This article is dedicated to the fate of naval officer Anatoly Vasilyevich Lenin. From his relatives, the leader of the Bolsheviks, Vladimir Ulyanov, received his pseudonym Lenin, under which he went down in history.
The Yenisei Cossack, a half-soldier, Posnik Ivanov, son, nicknamed Gubar, was a tough man, he carried out his service correctly, he swore the oath to the tsar and did not give up to his Cossacks or enemies. He tore three skins from everyone, but he didn’t spare his back either, for that he was respected by both his subordinates and his superiors. In the "Book of the Yasak collection of the Yenisei prison" for 1635, it is noted that that year "Posnichko with goods was taken from the Tunguska prince Gornul and his family 8011 sables with tails." It was with such a breathtakingly large yasak that Posnik Ivanov and his comrades bowed to the tsar, taken in only one year from one Tungus clan.
The Cossack half-horse is known as well as the founder of the cities of Vilyuisk, Verkhoyansk and Zashiversk, the discoverer of the Indigirka River, the upper reaches of the Yana River and the Yukagir people. For long-distance campaigns and an unprecedented tribute, for bringing the hand of foreigners of all tribes and languages under the sovereign, and for the construction of Cossack forts on the Lena River, which is in Yakut land, the Cossack was awarded a diploma from Sovereign Mikhail Fedorovich for the Siberian nobility for himself and his descendants in addition to estate in the Vologda province. And the surname was given to him Lenin, which literally means "an eminent person who distinguished himself on the Lena River." As you know, in those ancient pre-Petrine times, only representatives of the "noble" class had surnames, and commoners were assigned only in exceptional cases as a reward. So from the middle of the 17th century, the noblemen Lenins served - some along the civil line, some along the military, and some even exchanged land for sea. The Vologda estate, inherited by the first Lenin for the increment of Russia with Siberia, was passed on to his descendants. The first of the descendants known to historians is Posnik's grandson Nikifor Aleksandrovich Lenin, who owned an estate in the Vologda district in 1659-1688. And his son Alexei Nikiforovich Lenin took part in the Azov campaign of Peter I in 1696. All of a sudden, we have his portrait at our disposal.
A. N. Lenin and Kalmyk (Russian Museum, unknown artist)
The vaults of the Russian Museum contain a painting by an unknown artist: “A. N. Lenin with a Kalmyk”. The brother of Alexei Nikiforovich, Ilya, received from the "Great Sovereign Tsar and Grand Duke Peter Alexeevich" a diploma for the estate, which was in the Vologda and Kineshemsky districts, "in February 1707 on the 1st day." According to archival data, at the beginning of the twentieth century, the Lenin family owned the following lands: 750 dessiatines in the Vologda province, 780 dessiatines in the Yaroslavl district, 115 dessiatines in the Rybinsk district of the Yaroslavl province, and 28 dessiatines in the Kirillovsky district of the Novgorod province.
But still, how did Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov become Lenin? In 1900, Vladimir Ilyich had just returned from exile and was going abroad. He applied to the Pskov governor for a passport. The passport was desperately needed, and there was apparently no confidence that it would be issued due to political unreliability. Nadezhda Konstantinovna Krupskaya got him a passport through her friend Olga Nikolaevna, who worked at the Smolensk evening school for workers with Krupskaya and maintained good relations with her. Olga's brothers, Privy Councilor Sergei Nikolaevich Lenin and actual State Councilor Nikolai Nikolaevich "for a good cause" and took the document from their elderly and sick father, retired collegiate secretary Nikolai Yegorovich, who lived in the Vologda province and was dying. The date of birth was cleaned up and corrected, although a passport was not needed to travel abroad, but it came in handy a year later. In 1901, in Stuttgart, Vladimir Ilyich published the book The Development of Capitalism in Russia, and before its publication, the publishing house demanded an identity card from the author. This is how the pseudonym “N. Lenin ". In 1919, the help of the Russian intelligentsia Lenins to the leader of the October Revolution was assessed "according to merit": Sergei Nikolaevich was shot in Poshekhonye as a "class enemy", soon died of smallpox and his sister, the "godmother" of Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov-Lenin Olga Lenin. Nikolai Nikolayevich died of typhus in the Poshekhonsky prison, where he ended up as a "free farmer" who did not fulfill the requisition rate (he, like his brother, managed the plot of his former land allocated to him by the peasants).
