In the history of the Civil War, there is, perhaps, no topic more vague and painstakingly evaded by researchers than the frontline path and the combat successes of the 2nd Cavalry Army.
In Soviet times, the first mention is just a mention! - appeared about her in the scientific historical literature in 1930. The second - a quarter of a century later, in 1955. Then there was another fifteen years of deaf silence. And only in 1970 - a barely noticeable timid attempt to tell something about the participation of this army in the defeat of Wrangel and the liberation of the Crimea. To which the roar of those in power immediately followed: "Don't you dare!"
So today the very fact of the existence of this huge cavalry unit, which played a prominent role at the final stage of the fratricidal meat grinder, can become a complete revelation for many of our compatriots.
As well as the biography of Army Commander Philip Kuzmich Mironov - one of the first high-ranking Soviet military leaders who decided to engage in armed struggle against the regime that raised him …
Hero and truth-seeker
From the very beginning, his fate abounded with sharp turns and unpredictable turns. The future red army commander was born in 1872 on the Buerak-Senyutkin farm in the village of Ust-Medveditskaya (now it is the Serafimovichsky district of the Volgograd region). He also graduated from the parish school and two classes at the local gymnasium there.
At the age of twenty, the military service of Philip Mironov began. For two years the young man regularly drew up and copied orders and reports in the office of one of the district directorates of the Don Army, and then entered the Novocherkassk cadet school.
In 1898, the newly minted, but by no means a young cornet, took over fifty scouts in the 7th Don Cossack regiment. He served conscientiously, was repeatedly encouraged by the command for the exemplary training of subordinates who were famous throughout the division for their daring and daring. But three years later, having barely received the title of centurion, he resigned - men's hands and skill were more needed in a large household. However, Mironov did not remain a simple Cossack for long: soon his fellow countrymen elected him the village chieftain.
When the Russo-Japanese War began, Philip Kuzmich applied three times with a request to reinstate him in the service, but he got to Manchuria only in June 1904 and spent only 10 months at the front. But he fought so bravely and desperately that in such a short time he was awarded four orders: St. Vladimir 4th degree, St. Anna 3rd and 4th degree and St. Stanislav 3rd degree. So Mironov returned to his native village, who, moreover, was promoted to the podlesauli ahead of schedule for military distinctions, returned in the rays of well-deserved glory.
But then suddenly his friction with the authorities began. Returning to Ust-Medveditskaya, Philip Kuzmich initiated a district gathering, at which the villagers accepted - no more, no less! - order to the State Duma. In it, the Don people asked to adopt a law on the release of the Cossacks of the second and third stages of conscription (that is, the elderly, sophisticated in life and combat experience) from police service during workers 'and peasants' riots. They already have enough trouble, and let the police and beardless youths be engaged in pacifying the dissatisfied.
With this mandate, the village chieftain at the head of the delegation went to St. Petersburg. It is easy to imagine the confusion of the then parliamentarians: the events of the First Russian Revolution are in full swing in the country, and the Cossacks - the eternal support of the throne - come to the capital with such a request!
In general, after returning to his native land, Mironov, despite all his military merits, fell into disgrace with the leaders of the Don Army: he was no longer elected as the village chieftain, and until the very beginning of the First World War, Philip Kuzmich quietly and peacefully engaged in agriculture on his land a precinct under the covert surveillance of the police.
But then the thunders of the military thundered - and the gallant Cossack officer was back in the saddle. And again he fights beyond all praise. By the fall of 1917, he became a military sergeant major (lieutenant colonel), reached the post of deputy regiment commander, his uniform was decorated with the Order of St. Vladimir, 3rd degree, St. Stanislaus, 2nd and 1st degree, St. Anna, 2nd and 1st degree. … That is, a commoner Cossack became a full knight of two orders of the Russian Empire, which was already a unique phenomenon.
