Acting Supreme Ruler of Russia
Predecessor:	Alexander Vasilievich Kolchak
Successor:
Birth:	December 4 (16), 1872 Wloclawek, Warsaw Province, Russian Empire (now in the Kuyavian-Pomeranian Voivodeship, Poland)
Buried:	Donskoy Monastery, Moscow, Russia
Military service
Years of service:
Affiliation:	Russian Empire, White Movement
Citizenship:
Type of army:	Russian empire
Occupation:	infantry
	General Staff Lieutenant General
Commanded:	4th Rifle Brigade (September 3, 1914 - September 9, 1916, from April 1915 - division) 8th Army Corps (September 9, 1916 - March 28, 1917) Western Front (May 31 - July 30, 1917) Southwestern Front (August 2-29, 1917) Volunteer Army (April 13, 1918 - January 8, 1919) All-Soviet Socialist Republic (January 8, 1919 - April 4, 1920) Deputy Supreme Commander-in-Chief of the Russian Army (1919-1920)
Battles:	Russo-Japanese War World War I Russian Civil War
	Foreign awards:

Origin

Childhood and youth

Beginning of military service

General Staff Academy

In the Russo-Japanese War

Between the wars

In the First World War

1916 - early 1917

Leader of the White Movement

The period of the greatest victories

The period of defeat of the AFSR

In exile

Interwar period

The Second World War

Moving to the USA

Death and funeral

Transfer of remains to Russia

In Soviet historiography

Russian

Received in peacetime

Foreign

In art

In literature

Major works

Anton Ivanovich Denikin(December 4, 1872, suburb of Wloclawek, Kingdom of Poland, Russian Empire - August 7, 1947, Ann Arbor, Michigan, USA) - Russian military leader, political and public figure, writer, memoirist, publicist and military documentarian.

Participant in the Russo-Japanese War. One of the most effective generals of the Russian Imperial Army during the First World War. Commander of the 4th Infantry "Iron" Brigade (1914-1916, from 1915 - deployed under his command to a division), 8th Army Corps (1916-1917). Lieutenant General of the General Staff (1916), commander of the Western and Southwestern Fronts (1917). An active participant in the military congresses of 1917, an opponent of the democratization of the army. He expressed support for the Kornilov speech, for which he was arrested by the Provisional Government, a participant in the Berdichev and Bykhov sittings of generals (1917).

One of the main leaders of the White movement during the Civil War, its leader in the South of Russia (1918-1920). He achieved the greatest military and political results among all the leaders of the White movement. Pioneer, one of the main organizers, and then commander of the Volunteer Army (1918-1919). Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of the South of Russia (1919-1920), Deputy Supreme Ruler and Supreme Commander-in-Chief of the Russian Army Admiral Kolchak (1919-1920).

Since April 1920 - an emigrant, one of the main political figures of the Russian emigration. Author of the memoirs “Essays on the Russian Time of Troubles” (1921-1926) - a fundamental historical and biographical work about the Civil War in Russia, the memoirs “The Old Army” (1929-1931), the autobiographical story “The Path of the Russian Officer” (published in 1953) and a number of other works.

Biography

Anton Ivanovich Denikin was born on December 4 (16), 1872 in the village of Shpetal Dolny, the Zavislinsky suburb of Wloclawek, a district city of the Warsaw province of the Russian Empire, in the family of a retired border guard major.

Origin

Father, Ivan Efimovich Denikin (1807-1885), came from serf peasants in the Saratov province. The landowner gave Denikin's young father as a recruit. After 22 years of military service, he was able to become an officer, then made a military career and retired in 1869 with the rank of major. As a result, he served in the army for 35 years, participating in the Crimean, Hungarian and Polish campaigns (suppression of the 1863 uprising).

Mother, Elizaveta Feodorovna (Franciskovna) Vrzhesinskaya (1843-1916), was Polish by nationality, from a family of impoverished small landowners.

Denikin’s biographer Dmitry Lekhovich noted that, as one of the leaders of the anti-communist struggle, he was undoubtedly of more “proletarian origin” than his future opponents - Lenin, Trotsky and many others.

Childhood and youth

On December 25, 1872 (January 7, 1873), at the age of three weeks, he was baptized by his father in Orthodoxy. At four years old, the gifted boy learned to read fluently; Since childhood, he spoke fluent Russian and Polish. The Denikin family lived poorly and subsisted on their father's pension of 36 rubles a month. Denikin was brought up “in Russianness and Orthodoxy.” The father was a deeply religious man, he was always at church services and took his son with him. From childhood, Anton began to serve at the altar, sing in the choir, ring the bell, and later read the Six Psalms and the Apostle. Sometimes he and his mother, who professed Catholicism, went to church. Lekhovich writes that Anton Denikin in the local modest regimental church perceived the Orthodox service as “his own, dear, close,” and the Catholic service as an interesting spectacle. In 1882, at the age of 9, Denikin passed the entrance exam to the first class of the Włocław Real School. After the death of his father in 1885, life became even more difficult for the Denikin family, as the pension was reduced to 20 rubles a month, and at the age of 13, Anton began to earn extra money as a tutor, preparing second-graders, for which he received 12 rubles a month. The student Denikin demonstrated particular success in studying mathematics. At the age of 15, as a diligent student, he was assigned his own student allowance of 20 rubles and was given the right to live in a student apartment of eight students, where he was appointed senior. Later, Denikin lived outside the home and studied at the Lovichi Real School located in the neighboring town.

Beginning of military service

Since childhood, I dreamed of following in my father’s footsteps and entering military service. In 1890, after graduating from the Łovichi Real School, he was enrolled as a volunteer in the 1st Rifle Regiment, lived for three months in a barracks in Płock, and in June of the same year was accepted into the “Kiev Junker School with a military school course.” After completing a two-year course at the school on August 4 (16), 1892, he was promoted to second lieutenant and assigned to the 2nd field artillery brigade, stationed in the district town of Bela, Siedlce province, 159 versts from Warsaw. He described his stay in Bel as a typical stop for the majority of military units abandoned in the outbacks of the Warsaw, Vilna, and partly Kyiv military districts.

In 1892, 20-year-old Denikin was invited to hunt wild boars. During this hunt, he had the opportunity to kill an angry boar, which drove a certain tax inspector Vasily Chizh, who also took part in the hunt and was considered an experienced local hunter, into a tree. After this incident, Denikin was invited to the christening of Vasily Chizh’s daughter Ksenia, who was born a few weeks ago, and became a friend of this family. Three years later, he gave Ksenia a doll for Christmas whose eyes opened and closed. The girl remembered this gift for a long time. Many years later, in 1918, when Denikin had already headed the Volunteer Army, Ksenia Chizh became his wife.

General Staff Academy

In the summer of 1895, after several years of preparation, he went to St. Petersburg, where he passed a competitive exam at the Academy of the General Staff. At the end of the first year of study, he was expelled from the Academy for failing to pass an exam in the history of military art, but three months later he passed the exam and was again enrolled in the first year of the Academy. The next few years he studied in the capital of the Russian Empire. Here he, among the students of the academy, was invited to a reception at the Winter Palace and saw Nicholas II. In the spring of 1899, upon completion of the course, he was promoted to captain, but on the eve of his graduation, the new head of the Academy of the General Staff, General Nikolai Sukhotin (a friend of War Minister Alexei Kuropatkin), arbitrarily changed the lists of graduates assigned to the General Staff, as a result of which the provincial officer Denikin was not included in their number . He took advantage of the right granted by the charter: he filed a complaint against General Sukhotin “in the Highest Name” (the Sovereign Emperor). Despite the fact that an academic conference convened by the Minister of War recognized the general’s actions as illegal, they tried to hush up the matter, and Denikin was asked to withdraw the complaint and instead write a petition for mercy, which they promised to satisfy and assign the officer to the General Staff. To this he replied: “I don’t ask for mercy. I only achieve what is rightfully mine.” As a result, the complaint was rejected, and Denikin was not included in the General Staff “for his character!”

He showed a penchant for poetry and journalism. In his childhood, he sent his poems to the editorial office of the Niva magazine and was very upset that they were not published and that the editorial office did not answer him, as a result of which Denikin concluded that “poetry is not a serious matter.” Later he began to write in prose. In 1898, his story was first published in the magazine “Razvedchik”, and then Denikin was published in the “Warsaw Diary”. He was published under the pseudonym Ivan Nochin and wrote mainly on the topic of army life.

In 1900 he returned to Bela, where he again served in the 2nd Field Artillery Brigade until 1902. Two years after completing the Academy of the General Staff, I wrote a letter to Kuropatkin asking him to look into his long-standing situation. Kuropatkin received the letter and during the next audience with Nicholas II “expressed regret that he had acted unfairly and asked for orders” to enlist Denikin as an officer of the General Staff, which took place in the summer of 1902. After this, according to historian Ivan Kozlov, a brilliant future opened up for Denikin. In the first days of January 1902, he left Bela and was accepted into the headquarters of the 2nd Infantry Division, located in Brest-Litovsk, where he was entrusted with command of a company of the 183rd Pultus Regiment, located in Warsaw, for one year. Denikin’s company was from time to time assigned to guard the “Tenth Pavilion” of the Warsaw Fortress, where particularly dangerous political criminals were kept, including the future head of the Polish state Jozef Pilsudski. In October 1903, at the end of his qualifying period of command, he was transferred to adjutant of the 2nd Cavalry Corps located here, where he served until 1904.

In the Russo-Japanese War

In January 1904, a horse fell under Captain Denikin, who was serving in Warsaw, his leg got stuck in the stirrup, and the fallen horse, rising, dragged him a hundred meters, and he tore ligaments and dislocated his toes. The regiment in which Denikin served did not go to war, but on February 14 (27), 1904, the captain obtained personal permission to be seconded to the active army. On February 17 (March 2), 1904, still limping, he departed by train to Moscow, from where he had to get to Harbin. Admiral Stepan Makarov and General Pavel Rennenkampf were traveling to the Far East on the same train. On March 5 (18), 1904, Denikin descended in Harbin.

At the end of February 1904, even before his arrival, he was appointed chief of staff of the 3rd brigade of the Zaamur district of a separate border guard corps, which stood in the deep rear and engaged in skirmishes with the Chinese robber detachments of Honghuz. In September, he received the post of officer for assignments at the headquarters of the 8th Corps of the Manchurian Army. Then he returned to Harbin and from there on October 28 (November 11), 1904, already with the rank of lieutenant colonel, he was sent to Qinghechen to the Eastern Detachment and accepted the position of chief of staff of the Transbaikal Cossack Division of General Rennenkampf. He received his first combat experience during the Battle of Tsinghechen on November 19 (December 2), 1904. One of the hills in the battle area went down in military history under the name “Denikin” for repelling the Japanese offensive with bayonets. In December 1904 he participated in enhanced reconnaissance. His forces, having twice shot down the advanced units of the Japanese, reached Jiangchang. At the head of an independent detachment, he threw the Japanese from the Vantselin Pass. In February - March 1905 he took part in the Battle of Mukden. Shortly before this battle, on December 18 (31), 1904, he was appointed chief of staff of the Ural-Transbaikal division of General Mishchenko, which specialized in horse raids behind enemy lines. There he showed himself to be an initiative officer, working together with General Mishchenko. A successful raid was carried out in May 1905 during a horse raid by General Mishchenko, in which Denikin took an active part. He himself describes the results of this raid in this way:

On July 26 (August 8), 1905, Denikin’s activities received high recognition from the command, and “for distinction in cases against the Japanese” he was promoted to colonel and awarded the Order of St. Stanislaus, 3rd class with swords and bows, and St. Anne, 2nd class. with swords.

