In the Soviet Union, his name was a legend. Streets and state farms, ships and military formations were named in his honor. Every schoolchild knew the heroic song about how “the regiment commander walked under the red banner, his head was bandaged, blood was on his sleeve, a trail of blood was spreading across the damp grass.” This commander was the famous hero of the Civil War, Nikolai Shchors. In the biography of this man, whom I. Stalin called the “Ukrainian Chapaev,” there are quite a lot of “blank spots” - after all, he even died under very strange and mysterious circumstances. This secret, which has not yet been revealed, is almost a hundred years old.
In the history of the Civil War 1918-1921. there were many iconic, charismatic figures, especially in the camp of the “winners”: Chapaev, Budyonny, Kotovsky, Lazo... This list can be continued, without a doubt including the name of the legendary red division commander Nikolai Shchors. Poems and songs were written about him, a huge historiography was created, and 60 years ago the famous feature film by A. Dovzhenko “Shchors” was shot. There are monuments to Shchors in Kyiv, which he courageously defended, Samara, where he organized the partisan movement, Zhitomir, where he crushed the enemies of Soviet power, and near Korosten, where his life was cut short. Although a lot has been written and said about the legendary commander, the history of his life is full of mysteries and contradictions that historians have been struggling with for decades. The biggest secret in the biography of division commander N. Shchors is connected with his death. According to official documents, the former second lieutenant of the tsarist army, and then the legendary red commander of the 44th Infantry Division, Nikolai Shchors, died from an enemy bullet in the battle near Korosten on August 30, 1919. However, there are other versions of what happened...
Nikolai Shchors, a native of Snovsk Gorodnyanskosh district, during his short life, and he lived only 24 years, accomplished a lot - he graduated from a military paramedic school in Kiev, took part in the First World War (after graduating from the cadet school in Poltava, Shchors was sent to the Southwestern Front as a junior company commander), where after difficult months of trench life he developed tuberculosis. Throughout 1918-1919. the former ensign of the tsarist army made a dizzying career - from one of the commanders of the small Semenovsky Red Guard detachment to the commander of the 1st Ukrainian Soviet Division (from March 6, 1919). During this time, he managed to be the commander of the 1st Regular Ukrainian Regiment of the Red Army named after I. Bogun, the commander of the 2nd Brigade of the 1st Ukrainian Soviet Division, the commander of the 44th Streltsy Division and even the military commandant of Kyiv.
In August 1919, Shchors's 44th Streltsy Division (which included the 1st Ukrainian Soviet Division), which was part of the 12th Army, held positions at the strategically important railway junction in the city of Korosten, west of Kyiv. With their last strength, the fighters tried to stop the Petliurists, who were trying to take possession of the city at any cost. When on August 10, as a result of a raid by the Don Cavalry Corps of General Mamontov, the Cossacks broke through the Southern Front and moved towards Moscow along its rear, the 14th Army, which took the main blow, began to hastily retreat. Between the whites and the reds there now remained only Shchors's division, which was pretty battered in battle. However, it was clear to everyone that Kyiv could not be defended; it was considered only a matter of time. The Reds had to hold out to evacuate institutions, organize and cover the retreat of the 12th Army of the Southern Front. Nikolai Shchors and his fighters managed to do this. But they paid a high price for this.
On August 30, 1919, division commander N. Shchors arrived at the location of the Bogun brigade near the village of Beloshitsa (now Shchorsovka) near Korosten and died on the same day from a fatal wound to the head. The official version of the death of N. Shchors looked like this: during the battle, the division commander watched the Petliurites with binoculars, while simultaneously listening to the reports of the commanders. His fighters went on the attack, but suddenly an enemy machine gun “came to life” on the flank, the burst of which pinned the Red Guards to the ground. At that moment, the binoculars fell out of Shchors’ hands; he was mortally wounded and died 15 minutes later in the arms of his deputy. Witnesses to the fatal wound confirmed the heroic version of the death of their beloved commander. However, from them, in an unofficial setting, came the version that the bullet was fired by one of their own. Who benefited from this?
In that last battle, next to Shchors in the trench there were only two people - assistant division commander I. Dubova and another rather mysterious person - a certain P. Tankhil-Tankhilevich, a political inspector from the headquarters of the 12th Army. Major General S.I. Petrikovsky (Petrenko), who at that time commanded the cavalry 44th brigade of the division, although he was nearby, ran up to Shchors when he was already dead and his head was bandaged. Dubovoy claimed that the division commander was killed by an enemy machine gunner. However, it is surprising that immediately after Shchors’ death, his deputy ordered the dead man’s head to be bandaged and forbade the nurse, who came running from a nearby trench, to unbandage it. It is also interesting that the political inspector lying on the right side of Shchors was armed with a Browning. In his memoirs, published in 1962, S. Petrikovsky (Petrenko) cited Dubovoy’s words that during the shootout Tankhil-Tankhilevich, contrary to common sense, shot at the enemy from a Browning gun. One way or another, after the death of Shchors, no one saw the staff inspector again; traces of him were lost already in early September 1919. It is interesting that he got to the front line of the 44th division under unclear circumstances by order of S.I. Aralov, a member of the Revolutionary Military Council of the 12th Army, as well as the head of the intelligence department of the Field Headquarters of the Revolutionary Military Council of the Republic. Tankhil-Tankhilevich was a confidant of Semyon Aralov, who hated Shchors “for being too independent.” In his memoirs, Aralov wrote: “Unfortunately, persistence in personal appeal led him (Shchors) to premature death.” With his intractable character, excessive independence, and disobedience, Shchors interfered with Aralov, who was the direct protege of Leon Trotsky and therefore was endowed with unlimited powers.
There is also an assumption that Shchors’ personal assistant I. Dubova was an accomplice in the crime. General S.I. Petrikovsky insisted on this, to whom he wrote in his memoirs: “I still think that it was the political inspector, not Dubovoy, who fired. But without the assistance of Dubovoy, the murder could not have happened... Only relying on the assistance of the authorities in the person of Deputy Shchors Dubovoy, on the support of the Revolutionary Military Council of the 12th Army, the criminal [Tankhil-Tankhilevich] committed this terrorist act... I knew Dubovoy not only from the Civil War. He seemed to me an honest man. But he also seemed weak-willed to me, without any special talents. He was nominated, and he wanted to be nominated. That's why I think he was made an accomplice. But he didn’t have the courage to prevent the murder.”