And in June 1917, Philip Kuzmich was awarded the St. George weapon. The award, to be sure, is very honorable, but in itself an ordinary case for the war years. However, only three years will pass, and the commander Mironov will receive from the government of the Soviet Republic a saber with the Order of the Red Banner soldered into the hilt. After that, he will become the only owner of three types of award weapons in the world - Annensky, Georgievsky and Honorary revolutionary …
Cossack citizen
In January 1918, the military sergeant major, elected commander of the 32nd Cossack regiment, arbitrarily took his subordinates from the Romanian front to the Don, already engulfed in the Civil War. Mironov, who unconditionally sided with the new government, was elected by the Cossacks to the Ust-Medveditsa District Revolutionary Committee, then the military commissar of the district. In the spring of 1918, to fight the Whites, Philip Kuzmich organized several Cossack partisan detachments, which were then combined into a brigade, which later expanded into the 23rd Division of the Red Army. Mironov, of course, was appointed chief of the division.
Ardent and straightforward, he did not immediately figure out which particular idea he had defended. Therefore, he fought for her as selflessly as he had just recently defended the Tsar and the Fatherland. The glory of the national hero rolled on his heels. Hundreds of Cossacks from the regiments of Ataman Krasnov went over to Mironov.
“Brave, dexterous, cunning. Protects his own in battle. After the battle, the prisoners are released to their homes with an order to the brothers-villagers to stop the fratricidal massacre. In the liberated villages gathers huge rallies. He speaks passionately, contagiously, besides, in a simple and understandable language for the Cossacks, since he is a local himself. The appeals are simply signed by “citizen-Cossack Philip Mironov”. Subordinates consider him charmed by a bullet and are ready to follow him into fire and water "- this is how the chairman of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee Mikhail Kalinin told Lenin about the division commander Mironov. To which the leader of the world proletariat, with an indescribably cunning squint, replied: "We need such people!"
In the middle of summer, Mironov was introduced to the Cossack department of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee, located in Rostov-on-Don, and at the same time was put at the head of one of the military groups. In September 1918 - February 1919, Philip Kuzmich successfully operated in the south, famously defeated the white cavalry near Tambov and Voronezh, for which he was awarded the highest award of the young Soviet Republic - the Order of the Red Banner. The first such order was received by Vasily Konstantinovich Blucher, the second - by Iona Emmanuilovich Yakir. Philip Kuzmich Mironov had the order number 3!
Soon, the revolutionary hero was transferred to the Western Front, where Mironov was entrusted with the command of the first Lithuanian-Belarusian, and then the 16th army. Then, just as suddenly, in the middle of the summer of 1919, they were recalled to Moscow.
Mutiny
At that time, a relative calm reigned on the Western Front. But in the South, the situation for the Reds was becoming more and more threatening - Denikin suddenly began and successfully developed an offensive on the capital.
In Moscow, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin personally met with Philip Kuzmich and brought to him a new, most important task: to rectify the situation, the Soviet government decided to hastily form a Special Cavalry Corps in Saransk from captured Cossacks and send this unit to the Don. Mironov was offered to lead the Cossacks, who were given a chance to atone for imaginary and real sins before the Soviet regime, in connection with which Philip Kuzmich was endowed with the broadest powers.
Mironov, who had always sincerely supported the Cossack cause, agreed and immediately left for the Volga region. However, immediately upon arrival in Saransk, he realized that he had been impudently deceived. The commissars sent to the corps were mostly tainted with atrocities in the Don and North Caucasus in 1918. They openly sabotaged the orders of the corps commander, treated the Cossacks, especially former officers, with arrogance, with undisguised hatred and distrust, and pestered them with petty quibbles. In addition to this, shocking news of the reprisals perpetrated by the Reds over the Cossacks in the captured villages came from their native places. And Philip Kuzmich could not stand it.
On August 22, 1919, a rally of fighters of the corps being formed spontaneously began in Saransk, to which Mironov arrived. Instead of besieging his subordinates, the corps commander supported the rebels. “What is left for a Cossack outlawed and subject to merciless extermination ?! - Shaking his fist, Mironov asked angrily. And he himself answered: - Only to die with bitterness !!! … In order to save the revolutionary gains, - he further declared, - the only way remains for us: to overthrow the communists and avenge the desecrated justice. These Mironov's words were carefully recorded by political workers and employees of the Saransk Cheka, who were present at the rally, and sent to Moscow by telegraph.
And Mironov could no longer be stopped: on August 24, he raised the still unformed corps and moved it south, intending, as the order said, “to go to Penza, approach the Southern Front and, after defeating Denikin, restore Cossack power in the territory of the Don Army., freeing the population from the communists”.
