On January 22, 1906, exactly 110 years ago, the famous "Chita Republic" ceased to exist. Its short history is fairly typical of the turbulent years of the 1905-1907 revolution. At this time, in a number of regions of the Russian Empire, as a result of local uprisings, the Soviets of Workers' Deputies proclaimed "Soviet republics". One of them originated in the east of Siberia - in Chita and its environs.
Land of penal servitude and exile, mines and railways
The activation of the revolutionary movement in Eastern Siberia was not accidental. The Trans-Baikal Territory has long been used by the tsarist government as one of the main places for exile for political exiles. Since 1826, penal servitude for political convicts functioned here, one of the largest among which was the Nerchinsk penal servitude. It was the convicts who made up the bulk of the workers who worked at the mining enterprises of the Trans-Baikal Territory. Revolutionaries Pyotr Alekseev and Nikolai Ishutin, Mikhail Mikhailov and Ippolit Myshkin visited hard labor in the distant Transbaikalia. But, perhaps, the most famous convict of Transbaikalia was Nikolai Chernyshevsky. The political prisoners freed from convict prisons remained in the settlement in Transbaikalia. Naturally, most of them did not give up revolutionary ideas, which contributed to the spread of "seditious" views beyond political exile and hard labor. Gradually, more and more groups of residents of Transbaikalia, previously unrelated to revolutionary organizations, were drawn into the orbit of the agitation and propaganda, and then the practical activities of the revolutionary movement. This is how the rapid radicalization of the population of Eastern Siberia took place, especially the local youth, who were impressed by stories about the revolutionary exploits of their older comrades - convicts and exiled settlers.
Perhaps the most susceptible to revolutionary propaganda categories of the East Siberian population in the period under review were the workers of the mining industry and railway workers. The former worked in very difficult conditions, with a working day of 14-16 hours. At the same time, their earnings remained low, which further angered the workers. The second group of workers potentially susceptible to revolutionary ideas was represented by railroad workers. Many railway workers arrived in Eastern Siberia and specifically in Transbaikalia during the construction of the Great Siberian Railway. Among the new arrivals, a significant part were railway workers from the central and western provinces of the Russian Empire, who already had experience of participating in the workers' and revolutionary movement and brought it to Eastern Siberia. The number of workers and employees involved in the maintenance of the Trans-Baikal Railway also grew. So, already in 1900 more than 9 thousand people worked there. Naturally, at the beginning of the twentieth century, in such a numerous proletarian environment, revolutionary ideas could not fail to spread, especially since political exiles - social democrats and social revolutionaries - worked diligently on the radicalization of the Trans-Baikal railway workers. In 1898, the first Social Democratic circle was created in Chita. It was organized by G. I. Kramolnikov and M. I. Gubelman, better known under the pseudonym "Emelyan Yaroslavsky" (pictured).
Most of the members of the circle were employees of the Main Railway Workshops, but people from other occupations also joined the circle, primarily students of the local teacher's seminary and gymnasium students. The founder of the circle, Emelyan Yaroslavsky, who was actually called Minei Isaakovich Gubelman (1878-1943), was a hereditary revolutionary - he was born into a family of exiled settlers in Chita and began to take part in the socialist movement from his youth. By the time the Social Democratic circle was founded in Chita, Gubelman was only twenty years old, and most of the other members of the circle were at about the same age.
Social Democrats in Chita
At the very beginning of the twentieth century, the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party also began its activities in Transbaikalia. Its Chita Committee was created in April 1902, and in May of the same year the first May Day took place on Titovskaya Sopka. In order to ensure the participation of workers in the May Day, leaflets with invitations to the celebration of May 1 began to be distributed among the railway workers in advance. Naturally, the Chita authorities also learned about the plans of the RSDLP. The governor ordered to prepare two hundred Cossacks to disperse the likely riots. Also prepared two companies of infantry - in case you have to open fire on the demonstrators. The troops were ordered to act decisively and mercilessly. However, no riots occurred and the workers spent the May Day peacefully, which greatly surprised the city authorities. The 1903-1904 years were relatively peaceful for the workers' and revolutionary movement of Transbaikalia. In the spring of 1903, the Union of Workers of Transbaikalia was created, and a strike of railway workers and employees was also held. After the start of the Russo-Japanese War, the Trans-Baikal Social Democrats carried out anti-war propaganda, all the more relevant in the specific conditions of Transbaikalia, which had become the rear of the active army. During the first three years of the existence of the RSDLP in Transbaikalia, organizations of social democrats arose not only in Chita, but also in Nerchinsk, Sretensk, Khilka, Shilka and a number of other settlements.