Some researchers argue that the order to liquidate Shchors was given by the People's Commissar and head of the Revolutionary Military Forces, L. Trotsky, who loved to purge the Red Army commanders. The version associated with Aralov and Trotsky is considered by historians to be quite probable and, moreover, consistent with the traditional perception of Trotsky as the evil genius of the October Revolution.
According to another assumption, the death of N. Shchors was also beneficial to the “revolutionary sailor” Pavel Dybenko, a more than well-known personality. Alexandra Kollontai’s husband, an old party member and friend of Lenin, Dybenko, who at one time held the post of head of Tsentrobalt, provided the Bolsheviks with detachments of sailors at the right time. Lenin remembered and appreciated this. Dybenko, who had no education and was not distinguished by special organizational skills, was constantly promoted to the most responsible government posts and military positions. He failed with invariable success wherever he appeared. First he missed P. Krasnov and other generals, who, having gone to the Don, raised the Cossacks and created a white army. Then, commanding a sailor detachment, he surrendered Narva to the Germans, after which he not only lost his position, but also lost his party card. Failures continued to haunt the former Baltic sailor. In 1919, holding the position of commander of the Crimean Army, local People's Commissar for Military and Naval Affairs, as well as head of the Revolutionary Military Council of the Crimean Republic, Dybenko surrendered Crimea to the Whites. Soon, however, he led the defense of Kyiv, which he mediocrely failed and fled from the city, leaving Shchors and his fighters to their fate. Returning to his possible role in the murder of Shchors, it should be noted that as a person who came from poverty and managed to get a taste of power, Dybenko was panicky afraid of another failure. The loss of Kyiv could be the beginning of his end. And the only person who knew the truth about how Dybenko “successfully” defended Kyiv was Shchors, whose words could be listened to. He knew all the vicissitudes of these battles thoroughly and, moreover, had authority. Therefore, the version that Shchors was killed on the orders of Dybenko does not seem so incredible.
But this is not the end. There is another version of the death of Shchors, which, however, hardly casts doubt on all the previous ones. According to her, Shchors was shot by his own security guard out of jealousy. But in the collection “Legendary Division Chief,” published in September 1935, in the memoirs of Shchors’ widow, Fruma Khaikina-Rostova, the fourth version of his death is given. Khaikina writes that her husband died in a battle with the White Poles, but does not provide any details.
But the most incredible assumption, which is associated with the name of the legendary division commander, was expressed on the pages of the Moscow weekly Sovremennik, popular during “perestroika and glasnost”. An article published in 1991 in one of its issues was truly sensational! It followed from it that the division commander Nikolai Shchors... did not exist at all. The life and death of the Red commander is supposedly another Bolshevik myth. And its origins began with the famous meeting of I. Stalin with artists in March 1935. It was then that the head of state allegedly turned to A. Dovzhenko with the question: “Why do the Russian people have the hero Chapaev and a film about the hero, but the Ukrainian people do not have such a hero?” Dovzhenko, of course, instantly understood the hint and immediately began working on the film. As Sovremennik claimed, the unknown Red Army soldier Nikolai Shchors was appointed as a hero. To be fair, it should be noted that there really was a meeting between the Soviet leadership and cultural and artistic figures in 1935. And it was precisely from 1935 that the all-Union fame of Nikolai Shchors began to actively grow. The Pravda newspaper wrote about this in March 1935: “When director A.P. Dovzhenko was awarded the Order of Lenin at a meeting of the Presidium of the USSR Central Executive Committee and he was returning to his place, he was overtaken by Comrade Stalin’s remark: “You have a duty - the Ukrainian Chapaev.” . Some time later, at the same meeting, Comrade Stalin asked questions to Comrade Dovzhenko: “Do you know Shchors?” “Yes,” answered Dovzhenko. “Think about him,” said Comrade Stalin.” There is, however, another – absolutely incredible – version, which was born in “around the cinema” circles. A legend still roams the corridors of GITIS (now RATI) that Dovzhenko began filming his heroic-revolutionary film not at all about Shchors, but about V. Primakov, even before the latter’s arrest in 1937 in the case of the military conspiracy of Marshal Tukhachevsky. Primakov was the commander of the Kharkov Military District and was a member of the party and state elite of Soviet Ukraine and the USSR. However, when the investigation into the Tukhachevsky case began, A. Dovzhenko began to re-shoot the film - now about Shchors, who could not possibly have been involved in conspiracy plans against Stalin for obvious reasons.
When the Civil War ended and memoirs of participants in the military and political struggle in Ukraine began to be published, the name of N. Shchors was always mentioned in these stories, but not among the main figures of the era. These places were reserved for V. Antonov-Ovseenko as the organizer and commander of the Ukrainian Soviet armed forces and then the Red Army in Ukraine; corps commander V. Primakov, who proposed the idea of creating and commanded units and formations of the Ukrainian “red Cossacks” - the first military formation of the Council of People's Commissars of Ukraine; S. Kosior, a high party leader who led the partisan movement in the rear of the Petliurites and Denikinites. All of them in the 1930s. were prominent party members, held high government positions, and represented the USSR in the international arena. But during the Stalinist repressions of the late 1930s. these people were mercilessly destroyed. The country learned about who I. Stalin decided to fill the empty niche of the main characters in the struggle for Soviet power and the creation of the Red Army in Ukraine in 1939, when Dovzhenko’s film “Shchors” was released. The very next day after its premiere, the leading actor E. Samoilov woke up popularly famous. At the same time, no less fame and official recognition came to Shchors, who died twenty years earlier. A hero like Shchors, young, brave in battle and fearlessly killed by an enemy bullet, successfully “fit” into the new format of history. However, now the ideologists have a strange problem when there is a hero who died in battle, but there is no grave. For official canonization, the authorities ordered an urgent search for the burial of Nikolai Shchors, which no one had ever remembered until now.