On September 4, 2000 rebel horsemen occupied Balashov. But here they were surrounded by four times superior troops of Budyonny. Realizing that resistance was useless, Mironov ordered to lay down arms: Philip Kuzmich remained true to himself here, not wanting to shed Cossack blood once again. In general, it may seem surprising, but nevertheless it is a historical fact: not a single Red commander, Red Army soldier, commissar or Chekist was killed either in Saransk or along the route of the Mironovites!
But Semyon Mikhailovich Budyonny was not so noble and sentimental. By his order, the corps commander and another 500 people were put on trial by a military tribunal, which sentenced Mironov and every tenth of those arrested to death. The verdict was going to be carried out at dawn on October 8. But the night before, a telegram came to the city with the following content:
“On a direct wire. By cipher. Balashov. Smilge. The slowness of our offensive on the Don requires increased political influence on the Cossacks in order to split them. For this mission, perhaps, take advantage of Mironov, summoning him to Moscow after being sentenced to death and pardoning him through the All-Russian Central Executive Committee with his obligation to go to the white rear and raise an uprising there. I am bringing to the Politburo of the Central Committee for discussion the question of changing the policy towards the Don Cossacks. We give Don, Kuban full autonomy after our troops clear the Don. For this, the Cossacks completely break with Denikin. Adequate guarantees must be provided. Mironov and his comrades could act as mediators. Send your written ideas at the same time as sending Mironov and others here. For the sake of caution, send Mironov under soft but vigilant control to Moscow. The question of his fate will be decided here. October 7, 1919, No. 408. Pre-military council Trotsky."
Thus, Philip Kuzmich once again became a bargaining chip in a big political game. But he himself, of course, did not know anything about it, taking everything that was happening to him at face value.
In Moscow, Mironov was brought to a meeting of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the RCP (b), where the leaders of the party and the state publicly expressed "political confidence" to him. Moreover, Philip Kuzmich was accepted as a candidate for membership in the Communist Party right there and was appointed to one of the key positions in the Central Election Commission of Don, a few days later his appeal to the Cossacks was published in the newspaper Pravda.
But, having perked up in spirit, Mironov did not rejoice for long. Denikin's offensive on Moscow bogged down, the Whites hastily retreated to Novorossiysk, evacuated to the Crimea, and the need for the authority of Philip Kuzmich again disappeared. He, a militant and renowned, but uncontrollable and headstrong horseman commander, began to head the land department and the anti-plague cabinet in the Don Bolshevik government. Something extraordinary had to happen for the communists to once again have a burning need for Mironov.
And such an event happened: in the summer of 1920, the troops of Baron Wrangel escaped from the Crimea into the operational space and launched an offensive in Northern Tavria. At the same time, the Poles, having defeated Tukhachevsky and Budyonny near Warsaw, moved east.
The outcome of the Civil War again became uncertain and unpredictable.
2nd Cavalry
While Budyonny's cavalry was licking his wounds after an unsuccessful Polish campaign, on the basis of the cavalry corps, the formation of which Philip Kuzmich began but did not finish, on July 16, 1920, the 2nd Cavalry Army was deployed. It included 4 cavalry and 2 rifle divisions (a total of just over 4,800 sabers, 1,500 bayonets, 55 guns and 16 armored vehicles). Mironov was put in command of this armada transferred to the Southern Front.
Already on July 26, his regiments entered into battle with Wrangel's troops and, in cooperation with the 13th Army, threw them back from Aleksandrovsk. In August, Mironov's horsemen broke through the front line and went for a walk along the Wrangel rear, making a daring 220-kilometer raid.
In September, the 2nd Horse, withdrawn to the reserve, rested, replenished with people and ammunition. On October 8, Wrangel crossed the Dnieper and began an offensive operation, trying to defeat the Red group at Nikopol. At first, the baron was successful: the city was taken, and the whites set their sights on Apostolovo, in order to then knock off the Kakhovsky bridgehead, which was sitting with a bone in their throat, with powerful blows. It was then that they clashed with Mironov's cavalry.
On October 12-14, in fierce battles that went down in the history of the Civil War as the Nikopol-Alexander battle, the regiments of the 2nd Cavalry Army defeated the cavalry corps of white generals Babiev and Barbovich, frustrating the intentions of the whites to unite with the Poles on the right bank of the Dnieper. For this victory, Army Commander Mironov was awarded a saber with a gilded hilt, into which the Order of the Red Banner was soldered. For Philip Kuzmich, this was already the second revolutionary order, at the same time he became the eighth red commander to be awarded the Honorary Revolutionary Weapon.