After the end of the war and the signing of the Portsmouth Peace, in conditions of confusion and soldier unrest, he left Harbin in December 1905 and arrived in St. Petersburg in January 1906.

Between the wars

From January to December 1906, he was temporarily appointed to the lower position of staff officer for special assignments at the headquarters of his 2nd Cavalry Corps, based in Warsaw, from which he left for the Russo-Japanese War. In May - September 1906 he commanded a battalion of the 228th Infantry Reserve Khvalynsky Regiment. In 1906, while waiting for his main assignment, he took a vacation abroad and visited European countries (Austria-Hungary, France, Italy, Germany, Switzerland) as a tourist for the first time in his life. Having returned, he asked to speed up his appointment, and he was offered the position of chief of staff of the 8th Siberian Division. Having learned about the appointment, he exercised the right to refuse this offer as a senior officer. As a result, he was offered a more acceptable place in the Kazan Military District. In January 1907, he took up the post of chief of staff of the 57th Infantry Reserve Brigade in the city of Saratov, where he served until January 1910. In Saratov, he lived in a rented apartment in the house of D.N. Bankovskaya on the corner of Nikolskaya and Anichkovskaya streets (now Radishchev and Rabochaya).

During this period, he wrote a lot for the magazine “Razvedchik”, under the heading “Army Notes”, including denouncing the commander of his brigade, who “launched the brigade and completely retired”, putting the responsibility of the brigade on Denikin. The most noticeable was the humorous and satirical note “Cricket”. He criticized the management methods of the head of the Kazan Military District, General Alexander Sandetsky. Historians Oleg Budnitsky and Oleg Terebov wrote that during this period Denikin, in the pages of the press, spoke out against bureaucracy, suppression of initiative, rudeness and arbitrariness towards soldiers, for improving the system of selection and training of command personnel and devoted a number of articles to the analysis of the battles of the Russian-Japanese War, drew attention to the German and Austrian threat, in light of which he pointed out the need for speedy reforms in the army, wrote about the need to develop motor transport and military aviation, and in 1910 proposed convening a congress of General Staff officers to discuss the problems of the army.

On June 29 (July 11), 1910, he took command of the 17th Arkhangelsk Infantry Regiment, based in Zhitomir. On September 1 (14), 1911, his regiment took part in the royal maneuvers near Kiev, and the next day Denikin opened a parade with his regiment with a ceremonial march on the occasion of honoring the Emperor. Marina Denikina noted that her father was unhappy that the parade was not canceled due to the injury of the Chairman of the Council of Ministers, Pyotr Stolypin, at the Kyiv Opera. As the writer Vladimir Cherkasov-Georgievsky notes, 1912-1913 in the border district of Denikin passed in a tense situation, and his regiment received a secret order to send detachments to occupy and guard the most important points of the South-Western Railway in the direction of Lvov, where the Arkhangelsk residents stood for several weeks.

In the Arkhangelsk Regiment he created a museum of the history of the regiment, which became one of the first museums of military units in the Imperial Army.

On March 23 (April 5), 1914, he was appointed acting general for assignments under the Commander of the Kyiv Military District and moved to Kyiv. In Kyiv, he rented an apartment on Bolshaya Zhitomirskaya Street, 40, where he moved his family (mother and maid). On June 21 (July 3), 1914, on the eve of the outbreak of World War I, he was promoted to the rank of major general and confirmed as quartermaster general of the 8th Army, which was under the command of General Alexei Brusilov.

Military leader of the Russian Imperial Army

In the First World War

1914

The First World War, which began on July 19 (August 1), 1914, initially developed successfully for Brusilov’s 8th Army, on whose headquarters Denikin served. The army went on the offensive and took Lviv on August 21 (September 3), 1914. On the same day, having learned that the previous commander of the 4th Infantry Brigade had received a new appointment, and wanting to move from a staff position to a combat position, Denikin submitted a petition to be appointed commander of this brigade, which was immediately granted by Brusilov. In his memoirs, published in 1929, Brusilov wrote that Denikin “showed excellent talents as a military general in the combat field.”

Denikin about the 4th Rifle Brigade

Fate connected me with the Iron Brigade. For two years she walked with me across the fields of bloody battles, writing many glorious pages in the chronicle of the great war. Alas, they are not in the official history. For the Bolshevik censorship, which gained access to all archival and historical materials, dissected them in its own way and carefully erased all episodes of the brigade’s combat activities associated with my name...

"The Path of the Russian Officer"

Having taken command of the brigade on August 24 (September 6), 1914, he immediately achieved noticeable success with it. The brigade entered the battle at Grodek, and based on the results of this battle, Denikin was awarded the St. George's Arms. The Highest Award Certificate stated that the weapon was awarded “For your participation in battles from 8 to 12 September. 1914, at Grodek, with outstanding skill and courage, they repelled the desperate attacks of an enemy superior in strength, especially persistent on September 11, when the Austrians tried to break through the center of the corps; and in the morning of September 12. They themselves went on a decisive offensive with the brigade.”

A little over a month later, when the 8th Army was stuck in a positional war, noticing the weakness of the enemy’s defense, on October 11 (24), 1914, without artillery preparation, he transferred his brigade to an offensive against the enemy and took the village of Gorny Luzhek, where the headquarters of Archduke Joseph’s group was located, from where he hastily evacuated. As a result of the capture of the village, the direction for the attack on the Sambir-Turka highway was opened. “For his brave maneuver,” Denikin was awarded the Order of St. George, 4th degree.

In November 1914, Denikin’s brigade, while carrying out combat missions in the Carpathians, captured the city and station of Mezolyaborch, with the brigade itself consisting of 4,000 bayonets, “taking 3,730 prisoners, a lot of weapons and military equipment, large rolling stock with valuable cargo at the railway station, 9 guns” , losing 164 killed and 1332, including the wounded and disabled. Since the operation itself in the Carpathians, regardless of the success of Denikin’s brigade, was unsuccessful, he himself received only congratulatory telegrams from Nicholas II and Brusilov for these actions.

1915

In February 1915, the 4th Infantry Brigade, sent to help the combined detachment of General Kaledin, captured a number of command heights, the center of the enemy position and the village of Lutovisko, capturing over 2,000 prisoners and throwing the Austrians across the San River. For this battle, Denikin was awarded the Order of St. George, 3rd degree.

At the beginning of 1915, he received an offer to move to the post of division chief, but refused to part with his brigade of “iron” riflemen. As a result, the command solved this problem in a different way, deploying Denikin’s 4th Infantry Brigade into a division in April 1915. In 1915, the armies of the Southwestern Front were retreating or on the defensive. In September 1915, in conditions of retreat, he unexpectedly ordered his division to go on the offensive. As a result of the offensive, the division captured the city of Lutsk, and captured 158 officers and 9,773 soldiers. General Brusilov wrote in his memoirs that Denikin, “without any difficulties as an excuse,” rushed to Lutsk and took it “in one fell swoop,” and during the battle he himself drove a car into the city and from there sent Brusilov a telegram about the capture of the city by the 4th Infantry division.

For the capture of Lutsk during the battles of September 17 (30) - September 23 (October 6), 1915. On May 11 (24), 1916, he was promoted to lieutenant general with seniority from September 10 (23), 1915. Later, the command, straightening the front, ordered the abandonment of Lutsk. In October, during the Czartorysk operation, Denikin’s division, having completed the command’s task, crossed the Stryi River and took Czartorysk, occupying a bridgehead 18 km wide and 20 km deep on the opposite bank of the river, diverting significant enemy forces. On October 22 (November 4), 1915, an order was received to retreat to their original positions. Subsequently, there was a lull at the front until the spring of 1916.

1916 - early 1917

On March 2 (15), 1916, during a trench war, he was wounded by a shrapnel fragment in his left hand, but remained in service. In May, with his division as part of the 8th Army, he took part in the Brusilovsky (Lutsk) breakthrough of 1916. Denikin’s division broke through 6 lines of enemy positions, and on May 23 (June 5), 1916, re-took the city of Lutsk, for which Denikin was again granted the St. George’s Arms, studded with diamonds, with the inscription: “For the double liberation of Lutsk.”

On August 27 (September 9), 1916, he was appointed commander of the 8th Corps and, together with the corps, was sent to the Romanian Front, where, after the offensive of the Southwestern Front on the side of Russia and the Entente, the Romanian army suffered defeats and retreated. Lekhovich writes that after several months of fighting at Buzeo, Rymnic and Focshan, Denikin described the Romanian army as follows:

He was awarded the highest military order of Romania - the Order of Mihai the Brave, 3rd degree.

The February Revolution and Denikin's political views

The revolution of February 1917 found Denikin on the Romanian front. The general greeted the coup with sympathy. As the English historian Peter Kenez writes, he unconditionally believed and even later repeated in his memoirs false rumors about the royal family and Nicholas II, cleverly spread at that time by Russian liberal figures corresponding to his political views. Denikin’s personal views, as the historian writes, were very close to those of the cadets and were subsequently used by him as the basis for the army he commanded.

In March 1917, he was summoned to Petrograd by the Minister of War of the new revolutionary government, Alexander Guchkov, from whom he received an offer to become chief of staff under the newly appointed Supreme Commander of the Russian Army, General Mikhail Alekseev. Having been released from the oath by Nicholas II, he accepted the offer of the new government. On April 5 (28), 1917, he took office, in which he worked for more than a month and a half, working well with Alekseev. After Alekseev was removed from his post and replaced by General Brusilov, he refused to be his chief of staff and on May 31 (June 13), 1917, he was transferred to the post of commander of the armies of the Western Front. In the spring of 1917, at a military congress in Mogilev, he sharply criticized Kerensky’s policies aimed at democratizing the army. At a meeting of the Headquarters on July 16 (29), 1917, he advocated the abolition of committees in the army and the removal of politics from the army.

As commander of the Western Front, he provided strategic support for the Southwestern Front during the June 1917 offensive. In August 1917, he was appointed commander of the Southwestern Front. On the way to his new assignment in Mogilev, he met with General Kornilov, during a conversation with whom he expressed his support for Kornilov’s upcoming political actions.

Arrest and imprisonment in Berdichev and Bykhov prisons

As commander of the Southwestern Front, on August 29 (September 11), 1917, he was arrested and imprisoned in Berdichev prison for expressing solidarity with General Kornilov in a sharp telegram to the Provisional Government. The arrest was made by the Commissioner of the Southwestern Front, Nikolai Iordansky. Along with Denikin, almost the entire leadership of his headquarters was arrested.

The month spent in the Berdichev prison, according to Denikin, was difficult for him; every day he expected reprisals from revolutionary soldiers who could break into the cell. On September 27 (October 10), 1917, it was decided to transfer the arrested generals from Berdichev to Bykhov to the arrested a group of generals led by Kornilov. During transportation to the station, Denikin writes, he and other generals almost became a victim of lynching by a soldier’s crowd, from which they were largely saved by the officer of the cadet battalion of the 2nd Zhitomir school of ensigns, Viktor Betling, who had previously served in the Arkhangelsk regiment, which Denikin commanded before the war. Subsequently, in 1919, Betling was accepted into Denikin’s White Army and was appointed commander of the Special Officer Company at the Headquarters of the Commander-in-Chief of the AFSR.

After the transfer, he was kept in the Bykhov prison together with Kornilov. The investigation into the Kornilov speech case became more complicated and delayed due to the lack of convincing evidence of the generals’ treason, and the sentencing was delayed. In such conditions of Bykhov's imprisonment, Denikin and other generals met the October Revolution of the Bolsheviks.