It is known that at the beginning of September 1919, Shchors’ body was taken to the rear - to Samara. But only 30 years later, in 1949, the only witness to the rather strange funeral of the division commander was found. He turned out to be a certain Ferapontov, who as a homeless boy helped the guard of the old cemetery. He told how, late in the autumn evening, a freight train arrived in Samara, from which they unloaded a sealed zinc coffin, which was a great rarity at that time. Under cover of darkness, maintaining secrecy, the coffin was brought to the cemetery. After a short “funeral meeting,” a three-time revolver salute sounded and the grave was hastily covered with earth and a wooden tombstone was installed. The city authorities did not know about this event and no one looked after the grave. Now, 30 years later, Ferapontov led the commission to the burial place... on the territory of the Kuibyshev Cable Plant. Shchors' grave was discovered under a half-meter layer of rubble. When the hermetically sealed coffin was opened and the remains were exhumed, the medical commission conducting the examination concluded that “the bullet entered the back of the head and exited through the left parietal bone.” “It can be assumed that the diameter of the bullet was a revolver... The shot was fired at close range,” the conclusion wrote. Thus, the version of the death of Nikolai Shchors from a revolver shot fired from a distance of just a few steps was confirmed. After a thorough examination, the ashes of N. Shchors were reburied in another cemetery and finally a monument was erected. The reburial was carried out at a high government level. Of course, materials about this were kept for many years in the archives of the NKVD and then the KGB under the heading “Secret”; they were made public only after the collapse of the USSR.
Like many commanders of the Civil War, Nikolai Shchors was only a “bargaining chip” in the hands of the powers that be. He died at the hands of those for whom their own ambitions and political goals were more important than human lives. These people did not care that, left without a commander, the division had practically lost its combat effectiveness. As the hero of the Civil War and former member of the Revolutionary Military Council of the Ukrainian Front E. Shadenko said, “Only enemies could tear Shchors away from the division in whose consciousness he was rooted. And they tore it off."
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It has long been known that revolutions are made by romantics. High ideals, moral principles, the desire to make the world a better and fairer place - only an incorrigible idealist can really set such goals. A similar person was Nikolai Shchors - the son of a railway worker, an officer in the tsarist army and a red commander. He lived only 24 years, but went down in the history of the country as a symbol of a fair struggle for the right to live in a happy and prosperous state.
Parents' house
A small wooden house, hidden under the crown of a large spreading maple. It was built in 1894 by Alexander Nikolaevich Shchors. In search of a better life, he moved to Snovsk from the small town of Stolbtsy in the Minsk region as a 19-year-old boy. He was drafted into the tsarist army, but after service he returned to the town he liked. Here Alexandra, one of the daughters of the Tabelchuk family, from whom Alexander Nikolaevich rented a room, was waiting for him. Next door, the newlyweds bought a plot of land and built a house on it. On June 6, their first child was born, named after his grandfather, Nikolai Shchors. The year was 1895.
My father worked on the railroad. First as a laborer, mechanic, fireman. Then he became and in 1904 he passed the exam to become a driver - he drove a shunting locomotive on the Libavo-Romny Railway. By this time, four more children appeared in the house. This is how the future hero of the Civil War Shchors began his life.
Childhood
Family life was unremarkable. The father worked, and the mother did household chores and raising children. Nikolai did not cause her much trouble. The boy was smart and intelligent beyond his years. He learned to read and write at the age of six, and at the age of eight he began to attend classes with teacher Anna Vladimirovna Gorobtsova - she prepared children for admission to the railway parochial school. In 1905, Shchors began studying there. His biography could not have turned out differently - the boy had an extraordinary thirst for knowledge.
A year later, the family suffered grief - the mother died. She suffered from consumption and died in Belarus, where she had gone to visit relatives. Five children, a large farm and work on the railroad. A woman is needed in the house - this is what the elder Shchors decided. Nikolai Alexandrovich later recalled that at first he was hostile to his stepmother. But gradually their relationship improved. Moreover, my father’s new wife, her name was Maria Konstantinovna, gave birth to five children in subsequent years. The family grew, and Kolya was the eldest of the children. He graduated from school in 1909 with a certificate of merit and really wanted to continue his education.
Admission to military school
But my father had other plans. He expected that his son would go to work and help the family. To understand the events that made up Shchors’ life story, you need to imagine his immense thirst for knowledge. So strong that in the end the father gave up. The first attempt was unsuccessful. When entering the Nikolaev Naval Paramedic School, Kolya missed one point.
In a depressed state, the young man returned home - now he agreed to go to work at the railway depot. But the father unexpectedly objected. By this time, his younger brother Konstantin had also graduated from school with a good certificate. Alexander Nikolaevich gathered both sons and took them to enter the Kyiv military paramedic school. This time everything worked out well - both brothers passed the entrance exams. Having allocated one ruble each to his sons, the satisfied father left for Snovsk. For the first time, Nikolai Shchors went so far from home. A new stage of his life began.
Tsarist army officer
The learning conditions at the military school were strict, but they had a great influence on the formation of the character of the future legendary division commander of the Red Army. In 1914, a graduate of the Kyiv military school, Shchors, arrived in one of the units stationed near Vilnius. Nikolai Alexandrovich began his service as a junior paramedic. The entry of the Russian Empire into the First World War soon followed, and the 3rd Light Artillery Division, in which the volunteer Shchors served, was sent to the front line. Nikolai carries out the wounded and provides first aid. In one of the battles, the paramedic himself is wounded and ends up in a hospital bed.
After recovery, he entered the Vilnius Military School, which was evacuated to Poltava. He diligently studies military sciences - tactics, topography, trench warfare. In May 1916, warrant officer Shchors arrived at the reserve regiment, which was stationed in Simbirsk. The biography of the future division commander took sharp turns during this period of his life. A few months later he was transferred to the 335th Regiment of the 85th Infantry Division. For battles on the Southwestern Front, Nikolai Alexandrovich received the rank of second lieutenant ahead of schedule. However, unsettled trench life and bad heredity took their toll - the young officer began to develop a tuberculosis process. He was treated in Simferopol for almost six months. In December 1917, having been demobilized from the army, he returned to his native Snovsk. Thus ended the period of service in the tsarist army.
