After the terrorist attack, Blumkin and his comrades decided to hide in a special detachment of the Moscow Cheka, commanded for some reason by the left SR sailor Popov. And in the detachment, too, there were mainly sailors who condemned the Brest-Litovsk Peace and were dissatisfied with the destruction of the fleet.
Now let's see. You are the head of the Cheka, but you do not know either the mood in your special task force, or whoever breathes what … What kind of leadership is this? But this is exactly how it turns out that Dzerzhinsky was in charge of the Cheka. Because when he found out that Blumkin was in Popov's detachment, he himself went there … Did he count on his authority? Consciousness of an alcoholized sailor? It is clear that there he was arrested by their own Socialist-Revolutionaries and happiness (although for whom is happiness?), That they did not kill immediately, but decided to make him a hostage.
This is how Yakov Blumkin looked in the 1920s …
Well, with Blumkin at that time it was like that. It turned out that because of his wound he could not walk and he was carried in his arms to the detachment's infirmary, having previously shaved his beard and changed into a tunic. Disguised, in a word!
Meanwhile, the Central Committee of the Left SRs moved into the mansion where Popov's detachment was located and, having at hand two thousand bayonets and sabers, and forty-eight machine guns, four armored vehicles and eight artillery pieces, began an uprising. In addition to Dzerzhinsky, the rebels also arrested the Chekist M. Latsis and the chairman of the Moscow Soviet, the Bolshevik P. Smidovich. But although they managed to achieve certain successes, their uprising was initially doomed to failure. There is a beautifully shot film "July 6", where the events of that day are presented in the most dramatic way for the Bolshevik party, but in fact the overwhelming majority in the armed forces was not at all with the Socialist-Revolutionaries.
Already at 6 o'clock in the morning on July 7, artillery fire was opened on the mansion where the main forces of the Left SRs were located. The Bolsheviks no longer needed Blumkin, especially since Lenin had already apologized for what had happened to the German side. And it was profitable for the Germans to hush up this "business" and continue to siphon funds from Ukraine further. Moreover, the current situation was extremely beneficial for the Bolsheviks. Right in the hall of the Bolshoi Theater during the V All-Russian Congress of Soviets, the entire Left Socialist-Revolutionary faction, together with their leader Maria Spiridonova, was arrested. And although Popov began to threaten that "after Marusya he would demolish half the Kremlin, half the Lubyanka, half the Theater with artillery!" The Bolsheviks, having at hand a whole division of Latvian riflemen, were initially stronger.
But in this book Bonch-Bruyevich described in detail the July 6 mutiny. "That's just, what if the boy was not there?"
The Bolsheviks had fifteen guns, from which they began shelling the quarter where the Left SR headquarters was located and soon destroyed many houses there. In fact, by 5 o'clock on July 7, the revolt of the Left SRs was completely suppressed. More than 300 of them died in the battle or were shot on the spot, and about 600 were arrested. Lenin issued a decree on the need to arrest all militants of the Left Socialist-Revolutionary Party and members of their Central Committee. Soon 13 people from among the leaders of the uprising were shot.
D. Popov, however, being sentenced to death in absentia, managed to escape from Moscow and … escaped with Makhno. Blumkin also escaped, but the Socialist-Revolutionary Party ceased to exist. If before the rebellion on July 6, 20-23% of the Left Socialist-Revolutionaries were in the provincial Soviets across the country, then by the end of 1918 there were only 1% of them.
However, there is a version that there was no rebellion, that all this was rigged and organized by the Bolsheviks, who thus decided to get rid of dangerous competitors. About this write O. Shishkin (Battle for the Himalayas. M., 1999) and V. Romanov (Killed on July 6. M., 1997), who in their books argued that both the terrorist attack and the murder of Mirbakh were sanctioned by Lenin and Dzerzhinsky. Later, Blumkin, in a conversation with Lunacharsky's wife, Natalya Lunacharskaya-Rosenel and her cousin Tatyana Sats, admitted that both Lenin and Dzerzhinsky knew about the impending assassination attempt on the German ambassador. And Lenin then ordered the murderers by telephone to “search, search very carefully, but not find”.