Following the defeat by Mironov, the Wrangelites suffered a severe setback at Kakhovka and began to hastily retreat to the Crimea, trying to go beyond the Perekop Isthmus as quickly as possible. The Revolutionary Military Council instructed the 1st Cavalry Army to cut the escape routes to the whites. But Budyonny did not cope with this task, and the baron with a 150,000-strong army again closed on the peninsula. People's Commissar for military and naval affairs Leon Trotsky tore and threw: in the name of the commander of the Southern Front Mikhail Frunze, the commanders of armies and military groups, one after another, angry telegrams were carried with the demand “to take Crimea at all costs before winter, regardless of any victims."
The offensive of the troops of the Southern Front began on the night of November 8. The positions of the Whites on the Perekop Isthmus were stormed by the 6th Red Army. To develop success in this area, the 2nd Cavalry Army and units of the 1st Insurgent Army of Bat'ka Makhno were concentrated. In the Chongarsk direction, across the Sivash Bay, the 4th Army was supposed to operate, the main task of which was to pave the way for Budyonny's horsemen.
The Lithuanian peninsula was cleared of whites by 8 o'clock on November 8. The Turkish rampart at Perekop, the Reds stormed continuously for thirteen hours and ascended it only in the morning of November 9. However, the Wrangelites with a frantic counterattack drove the Red units from the isthmus. Frunze ordered the 16th Cavalry Division of the 2nd Cavalry Army and the Makhnovists to be sent to the aid of the bleeding infantry regiments. Army Budyonny remained in place.
On November 10, at 3:40 am, the 16th cavalry division made a rush to the southern bank of the Sivash and quickly rushed into the Solenoye-Krasnoye inter-lake defile in order to save the remnants of the 15th and 52nd rifle divisions of the 6th th army.
Wrangel hastily moved forward the 1st Army Corps, which consisted of officer regiments, and the cavalry corps of General Barbovich. On the morning of November 11, the Reds were driven back to the tip of the Lithuanian Peninsula. Barbovich's cavalry entered the rear of the 51st and Latvian divisions fighting in the area of the Yushun station, and a real threat of encirclement arose for them. Moreover, the entire Crimean operation of the Southern Front of the Red Army hung in the balance.
It was then that Frunze ordered the 2nd Cavalry to immediately move to the aid of the 6th Army units in order to assist them "in the last battle, which will decide the outcome of the entire operation" (MV Frunze. Selected Works, vol. 1, p. 418). Army Budyonny remained in place.
On November 11 at 5 o'clock in the morning, the Mironovites crossed the Sivash Bay, reached the Lithuanian Peninsula east of Karadzhanay, meeting the wounded of their 16th Cavalry Division on the way. And immediately rushed to the attack. The bloody battle went on all day. The fighting reached particular fierceness near Karpovaya Balka, where the corps of General Barbovich with the Kuban cavalry brigade, with the support of the officer battalions of the Drozdovskaya and Kornilov divisions, broke through to the rear of the 51st Red Infantry Division.
Two horse lavas were approaching like thunderclouds: a few hundred meters more - and the brutal felling would begin. But at that moment the red cavalry moved apart, and the enemy faced 300 machine-gun carts of the Makhnovist brigade commander Semyon Karetnik … The rate of fire of the "maxim" is 250-270 rounds per minute. That is, three hundred of these infernal machines in the first minute spat out at least 75 thousand bullets in the direction of Barbovich's cavalrymen, for the second - the same amount. It is almost impossible to escape from such an amount of lead in an open field!
After the death of their cavalry, the Wrangelites continued their organized resistance, at the same time perfectly realizing that they had already lost the battle for the Crimea. In some places, White's retreat turned into a flight. They were pursued by the 21st and 2nd Cavalry Divisions of the 2nd Cavalry Army. Budenny's army was still in place.
On November 12, at about 8 am, the 2nd Cavalry Division occupied the Dzhankoy station. At the same time, the main forces of the 2nd Cavalry Army were attacking to the south, in the direction of Kurman-Kemelchi station, where the enemy decided at any cost to delay the onslaught of the Reds in order to gain time for loading onto the steamers. Only after a six-hour battle did the enemy abandon the station, huge reserves of military equipment and hastily moved to Simferopol.
