In our age of universal awareness, it is very difficult to find something new about a famous person. Especially if someone has made an effort to properly dip the person in the mud. Or, on the contrary, to clothe an outspoken scoundrel and traitor with a martyr's crown and glorify. And therefore, to give a certain number of portraits that have been undeservedly ignored is not a bad idea.
On the one hand, a lot was written about Semyon Mikhailovich Budyonny, on the other hand, only the lazy one did not throw mud at him, molding the image of such a dashing cavalryman, except for a saber and a horse who did not think about anything else, and who did not know how to think.
Yes, the fact that Budyonny was a dashing cavalryman, fortunately, no writing organism dares to dispute. Five St. George's crosses and four St. George's medals are an indicator. Yes, one cross was taken away for a scuffle with a higher rank, but … The full St. George's bow took place. Zhukov was also a very dashing and fearless cavalryman. But Georgiev he had only two.
And Budyonny did not just love horses. He adored them. And this is also not a minus, but a plus. For thanks to this love, which was also transferred to work in the field of horse breeding, we have two wonderful breeds of horses, Budyonnovskaya and Terek, as well as a sufficient number of horses in the Red Army in 1941-1945. For this alone it would have been possible to appropriate the Hero of Socialist Labor.
Terek horse
Horse of Budyonnovskaya breed
Many scribblers accuse Budyonny of the fact that he very willingly accepted gifts from horses. This is true. With particular joy he accepted horses of foreign blood. But, since he lived in Moscow, on Granovsky Street, albeit not in a very simple, but apartment building, it is clear that he did not have a stable. And he sent all the horses presented to him to the stud farms. See the result above.
Biography in general is such a thing … Dry facts, and the whole question is how to interpret them. But everyone can get acquainted with the biography, much more interesting is what is left behind the scenes or between the lines.
We will omit how Budyonny fought in the First World War. He fought well, and that says it all. But it is worth noting that half of his awards were awarded for actions in the rear of the enemy. This speaks not only of courage, but also of a certain understanding of the tactics of such actions.
S. M. Budyonny in 1916.
In the Civil War, Budyonny acted no less successfully, creating a cavalry detachment that acted against the White Guards on the Don, which joined the 1st Cavalry Peasant Socialist Regiment under the command of B. M. Dumenko, in which Budyonny was appointed deputy regiment commander. The regiment subsequently grew into a brigade, and then a cavalry division. And the result was the First Cavalry Army.
Here Budyonny showed himself as a commander. There were beats, and more than once, Mamontov, Shkuro, Denikin, Wrangel. There were also defeats, in 1920 near Rostov from General Toporkov and 10 days later from General Pavlov. But with Pavlov, having restored the losses incurred, Budyonny got even.
It must also be said about what ensured the success of Budyonny's cavalry. For some reason, all "historians" together prefer to keep silent about this. And it's worth saying. I'm talking about carts.
The tachanka was invented, that is, adapted for military needs by Nestor Ivanovich Makhno. The genius of partisan warfare and the author of tactical flaws of the time. Budyonny, seeing this technical novelty, seized on it and used it for its intended purpose. Moreover, "pushed" as a special type of weapon in the Red Army.
What is the secret of the cart, why exactly the cart, and not the cart, cart or something else? What, it would seem, is the difference?
And the difference is in the machine gun. In "Maxim". If anyone did not know, the wheels of the machine gun served one purpose: to roll it to the next position on the battlefield. And the machine gun was transported exclusively in a disassembled state. The machine is separate, the trunk is separate, the shield is separate. The point is not about the mass, the point is in the axes of the machine gun, which loosened from prolonged shaking, and the machine gun lost both accuracy and accuracy. Therefore, the "Maxim" was transported disassembled. Or postponed.
The tachanka was an invention of German colonists, of whom there were many in the south of Russia at that time. Makhno, who thoroughly dragged the Germans, realized with his bright peasant head that a carriage on springs (the Germans loved comfort) with a very soft ride was what was needed. But Makhno did not just put the machine gun on the cart. The tachanka is a fairly large crew designed for long journeys across the vast expanses of Russia. So Nestor Ivanovich harnessed two more horses to a pair of existing ones and put another 2-4 infantrymen on a cart with the machine gunners.
What happened at the exit? A highly mobile battle group with fairly good firepower. The cavalry division, the forerunner, if you will, of the modern motorized rifle division. Machine gun plus hand weapons plus the ability to quickly move a considerable distance.
