The first Russian soldiers in the Foreign Legion appeared at the end of the 19th century, but their number was small: as of January 1, 1913, there were 116 people.
However, immediately after the outbreak of World War I, many Russian emigrants (by which they meant all former subjects of the Russian Empire) joined the ranks of the legionnaires, succumbing to a feeling of general euphoria: about 9 thousand people turned to recruiting offices, were recognized as fit and sent to training camps - 4 thousand.
Most of the Russian-speaking volunteers were Jews - 51.4%. Russians were 37, 8%, Georgians - 5, 4%, Poles - 2, 7%. Bulgarians and Estonians were also considered "Russians" - 1, 3% each.
It is estimated that 70.5% of Russian-speaking recruits were workers, 25.7% considered themselves to be the intelligentsia, 4.8% called themselves "persons without specific occupations."
It also turned out that 9.5% of Russian legionaries went through tsarist hard labor, 52.7% were in exile for some time, many were in prison - all in full accordance with the historical traditions of the Foreign Legion.
Among the legionnaires was even the former deputy of the State Duma of the first convocation F. M. Onipko, who was exiled to Siberia, but fled to France, where he was forced to work as a shoemaker.
The reputation of the Foreign Legion was not very favorable, and therefore the Russian volunteers insisted on enrollment in ordinary regiments, but the French military bureaucrats decided everything in their own way.
The most famous Russians who went through the "school" of the French Foreign Legion were Zinovy (Yeshua-Zalman) Peshkov and Rodion Yakovlevich Malinovsky, but they will be discussed in separate articles.
Now we will talk about other "Russian legionnaires", the fates of some of whom are very interesting and instructive.
Difficulties of service in the Foreign Legion
There are different stories about the service of Russian volunteers in the Foreign Legion. Many authors emphasize heroism, gratitude, awards, which, of course, were. However, there is another side, which is sometimes shyly hushed up. We are talking about evidence of extremely rough treatment of Russian recruits by officers and corporals of the legion.
One can still be skeptical about the testimonies of the legionnaires of the first, "patriotic wave": they say that they, for the most part, were civilian shtafirks, they expected from military service, they did not serve coffee and cakes in bed on time? However, these stories are repeated almost word for word in the memoirs of the soldiers and officers of the White Army, who were forced to join the legion after the end of the Civil War. And this despite the fact that the Russian imperial army also had enough problems, and the White Guards themselves did not deny in their memoirs that the reason for the mass extermination of officers after the revolution was the inappropriate attitude of “their nobles” to the lower ranks. But even these former Tsarist military personnel were overwhelmed by the order in the Foreign Legion.
In June 1915, 9 Russian legionnaires were even shot for having entered a fight with the "old-timers" and non-commissioned officers who insulted them. This story had a great resonance both in France and in Russia, and in late summer - early autumn 1915, part of the Russians were transferred to regular regiments, others (about 600 people) were sent to Russia. By the way, many Italians and Belgians left the legion together with the Russians.
But there were also those who remained among the Russian volunteers. Later, General Dogan, in his speech on the battles of Verdun, especially noted their stamina and heroism.
It must be said that the French authorities themselves sent some Russian legionnaires to Russia, for example, Mikhail Gerasimov, a political emigrant who had lived in France since 1907.
Brothers Gerasimov
Mikhail and Pyotr Grigoriev were political emigrants from Russia, they almost simultaneously entered the service in the Foreign Legion, but their fates turned out to be very different.
Mikhail Gerasimov ended up in the Second Regiment of the Foreign Legion, fought with him on the Marne, in Champagne, Argonne and was wounded near Reims.
The reason for his deportation was anti-war propaganda. In Russia, he joined the Bolsheviks and made a good career - he was chairman of the Council of Military Deputies, a member of the Central Executive Committee of the First Convocation, chairman of the Samara proletkult and also one of the founders of the Kuznitsa association of proletarian writers and poets. He was arrested in 1937, there is no reliable information about his further fate.
The brother of Mikhail Gerasimov, Peter, went to serve in the Foreign Legion under the name of Mark Volokhov. He fought at first as part of the First Regiment in Gallipoli and on the Thessaloniki front.
In August 1916, Mark (Peter) rose to the rank of lieutenant, in February 1918 he was transferred to the Western Front, where he was awarded the Order of the Legion of Honor for saving two aviators.
After the First World War, he studied at a flight school and was sent to Morocco with the rank of captain.