The radicalization of the revolutionary movement in Transbaikalia began in 1905, after news reached Eastern Siberia that a peaceful demonstration on its way to the Winter Palace had been dispersed in St. Petersburg. The shooting from firearms of a peaceful demonstration of workers, many of whom came with their wives and children, shocked Russian society and became one of the immediate causes of the uprisings that started the First Russian Revolution of 1905-1907. Already on January 27, 1905, a rally of opposition forces was held in Chita, in which the workers of the Chita main railway workshops and depots took part. It was the railway workers, as the most active and advanced part of the working class of Transbaikalia, who became the vanguard of protests in 1905. At the rally, the Chita railway workers, under the influence of the Social Democrats, put forward not only economic, but also political demands - the abolition of the autocracy, the convocation of a constituent assembly, the proclamation of Russia as a democratic republic, and an end to the war between Russia and Japan. On January 29, 1905, a political strike of workers of the Chita main railway workshops and depots began in Chita. In the spring of 1905, a further intensification of workers' protests followed. On May 1, 1905, the workers of the railway workshops and depots declared a one-day strike and held a May Day outside the city. On the same day, a red flag was hoisted by unknown activists on the spire of the monument to Emperor Nicholas II. Of course, he was immediately removed by the police, but the very fact of such an action testified to the transition of the Chita Social Democrats to demonstrating their strength and influence in the city. Subsequently, the political situation in Chita only escalated. So, from July 21 to August 9, the political strike of the workers of the Chita Main railway workshops and depots continued, which was supported by the workers of a number of other settlements - Borzi, Verkhneudinsk, Mogzon, Olovyannaya, Slyudyanka, Khilka.
On October 14, 1905, the Chita workers joined the All-Russian October political strike, which was initiated by the workers of the city of Moscow. In Chita, railway workers who were under the influence of the Social Democratic organization acted as the instigators of the strike, then they were joined by workers and employees of the city's printing houses, telephone and telegraph stations, post offices, students and teachers. Local power structures could not cope with the growing strike movement, so soon practically the entire railway of Transbaikalia was under the control of the striking workers. In Chita, military units refused to shoot at the people, and many soldiers joined the striking units. The head of the Irkutsk Gendarme Directorate telegraphed to the Russian Police Department about the riots in Chita and the need to send reliable military units to the region that would not go over to the side of the rebels, but would act decisively and harshly against the strikers. In the meantime, on October 15, 1905, the Chita Social Democrats tried to seize weapons, during the shootout, worker A. Kiselnikov was killed. The Social Democratic organization used his funeral to hold a three thousandth workers' demonstration.
The beginning of the uprising
Workers' protests inevitably affected the general political situation in Transbaikalia, including the mood of that part of the population that had not previously shown active participation in the activities of the revolutionary movement. In 112 Trans-Baikal villages, mass demonstrations of peasants took place, and even soldiers began to gather at the rallies, trying to work out common demands with the workers. However, the main role in the mass protests was still played by railroad workers - as the most active and organized force in the general mass of the Trans-Baikal proletariat. Despite the fact that on October 17, 1905, Emperor Nicholas II issued the Highest Manifesto on the improvement of the state order, in accordance with which freedom of conscience, freedom of speech, freedom of assembly and freedom of association were introduced, revolutionary unrest continued throughout the country. The Trans-Baikal Territory was no exception. Representatives of the main political parties of the country appeared here, and local revolutionary organizations received powerful reinforcement in the person of former political prisoners who were freed from hard labor and exile.