My story will be about a relative of Nikolai Yegorovich, who, against his will, surrendered his passport to the leader of the world proletariat. The only surviving photograph of him was taken in 1898: Anatoly Lenin, a freshly baked graduate of the Naval Cadet Corps. He's twenty or so here. Anatoly Vasilievich Lenin was born on March 13, 1877. Lenin's great-grandfather and grandfather were naval officers, served in the Baltic and retired with small ranks. In the fund of the naval corps of the archive of the navy, the file of the pupil of Anatoly Lenin has been preserved. It contains a petition, which on January 28, 1891, the wife of the provincial secretary, Vera Vasilyevna Lenina, submitted to the head of the naval school (as the naval corps was called at that time). She asks permission to take the entrance exam for her son Anatoly, the grandson of a retired lieutenant commander, "who has an irresistible desire to serve in the navy." The place of writing is marked as follows: "Nizhny Novgorod, Bulychev's house." In the brief information about his father, the provincial secretary Vasily Sergeevich Lenin, available in the case, it is said that he is a retired hussar cornet, married to the daughter of a merchant of the 2nd guild, Vera Vasilyevna Bulycheva.
midshipman A. V. Lenin, 1898
Researchers of Maxim Gorky's creativity consider Vasily Bulychev to be one of the prototypes of Yegor Bulychev in the famous play. V. V. Bulychev became a merchant of the 1st guild, a vowel of the Nizhny Novgorod City Duma, was awarded four gold medals "for diligence." He owned an estate in the Kostroma province, a stone shop at the Nizhny Novgorod fair, two stone houses in Nizhny, in one of which his grandson Anatoly was born. Having passed the entrance exam, on August 30, 1891, Anatoly Lenin entered the naval corps as a cadet, and on September 15, 1898, he graduated. Among his classmates graduated in 1898, there were many officers who left a noticeable mark in the history of the Russian fleet: G. K. Stark, Rear Admiral, one of the prominent leaders of the White Fleet on the Volga and the Far East, A. M. Kosinsky, captain 1st rank, who wrote the best book about the Moonsund battle in the Baltic in October 1917, of which he was a participant, A. V. Razvozov, Rear Admiral, the last commander of the Baltic Fleet before the October coup, M. A. Behrens, Rear Admiral, Commander of the Russian Squadron in Bizerte, N. N. Matusevich, vice admiral of the Soviet fleet, renowned hydrographer. Together with Lenin in 1898, the midshipman's shoulder straps were received … by the ship's midshipman Vladimir Ulyanov, such are the coincidences! The service of midshipman Lenin began in the Sevastopol 33rd naval crew, but not on ships, but as "assistant head of training for recruits." Anatoly got on the ships of the Black Sea fleet in March 1899. In May 1902, midshipman Lenin on the seaworthy gunboat Donets made a trip to the Turkish shores, for which, among other officers, he was awarded the "Order and insignia of the Turkish Order of the Osmaniye of the 4th degree." In April 1903, midshipman Lenin was promoted to lieutenant. In June of the same year, by the highest order, "Lieutenant Lenin is enlisted in the fleet reserve." It was not possible to find out what was behind this apparently urgent measure. He will receive the next rank only after 13 years, when his classmates will already be captains of the 1st rank. I dare to assume, knowing the future adventures of the gallant lieutenant, that in this case there was a woman and some scandalous story. On March 1, 1904, Lenin was called up from the reserve in connection with the outbreak of the Russian-Japanese war. He was assigned to the Revelsky 13th crew of the Baltic Fleet and sent as the chief of watch to the battleship Sisoy the Great. As part of the squadron of Admiral Rozhdestvensky, the ship will take part in the Tsushima battle, and at the end of it, half-submerged and broken, it will try to throw itself onto the stones of Tsushima Island, but will go to the bottom, a little short of the shore. The rest of the crew will be picked up by the Japanese, but Anatoly Lenin will not be on the battleship - not destiny.