After the fall of the Provisional Government, the new Bolshevik government temporarily forgot about the prisoners, and on November 19 (December 2), 1917, the Supreme Commander-in-Chief Dukhonin, having learned about the approach of trains with Bolshevik troops led by Ensign Krylenko to Mogilev, who threatened to kill them, and relying on the troops brought from Petrograd An order by Captain Chunikhin with the seal of the Higher Investigative Commission and forged signatures of the commission members, military investigators R.R. von Raupach and N.P. Ukraintsev, released the generals from Bykhov prison.

Flight to the Don and participation in the creation of the Volunteer Army

After his release, in order to be unrecognized, he shaved his beard and, with a certificate in the name of “assistant to the head of the dressing detachment Alexander Dombrovsky,” made his way to Novocherkassk, where he took part in the creation of the Volunteer Army. He was the author of the Constitution of the supreme power on the Don, which he outlined in December 1917 at a meeting of the generals, in which it was proposed to transfer civil power in the army to Alekseev, military power to Kornilov, and control of the Don region to Kaledin. This proposal was approved and signed by the Don and volunteer leadership and formed the basis for organizing the management of the Volunteer Army. Based on this, researcher of Denikin’s biography, Doctor of Historical Sciences Georgy Ippolitov, concluded that Denikin was involved in the formation of the first anti-Bolshevik government in Russia, which lasted one month, until Kaledin’s suicide.

In Novocherkassk he began to form units of the new army, taking on military functions and abandoning economic ones. Initially, like other generals, he worked in secret, wore civilian dress and, as the pioneer Roman Gul wrote, was “more like the leader of a bourgeois party than a military general.” He had at his disposal 1,500 men and 200 rounds of ammunition per rifle. Ippolitov writes that weapons, the funds for which were chronically lacking, were often traded with the Cossacks in exchange for alcohol or stolen from the warehouses of decaying Cossack units. Over time, 5 guns appeared in the army. In total, by January 1918, Denikin managed to form an army of 4,000 soldiers. The average age of a volunteer was small, and young officers called 46-year-old Denikin “Grandfather Anton.”

In January 1918, Denikin’s still forming units entered the first battles on the Cherkassy front with detachments under the command of Vladimir Antonov-Ovseenko, sent by the Council of People’s Commissars to fight Kaledin. Denikin's fighters suffered heavy losses, but achieved tactical success and held back the advance of the Soviet troops. In fact, Denikin, as one of the main and most active organizers of volunteer units, was often perceived at this stage as an army commander. He also temporarily performed the functions of commander during periods of Kornilov’s absence. Alekseev, speaking to the Don Cossack government in January, said that the Volunteer Army was commanded by Kornilov and Denikin.

During the formation of the army, changes occurred in the general's personal life - on December 25, 1917 (January 7, 1918) he got married for the first time. Ksenia Chizh, whom the general had been courting in recent years, came to him on the Don, and they, without attracting much attention, got married in one of the churches in Novocherkassk. Their honeymoon lasted eight days, which they spent in the village of Slavyanskaya. After this, he returned to the army, going first to Yekaterinodar for General Alekseev, and then returning to Novocherkassk. All this time, for the outside world, he continued to exist secretly under the false name of Dombrovsky.

On January 30 (February 12), 1918, he was appointed commander of the 1st Infantry (Volunteer) Division. After volunteers suppressed the workers' uprising in Rostov, the army headquarters moved there. Together with the Volunteer Army, on the night of February 8 (21) to February 9 (22), 1918, he set out on the 1st (Ice) Kuban campaign, during which he became deputy commander of the Volunteer Army of General Kornilov. Denikin himself recalled it this way:

He was one of those who convinced Kornilov at the army council in the village of Olginskaya on February 12 (25), 1918, to make the decision to move the army to the Kuban region. On March 17 (30), 1918, he also contributed to Alekseev’s conviction of the Kuban Rada of the need for its detachment to join the Volunteer Army. At the council that decided to storm Ekaterinodar, Denikin was supposed to take the post of its governor-general after taking the city.

The assault on Yekaterinodar, which lasted from April 28 (10) to March 31 (April 13), 1918, developed unsuccessfully for the volunteers. The army suffered heavy losses, ammunition was running out, and the defenders had numerical superiority. On the morning of March 31 (April 13), 1918, Kornilov was killed as a result of a shell hitting the headquarters building. By succession from Kornilov and his own consent, as well as as a result of the order issued by Alekseev, Denikin led the Volunteer Army, after which he gave the order to stop the assault and prepare to retreat.

Leader of the White Movement

Beginning of command of the Volunteer Army

Denikin led the remnants of the Volunteer Army to the village of Zhuravskaya. Experiencing constant persecution and the threat of encirclement, the army maneuvered and avoided the railways. Further from the village of Zhuravskaya, he led troops east and reached the village of Uspenskaya. Here news was received of the uprising of the Don Cossacks against Soviet power. He gave the order for a forced march to move towards Rostov and Novocherkassk. His troops took the Belaya Glina railway station in battle. On May 15 (28), 1918, at the height of the Cossack anti-Bolshevik uprising, volunteers approached Rostov (occupied at that time by the Germans) and settled in the villages of Mechetinskaya and Yegorlykskaya for rest and reorganization. The strength of the army, including the wounded, was about 5,000 people.

The author of the essay about the general, Yuri Gordeev, writes that at that moment it was difficult for Denikin to count on his leadership in the anti-Bolshevik struggle. The Cossack units of General Popov (the main force of the Don uprising) numbered more than 10 thousand people. In the negotiations that began, the Cossacks demanded that volunteers attack Tsaritsyn while the Cossacks were advancing on Voronezh, but Denikin and Alekseev decided that first they would repeat the campaign to Kuban to clear the area of ​​the Bolsheviks. Thus, the question of a unified command was excluded, since the armies dispersed in different directions. Denikin, at a meeting in the village of Manychskaya, demanded the transfer of a 3,000-strong detachment of Colonel Mikhail Drozdovsky, who came to the Don from the former Romanian Front, from the Don to the Volunteer Army, and this detachment was transferred.

Organization of the Second Kuban Campaign

Having received the necessary rest and reorganized, as well as being strengthened by Drozdovsky’s detachment, the Volunteer Army on the night of June 9 (22) to June 10 (23), 1918, consisting of 8-9 thousand soldiers under the command of Denikin, began the 2nd Kuban campaign, which ended in the defeat of almost 100 - a thousand-strong Kuban group of red troops and the capture of the capital of the Kuban Cossacks, Ekaterinodar, on August 4 (17), 1918.

He placed his headquarters in Yekaterinodar, and the Cossack troops of the Kuban came under his command. The army under his control by that time amounted to 12 thousand people, and it was significantly replenished by a 5 thousand-strong detachment of Kuban Cossacks under the command of General Andrei Shkuro. The main direction of Denikin’s policy during his stay in Yekaterinodar was the solution to the issue of creating a united front of anti-Bolshevik forces in the South of Russia, and the main problem was relations with the Don Army. As the success of volunteers in the Kuban and Caucasus unfolded, his position in the dialogue with the Don forces became increasingly stronger. At the same time, he led a political game to replace Pyotr Krasnov (until November 1918, oriented toward Germany) in the post of Don Ataman with the allied-oriented Afrikan Bogaevsky.

He spoke negatively about the Ukrainian hetman Pavlo Skoropadsky and the Ukrainian state he created with the participation of the Germans, which complicated relations with the German command and reduced the influx of volunteers to Denikin from the German-controlled territories of Ukraine and Crimea.

After the death of General Alekseev on September 25 (October 8), 1918, he took over the post of Commander-in-Chief of the Volunteer Army, uniting military and civil power in his hands. During the second half of 1918, the Volunteer Army under the general control of Denikin managed to defeat the troops of the North Caucasus Soviet Republic and occupy the entire western part of the North Caucasus.

In the autumn of 1918 - winter of 1919, despite opposition from Great Britain, the troops of the general Denikin conquered Sochi, Adler, Gagra, and the entire coastal territory captured by Georgia in the spring of 1918. By February 10, 1919, the troops of the AFSR forced the Georgian army to retreat across the Bzyb River. These battles of Denikin’s troops during the Sochi conflict made it possible to de facto preserve Sochi for Russia.

Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of the South of Russia

On December 22, 1918 (January 4, 1919), the troops of the Red Southern Front went on the offensive, which caused the collapse of the front of the Don Army. Under these conditions, Denikin had a convenient opportunity to subjugate the Cossack troops of the Don. On December 26, 1918 (January 8, 1919), Denikin signed an agreement with Krasnov, according to which the Volunteer Army merged with the Don Army. With the participation of the Don Cossacks, Denikin also managed in these days to remove General Pyotr Krasnov from the leadership and replace him with Afrikan Bogaevsky, and the remnants of the Don Army headed by Bogaevsky were reassigned directly to Denikin. This reorganization marked the beginning of the creation of the Armed Forces of the South of Russia (AFSR). The AFSR also included the Caucasian (later Kuban) Army and the Black Sea Fleet.

Denikin headed the AFSR, choosing as his deputy and chief of staff his longtime comrade-in-arms, with whom he went through Bykhov’s imprisonment and both Kuban campaigns of the Volunteer Army, Lieutenant General Ivan Romanovsky. On January 1 (14), 1919, he transferred command of the Volunteer Army, which now became one of the units of the AFSR , Peter Wrangel. Soon he transferred his Headquarters as the Commander-in-Chief of the AFSR to Taganrog.

By the beginning of 1919, Denikin was perceived by Russia’s Entente allies as the main leader of the anti-Bolshevik forces in the South of Russia. He managed to receive from them through the Black Sea ports a large amount of weapons, ammunition, and equipment as military assistance.

Doctor of Historical Sciences Vladimir Kulakov divides Denikin’s activities as commander-in-chief of the AFSR into two periods: the period of the largest victories (January - October 1919), which brought Denikin fame both in Russia and in Europe and the USA, and the period of the defeat of the AFSR (November 1919 - April 1920), which ended with the resignation of Denikin.

The period of the greatest victories

According to Gordeev, Denikin had an army of 85 thousand people in the spring of 1919; According to Soviet data, Denikin’s army by February 2 (15), 1919 amounted to 113 thousand people. Doctor of Historical Sciences Vladimir Fedyuk writes that 25-30 thousand officers served with Denikin during this period.

Entente reports from March 1919 drew conclusions about the unpopularity and poor moral and psychological state of Denikin’s troops, as well as their lack of their own resources to continue the fight. The situation was complicated by the withdrawal of the Allies from Odessa and its fall in April 1919 with the retreat of the Timanovsky brigade to Romania and its subsequent transfer to Novorossiysk, as well as the occupation of Sevastopol by the Bolsheviks on April 6. At the same time, the Crimean-Azov Volunteer Army gained a foothold on the isthmus of the Kerch Peninsula, which partially removed the threat of a Red invasion of Kuban. In the Kamenny Coal region, the main forces of the Volunteer Army fought defensive battles against the superior forces of the Southern Front.

In these contradictory conditions, Denikin prepared the spring-summer offensive operations of the AFSR, which achieved great success. Kulakov writes that, according to an analysis of documents and materials, “at this time the general showed his best military-organizational qualities, non-standard strategic and operational-tactical thinking, showed the art of flexible maneuver and the correct choice of the direction of the main attack.” Denikin's success factors include his experience in combat operations of the First World War, as well as his understanding that the strategy of the Civil War differs from the classical scheme of warfare.