Evidence that Blumkin acted with "highest" approval is also shown by the fact that the Revolutionary Tribunal at the All-Russian Central Executive Committee sentenced him for murder after only three years in prison. Since he was wounded, he was kept in a guarded hospital, but … On July 9, 1918, he safely escaped from there and went to St. Petersburg, where, under the name Vladimirov, Konstantin Konstantinovich got a job in the Cheka!
But how then do Dzerzhinsky's words look after the suppression of the Socialist-Revolutionary "rebellion", that he did not trust Blumkin and even dismissed him for … his excessive talkativeness. But it turns out that the same Dzerzhinsky first hides Blumkin, convicted by the Soviet court, in the states of his institution, and then in September 1918 sends him to work in Ukraine.
There, being in Kiev, he turns out to be part of the second combat Kiev group, which was supposed to kill Hetman Skoropadsky. The group consisted of four Maximalist SRs and four Left SRs. The terrorist attack was supposed to take place on November 26, 1918, and was entrusted to the same Andreev, but due to the malfunction of the bombs, it did not take place.
And in April 1919, he suddenly appeared in the Kiev Cheka and surrendered to "Soviet justice." And this at a time when the Left SRs were being shot across the country for just membership in the party. And here is such a brave and, one might say, desperate step and practically without consequences! In his statement to the Cheka, he argued that, in fact, there was no revolt of the Left Socialist Revolutionaries at all, but only "the self-defense of the revolutionaries after the Central Committee refused to extradite me" and insisted that by appearing in the Cheka he wanted to stop all false attacks on the Left Social Revolutionaries …
And now guess from one time how the investigation in the Blumkin case ended? In agreement with the Presidium of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee of Soviets and, of course, with the approval of the "iron Felix", irreconcilable to the enemies of the revolution, the commission of inquiry decided Blumkin … to amnesty! And immediately, after this amnesty in May 1919, he immediately expressed a passionate desire to work in the Cheka and … he was taken there for the third time!
What he did after that is practically unknown, but there is evidence that he joined either one "revolutionary party" (and there were many of them), then another, and as soon as somewhere, someone in them conceived to oppose the Bolsheviks, so immediately and fell on the bunks or even worse. And such a strange algorithm of his behavior was noticed. Exactly one year after their failed uprising on June 6, 1919, the Left Social Revolutionaries invited Blumkin to a gathering outside the city, where they read him an indictment, declaring him a traitor and a provocateur. Blumkin listened to them, turned and ran! And those gathered began to shoot at him and … did not hit! And they didn't catch up, that's how! One would think that this assassination attempt is just a staging. But in reality this was not the case.
A few days later, when Blumkin was in a cafe on Khreshchatyk, two people approached him and fired several shots at point-blank range. The music drowned out the shots, so the assassins managed to escape. The wounded Blumkin was taken in serious condition to the Georgievsk hospital, but on June 17, right to his room, the SRs managed to throw a bomb, and it is fortunate that no one was injured there from its explosion.
Having recovered his health, Blumkin, on the instructions of the Socialist Revolutionaries-maximalists, went to the Southern Front, where he first became an authorized agent for the fight against espionage at the Special Department of the 13th Army and an instructor in reconnaissance and terrorist activities, in which capacity he began to prepare a terrorist attack against Denikin. And then he received the post of chief of staff of the 79th brigade of the 27th division and … became a member of the RCP (b).
Blumkin returned to Moscow in March 1920 and was immediately enrolled as a student of the Academy of the General Staff of the Red Army at the Eastern Faculty, where he trained intelligence agencies and employees for Soviet embassies abroad. They taught there not out of fear, but out of conscience from nine in the morning until ten in the evening. The students were supposed to learn several oriental languages and gain military, economic and political knowledge. True, it was more difficult for Blumkin to study than for others, since he was periodically seized by the fear that the Left Social Revolutionaries would find him and kill him again. After all, no one canceled the sentence passed on him, and very many knew that he had been passed …
But, despite all his fears, he still graduated from the Academy. Now, in addition to his native Hebrew, he also knew Turkish, Arabic, Chinese and Mongolian languages (at least he could at least somehow communicate at the everyday level), but he received a job assignment not just anywhere, but in the apparatus of the People's Commissar for the military and naval affairs of L. Trotsky for the post of his personal secretary.