The beginning of the revolutionary struggle
In difficult times, Nikolai Shchors returned to his homeland. There was an active struggle for power between various political parties. A civil fratricidal war engulfed the Ukrainian lands, and soldiers returning from the front joined various armed formations. In February 1918, the Central Rada of Ukraine signed a peace treaty with Germany and Austria. German troops entered the country to jointly fight the Soviets.
Nikolai made his political choice at the front, when he met the Bolsheviks and understood their party program. Therefore, in Snovsk, he quickly established connections with the communist underground. On instructions from the party cell, Nikolai goes to the Novozybkovsky district, to the village of Semyonovka. Here he had to form a partisan detachment to fight German troops. The experienced front-line soldier coped well with his first important task. The united detachment he created consisted of 350-400 trained fighters and conducted military operations in the Zlynka and Klintsy area, carried out daring partisan raids on the Gomel-Bryansk railway line. At the head of the detachment was the young red commander Shchors. The biography of Nikolai Alexandrovich from that time was associated with the struggle for the establishment of Soviet power throughout Ukraine.
Retreat
The activity of the partisan detachment forced the German troops to suffer significant losses, and the German command decided to put an end to its existence. With heavy fighting, the partisans managed to escape from the encirclement and retreat to the area of the city of Unecha, which was located on Russian territory. Here the detachment was disarmed and disbanded - as prescribed by the law.
Shchors himself went to Moscow. He always dreamed of studying and wanted to go to medical school. The revolutionary whirlpool changed the plans of the recent front-line soldier. In July 1918, the First Congress of the Bolsheviks of Ukraine took place, followed by the creation of the Party Central Committee and the revolutionary committee, whose task was to create new military units from fighters of partisan detachments - Nikolai returns to Unecha. He is tasked with forming and leading a regiment of local residents and fighters of the Dnieper partisan detachment. In September, the regiment was named after Ivan Bohun, a comrade-in-arms of Bohdan Khmelnytsky who died in the Chernigov region. In memory of these days, opposite the railway station in Unecha there is a monument to Shchors, one of the youngest commanders of the Red Army.
A detachment walked along the shore
The Bohunsky regiment numbered 1,500 Red Army soldiers in its ranks and was part of the First Insurgent Division. Immediately after formation, the Red Army soldiers began making forays behind German lines. In combat conditions, they acquired military experience and obtained weapons. Later, Nikolai Shchors became the commander of a brigade, which included two regiments - Bohunsky and Tarashchansky.
On October 23, 1918, a large-scale offensive began, the goal of which was to completely expel German troops from the territory of Ukraine. The soldiers liberated Klintsy, Starodub, Glukhov, Shostka. At the end of November, the Tarashchansky regiment entered Snovsk. The advancing Red Army soldiers quickly occupied more and more cities. In January 1919, Chernigov, Kozelets and Nizhyn were taken. The ultimate goal of the offensive was that the brigade commander was on the front line all the time. The soldiers respected him for his personal courage and caring attitude towards the soldiers. He never hid behind the backs of the Red Army soldiers and did not sit out in the rear. “Song about Shchors,” written in 1936, almost documented the soldiers’ memories of their commander.
Commandant of Kyiv
When approaching Kyiv, selected units of Petliura’s troops stood in the way of the Red Army soldiers. Shchors decides to immediately engage in battle and with two regiments, Bogunsky and Tarashchansky, attacks the positions of the numerically superior enemy. On February 1, 1919, Petliura’s troops were defeated, and Shchors’ brigade liberated the city of Brovary. After 4 days, Kyiv was taken, Shchors was appointed commandant of the capital of Ukraine. For his great contribution to the defeat of enemy troops and for personal courage, he was awarded a personalized golden weapon. In 1954, perpetuating the memory of this heroic time, a monument to Shchors will be erected in the capital of Ukraine.
The respite between battles was short-lived. The brigade again entered into hostilities and liberated Berdichev and Zhitomir. In March 19th Shchors became commander of the First Ukrainian Soviet Division. The Petliurists suffered one defeat after another. The Red Army liberated Vinnitsa and Zhmerinka, Shepetivka and Rivne. The division was replenished with recruits from among local residents, but there was a catastrophic shortage of combat commanders. On the initiative of Shchors, a military school was created, to which 300 of the most experienced Red Army soldiers with front-line experience were sent to study.
Fatal bullet
In June 1919, the Revolutionary Military Council reorganized the Ukrainian Front. Shchors' division became part of the 12th Army. The unit already had solid combat experience and glorious victories behind it. It is difficult to imagine that the division was commanded by a commander who was only 24 years old. Shchors truly had amazing military talent. But this served as the reason why superior enemy forces were advanced against his formation.
Under pressure from a numerically superior enemy, the Shchorsovites retreated to the Korosten area. On August 30, N.A. Shchors, his deputy I.N. Dubovoy and political worker Tankhil-Tankhilevich arrived at the Bogun division, which occupied positions near the village of Beloshitsa. While on the front line of defense, Nikolai Shchors was wounded in the head. I. N. Dubovoi bandaged him, but 15 minutes later the division commander died. His body was sent to Klintsy, and then to Samara, where he was buried. Thus ended the life of one of the youngest and most talented commanders of the Civil War.
Strange story
In 1949, when the remains of N.A. Shchors were reburied, a previously unknown detail was revealed. The deadly bullet was fired from a short-barreled weapon and entered the back of the head of the fearless division commander. It turns out that Shchors died at the hands of a man who was behind him at a close distance. Various versions have emerged - death at the hands of the “Trotskyists” and even revenge of the Bolsheviks on an intractable and popular commander among the troops.
The name of N.A. Shchors was not forgotten, and his exploits were immortalized by many monuments, names of streets and cities. People still hear the “Song about Shchors” - a courageous and selfless man who, until the last minute of his life, believed in the possibility of building a just and honest state.