In addition to military operations, he paid great attention to propaganda work. He organized an information agency that developed and used various unusual propaganda methods. Aviation was used to distribute leaflets over Red positions. In parallel with this, Denikin’s agents distributed leaflets in rear garrisons and places where Red spare parts were quartered with a variety of disinformation in the form of texts of “orders and appeals” from the Chairman of the Revolutionary Military Council of the Republic. The distribution of leaflets among the Vyoshensky Cossack rebels with information that the Council of People's Commissars signed a secret letter on the total extermination of the Cossacks, which won the rebels over to Denikin's side, is considered a successful propaganda move. At the same time, Denikin supported the morale of the volunteers with his own sincere belief in the success of the undertaking and his personal closeness to the army.

Although the balance of forces in the spring of 1919 is estimated as 1:3.3 in bayonets and sabers not in favor of the Whites with relative equality in artillery, the moral and psychological advantage was on the side of the Whites, which allowed them to conduct an offensive against a superior enemy and minimize the disadvantage factor material and human resources.

During the late spring and early summer of 1919, Denikin's troops managed to seize the strategic initiative. He concentrated against the Southern Front, according to the Soviet command, 8-9 infantry and 2 cavalry divisions with a total number of 31-32 thousand people. Having defeated the Bolsheviks on the Don and Manych in May - June, Denikin’s troops launched a successful offensive into the interior of the country. His armies were able to capture the Carboniferous region - the fuel and metallurgical base of southern Russia, enter the territory of Ukraine, and also occupy vast fertile regions of the North Caucasus. The front of his armies was located in an arc curved to the north from the Black Sea east of Kherson to the northern part of the Caspian Sea.

Denikin became widely known within Soviet Russia in connection with the offensive of his armies in June 1919, when volunteer troops took Kharkov (June 24 (July 7), 1919), Yekaterinoslav (June 27 (July 7), 1919), Tsaritsyn ( June 30 (July 12), 1919). The mention of his name in the Soviet press became ubiquitous, and he himself was subjected to fierce criticism. In mid-1919, Denikin instilled serious fear in the Soviet side. In July 1919, Vladimir Lenin wrote an appeal with the title “Everyone to fight Denikin!”, which became a letter from the Central Committee of the RCP (b) to the party organizations, in which Denikin’s offensive was called “the most critical moment of the socialist revolution.”

At the same time, Denikin, at the height of his successes, on June 12 (25), 1919, officially recognized the power of Admiral Kolchak as the Supreme Ruler of Russia and Supreme Commander-in-Chief. On June 24 (July 7), 1919, the Council of Ministers of the Omsk Government appointed Denikin Deputy Supreme Commander-in-Chief in order to “ensure continuity and continuity of the high command."

On July 3 (16), 1919, he issued a Moscow Directive to his troops, providing for the ultimate goal of capturing Moscow - the “heart of Russia” (and at the same time the capital of the Bolshevik state). The troops of the All-Soviet Union of Socialists under the general leadership of Denikin began their March on Moscow.

In mid-1919 he achieved great military successes in Ukraine. At the end of the summer of 1919, his armies captured the cities of Poltava (July 3 (16), 1919), Nikolaev, Kherson, Odessa (August 10 (23), 1919), Kyiv (August 18 (31), 1919). During the capture of Kyiv, volunteers came into contact with units of the UPR and the Galician Army. Denikin, who did not recognize the legitimacy of Ukraine and the Ukrainian troops, demanded the disarmament of the UPR forces and their return to their homes for subsequent mobilization. The impossibility of finding a compromise led to the outbreak of hostilities between the AFSR and the Ukrainian forces, which, although they developed successfully for the AFSR, however, led to the need to fight on two fronts simultaneously. In November 1919, the Petliura and Galician troops suffered a complete defeat in Right Bank Ukraine, the UPR army lost a significant part of the controlled territories, and a peace treaty and military alliance was concluded with the Galicians, as a result of which the Galician army came under the control of Denikin and became part of the AFSR.

September and the first half of October 1919 were the times of greatest success for Denikin’s forces in the central direction. Having inflicted a heavy defeat on the armies of the Red Southern Front (commander - Vladimir Yegoriev) in a large-scale oncoming battle near Kharkov and Tsaritsyn in August - September 1919, Denikin’s troops, pursuing the defeated Red units, began to rapidly advance towards Moscow. On September 7 (20), 1919, they took Kursk, September 23 (October 6), 1919 - Voronezh, September 27 (October 10), 1919 - Chernigov, September 30 (October 13), 1919 - Oryol and intended to take Tula. The southern front of the Bolsheviks was collapsing. The Bolsheviks were close to disaster and were preparing to go underground. An underground Moscow Party Committee was created, and government institutions began evacuating to Vologda.

If on May 5 (18), 1919, the Volunteer Army in the Kamenny Coal region numbered 9,600 fighters in its ranks, then after the capture of Kharkov, by June 20 (July 3), 1919, it amounted to 26 thousand people, and by July 20 (August 2), 1919 - 40 thousand people. The entire number of the AFSR subordinate to Denikin gradually increased from May to October from 64 to 150 thousand people. Under Denikin’s control were the territories of 16-18 provinces and regions with a total area of ​​810 thousand square meters. versts with a population of 42 million.

The period of defeat of the AFSR

But from mid-October 1919, the position of the armies of Southern Russia noticeably worsened. The rear was destroyed by the raid of the rebel army of Nestor Makhno in Ukraine, which broke through the White front in the Uman region at the end of September, in addition, troops against him had to be withdrawn from the front, and the Bolsheviks concluded an unspoken truce with the Poles and Petliurists, freeing up forces to fight Denikin. Due to the transition from a volunteer to a mobilization basis for recruiting the army, the quality of Denikin’s armed forces fell, mobilizations did not give the desired result, a large number of those liable for military service preferred, under various pretexts, to remain in the rear rather than in active units. Peasant support weakened. Having created a quantitative and qualitative superiority over Denikin’s forces in the main, Oryol-Kursk, direction (62 thousand bayonets and sabers for the Reds versus 22 thousand for the Whites), in October the Red Army launched a counteroffensive: in fierce battles, which went on with varying success, south of Orel there were few By the end of October, the troops of the Red Southern Front (since September 28 (October 11), 1919 - commander Alexander Egorov) defeated parts of the Volunteer Army, and then began to push them back along the entire front line. In the winter of 1919-1920, the AFSR troops left Kharkov, Kyiv, Donbass, and Rostov-on-Don.

On November 24 (December 7), 1919, in a conversation with the Pepelev brothers, the Supreme Ruler and Supreme Commander-in-Chief of the Russian Army A.V. Kolchak for the first time announced his abdication in favor of A.I. Denikin, and in early December 1919 the admiral raised this issue with his government. On December 9 (22), 1919, the Council of Ministers of the Russian Government adopted the following resolution: “In order to ensure the continuity and succession of all-Russian power, the Council of Ministers decided: to assign the duties of the Supreme Ruler in the event of a serious illness or death of the Supreme Ruler, as well as in the event of his refusal of the title of Supreme The ruler or his long-term absence on the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces in the South of Russia, Lieutenant General Denikin.”

On December 22, 1919 (January 4, 1920) Kolchak issued his last decree in Nizhneudinsk, which, “in view of my predetermined decision on the transfer of supreme all-Russian power to the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces in the South of Russia, Lieutenant General Denikin, pending receipt of his instructions, in order to preserve on our Russian Eastern Outskirts, a stronghold of statehood on the basis of inextricable unity with all of Russia,” provided “the fullness of military and civil power throughout the entire territory of the Russian Eastern Outskirts, united by the Russian supreme power,” to Lieutenant General Grigory Semyonov. Despite the fact that the supreme all-Russian power was never transferred to Denikin by Kolchak, and accordingly, the title “Supreme Ruler” itself was never transferred, Denikin wrote in his memoirs that in the context of heavy defeats of the Armed Forces of the South of Russia and the political crisis, he considered it completely unacceptable “acceptance of the corresponding name and functions” and refused to accept the title of Supreme Ruler, motivating his decision “by the lack of official information about events in the East.”

After the retreat of the remnants of the Volunteer Army into the Cossack regions by the beginning of 1920, already possessing the title of Supreme Ruler received from Kolchak, Denikin tried to form the so-called South Russian model of statehood, based on the unification of the state principles of the volunteer, Don and Kuban leaderships. To do this, he abolished the Special Meeting and created instead the South Russian Government from representatives of all parties, which he headed, remaining as the commander-in-chief of the AFSR. The issue of the need for a broad coalition with representatives of the Cossack leadership lost relevance by March 1920, when the army retreated to Novorossiysk, losing control over the Cossack regions.

He made an attempt to delay the retreat of his troops on the line of the Don and Manych rivers, as well as on the Perekop Isthmus, and ordered in early January 1920 to take up defense on these lines. He hoped to wait until spring, receive new help from the Entente and repeat the offensive into central Russia. The Red Cavalry Armies, which tried to break through the stabilized front in the second half of January, suffered heavy losses near Bataysk and on the Manych and Sal rivers from the strike group of the Don Army of General Vladimir Sidorin. Inspired by this success, on February 8 (21), 1920, Denikin ordered his troops to go on the offensive. On February 20 (March 5), 1920, volunteer troops took Rostov-on-Don for several days. But a new offensive by the troops of the Red Caucasian Front on February 26 (March 11), 1920, caused fierce battles near Bataysk and Stavropol, and at the village of Yegorlykskaya there was a counter cavalry battle between the army of Semyon Budyonny and the group of Alexander Pavlov, as a result of which Pavlov’s cavalry group was defeated and the troops Denikin began a general retreat along the entire front to the south for more than 400 km.

On March 4 (17), 1920, he issued a directive to the troops to cross to the left bank of the Kuban River and take up defense along it, but the disintegrated troops did not comply with these orders and began a panicked retreat. The Don Army, which was ordered to take up defensive positions on the Taman Peninsula, instead, mixed with volunteers, retreated to Novorossiysk. The Kuban army also left its positions and rolled back to Tuapse. The disorderly accumulation of troops near Novorossiysk and the delay in starting the evacuation became the cause of the Novorossiysk disaster, which is often blamed on Denikin. In total, about 35-40 thousand soldiers and officers were transported from the Novorossiysk region by sea to the Crimea on March 8-27, 1920. The general himself, with his chief of staff Romanovsky, was one of the last to board the destroyer Captain Saken in Novorossiysk.

Resignation from the post of Commander-in-Chief of the AFSR

In Crimea, on March 27 (April 9), 1920, he placed his Headquarters in Feodosia in the building of the Astoria Hotel. During the week, he carried out a reorganization of the army and measures to restore the combat effectiveness of the troops. At the same time, in the army itself, with the exception of the colored units and the majority of the Kuban residents, dissatisfaction with Denikin was growing. The opposition generals expressed particular dissatisfaction. Under these conditions, the Military Council of the AFSR in Sevastopol made a recommendatory decision on the advisability of Denikin transferring command to Wrangel. Feeling responsible for military failures and following the laws of officer honor, he wrote a letter to the Chairman of the Military Council, Abram Dragomirov, in which he said that he planned to resign and convened a meeting of the council in order to elect a successor. On April 4 (17), 1920, he appointed Lieutenant General Peter Wrangel as Commander-in-Chief of the AFSR and on the same day in the evening, together with the former chief of staff Romanovsky, who had also resigned, he left Crimea on an English destroyer and went to England with an intermediate stop in Constantinople, leaving forever borders of Russia.

