Under the steps leading to the Monument of Russian Glory in Belgrade, there is a chapel in which the remains of Russian soldiers and officers who died in Serbia are buried. She keeps the memory of one of the last knights of the Empire - General Mikhail Konstantinovich Dieterichs.
The Monument of Russian Glory - a monument to Russian soldiers who fell in World War I, was erected in Belgrade in 1935. The sculptural composition by the Russian architect Roman Verkhovsky was made in the form of an artillery shell, at the foot of which is depicted a wounded Russian officer defending the banner. The date "1914" is engraved above the officer's figure, a bas-relief of a double-headed eagle and the inscriptions in Russian and Serbian languages: "Eternal memory to Emperor Nicholas II and 2,000,000 Russian soldiers of the Great War." The composition is crowned with the figure of the holy Archangel Michael, the Archangel of the Heavenly Host, the patron saint of General Michael Dieterichs …
Mikhail Konstantinovich Dieterichs came from the oldest knightly family in Europe. His distant ancestor, Johann Dieterichs, was invited by Empress Anna Ioannovna to lead the construction of the seaport in Riga in 1735, and became the founder of a dynasty of Russian military, whose representatives distinguished themselves in the Patriotic War of 1812, and in the Russian-Turkish and Caucasian wars. Mikhail Konstantinovich continued the family tradition. In 1886, upon reaching twelve years of age, by the Highest order, he was enrolled in the pupils of His Imperial Majesty's Corps of Pages, whose director at that time was his uncle, Lieutenant General Fyodor Karlovich Dieterichs (according to the rescript approved by Catherine the Great, only children and grandchildren of generals from infantry, cavalry or artillery).
"You will be faithful to everything that the Church teaches, you will protect her; You will respect the weak and become his defender; You will love the country in which you were born; You will not give up before the enemy; You will wage a merciless war with the infidels; You will not lie and will remain true to the given word; You will be generous and do good to everyone; You will be everywhere and everywhere a champion of justice and good against injustice and evil. You will be as strong as steel, and pure as gold. " Fidelity to the precepts of the Knights of Malta, on which the pages were brought up, Mikhail Dieterichs carried through his whole life.
On August 8, 1894, Mikhail received the junior officer rank of second lieutenant and was sent to Turkestan, to the post of clerk of a horse-mountain battery. A year later, seeing no prospects for career advancement, Lieutenant Dieterichs filed a report on expulsion. In 1897 he passed the exams at the Nikolaev Academy of the General Staff with excellent marks and returned to St. Petersburg. Three years later, Dieterichs completed his studies in two classes of the Academy in the first category. In May 1900, he was promoted to staff captain for "excellent achievements in the sciences" and sent to serve in the Moscow military district.
The first military campaign for Dieterichs was the Russian-Japanese war of 1904. He was appointed chief officer for special assignments at the headquarters of the 17th Army Corps and immediately sent to the front lines
He was awarded the Order of St. Anne of the 3rd degree with swords and a bow, then the Order of St. Anne of the 2nd degree with swords. After finishing the campaign with the rank of lieutenant colonel, Dieterichs returned to headquarters service. He met the First World War with the rank of colonel and the post of chief of a section in the mobilization department of the main directorate of the General Staff. When hostilities began, Dieterichs headed the operational department of the headquarters of the Southwestern Front, and soon, at the request of the chief of staff of the Southwestern Front, Adjutant General M. V. Alekseev, was first appointed quartermaster general of the headquarters of the 3rd army, and then - acting. Quartermaster General of the Headquarters of the Southwestern District. According to the memoirs of Colonel B. V. Gerua, General Alekseev divided the staff work into creative and executive, and General V. Borisov and Colonel M. Dieterichs were involved in the creative work, with the help of whom Alekseev made and developed decisions. On May 28, 1915, Dieterichs was promoted to major general "for excellent service and wartime labors," and on October 8 of the same year, he was awarded the Order of St. Stanislaus, 1st degree with swords. In December 1915, the Southwestern Front was headed by Adjutant General A. A. Brusilov, who, paying tribute to the knowledge and abilities of General Dieterichs, entrusted him with the development of plans for the famous counter-offensive, which went down in history as the "Brusilov Breakthrough". However, three days after the start of the offensive, on May 25, 1916, Major General Dieterichs was appointed head of the 2nd Special Brigade, which was supposed to be part of the inter-allied military contingents of the Thessaloniki Front.