“A detachment walked along the shore,
Walked from afar
Walked under the red banner
Regiment commander"
Even those who grew up in post-Soviet times have probably heard these lines more than once. But not everyone knows that they were taken from the “Song of Shchors”.
Nikolay Shchors During the Soviet period of history, he was included in the list of heroes of the revolution, about whose exploits children learned in elementary school, if not in kindergarten. Comrade Shchors was one of those who gave their lives in the struggle for the happiness of the working people. That is why he, like other dead revolutionaries, was not affected by the subsequent stages of the political struggle with the erasure from history of yesterday’s comrades, declared “enemies of the people.”
Nikolai Aleksandrovich Shchors (1895-1919), red commander, division commander during the Civil War in Russia. Photo: Commons.wikimedia.org
Nikolai Aleksandrovich Shchors was born on June 6, 1895 in the Chernigov region, in the village of Snovsk, Velikoschimelsky volost, Gorodnya district, according to some sources, in the family of a wealthy peasant, according to others - a railway worker.
The future revolutionary hero in his youth did not think about class battles. Kolya Shchors could well have made a spiritual career - after graduating from the parochial school, he studied at the Chernigov Theological School, and then at the Kyiv Seminary.
Shchors' life changed with the outbreak of the First World War. The failed priest graduates from military paramedic school and is appointed to the post of military paramedic of an artillery regiment on a volunteer basis. In 1914-1915 he took part in hostilities on the North-Western Front.
Second lieutenant with tuberculosis
In October 1915, his status changed - 20-year-old Shchors was assigned to active military service and transferred to a reserve battalion as a private. In January 1916, he was sent to a four-month accelerated course at the Vilna Military School, evacuated to Poltava.
By that time, the Russian army had a serious problem with officer personnel, so everyone who, from the point of view of the command, had the ability, was sent for training.
After graduating from college with the rank of ensign, Nikolai Shchors served as a junior officer of a company in the 335th Anapa Infantry Regiment of the 84th Infantry Division, operating on the Southwestern and Romanian Front. In April 1917, Shchors was awarded the rank of second lieutenant.
The commanders who sent the young soldier for training were not mistaken: he truly had the makings of a commander. He knew how to win over his subordinates and become an authority figure for them.
Second Lieutenant Shchors, however, in addition to officer's shoulder straps, also acquired tuberculosis during the war, for the treatment of which he was sent to a military hospital in Simferopol.
It was there that the hitherto apolitical Nicholas joined the revolutionary movement, falling under the influence of agitators.
Shchors' military career could have ended in December 1917, when the Bolsheviks, who were heading out of the war, began demobilizing the army. Nikolai Shchors also went home.
Reproduction of the plate “Song about Shchors”. The work of Palekh masters. The village of Palekh. Photo: RIA Novosti / Khomenko
Field commander
Shchors' peaceful life did not last long - in March 1918, the Chernihiv region was occupied by German troops. Shchors was among those who decided to fight the invaders with weapons in their hands.
In the very first skirmishes, Shchors shows courage and determination and becomes the leader of the rebels, and a little later the commander of a united partisan detachment created from disparate groups.
For two months, Shchors' detachment caused a lot of headaches for the German army, but the forces were too unequal. In May 1918, the partisans retreated to the territory of Soviet Russia, where they ceased military activities.
Shchors makes another attempt to integrate into civilian life by applying for admission to the medical faculty of Moscow University. However, the Civil War is gaining momentum, and Shchors accepts the offer of one of his comrades in the partisan detachment Kazimir Kwiatek re-enter the armed struggle for the liberation of Ukraine.
In July 1918, the All-Ukrainian Central Military Revolutionary Committee (VTsVRK) was formed in Kursk, which plans to carry out a large-scale Bolshevik armed uprising in Ukraine. The VTsRVK needs commanders with experience in fighting in Ukraine, and Shchors comes in handy.
Shchors is given the task of forming a regiment from among local residents in the neutral zone between German troops and the territory of Soviet Russia, which should be part of the 1st Ukrainian Insurgent Division.
Shchors copes with the task brilliantly and becomes the commander of the 1st Ukrainian Soviet Regiment, named after the assigned hetman, which he assembled Ivan Bogun, which in the documents was listed as the “Ukrainian revolutionary regiment named after Comrade Bogun.”
Rebuke of “Ataman” Shchors to “Pan-Hetman” Petliura, 1919. Photo: Commons.wikimedia.org
The commandant of Kyiv and the threat of the Petliurists
Shchors' regiment very quickly turns out to be one of the most effective combat units among the rebel formations. Already in October 1918, Shchors’s merits were noted by his appointment as commander of the 2nd brigade as part of the Bohunsky and Tarashchansky regiments of the 1st Ukrainian Soviet division.
Brigade commander Shchors, with whom the soldiers literally fall in love, conducts successful operations to capture Chernigov, Kyiv and Fastov.
On February 5, 1919, the Provisional Workers' and Peasants' Government of Ukraine appointed Nikolai Shchors as commandant of Kyiv and awarded him an honorary golden weapon.
And the hero, whom the fighters respectfully call “dad,” is only 23 years old...
The Civil War has its own laws. Military leaders who achieve success are often people who do not have sufficient military education, very young people who captivate people not so much with their skills as with their drive, determination and energy. This is exactly what Nikolai Shchors was.
In March 1919, Shchors became the commander of the 1st Ukrainian Soviet Division and turned into a real nightmare for the enemy. Shchors' division carries out a decisive offensive against the Petliurists, defeating their main forces and occupying Zhitomir, Vinnitsa and Zhmerinka. The Ukrainian nationalists are saved from complete disaster by the intervention of Poland, whose troops support the Petliurites. Shchors is forced to retreat, but his retreat does not closely resemble the flight of other Bolshevik units.
In the summer of 1919, Ukrainian rebel Soviet units were included in the united Red Army. The 1st Ukrainian Soviet Division joins the 44th Rifle Division of the Red Army, whose chief is Nikolai Shchors.