On April 5 (18), 1920, in Constantinople, in the immediate vicinity of Denikin, his chief of staff, Ivan Romanovsky, was killed, which was a severe blow for Denikin. That same evening, with his family and the children of General Kornilov, he transferred to an English hospital ship, and on April 6 (19), 1920, he left for England on the dreadnought Marlboro, in his own words, with a feeling of “inexorable sorrow.”

In the summer of 1920, Alexander Guchkov turned to Denikin with a request to “complete the patriotic feat and invest Baron Wrangel with a special solemn act ... with successive all-Russian power,” but he refused to sign such a document.

Denikin's policy in controlled territories

In the territories controlled by the Armed Forces of the South of Russia, all power belonged to Denikin as commander-in-chief. Under him, there was a Special Council that performed the functions of the executive and legislative powers. Possessing essentially dictatorial power and being a supporter of a constitutional monarchy, Denikin did not consider himself to have the right (before the convening of the Constituent Assembly) to predetermine the future state structure of Russia. He tried to rally the widest possible sections of the population around the White movement under the slogans “Fight Bolshevism to the end”, “Great, United and Indivisible Russia”, “Political freedoms”, “Law and order”. This position was the object of criticism both from the right, from the monarchists, and from the left, from the liberal socialist camp. The call to recreate a united and indivisible Russia met resistance from the Cossack state formations of the Don and Kuban, who sought autonomy and a federal structure of the future Russia, and also could not be supported

jan by the nationalist parties of Ukraine, Transcaucasia, and the Baltic states.

The implementation of Denikin's power was imperfect. Although formally power belonged to the military, which, relying on the army, shaped the policy of the White South, in practice Denikin failed to establish firm order either in the controlled territories or in the army.

In attempts to resolve the labor issue, progressive labor legislation was adopted with an 8-hour working day and labor protection measures, which, due to the complete collapse of industrial production and unscrupulous actions of owners who used their temporary return to power in enterprises as a convenient opportunity to save their property and transfer of capital abroad has not found practical implementation. At the same time, any labor demonstrations and strikes were considered exclusively political and were suppressed by force, and the independence of trade unions was not recognized.

Denikin’s government did not have time to fully implement the land reform he developed, which was supposed to be based on the strengthening of small and medium-sized farms at the expense of state-owned and landed estates. In modern Russian and Ukrainian historiography, unlike earlier Soviet historiography, it is not customary to call Denikin’s agrarian legislation focused on protecting the interests of landownership. At the same time, Denikin’s government failed to completely prevent the spontaneous return of landownership with all its negative consequences for the implementation of land reforms.

In national policy, Denikin adhered to the concept of a “united and indivisible Russia,” which did not allow for discussion of any autonomy or self-determination of the territories that were part of the former Russian Empire within the pre-war borders. The principles of national policy regarding the territory and population of Ukraine were reflected in Denikin’s “Appeal to the Population of Little Russia” and did not allow the right of the Ukrainian people to self-determination. Cossack autonomy was not allowed either - Denikin carried out repressive measures against attempts to create their own federal state by the Kuban, Don and Terek Cossacks: he liquidated the Kuban Rada and made reshuffles in the Government of the Cossack regions. A special policy was carried out regarding the Jewish population. Due to the fact that a significant part of the leaders of the Bolshevik structures were Jews, among the Volunteer Army it was customary to consider any Jews as potential accomplices of the Bolshevik regime. Denikin was forced to issue an order banning Jews from joining the Volunteer Army as officers. Although Denikin did not issue a similar order regarding the soldiers, the artificially high requirements for Jewish recruits accepted into the army led to the fact that the question of Jewish participation in the AFSR “was resolved by itself.” Denikin himself repeatedly appealed to his commanders “not to set one nationality against another,” but the weakness of his local power was such that he was unable to prevent pogroms, especially under conditions when the propaganda agency of Denikin’s government, OSVAG, was itself conducting anti-Jewish agitation - for example, in its propaganda it equated Bolshevism with the Jewish population and called for a “crusade” against the Jews.

In his foreign policy, he was guided by the recognition of the state entity under his control by the Entente countries. With the consolidation of his power at the end of 1918 and the formation of the AFSR in January 1919, Denikin managed to enlist the support of the Entente and receive its military assistance throughout 1919. During his reign, Denikin did not set the task of international recognition of his government by the Entente; these issues were already resolved by his successor Wrangel in 1920.

He had a negative attitude towards the idea of ​​​​forming a coalition legislative government of anti-Bolshevik forces in the South of Russia, and was skeptical about the state abilities of his Don and Kuban allies, believing that the territory subordinate to him “could provide a representative body intellectually no higher than the provincial zemstvo assembly.”

From mid-1919, a major conflict emerged between Denikin and Wrangel, one of the military leaders of the Volunteer Army that had risen to prominence by that time. The contradictions were not of a political nature: the reasons for the disagreements were the difference in the vision of the two generals on the issue of choosing allies and the further strategy for the forces of the White movement in the South of Russia, which quickly turned into mutual accusations and diametrically opposed assessments of the same events. Researchers say that Denikin ignored Wrangel’s secret report in April 1919, in which he proposed making the Tsaritsyn direction of the White armies’ offensive a priority, as the starting point of the conflict. Denikin later issued the Moscow offensive directive, which, after its failure, was publicly criticized by Wrangel. By the end of 1919, open confrontation broke out between the generals; Wrangel probed the waters to replace General Denikin, but in January 1920 he resigned, left the territory of the All-Soviet Union of Socialist Republics and went to Constantinople, staying there until the spring of 1920. The conflict between Denikin and Wrangel contributed to the emergence of a split in the white camp, and it also continued in emigration.

The repressive policy of the Denikin government is assessed as similar to the policy of Kolchak and other military dictatorships, or is called tougher than that of other white entities, which is explained by the greater severity of the Red Terror in the South in comparison with Siberia or other areas. Denikin himself transferred responsibility for organizing the White Terror in the South of Russia to the initiative of his counterintelligence, arguing that it became “sometimes centers of provocation and organized robbery.” In August 1918, he ordered that, by order of the military governor, those responsible for the establishment of Soviet power should be brought to “military courts of the military unit of the Volunteer Army.” In mid-1919, repressive legislation was tightened by the adoption of the “Law regarding participants in the establishment of Soviet power in the Russian state, as well as those who consciously contributed to its spread and strengthening,” according to which persons clearly involved in the establishment of Soviet power were subject to the death penalty, and those who were complicit were subject to “indefinite hard labor", or "hard labor from 4 to 20 years", or "correctional prison departments from 2 to 6 years", smaller violations - imprisonment from a month to 1 year 4 months or "monetary penalty" from 300 to 20 thousand rubles . In addition, “fear of possible coercion” was excluded by Denikin from the “exemption from liability” section because, according to his resolution, it was “difficult for the court to grasp.” At the same time, Denikin, with his own propaganda goals, set the task of studying and documenting the results of the Red Terror. On April 4, 1919, by his order, a Special Investigative Commission was created to investigate the atrocities of the Bolsheviks.

In exile

Interwar period

Retreat from politics and a period of active literary activity

Heading with his family from Constantinople to England, Denikin made stops in Malta and Gibraltar. In the Atlantic Ocean, the ship was caught in a strong storm. Arriving in Southampton, he left for London on April 17, 1920, where he was met by representatives of the British War Office, as well as General Holman and a group of Russian figures, including former cadet leader Pavel Milyukov and diplomat Yevgeny Sablin, who presented Denikin with a certificate of gratitude and welcome. a telegram from Paris sent to the Russian embassy in London addressed to Denikin with the signatures of Prince Georgy Lvov, Sergei Sazonov, Vasily Maklakov and Boris Savinkov. The London press (in particular, The Times and the Daily Herald) noted Denikin's arrival with respectful articles addressed to the general.

Stayed in England for several months, first living in London and then in Pevensey and Eastbourne (East Sussex). In the fall of 1920, a telegram from Lord Curzon to Chicherin was published in England, in which he noted that it was his influence that contributed to convincing Denikin to leave the post of Commander-in-Chief of the AFSR and transfer it to Wrangel. Denikin in The Times categorically denied Curzon's statement about any influence of the lord on his leaving the post of Commander-in-Chief of the AFSR, explaining the resignation for purely personal reasons and the requirement of the moment, and also refused Lord Curzon's offer to participate in concluding a truce with the Bolsheviks and reported that:

In protest against the British government's desire to make peace with Soviet Russia, in August 1920 he left England and moved to Belgium, where he settled with his family in Brussels and began writing his fundamental documentary study of the Civil War, “Essays on the Russian Troubles.” On Christmas Eve in December 1920, General Denikin wrote to his colleague, the former head of the British mission in the South of Russia, General Briggs:

Gordeev writes that during this period Denikin decided to abandon further armed struggle in favor of fighting “with word and pen.” The researcher speaks positively about this choice and notes that thanks to him, the history of Russia at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries “received a wonderful chronicler.”

In June 1922 he moved from Belgium to Hungary, where he lived and worked until mid-1925. During the three years of his life in Hungary, he changed his place of residence three times. First, the general settled in Sopron, then spent several months in Budapest, and after that he settled again in a provincial town near Lake Balaton. Here the work on the last volumes of the Essays was completed, which were published in Paris and Berlin, and were also translated and published with abbreviations in English, French and German. The publication of this work somewhat improved Denikin’s financial situation and gave him the opportunity to look for a more convenient place to live. At this time, Denikin’s longtime friend, General Alexei Chapron du Larre, married the daughter of General Kornilov in Belgium and invited the general to return to Brussels in a letter, which was the reason for the move. He stayed in Brussels from mid-1925 until the spring of 1926.

In the spring of 1926 he settled in Paris, which was the center of Russian emigration. Here he took up not only literary, but also social activities. In 1928, he wrote the essay “Officers”, the main part of the work on which took place in Capbreton, where Denikin often communicated with the writer Ivan Shmelev. Next, Denikin began work on the autobiographical story “My Life.” At the same time, he often traveled to Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia to lecture on Russian history. In 1931, he completed the work “The Old Army,” which was a military-historical study of the Russian Imperial Army before and during the First World War.

Political activity in exile

With the Nazis coming to power in Germany, he condemned Hitler's policies. In contrast to a number of emigrant figures who planned to participate in hostilities against the Red Army on the side of foreign states unfriendly to the USSR, he advocated the need to support the Red Army against any foreign aggressor, with the subsequent awakening of the Russian spirit in the ranks of this army, which, according to the general’s plan, and must overthrow Bolshevism in Russia and at the same time preserve Russia’s army itself.

In general, Denikin retained authority among the Russian emigration, but part of the white emigration and subsequent waves of Russian emigration were critical of Denikin. Among them was the successor to the post of Commander-in-Chief of the All-Russian Socialist Republic Pyotr Wrangel, the writer Ivan Solonevich, the philosopher Ivan Ilyin and others. For military-strategic miscalculations during the Civil War, Denikin was criticized by such prominent emigration figures as military specialist and historian General Nikolai Golovin, Colonel Arseny Zaitsov and others. Denikin also had complex relations, due to differences in views on the further continuation of the White struggle, with the Russian All-Military Union (ROVS), a military emigrant organization of former participants in the White movement.

In September 1932, a group of former Volunteer Army soldiers close to Denikin created the Union of Volunteers organization. The newly created organization worried the leadership of the EMRO, which claimed leadership in organizing military unions among the emigrants. Denikin supported the creation of the “Union of Volunteers” and believed that the EMRO in the early 1930s. was in crisis. According to some reports, he headed the Soyuz.

From 1936 to 1938, with the participation of the “Union of Volunteers” in Paris, he published the newspaper “Volunteer”, on the pages of which he published his articles. A total of three issues were published in February of each year, and they were timed to coincide with the anniversary of the First Kuban (Ice) Campaign.

