Actually, this material should be given on May 28, in memory, so to speak, of the events about which it speaks. But since the topic of the "White Bohemian rebellion" interested many readers of the VO, I thought that it makes sense to turn to my archive, where there is material on this topic. It was once published in Tankomaster magazine, but was significantly revised based on newspaper articles from 1918.
Armored cars sent to Penza.
Well, and it should start with the fact that he was still a student at the Penza Pedagogical Institute named after V. I. V. G. Belinsky (where in 1972 I began to study at the Faculty of History and Philology, receiving at the same time the specialty of a teacher of history and the English language), I decided to study science, and enrolled in the scientific circle of Professor Vsevolod Feoktistovich Morozov, our then first doctor of sciences in the history of the CPSU, who I gave our students a report to write about how in 1918, in May, the "White Czechs" captured Penza. At the same time, he ordered them to turn to the memories of still living witnesses of those events.
The report was read, and even then I thought that something was clearly missing in the information they had collected about those events. Ends do not tie ends! So, for example, from it it became clear that the train with the Czechs, which arrived at the Penza-3 station, did not have guns, they were all surrendered before that. However, according to the recollections of one eyewitness, the Czechs were firing at the city from cannons, and one "cannonball" fell into the corner of a house on Sovetskaya Square. Further more: the entire center of Penza, which was stormed by the "White Czechs", is located on a mountain, and a river separates it from the station where their echelons were stationed. Yes, there were wooden bridges, but there were machine guns on the bell tower of the cathedral and on the river bank. The Soviet troops that defended the city had artillery. And how did the Czechs, under the fire of artillery and machine guns, manage to cross these two bridges and climb up the mountain? It's hard to go there and light, but then run under machine-gun fire with full gear!
On the offensive, the advantage in forces should be at the level of 6: 1, so did the Czechs really have such an advantage? In general, it was very difficult for our speaker at that conference. When he began to tell that "the White Czechs entered the city through bridges," they began to ask him how this could be, because it is absolutely clear that if a machine gun was placed at each bridge, then the infantry would not be able to cross it. Moreover, the Bolsheviks in Penza had machine guns then, if they were on the bell tower of the city cathedral, and in the house of the Council on the same Cathedral Square, and in various other places in the city.
With regard to the Czechs, an order was read out: “In each echelon, leave for your own protection an armed company of 168 people, including non-commissioned officers, and one machine gun, for each rifle 300, for a machine gun 1200 charges. All other rifles and machine guns, all guns must be handed over to the Russian government in the hands of a special commission in Penza, consisting of three representatives of the Czechoslovak army and three representatives of the Soviet government … "[1]. So the corps passed the guns when it was leaving the Ukraine for Russia. But neither the speaker, nor the co-speakers, nor our professor Morozov himself gave so exhaustive answers to the questions of various meticulous students.
Participant of three wars
It turned out that either “ours” were in a complete minority, or “they didn’t know how to fight,” or the “Czechs” had too much superiority in strength and were brave to the point of insanity! Or something we did not know about all this … However, the story about those events is best to start with clarifying the reasons for this "rebellion", and its background, which in its own way is very instructive. But first of all, it should be said about who these same Czechs were and what they did in Russia in 1918. Briefly about them we can say this: they are collaborators, then … "Vlasovites".
Already at the beginning of World War I, the Czechs and Slovaks who fought in the army of the Austro-Hungarian Empire deserted whole regiments and surrendered to the Russians (well, they did not like either the Austrians or the Hungarians - what can you do ?!), so in the end they were formed from them. a whole corps (created on October 9, 1917) of 40 thousand soldiers, called upon to fight along with the Russian army for the independence of the Czech Republic and Slovakia, that is, against their state - the Austro-Hungarian monarchy. After the victory, they were promised the creation of an independent state, just as Hitler promised our Cossacks the republic of "Cossacks" and, naturally, for this they went to fight very willingly. The Czechoslovakians, naturally, considered themselves part of the Entente troops, and fought against the Germans and Austrians on the territory of Ukraine. When the Russian Empire ordered to live long, parts of the Czechoslovak corps stood near Zhitomir, then retreated to Kiev, and from there to Bakhmach.