The Thessaloniki Front was opened in October-November 1915 after the Anglo-French Expeditionary Force landed in Greek Thessaloniki. Initially, the front was created to provide assistance to the Serbian army and jointly repel the Austro-German-Bulgarian offensive against Serbia. But due to the contradictions between the Entente countries, which sought to shift the brunt of the operation onto each other, help was delayed: by the end of 1915, Serbia was occupied, and its army, with great difficulties, through Albania, was evacuated to the island of Corfu. However, the allied landing force managed to hold its positions in Thessaloniki. At the beginning of 1916, the Entente contingent on the Thessaloniki front already consisted of four French, five British and one Italian divisions, which were soon joined by the revived Serbian army that returned to the Balkans. On January 16, 1916, the Allied military units formed the Eastern Army, led by the French General Maurice Sarrail. At the same time, the question of sending Russian troops to the Thessaloniki front was raised. Emperor Nicholas II, who considered the protection of Orthodox Slavic peoples a historical duty of Russia, approved the project of creating a 2nd Special Brigade for subsequent dispatch to the Balkans. Major General Dieterichs, appointed by its chief, was, according to the memoirs of contemporaries, certified by the French military leadership by the head of the French mission in Russia "as an active and educated officer, in general, quite appropriate for a much more responsible position than the position of a brigade commander."
General Dieterichs was personally involved in the formation of the brigade, which was staffed with experienced career officers and non-commissioned officers. Its staff consisted of 224 officers and 9,338 lower ranks. As the researchers note, the brigade commander meticulously delved into all the details of combat training and the organization of the life of the military unit entrusted to him.
The first echelon of the brigade, led by Dieterichs, moved to the place of deployment on June 21, 1916. The path of this Russian avant-garde, directed to the Balkans, to the Greek Thessaloniki, which everyone unanimously called Solun in Slavic, under the conditions of war, ran through the Atlantic, Brest and Marseilles. Already at the end of August, units of the 2nd brigade took up positions on the front line.
By that time, the position of the allied forces in the Balkans was close to catastrophic. Romania entered the war extremely unsuccessfully, its army suffered one defeat after another, the Bulgarian-Austrian troops had already occupied Bucharest. To save the new member of the Entente, the troops of the Thessaloniki front had to go on a general offensive. But unexpectedly, Bulgarian troops broke through the front near the city of Florina and attacked the Serbian units. The commander of the inter-allied forces, General Sarrail, sent the 2nd Special Brigade to liquidate the breakthrough, the concentration of which had not yet been completed.
General Dieterichs began hostilities, having at his disposal only one regiment and his own headquarters. In the very first battle, which took place on September 10, 1916, the Russian units, together with the French, repulsed the attack of the Bulgarian infantry
The next task was to capture the city of Monastir, which ensured the connection of the Western (occupied by Italian troops) and Eastern (joint Franco-Serbian-Russian contingent) sectors of the Thessaloniki front. The main blow was delivered by the troops of the Eastern Sector. The brigade of Dieterichs was at the forefront of the attack. The offensive took place in difficult mountain conditions, with a lack of food and ammunition. However, on September 17, the allied forces captured the city of Florina, which was a key position on the approaches to Monastir. The Bulgarian army began to retreat to the north - thus one of the objectives of the offensive was achieved.
