Who is Vasiliy Ivanovich Chapaev? Chapaev VI - beginning the Red Army, the hero of the Civil War. Biography, awards, memory

Who is Chapayev? It's not just soldiers of two armies, it's a symbol of the era of the collapse of empires and revolutions. He played a significant role in the Civil War on the territory of the Russian Empire. The Red Army men under his leadership dealt a heavy blow to General Kolchak on the Eastern Front. Chapaev himself was a symbol of red Cossack courage. His image was actively used for agitation and propaganda both during the Civil War and in the Soviet Union.

Vasily Chapayev: biography

He was born on January 28 (February 9) in 1887 in the Kazan province. His parents were ordinary peasants. Relative to the name of Vasily Ivanovich, there is no exact information. As the brother of the famous Red Army soldier remembered, the name Chapaev was at first a nickname. Allegedly Vasily's grandfather worked as a foreman in a construction team and constantly shouted to his subordinates: "Chepai, Chepai" ("take"). Since then, he was called Chapaev, which soon became a surname, which Vasily Ivanovich Chapayev himself affirmed. "The Cossack is still unclear." According to some sources, his mother was a chuvash.

The Chapaev family was quite large. In addition to Basil, there were six children. Parents worked hard, but still the family lived poorly. Therefore, several years after the birth of the last child, they move to Samara province. Father Vasily, who wanted to give his son an education, gives it to the church school. At that time she is sponsored by her father's cousin. Initially, the parents wanted Vasili to become a priest, like some other relatives. However, in the autumn of 1908, Chapaev was drafted into the army. Its subdivision is stationed in Kiev. However, a few months later, Vasily is being fired into the reserve. Who such Chapaev, in the Kiev military district did not know, therefore precisely to define the reason of such strange decision it is impossible. According to the official version, the dismissal was due to illness. In Soviet times, there was a popular theory, according to which Basil was expelled from the army due to political unreliability. Upon arrival, the rank of militia rider is favored to him.

At home Vasily works as a carpenter. Soon he marries Pelagia Metlina, who is the daughter of a local priest. In the nine hundred and ninth year they are crowned. Almost immediately they move to Dimitrovgrad and live there. In the fourteenth year begins the First World War. Imperial troops are calling for all military supplies, Chapaev is no exception. Biography of Basil as a military man begins precisely then.

World War I

Vasily Ivanovich was mobilized in the one hundred and fifty-ninth regiment of the reserve, which was stationed in the city of Atkarsk. There he is trained and retrained. Two months later he was sent to the front. He arrives in Galicia, where fierce battles are fought against the Germans and Austro-Hungarians. Cold winter of the fifteenth continued the siege of Przemysl. The Russian troops began preparing an operation to break through to the territory of Hungary. For this it was necessary to enter the Hungarian plain, which was impeded by the strengthening of the Austrians in the Carpathians. In mid-January, the almost simultaneous offensive of the warring parties began. The army of the German Empire planned to lift the siege of the strategically important Przemysl and withdraw to the rear of the Russian troops.

V. I. Chapaev participated in the Carpathian operation. Strong battles began in the mountains. Battles took place in the hardest weather conditions. The passes were nearly completely covered with snow by this time. Also, the rarefied air affected the well-being of soldiers who grew up on a flat terrain. Chapaev was wounded in one of the fights and was in the hospital for some time.

Battle in the Carpathians

After heavy fighting, the Russian troops still managed to occupy the dominant heights and win in tactical terms. However, in the spring, a massive offensive of the enemy began. The German army was going to attack from East Prussia and encircle the Russian troops in the Warsaw area. At this time, a significant part of the imperial army was stuck in difficult transitions in the Carpathians and could not move quickly. The Russian army was extremely poorly equipped. The Germans and Austrians had a total superiority both in heavy guns and in machine guns. For example, the Germans had ninety-six machine guns, and the Russian troops did not have one. VI Chapaev was part of the retreating from Poland in 1915. This defeat leveled all the achievements of the Russian army in the campaign of the fourteenth year and in the Carpathian operation. But the most powerful was a moral blow.

Breakthrough of Russian troops

Who is Chapaev, became known in the Belgorai regiment during the famous Brusilovsky breakthrough. In the summer of the sixteenth year, a mass offensive of Russians began at Lutsk. The goal was to occupy Galicia and Volhynia, seizing enemy enemy groupings. After several hours of artillery preparation, the troops of the entire front went on the offensive. Already on the first day they managed to break through the first line of defense and capture a lot of trophies. By September, the operation was over. The Germans and Austrians lost one and a half million soldiers killed, wounded and captured. For showing courage, Vasily Chapayev received the St. George Cross.