And it was here that Soviet Russia signed the "Brest Peace" and became a de facto ally of Germany, which was transferred to the Baltic States, Belarus, Ukraine to Rostov and the entire Black Sea fleet. In accordance with it, all the Entente troops (in Russia, where, in addition to the Czechoslovakians, there were also English and Belgian armored divisions, and many other units) had to be urgently removed from the country, whose allies they were quite recently. And although the newspaper "Pravda" and local newspapers wrote in March 1918 that "50,000 Czecho-Slovaks went over to the side of the Soviet republic" [2], in reality this was far from the case!
They did not "go anywhere", but it so happened that the leaders of the Czechoslovak corps, together with Joseph Stalin - at that time the People's Commissar for Nationalities, signed an agreement, according to which the corps was to leave for France through Vladivostok, and all its heavy surrender weapons.
Penza was designated the point of delivery of weapons, where the former allies were loaded into echelons and sent along the Trans-Siberian Railway to the Pacific Ocean. Those who did not want to go to the Western Front here, in Penza, could enroll in the Czechoslovak regiment organized in the Red Army.
But then, at the end of April 1918, the German side demanded to stop sending trains with the Czechoslovakians. But they gave a "green light" to echelons with captured Austrian and German soldiers, who were urgently returned to their homeland from camps on the territory of modern Kazakhstan. And it is clear that the German army, which fought on the Western Front, needed reinforcements, and the appearance of 50,000 Czechoslovakians at the front in France was not at all necessary. Well, the Bolsheviks had to "pay off their debts." Everything is according to the saying: you love to ride, love to carry sledges. On the Black Sea ships, those that were not sunk in Novorossiysk, the Kaiser's flags were already fluttering, but what about the Czechoslovakians? And about them it was like this: on May 14, in Chelyabinsk, Austro-Hungarian prisoners of war threw a piece of iron from a passing train and "seemingly accidentally" seriously wounded one Czech soldier. The Czechoslovakians stopped the train with the prisoners of the Hungarians, and the culprit was found and … they were immediately shot by lynching.
The local council did not begin to clarify the matter, but the ringleaders were arrested. Then on May 17, the 3rd and 6th regiments of the Czechoslovak corps occupied Chelyabinsk and released the arrested comrades. This time, the conflict between the Czechs and the Soviet government was resolved peacefully. But on May 21, the Czechs intercepted a telegram sent signed by Leon Trotsky, the people's commissar for military affairs, which contained an order to disband all Czechoslovak units immediately or, instead of being sent to France, turn them into … a labor army! In response, the Czechoslovakians … decided to go to Vladivostok on their own in spite of everything.
Trotsky did not like it when whoever undermined his authority by failing to comply with his orders. Therefore, on May 25, he issued an order: by any available means to stop the Czechoslovak echelons, and to shoot any Czechoslovakian who is in the area of the highway with a weapon in his hands immediately.
Thus, it was the Soviet government that was the first to declare war on the corps. And he accepted the challenge, although thereby he became a participant in four wars at once - the war of the Entente with Germany and its allies, the civil war with those Czechs who remained loyal to the Austro-Hungarian monarchy, the "Red Czechs" that were passed on to the Bolsheviks, and also the civil war in territory of Russia, and turned into one of the active participants in all these wars.
