Now we will talk about the most famous natives of the Russian Empire from among those who went through the harsh school of the French Foreign Legion. And first, let's talk about Zinovia Peshkov, whose life Louis Aragon, who knew him well, called "one of the strangest biographies of this meaningless world."
Zinovy (Yeshua-Zalman) Peshkov, the elder brother of the chairman of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee Yakov Sverdlov and godson of A. M. Gorky, rose to the rank of general of the French army and, among other awards, received the Military Cross with a palm branch and the Grand Cross of the Legion of Honor. He was well acquainted with Charles de Gaulle and Henri Philippe Pétain, met with V. I. Lenin, A. Lunacharsky, Chiang Kai-shek and Mao Tse Tung. And such an outstanding career was not prevented even by the loss of his right arm in one of the battles in May 1915.
How Zalman Sverdlov became Zinovy Peshkov and why he left Russia
The hero of our article was born in 1884 in Nizhny Novgorod in a large Orthodox Jewish family, his father (whose real name is Serdlin) was an engraver (according to some sources, even the owner of an engraving workshop).
There is reason to believe that the elder Sverdlov collaborated with the revolutionaries - he produced counterfeit stamps and cliches for documents. His children, Zalman and Yakov (Yankel), were also opponents of the regime, and Zalman was even arrested in 1901 - a boy from a family of engravers used his father's workshop to make leaflets written by Maxim Gorky (and ended up in the same cell with him, where he finally burned under his influence).
Yakov (Yankel) Sverdlov was even more radical. The brothers often argued and quarreled, defending their point of view on the methods of revolutionary struggle and the future of Russia. It is just right to recall the lines of the famous poem by I. Guberman:
Forever and not at all getting old, Everywhere and at any time of the year, Lasts, where two Jews come together, Dispute about the fate of the Russian people.
The relationship between the brothers was so strained that, according to some researchers, in 1902 Zalman left his home in Arzamas for Gorky for a reason. The fact is that then Zalman tried to beat off a certain girl from Yakov, and he decided to report him to the police. Fortunately, his father found out about his intention, who warned the eldest son, and he, forgetting about his feelings, went to the writer who agreed to accept him. And in his father's workshop he was replaced by a relative - Enoch Yehuda, better known in Soviet times as Heinrich Yagoda.
Zalman Sverdlov had good acting skills, which were noted even by V. Nemirovich-Danchenko, who visited Gorky: he was greatly impressed by Zalman's reading of the role of Vaska Pepla (a character in the play "At the Bottom"). And Zalman accepted Orthodoxy for purely mercantile reasons - he, a Jew, was refused admission to the Moscow theater school. It is generally accepted that Maxim Gorky became Zalman's godfather. However, there is evidence that Gorky became the godfather of Zinovy "in absentia" - at the time of his baptism, the writer, perhaps, was no longer in Arzamas, and he was represented by another person. One way or another, Zinovy officially took the patronymic and surname of Gorky, who often called him "spiritual son" in letters.
The father's attitude to the baptism of his son is described in different ways. Some argue that he cursed him at some particularly terrible Jewish rite, others that he himself was soon baptized and married an Orthodox woman.
But back to our hero.
At that time, Zinovy Peshkov was so close to the family of his godfather that he became a victim of an intra-family conflict: he was on the side of the first and official wife of the writer, Ekaterina Pavlovna, and the new, common-law wife of Gorky, actress Maria Andreeva, reproached him with dependency in revenge and accused in parasitism.
In fairness, it must be said that Gorky himself at that time often half-jokingly called Zinovy a loafer and a fool. Therefore, Andreeva's claims were most likely justified.
Such M. Andreeva saw I. Repin in 1905:
As a result of this conflict, in 1904, not Zalman, but Zinovy Alekseevich Peshkov went to Canada, and then to the USA, where he changed his first and last name, temporarily becoming Nikolai Zavolzhsky.