What did Makhno's 100 machine-gun carts do with Denikin's cavalry near Gulyai-Pole, I think, is not worth telling. And Nestor Ivanovich did not stop there. He also had artillery carts, with light field three-inches. The four horses were quite capable of pulling the cannon, the crew, and three dozen shells. It's enough for one fight.
In the cavalry regiment of the Red Army of that time (by analogy with the cavalry regiment of the First World War), 2 (two) machine guns were put on staff for 1,000 sabers. Budyonny increased the number of machine guns to 20, following the example of Makhno, placing them on carts. Plus an artillery battery.
Thus, the First Horse beat her opponents not only through dashing saber attacks, but also with quite normal fire from guns and machine guns. The soldiers of Piłsudski in 1920 tested this on themselves.
By the way, about the Soviet-Polish war.
Many "historians" have met such an interesting interpretation of events. Say, poor Tukhachevsky just lost the whole war with a crash because he did not wait for help from Budyonny. Here, too, a few words must be said.
In the northern sector (Western Front), Tukhachevsky had "only" two armies at his disposal: the 15th Cork and the 16th Sollogub. 66, 4 thousand infantry and 4.4 thousand cavalry. Plus artillery, armored trains and other pleasures. 60, 1 thousand infantry and 7 thousand Polish cavalry fought against them.
For comparison: the southern sector (South-Western Front) was occupied by Yegorov, with Mezheninov's 12th army and Uborevich's 14th army. 13, 4 thousand infantry and 2, 3 thousand cavalry against 30, 4 thousand Polish infantry and 5 thousand cavalry. And about 15 thousand soldiers of Petliura. Plus, Makhno, who had completely gone crazy by that time.
While Tukhachevsky was engaged in his dubious experiments from Minsk, carrying out "ram attacks of infantry masses", the Poles defeated the 15th Army by June 8. The losses amounted to more than 12 thousand people.
What was Budyonny doing at that time, who is so blamed for the defeat? And here's what.
The First Cavalry Army (16, 7 thousand sabers, 48 guns) left Maikop on April 3, defeated the detachments of Nestor Makhno in Gulyaypole, and on May 6 crossed the Dnieper north of Yekaterinoslav.
On May 26, after the concentration of all units in Uman, the First Horse attacked Kazatin, and on June 5, Budyonny, finding a weak spot in the Polish defense, broke through the front near Samogorodok and went to the rear of the Polish units, advancing on Berdichev and Zhitomir.
On June 10, the 3rd Polish army of Rydz-Smigly, fearing encirclement, left Kiev and moved to the Mazovia region. On June 12, the First Cavalry Army entered Kiev. The Polish troops regrouped and tried to launch a counteroffensive. On July 1, the troops of General Berbetsky struck at the front of the 1st Cavalry Army near Rovno. Berbetsky was defeated. Polish troops made several more attempts to capture the city, but on July 10 it finally came under the control of the Red Army.
Meanwhile, Tukhachevsky, adding to the existing troops another Gai's 3rd Cavalry Corps, Lazarevich's 3rd Army, Shuvaev's 4th Army and Tikhvin's Mozyr Group, launched an offensive on Warsaw.
The number of Tukhachevsky's grouping cannot be accurately determined, as well as the number of Polish troops. Historians differ greatly in numbers, but we can say that the forces were approximately equal and did not exceed 200 thousand on each side.
The genius of Tukhachevsky's crawling bore fruit: he gathered a huge group against himself, which he actually pushed back to Warsaw, instead of beating it in parts, as Budyonny did with his roundabout maneuvers and encirclements.
On August 16, Tukhachevsky was beaten. And in the end they broke. Which, in general, did not constitute much work for Pilsudski (with the help of French specialists).
To save the situation, Commander-in-Chief Kamenev gave the order to move the First Cavalry and the 12th Army from Lvov to help Tukhachevsky's troops.
On August 20, the 1st Cavalry Army began to move north. March for a distance of about 450 kilometers. By the time the attack began, the troops of the Western Front had already begun an unorganized retreat to the east. On August 19, the Poles occupied Brest, on August 23 - Bialystok. In the period from 22 to 26 August, the 4th Army, Guy's 3rd Cavalry Corps, as well as two divisions from the 15th Army (about 40 thousand people in total) crossed the German border and were interned.