Newspaper pages testify …
Even today I cannot understand why our professor Morozov did not send us to the city archives that time so that we could read about all these events in the Penza newspapers, because then we had to be satisfied with the recollections of eyewitnesses and secondary sources. But when I was able to read all our newspapers, they revealed a lot of interesting things. For example, in the Bulletin "Penza Izvestiya Sovdep" and in the newspaper "Molot" in the section "About events" it was directly reported that "about the causes of the bloody events that took place in the city, there are (as it is written in the text - V. O.) noises … "- and" it is necessary to clarify. " Then it was written that "the Czech echelons are the remnants of the Russian army …, which fell under the influence of their counter-revolutionary officers, that" trains with food … were not allowed by the rapists at all "(from Siberia). Further, that on the morning of May 28, "the Czechoslovak troops captured three armored cars sent to the Soviet, thus starting military operations." “Already at 1-2 o'clock, shots began to be heard and machine guns began to chirr here and there. And, finally, the artillery rumbled …”[3]. Then the newspaper gave a colorful description of the rampant robbery that the Czechs committed in Penza (who wanted to know about the robberies in the comments to the previous article "about the Czechs? Here!"), And about the "cowardly" withdrawal of the rebels by rail. It was reported about 83 corpses of Penza residents, which were offered in the morgue of the city hospital for identification, and 23 corpses at the chapel in one of the city churches.
Attention was drawn to the fact that many Red Army men were killed by explosive bullets, which for some reason the Czechs had in abundance. That is, the Czechs in Penza also violated the international convention - that's how it is! In the newspaper Izvestia of the Penza Council of Workers, Peasants and Soldiers' Deputies, dated June 2, 1918, the armed struggle against the Czechoslovakians was reported hourly: “At 12 o'clock (May 28) Penza was declared a state of siege. In the city, the workers' Red Guard took up arms. Trenches are being dug and barricades are being built. 2 hours - ours are busy with the crossings across the Penza River and are under fire with rifle and machine-gun fire. 4 o'clock in the afternoon - artillery fire began. 12 o'clock in the morning - the shooting does not subside …”[4] The newspaper could not write about what happened next, since it was published only on June 2, when the trains of Czechoslovakians from Penza had already left. That is, there were cannons firing, and there were even armored cars, but it was impossible to learn more about this either from newspapers or from other archival materials of the State Archives of the Penza Region.
Penza. Ryazan-Uralskaya railway station (now Penza-3 station).
The same building. View from the side of the railway tracks.
A gift from fate
It is known from Soviet historical literature that in the vastness of Russia the Czechoslovak Corps stretched along the entire Trans-Siberian Railway, and at the same time there were six groups in it - Penza, Chelyabinsk, Novonikolaevskaya, Mariinskaya, Nizhneudinskaya and Vladivostokskaya, which were sufficiently isolated from each other.
At the same time, the Penza group was one of the largest and most heavily armed. It consisted of the 1st Rifle Regiment named after Jan Hus, the 4th Rifle Regiment of Prokop Gologo, the 1st Reserve Hussite Regiment and the 1st Artillery Brigade of Jan Zizka from Trotsnov, who were able to retain some of the weapons put by the state. However, it would be very difficult for them to take by storm a city on a hill, and such a big one as Penza, if there were no circumstances here unknown to us. And here the question naturally arises: what were these circumstances?
Czechs at the captured armored car.
In Soviet times, it was usually written that "the most powerful and dangerous group for the Bolsheviks was on the Serdobsk-Penza-Syzran railway line and had a total number of about 8 thousand soldiers." But these 8 thousand were not in Penza, so it can hardly be argued that the Czechoslovakians had a significant advantage in manpower. Consequently, the Czechs did not defeat the Penza garrison by the number of fighters. It was something else. But then what?