But there is another version: Zinovy could have left Russia in order to avoid mobilization to the front of the Russo-Japanese War.
Life in exile
The country of "great opportunities" and "advanced democracy" made the most unpleasant impression on him: despite all efforts, it was not possible to achieve success.
He tried to make a living and literary work: when he appeared in one of the American publishing houses, he introduced himself as the son of Maxim Gorky (family, not godfather) and offered to publish his stories. The denouement of this story turned out to be unexpected: after paying the guest 200 dollars, the publisher threw his manuscript out the window, explaining that he did both out of respect for his father, the great Russian writer.
Therefore, in March 1906, upon learning of Gorky's arrival in the United States, Zinovy, forgetting about the enmity with Andreeva, came to him and began to act as a translator, seeing then many celebrities - from Mark Twain and Herbert Wells to Ernest Rutherford.
Gorky's popularity all over the world was really great. In the 11th volume of "Contemporary Cambridge History", published in 1904, in the section "Literature, Art, Thought" the names of four writers are named who "most fully express the mood of our time": Anatole France, Lev Tolstoy, Thomas Hardy and Maxim Bitter. In the United States, at one of Gorky's meetings with feminists, ladies who wanted to shake his hand almost fought in line.
But this trip of Gorky ended in a scandal. Dissatisfied with the "left" views of the "guest" publishers of American newspapers have unearthed the story of his separation from his first wife. The result was a series of publications that the writer, who left his wife and children in Russia, is now traveling around the United States with his mistress (recall that Andreeva was only Gorky's common-law wife).
The first to shoot was the New York World newspaper, which on April 14, 1906, placed two photographs on the front page. The first was signed: "Maxim Gorky, his wife and children."
The caption under the second read:
"The so-called Madame Gorky, who is actually not Madame Gorky at all, but the Russian actress Andreeva, with whom he has been living since his separation from his wife a few years ago."
In the puritanical America of those years, this was a very serious compromising material, as a result, hotel owners began to refuse to accommodate such scandalous guests. The writer had to first live in one of the rooms of a house rented by socialist writers, and then take advantage of the hospitality of the Martin family, who sympathized with him, who invited the outcasts to their estate (here he continued to receive guests and engage in literary work). The invitation to the White House was canceled, the administration of Barnard Women's College expressed "censure" to Professor John Dewey (a famous American philosopher of the first half of the twentieth century) for allowing underage students to meet with the "bigamist". Even Mark Twain, one of the initiators of his invitation to the United States, refused to communicate with Gorky. Mark Twain then stated:
“If the law is respected in America, then the custom is sacredly observed. Laws are written on paper and customs are carved in stone. And a foreigner visiting this country is expected to observe its customs."
That is, it turns out that the "democratic" America of those years lived not according to laws, but "according to concepts."
But they greeted Gorky with these pictures:
As a result, it turned out only worse: Gorky's attitude to the United States, initially quite benevolent, changed dramatically, the views of the writer became more radical. But he continued to be the idol of the left intelligentsia of the whole world. One of the responses to this insulting persecution was the famous story "City of the Yellow Devil."
Because of this scandal, Gorky managed to collect less money for the "needs of the revolution" than he had hoped. But the amount of 10 thousand dollars was very impressive at that time: the US currency was backed by gold, and at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, the gold content of one dollar was 0.04837 ounces, that is, 1.557514 grams of gold.
On April 21, 2020, the price of an ounce of gold was $ 1688 per ounce, or 4052 rubles 14 kopecks per gram. That is, one US dollar in 1906 would now cost about 6,311 rubles. Thus, if the money received by Gorky were exchanged for gold, it would turn out that the writer collected donations in an amount equivalent to the current 63 million 110 thousand rubles.
At the end of 1906, Gorky and his godson parted: the writer went to the island of Capri, Zinovy was hired as a fireman's assistant on a merchant ship going to New Zealand, where he had long wanted to visit. Here he did not like it either: he called the smug inhabitants of Auckland "stupid rams" and "miserable sheep", confident that they lived in the best country in the world.