After the return of the professional revolutionaries, the Chita Committee of the RSDLP began to work even more actively than before October 1905. In November, a congress of social democrats was held in Chita, a regional committee of the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party was elected, which included revolutionaries well-known in the region - A. A. A. Kostyushko-Valyuzhanich, N. N. Kudrin, V. K. Kurnatovsky, M. V. Lurie. On the Trans-Baikal Railway, a Committee was created under the leadership of Ya. M. Lyakhovsky. On November 16, the Chita Main Railway Workshops received unusual guests - soldiers and Cossacks, promoted by the Social Democrats and taking part in a revolutionary meeting. The consequence of revolutionary propaganda among the military units stationed in Chita and the surrounding area was the transition of almost the entire city military garrison (and this is about five thousand soldiers and Cossacks) to the side of the revolution. On November 22, 1905, the Council of Soldiers and Cossack Deputies was created in Chita, which included the well-publicized representatives of the military units of the garrison. Under the Council, an armed workers' squad was formed, numbering 4 thousand people. At the head of the Council and the squad was a well-known revolutionary in Chita, Anton Antonovich Kostyushko-Valyuzhanich (1876-1906). Despite his young years (and Anton Kostyushko-Valyuzhanich was not even thirty at the time of the beginning of the uprising), he was already a famous revolutionary. Unlike many of his like-minded people, Anton Kostyushko-Valyuzhanich received a fundamental military and technical education - he graduated from the Pskov Cadet Corps, then from the Pavlovsk Military School and the Yekaterinoslav Higher Mining School. It would seem that broad horizons of a military or civil engineering career were opening up for the young man. But he preferred the difficult and thorny path of a revolutionary, which ultimately led to an untimely death. In 1900, 24-year-old Kostyushko-Valyuzhanich joined the ranks of the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party, became a member of the Yekaterinoslav Committee of the RSDLP. However, for his revolutionary activities, the young man was arrested already in 1901 and in February 1903 he was exiled to Siberia for a period of five years. The tsarist authorities hoped that during this time Kostyushko-Valyuzhanich would come to his senses and move away from the revolutionary movement, but the opposite happened - he not only did not become disillusioned with the revolutionary ideals, but also began to actively work to strengthen the social democratic organization in Chita. In 1904, Kostyushko-Valyuzhanich led an armed uprising of political exiles in Yakutsk, after which he was sentenced to twelve years in hard labor. The young man fled from hard labor. In October 1905, he illegally made his way to Chita, where, as an experienced revolutionary, he was immediately included in the Chita Committee of the RSDLP. It was Kostyushko-Valyuzhanich, given his military education, who was entrusted with leading revolutionary propaganda in the army and Cossack units. At the same time, he led the work on the creation of workers' squads of Chita, headed the Council of combat squads of the city.
On November 22, 1905, the workers of Chita instituted an eight-hour working day at the city's factories. On November 24, 1905, a 5,000-strong demonstration of workers took place in the city, demanding the immediate release from the local prison of the arrested political prisoners - two Cossacks and Social Democrat D. I. Krivonosenko. The regional authorities had no choice but to meet the demands of the demonstrators and release political prisoners to avoid mass unrest. In fact, power in the region was in the hands of the insurgent workers, although the governor I. V. Kholshchevnikov remained at his post. Military units of the 2nd Chita Infantry Regiment and the headquarters of the 1st Siberian Rifle Division were transferred from Manchuria to help the local authorities, but their arrival in the city did not have a significant impact on the political situation in Chita. The insurgent workers set out to seize the city's military depots, which contained a large amount of small arms and ammunition intended to arm the Russian army operating in Manchuria. The famous professional revolutionary Ivan Vasilyevich Babushkin (1873-1906) was sent from Irkutsk to Chita to lead the impending armed uprising. A veteran of the Russian social democratic movement, Ivan Babushkin was highly valued in the party as one of the few workers who stood at the origins of the creation of the RSDLP. His participation in the revolutionary movement, Ivan Babushkin, a peasant son from the village of Ledengskoe, Totemsky district of the Vologda province, began back in 1894. It was then that the 21-year-old locksmith of a steam locomotive-mechanical workshop began to participate in the activities of the Marxist circle headed by Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov-Lenin, who By the way, he was only three years older than Babushkin. Over the ten years of his revolutionary activity, Babushkin was arrested several times, and in 1903 he was exiled to Verkhoyansk (Yakutia). After the amnesty in 1905, he arrived in Irkutsk, from where he was sent by the leadership of the RSDLP to Chita to coordinate an armed uprising in this city.