The allied command appreciated the successes of the Special Brigade: “The 3rd Special Infantry Regiment / … / carried out an outstanding offensive movement against the Bulgarians, and successively knocked them down from the Sinzhak, Seshrets and Neretskaya Planina mountains, captured with a decisive and mighty effort, despite sensitive losses, the line of fortified the heights of the enemy to the north of Armensko and thus contributed to a large extent to the capture of Florina. So in the order on awarding the 3rd Special Infantry Regiment with the French military cross with a palm branch, General Sarrail, the Commander-in-Chief of the Allied Forces on the Eastern Front, announced the merits of the troops of General Dieterichs. Received Croix de Guerre avec Palme and Dieterichs himself. Dozens of soldiers and officers were awarded with St. George's crosses and orders. At the end of September 1916, Dieterichs led the combined Franco-Russian division, which, in addition to the 2nd Special Brigade, included French colonial troops, usually used in the most dangerous areas. The Franco-Russian division continued the offensive, but met fierce resistance from the Bulgarian troops.
On October 2, Dieterichs gave the order to the troops immediately after the end of the artillery barrage to go on the attack in two columns. Under the threat of encirclement, the Bulgarians began to retreat further north on the night of October 2–3. Their forces were depleted by defeat in a bloody massacre in the region of the Kaimakchalan mountain range. Dieterichs gave the order to continue pursuing the enemy, defeat the rearguard left for cover and overtake the main forces of the retreating enemy. On the evening of October 4, both regiments of the Special Russian Brigade crossed the Rakova River. The Russians were so carried away by the offensive that they neglected intelligence. Taking on the move the large village of Negochany and repelling the counterattack of the Bulgarians, they rushed into the attack and stumbled upon the well-fortified positions of the enemy. Two kilometers outside the village, on a smooth field, the Russian regiments were met with hurricane machine-gun and rifle fire from the Bulgarians.
This is how a participant in the battle, an officer of the 4th Special Regiment V. N. Smirnov:
“Attaching bayonets, the companies rushed forward and unexpectedly stumbled upon a wide strip of barbed wire. Without scissors, under terrible fire they tried to knock down the wire with rifle butts without success, but were forced to lie under it in the cold autumn water under the destructive fire. There was no way to dig in the swamp. So they lay in the water and only in the morning they moved away to about the middle of the field, where they began to dig trenches …
The division suffered heavy losses and needed a respite. To support the spirit of his soldiers, General Dieterichs personally went around the trenches in the evenings, talked with officers and soldiers
Russian troops stood in positions in extremely difficult conditions: rains, cold weather, worn out ammunition, power problems due to poorly established communications with the rear. Cases of looting were recorded. Wishing to avoid the disintegration of the troops and the complication of relations with the local population, the general issued an order in which he reminded his soldiers: “A Russian soldier here, in a foreign land, among foreign troops, must be especially careful and with his behavior, impeccably honest and noble, serve as an example for all others, and the Russian name should not be tarnished in anything and in the slightest degree."
The general strictly forbade the release of individual lower ranks from the location of the units: it was only possible to go to the villages in teams with a reliable senior. Company commanders and chiefs of teams were ordered to keep such squads strictly accountable and monitor their subordinates. It was possible to requisition products only on the basis of written orders from the authorities, and it was obligatory to pay in cash according to the existing prices.
Realizing that long-term artillery preparation is necessary to overcome the enemy's resistance and further advance forward, Dieterichs reported this to Sarrail. However, Serbian units soon broke through to the rear of the Bulgarian troops. Trying to avoid encirclement, the Bulgarians continued their retreat to the north. General Dieterichs foresaw this, immediately organized the pursuit of the enemy and informed General Leblois, who commanded the French Eastern Army, that he decided to occupy Monastir at all costs. At that moment, the Italians, advancing from the territory of Albania, and the French, and the Serbs aspired to Monastir - the significance of this victory was obvious to everyone. But the Russians were the first in the city with an old Slavic name, which today has been changed to nothing and to no one, Bitola. At 9:30 am on November 19, 1916, the 1st battalion of the 3rd Special Regiment literally broke into Monastir on the shoulders of the enemy.