Homecoming

Home Chapaev returned to the rank of sergeant major. For a long time I was in the hospital. At this time, the country was ripe for change. Chapaev, like millions of Russian workers, was extremely dissatisfied with the state of affairs in the country. The standard of living worsened, the social gulf between the nobles and the "masses" was simply monstrous. In addition to everything, on an understandable war, thousands of soldiers perished daily. As a result, the excitement among the people reached their peak in February. In St. Petersburg, the revolution began. The king renounced the throne, and power passed to the Provisional Government. Vasily Ivanovich positively reacted to new changes. In September of the seventeenth year he joined the Bolshevik Party. As a person with fighting experience, it was very appreciated. Therefore, he is appointed commander of the infantry regiment.

The Beginning of the Civil War

After Vasily showed his skills, he was appointed commissar of the whole county. Practically autonomously engaged in the formation of militant Communist detachments. For quite a short time he managed to organize the Red Guard of 14 battalions. Almost from the very beginning of the war, the entire Ural region was occupied by whites. This is due to the compact living of Cossacks in this territory. Therefore Chapaev's detachments operated under extremely difficult conditions. White did not even need to carry out thorough reconnaissance, because wherever the Reds appeared, there were people among the local population who reported on their numbers, weapons and other important information.

The onset of the Reds

In winter, fierce fighting broke out near Tsaritsyn. General Kaledin had at the disposal of the selected fighters, who had a good fighting experience behind them. And many have been trained in military craft since childhood. But Chapaev managed to train peasants and workers in such a short time that they fought alongside the military. After that, his connections were included in the Special Army. In her composition, Vasily Ivanovich took a personal part in the campaign against Uralsk. During the fighting he was wounded in the head. After the end of the campaign, he conducted a reorganization, breaking the Guardsmen into two regiments, which he united into a brigade under his command.

In the summer of the eighteenth year, the Civil War was in full swing. The Czechoslovak interventionists seized Nikolaevsk, where less than a year ago they proclaimed Soviet power with the active participation of Chapaev himself. Almost all of the Urals region came under White control. The Pugachev Brigade (one of the regiments wore the name of Pugachev) besieged the city and after several days of heavy fighting repulsed it. During the battles for Nikolaevsk, the Red Army men fought so desperately that many white men fled the battlefield. After that, about who Chapaev was, he knew the whole north of Russia. In the winter of the eighteenth year, Vasily Ivanovich is trained at the General Staff Academy. After that he gets the position of commissioner.

Commander of the Army

Six months later Chapaev commands the brigade, and a month later - the division. The troops are conducting an offensive on the Eastern Front against one of the best White generals, Kolchak. With the support of the Turkestan Army, the Bugulma and Buguruslanov districts were taken in red. The front passed through the Ufa province. About thirty thousand soldiers began the offensive on May twenty-fifth, and by the end of June Kolchak's troops fled the province. Chapaev took part in the storming of Ufa. During the fight, he was wounded in the head of an air-gun, but he was still alive.

The commander of the Red Army continued to direct combat operations in extremely difficult conditions. After a swift advance, Chapaev's men broke through and were exhausted. So in the autumn of the eighteenth they stopped in Lbischensk to rest and wait for the reinforcement approach. In the city itself, all administrative military institutions are located. However, there were very few fighters. The garrison consisted of six hundred bayonets, commanded by Vasily Ivanovich Chapaev. Civil war squeezed the last juices out of the torn country. Therefore, the peasants who could not handle weapons were mobilized in the Red Army. About two thousand such recruits were also in Lbischensk, but were not armed. The main forces of the division were forty kilometers from the city.

White Cossack raid

The weakness of the Chapaev garrison was decided by White Colonel Borodin. Under the cover of the night on the last day of summer, his squad consisting of selected fighters departed from Kaleny and set off for the raid. At the disposal of the Red Army there were four airplanes. They were engaged in reconnaissance around the city. However, the pilots were mobilized from the local population, and, apparently, sympathized with the whites. Therefore, on September 4, Borodin's detachment quietly approached the city. The commander of the Red Army Chapaev was at that time in Lbischensk. At dawn the Cossacks attacked the city. The surprise factor worked - panic began. The Red Army men in chaos tried to organize resistance. The battle lasted about six hours.

Death

Many were captured. But some managed to break through to the Ural River. They tried to swim across the river, despite the current. Among them was Chapaev. The Civil War hero was seriously injured in the stomach, but still continued to fight. According to the official version, after the arrival of the main part of the Cossacks ran to the river. He was almost in the middle when the bullet hit him in the head. He died when he reached the shore. The monument to Chapaev was simple - from reeds and seaweed. Burying the glorious commander, the Red Army men feared that White would find a burial.

Memory

After the Civil War, thanks to Soviet agitation, Chapaev became one of its most striking symbols. About him was filmed a few films, written a lot of songs and poems. The image of a dashing red Cossack became an element of folklore. In the anecdotes Chapayev became someone like Rzhevsky's lieutenant. The monument to Chapayev, already made of stone, stands in many cities of the post-Soviet space.