel I". The sailor worked as an electrician, and was later promoted to non-commissioned officer. In 1913 he took part in a foreign campaign, visited England, France and Norway.
World War I
In 1914, the First World War began. Dybenko Pavel Efimovich was in the current squadron and participated in several military sorties in the Baltic Sea. Several years of service did not dull his revolutionary mood. On the contrary, as a naval cadre, he proved to be a very valuable agitator for the Bolshevik party. At the same time, Dybenko was under the secret surveillance of the secret police. He was in a “risk group” and that is why he was decommissioned from his ship when the Baltic Fleet survived the uprising of sailors on the battleship Gangut for the first time during the war.
Riga, which was well known to the revolutionary, turned out to be the place where Pavel Efimovich Dybenko was sent. The military’s biography could remain connected exclusively with the fleet, but now he had to find application on the land front. After three months of service, he received a prison term in Helsingfors for defeatist agitation. The conclusion was short-lived. Soon, Dybenko was returned to the fleet as a battalion. Despite all his past misadventures, the Bolshevik continued his revolutionary activity.
Between February and October
In 1917, Pavel Dybenko was in the thick of things. After the appearance of the Provisional Government, he joined the Helsingfors Council, where he was a deputy from the fleet. As an ardent Bolshevik, he was distinguished by the most radical views. It was Pavel Dybenko who conducted the greatest propaganda activity in the Baltic Fleet during the anti-government speech of his party in July 1917. That summer, most of the Bolsheviks were arrested, and Lenin fled and hid in the Razliv.
Pavel Yefimovich Dybenko also went to prison. A short biography of this revolutionary is full of episodes of arrest and imprisonment. This time he ended up at the Crosses, where Trotsky was at the same time. In early September, among other Bolsheviks, Dybenko was released. The interim government decided that the party of marginals lost its influence and lost support among the masses. This view was a fatal fallacy.
Acceleration of the Constituent Assembly
On the night when Lenin’s supporters seized power in Petrograd, Dybenko directed the transfer of revolutionary sailors from Kronstadt to the capital. The merits of the Bolshevik to the new Soviet regime were significant. After the October Revolution, he was immediately introduced into the Council of People's Commissars, where he became Commissar for Maritime Affairs.
The Baltic Fleet also remembered how much Pavel Efimovich Dybenko did for the coup. The date of birth of the new state almost coincided with the convocation of the Constituent Assembly. Dybenko was elected as his delegate precisely from the Baltic Fleet. On the day of the convocation of the Constituent Assembly, the Bolshevik led a large group of sailors who actually dispersed this democratically elected body.
Again against the Germans
The Bolsheviks who came to power were in an extremely difficult situation. On the one hand, the white movement was gaining strength, and on the other, until the signing of the Brest Peace, the war with the Germans continued. In early 1918, they continued their offensive in the Baltic. The sailors, led by Pavel Efimovich Dybenko, were sent across the interventionists. The personal life of the revolutionary on the eve was marked by a joyful event: he married his colleague Alexandra Kollontai, who in the future became famous in the diplomatic field.
However, there was no time left for family affairs. Dybenko detachment encountered the Germans near Narva. The sailors who were inferior to the enemy in all respects left the city. Soon the detachment was disarmed by its own. For a mistake, Dybenko was expelled from the party (reinstated in 1922). In a sense, the revolutionary was lucky - they did not shoot him, but sent him to underground work in Odessa (former merits affected).
On the fronts of the Civil War
In the fall of 1918, Pavel Dybenko joined the Ukrainian Soviet Army. He led the partisan division, which included supporters of Nestor Makhno. The main success of this formation was participation in the capture of the Crimea. Dybenko’s division was the first to establish control over the key Perekop Isthmus. However, those successes were variable. Soon, the Bolshevik supporters had to retreat.
Dybenko Pavel Efimovich also left. The photo of the commander again began to appear in Soviet newspapers - he returned to Moscow and became one of the first students of the newly opened Academy of the General Staff of the Red Army. The situation at the fronts was hectic, and the unlearned Dybenko was again sent to the front. At the end of 1919, he took part in the liberation of Tsaritsyn, where Stalin and future marshals Budyonny and Egorov also noted.
Contest Wrestler
The new 1920th Dybenko met on the road. His division pursued the retreating Denikin. By spring, the military leader reached the Caucasus. Then Pavel Efimovich returned to the Crimea, where on the last gasp the rest of the Whites under the command of Wrangel resisted. In September 1920, a Civil War participant returned to the academy that had been left shortly before.
A few months later, during the next party congress, the famous Kronstadt uprising of sailors broke out. Dybenko knew this contingent very well. Therefore, it is not surprising that it was his party that sent the suppression of the discontent of deprivations and unjustified expectations of the sailors to suppress. Then Dybenko came under the command of Tukhachevsky. In April 1921, both commanders again together - this time they suppressed the peasant uprising of the Antonovites in the Tambov province.
Later years
After returning to peaceful life, Dybenko Pavel Efimovich and Kollontai began to occupy all kinds of leadership positions. The husband is in the army, the wife is in the party and diplomatic service. Throughout the 20s and 30s. Dybenko led many military units in the Red Army.
The fate of the old Bolshevik developed on the thumb. When Stalin began the purges in the Red Army, Dybenko initially acted as a reliable executor of terror. He repressed wards in the Leningrad Military District, where he was commander. The apogee of Dybenko’s length of service was his participation in the trial of Marshal Tukhachevsky in the summer of 1937. And just a few months after this episode, he himself was removed from all his posts. Several personnel shifts followed. As a result, Dybenko got a job in the People’s Commissariat of the forest industry and began to manage the logging in the Gulag. In February 1938 he was arrested.
Pavel Dybenko, according to the then tradition, was accused of spying on foreign intelligence and even in relations with Tukhachevsky, whom he himself helped to put. The famous commander of the Civil War was shot on July 29, 1938. He was rehabilitated after the XX Party Congress in 1956.