Anastasia Vyaltseva
Lenin dedicated the romance to her. I will not write, I don’t know if Anatoly Lenin was closely acquainted with Anastasia Vyaltseva, whether he had any relationship with the addressee of his romance, or whether his love was only platonic - information about this has not survived and we will never know anything more. This romance remained the only piece of music by the poet and composer Lenin:
Forgotten tender kissing
Passion fell asleep, love passed, And the joy of a new date
I don’t care about blood anymore.
The heart is oppressed by dumb suffering;
Happy days cannot be turned back
No sweet dreams, no old dreams
It is in vain to believe and love.
So the wind is all the beauty of the outfit
From the trees in the fall it will pick
And along the paths of the sad garden
Will blow dry leaves.
The blizzard will disperse them far, Circling over the frozen ground
Will forever separate from each other, Covered with a blanket of snow …
On July 29, 1914, the first volleys of the First World War were fired in the Danube waters of Belgrade - the ships of the Austro-Hungarian flotilla fired at the Serbian capital. Serbia turned to Russia for military assistance. She asked to deliver small arms, in which there was an urgent need, to send specialist miners and mine-torpedo weapons to fight the enemy's river forces, as well as engineering units to arrange crossings across the Danube and its tributaries. Serbia's request was granted. And four days later, the Russian Emperor, by his decree, created in Russia in order to provide military assistance to Serbia along the Danube, a "Special Purpose Expedition" headed by Captain 1st Rank, later Admiral, Adjutant Wing MM. Veselkin. According to the recollections of his contemporaries, he was an energetic and intelligent man, who knew how to drink and live, a great merry fellow and a good storyteller of anecdotes, at the same time an excellent commander and personally a brave man. The Emperor knew and loved him and called him a fat man.
The expedition consisted of: a detachment of combat and transport ships, a detachment of obstacles, a detachment of protection of the "Iron Gate", an engineering detachment and various coastal units, and even one submarine.
On September 30, the expedition set out on a journey consisting of 7 paddle steamers and 16 barges. The ships were equipped with 75 and 47 mm guns. The caravan carried 32,814 boxes of ammunition, 322 boxes of shells, 214 coils of barbed wire, 12,500 poods of coal, 1,700 poods of hay, 99 barrels of acid, 467 of mineral oil, 426 of poisonous gasoline and 67 barrels of alcohol. Two six-inch guns with 1000 shells and 13000 shells for field artillery were delivered to Serbia. In addition, the barges carried 753 heavy artillery horses and a large amount of material for the construction of pontoon bridges. The small paddle steamer "Graf Ignatiev", armed at the beginning of the war with two 75-mm cannons, was commanded by the newly recruited Lieutenant Lenin from the reserve. In the archives of the Navy, there is an award list for assigning him the rank of senior lieutenant for military distinctions. The commander of the detachment, Captain 1st Rank Semenov, reports: “… being the commander of the armed steamer“Graf Ignatiev”, during 1914 and 1915. he successfully escorted transports to Serbia and back, and thanks to his energy, vigilance and knowledge of the matter, he conducted them 45 times, repeatedly preventing attempts to blow up caravans and repelling attacks from enemy airplanes. In addition, he vigilantly guarded the mouth of the Danube, which made it possible to carry out dredging work to deepen the Potapov Canal, thanks to which the transports, climbing up the Danube, were able to bypass the neutral waters of Romania, where enemy submarines often appeared … ". There is also a resolution of the head of the expedition, M. M. Veselkina: "I am diligently soliciting the awarding of this brilliant officer with the rank." And on July 30, 1916, Anatoly Vasilyevich Lenin was deservedly awarded the rank of senior lieutenant. The military distinctions of the brave military officer A. Lenin on the Danube were not limited to this: in April 1915 he received the Order of St. Anna of the 3rd degree with swords and a bow and in the same year he was awarded the Serbian military awards: the Order of St. Savvas of the 4th degree and the Kosovo medal. The expedition operated on the Danube until the autumn of 1915, before Bulgaria entered the war, when it was divided into several parts. One part, under the command of Veselkin, continued to operate (until the beginning of 1918) in the lower reaches of the Danube, a small part was captured by Bulgaria, and another part was interned by Romania. The remaining members of the expedition in Serbia took part in the heroic defense of Belgrade. The steamer "Graf Ignatiev" managed to break through the channels into the Black Sea. In November 1916, senior lieutenant Lenin was appointed commander of the "aircraft cruiser", or "hydro-cruiser" "Romania", armed in addition to guns, three seaplane planes and was in the air division of the Black Sea Fleet.