From grabbing a weapon to grabbing a telegraph
December 5 and 12, 1905groups of armed workers, whose general leadership was carried out by Anton Kosciuszko-Valyuzhanich, carried out operations to seize weapons in army warehouses and in warehouse cars of the 3rd reserve railway battalion. The workers managed to seize fifteen hundred rifles and ammunition for them, which allowed the rebels to feel much more confident. On December 7, 1905, the publication of the newspaper "Zabaikalsky Rabochy" began, which was officially considered the organ of the Chita Committee of the RSDLP. The newspaper came out with a total circulation of 8-10 thousand copies, and it was edited by Viktor Konstantinovich Kurnatovsky (1868-1912), a former Narodnoye resident, who in 1898 in Minusinsk met V. I. Lenin and who signed the "Protest of the Russian Social Democrats." For his revolutionary activities, Kurnatovsky was exiled to Siberia in 1903. He settled in Yakutsk, where he took part in an attempt to organize an armed uprising of political exiles - the so-called "uprising of the Romanovites". On February 18, 1904, 56 political exiles seized a residential building in Yakutsk, which belonged to a certain Yakut by the name of Romanov - hence the name of the uprising - “the uprising of the Romanovites”. The rebels were armed with 25 revolvers, 2 Berdanks and 10 hunting rifles. They raised a red flag and put forward demands to relax the supervision of the exiles. The house was surrounded by a detachment of soldiers and after a long siege on March 7, the "Romanovites" were forced to surrender. All of them were put on trial and exiled to hard labor. Among the convicts was Kurnatovsky, who was sent to the Akatui convict prison. After the publication of the manifesto on October 17, Kurnatovsky, along with many other political prisoners, was released. He arrived in Chita, where he took part in organizing an armed uprising of the Chita workers. Like Kostyushko-Valyuzhanich, Kurnatovsky became one of the leaders of the local Council of Soldiers and Cossack Deputies, and in addition, he headed the newspaper "Zabaikalsky Rabochy". It was under the leadership of Kurnatovsky that the operation was carried out to free the arrested sailors who were held in the Akatuy convict prison. Fifteen sailors previously served on the Prut. On June 19, 1905, an uprising of sailors was raised on the Prut, led by the Bolshevik Alexander Mikhailovich Petrov (1882-1905). The ship headed for Odessa, where its crew intended to unite with the crew of the legendary battleship Potemkin. But in Odessa, "Prut" did not find "Potemkin", so he set off, raising the red flag, to Sevastopol. On the way, he was met by two destroyers and escorted to the naval base, where 42 of the ship's sailors were arrested. Fifteen of them ended up in the Akatui convict prison - one of the most terrible convict prisons in the Russian Empire.
The Akatuisk prison was founded in 1832 and was located 625 km from Chita at the Akatuisk mine of the Nerchinsk Mining District. Participants of the Polish uprisings, the People's Will, participants in the revolutionary events of 1905 were kept here. Among the most famous prisoners of Akatui are the Decembrist Mikhail Sergeevich Lunin, the Socialist Revolutionary Maria Alexandrovna Spiridonova, the anarchist Fanny Kaplan. Thus, the release of fifteen sailors held in the Akatuy convict prison was one of the few examples of such operations in the history of Russian prisons at the beginning of the 20th century. Naturally, it also added credibility to the Social Democrats in the eyes of the working population of Chita. In parallel with the release of political prisoners, actions to seize weapons continued. So, on the night of December 21-22, about two thousand rifles were captured at the Chita-1 station, which also entered service with the city workers' squads. On December 22, 1905, the workers' squad carried out the next major operation - the seizure of the mail and telegraph office of Chita. By the way, this decision was supported at a meeting of the city's postal and telegraph workers, and only after that the operation was carried out to seize the office building. The soldiers guarding the post and telegraph office did not put up armed resistance and were replaced by a post of armed workers' vigilantes.