At the end of August, Budyonny's army struck through Sokal in the direction of Zamoć and Grubieszow, in order to then go through Lublin to the rear of the Polish attack group advancing to the north. However, the Poles advanced the General Staff's reserves to meet the First Horse Cavalry.
Army Budyonny, and behind it the troops of the Southwestern Front, were forced to retreat from Lvov and go on the defensive.
You can criticize Budyonny a lot and stubbornly, but here there are only figures and facts.
Firstly, the size of the Cavalry Army of 16 thousand bayonets and sabers is its number at the beginning of the campaign, but after the Ukrainian campaign and heavy Lviv battles, its number was reduced by more than half.
Secondly, when the First Cavalry was thrown into a raid on Zamoć in order to alleviate the position of the armies of the Western Front, there it collided with more than one Polish division. In the Zamoć area, the Poles managed to regroup, and in addition to units of the 3rd Polish Army, the 10th and 13th Infantry, 1st Cavalry, 2nd Ukrainian, 2nd Cossack Divisions and Rummel's division were found there.
How and how 6-7 thousand Budennovites could alleviate the fate of the broken front, I personally do not understand. To Budyonny, at least from the side of the commander-in-chief of the Red Army Kamenev, there were no complaints.
Moreover, in September, the genius of Tukhachevsky in the battles for Grodno finally brought the Western Front to its knees. The Poles entered Minsk, and in March 1921 the humiliating Treaty of Riga was signed, according to which the RSFSR lost not only Western Belarus and Western Ukraine, but also part of the primordially Russian territories.
But what does Budyonny have to do with it?
The mediocre command of Tukhachevsky cost the Red Army terrible numbers: about 90 thousand killed and 157 thousand prisoners, of which about 60 thousand died in captivity. Are you surprised by the resolution of Budyonny on the verdict of Tukhachevsky "to shoot the bastard"? I am personally not surprised.
"The horse will still show itself." Another myth from the pre-war period from those who like to lick from strangers and spit in theirs. Say, Budyonny and Voroshilov were categorical opponents of Tukhachevsky's doctrine on the mechanization of the Red Army and in every possible way harmed and slowed down this process.
Here are just numbers about thousands "in spite of" the released tanks say the opposite. As well as the figures on the reduction of the cavalry so beloved by Budyonny. Of the 32 cavalry divisions and 7 corps directorates available in the USSR by 1938, 13 cavalry divisions and 4 corps remained by the beginning of the war. And in 1941, the urgent formation of new cavalry corps began.
I managed to find the correct quote from Budyonny about his vision of the cavalry. It doesn't sound like it is mostly offered to us:
"What is meant by strategic cavalry? Large formations of cavalry, reinforced by mechanical units and aviation, operating in operational cooperation with the armies of the front, independent aviation, airborne assault forces. Such formations are operational means of front importance."
The prototype of the modern motorized infantry, if you will. Well, then there were no armored personnel carriers and infantry fighting vehicles. But the thought is far from "a fool with a saber bald".
[center] Checker yes, but behind the back is Tokarev's self-loading …
In the first period of the Great Patriotic War, Budyonny did not command the fronts that were at the forefront of the strike, this is a fact. Although his short-term command of the South-West direction could be called successful, if not for the events near Kiev.
It was not for nothing that Stalin put Budyonny in this direction. Semyon Mikhailovich knew these places very well, he fought there. And he foresaw the catastrophe near Kiev, and insisted on the withdrawal of troops. If the Stavka directive had been fulfilled, then such a defeat might not have happened. But the traitor Kirponos assured Stalin that "everything is in order, we will not surrender Kiev." As a result, Budyonny was removed from office, Tymoshenko was appointed in his place, Kirponos abandoned the troops, having committed a betrayal, which we will talk about later, Kiev surrendered, and the South-Western Front rolled back far to the south.
Opinion of Colonel-General A. P. Pokrovsky, who was then chief of staff of the South-West direction:
“Budyonny is a very peculiar person. He is a real nugget, a man with a popular mind, with common sense. He had the ability to quickly grasp the situation. offered one or another solution, a program, one or another, of actions, he, firstly, quickly grasped the situation and, secondly, as a rule, supported the most rational decisions. And he did it with sufficient determination.
In particular, we must pay tribute to him that when the situation in the Kiev sack was reported to him, and when he figured it out, assessed it, the proposal that was made to him by the headquarters in order to raise the question before the Headquarters about withdrawing from the Kiev sack, he immediately accepted and wrote a corresponding telegram to Stalin. He did it decisively, although the consequences of such an act could be dangerous and formidable for him.