In 1922, having received French citizenship, he continued to serve in the legion. In 1925, one of the documents noted his "outstanding services": 11 years of service, nine campaigns, one wound, four mentions in orders.
He was twice wounded during the Rif War, in 1930, having risen to the rank of major, he retired, but was again drafted into the army after the outbreak of World War II.
He was captured, but was repatriated to France as injured. He died in 1979.
Russian legionnaires after the revolution
Let's go back to France during the First World War. At this time, two brigades of the Russian Expeditionary Force fought there - the First and the Third (and the Second and Fourth fought on the Thessaloniki front).
A Russian pilot (a graduate of the Military School of Aeronautics) Vladimir Polyakov-Baydarov, the father of actress Marina Vlady, was also part of the Russian expeditionary forces in France.
After the revolution in Russia and the fall of the autocracy, the French authorities demanded that the servicemen of the Russian Expeditionary Force (more than 11 thousand people) go to the Foreign Legion, only 252 of them agreed. Many refused Russian soldiers and officers were sent to forced rear services, including in North Africa. Under such conditions, some of the Russian soldiers and officers changed their mind, and the number of Russian-speaking legionnaires increased significantly: in December 1917 there were only 207 of them, in March 1918 - already 2080.
On March 20, 1918, 300 participants in the uprising of the First Russian Brigade in the La Courtina camp, exiled to North Africa, were added to them (September 1917, the rebels demanded to be sent home).
Some of them ended up in the "Russian battalions" of the legion (for example, R. Malinovsky, a detailed story about which is ahead), but most of them ended up in mixed ones.
Russian legionnaires after the Civil War
After the end of the Civil War in Russia, many former soldiers and officers of the White Army joined the Foreign Legion simply out of despair, so as not to die of hunger. It is estimated that the bulk of the Russians who ended up in the Foreign Legion at that time were soldiers and officers of Wrangel's army - about 60%. Denikin residents who fled from Russia turned out to be 25%, former servicemen of the Russian Expeditionary Force - 10%, and former prisoners of war - 5%.
The first to enter the legion were the "Wrangelites" evacuated to Galipoli, Constantinople and the island of Lemnos. Those of them who ended up in Constantinople often did so by force. Theft flourished in this city, along with things, identity cards issued by the British occupation authorities disappeared. The people who lost their documents had only two ways: to volunteer for the legion, where they did not pay attention to such "trifles", or to prison. Cossack officer N. Matin wrote about the attitude towards Russian recruits in his memoirs:
“When we entered French waters, the attitude of the French authorities towards us noticeably worsened … On the very first day in the fortress (Saint-Jean) there was a clash with the French: without giving us a rest, after the road, we were forced to sweep and whitewash the fortress from the place … the French made it clear that we had sold ourselves for five hundred francs and did not have the right of any vote … In Marseille we were kept as prisoners."
Here is his description of the situation of Russian legionnaires in Tunisia:
“We were deceived in everything except the prize we received: two hundred fifty francs upon arrival and two hundred fifty francs four months later. The service became more and more difficult every day, and mass desertion began among us. Two or three people ran, ran, not knowing where, just to get away. True, many managed to hide for several weeks, and there were even cases that crossed the border, but this was very rare, in most cases they were caught, put on trial, and then, at best, they were in prison for six months with compulsory works, without offsetting the service life. My head did not fit how the French, cultured people, can cheat so brazenly."
And here is how the former Cossack colonel F. I. Eliseev (who served in the legion as the commander of a machine-gun platoon from 1939 to 1945) describes the order in the legion:
“In the Foreign Legion of the French Army, every foreign legionnaire is a being“without clan and tribe”. Whether he dies or is killed, he is deleted from the lists "as a number" and nothing more. He has no relatives and heirs and should not have. His things are sold in the company from the auction and go to the company or battalion. This also applies to foreign officers. All of them are considered "salibater", that is, unmarried, even if they had legal wives. In case of death, the family does not receive anything."
As you can see, in the middle of the twentieth century, the order in the legion changed little.
We will remember about F. Eliseev when we talk about the war in Indochina. In the meantime, digressing a little, let's say that F. Eliseev, who was born in 1892, retained enviable physical data up to the age of 60: after demobilizing, he performed for several years with a circus troupe of horsemen in Holland, Belgium, Switzerland and the USA. And he died in 1987 at the age of 95.