Thus, as in a number of other regions of Russia, in Chita the real political situation in late December 1905 - early January 1906. was under the control of the revolutionaries. On January 9, 1906, a mass demonstration was held in Chita to mark the anniversary of the tragic events of "Bloody Sunday" on January 9, 1905. More than 5 thousand people took part in the demonstrations in Chita and a number of other settlements of the region, mainly workers and students, youth. On January 5 and 11, 1906, the armed workers' squad undertook a new operation to seize weapons - this time also at the Chita-1 station. During these days, the workers managed to seize 36 thousand rifles, 200 revolvers, ammunition and explosives. The leadership of the Council of Soldiers and Cossack Deputies had at their disposal weapons sufficient to arm a large infantry formation. Therefore, the Chita revolutionaries began to supply weapons to their like-minded people from other settlements. On January 9, 1906, three hundred rifles were sent to Verkhneudinsk to arm the local workers' squad. It was decided to send three more cars to the stations Irkutsk, Mysovaya and Slyudyanka. A group of vigilantes - telegraph workers, headed by Ivan Babushkin personally, was assigned to escort the weapons. However, the revolutionaries did not know that a punitive detachment under the command of General A. N. Meller-Zakomelsky. At the Slyudyanka station, the military detained Ivan Babushkin and his companions. On January 18, 1906, Ivan Babushkin and employees of the Chita telegraph office Byalykh, Ermolaev, Klyushnikov and Savin were shot without trial at Mysovaya station.
Expeditions of Rennenkampf and Meller-Zakomelsky
Despite the fact that the power in Chita was under the control of the revolutionaries, in reality their position was very precarious. Even with a large number of weapons, the workers' squad would not have been able to withstand full-fledged army formations that had moved forward to suppress the uprising. Troops were drawn to Chita from two sides - the expedition of General Meller-Zakomelsky was moving from the West, and troops under the command of General P. K. Rennenkampf.
The "western" detachment consisted of 200 people, but they were commanded by Lieutenant General Alexander Nikolaevich Meller-Zakomelsky (1844-1928). During his long life, Alexander Meller-Zakomelsky had to take part in the suppression of uprisings and revolutionary uprisings more than once. As a 19-year-old cornet of the Life Guards Hussar Regiment, he participated in the suppression of the Polish uprising of 1863. Then there was an eight-year service in Turkestan - in the "hottest" years of 1869-1877, where Meller-Zakomelsky commanded the 2nd line Turkestan battalion. Colonel Meller-Zakomelsky had a chance then to take part in the Russian-Turkish war. By the time the 1905 revolution began, Meller-Zakomelsky held the rank of lieutenant general as commander of the VII Army Corps. He commanded the suppression of revolutionary uprisings in Sevastopol. In December 1905, General Meller-Zakomelsky was sent at the head of a special punitive detachment recruited in the guards units to pacify the insurgent workers on the Trans-Baikal railway. During the punitive expedition, the elderly general was not distinguished by excessive humanism - he executed people without trial or investigation. On account of the Meller-Zakomelsky expedition - not only the murder of Ivan Babushkin and his telegraph comrades-in-arms, but also the execution of 20 railway workers at the Ilanskaya station.
The Eastern Punitive Squad departed by train from Harbin. An infantry battalion, reinforced with several machine guns, was included in its composition, and Lieutenant General Pavel Karlovich Rennenkampf (1854-1918) was put in command of the detachment. General Rennenkampf began his service in the Uhlan and Dragoon regiments of the Russian cavalry, already in the rank of major general he participated in the suppression of the boxing uprising in China. At the time of the events described, Rennenkampf was in command of the 7th Siberian Army Corps. The detachment under the command of General Rennenkampf had to solve the most important strategic task for the Russian army in Manchuria - to restore the railway communication between Manchuria and Western Siberia, from where the trains with reinforcements, weapons and ammunition were to follow. Communication was disrupted as a result of an armed uprising of the Chita railway workers, who in fact put the entire Trans-Baikal railway under their control and prevented the full supply of troops in Manchuria. Like Meller-Zakomelsky, Rennenkampf acted harshly against the revolutionaries and not always legally. On January 17, 1906, at the Borzya station, the soldiers of Rennenkampf, without trial or investigation, shot a member of the Chita committee of the RSDLP A. I. Popov (Konovalov). Realizing the danger of the current situation, the leadership of the Chita Committee of the RSDLP decided to send two subversive detachments to meet the troops moving from the west and from the east. The revolutionaries hoped that the saboteurs would be able to blow up the railway track and, thereby, prevent the advance of the troops of Rennenkampf and Meller-Zakomelsky.