Shchors would have been confirmed in this position on August 21 and would have stayed in it for only nine days. On August 30, 1919, the division commander died in a battle with the 7th brigade of the 2nd corps of the Petliura Galician army near the village of Beloshitsa.
Shchors was buried in Samara, where his wife’s parents lived Frooms of Rostova. Shchors' daughter Valentina was born after her father's death.
Monument at Shchors' grave in Samara, erected in 1954. Photo: Commons.wikimedia.org
PR for Comrade Stalin
Oddly enough, in the 1920s the name Nikolai Shchors was familiar to few people. The rise of its popularity occurred in the 1930s, when the authorities of the Soviet Union seriously began to create a heroic epic about the revolution and the Civil War, on which new generations of Soviet citizens were to be educated.
In 1935 Joseph Stalin, presenting the Order of Lenin film director Alexander Dovzhenko, noted that it would be nice to create a heroic film about the “Ukrainian Chapaev” Nikolai Shchors.
Such a film was actually made; it was released in 1939. But even before its release, books about Shchors and songs appeared, the most famous of which was written in 1936 Matvey Blanter And Mikhail Golodny“Song about Shchors” - lines from it are given at the beginning of this material.
Streets, squares, towns and cities began to be named after Shchors, and monuments to him appeared in various cities of the USSR. In 1954, on the 300th anniversary of the reunification of Ukraine and Russia, a monument to the hero of the two nations was erected in Kyiv.
The image of Shchors successfully survived all the winds of change, right up to the collapse of the USSR, when everyone who fought on the side of the Reds was subjected to defamation.
Shchors has a particularly hard time after Euromaidan: firstly, he is a Red commander, and everything connected with the Bolsheviks is now anathema in Ukraine; secondly, he famously crushed the Petliura formations, declared by the current Kyiv regime to be “hero-patriots”, which, of course, cannot be forgiven for him.
Shot in the back of the head
There is one mystery in the history of Nikolai Shchors that has not yet been solved - how exactly did the “Ukrainian Chapaev” die?
Reproduction of the painting “The Death of the Division Chief” (part of the triptych “Shchors”). Artist Pavel Sokolov-Skalya. Central Museum of the Armed Forces of the USSR. Photo: RIA Novosti
The classic version says: Shchors was killed by a bullet from a Petlyura machine gunner. However, among people close to Shchors, there was persistent talk that he died at the hands of his own people.
In 1949, the year of the 30th anniversary of the death of Shchors, in Kuibyshev (as Samara was called during this period), the remains of the hero were exhumed and his ceremonial reburial took place in the central cemetery of the city.
The results of the examination of the remains, carried out in 1949, were classified. The reason was that the examination showed that Shchors was shot in the back of the head.
In the 1960s, when this data became known, the version that Shchors was eliminated by his comrades became very widespread.
True, it is impossible to habitually blame Comrade Stalin for this, and the point is not only that it was the “leader and teacher” who launched the campaign to glorify Shchors. It’s just that in 1919, Joseph Vissarionovich was solving completely different problems and did not have the influence necessary for such actions. And in principle, Shchors could not do anything to interfere with Stalin.
Was Shchors “ordered” by Trotsky?
Another matter Lev Davidovich Trotsky. At that time, the second person in Soviet Russia after Lenin, Trotsky was busy forming a regular Red Army, in which iron discipline was imposed. Uncontrollable and too obstinate commanders were disposed of without any sentimentality.
The charismatic Shchors belonged precisely to that category of commanders whom Trotsky did not like. Shchors' subordinates were first of all devoted to the commander, and only then to the cause of the revolution.
Among those who could carry out the order to eliminate Shchors, the name of his deputy was named Ivan Dubovoy, as well as the authorized Revolutionary Military Council of the 12th Army Pavel Tankhil-Tankhilevich, subordinate GRU founding father Semyon Aralov.
According to this version, during the ensuing firefight with the Petliurists, one of them shot Shchors in the back of the head, then passing it off as enemy fire.
Most arguments are put forward against Ivan Dubovoy, who personally bandaged Shchors’ mortal wound and did not allow the regimental paramedic to examine it. It was Dubovoy who became the new division commander after the death of Shchors.
In the 1930s, Dubovoy managed to write a book of memories about Shchors. But in 1937, Dubovoy, who rose to the position of commander of the Kharkov Military District, was arrested, accused of a Trotskyist conspiracy and executed. For this reason, he could not object to the accusations made in the 1960s.
If we proceed from the version that Shchors was shot to get rid of the “unsystematic” commander, it turns out that Trotsky was very dissatisfied with him. But the facts say otherwise.
Shortly before the death of its commander, Shchors' division stubbornly defended the Korosten railway junction, which made it possible to organize the planned evacuation of Kyiv before the army offensive Denikin. Thanks to the resilience of Shchors' fighters, the retreat of the Red Army did not turn into a full-scale disaster for it. As already mentioned, nine days before his death, Trotsky approved Shchors as commander of the 44th division. It is unlikely that this will be done in relation to a person whom they are going to get rid of in the very near future.
Reproduction of the painting “N. A. Shchors with V.I. Lenin.” 1938 Author Nikita Romanovich Popenko. Kiev branch of the Central Museum of V.I. Lenin. Photo: RIA Novosti / Pavel Balabanov
Fatal ricochet
What if the murder of Shchors was not an “initiative from above”, but a personal plan of Dubovoy’s ambitious deputy? This is also hard to believe. If such a plan had surfaced, Dubovoy would have lost his head - either from Shchors’ fighters, who adored the commander, or from the anger of Trotsky, who extremely disliked such actions carried out without his own approval.
There remains one more option, quite plausible, but not popular among conspiracy theorists - Divisional Commander Shchors could have become a victim of a bullet ricochet. At the place where everything happened, according to eyewitnesses, there were enough stones that could have caused the bullet to bounce off them and hit the back of the red commander’s head. Moreover, the ricochet could have been caused either by a shot from the Petliurists or by a shot from one of the Red Army soldiers.