At the end of 1938, he was a witness in the case of Nadezhda Plevitskaya regarding the kidnapping of the head of the EMRO, General Evgeniy Miller, and the disappearance of General Nikolai Skoblin (Plevitskaya’s husband). His appearance at the trial in the French newspaper press on December 10, 1938 was considered a sensation. He gave testimony in which he expressed distrust of Skoblin and Plevitskaya, and also expressed confidence in the involvement of both in the abduction of Miller.

On the eve of World War II, Denikin gave a lecture in Paris “World Events and the Russian Question,” which was subsequently published as a separate brochure in 1939.

The Second World War

The beginning of World War II (September 1, 1939) found General Denikin in the south of France in the village of Monteil-au-Vicomte, where he left Paris to work on his work “The Path of the Russian Officer.” According to the author's plan, this work was supposed to be both an introduction and a supplement to the “Essays on the Russian Troubles.” The invasion of German troops into French territory in May 1940 forced Denikin to decide to hastily leave Bourg-la-Reine (near Paris) and drive to the south of France to the Spanish border in the car of one of his comrades, Colonel Glotov. In Mimizan, north of Biarritz, the car with Denikin was overtaken by German motorized units. He was imprisoned by the Germans in a concentration camp, where Goebbels' department offered him assistance in his literary work. He refused to cooperate, was released and settled under the control of the German commandant's office and the Gestapo in a villa of friends in the village of Mimizan in the vicinity of Bordeaux. Many of the books, pamphlets and articles written by Denikin in the 1930s ended up on the list of prohibited literature in territory controlled by the Third Reich and were confiscated.

He refused to register with the German commandant's office as a stateless person (which were Russian emigrants), citing the fact that he was a citizen of the Russian Empire, and no one had taken this citizenship away from him.

In 1942, the German authorities again offered Denikin cooperation and moving to Berlin, this time demanding, according to Ippolitov’s interpretation, that he lead anti-communist forces from among Russian emigrants under the auspices of the Third Reich, but received a decisive refusal from the general.

Gordeev, referring to information obtained in archival documents, cites information that in 1943 Denikin, using his personal funds, sent a carload of medicines to the Red Army, which puzzled Stalin and the Soviet leadership. It was decided to accept the medications and not disclose the name of the person sending them.

Remaining a staunch opponent of the Soviet system, he called on emigrants not to support Germany in the war with the USSR (the slogan “Defense of Russia and the overthrow of Bolshevism”), repeatedly calling all emigration representatives collaborating with the Germans “obscurantists,” “defeatists,” and “Hitler admirers.”

At the same time, when in the fall of 1943 one of the eastern battalions of the Wehrmacht was stationed in Mimizan, where Denikin lived, he softened his attitude towards ordinary military personnel from former Soviet citizens. He believed that their transition to the side of the enemy was explained by the inhuman conditions of detention in Nazi concentration camps and the national self-awareness of Soviet people, disfigured by Bolshevik ideology. Denikin expressed his views on the Russian liberation movement in two unpublished essays, “General Vlasov and the Vlasovites” and “World War. Russia and abroad."

In June 1945, after the surrender of Germany, Denikin returned to Paris.

Moving to the USA

The strengthening of Soviet influence in European countries after World War II forced the general to leave France. The USSR was aware of Denikin's patriotic position during World War II, and Stalin did not raise the issue of forcibly deporting Denikin to the Soviet state with the governments of the anti-Hitler coalition countries. But Denikin himself did not have accurate information on this matter and experienced a certain discomfort and fear for his life. In addition, Denikin felt that under direct or indirect Soviet control his ability to express his views in print was limited.

It turned out to be difficult for Russian emigrants to obtain an American visa under the quota, and Denikin and his wife, being born on the territory of modern Poland, were able to obtain an American emigration visa through the Polish embassy. Leaving their daughter Marina in Paris, on November 21, 1945, they left for Dieppe, from there via Newhaven they got to London. On December 8, 1945, the Denikin family stepped off the steamship in New York.

In the USA he continued working on the book “My Life”. In January 1946, he appealed to General Dwight Eisenhower to stop the forced extradition to the USSR of former Soviet citizens who joined German military formations during the war. He made public presentations: in January he gave a lecture “World War and Russian Military Emigration” in New York, and on February 5 he spoke to an audience of 700 people at a conference in the Manhattan Center. In the spring of 1946, he often visited the New York Public Library on 42nd Street.

In the summer of 1946, he issued a memorandum “The Russian Question” addressed to the governments of Great Britain and the United States, in which, allowing for a military clash between the leading Western powers and Soviet Russia in order to overthrow the rule of the Communists, he warned them against their intentions to carry out the dismemberment of Russia in such a case.

Before his death, at the invitation of his friends, he went on vacation to a farm near Lake Michigan, where on June 20, 1947, he suffered his first heart attack, after which he was admitted to the hospital in the city of Ann Arbor, closest to the farm.

Death and funeral

He died of a heart attack on August 7, 1947, at the University of Michigan Hospital in Ann Arbor and was buried in a Detroit cemetery. American authorities buried him as commander-in-chief of the Allied army with military honors. On December 15, 1952, by decision of the White Cossack community in the United States, the remains of General Denikin were transferred to the Orthodox Cossack cemetery of St. Vladimir in the town of Keesville, in the area of ​​Jackson, in the state of New Jersey.

Transfer of remains to Russia

On October 3, 2005, the ashes of General Anton Ivanovich Denikin and his wife Ksenia Vasilievna (1892-1973), together with the remains of the Russian philosopher Ivan Aleksandrovich Ilyin (1883-1954) and his wife Natalya Nikolaevna (1882-1963), were transported to Moscow for burial in Donskoy monastery The reburial was carried out in accordance with the instructions of Russian President Vladimir Putin and the Government of the Russian Federation with the consent of Denikin’s daughter Marina Antonovna Denikina-Grey (1919-2005) and organized by the Russian Cultural Foundation.

Ratings

Are common

One of the main Soviet and Russian researchers of Denikin’s biography, Doctor of Historical Sciences Georgy Ippolitov, called Denikin a bright, dialectically contradictory and tragic figure in Russian history.

Russian emigrant sociologist, political scientist and historian Nikolai Timashev noted that Denikin went down in history primarily as the leader of the Armed Forces of the South of Russia, and his troops, out of all the forces of the White movement, came as close as possible to Moscow during the Civil War. Such assessments are shared by other authors.

There are frequent assessments of Denikin as a consistent Russian patriot who remained loyal to Russia throughout his life. Often, researchers and biographers highly value Denikin’s moral qualities. Denikin is presented by many authors as an irreconcilable enemy of the Soviet regime, while his position during the Second World War, when he supported the Red Army in its confrontation with the Wehrmacht, is called patriotic.

Historian and writer, researcher of Denikin’s military biography Vladimir Cherkasov-Georgievsky painted a psychological portrait of Denikin, where he presented him as a typical liberal military intellectual, a special kind of church-Orthodox person with a “republican” accent, who are characterized by impulsiveness, eclecticism, hodgepodge, and the absence of a solid monolith . Such people are “unpredictably” indecisive, and it was they, according to the author, who gave birth to Kerensky and Februaryism in Russia. In Denikin, “the commonplace of the intelligentsia” tried to coexist “with genuine Orthodox asceticism.”

American historian Peter Kenez wrote that throughout his life Denikin always clearly identified himself with Orthodoxy and belonging to Russian civilization and culture, and during the Civil War he was one of the most uncompromising defenders of the unity of Russia, fighting against the separation of the national outskirts from it.

Historian Igor Khodakov, discussing the reasons for the defeat of the White movement, wrote that Denikin’s thoughts, as a Russian idealist intellectual, were completely incomprehensible to ordinary workers and peasants; the American historian Peter Kenez drew attention to a similar problem. According to historian Lyudmila Antonova, Denikin is a phenomenon of Russian history and culture, his thoughts and political views are an achievement of Russian civilization and “represent positive potential for today's Russia.”

Doctor of Historical Sciences Vladimir Fedyuk writes that Denikin in 1918 was never able to become a charismatic leader due to the fact that, unlike the Bolsheviks, who created a new statehood on the principle of a real great power, he continued to remain in the position of a declarative great power. Joffe writes that Denikin, by political convictions, was a representative of Russian liberalism; he remained faithful to such convictions to the end, and it was they who played “not the best role” with the general in the Civil War. The assessment of Denikin's political beliefs as liberal is also typical of many other modern authors.

The current state of the study of Denikin is assessed in Russian historiography as continuing to contain many unresolved debatable issues, and also, according to Panov, bearing the imprint of political conjuncture.

In the 1920s, Soviet historians characterized Denikin as a politician who sought to find “some kind of middle line between extreme reaction and “liberalism” and in his views “approached right-wing Octobrism,” and later Denikin’s reign in Soviet historiography began to be viewed as "unlimited dictatorship". A researcher of Denikin’s journalism, Candidate of Historical Sciences Denis Panov writes that in the 1930-1950s, cliches in the assessment of Denikin (as well as other figures of the White movement) developed in Soviet historiography: “counter-revolutionary rabble”, “White Guard rump”, “lackeys of imperialism” and others. “In some historical works (by A. Kabesheva, F. Kuznetsov), white generals turn into caricatures and are reduced to the role of evil robbers from a children’s fairy tale,” writes Panov.

The Soviet historiographical reality in the study of Denikin’s military and political activities during the Civil War was the representation of Denikin as the creator of “Denikinism,” characterized as a military dictatorship of a general, a counter-revolutionary, reactionary regime. Characteristic was the erroneous statement about the monarchical-restoration nature of Denikin’s policy, his connection with the imperialist forces of the Entente, who were carrying out a campaign against Soviet Russia. Denikin's democratic slogans about convening a Constituent Assembly were presented as a cover for monarchical goals. In general, Soviet historical science has developed an accusatory bias in the coverage of events and phenomena related to Denikin.

According to Antonova, in modern science, many assessments of Denikin by Soviet historiography are predominantly perceived as biased. Ippolitov writes that no serious success was achieved in the study of this problem in Soviet science, because “in the absence of creative freedom, it was not possible to study the problems of the White movement, including the activities of General Denikin.” Panov writes about Soviet assessments as “far from objectivity and impartiality.”

In Ukrainian historiography after 1991

Modern Ukrainian historiography studies Denikin mainly in the context of the presence of the armed forces under his control on the territory of Ukraine and presents him as the creator of the military dictatorship regime in Ukraine. His criticism was widespread for his pronounced anti-Ukrainian position, which was reflected in Denikin’s address “To the Population of Little Russia” published in the summer of 1919, according to which the name Ukraine was banned, replaced by the South of Russia, Ukrainian institutions were closed, and the Ukrainian movement was declared “treasonous.” Also, the regime created by Denikin on the territory of Ukraine is accused of anti-Semitism, Jewish pogroms and punitive expeditions against the peasantry.

Often in Ukrainian historiography there are assessments of the reasons for the defeat of the White movement, led by Denikin, as a result of his rejection of cooperation with national movements, primarily Ukrainian. Denikin’s success in Ukraine in 1919 is explained by the activity of Ukrainian partisan movements, which contributed to the weakening of the Bolsheviks in Ukraine; as the reasons for the defeat, significant attention is paid to the failure to take into account local characteristics and Denikin’s ignorance of the right of the Ukrainian people to self-determination, which alienated the broad peasant masses of Ukraine from Denikin’s political programs.