However, the detachments of demolitions sent from Chita did not succeed in realizing the planned plan. The RSDLP and the Council of Workers' Militia, taking into account the peculiarities of the current situation, decided not to enter into open confrontation with the detachments of Rennenkampf and Meller-Zakomelsky, but to go on to partisan and sabotage struggle.
On January 22, 1906, troops under the command of Lieutenant General Rennenkampf entered Chita without encountering resistance from the local workers' squads. This is how the history of the Chita Republic ended. Rennenkampf, with emergency powers, began mass arrests. Governor I. V. Kholshchevnikov, who was formally on duty and did not create serious obstacles in the path of the revolutionaries, was accused of aiding the uprising. As for the arrested leaders of the Chita Republic, they were sentenced to death by hanging. Nevertheless, most of the revolutionaries were replaced by hard labor, and only four of the most active leaders of the uprising were sentenced to death instead of being hanged: Chairman of the Council of Workers' Militia Anton Antonovich Kostyushko-Valyuzhanich, assistant to the head of the Chita-1 railway station Ernest Vidovich Tsupsman, worker of the Main Railway Workshops Prokopy Evgrafovich Stolyarov, clerk of the Society of Consumers of Employees and Workers of the Trans-Baikal Railway Isai Aronovich Weinstein. On March 2 (15), 1906, the leaders of the Chita Republic, sentenced to death, were shot on the slope of the Titovskaya volcano. In general, by the twentieth of May 1906, 77 people were sentenced to death, accused of participating in an armed uprising. Another 15 people were sentenced to hard labor, 18 people were sentenced to imprisonment. In addition, more than 400 workers, whom the authorities suspected of political unreliability, were dismissed from the Main Railway Workshops and the depot in Chita and expelled from the city. Almost all the lower ranks of the 3rd reserve railway battalion were also arrested, as a result of the uprising in which Second Lieutenant Ivashchenko, one of the battalion's officers, was killed, and weapons were handed over to the revolutionary squads. Lieutenant General Rennenkampf telegraphed Emperor Nicholas II about the suppression of the uprising. The defeat of the Chita Republic did not lead to a complete cessation of the activities of revolutionary organizations in the city and its environs. So, the Chita Committee of the RSDLP continued its activities in an illegal position and by May 1, 1906.new revolutionary leaflets appeared on the streets of Chita. In 1906 alone, 15 workers 'strikes and strikes, 6 soldiers' demonstrations were organized in Transbaikalia; disturbances of the local peasant population occurred in 53 rural settlements. But in general, the revolutionary movement in the region, after the harsh actions of the punitive expedition of Rennenkampf, began to decline. In the next 1907, there were only three workers 'strikes, five peasant demonstrations and four soldiers' demonstrations. Thus, we can conclude that the revolutionary movement in the Trans-Baikal Territory as a result of the actions of the punitive expeditions of Rennenkampf and Meller-Zakomelsky suffered a serious defeat and the revolutionary organizations of the region were able to recover from its consequences only by the February and October revolutions of 1917.
What happened after …
Lieutenant General Rennenkampf subsequently commanded the 3rd Siberian Army Corps and the 3rd Army Corps (until 1913). On October 30, 1906, the revolutionaries tried to take revenge on the general for the massacre of comrades. When the 52-year-old lieutenant general walked along the street with his assistants - the adjutant staff captain Berg and the orderly Lieutenant Gaisler, the socialist-revolutionary N. V. The kite, sitting on the bench, threw a shell at the officers. But the explosion only managed to stun the general and his assistants. The intruder was seized and subsequently brought to justice. In 1910, Rennenkampf received the rank of general from the cavalry, and in 1913 he was appointed commander of the Vilna military district. At the beginning of World War I, he served as commander of the 1st Army of the Northwestern Front. However, after the ód operation, General Rennenkampf was removed from his post as army commander and on October 6, 1915, he was dismissed "with a uniform and a pension." Immediately after the February Revolution, Rennenkampf was arrested and placed in the Peter and Paul Fortress, but in October 1917, during the October Revolution, the Bolsheviks released him from prison. Under the name of the petty bourgeois Smokovnikov, he went to Taganrog, the homeland of his wife, then hid under the name of the Greek Mandusakis, but was hunted down by the Chekists. Rennenkampf was taken to the headquarters of Antonov-Ovseenko, who suggested that the general go to serve in the Red Army. The general refused and on the night of April 1, 1918, he was shot near Taganrog.