In this situation, there is also an explanation for the fact that Dubovoy himself bandaged Shchors’ wound, not letting anyone in to see it. Seeing that the bullet hit the back of the head, the deputy division commander was simply scared. Ordinary soldiers, having heard about the bullet in the back of the head, could easily deal with the “traitors” - there were plenty of such cases during the Civil War. Therefore, Dubovoy hastened to transfer his anger towards the enemy, and quite successfully. Enraged by the death of their commander, Shchors' fighters attacked the positions of the Galicians, forcing them to retreat. At the same time, the Red Army soldiers did not take prisoners that day.
It is hardly possible today to establish for certain all the circumstances of the death of Nikolai Shchors, and this is not of fundamental importance. The Red commander Shchors long ago took his place in the history of the Civil War in Ukraine, and a song about him entered folklore, regardless of how historians evaluate his personality.
A little less than a hundred years after the death of Nikolai Shchors, the Civil War is raging again in Ukraine, and the new Shchors are fighting to the death with the new Petliurists. But, as they say, this is a completely different story.
Russian empire
Ukrainian SSR
held the position of division commander
Nikolay Shchors on a postcard from IZOGIZ, USSR
Nikolay Aleksandrovich Shchors(May 25 (June 6) - August 30) - second lieutenant, red commander, division commander during the Civil War in Russia. Member of the Communist Party since 1918, before that he was close to the Left Social Revolutionaries.
Biography
Youth
Born and raised in the village of Korzhovka, Velikoschimel volost, Gorodnyansky district, Chernigov province (from the city of Snovsk, now the regional center of Shchors, Chernigov region of Ukraine). Born into the family of a wealthy peasant landowner (according to another version, from the family of a railway worker).
Civil War
In September 1918, he formed the 1st Ukrainian Soviet Regiment named after. Bohuna. In October - November he commanded the Bogunsky regiment in battles with German interventionists and hetmans, from November 1918 - the 2nd brigade of the 1st Ukrainian Soviet division (Bogunsky and Tarashchansky regiments), which captured Chernigov, Kiev and Fastov, repelling them from the troops of the Ukrainian Directory .
On August 15, 1919, the 1st Ukrainian Soviet Division under the command of N. A. Shchors was merged with the 44th Border Division under the command of I. N. Dubovoy, becoming the 44th Infantry Division. On August 21, Shchors became its chief, and Dubova became the deputy chief of the division. The division consisted of four brigades.
The division that stubbornly defended the Korosten railway junction, which ensured the evacuation of Kyiv (on August 31, the city was taken by the Volunteer Army of General Denikin) and a way out of the encirclement of the Southern Group of the 12th Army.
Death studies
The official version that Shchors died in battle from a bullet from a Petlyura machine gunner began to be criticized with the beginning of the “thaw” of the 1960s.
Initially, researchers blamed the murder of the commander only on the commander of the Kharkov Military District, Ivan Dubovoy, who during the Civil War was Nikolai Shchors’s deputy in the 44th division. The 1935 collection “Legendary Division Commander” contains the testimony of Ivan Dubovoy: “The enemy opened strong machine-gun fire and, I especially remember, one machine gun showed “daring” at the railway booth... Shchors took binoculars and began to look at where the machine-gun fire was coming from. But a moment passed, and the binoculars fell from Shchors’ hands to the ground, and Shchors’s head too...” The head of the mortally wounded Shchors was bandaged by Dubovoy. Shchors died in his arms. “The bullet entered from the front,” writes Dubovoy, “and came out from the back,” although he could not help but know that the entrance bullet hole was smaller than the exit hole. When Bohunsky Regiment nurse Anna Rosenblum wanted to change the first, very hasty bandage on the head of the already dead Shchors to a more accurate one, Dubovoy did not allow it. By order of Dubovoy, Shchors’ body was sent for preparation for burial without a medical examination. It was not only Dubovoy who witnessed the death of Shchors. Nearby were the commander of the Bohunsky regiment, Kazimir Kvyatyk, and the representative of the Revolutionary Military Council of the 12th Army, Pavel Tankhil-Tankhilevich, sent with an inspection by a member of the Revolutionary Military Council of the 12th Army, Semyon Aralov, Trotsky’s protégé. He was twenty-six years old, born in Odessa, graduated from high school, spoke French and German. In the summer of 1919 he became a political inspector of the Revolutionary Military Council of the 12th Army. Two months after the death of Shchors, he left Ukraine and arrived on the Southern Front as a senior censor-controller of the Military Censorship Department of the Revolutionary Military Council of the 10th Army.
The exhumation of the body, carried out in 1949 in Kuibyshev during reburial, confirmed that he was killed at close range with a shot to the back of the head. Near Rovno, Shchorsovite Timofey Chernyak, commander of the Novgorod-Seversky regiment, was later killed. Then Vasily Bozhenko, the brigade commander, died. He was poisoned
Sculpture of Nikolai Shchors in the former museum named after. Shchorsa in the former town of Shchorsa
Nikolai Alexandrovich Shchors. The biography of this famous hero of the Civil War is still the subject of much debate and debate. Today, on the 100th anniversary of his death, we will tell you several unknown facts from the life of the “Ukrainian Chapaev.”
On August 30, 1919, near the Ukrainian city of Korosten, under unclear circumstances, the head of the 44th Infantry Division, Nikolai Aleksandrovich Shchors, died. However, what kind of Nikolai Alexandrovich? Simply - Kolya Shchors. In any case, that’s what his colleagues called him. At the time of his death, the legendary Shchors was only 23 years old.
The remains of Shchors were embalmed, sealed in a zinc coffin, transported to Samara and on September 14, 1919 buried in the “German sector” of the All Saints Cemetery. The division commander was seen off on his final journey by ten cadets from the Shchorsov school of red commanders, five employees of the 44th division, Frum's widow Rostova and her three sisters. A few days after the funeral, Fruma turned to Gubkom with a request to install a monument and fence over her husband’s grave. Sponge gave the go-ahead and allocated 20 thousand rubles for these purposes. The stone stele was made and installed by the Samara master Brannikov. For some reason, only a monument was erected, and the fence was ordered in 1921 by Shchors’ comrade-in-arms, Iosif Tishchenko, with his own money (in the newsreel below Tishchenko to the left of Shchors).