Soon the headquarters of the Franco-Russian division settled in Monastir. The Austro-German-Bulgarian front was broken through, the allied forces entered the territory of Serbia. But the capture of Monastir had not only a military-strategic, but also an important moral significance, since it marked the beginning of the liberation of the Serbian land from the invaders.
“I sincerely thank you for the congratulations you brought to me on behalf of your heroic brigade, whose dedication contributed to the fall of Monastir. I am happy that the age-old Russian-Serbian brotherhood was again impressed in the just struggle for the liberation of the Serbian land from the insidious kidnapper,”the heir to the Serbian throne, Prince Alexander Karadjordjevic, telegraphed to Dieterichs. Two days after the capture of the city, the prince Alexander personally arrived at the liberated Monastir, where, according to eyewitnesses, he expressed special gratitude to the Russian troops and awarded General Dieterichs with a high military order. The commander of the French Eastern Army, General Leblois, in his order noted the discretion shown by Dieterichs, thanks to which "Monastir fell and the destruction that the enemy prepared in his rage after defeat was prevented." General Sarrail also highly appreciated the actions of the 2nd Special Brigade: "Russians, in the Greek mountains, as well as on the Serbian plain, your legendary courage has never betrayed you." On January 10, 1917, Dieterichs was awarded the Officer's Cross of the Order of the Legion of Honor, the highest award in France. The actions of the general were also noted in the Fatherland: for the capture of Monastir, he was awarded the Order of St. Vladimir, 2nd degree with swords.
However, the Romanian army, having suffered a crushing defeat by that time, left Bucharest and took refuge in Bessarabia, on the territory of the Russian Empire. Since the task of saving her had lost its relevance, the offensive in Macedonia was stopped. The troops were entrenched on the achieved lines and began to prepare for the winter. The war on the Thessaloniki front also entered the positional stage. In November 1916, the 2nd Special Brigade was included in the Serbian forces. According to the testimony of contemporaries, Russian and Serbian soldiers treated each other with sincere respect and sympathy.
Hopes for a spring offensive along the entire front and an early victorious end to the war in early March 1917 were shaken by the news of the revolution in Russia and the abdication of Emperor Nicholas II
Soon, from behind the front line, a stream of defeatist propaganda literature literally poured into the Russian units. However, General Dieterichs managed to preserve the combat capability of the units entrusted to him. He tried as soon as possible to convey to the soldiers all the official information about the situation in Russia, and thanks to this he was able to maintain discipline and confidence in the officers in the troops. Dieterichs called on the soldiers to unite in the name of Victory over the enemies of the Fatherland. The general was a staunch monarchist, but accepted the Provisional Government as a new power, which his Sovereign and Supreme Commander ordered to obey in his manifesto on abdication.
The 2nd Special Brigade swore allegiance to the Provisional Government.
General Dieterichs was convinced that a soldier who sacrifices his life for his Motherland expresses a certain Higher Truth. Dieterichs treated his fighters not only with paternal care (in his diary he calls the soldiers "children" with a somewhat ingenuous constancy), but also with respect, therefore he took it for granted that they were given civil rights. His expectations were justified: the overwhelming majority of the soldiers and officers of the Special Brigade were ready to fight until victory. However, the participation of the brigade in the offensive on May 9, 1917 resulted in heavy losses: 1,300 of the best fighters were killed, wounded and missing. Their death shocked Dieterichs and he turned to General Sarrail with a report on the need to send a brigade to the rear: after all, Russian units had been on the front line since August 1916. The 2nd Special Brigade retreated to the rear, where it was supposed to unite with the 4th Special Brigade of General Leontiev (since October 1916, it was also part of the Serbian Army) into the 2nd Special Division. On June 5, General Dieterichs took command of the new formation, but already at the beginning of July he was urgently summoned to Russia.