This battle at Kurman-Kemelchi was the last in the Crimea. As a result of the battles on November 11 and 12, the 2nd Cavalry Army took rich trophies and over 20 thousand prisoners. On November 15, Mironov's cavalry occupied Sevastopol, and on November 16, Kerch, already abandoned by the Wrangelites.
And what about the 1st Cavalry Army?
Here is what its commander, Semyon Mikhailovich Budyonny, writes in the book "The Path Traveled": “The 1st Cavalry set out on the march on the morning of November 13th. By this time, units of the 6th and 2nd Cavalry Armies had already cut the highway to Simferopol, occupied the Dzhankoy station and the town of Kurman-Kemelchi, where the 2nd brigade of the 21st Cavalry Division distinguished itself … We went, - says the Soviet marshal further, - on the wounded, still smoking Crimean land, where battles were recently fought. Felled wire fences, trenches, trenches, shell and bomb craters. And then a wide steppe opened before us. We spurred our horses”(p. 140). That is, the legendary commander himself admits that his army did not participate in the Crimean battles! But it doesn't explain why.
And just at that time, the subsequently glorified and glorified 1st Cavalry Army was extremely unreliable. Back in early October 1920, its 6th Cavalry Division, during the transfer from the Polish front to the Wrangel front, rebelled against the Bolsheviks, speaking under the slogan "Down with Trotsky!" and "Long live Makhno!" The insurgents dispersed the political and special divisions of the division, shot or hacked to death about two dozen commanders, commissars and security officers and moved to join the units of the 4th cavalry division with the same 1st Cavalry, ready to support them. They calmed down only after they were blocked by armored trains and ChON detachments formed from communists and Komsomol members, subordinate to the Cheka. The instigators and the most active participants in the mutiny were shot, new, more zealous commissars and strong-willed commanders were sent to the division. But the high headquarters still continued to believe that the combat effectiveness of these formations was low. And then Makhno's army was at hand …
Mironov, in those days, was at the height of his glory. “For his executive energy and outstanding courage shown in the last battles against Wrangel,” MV Frunze presented him to the third Order of the Red Banner. A telegram of gratitude was sent to the commander of the army by the People's Commissariat for Military Affairs and the chairman of the Revolutionary Military Council of the republic, Lev Trotsky.
But immediately after her came a Jesuitical, treacherous order, incomprehensible to the straightforward and inexperienced in political games Philip Kuzmich. It was he and his horsemen who were ordered to disarm their recent comrades-in-arms - the 1st Insurgent Army of Makhno, to arrest Nestor Ivanovich himself and hand him over to the Chekists, and to "pour his fighters in small groups into the infantry and cavalry units of the Red Army".
Makhno sensed something was wrong with an animal instinct and hastened to sneak out of the Crimea. Mironov, sent by Frunze in pursuit of yesterday's allies, written off by the Bolsheviks from the accounts, overtook them already near Taganrog. Naturally, the Makhnovists did not want to disarm, and the case ended in several battles that put an end to the existence of Batka's army. Makhno himself, who was shot in the face, with a handful of especially close people, managed to break away from the pursuit and go to Romania.
So if in the defeat of Wrangel and the liberation of the Crimea, the 2nd Cavalry Army played one of the leading roles, then the Bolsheviks should thank Mironov entirely for the elimination of Makhno's army.
They thanked, but in their own way. On December 6, 1920, the 2nd Cavalry was disbanded and reduced to a cavalry corps, which was located in the Kuban. And Philip Kuzmich was summoned to Moscow to accept the post of chief inspector of the cavalry of the Red Army. That is, the former commander was formally put at the head of all the red cavalry, but the real strength - the Don Cossacks, doted on him and ready to carry out any of his orders - was taken away from Mironov.
However, Philip Kuzmich did not manage to take up his new position …
Uprising in Mikhailovka and a shot in Butyrka
On the night of December 18, a guard battalion rebelled in the village of Mikhailovka in the Ust-Medveditsky district of the Don region. At the head of the rebels was his battalion commander Kirill Timofeevich Vakulin, a communist and holder of the Order of the Red Banner. The reason for the revolt of an entire military unit was dissatisfaction with the cruelty with which the surplus appropriation was carried out in the region, or, more simply, the withdrawal from the population of food, stocks of wheat and rye prepared for spring sowing.