As a result, he again came to Gorky and lived in Capri from 1907 to 1910, met with V. Lenin, A. Lunacharsky, F. Dzerzhinsky, I. Repin, V. Veresaev, I. Bunin and many other famous and interesting people …
Zinovy again had to leave the writer's house because of the scandal associated with Maria Andreeva, who this time accused him of stealing money from the box office, which received numerous donations from liberal-minded representatives of the bourgeoisie (both Russian and foreign from among those who then called "limousine socialists"). The offended Peshkov left Gorky for another well-known writer at that time - A. Amfitheatrov, becoming his secretary. Gorky did not interrupt communication with his godson: apparently, Andreeva's accusations did not seem convincing to him.
At this time, Peshkov married Lydia Burago, the daughter of a Cossack officer, who gave birth to his daughter Elizabeth.
The life and fate of Elizaveta Peshkova
Elizaveta Peshkova received a good education, graduating from the department of Romance languages at the University of Rome. In 1934 she married the Soviet diplomat I. Markov and left for the USSR. In 1935 she gave birth to a son, Alexander, and in 1936-1937. again ended up in Rome, where her husband, being a career intelligence officer, acted as the 2nd secretary of the embassy. They were forced to leave Italy after the authorities accused I. Markov of espionage. They could not provide evidence of Markov's guilt, from which it can be concluded that Peshkov's son-in-law was a high-class professional. On February 17, 1938, in Moscow, Elizabeth gave birth to her second son, Alexei, and on March 31, she and Markov were arrested as Italian spies. After refusing to testify against her husband, Elizabeth was sent into exile for 10 years. In 1944, she was found by the former Soviet military attaché in Rome, Nikolai Biyazi, who knew her from work in Italy, who at that time was the director of the military institute of foreign languages. He secured the return of an old acquaintance from exile and the provision of a 2-room apartment to her and helped to find the sons. At his institute, she taught French and Italian, in 1946 she was even awarded the rank of lieutenant, and in 1947 she was appointed head of the department of the Italian language.
But after the dismissal of Biyazi, his ward was also dismissed, ordering her to leave Moscow. She worked as a French teacher in one of the villages of the Krasnodar Territory, and after rehabilitation - a nurse and librarian-archivist of the Sochi Regional Museum. In 1974, the Soviet authorities allowed her to visit her father's grave in Paris, in the same year Italian relatives found her: she then visited her half-sister Maria (Maria-Vera Fiaschi), who was 11 years younger than her, 5 times. The eldest son of Elizabeth became the captain of the marines of the Soviet Army, the youngest - a journalist.
But let's return now to her father, Zinovy Peshkov, who made another, also unsuccessful attempt to "conquer America": while working in the library of the University of Toronto, he invested all his money in a piece of land in Africa, but the deal turned out to be extremely unsuccessful. So I had to return to Capri - but not to Gorky, but to the Amphitheater.
Stars from the sky, as we see, Zinovy Peshkov then lacked, but everything changed with the outbreak of World War I, when a 30-year-old man who had a reputation as a chronic loser finally found his place in life.
The beginning of a military career
Yielding to the general impulse, Zinovy Peshkov reached Nice, where he entered service in one of the infantry regiments. When the authorities found out that the recruit was fluent in five languages, Xenovius was instructed to put things in order in the regimental archive. After completing this assignment, he was awarded the rank of private second class, but it turned out that he was admitted to this regiment by mistake - not having French citizenship, Zinovy could only serve in the Foreign Legion, in the Second Regiment of which he was transferred. By April 1, 1915, he rose to the rank of corporal, but on May 9, he was seriously wounded near Arras, having lost most of his right arm.
Former Stalin's sergeant B. Bazhenov stated:
“When, after a while, the news came that he (Zinovy) had lost an arm in the battles, old Sverdlov was terribly agitated:
"Which hand?"
