"Kushki will not be sent further, they will not give less platoon" - an old proverb of officers of the imperial and later Soviet army. Alas, now the name Kushka says nothing 99, 99% of our senior pupils and students. Well, until 1991, our schoolchildren knew Kushka as the southernmost point of the USSR, the place “where geography ends” and where in July the temperature exceeds +40 degrees, and in January - for –20 degrees. However, few people know that it was here that Russian engineers in the late 1890s built the most powerful fortress in all of Central Asia.
The veil of oblivion
The fortresses of imperial Russia are still in oblivion. Any church of the 18th century or the house of a merchant of the 19th century has long become attractions of the county towns, and tourists from the capital are taken there by buses.
Well, our fortresses have always been the "top" secrets of the empire. Even after the abolition of the fortress, it did not cease to remain a closed object - a military warehouse, a prison for political prisoners, etc. For example, the Rubezh missile system was based at the Rif fort in Kronstadt for a long time. Fortresses were convenient sites for experiments in the creation of chemical and biological weapons. Let us recall the "Plague Fort" in Kronstadt. In the 1930s, in the forts of the Brest Fortress, Poles tested biological weapons on prisoners, etc.
Kushka also did not escape this fate - until the beginning of the 21st century there was always a Soviet and later a Russian military base.
FOR LOYALTY TO THE RUSSIAN TSAR
The Russians came to Kushka 131 years ago. In 1882, Lieutenant General A. V. Komarov. He drew special attention to the city of Merv - "a nest of robbery and destruction that hindered the development of almost all of Central Asia", and at the end of 1883 sent a captain-captain Alikhanov and a Tekin citizen, Major Mahmut-Kuli-khan, with a proposal to the Mervites to accept Russian citizenship. This assignment was carried out brilliantly, and already on January 25, 1884, a deputation from Merv arrived in Askhabad and presented Komarov with a petition addressed to the emperor to accept the city of Merv into Russian citizenship. The highest consent was soon entrusted, and the Mervtsy swore allegiance to the Russian Tsar.
In 1883, Emir Abdurrahman Khan, incited by the British, occupied the Pendinsky oasis on the Murtaba River. At the same time, Afghan troops captured the strategically important point of Akrabat, a junction of mountain roads. Akrabat was inhabited by Turkmens, and now it is located on the territory of Turkmenistan.
Afghan troops occupied the post of Tash-Kepri on the Kushka River, where the city of Kushka is now located. The patience of General Komarov came to an end, and he formed a special Murghab detachment to repulse the invaders. The detachment consisted of eight infantry companies, three hundred Cossacks, a hundred mounted Turkmens, a sapper squad and four mountain guns, about 1800 people in total.
By March 8, 1885, the Murghab detachment moved to Aimak-Jaar, on March 12 approached the Krush-Dushan tract, and the next day approached Kash-Kepri and stopped at a Russian forward post of 30 militiamen on the Kizil-Tepe hill. Two or four versts from the Russian detachment were the positions of the Afghans under the command of Naib-Salar. Salar had 2,500 horsemen and 1,500 infantry with eight cannons.
General Komarov tried to negotiate with the Afghans and the British officer Captain Ietta. As Komarov reported, the Afghans were becoming more and more daring, accepting the negotiations begun with them as a manifestation of weakness.
On March 18, 1885, at 5 o'clock in the morning, Russian units moved on the Afghans. They approached the enemy 500 paces and stopped. Afghans were the first to open fire. With screams "Alla!" the cavalry attacked. The Russians met them with intense rifle and artillery fire, and then launched a counterattack.
As Abdurrahman Khan later wrote in his autobiography, as soon as the battle began, "the British officers immediately fled to Herat together with all their troops and retinue." Afghans also rushed to run after them. General Komarov did not want to quarrel with the emir and forbade the cavalry to pursue the fleeing Afghans. Therefore, they got off relatively easily - about 500 people were killed and 24 were taken prisoner. The number of wounded is unknown, but, in any case, there were many of them. Naib-Salar himself was wounded.
Among the Russian trophies were all 8 Afghan guns and 70 camels. The losses of the Russians amounted to 9 killed (1 officer and 8 lower ranks) and 35 wounded and shell-shocked (5 officers and 30 lower ranks).