Infantry General Meller-Zakomelsky from October 17, 1906, served as the interim Baltic Governor-General, in which he was also responsible for suppressing the revolutionary movement in the Baltic States. Since 1909, he was a member of the State Council, but in 1912 he was declared not present - the general cohabited with a young mistress and carried out a machination with the estate, which compromised him and caused discontent on the part of the emperor. Among other members of the State Council, after the February Revolution on May 1, 1917, General Meller-Zakomelsky was removed from the staff, and in December 1917, according to a decree of the Council of People's Commissars, he was dismissed from service on 1917-25-10. In 1918, Meller-Zakomelsky emigrated to France, where he died ten years later at a very old age.
As for the famous Chita revolutionaries, most of them were killed during the suppression of the Chita Republic. One of the few leaders of the uprising who survived was Viktor Konstantinovich Kurnatovsky. He, among other leaders and active participants in the uprising, was captured by the punitive detachment of Rennenkampf and in March 1906 was sentenced to death. However, on April 2 (15), 1906, the death penalty for Kurnatovsky was replaced with indefinite hard labor. But a month later, on May 21 (June 3), 1906, Kurnatovsky, together with a propagandized sentry, using the help of a doctor, fled from the Nerchinsk city hospital. He managed to get to Vladivostok and, with the help of the local organization of the Social Democrats, got over to Japan, from where he left for Paris. However, in exile, Kurnatovsky's life was not long - six years later, on September 19 (October 2), 1912, the former leader of the Chita Republic died in Paris at the age of 45. The illnesses received in hard labor made themselves felt, significantly reducing the life expectancy of the revolutionary.
Much more successful was the life of another Trans-Baikal revolutionary - Nikolai Nikolaevich Baransky (1881-1963). The author of the Charter of the trade union workers of the Trans-Baikal Railway managed to remain at large and in 1906 it was Baransky who directed the restoration of the activities of the social democratic organization in Chita after the defeat of the revolutionary movement by Rennenkampf. After the October Revolution, Baransky taught in a number of educational institutions, including the Higher Party School. In 1939 he was elected a corresponding member of the USSR Academy of Sciences, from 1946 to 1953. headed the editorial office of economic and political geography of the Foreign Literature Publishing House. A number of textbooks on economic geography were published under the editorship and authorship of Baransky; he is considered the founder of the Soviet regional school, which for a long time dominated domestic economic geography.
Memory of the events of 1905-1906 in Chita sought to perpetuate Soviet power. In 1941, the city of Mysovsk in Buryatia, where Babushkin and his companions were killed, was renamed Babushkin. His native village and district in the Vologda region bear the name of Babushkin. Streets in many cities of the country were named after Babushkin. As for the less well-known leaders of the Chita Republic outside of Transbaikalia, their memory is kept by the names of streets, monuments and memorial plaques in Chita itself and the surrounding cities. So, at the place of execution of the participants of the armed uprising at the foot of Titovskaya Sopka in 1926, a monument was erected to the executed revolutionaries A. A. Kostyushko-Valyuzhanich, E. V. Tsupsman, P. E. Stolyarov, I. A. Vainshtein. A number of streets in Chita were named after the leaders of the Chita Republic - Kostyushko-Valyuzhanich, Stolyarov, Kurnatovsky, Babushkin, Baransky, Weinstein, Tsupsman. In the town of Borza, the street bears the name of the social democrat A. I. Popov (Konovalov). The Regional Museum of Local Lore of Transbaikalia bears the name of A. K. Kuznetsov. The Zabaikalsky Rabochy newspaper, founded by him, is the best monument to Viktor Kurnatovsky, whose name is a street in Chita. This printed edition has been published for 110 years - from the very time it became, in fact, the official organ of the Chita Republic. Currently, Zabaikalsky Rabochy is a daily socio-political newspaper.