In total, about 10 thousand soldiers and officers of the White Army, including three thousand Cossacks, went into the French service. Among them were aristocrats, for example, N. A. Rumyantsev, who, as a result, had the largest number of awards among the cavalrymen of the legion.
In the I Cavalry Regiment of the Legion (formed in 1921, the place of deployment is Sus, Tunisia), among others, B. R.
On July 11, 1925, he entered service in the 4th squadron of this regiment, in September he was wounded in a battle with the Syrian rebels, by January 1929 he had gone from private to lieutenant. Then he served as an officer for special assignments of the legion for the Levant and North Africa, in November 1933 he retired, and in 1935 - received French citizenship. He took part in a short military campaign in 1940, in June 1940 he was evacuated with his squadron to Tunisia, where he soon died of some kind of illness.
Lieutenants of this regiment were also B. S. Kanivalsky (former lieutenant colonel of the 2nd Life Hussar Pavlograd regiment) and V. M. Solomirsky (former staff captain of the Life Guards Horse Grenadier Regiment). The now forgotten poet Nikolai Turoverov, who had previously served in the Life Guards Ataman Regiment, also found himself here. In total, this regiment included 128 Russian emigrants, 30 of them were former officers of the White Army. The march of the fourth squadron of the First Cavalry Regiment (recall that Khreschatitsky served in it) was then performed to the tune of the famous song "Along the valleys and over the hills", but it was already about the "dzhebel" - the rocky part of the Sahara desert.
This regiment was the first French combat formation to enter Germany. But he also became famous for his participation in the suppression of the uprising of the Druze tribes in the Middle East. The above-mentioned Turover did not experience any special complexes for this:
We don't care which country
Sweep away the popular uprising, And not in others, just like not in me
No pity, no compassion.
Keep records: in what year, -
An unnecessary burden for us;
And now, in the desert, as in hell, We go to the indignant Druze.
Seventeen century period
Went through the world without haste;
The sky and the sand are still the same
They look carelessly at Palmyra
Among the destroyed columns.
But the surviving columns -
Our Foreign Legion, Heir to the Roman legions.
Former captain S. Andolenko managed to enter the Saint-Cyr military school. Since 1927, Russian cadets were released from it as sergeants (and not sous-lieutenants) and were sent to serve not in the French army, but in the Foreign Legion. Andolenko first rose to the rank of headquarters company commander of the 6th regiment of the legion, which was stationed in Syria, and then even to the rank of brigadier general and the post of commander of the 5th regiment, which he held from 1956 to 1958.
The career of a certain captain von Knorre, who after the revolution became the inspector general of the Cossack division of the Persian shah (there was one), looks even more fantastic. Then he served in the Foreign Legion for 23 years. He retired at the end of the 40s with the rank of major, became the commander of the Monaco carabinieri, and held this position until 1969.
The highest post in the legion was held by the former Georgian prince Dmitry Amilakhvari, but in order not to run too far ahead, we will talk about him a little later - in the article about the legionnaires of World War II.
Circassian "squadrons of the Levant"
In November 1925, from the descendants of the Circassians who moved to the Middle East from the Caucasus in the second half of the 19th century, (in the Aleppo region, Golan Heights, Amman-Balka, Tiberias in Palestine, Jordan), the "Light squadrons of the Levant" (d'Escadrons Legers du Levant). Their commander was Captain Philibert Collet, who later rose to the rank of general.
A total of 8 such squadrons were created, Damascus became their base.
These squadrons played an important role in the defeat of the Syrian Druze uprisings (relations between the Circassians and the Druze were extremely tense from the very beginning) in 1925 and 1927, losing 302 people in battles with them killed (including 20 officers) and 600 wounded.
After the defeat of France in 1940, some of these squadrons were subordinated to the government of Pétain, who awarded them with a special sign with the inscription: "Always faithful." Three of them became motorized in November 1940. In November 1941, on the Syrian-Iraqi border, they opposed the 10th Indian Division, actively participated in the expulsion of the British from Syria, Palestine and Jordan: the "natives" of the French and British fought for their masters. How can we not recall the famous phrase of Prince Mstislav Vladimirovich, said by him after the Battle of Listven in 1024:
“Who wouldn't be happy about that? Here is a northerner, and here is a Varangian. Their own squad is intact."
Note that the Varangians in this battle fought on the side of Yaroslav (later called "the Wise"), so Mstislav was glad not only for himself, but also for his brother, who, in his opinion, did not suffer much as a result of this defeat.