The day after the victory, March 19, 1885, a deputation from the independent Pendinsky Saryks and Ersarins came to Komarov with a request to accept them into Russian citizenship. As a result, the Pendinsky District was established from the lands cleared of Afghans.
LONDON BEATS IN ISTERIC
After the battle at Kushka, Russia and England again found themselves on the brink of war. Any advance of Russian troops into Central Asia caused hysteria in London and an explosion of emotions in the corrupt press: "The Russians are going to India!" It is clear that this propaganda was aimed at the British man in the street, so that he would more willingly support the military spending and adventures of his government. But the side effect of these campaigns was that the Indians really believed that the Russians could come and free them from the British. In the 1880s, the famous orientalist and Buddhist researcher Ivan Pavlovich Minaev visited India. In his travel diary, published only 75 years later, he wrote, not without irony: "The British talked so much and for a long time about the possibility of a Russian invasion that the Indians believed them."
As a result, “petitioners” were drawn to Tashkent. So, in the early 60s of the XIX century, the embassy of the Maharaja of Kashmir Rambir Singa arrived. He was received by the military governor Chernyaev. Sing's envoys declared that the people were "waiting for the Russians." Chernyaev was forced to answer that "the Russian government is not looking for conquests, but only for the spread and establishment of trade, beneficial for all peoples with whom it wants to live in peace and harmony."
Then a messenger from the Maharaja of the Indur principality came to Tashkent. He presented a blank sheet of paper to the Russian officers. When the sheet was heated over the fire, letters appeared on it. Maharaja Indura Mukhamed-Galikhan addressed the Russian emperor: “Hearing about your heroic deeds, I was very happy, my joy is so great that if I wanted to express it all, then the paper would be lacking”. This message was written on behalf of the union of the principalities of Indur, Hyderabad, Bikaner, Jodhpur and Jaipur. It ended with the words: "When you start hostilities with the British, I will greatly harm them and within one month I will expel all of them from India."
This embassy was followed by a number of others. Soon a new mission arrived in Tashkent from the Maharaja of Kashmir, led by Baba Karam Parkaas. And in 1879, the head of the Zeravshan district received the seventy-year-old guru Charan Singh. In the binding of the book of Vedic hymns, the elder carried a thin sheet of blue paper. It was a letter written in Punjabi, unsigned and without date, addressed to the Governor-General of Turkestan. He was approached with an appeal for help by the "high priest and chief of the Sikh tribe in India" Baba Ram Singh.
Lieutenant Colonel N. Ya. Schneur, who was traveling in India in 1881, wrote: “Going to the island of Elephantu, a customs official approached me at the pier, having previously loudly asked whether I was a Russian officer, and said that the case at the customs office had been settled. The word "Russian officer" made a strong impression on the boatmen and especially on our guide. As soon as we landed on the island, he with feverish excitement removed me from the rest of the public and asked: "Will General Skobelev come soon with the Russian army?" Remembering the instructions given to me to be careful, I replied that I was leaving Japan and did not know anything, I didn’t even know where General Skobelev should go. "You, of course, will not say this," he replied, "but we know that Skobelev is already close and will soon come to India."
NEW FORTRESS
Having annexed Central Asia, the Russians began to intensively build railways there.
Kushka, the southernmost point of the Russian Empire, became an important stronghold for the fight against England.
At first, the Russian fortifications in Kushka were called the Kushkin post. In August 1890, the 6th hundred of the 1st Caucasian Cavalry Regiment was stationed there. The post was built 6 km from the Afghan border.
In the spring of 1891, the 1st company of the 5th Zakasshiy rifle battalion and 40 lower ranks of the Serakh local command from the Serakhs fortification arrived at the Kushkin post from Pul-i-Khatun, and the 4th platoon of the 6th mountain battery (two, 5-inch cannon model 1883) of the 21st artillery brigade.
In addition to the Kushkin fortress company, which was finally formed in Askhabad on May 30, 1893, a non-standard mobile semi-battery was formed with the help of the artillery units of the region in 1894.
By 1895, the Kushkin post was armed with eight 9-pounder and four 4-pounder copper cannons mod. 1867, sixteen half-pound smooth mortars arr. 1838 and eight 4, 2-line (10, 7-mm) machine guns. Then Gatling's grapeshot was also called machine guns.