And here in the Czech magazine NRM I came across material about … Czech armored cars that took part in the assault … Penza! The editors of the magazine put me in touch with the Prague Diffrological Society (a society of amateurs of the history of armored vehicles), and from there they sent me information about those events from the private archives of the Czech Republic and Slovakia, as well as a photo from the collection of B. Panush and another scheme of I. Vanek. All these materials were published in the magazine "Tankomaster" [5], but there were no links to sources, since the materials were sent to me in typewritten form, and we did not publish links in it. And now the unknown factor was found out. It turns out that the insurgent Czechoslovakians were helped … by the Bolsheviks themselves, who sent three armored cars to Penza to "suppress the Czechs" that arrived by rail at the Penza-3 station. They sent them to the Penza Soviet, because of obvious bungling and by coincidence, all armored cars fell into the hands of the Czechs. Moreover, the armored cars were brought to Penza … by the Chinese (!), And they did not really resist the Czechs, and handed over all three armored cars intact. And the most interesting thing is that only here in the USSR did not know about it, and in socialist Czechoslovakia they knew about it well, since the memoirs of S. Chechek, one of the commanders of the rebellious corps, where all these details were given, were published in 1928! [6]
BA "Austin"
BA "Garford-Putilovsky"
Well, for the Czechoslovakians, the armored cars sent to "pacify" them became just a "gift of fate." BA "Grozny", for example, was a heavy cannon vehicle "Garford-Putilovsky" with a 76, 2-mm cannon in a rotating turret in the rear of the hull and with three Maxim machine guns in the turret and sponsons. BA "Armstrong-Whitworth-Fiat" called "Infernal" had two machine-gun turrets with 7, 62-mm machine guns, and the third, also with two machine guns, was assembled from parts of the Austin armored cars of the 1st and 2nd series. One machine gun on it stood next to the driver, the other in the tower. Moreover, on its tower even the Kornilov emblem has been preserved, i.e. skull and Bones! And at that time it was a formidable force. It only remained to apply it correctly, which the Czechs did!
The Lebedev Bridge was considered the most important in the city by its importance. For it connected the city center with the Ryazan-Uralsky railway station Penza III, with the orders across the river and a military camp located behind the railway. But judge for yourself, is it possible for infantry to break through such a bridge under the fire of at least one Maxim machine gun?
View of the same bridge from the side of Sands. Most likely, the holiday of the Blessing of Water was photographed. As you can see, there were enough bell towers on which machine guns could be installed in the city then!
The main thing is to have a good plan.
It was these BAs that ultimately decided the fate of Penza, since it was simply unthinkable to storm it without their support. At that time, the Penza-3 station (in 1918 - the Uralsky railway station) was separated from the central part of the city by the Penza River and also by the Starorechye - the old channel of the Penza River, which was flooded with water during floods, which turned the village of Peski into an island, located opposite this station … When Starorechye dried up after the flood, a small stream flowed along it, over which a bridge was built (more like a flimsy footbridge with a railing). The infantry could pass through them, and through Peski, across the Lebedevsky bridge, make their way to the city center. But the defenders of the city were shooting the bridge from the embankment with machine-gun fire. Here it was possible to pass only under the cover of an armored car, although it is not known how the Czechs dragged it across the Old River creek.
View of the city from the east. In the foreground is the Starorechensky brook and the river bed, which was flooded during the flood. Here, in theory, the rebellious Czechoslovakians were supposed to move towards the Lebedevsky Bridge.
“View of Penza from the Dragoon passage at the end of Predtecheskaya street (now Bakunin). In 1914, the Red Bridge (now Bakuninsky) was built on that place. There is such a photo on the site of the history of Penza, and this signature was taken from there. However, in reality, it is not Penza that is depicted here. There was no such place in Penza at that time anywhere.
However, maybe they didn't need it. After all, down the river there was another solid bridge - Tatarsky, but it was impossible to take it with the forces of one infantry, since this and all other bridges were under machine-gun fire, which, by the way, was reported by the Penza Izvestia.
On May 29, the Czechs launched the Hellskiy armored car in front of their units, which was supposed to defiantly depict an attack across a bridge across the river in the Peskov area. The single-turret Austin, armed with two machine guns, moved along Moskovskaya Street, the main street of Penza. Now it is pedestrian, because it is very steep, and in winter you can easily go sledging along it. And it was also paved with cobblestones, as the cobblestones are slippery, and then at the Austin, when he was driving uphill, the engine suddenly began to jerk. The clutch of the brakes from the cobblestone pavement was not enough, and the armored car crawled down, although the driver tried with all his might to start the engine, and the soldiers were pushing him from behind.