The rebellious soldiers, who spoke under the slogan "Down with the commissars, long live the power of the people!", Were supported by a significant part of the nearby Cossack villages. Later, the Red Army soldiers of the military units sent to suppress the rebellion, as well as the former Cossack officers who were arrested by the DonChK, who were released from prisons and prison rooms, began to go over to their side. No wonder the number of rebels grew like a snowball. By the spring of 1921, this insurgent formation numbered 9000 people, brought together in three regiments, had its own machine-gun team, which had fifteen "maxims", as well as three squadrons of 100 sabers each and a battery of three field guns with a fire reserve of up to 200 shells. But now the conversation is not about that.
During the Civil War, Vakulin commanded a regiment in the Mironovskaya 23rd Division and therefore was well known to Philip Kuzmich. At the beginning of the rebellion, the name of the army commander and his authority among the Cossacks were constantly used by the Vakulina agitators to recruit new supporters, referring to the fact that units of the Mironovsky corps were about to come to the aid of the rebels, and Mironov himself agreed to lead the struggle “for the Soviets without communists, for the people's power without commissars”. This information reached Moscow, where it caused great alarm: and, indeed, how will the military leader, who is beyond measure popular among the Cossacks, behave?
And Mironov, who was supposed to be on his way to Moscow at that time, unexpectedly appeared in Ust-Medveditskaya on February 6, 1921. Three days later, in Mikhailovka, from which the rebel battalion's performance began, a district party conference was convened, at which Philip Kuzmich made a speech. He described Vakulin as "an honest revolutionary and an excellent commander who rebelled against injustice." Then Mironov spoke out against such discredited phenomena as food detachments and food appropriation.
Further more. The dispersed Philip Kuzmich said that at this time the state is ruled by a handful of people who uncontrollably dispose of the property of the people, while focusing the attention of the audience on the "foreign" origin of many leaders of the Communist Party and said that such a situation was abnormal. Mironov also dwelt on the party's policy of decossackization, ending his speech with the fact that it would lead the Soviet Republic to collapse, which would occur no later than the autumn of 1921 …
While Mironov was speaking at the conference, several cavalry units loyal to him began to concentrate at the Archeda station, which is a few kilometers from Mikhailovka. Located next to Ust-Medveditskaya, the 10th regiment of the internal service troops (the forerunner of the current internal troops of the Ministry of Internal Affairs), more than half of the soldiers of the infantry divisions of the former 2nd Cavalry Army, according to the reports of the Cheka employees, "behaved very mysteriously."
And although Mironov did not seek direct contacts with Vakulin, Moscow decided to act proactively: on February 12, a train with a flying KGB detachment flew into Archeda station. This was followed by a rapid rush to Mikhailovka, the arrest of Mironov and five more people from his inner circle. On the same day, Philip Kuzmich was sent under a reinforced escort to the capital, where he was placed in the Butyrka prison.
The former army commander was held in prison with the utmost severity, but no charges were brought against him, he was not taken to interrogations, and they did not arrange confrontations. And on April 2, he was simply shot by a sentry from a tower while walking around the prison yard.
Surprisingly, history has not preserved a single document capable of shedding light on this mysterious murder. Interestingly, the death of Mironov came as a complete surprise even for the KGB: the investigator who fabricated the case of the counter-revolutionary conspiracy learned about the death of the accused a few weeks after the fatal shot.
By whose order was one of the main characters of the Civil War killed and then consigned to complete oblivion? What is the reason for such a cruel reprisal against a person and his memory? Most likely, in the beginning of the struggle for power, so inevitable after every revolution, honest and incorruptible, straightforward and incapable of compromises, Mironov was dangerous for everyone. And each of those striving for power understood perfectly well that making him an ally in political intrigues would be very problematic. And no one would want to have such an opponent as Philip Kuzmich …
There is another historical incident in the amazing fate of this extraordinary person: in 1960, by the decision of the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the USSR, Philip Kuzmich Mironov was posthumously rehabilitated.
But how can you rehabilitate someone without accusing or condemning anything?