In 1896, the Kushkin post was reorganized into a class IV fortress. The construction of sheltered batteries and forts began there. By 1897, Kushka was supposed to have 37 rifled guns (36 available), 16 smooth-bore (16) and 8 machine guns (8).
SECRET ROAD
In 1900, the railway came to Kushka. This is what it says in the "History of Railway Transport in Russia". In fact, the first train arrived at the fortress in December 1898. The fact is that the railway was secret for the first two years. In April 1897, soldiers of the 1st and 2nd Trans-Caspian railway battalions near the city of Merv at the 843rd verst of the Central Asian Railway began the construction of a normal track line to Kushka.
For two years the road was secret, and only on July 1, 1900, it was transferred from the Military Department to the Ministry of Railways, and trains with civilian goods began to walk along it. For the first few years, postal and passenger trains departed from Merva to Kushka twice a week: on Wednesdays and Saturdays, and back on Mondays and Thursdays. The train covered 315 km of track in 14-15 hours. This was due to the difficult terrain and the weakness of the railroad tracks. Strict passport control was carried out on the railway. It was possible to get to Kushka only with the special permission of the gendarme office.
Meanwhile, hundreds of Russian settlers settled in Kushka. Among them were Molokans and other sectarians, as well as simply immigrants from Central Russia and the Little Russian provinces. Russian villages flourished. The fact is that the War Department bought bread and other products from Russian settlers at fixed prices, regardless of fluctuations in the market.
It is curious that the secret railway on Kushka remained. But it was already a completely different road - a 750-mm gauge military field railway. At first, it was served by a field railroad company, which, on April 1, 1904, was reorganized into a railroad company.
In Kushka, the southern point of the Russian Empire, was probably the only one of the crosses designed to determine the boundaries of the state in relation to the cardinal points. Photo by RIA Novosti
The Kushkin military field railway was so secret that the author literally had to collect information about it bit by bit. So, for example, in October 1900, a two-axle steam locomotive-tank of type G.1 weighing 7, 75 tons for a 750-mm gauge arrived in Kushka. It was used as a shunting locomotive in the Kushkin field railway park. And this park was intended for the operational construction of a railway to Afghanistan up to the border with India, and, if necessary, further. The speed of laying the bed of the military field railway could reach 8-9 versts per day, that is, coincide with the pace of the advance of the infantry units. Naturally, high-speed trains could not run on military field roads, and a speed of 15 versts per hour was considered normal for a 750-mm track. The carrying capacity of the Kushkin military field railway is 50 thousand poods (820 tons) per day.
On September 27, 1900, the Military Communications Directorate of the General Staff entered into an agreement with the Kolomensky Zavod for the manufacture of 36 locomotives of the 0-3-0 type with a tender and oil heating, intended for the 200-verst VPZhD located in the Kushka fortress. Immediately after the outbreak of hostilities, the Kushka-Herat line, 171 miles long, was to be laid.
In addition to locomotives, 220 platforms, 12 tanks, one service car and three passenger cars, as well as materials for the superstructure of the track, semaphores, water pumps, oil pumping stations and 13 collapsible bridges (8 - 26 m long and 5 - 12 m long) were ordered.
In 1903, the Kolomna plant manufactured 33 steam locomotives, which were delivered to Kushka in late 1903 - early 1904.
In the middle of 1910, due to the deterioration of the military-political situation in the Balkans, the War Ministry decided "to form two hundred faithful steam parks (in Kiev and in Baranovichi) from the property of the Kushkin field railway company and to convert all locomotives for coal heating." From the beginning of November 1912 to the end of February 1913, 42 narrow-gauge steam locomotives were delivered from Kushka to Kiev.
Instead, on August 31, 1914, 78 narrow-gauge steam locomotives were ordered to Kolomensky Zavod to complete the railway fleet in Kushka. For this, back in 1910, the Council of Ministers allocated 2.5 million rubles. gold. Alas, a few days later the First World War began, and a new batch of steam locomotives never got to Kushka.
FOR ACTION AGAINST THE BRITISH
With the arrival of the railway to Kushka, siege artillery began to be drawn there. Of course, it was not intended to fight the Afghans, but to bombard British fortresses in India. Whether for the convenience of bureaucrats in the Military Department, or for conspiracy, siege artillery in Kushka was listed as a "branch of the Caucasian Siege Park."