In 1946, the Circassian squadrons were disbanded, but their standard can be seen in the Banner Hall of the Paris Army Museum.
Many members of the d'Escadrons Legers du Levant later ended up in the Syrian army.
Even more interesting was the fate of the Jordanian Circassians, whose 40 warriors in 1946, after this country gained independence, brought to Amman a pretender to the throne - the Hashemite prince Abdullah ibn Hussein, and since then only the Circassians have been the bodyguards of this royal family.
On June 7, 1970, Circassian guards rescued King Hussein ibn Talal during an assassination attempt organized by the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) militants: 40 of the 60 guards were killed, the rest were wounded.
If you call a spade a spade, the Palestinians led by Yasser Arafat, who fled from the West Bank after the 1967 Six-Day War, tried to crush Jordan. Or at least create your own state on its territory, not under the control of local authorities. They did not like the opposition to these plans on the part of the legitimate government bodies, which became the cause of the conflict.
On September 1 of the same year, the king of the country hosting 800,000 Palestinians was attacked by another extremist organization - the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (part of the PLO).
On September 16, Hussein declared martial law in the country, Yasser Arafat, in turn, became the commander-in-chief of the Palestine Liberation Army, and the Jordanian army launched a military operation against Palestinian militants.
Syria took the side of the Palestinians, the authorities of which, since the time of the first assassination attempt, urged "to show the traitor Hussein and his Circassian and Bedouin henchmen for their crimes against the Palestinian people." Syrian T-50 tanks defeated the Jordanian Centurions, but were stopped by air attacks. In those battles with the Syrians, the Circassian special-purpose battalion distinguished itself.
At that time, Iraqi troops entered the territory of Jordan (as allies of the Palestinians), but did not enter the battle. But military aid to Jordan was ready to provide … Israel! The American 6th Fleet came to the shores of Israel, the Soviet squadron to the Syrian coast …
On September 24, Arafat and other PLO leaders fled to Lebanon (they did not sit still here either, organizing the assassination of the country's president, after which they were forced to go to Tunisia).
Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser succeeded in convening an emergency summit of the League of Arab States, at which a ceasefire was reached - and the next day he died of a heart attack.
These events went down in history as "Black September" (or "The Age of Sad Events"): 2 thousand Jordanians and 20 thousand Palestinians died in a week - more than in 100 years of continuous confrontation with Jews.
About 150 thousand of Arafat's supporters left Jordan then, but the Palestinians and their descendants still make up 55% of the population of this country.
At the same time, let's say that in 1972 the whole world started talking about "Black September" - that was the name of the Palestinian terrorist group, whose members captured 11 Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics.
Russian legionaries during World War II
With the beginning of the Soviet-Finnish war, many former White Guards were included in the 13th semi-brigade of the legion, which was supposed to fight on the side of the Finns, but, as they say, God saved these people from fighting against their homeland: they did not have time for this war. Instead, they ended up in Norway, where they fought against the Germans at Narvik. Despite the fact that the allied forces were more than three times outnumbered by the German forces (24 thousand against 6 thousand), they could not achieve success, and were evacuated: this is described in the article "Weserubung" against "Wilfred".
At one time, the 13th semi-brigade was headed by the previously mentioned Dmitry Amilakhvari. He died in November 1942 while inspecting enemy positions at Bir-Hakeim, and the story about him is ahead, in the article "The French Foreign Legion in World Wars I and II."
In July 1939, the French government, in anticipation of a big war, issued a decree according to which former officers of the Entente armies could enroll in the Foreign Legion with a demotion: second lieutenants became sergeants, lieutenants - sous-lieutenants, captains - lieutenants, colonels and generals - captains. This meant, of course, the former White Guards, many of whom then joined the Foreign Legion. Some of them will be discussed in the article: "The French Foreign Legion in World Wars I and II", so as not to break the logic of the narrative and not return to the same topic several times.
Those of the Russian emigrants who served in the 5th regiment of the legion, together with him, ended up in Indochina, which until 1930 was considered a very calm place - almost a resort. After World War II, everything changed: Vietnam, fighting for its independence, became one of the hottest spots on the planet. It was then that in the Indo-Chinese formations of the legion (their number was 10 thousand people) there were a lot of Russians - former prisoners of war. One of the veterans of the legion described them as follows:
"Russian legionnaires were strange people, they suffered greatly in their homeland and in the evenings they sang drawn-out Russian songs, and then they committed suicide."