And when it turned out that the right hand, there was no limit to the triumph: according to the formula of the Jewish ritual curse, when a father curses his son, he must lose his right hand."
On August 28, 1915, Marshal Joseph Joffre awarded Zinovy Peshkov with a personalized weapon and a Military Cross with a palm branch and, apparently, to finally get rid of, he signed an order conferring the rank of lieutenant on him. As a wounded legionary, Peshkov could now bother to obtain French citizenship and the appointment of a military pension. Anyone else, probably, would have lived the rest of his life as a disabled person who periodically speaks to listeners at solemn meetings dedicated to the celebration of some date. But Zinovy Peshkov was not "any". Having healed the wound, he secured his return to military service.
From June 22, 1916, he was engaged in staff work, and then went along the diplomatic line: he went to the United States, where he was until the beginning of 1917. Returning to Paris, he received the rank of captain, the Order of the Legion of Honor ("for exceptional services in relation to the Allied countries") and French citizenship.
Diplomatic assignments in Russia
In May of the same year, Peshkov arrived in Petrograd in the rank of a diplomatic officer of the III class as a representative of France at the Ministry of War of Russia, which was then headed by A. Kerensky (from Kerensky, Peshkov managed to receive the Order of St. Vladimir, 4th class). In Petrograd, after a long separation, Zinovy met with Gorky.
There is information about Peshkov's meeting with Yakov Sverdlov. According to one of the versions, the brothers "did not recognize" each other when they met and did not shake hands. According to the other, they retired for a long time in a room (from which they "left with white faces"), the conversation clearly did not work out and led to a final break in relations. According to the third, on which J. Etinger insists, referring to the testimony of Yakov Sverdlov's stepbrother German, Zinovy "in response to his brother's attempt to embrace him, sharply pushed him away, saying that he would conduct the conversation only in French."The latest version seems to me the most plausible.
But another brother of Zinovy, Benjamin, in 1918 returned to Russia, engulfed in civil war, from prosperous America, where he worked in one of the banks. He served as the People's Commissar of Railways, in 1926 he became a member of the Presidium of the Supreme Economic Council, then he was the head of the scientific and technical department of the Supreme Economic Council, the secretary of the All-Union Association of Science and Technology Workers and the director of the road research institute.
After the October Revolution, Zinovy Peshkov briefly returned to France, but returned to Russia in 1918 as the Entente "curator" of Kolchak, to whom he brought an act recognizing him as the "supreme ruler" of Russia. For this, the "Omsk ruler" awarded him the Order of St. Vladimir, 3rd degree.
You may have heard the historical anecdote that from the headquarters of Kolchak Z. Peshkov sent an insulting and threatening telegram to his brother Yakov, in which there were the words: "We will hang" (you and Lenin). How should we treat such messages?
It must be understood that Peshkov was not a private person and, moreover, was not an officer of the White Army. On the contrary, at the time he was a high-ranking French diplomat. The word "we" in his telegram, addressed to the chairman of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee of Soviet Russia, should have been read not "I and Kolchak," but "France and the Entente countries." And this would mean the recognition of the fact of France's participation in the civil war in Russia on the side of the "whites" - exactly what this state has always denied and denied (like Great Britain, the USA, Japan), presenting the presence of its troops on the territory of a foreign country as "humanitarian mission ". The Bolsheviks would publish this telegram in the newspapers and then, at all conferences, would poke the French at it, like a tattered cat in a puddle it had made. And Peshkov would have left the civil service with a “black ticket”. But this man was never feeble-minded, and therefore he never sent such a telegram (which, by the way, no one had ever seen or held in his hands).
Then Peshkov was in the French mission under Wrangel and in Georgia, led by the Mensheviks.
It should be said that the choice of Peshkov as the French emissary was not very successful: very many both in the headquarters of Kolchak and at Wrangel did not trust him and were suspected of spying on the “Reds”.
