On the eve of the press center of the MIA "Russia Segodnya" received French guests. The military attache, General Ivan Martin, was expected, but he was successfully replaced by the historian Pierre Malinovsky and Marie Bellega, the granddaughter of Fyodor Mamontov, one of the soldiers who fought as part of the Russian expeditionary corps on French soil.
The press conference "Russia and France: a living connection between generations" was timed to coincide with the 100th anniversary of the end of the First World War. It was opened by officials: Scientific Director of the Russian Military Historical Society Mikhail Myagkov and Sergey Galaktionov, Chief Adviser of the French Division 1 of the European Department of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
Mr. Myagkov noted the fact that Russia not only saved its allies at some stages of hostilities, but also suffered the greatest losses in that war. But in Russia, only now they remembered the country's decisive contribution to victory in that war and that Russia was not among the winners in the end.
In turn, the representative of the Foreign Ministry drew the attention of journalists to the fact that the First World War turned out to be a large-scale conflict, for which humanity was absolutely not prepared. There were no winners or losers in it, it became a tragedy for all countries, for all mankind. And it is extremely important to preserve the memory of this cruel lesson in history so that such tragedies do not happen again, says Sergei Galaktionov.
The fact that France remembers not only the terrible damage that war inflicted on the country, and most importantly, its people, but also the help that Russia provided to the French, helped to make sure the emotional speeches of the French guests. Marie Bellegu spoke mainly about her grandfather, but these were actually words about all the Russians who fought for France, and not only in France.
She very briefly recalled that Russia had sent brigades of the Special Russian Expeditionary Corps (REC) to France, which liberated several settlements from German troops, taking many enemy fighters prisoner. Of the 20,000 soldiers of the REC, a quarter died: more than 800 of our soldiers died just for the liberation of Kursi.
In this regard, it is worth recalling that the inhabitants of Kursi themselves did not forget what the Russian soldiers did for them. As a token of gratitude to the soldiers of the REC, they organized an international charity event to collect a batch of teddy bears for children from orphanages in the Republic of Bashkortostan: after all, many soldiers of the corps were called up from the Ufa province.
Marie Bellegu said that when leaving for the war, her grandfather left his parents and brothers at home. After the end of hostilities, he decided to stay in France, met her grandmother Jeanne, and from 1922 he worked in the civil service. In 1940, the year of the German occupation of France, he had to destroy all the papers proving Russian origin.
When Marie and her brother began to look for information about him, they found many documents and memoirs about his fellow soldiers. Among other things, it tells how the French population greeted Russian soldiers with flowers who arrived on the Western Front.
For their heroism, many members of the expeditionary corps were awarded high French and Russian awards. And the symbol of the charity event, the teddy bear, was, according to Mrs. Bellegu's testimony, not chosen by chance:
- There is a photograph of a Russian soldier who liberated the Kursi commune over 100 years ago. He gave the little Frenchwoman a toy - a teddy bear. This episode formed the basis for the monument to the Soldiers of the Russian Expeditionary Force, which was opened in Kursi in 2015.
Historian Pierre Malinovsky told about the tragic and heroic pages of history, when Russian brigades selflessly performed their tasks in Kursi and near Mont-Spen, in the Nivelle operation. On his initiative, RVIO conducted in 2017 the first International Search Expedition on the battlefields of the Russian Expeditionary Force. Pierre Malinovsky said that large excavations were carried out in the Grand Est region, and during the work, the remains of two Russian soldiers were found.
“When you find a soldier, you physically understand what happened here,” the historian admitted.
A unique collection of artifacts from the battlefield was also collected: items of military equipment, equipment, personal items and medallions. Pierre Malinovsky said that the Moscow government has already expressed its readiness to erect a monument in memory of the joint struggle between Russia and France at the memorial cemetery in memory of the heroes of the First World War on the territory of the former village of Vsekhsvyatskoye (now the Sokol district).
Recall, in this regard, that back in 2016 it was planned to install in New Jerusalem a commemorative token of gratitude for the Brusilov breakthrough of 1916, which helped the French to defend Verdun, which was considered the "key to Paris". However, then, alas, politics got in the way.
At the press conference, it was noted that the two revolutions of 1917 and the civil war largely nullified Russia's efforts in this first-ever global conflict. But the Russian soldier showed an example of heroism and honorably fulfilled his allied duty. Russian soldiers were distinguished by mass heroism, as evidenced by the awarding of the St. George Cross. About 1, 2 million of the lower ranks became Knights of St. George, of which 30,000 received a full degree. More than 5,000 officers were awarded the Order of St. George, 4th degree.
At the end of the briefing, Mikhail Myagkov announced the creation by the Russian Military Historical Society of the Internet service “The Great War. People's Archives of the First World War , where everyone can create their own page about the participation of their relatives in the First World War. There you can also post materials from family archives: photographs, documents, stories, fragments of diary entries.
At present, RVIO, together with the Russian Historical Society, is also creating an electronic card index of Russian participants in the First World War, which already contains 10 million cards. In each of them - the fate of a Russian person, killed, wounded or missing.
