On February 23 (March 7, new style), 1894, in the small village of Pyatra, located on the territory of the Bessarabian province, Sergei Georgievich Lazo was born.
A nobleman by birth and second lieutenant of the Russian Imperial Army during the First World War, he chose the path of a revolutionary and died for his ideals at the age of 26 at the other end of the already former Russian Empire - in the Far East.
At the same time, Sergei Lazo is often called a romantic and even Don Quixote of the revolution. This can be partly explained by the fact that he abandoned his origin, from his old life, from the beliefs that had been instilled in him since childhood. He died during the Civil War at the age of 26, far from his home, died in the name of ideals, choosing the path of revolutionary struggle and having lived, albeit a short, but bright life.
It is worth noting that many Russian revolutionaries were precisely of noble origin. The most famous of them was the hereditary nobleman Vladimir Ilyich Lenin (Ulyanov), in addition to him, only in the first composition of the Council of People's Commissars (SKN) were noblemen Lunacharsky, People's Commissar for Education, Teodorovich People's Commissar for Food, Oppopkov cases of Ovseenko.
Sergey Georgievich Lazo was born 125 years ago on March 7 (new style) in 1894 in the village of Pyatra into a noble family of Moldovan origin. His parents were Georgy Ivanov and Elena Stepanovna Lazo. After the death of his father in 1907, the family of Sergei Lazo moved to Ezoreny, and in 1910 Lazo entered the 7th grade of the 1st Chisinau male gymnasium, in the same year his whole family moved to Chisinau. In the fall of 1912, the future revolutionary graduated from the gymnasium and decided to continue his studies by entering the St. Petersburg Institute of Technology, but in 1914, before the outbreak of the First World War, he was forced to return to his homeland in Bessarabia. Due to the illness of his mother, he had to, as the eldest son, temporarily take care of the family. In the fall of 1914, he continued his studies, entering the Physics and Mathematics Faculty of Moscow University.
Sergei Lazo in 1912
At the university, he studied mathematics with particular enthusiasm. In his diary, he wrote that the importance of mathematics for the mental development of a person seems to him enormous. Mathematics disciplines the mind, teaches you to quickly understand a variety of issues. At the same time, Lazo wrote that mathematics has its own poetry and philosophy, it endows a person with the power of thinking. Based on his convictions, he advised everyone in their youth to devote 2-3 hours a day to the study of mathematical sciences, regardless of the person's knowledge and hobbies.
In addition to classes at Moscow University, Sergei often attended lectures of interest to him, which were held at the Shanyavsky People's University, and visited Moscow theaters and museums. At the same time, from an early age, Sergei Lazo stood out among his peers for his maximalism and heightened sense of justice. It is not surprising that already in his student years he was carried away by revolutionary ideas and was an active participant in student gatherings, a member of an illegal revolutionary circle, of which there were a huge number in the Russian student environment of those years.
In July 1916, Lazo was mobilized into the army, he was sent to study at the Alekseevsky Infantry School in Moscow, after which he was promoted to an officer at the end of 1916 (first ensign, then second lieutenant). Upon graduation from the school, the questionnaire described him as a "democrat officer" opposed to the tsarist government. The authorities tried not to send such officers to the front, where the soldiers were already beginning to show dissatisfaction with the protracted war, and discipline in the army was falling. In 1916, there were already more than 1.5 million deserters in the country. That is why in December 1916 Lazo was sent not to the front, but to Krasnoyarsk, to the 15th reserve rifle regiment. Already in Krasnoyarsk, Sergei Lazo became close to the political exiles who were in the city, together with whom he began to conduct propaganda among the soldiers of the regiment against the ongoing war. Here in Krasnoyarsk, Lazo joined the Party of Socialist Revolutionaries (SRs).
On March 2, 1917, news of the events that took place in Petrograd reached Krasnoyarsk. At the same time, Lazo, one of the first officers of the regiment, took off his shoulder straps and joined the revolution. By the soldiers of the 4th company of the 15th Siberian reserve rifle regiment, he was chosen as their commander instead of the company commander Smirnov, who remained loyal to the oath. At the same time, Sergei Lazo was elected a delegate to the Krasnoyarsk Soviet of Workers 'and Soldiers' Deputies, the council began to operate in the city on March 3.
In June, the Krasnoyarsk Soviet sent Lazo to the First All-Russian Congress of Soviets of Workers 'and Soldiers' Deputies, which was held in Petrograd. Here the young revolutionary saw and heard Lenin's speech for the first time. Lenin's speech, who openly called on the Bolsheviks to fight for the transfer of all power in the country to the Soviets, made a very great impression on Sergei. He liked the leader's radicalism and his demarche at the congress. These events finally determined his future destiny, bringing him closer to the Bolsheviks. After the congress, Lazo briefly visited his home in Moldova, where he met with his mother and brothers, and then left again for Krasnoyarsk.