On January 7, 1918, the commander of the Rumania hydro-cruiser, naval sailor Lenin, by order of the Central Fleet No. 24, was seconded to the 2nd Baltic crew as "who submitted a resignation letter" at the end of December 1917.
Order of St. Savvas of the 4th degree
In the Civil War, Anatoly Lenin takes part on the side of the white movement, serves on his old armed paddle steamer "Graf Ignatiev". At one time, the "Graf" remained one of only six White Guard combat units under the St. Andrew's flag. The steamer landed troops, supported infantry and cavalry with fire. For successful command and distinction in service, senior lieutenant Lenin received the rank of captain of the 2nd rank. It was with this rank that A. V. Lenin is listed in one of the lists of Russian refugees in Constantinople, discovered in the state archive of the Russian Federation, where the lists came from a Russian foreign historical archive seized in 1945 in Prague. With the same rank, he is temporarily assigned to the French fleet, in accordance with the order below:
EASTERN MEDITERRANEAN ESCADER
Archives of Vincennes. Box 1ВВ7-176
By Order No. 87 of December 15, 1920 Rear Admiral DUMENIL orders that the following Russian officers will be in the service of the French Navy in Constantinople:
1.- Under the Main Directorate of the Russian Fleet, under French control:
- Lieutenant General ERMAKOV (1): official representative of Vice Admiral KEDROVA
- Captain of the 3rd rank KOPYTKO (1)
- Senior Lieutenant MASLENNIKOV (2).
These three officers will reside on the former Kazbek hydrographic vessel, which will be moored in the Golden Horn.
2.- For service in BEYCOS, Assistant French Commander-in-Chief, Raid Manager:
- Captain 2nd rank BULASHEVICH (3)
- Senior Lieutenant KOTELNIKOV. (4)
3.- By the liaison officer on board the Waldeck-Russo:
- Senior Lieutenant IGNACIUS (5)
4.- Assistant to Mr. Senior Lieutenant KOSME, manager of the Control Service of the Russian Merchant Fleet in Constantinople:
- Captain 2nd rank de LENIN. (6).
Admiral G. K. Stark
In this case, Anatoly Lenin is trying for the first time to remake his honest Cossack surname, soiled, in his opinion, by Vladimir Ilyich, in the French manner. Subsequently, already in Paris, even in the telephone directory, his surname will look like this: Le Nine. Very little is known about the emigre life of Captain 2nd Rank Lenin in Paris. Boris Georgievich Stark, son of Rear Admiral G. K. Stark, a classmate of Anatoly Vasilyevich Lenin in the naval corps, who returned to Russia and was a priest in one of the parishes of Yaroslavl, told the marine painter Nikolai Cherkashin that as a boy he called Lenin "a candy-uncle." A former officer of the Russian Imperial Navy traded sweets from a tray in Paris and every time he came to visit the parents of little Bori, he treated him to candy. Anatoly Vasilyevich never married and left no descendants behind him. Although the Lenin family, of course, did not stop. Now in Vologda, Nikolsk, Yaroslavl and Kotlas, as well as in Syktyvkar, Smolensk, Moscow, St. Petersburg, there are many direct and "lateral" descendants of the daring Yenisei Cossack Posnik. Some have kept this loud surname, some have changed. This is where our sad story ends, how the life of the 2nd rank captain Lenin ended at the Russian cemetery of Sainte-Genevieve-des-Bois.