By the end of the 20s, the All Saints Cemetery was closed. Relatives were given the opportunity to rebury their deceased loved ones in the new city cemetery. But since the population of Samara after the Civil War and the famine of the 20s greatly decreased and changed, most of the graves remained ownerless. And the gravestones, including those of Shchors, were used for urgent construction needs.
Nikolai Alexandrovich Shchors. Birth of a Hero
In 1935, director Alexander Dovzhenko was summoned to the Kremlin for a reception with Stalin. Joseph Vissarionovich listened carefully to the report on the progress of work on the film “Aerograd” and said:
“When I told you last time about Shchors, I said it in terms of advice. But neither my words nor newspaper articles oblige you to anything. You are a free person. If you want to make Shchorsa, do it, but if you have other plans, do something else.”
Dovzhenko thanked Stalin for the idea and confirmed that he was ready to make Shchorsa. Moreover, Alexander Dovzhenko had heard more than enough about the head of the 44th Ukrainian Soviet division - at one time the future director served in the Shchors division as a teacher at the school at the headquarters.
“The story has fascinated us, boys. I also often think: Years will pass, the revolution will end and people will live as brothers on earth. How many fairy tales will they tell about us!” Still from the film "Shchors". On May 1, 1939, the premiere of the film “Shchors” took place and from that moment real “shchorsomania” began in the Soviet Union. Civil War veterans told young people stories of heroic banality that were almost identical to the events depicted in the film. But the people closest to the “Ukrainian Chapaev” greeted the film with restraint. Shchors' widow Fruma Rostova said in an interview with one of the newspapers:
“The film exceeded all expectations. He shocked with his spontaneity, monumentality, and swiftness.”
And not a word about the plausibility of the plot. Well, in one of the conversations Dovzhenko even stated that the content of the film was invented by him from beginning to end. So who was Nikolai Aleksandrovich Shchors? I think that some of his character traits can be learned from unique archival materials that I was able to familiarize myself with in the now former Shchors Museum in Snovsk.
Kolya Shchors. Hero's youth
In the former Shchors Museum of the former city of Shchors (now Snovsk), I hope, the memories of Shchors’ school friend - a certain Kostenko (by the way, this same Kostenko, most likely, was from Samara) are still preserved. Kostenko left extremely interesting notes from which one can draw a portrait of the future hero of the Civil War.
Kolya Shchors, student at paramedic school Apparently, Shchors was really fascinated by military topics. At the first meeting, Nikolai explained in detail to Kostenko the meaning of shoulder straps and other insignia, which were hung as visual aids in the corridor of the paramedic school.
Shchors behaved independently with his comrades. Kostenko recalled that one of the teachers at the school was a disabled person from the Russian-Japanese War. And then one day during formation, a student named Muratov shouted an insulting phrase at the disabled person’s back. He naturally began to find out who had insulted him. Everyone was silent. And then, suddenly, Shchors broke ranks and commanded: “Muradov! Get out of line and apologize to the teacher!” Muradov blushed, broke ranks and apologized. Well, the class was divided. Some said that Shchors did a bad thing by betraying his comrade, others that Shchors was a great guy and did the right thing. In any case, there was no boycott - Shchors was taken into account at school.
One winter, several students from a paramedic school were walking along Khreshchatyk. At one of the intersections, an elderly newspaper seller was inviting people, shouting the names of publications. One of the schoolchildren asked the seller:
- Do you have “time”?
- Then sing.
The seller was offended, the schoolchildren laughed. Everyone except Shchors. Nikolai scolded the joker: “Is it possible to joke like that at a person who can barely make ends meet?”
And one more story.
This was in 1913. The Empire celebrated the 300th anniversary of the House of Romanov. On this occasion, a parade of garrison troops took place in Kyiv. As usual, everyone they could was brought to the parade, including students from the paramedic school.
The parade was commanded by General Alexey Mavrin, riding a magnificent snow-white horse, prancing with impatience. After the parade, the schoolchildren were depressed. But not because I had to stand in line for several hours. The young men understood that the “cream of society,” who shone at the parade with jewelry, orders and expensive clothes, was an unattainable level for paramedics. And only Shchors, usually reserved, was excited.
"Have you seen? No, did you see it? What a horse! What a general! How great they look surrounded by troops!”- Nikolai ran around the classroom.
And this excitement was passed on to his comrades. The guys became animated and began to draw a horse on the board, commenting on the details of the parade.
Only a few years have passed. Shchors already had behind him the trenches of the First World War, tuberculosis, battles with the Czechs near Samara, and injury. Now he is the commander of the Soviet Ukrainian regiment named after Comrade Bohun. Shchors arrived in Unecha, so that a few months later, at the head of the regiment, he would solemnly enter Kyiv. But before that, in the small village of Naitopovichi, the fighters were knocked off their feet in search of a white horse for the commander. And the horse was found. True, not quite white. A true albino white horse is extremely rare. According to the recollections of fellow soldiers, the owner of the “dapple horse” was given an “old-fashioned mare” in return.
Shchors, at the head of the Bohunsky regiment, enters Kyiv. To the left of Shchors is Joseph Tishchenko
What would have happened to Shchors in the future if he had remained alive is unknown. But it is absolutely certain that Nikolai Aleksandrovich Shchors is perhaps one of the most discussed heroes of the Civil War. The circumstances of his death are still the subject of debate. True, I think that in the near future there will be one less historical mystery associated with the name of Shchors.
Recently, Samara collector Dmitry Khmelev put forward a version that explains one strange circumstance: why Nikolai Shchors was buried in Samara. According to Khmelev, Shchors was taken on a special propaganda train to be buried in Moscow near the Kremlin wall. The route passed through Samara. In Samara, the train was delayed until October, so Shchors was temporarily buried at the All Saints Cemetery. But, as you know, “there is nothing more permanent than temporary.” And the temporary “registration” at the Samara cemetery for Nikolai Aleksandrovich Shchors, as expected, turned into a permanent one.
P.S.. If you have questions related to Shchors’ life, write in the comments. We will try to answer as detailed as possible.
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