Returning to Krasnoyarsk, Sergei Lazo organized a Red Guard detachment in the city, continued his work in the Soviet and studied military affairs, including reading Lenin's articles on the revolutionary army and partisan struggle, followed the performances of the Bolsheviks. After the October Revolution, the executive committee of the Krasnoyarsk Soviet: a bloc of Bolsheviks, Left Social Revolutionaries and anarchists (the so-called "left bloc") supported the armed uprising of the Bolsheviks against the forces of the Provisional Government and instructed Lazo to seize all government institutions in Krasnoyarsk, arresting the representatives of the old government who remained in the city. On the night of October 29, Sergei Lazo raised the alarm on those military units of the garrison that supported the Bolsheviks, and occupied with them all the Krasnoyarsk state institutions, while the top city officials were escorted to prison.
Already at the end of 1917, Soviet power was established in Irkutsk, Omsk and other large cities of Siberia, while Sergei Lazo was directly involved in this. So already on November 1, 1917, in Omsk, there was a performance by the cadets of the Omsk school of warrant officers, who supported Kerensky and were part of the anti-Bolshevik organization "Union for the Salvation of the Fatherland, Freedom and Order." The Red Guard detachment, commanded by Lazo, also took part in suppressing the cadets' uprising. In December, the uprising of cadets, Cossacks, officers and students took place in Irkutsk. Fierce street battles were going on in the city, in which Sergey Lazo and his detachment took part, whose fighters on December 26, after many hours of battle, captured the Tikhvin Church and tried to break through to the residence of the Governor-General of Eastern Siberia (known to all residents of Irkutsk, the White House, today an architectural monument of the federal values). At the same time, in the late afternoon, by a counterattack by the cadets, parts of the Reds were knocked out of the city, and Lazo was even taken prisoner for a short time, but already on December 29, an armistice was declared, after a while Soviet power in the city was restored, and Lazo himself even managed to be a military commander and the head of the garrison of Irkutsk. At the same time, he was also a member of the military commissariat of Central Siberia.
These days, the former tsarist general Alexander Taube, who went over to the side of the revolutionaries, rendered him great help in his work. As a well-trained military specialist, he passed on his experience and knowledge to Lazo. They came in handy for him already in February-August 1918, when at the age of 24, Sergei Lazo became commander of the troops of the Trans-Baikal Front. In the same period of time, he finally passed from the Socialist-Revolutionary Party to the Bolsheviks.
At the same time, the power of the Bolsheviks in the eastern part of Russia did not last long, already in the fall of 1918, Sergei Lazo was forced to go underground and began organizing a partisan movement, first directed against the troops and officials of the Provisional Siberian Government, and later against the Supreme Ruler of Russia, Admiral Kolchak. In the fall of the same year, Lazo became a member of the Far Eastern Regional Committee of the RCP (b) in Vladivostok and from the spring of 1919 he commanded partisan detachments operating in the territory of Primorye, from December 1919 - the head of the Military Revolutionary Headquarters for preparing an uprising in Primorye.
In Primorye, Sergei Lazo became one of the organizers of a successful military coup in Vladivostok on January 31, 1920, as a result of which it was possible to overthrow the chief commander of the Amur Territory, Lieutenant General Rozanov, who was the governor of Admiral Kolchak. After the uprising, a puppet "Provisional Government of the Far East" was formed in the city, which was completely controlled by the Bolsheviks. The success of the uprising in Vladivostok was largely due to the fact that Lazo was able to win over the officers of the ensign school on the island of Russky to his side, contacting them on behalf of the leadership of the rebels and demonstrating good oratorical skills. Already on March 6, 1920, Sergei Georgievich Lazo was appointed deputy chairman of the Military Council of the Provisional Government of the Far East.
Monument to Sergei Lazo in Vladivostok
After the Nikolaev incident, which ended with the defeat of the Japanese garrison and the massacre of the Japanese colony in Nikolaevsk-on-Amur, the Japanese government used these events as an excuse to justify massive intervention in Russia. Including with the aim of rehabilitating oneself in the eyes of public opinion. On the night of April 4-5, 1920, Japanese regular units attacked the Soviet authorities, as well as the military garrisons of the Far Eastern Republic located in Vladivostok, Khabarovsk, Spassk and other cities of Primorye, capturing them. On the night of April 4-5, the Japanese also arrested Sergei Lazo.
The further fate of Lazo is unknown. He was killed, but when exactly this happened, no one knows. The textbook version says that the Japanese military handed Lazo and other Bolsheviks to the White Cossacks, who, after torture, burned him alive in a locomotive furnace. So the unnamed driver claimed that he saw how at the Ussuri station the Japanese handed over three bags to the Cossacks from Bochkarev's detachment, in which there were people. The Cossacks tried to push them into the locomotive furnaces, but they resisted, then they were shot and thrust into the furnaces already dead. At the same time, back in April 1920, the Japanese newspaper Japan Chronicle published an article according to which Sergei Lazo was shot in Vladivostok, and his corpse was burned. This version seems more logical, the Japanese had no reason to hand over the arrested to the Cossacks and take them somewhere from Vladivostok. Secondly, the very dimensions of the locomotive furnaces of the rolling stock that were in the Far East were small and did not allow a person to be shoved into them. So, fortunately for Lazo himself, such a terrible death is more a legend than a truth.
It seems more likely that the young revolutionary romantic ended his life in April 1920 at Cape Engersheld in Vladivostok. Here the Bolsheviks and partisans, captured on the night of April 4-5, 1920, were massively shot. The corpses of those shot were then burned.