The departure of Dieterichs was perceived by many of his military comrades-in-arms as a great loss
General Sarrail, in particular, wrote: “I learned with sadness that he was leaving, a general … who was often my most precious assistant in all military and life problems. The general who replaced Dieterichs at his post was a brave officer, but his new position was an unknown thing for him …"
According to the unanimous admission of contemporaries, General Dieterichs, throughout his stay on the Macedonian front, brilliantly coped with his task both as a representative of Russia and as an experienced chief of combat units. Even in the most difficult times, he managed to maintain the respect and love of his soldiers and officers. “A well-educated man who speaks several languages, he behaved in the rear with invariable tact and dignity, and in battles, regardless of any shelling, he was always where his presence was most valuable. We were subject to both the French and the Serbs; with both, he knew how to establish excellent relations, persistently demanding the delivery of everything that was necessary for the success of the operation, to alleviate our needs and hardships, carefully thinking over and preparing our actions and forcing to the same everyone with whom he dealt; he knew the value of both himself and others, but he did not pursue any effects, remained accessible to his subordinates and was for them an example of patience, dedication to his homeland and his cause, respect for allies, perseverance and calm courage in all circumstances, he wrote about Dieterichs his colleague captain Vsevolod Foht.
It should be noted that the mission of the commanders of the Russian troops abroad was not only honorable, but also difficult. Their actual position was significantly greater than that which the chiefs of individual divisions were supposed to nominally occupy
“They were the first in Europe representatives of the active Russian army, its combat units, chiefs who endangered their own lives on a daily basis. Behind them there was, as it were, a double authority - officers of the General Staff, that is, specialists who had all possible training and competence in the purely theoretical field of military art, and, at the same time, generals who shared the life of their subordinates in advanced positions, who were in constant contact with the enemy, who knew from personal experience, and not from reports and stories alone, the actual situation at the front, the very practice of the war,”emphasizes Focht.
After the departure of General Dieterichs, Russian troops in Macedonia remained at the front until January 1918, but they were no longer destined to achieve at least some significant success. Mikhail Konstantinovich himself returned to a completely different country. Leaving Russia, he believed that his participation in the war in the distant Balkans would bring the long-awaited victory closer. But it turned out that the country, intoxicated by the intoxication of freedom, does not need this victory.
The further life of Mikhail Dieterichs was dramatic. From August 24 to September 6, 1917, he was Chief of Staff of the Special Petrograd Army, from September 6 to November 16, Quartermaster General of the Headquarters, and from November 16 to November 20, Chief of Staff of General Dukhonin. On November 21, he moved to Ukraine, where in March 1918 he became the chief of staff of the Czechoslovak Corps, already known from the history of the Civil War, with which he went to Vladivostok. Dieterichs immediately supported Admiral Kolchak, who appointed him on January 17, 1919, the head of the commission to investigate the murder of the Tsar's family.
From July 1 to July 22, 1919, General Dieterichs was the commander of the Siberian Army, from July 22 to November 17, the commander of the Eastern Front and simultaneously from August 12 to October 6, chief of staff A. V. Kolchak. As a result of disagreements with Kolchak, who insisted on the need to defend Omsk at any cost, General Dieterichs resigned at his personal request. It was he who initiated the creation in the summer and autumn of 1919 of volunteer formations with the ideology of defending the Orthodox Faith - "Brigades of the Holy Cross" and "Brigades of the Green Banner". In September 1919, Dieterichs developed and successfully carried out the last offensive operation of the Russian army of Admiral Kolchak - the Tobolsk Breakthrough. After the defeat of the whites in late 1919, he emigrated to Harbin.
On July 23, 1922, at the Zemsky Cathedral in Vladivostok, General Dieterichs was elected ruler of the Far East and the Zemsky voivode - the commander of the Zemsky army.
He began to introduce various reforms in order to revive the public order of the pre-Petrine era and return the Romanov dynasty to the throne. But in October 1922, the troops of the Amur Zemsky Territory were defeated by the Red troops of Blucher, and Dieterichs was forced to emigrate to China, where he lived in Shanghai. In 1930, he became chairman of the Far Eastern Department of the Russian All-Military Union.
The general died on October 9, 1937, and was buried in Shanghai, at the Lokavei cemetery. This cemetery was destroyed during the Chinese Cultural Revolution.