But then, luckily for the attackers, the armored car's engine started working, and the Austin slowly moved on. But already at the very top of Moskovskaya Street, he stopped again, since telegraph wires hung across the street there, and he got entangled in them. But this did not delay him very much, and at about 11 o'clock in the morning he finally left for Cathedral Square and with the fire of his machine guns silenced the machine guns of the Reds in the Council building and in the Cathedral bell tower. And then the infantry went on the attack, and even before noon the Czechs already completely controlled the city. Their trophies were a significant amount of weapons and ammunition and 1,500 Red Army prisoners, whom they did not shoot, but released to their homes [7].
Armored car "Grozny", 1st Czech regiment in Penza, 1918-28-05 "Garford" at 6 o'clock in the morning on May 29, the Czechs put on a railway platform (although it may well be that they did not even take it off it!), and, as support, units of the 4th regiment were sent to the west, to the city of Serdobsk, where the 1st battalion of the 4th regiment was located, communication with which was interrupted.
Once on the spot, this "armored train" with the fire of its cannon dispersed parts of the Serdobsky council, and then entered into battle with the approaching armored train of the Reds, and forced it to retreat. Thanks to this, the 1st battalion was able to leave for Penza. Note that, apparently, this BA traveled on this platform until the end of the battles, since it was difficult to use it on the dirt roads of Russia due to its heavy weight. So in the confrontation between the Penza Bolsheviks and the Czechoslovakians, everything was decided by the superiority of the latter in technology. The way home, the way to a new war!
After the Czechs left Penza, although the local wealthy offered them two million "tsars", if they stayed, they, using armored cars, first captured Samara, and then established contact with parts of the Chelyabinsk group's corps. But further on, delegations of the Russian public became frequent visitors, who asked them to stay. In addition, they were often opposed by part of the Reds from the Magyar prisoners of war recruited in the camps, with whom the Czechs had their own scores, so they decided to stay on the Volga and fight against them on the side of the Entente here.
And yes, indeed, this decision was very important, because as a result, 40 thousand Czechoslovakians were simply blocked in POW camps in Siberia and Kazakhstan … up to one million German and Austrian prisoners of war who never got to the Western Front. That is why Atlanta appreciated the actions of the Czechoslovak corps in Russia very highly and provided him with all kinds of support, although he, in general, fought and not too actively!
The first steamer with the soldiers of the corps and the women and children who joined them sailed from Vladivostok in November 1919, and the last left Russia in May 1920. The Czechs agreed with the Soviet regime that the corps units concentrated in Vladivostok would remain neutral, but would not disarm either. And now Trotsky had nothing against it.
The corps commander, General Gaida, tried to transfer a large number of small arms to the Koreans who fought against the Japanese, for which the Koreans are grateful to the Czechs to this day! Well, three armored vehicles of an unknown type from among the trophies captured in battles with the Red Army, they sold to the Chinese in Harbin. So, in the end, the collaboration of captured Czechoslovak soldiers was crowned with … complete success!
Monument to the victims of the White Bohemian rebellion in the center of Penza.
Sources of
1. See in more detail: Tsvetkov V. Zh. Legion of the Civil War. "Independent Military Review" No. 48 (122), December 18, 1998.
2. Proceedings of the Penza Soviet of Workers', Peasants' and Soldiers' Deputies”No. 36 (239). March 2, 1918 C.1.
3. "About events". In the same place. C.1
4. Proceedings of the Penza Soviet of Workers', Peasants' and Soldiers' Deputies”No. 36 (239). March 2, 1918 3105 (208), May 29, 1918 C.2.
5. Suslavyachus L., Shpakovsky V. Rebellious armor. Tankomaster, No. 6, 2002. P.17-21.
6. Chechek S. From Penza to the Urals - Will of the people (Prague), 1928, No. 8-9. S.252-256.
7. L. G. Priceman. The Czechoslovak Corps in 1918. Questions of History, No. 5, 2012. P.96.
Rice. A. Shepsa.