Awards

Russian

Received in peacetime

• Medal “In memory of the reign of Emperor Alexander III” (1896, silver on the Alexander ribbon)
• Order of St. Stanislaus, 3rd class (1902)
• Order of St. Vladimir, 4th degree (06.12.1909)
• Medal "In memory of the 100th anniversary of the Patriotic War of 1812" (1910)
• Medal “In memory of the 300th anniversary of the reign of the House of Romanov” (1913)

Combat

• Order of St. Anne, 3rd class with swords and bows (1904)
• Order of St. Stanislaus, 2nd class with swords (1904)
• Order of St. Anne, 2nd class with swords (1905)
• Medal "In memory of the Russian-Japanese War of 1904-1905" (light bronze)
• Order of St. Vladimir, 3rd degree (04/18/1914)
• Swords for the Order of St. Vladimir, 3rd degree (11/19/1914)
• Order of St. George, 4th class (04/24/1915)
• Order of St. George, 3rd class (11/03/1915)
• St. George's weapon (11/10/1915)
• St. George's weapon, decorated with diamonds, with the inscription “For the double liberation of Lutsk” (09/22/1916)
• Badge of the 1st Kuban (Ice) campaign No. 3 (1918)

Foreign

• Order of Michael the Brave, 3rd class (Romania, 1917)
• Military Cross 1914-1918 (France, 1917)
• Honorary Knight Commander of the Order of the Bath (Great Britain, 1919)

Memory

• In July 1919, the 83rd Samur Infantry Regiment petitioned Denikin to “donate” his name to the name of the regiment.
• In Saratov, in the house where Denikin lived in 1907-1910, there is a store called “Denikin’s House”. There, in Saratov, on December 17, 2012, in honor of the 140th anniversary of Denikin’s birth, a memorial plaque was installed for him at the Volga Region Institute of Management named after Stolypin, on the initiative of the director of the institute and former governor of the Saratov region, Dmitry Ayatskov.
• In March 2006, in Feodosia, a memorial plaque dedicated to the last days of Anton Denikin’s stay in Russia was installed on the wall of the Astoria Hotel.
• In May 2009, at the personal expense of Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, a memorial to white soldiers was built in the Donskoy Monastery. A marble tombstone was installed at Denikin’s grave, which became part of this memorial, and the area adjacent to the tombstone was landscaped. In the spring and summer of 2009, the name of General Denikin was in the center of attention of the socio-political media in connection with Putin’s citing of Denikin’s memoirs regarding his attitude towards Ukraine.
• According to some authors, a hill that bears the name of Denikin has survived to this day in Manchuria. The hill received this name during the Russian-Japanese War for Denikin’s services during its capture.

In art

To the cinema

• 1967 - “Iron Stream” - actor Leonid Gallis.
• 1977 - “Walking through torment” - actor Yuri Gorobets.
• 2005 - “The Death of an Empire” - Fyodor Bondarchuk.
• 2007 - “The Nine Lives of Nestor Makhno” - Alexey Bezsmertny.

In literature

• Tolstoy A. N."The Road to Calvary".
• Sholokhov M. A."Quiet Don"
• Solzhenitsyn A. I."Red Wheel".
• Bondar Alexander"Black Avengers".
• Karpenko Vladimir, Karpenko Sergey. Exodus. - M., 1984.
• Karpenko Vladimir, Karpenko Sergey. Wrangel in Crimea. - M.: Spas, 1995. - 623 p.

Major works

• Denikin A.I. Russian-Chinese question: Military-political essay. - Warsaw: Type. Warsaw educational district, 1908. - 56 p.
• Denikin A.I. Scout team: A manual for conducting training in the infantry. - St. Petersburg: V. Berezovsky, 1909. - 40 p.
• Denikin A.I. Essays on the Russian Troubles: - T. I−V.. - Paris; Berlin: Ed. Povolotsky; Word; Bronze Horseman, 1921−1926; M.: “Science”, 1991; Iris Press, 2006. - (White Russia). - ISBN 5-8112-1890-7.
• General A. I. Denikine. La décomposition de l’armée et du pouvoir, fevrier-septembre 1917.. - Paris: J. Povolozky, 1921. - 342 p.
• General A. I. Denikin. The Russian turmoil; memoirs: military, social, and political. - London: Hutchinson & Co, 1922. - 344 p.
• Denikin A.I. Essays on Russian Troubles. T. 1. Issue. 1 and 2. Volume II. Paris, b/g. 345 pp.
• Denikin A.I. The campaign and death of General Kornilov. M.-L., State. ed., 1928. 106 p. 5,000 copies
• Denikin A.I. March on Moscow. (Essays on Russian Troubles). M., "Federation", . 314 p. 10,000 copies
• Denikin A.I. Officers. Essays. - Paris: Rodnik, 1928. - 141 p.
• Denikin A.I. Old army. - Paris: Rodnik, 1929, 1931. - T. I-II.
• Denikin A.I. The Russian question in the Far East. - Paris: Imp Basile, 1, villa Chauvelot, 1932. - 35 p.
• Denikin A.I. Brest-Litovsk. - Paris. - 1933: Petropolis. - 52 s.
• Denikin A.I. International situation, Russia and emigration. - Paris, 1934. - 20 p.
• Denikin A.I. Who saved the Soviet government from destruction? - Paris, 1939. - 18 p.
• Denikin A.I. World events and the Russian question. - Ed. Union of Volunteers. - Paris, 1939. - 85 p.
• Denikin A.I. The path of the Russian officer. - New York: Ed. them. A. Chekhov, 1953. - 382 p. (posthumous edition of Denikin’s unfinished autobiographical work “My Life”); M.: Sovremennik, 1991. - 299 p. - ISBN 5-270-01484-X.

As of 2012, the manuscripts of Denikin’s books “The Second World War. Russia and Emigration" and "Slander of the White Movement", which was Denikin’s response to the criticism of General N.N. Golovin in the book “Russian Counter-Revolution. 1917-1920."

Anton Ivanovich Denikin was born on December 4 (16), 1872 in the Warsaw province. His father came from serf peasants in the Saratov province; in his youth he was recruited and managed to rise from the rank and file to major. My mother, a Polish woman, never learned to speak Russian well until the end of her life.

After graduating from real school, young Denikin entered military service, which he always dreamed of. He completed military school courses at the Kiev Infantry Junker School, and then graduated from the Nikolaev Academy of the General Staff (1899).

During Russo-Japanese War in March 1904, Denikin submitted a report on his transfer from Warsaw to the active army. At the front, he became the chief of staff of the Trans-Baikal Cossack division, and then of the famous Ural-Trans-Baikal division of General Mishchenko, famous for its daring raids behind enemy lines. Anton Ivanovich was awarded the Orders of St. Stanislav and St. Anne and promoted to the rank of colonel.

Anton Ivanovich Denikin. Photo from late 1918 or early 1919

IN revolutionary In 1905, the path of return from Manchuria to Russia was blocked by several anarchist “republics”. Denikin and other officers put together a detachment of reliable fighters and, on a train with weapons in hand, broke through the rebellious Siberia. Nevertheless, Anton Ivanovich was a liberal, spoke out in the press against the outdated order in the army, stood for a constitutional monarchy, and was close to the Cadets in his views.

In June 1910, Denikin became commander of the 17th Arkhangelsk Infantry Regiment. In June 1914 he was promoted to major general. Having no “patronage from above,” Denikin acted throughout his life on the principle of “honest service, not servility to those in power.”

With the beginning First World War Denikin refused the headquarters post of Quartermaster General of the 8th Army and went to the front as commander of the 4th Infantry Brigade, which was called Zheleznaya and was subsequently deployed into a division. She became famous throughout Russia. Denikin was awarded the Order of St. George 4th and 3rd degree and (for breaking through enemy positions during Brusilov offensive in 1916 and the second capture of Lutsk) with the Golden Arms of St. George with diamonds. In September 1916, he was appointed to command the 8th Corps on the Romanian Front.

In March 1917, under Provisional Government Denikin, as a well-known liberal general, was appointed to the high position of chief of staff of the Supreme Commander-in-Chief. But he openly did not approve of the policies of the new government, leading to the collapse of the army. After General Alekseev was removed from the post of Supreme Commander-in-Chief and replaced by an opportunist Brusilov Denikin was removed from Headquarters. On May 31 (June 13), 1917, he was transferred to the post of Commander-in-Chief of the Western Front.

Anton Denikin. The General's Path

On July 16 (29), 1917, at a meeting at Headquarters with the participation of Kerensky, Denikin made a sharp speech, calling for the elimination of the omnipotence of anarchist soldiers’ committees in the army and the removal of politics from it. Kerensky was unable to listen to this truth, looking Denikin in the eyes, and during his speech he sat at the table with his head in his hands.

In July 1917, after the appointment of General Kornilov as Supreme Commander-in-Chief, Denikin was appointed in his place as Commander-in-Chief of the Southwestern Front. Having learned that Kerensky ordered the removal of Kornilov right on the eve of the implementation of measures agreed upon with the government to decisively counter the Bolsheviks and the Soviet, Denikin sent an angry telegram to the supreme power, declaring that he would not go along with it along the path of “planned destruction of the army and the country.” Having learned about this, unbridled crowds of soldiers broke into the headquarters of the Southwestern Front, arrested generals Denikin, Markova and others (August 29, 1917) and threw them into Berdichev prison. They barely escaped a bloody massacre there. At the end of September, the generals arrested in Berdichev were transferred to Bykhov prison, where Kornilov’s group was already imprisoned.

November 19 (December 2), 1917, the day before the ensign arrived in Mogilev Krylenko with Red Guard militants, new Commander-in-Chief Dukhonin gave the Bykhov prisoners the opportunity to escape. They all went to Ataman Kaledin, to the Don Cossack region, where General Alekseev had already begun to create a center of struggle against the Bolsheviks who carried out the October Revolution.

In legendary 1st Kuban (Ice) campaign Volunteer Army Denikin acted as its deputy commander, Kornilov. When Kornilov died during the assault on Yekaterinodar on April 13, 1918, Denikin led the army and led it from the Kuban back to the borders of the Don region. [Cm. Russian Civil War - chronology.]

An extremely conscientious man, Denikin placed the blame on himself for these defeats. On April 4, 1920, he transferred the post of commander-in-chief to Peter Wrangel, and he and his family went to Constantinople, then to England. Later he lived in Belgium, Hungary, and again in Belgium. From 1926 he settled in Paris.

In exile, Denikin wrote a five-volume work “Essays on the Russian Troubles” - one of the best and most objective works on the history of the civil war. The Soviet authorities made several attempts to assassinate and kidnap Denikin, but fortunately they failed.

Name: Anton Ivanovich Denikin

State: USSR, USA

Field of activity: Army

Greatest Achievement: One of the commanders of the white army. Attempted to capture Moscow

Despite the fact that it had many shortcomings, as a state, the rulers did not care too much about the well-being of the people (with the exception of the aristocratic elite), one thing can be confidently stated - we had excellent military personnel.

And it was not just a sense of patriotism (although that was of great importance). In Russia there lived real talents who were destined to write their names in the military history of the country. One of these names is Anton Denikin.

The beginning of the way

The future great commander was born into an ordinary family that had neither titles nor money. On December 16, 1872, in the Polish Province, a son was born into the family of the former serf Ivan Efimovich Denikin, who was named Anton. Of course, neither father nor mother imagined that their son would have a brilliant military future.

Although, in fairness, it is worth noting that Ivan Denikin, despite his proletarian origin, made an excellent military career - for more than 20 years of service to the emperor he received the rank of officer, he retired only in 1869, when his service was 35 years (later Anton Ivanovich admits that his father was an ideal role model for him).