And so it happened! It was for this telegram that he was removed from the commander of the South-West direction, and Tymoshenko was appointed in his place."
Where is the "fool with a saber" here? If Pokrovsky was a narrow-minded person, it would still be understandable. But from 1943 until the Victory, he did not fall below the post of chief of staff of the front. And from 1953 to 1961 he was the head of the Military Scientific Directorate of the General Staff.
In 1943, Budyonny was appointed chief of the cavalry of the Red Army. What is behind this? Many say that an "honorary position" is the type of retirement. And behind this stand 80 formed cavalry mechanized divisions. These divisions saw Budapest, Prague, and Berlin.
In 1943, on the initiative of Budyonny, the Moscow Zootechnical Institute of Horse Breeding was recreated from the ashes, which continued to train specialists in this field. Surprisingly, the institute still exists today. This is Izhevsk Agricultural University.
In the fact that Budyonny did not occupy significant positions, many "historians" see just proof of his narrow-mindedness and other unflattering things. "Budyonny was a good tactician, but a lousy strategist! He did not understand that the essence of the war had changed!" and stuff like that.
Excuse me, but wasn't Budyonny solving strategic problems in 1920, driving two Polish fronts across Ukraine and Belarus at once? Not about Budyonny, the winner Pilsudski wrote: "If it were not for the First Horse of Budyonny in our rear, the success would have been more significant"?
Budyonny could well solve strategic problems. And he solved them successfully. And his vision of a new war was exactly what it turned out to be. And the war horse said his word, oddly enough. But not as a participant in a cavalry attack, but as a means of delivering a soldier to the line of attack.
Generals Belov, Dovator, Pliev, Kryukov, Baranov, Kirichenko, Kamkov, Golovskoy and their associates forged Victory on a par with the infantry and tankmen. And they successfully forged.
On the example of the composition of the 4th Guards Kuban Order of Lenin, the Red Banner Orders of Suvorov and Kutuzov, the Cossack Cavalry Corps under the command of Issa Aleksandrovich Pliev. On October 1, 1943, the corps looked like this:
9th Guards Kuban Cossack Cavalry Division
10th Guards Kuban Cossack Cavalry Division
30th Cavalry Division
1815th self-propelled artillery regiment
152nd Guards Anti-Tank Artillery Regiment
12th Guards Mortar Regiment of Rocket Mortars
255th Anti-Aircraft Artillery Regiment
4th Guards Anti-Tank Destroyer Division
68th Guards Mortar Division
27th Guards Separate Signal Division.
And as needed, the corps was given both tanks and aviation. And the corps went from Maykop to Prague. He participated in the Battle for the Caucasus, the Armaviro-Maikop defensive, North Caucasian, Rostov, Donbass, Melitopol, Bereznegovato-Snigirevskaya, Odessa, Belorussian, Bobruisk, Minsk, Lublin-Brest, Debrecen, Budapest, Bratislava and Pratisl-Brnovo offensive operations.
Here is the "fool with a saber" …
With all this, Semyon Mikhailovich was neither a careerist, nor a lover of awards. Of all the marshals who took part in the Great Patriotic War, only Voroshilov, Budyonny and Tolbukhin did not become Heroes of the Soviet Union. Why is another question, but a fact. Stalin knew better who and for what to make Heroes.
And in 1943, when Budyonny was appointed chief of the cavalry of the Red Army, he turned 60 … It is logical that the fronts and armies were commanded by younger ones. Many will say that the same Zhukov and Rokossovsky were not much younger. But Budyonny, without occupying high posts, did not get up across the road to anyone and did not sit on anyone. And the same Zhukov and Rokossovsky each owe something to Semyon Mikhailovich.
For the Georgievsky awards, Budyonny had a separate tunic
Actually, that's all. Someone, if he wants, can see in Budyonny a close-minded accordionist. Yes, he knew how to play the accordion, and yes, Stalin loved to listen. Budyonny even recorded a record in the 50s, "Duet of Bayanists", where Semyon Mikhailovich himself performed the part of the harmonica of the German system, and the part of the button accordion was performed by the well-known Rostov accordion player Grigory Zaitsev. He knew four languages well: German, French, Turkish and English.
And who does not want to, he can see a slightly different image. A brave soldier, an intelligent commander, a man who did everything in his power for the country in those difficult years. To each his own.