By January 1, 1904, the "squad" consisted of 16 6-inch (152-mm) guns weighing 120 pounds, 4 8-inch (203-mm) light mortars, 16 light (87-mm) guns mod. 1877, 16 semi-pud mortars, as well as 16 Maxim machine guns, of which 15 were on a high serf, and one on a field machine. Kushka was supposed to contain 18 thousand shells, but in fact there were 17 386 shells.
In 1902, the Kushkin branch of the Caucasian Siege Park was renamed the 6th Siege Regiment. During 1904, GAU planned to send 16 8-inch light guns and 12 8-inch light mortars to Kushka. This was reported as a fait accompli in 1905 to the Minister of War, and he included the data in the annual report. But, alas, the guns were never sent.
The artillery of the Kushkin Siege Park from January 1, 1904 to July 1, 1917 remained unchanged. It should be noted here that the material part of the siege park (6th siege regiment) was stored on the territory of the Kushkin fortress, but was never mixed with fortress artillery, including ammunition, spare parts, etc.
In January 1902, the Kushkin Fortress was transferred from IV to III class. By October 1, 1904, the Kushkin fortress artillery was armed with 18 light (87-mm) and 8 horse-drawn (87-mm) guns mod. 1877, 10 6-inch field mortars, 16 half-pud mortars, as well as 48 10-barreled and 6 6-barreled 4, 2-line Gatling guns.
By July 1, 1916, the armament of the fortress was increased to 21 light cannons, two battery (107-mm) cannons, 6 2, 5-inch mountain cannons mod. 1883 and 50 machine guns 7, 62 mm Maxim. Mortar weapons remained unchanged. By the beginning of 1917, over 5,000 rifles and up to 2 million cartridges were stored in the Kushkin Fortress.
UNDER SOVIET POWER
In 1914, a super-powerful (at that time) spark radio station (35 kW) was installed in the fortress, providing a stable connection with Petrograd, Sevastopol, Vienna and Calcutta.
Late in the evening of October 25 (November 7), 1917, the Kushkin radio station received a message from the radio station of the cruiser "Aurora", which spoke of the overthrow of the Provisional Government. Thus, the officers of the fortress were the first in Central Asia to learn about the October Revolution in Petrograd. The most curious thing is that the senior officers of the fortress immediately and unconditionally took the side of the Bolsheviks.
The commandant of the fortress, Lieutenant-General Alexander Pavlovich Vostrosablin, ordered to radio to Petrograd about Kushka's transition to the side of Soviet power. Well, the chief of staff of the fortress, staff captain Konstantin Slivitsky, was elected chairman of the Council of Soldiers' Deputies of the fortress. Later he became the Soviet diplomatic representative in Afghanistan.
In some ways, this position can be explained by the fact that not quite politically reliable officers were sent to Kushka. So, for example, in 1907, at the age of 33, Vostrosablin was already a major general, was the head of the Sevastopol fortress artillery. And in 1910 he was removed from the command in Sevastopol and poisoned in the godforsaken Kushka. The fact is that Alexander Pavlovich was fundamentally opposed to taking cruel measures against revolutionary soldiers and sailors.
On the night of July 12, 1918, an anti-Soviet rebellion began in Askhabad (Ashgabat), led by the Social Revolutionaries: the locomotive driver F. A. Funtikov and Count A. I. Dorrer. The rebels managed to capture a number of cities, including Askhabad, Tejen and Merv. Mass executions of supporters of the Soviet regime began. The "Trans-Caspian Provisional Government" was formed, headed by Funtikov. Well, the fact that Fedya was pretty drunk at the meeting did not bother anyone.
Kushka was deep in the rear of the rebels and Basmachi. The nearest red units were at least 500 km away.
The Transcaspian "government" instructed the commander of the Murghab sector of the rebel front, Colonel Zykov, to take the military property of the fortress. With a two thousand detachment of soldiers and Basmachi, on August 9, 1918, the colonel arrived under the walls of Kushka, hoping that 400 defenders of the citadel would immediately hand over their weapons and ammunition.
Kushka's radio station intercepted the negotiations of the head of the British military mission, General W. Mapleson, with the commanders of military units in Mashhad (Persia). They showed that on July 28, British troops crossed the border. A battalion of the Punjab regiment and companies of the Yorkshire and Hampshire regiments, cavalry and artillery are moving towards Askhabad.