A certain major of the Soviet Army by the name of Vasilchenko became a senior warrant officer of the Foreign Legion in a "roundabout way". After being captured in 1941, he joined the so-called "Russian Liberation Army" of the traitor Vlasov. But in the spring of 1945, realizing the scale of his problem, together with some colleagues, he surrendered to the Allies in Alsace and entered the service of the French Foreign Legion as a private. He managed to avoid deportation to the USSR only because he was wounded and was being treated far in the rear. After the end of the war, Vasilchenko continued to serve in Indochina, where his subordinate turned out to be Count A. Vorontsov-Dashkov, whose grandfather was the governor-general of Novorossia, the commander of the troops in the Caucasus and the Caucasian governor (as well as one of the characters in Leo Tolstoy's story “Haji -Murat ").
At the present time, in the Parisian cemetery of Sainte-Genevieve-des-Bois, there is a site with the burials of Russian members of the Foreign Legion.
Schwarzbard and Konradi
Samuel Schwarzbard, an anarchist, a participant in the first Russian revolution (spent several months in prison in 1905-1906), and also a poet who wrote in Yiddish under the pseudonym Bal-Khaloymes ("The Dreamer"), served in the Foreign Legion. He lived in Paris since 1910, with the outbreak of World War I he joined the legion, received the Military Cross and was seriously wounded during the Battle of the Somme. In August 1917, having given up his French pension, he returned to Russia, drove to Odessa, where he worked as a watchmaker for some time, and at the end of the year joined the anarchist detachment that operated as part of the Red Army. He fought in the brigade of G. Kotovsky and in the International Division, was engaged in work with children, including street children. But, disappointed, at the end of 1919 he returned to Paris, where he maintained contacts with many anarchist emigrants, among his close acquaintances was Nestor Makhno. On January 16, 1925, Schwarzbard received French citizenship, and on May 25, 1926, he shot and killed the former chairman of the UNR Directory, Simon Petliura. He did not hide from the scene of the crime: after waiting for the police, he gave the revolver, claiming that he had killed the murderer of tens of thousands of Ukrainian Jews.
By the way, on January 8, 1919, the Directory issued a decree on the arrest and trial of all citizens who wore the shoulder straps of the Russian army and tsarist awards, except for the crosses of St. George - as "enemies of Ukraine." So anti-Semitism was not the only sin of Simon Petliura.
Among others, M. Gorky, A. Barbusse, R. Rolland, A. Einstein and even A. Kerensky spoke out in defense of Schwarzbard. In New York and Paris, Schwarzbard defense committees were organized, which found 126 witnesses to Jewish pogroms in Ukraine under the Directory, which was headed by Petliura.
On October 27, 1927, Schwarzbard was acquitted by a jury (8 votes to 4), and released in the courtroom, with a mocking compensation awarded to Petliura's widow and brother in the amount of 1 franc each.
Schwarzbard died of a heart attack during a trip to South Africa on March 3, 1938. In 1967, his remains were reburied in the Avikhal moshav (rural settlement), north of Netanya.
In modern Israel, streets in Jerusalem, Netanya and in Beer Sheva ("The Avenger") are named after Samuel Schwarzbard.
And the Bandera rulers of today's Ukraine on October 14, 2017 (on the day of the Intercession and the UPA, banned in Russia) solemnly opened a monument to S. Petliura in Vinnitsa!
Another high-profile political murder in about the same years was committed not by a former legionnaire, but by a future citizen of Switzerland, Maurice Conradi, who came from a family that founded confectionery factories in St. Petersburg and Moscow. During World War I, he served in the Russian army, during the Civil War - in the Wrangel army. Returning to his homeland, on May 23, 1923, in Lausanne, he shot and killed the Soviet diplomat Vaclav Vorovsky and two of his assistants (Ahrens and Divilkovsky). He was acquitted by the court, but apparently suffering from a psychopathic personality disorder, he constantly got into various criminal stories. In Geneva, for example, he was once arrested for threatening the performers of a local variety show with a revolver in his hands. After enlisting in the Foreign Legion as a sergeant, he was tribunal and was demoted after hitting the officer.
In the following articles, we will talk about two Russian legionnaires who have achieved the greatest success in the military field: Zinovia Peshkov and Rodion Malinovsky.