On January 14, 1920, Zinovy briefly returned to military service, becoming the captain of the 1st Armored Cavalry Regiment of the Foreign Legion, in which mainly former White Guard officers served, but on January 21, 1921 he again found himself in diplomatic work.
In 1921, Peshkov briefly became the public secretary of the International Commission for Relief of Famine in Russia. But, according to the numerous testimonies of people who knew him, he did not show any interest either in his family or in his abandoned homeland either then or later. The new job did not arouse any particular enthusiasm in him: he persistently sought permission to return to military service. Finally, in 1922, he managed to get an appointment in Morocco.
Back in the ranks
In 1925, Zinovy Peshkov, as the battalion commander of the First Regiment of the Foreign Legion (40 of his soldiers were Russians), took part in the Rif War, being wounded in his left leg, the second Military Cross with a palm branch and earning a strange and funny nickname from his subordinates - the Red Penguin … While in the hospital, he wrote the book Sounds of the Horn. Life in the Foreign Legion”, which was published in 1926 in the USA, and in 1927 in France under the title“Foreign Legion in Morocco”.
In the preface to one of the editions of this book, A. Maurois writes:
“The Foreign Legion is more than an army of the military, it is an institution. From conversations with Zinovy Peshkov, the impression is created of the almost religious nature of this institution. Zinovy Peshkov speaks of a legion with burning eyes, he is, as it were, an apostle of this religion."
From 1926 to 1937 Peshkov was again in the diplomatic service (from 1926 to 1930.- in the French Foreign Ministry, from 1930 to 1937 - in the mission of the High Commissioner in the Levant), and then returns to Morocco as the commander of the 3rd battalion of the Second Infantry Regiment of the Foreign Legion. After the outbreak of World War II, he fought on the Western Front, about his escape from France, he later told an unlikely story about how he took a German officer hostage and demanded a plane to Gibraltar. According to a more likely version, his unit turned out to be part of the troops loyal to the Vichy government. Not wanting to serve the "traitor Pétain", Peshkov resigned due to reaching the age limit for his rank, after which he calmly left for London.
At the end of 1941 he was de Gaulle's representative in the colonies of South Africa, was engaged in the protection of allied transports, in 1943 - was promoted to general.
French diplomat Zinovy Peshkov
In April 1944, Peshkov finally switched to diplomatic work and was sent to the headquarters of Chiang Kai-shek, with whom he was destined to meet again in 1964 - on the island of Taiwan.
On September 2, 1945, Zinovy, as part of the French delegation, was on board the battleship Missouri, where the pact of Japan's surrender was signed.
From 1946 to 1949 Peshkov was in diplomatic work in Japan (in the rank of head of the French mission). In 1950 he retired, finally receiving the rank of corps general. He carried out his last major diplomatic assignment in 1964, when he handed Mao Zedong an official document on France's recognition of communist China.
On November 27, 1966, he died in Paris and was buried in the Saint-Genevieve-des-Bois cemetery. On the slab, according to his will, the inscription was carved: "Zinovy Peshkov, legionary."
As we can see, Zinovy Peshkov attached great importance to his service in the Foreign Legion, was brave, had military awards, but did not perform any special military feats in his life and was not a military man, but a diplomat for most of his life. In the diplomatic field, he achieved the greatest success. In this respect, he is significantly inferior to many other Russian "volunteers" of the legion, for example, D. Amilakhvari and S. Andolenko. SP Andolenko, who managed to rise to the rank of brigadier general and the posts of regiment commander and deputy inspector of the legion, was described in the article "Russian volunteers of the French Foreign Legion". And we will talk about Dmitry Amilakhvari in the article "The French Foreign Legion in World Wars I and II".
Rodion Yakovlevich Malinovsky, twice Hero of the Soviet Union, People's Hero of Yugoslavia, Soviet Marshal, who became Minister of Defense of the USSR, was much more successful in the military field.
It will be discussed in the next article.