Having familiarized himself with the text of the radio interception, Vostrosablin gave an answer to the rebels: “I am a lieutenant general of the Russian army, the honor of a nobleman and an officer commands me to serve my people. We remain loyal to the people's power and will defend the fortress to the last opportunity. And if there is a threat of seizure of the warehouse and transfer of property to the invaders, I will blow up the arsenal."
The two-week siege of Kushka began.
On August 20, a consolidated Red Army detachment under the command of the former staff captain of the tsarist army S. P. Timoshkova. The detachment consisted of two rifle companies, a horse-pack machine-gun command and a cavalry squadron. But fear has big eyes: when the Red Army men approached, Colonel Zykov fled with a small group of Basmachi through the mountains to Askhabad. Timoshkov's cavalry and riflemen quickly dispersed the remnants of the besiegers. From the unblocked Kushka, 70 guns, 80 wagons of shells, 2 million cartridges and other property were sent to Tashkent for the Red Army of Turkestan.
For heroic military operations against the White Guard troops, the Kushka fortress was awarded the Order of the Red Banner. In 1921, the commandant A. P. Vostrosablin and the commander of the combined detachment S. P. Timoshkov "For military distinction on the Trans-Caspian front against the White Guards" were awarded the Order of the Red Banner of the RSFSR. Unfortunately, Alexander Pavlovich received the award posthumously.
In January 1920, Vostrosablin received a new appointment - he became a member of the Revolutionary Military Council of the Turkestan Republic and an inspector of the troops of the Turkestan Military District. During his service in Tashkent, the general took part in suppressing the Socialist-Revolutionary rebellion, raised in January 1919 by the former warrant officer K. Osipov.
Vostrosablin's services to the revolution were great, and in August 1920 he was elected a delegate from Turkestan to the regional congress of the peoples of the East, held in Baku. On the way back, Vostrosablin was killed on the train by unknown persons.
INTERVENT HANDLING AND HOST SEARCH
Now a number of historians are painstakingly looking for figures who could lead Russia along the "third" path in the Civil War. So, they say, if they were obeyed, there would be no red or white terror, the birds would sing, and the peizans would dance in circles. Whoever is not being pulled up under the "third force" - either the Kronstadt rebels, or Father Makhno. And now wise historians tell us tales about the "real" workers' government of the Caspian Sea, headed by the bum Funtikov and Count Dorrer.
Alas, all the characters who followed the "third" path had the same fate - either the path was blocked by the Red Army, or the white generals and the royal marines were waiting for them.
It was the same with the "Transcaspian government". British units occupied the south of Central Asia. On January 2, 1919, the British arrested the "temporary". And in return, General W. Mapleson found a "directory" of five real gentlemen.
Having kept the Trans-Caspian ministers under lock and key for a week, the "enlightened navigators" let them go, giving them a good kick at parting. Count Dorrer went to Denikin and became his secretary of the court-martial. He died in Cairo. Funtikov went to a peasant farm near Nizhny Novgorod. In January 1925, his own daughter handed him over to the GPU. Since it was Funtikov who gave the order to shoot 26 Baku commissars, a show trial took place in Baku, broadcast on radio throughout the republic …
The defense of the Kushkin fortress in 1918 was continued in the fall of 1950. Even before Funtikov's rebellion, the Bolshevik leadership of Askhabad ordered the transfer of jewels and gold of the Trans-Caspian region to Kushka. By order of Vostrosablin, the treasures were walled up in an underground passage connecting the Kushkin citadel with the Ivanovsky fort.
There are many legends about why after the Civil War the burial place was forgotten for a long time and how in 1950 the "organs" learned about them. But, alas, none of them has documentary evidence. The treasure was found in sealed zinc ammo boxes. At night, MGB officers took the boxes out of the dungeon and loaded them onto an indoor Studebaker. Nobody has seen more such boxes and “emgebeshniks”.
Now the forts of Kushka are almost completely destroyed, and a 10-meter stone cross at the highest point of Kushka and two monuments to Lenin in the village remind of the glorious Russian fortress. In honor of the 300th anniversary of the Romanov dynasty, it was decided to erect huge crosses at the four most extreme points of the Russian Empire. As far as I know, only one cross was erected at the southernmost point of the empire, south of Gibraltar and Crete.
