Anatoly Nikolayevich Pepelyayev

Anatoly Nikolayevich Pepelyayev 1918

Anatoly Pepelyayev ( Russian Анатолий Николаевич Пепеляев , scientific. Transliteration Anatoly Nikolaevich Pepeljaev ; born July 3 ^jul. / 15. July  1891 ^greg. In Tomsk ; † 14. January 1938 in Novosibirsk ) was a Russian general and White Guard .

Life

Born into the family of a general in the Russian Imperial Army , Anatoly Pepeljajew was sent to the Omsk Cadet Institute in 1902 , which he successfully completed in 1908. In the same year he went to the Paulus Military School in Saint Petersburg . Anatoly Pepeljajew graduated from this in 1910 with the rank of lieutenant , whereupon he was immediately assigned to the MG command of the 42nd Siberian Rifle Regiment in Tomsk . In 1914, Pepeljajew, who had been married for two years, was promoted to the rank of first lieutenant .

Anatoly Pepeljajew entered the First World War as commander of the cavalry reconnaissance of his regiment. For his services he was promoted to the rank of captain in early 1917 . In total, Anatoly Pepeljajew carried seven orders of war from the front, including the Order of St. George of the 4th degree . Under Kerensky's Provisional Government , he remained at the front and even became a lieutenant colonel . After the October Revolution , Pepeljajew was confirmed as battalion commander by the soldiers' council of his battalion.

After the peace in Brest-Litovsk , the last remnants of the Russian army collapsed and Anatoly Pepelyayev fled to Tomsk, where he soon joined an anti-Bolshevik underground organization. On May 27, 1918, the uprising against the Bolsheviks led by Pepelyayev began , which ended on May 31 with the officers' victory. Thereupon Pepelyayev placed himself in the service of the anti-Bolshevik “Siberian government” of Pyotr Vologodski, which operated from Novonikolajewsk . At their request, he built the 1st Central Siberian Rifle Corps, with which he pulled along the Trans-Siberian Railway and overthrew communist councils in Krasnoyarsk , Verkhneudinsk and Chita . At the end of August / beginning of September 1918, east of Lake Baikal , he met the Cossacks of Ataman Semyonov , who had moved from Manchuria , which meant that the communists were now underground in all of Siberia. For his campaign to the east Pepeljajew was awarded the 3rd degree St. George Order and was promoted to the rank of colonel.

After this campaign, the Pepeljajew'sche Korps was sent west, where Pepeljajew, now in the rank of major general , launched an offensive against the 3rd Red Army, which led to the capture of the city of Perm on December 24, 1918. After Admiral Kolchak seized power at the end of the same year, Pepelyayev placed himself in his service. On January 31, 1919, he was declared lieutenant general . The Kolchak offensive, which began on March 4 of the same year, was best achieved by Pepelyayev's corps, as his military unit advanced farthest to the west. Until June 2, he was the only White Guard leader in the Urals to record an advance, but after two days he was stopped by the Reds and thrown back.

After the restructuring of the Kolchak army on July 21, 1919 and the formation of the Eastern Front, which was divided into several armies, Pepelyayev was declared commander of the 1st Army. However, this effectively did nothing to change the performance of the White Guards and the retreat continued. The worsening situation forced Pepelyayev to arrest Alexander Kolchak in mid-December at a remote railway station called Taiga and to ask him to clarify the situation. If Pepelyayev's brother, Prime Minister Viktor Pepelyayev, had not mediated, Pepelyayev would have arrested Kolchak and encountered no countermeasures, since Taiga was occupied by soldiers loyal to him. After the fall of Tomsk on December 20, 1919, Pepeljajew fled with his family in a railroad car to Transbaikalia, where he set up a partisan unit after suffering from typhoid fever. Because of the collaboration of his superior, the ataman Semyonov, with the Japanese , the Pepelyayev family left Russia on April 20, 1920 and settled in Harbin .

Pepelyayev lived in Harbin for more than two years, during which he had to change jobs several times. He was looking for a way to return to Russia and continue the fight against the Red Army. He found this possibility in the summer of 1922, when he was made an offer to assemble a military unit and transfer it to Yakutia , where he was supposed to support the partisans in the fight against the Bolsheviks . He accepted this offer and at the end of August of the same year his 553-strong troop were shipped to Ajan , a fishing village on the Okhotsk coast.

In the winter of 1922/23 Pepeljajew advanced to Yakutia and led the last battle of the Russian Civil War there . After the defeat suffered on March 3, 1923 near the large village of Amga , the remains of the Pepelyayev volunteer unit fled to Ajan, where they were captured by a Red Army expedition on June 17 of the same year. Pepeljajew was brought to Chita with his colleagues, where a court sentenced him to death. After a petition for clemency, the sentence was replaced by 10 years imprisonment. He was serving his term in prison in the city of Yaroslavl . However, his sentence was extended for another three years in 1932. Pepelyayev was only released in 1936. Since he was forbidden to settle in big cities and in Siberia, he moved to Voronezh , where he lived unscathed until August 1937 and was able to work as a carpenter, which he had learned in prison. But then he was arrested again and taken to Novosibirsk, where a court sentenced him to death by shooting for “counterrevolutionary activity” . The sentence was carried out on January 14, 1938.

On October 20, 1989, Anatoly Pepelyayev was posthumously rehabilitated by the Novosibirsk Oblast Bar .

swell

All titles are translated from Russian:

1. W. Shambarow: White Guard , Moscow, 2002
2. W. Klawing: Civil War in Russia: White Armies , Moscow, 2003
3. D. Mityurin: Civil War: Whites and Reds , Moscow, 2004
4. The last fighting in the Far East , Moscow, 2005
5. General Staff of the Armed Forces of the USSR: Officers Atlas , Moscow, 1984
6. The Great October: Atlas , Moscow, 1987
7. «Heimat» , 1990 № 10, J. Simtschenko: The imposed happiness
8. «Homeland» , 1996 № 9, A. Petrushin: Omsk, Ajan, Lubyanka ... Three Lives of General Pepelaev
9. W. Klipel: The Argonauts of the Snow. About the unsuccessful campaign of General A. Pepelaev
10. P. Konkin: A general's drama
11. Pepelaevtum. September 6, 1922 - June 17, 1923
12. Civil war in faces (photo documents)
13. J. Timofejew: Stepan Wostrezow , Moscow, 1981
14. G. Grachev: The Yakutia campaign of General Pepelajew