The parents adhered to different religions - the father was an Orthodox Christian, the mother was a Catholic (she was Polish by birth). Religion did not become an obstacle to the baptism of his son - when Anton was a little less than a month old, at the insistence of his father, he was baptized in the Orthodox faith.

One should not think that the mother had no influence on the child - Anton grew up very smart, at the age of four he could read and write fluently in Russian and Polish. Knowledge of the latter helped Denikin to enter the Włocław Higher Secondary School in the future.

In 1885, the head of the family dies, and life becomes more difficult. There is not enough money at all, and Anton decides to take up tutoring in order to somehow help his mother and himself survive. Since he was a very diligent and hardworking student, the school management begins to pay a scholarship.

Beginning of a military career

As already mentioned, Anton’s ideal was his father. He dreamed of becoming as successful an officer as Ivan Efimovich.

After graduating from the Włocław School, Anton entered the Łowicz Real School, from where he graduated in 1890 and immediately enlisted in the rifle regiment. Young Denikin decided not to stop there and entered the Kiev Junker School.

However, this was not enough - soon Anton Ivanovich became a student at the prestigious Imperial Academy of the General Staff. Studying was difficult for the young talent - he was even expelled from the school for failing an exam. Upon graduation, he was promoted to captain.

Gradually, his dream of achieving great heights in his military career begins to come true. However, due to a conflict with the new head of the Academy, Denikin was not included in the staff of officers of the educational institution. Only a few years later did justice triumph - Denikin wrote a letter to the Minister of War asking him to resolve the dispute. By order of the emperor, Anton becomes an officer of the Academy.

Soon Anton was given the chance to show his talents in real battle conditions - the Russian-Japanese War began. Before this event, Denikin was injured - a torn ligament in his leg. Therefore, officially he could not participate in battles. But Anton decided in his own way - he sent a request to the leadership to send him to the army. In March 1904, Anton Ivanovich arrived in Harbin, where his Japanese campaign began.

Let us note that Anton Denikin proved himself to be a valiant and fearless officer. For his participation in battles, reconnaissance operations, and raids, Denikin was presented with awards - orders, as well as the rank of colonel.

Career after the Russo-Japanese War

In 1906, Anton Denikin returned to St. Petersburg and began working as a staff officer in his regiment. Of course, this position is not exactly what Denikin expected. Having enough free time and financial resources, he decided to see the world - as a tourist, he visited Central and Southern Europe. Upon his return, he was offered the vacancy of chief of staff and a transfer to Saratov. Anton Ivanovich lived in this city for three years - until 1910.

Oddly enough, Anton Denikin was also a good writer. He tried to engage in this activity in his distant childhood, but then his creations (poetry and prose) did not receive success and recognition, so he abandoned this activity. When he was already a professional military man, Denikin began to write notes about army everyday life in various newspapers and magazines with military topics. His prose was sometimes characterized by criticism of his superiors, humor and satire.

But, of course, the main goal of his life was a military career. In 1914, Anton Ivanovich moved to Kyiv, where he continued his military career. Even then, the world was already filled with the smell of an impending catastrophe, which struck on August 1, 1914.

Participation in the First World War

Denikin personally sent a request to be sent to the front. At first he served in Brusilov's division, which was lucky on the battlefield. The following years, until the February Revolution, were marked by relative silence. In 1916, he took part in, then liberated the city of Lutsk. For his bravery in battles, he is again nominated for a reward.

During the fighting, Denikin was repeatedly wounded, but he always tried not to linger in a hospital bed, but to take part in the battle.

1917

Anton Denikin was on the Romanian front when information about the coup in Russia reached him. He supported the rebels, even repeated unpleasant rumors (mostly false) about the emperor and his family. At the same time, a conflict was brewing between generals Brusilov and Alekseev, who was appointed commander of the Russian Army.

Denikin had the imprudence to speak out in support of his former boss. For this he was arrested and taken to Berdichev prison, and then transferred to Bykhov, where the arrested army generals were already being held. Denikin managed to escape from there. From that time on, he decides that until the end of his days he will fight the Bolshevik government.

Anton Denikin in the Civil War

As a skilled military leader and strategist, Anton Ivanovich formed a fairly professional army around himself. The main territory of his activity was the south of Russia. At first, military operations were successful, Denikin even thought that it would be nice to go and capture Moscow. But the lack of a clear program and plans ultimately destroyed his army from within. In addition, some soldiers left Denikin's command and went free as bandits and thugs. In one of the last battles near Novorossiysk, Denikin realized that for him the fight was lost. In 1920 he resigns and leaves Russia.

Denikin and his family - his wife and daughter - lived in different countries, and especially loved the capital of France. In exile, Anton Ivanovich continues to write army essays. They also met the next world war here. After its completion, the family decides to move further – to the USA. This decision was also due to the fact that there were rumors about Stalin’s order to bring Denikin (forcibly) to. Daughter Marina decides to stay in France, her parents moved to New York. Former General Denikin died on August 7, 1947 in Ann Arbor.

The future white general Anton Ivanovich Denikin was born on December 16, 1872 in a village not far from the Polish capital. As a child, Anton dreamed of becoming a military man, so he bathed horses with the lancers and went with the company to the shooting range. At the age of 18, he graduated from a real school. After 2 years he became a graduate of the infantry cadet school in Kyiv. At the age of 27 he graduated from the General Staff Academy in the capital.

As soon as the military conflict with Japan began, the young officer sent a request to be sent to the warring army, where he became the chief of staff of the Ural-Transbaikal division. After the end of the war, Denikin was awarded two military awards and granted the rank of colonel. When returning home after the war, the path to the capital was blocked by a number of anarchist-minded republics. But Denikin and his colleagues formed a detachment of volunteers and with weapons by rail made their way through Siberia, engulfed in turmoil.

From 1906 to 1910, Denikin served on the General Staff. From 1910 to 1914, he served as commander of an infantry regiment, and before the First World War, Denikin became a major general.

When the first world conflict began, Anton Ivanovich commanded a brigade, which was later reformed into a division. In the fall of 1916, Denikin was appointed commander of the 8th Army Corps. As a participant in Brusilov's breakthrough, General Denikin was awarded two Orders of St. George and weapons encrusted with precious stones as a reward for courage and success.

In the spring of 1917, Denikin was already the chief of staff of the Supreme Commander-in-Chief, and in the summer, instead of Kornilov, he was appointed commander-in-chief of the Western Front.

Anton Ivanovich was very critical of the actions of the provisional government of Russia, which, as he believed, contributed to the disintegration of the army. As soon as Denikin learned about the Kornilov rebellion, he immediately sent a letter to the provisional government, where he expressed his agreement with Kornilov’s actions. In the summer, generals Denikin and Markov with other comrades were arrested and put in Berdichev’s casemates. In the fall, the prisoners were transferred to Bykhov prison, where Kornilov and his comrades were already languishing. In November, General Dukhonin ordered the release of Kornilov, Denikin and the rest of the prisoners, who immediately went to the Don.

Upon arrival on the Don land, the generals, which included Denikin, began to form the Volunteer Army. As deputy army commander, Denikin took part in the “Ice” campaign. After General Kornilov died, Denikin took the position of commander-in-chief of the Volunteer Army and gave the order to retreat back to the Don.

At the beginning of 1919, Denikin headed all the Armed Forces of southern Russia. Having cleared the entire North Caucasus of Red Guards, Denikin’s armies began to advance. After the liberation of Ukraine, the Whites took Oryol and Voronezh. After the assault on Tsaritsyn, Denikin decided to march on the capital. But already in the fall the Reds turned the tide of the Civil War, and Denikin’s armies began to retreat south. The army of the White Guards evacuated from Novorossiysk, and Anton Ivanovich, having surrendered command to Baron Wrangel and greatly experiencing the defeat, went into exile. Interesting fact: the white general Denikin never presented orders and medals to his soldiers, because he considered it shameful to receive awards in a fratricidal war.

Anton Ivanovich Denikin (December 4 (16), 1872, Wloclawsk, Russian Empire - August 7, 1947, Ann Arbor, Michigan, USA) - an outstanding Russian military leader, hero of the Russo-Japanese and World War I, lieutenant general (1916), one of the main leaders (1918 - 1920) of the White movement during the Civil War.

Denikin was born into the family of a Russian officer. His father, Ivan Efimovich Denikin (1807 - 1885), a serf peasant, was given as a recruit by the landowner; After serving in the army for 35 years, he retired in 1869 with the rank of major; was a participant in the Crimean, Hungarian and Polish campaigns (suppression of the 1863 uprising). Mother, Elisaveta Fedorovna Vrzhesinskaya, is Polish by nationality, from a family of impoverished small landowners. Denikin spoke fluent Russian and Polish since childhood. The family's financial situation was very modest, and after the death of his father in 1885, it deteriorated sharply. Denikin had to earn money as a tutor.

Denikin dreamed of military service since childhood. In 1890, after graduating from a real school, he volunteered for the army and was soon accepted into the Kiev Junker School (with a military school course). After graduating from college, (1892) he served in the artillery troops, and in 1895 he entered the Academy of the General Staff (graduated in 1899).

He received his first combat experience in the Russian-Japanese War. Chief of Staff of the Trans-Baikal Cossack Division, and then of the famous Ural-Trans-Baikal Division of General Mishchenko, famous for its daring raids behind enemy lines. In the Battle of Tsinghechen, one of the hills went down in military history under the name Denikinskaya.

At the outbreak of the First World War, Major General Denikin served at the headquarters of the Kyiv Military District. In August 1914 he took part in the operations of the 8th Army as a quartermaster general, and soon sought a transfer from headquarters to the line. From September 1914 he commanded the famous “Iron” 4th Infantry Brigade (then a division), which fought valiantly in the most difficult sectors of the front. Participant of the “Brusilovsky breakthrough” in 1916.

For successful operations and personal heroism he was awarded the Arms of St. George, the Order of St. George of the 4th and 3rd degrees and the Golden Arms of St. George with diamonds. In 1916, he was appointed to command the 8th Corps on the Romanian Front, where he actually commanded the Romanian troops, earning the highest order of this country - St. Michael.

In April - May 1917, Denikin was the chief of staff of the Supreme Commander-in-Chief, then the commander-in-chief of the Western and Southwestern Fronts.

On August 28, 1917, he was arrested for expressing solidarity with General Kornilov in a sharp telegram to the Provisional Government. Together with Kornilov, he was held in the Bykhov prison on charges of rebellion (the so-called “Kornilov rebellion”). Kornilov and the officers arrested with him demanded an open trial in order to clear themselves of slander and express their program to Russia.

After the fall of the Provisional Government, the charge of rebellion lost its meaning, and on November 19 (December 2), 1917, Supreme Commander-in-Chief Dukhonin ordered the transfer of those arrested to the Don, but the All-Army Committee opposed this. Having learned about the approach of trains with revolutionary sailors, which threatened lynching, the generals decided to flee.

With a certificate in the name of “assistant to the head of the dressing detachment Alexander Dombrovsky,” Denikin made his way to Novocherkassk, where he took part in the creation of the Volunteer Army, leading the 1st division during the 1st (Ice) Kuban campaign, and after the death of Kornilov on April 13, 1918 - the entire army. He managed to withdraw the army, which had suffered heavy losses, from near Yekaterinodar to the south of the Don region, avoiding encirclement and defeat. There, thanks to the fact that the Don Cossacks rose up in armed struggle against the Bolsheviks, he was able to give the troops rest and replenish them due to the influx of new volunteers - officers and Kuban Cossacks. On the night of June 22-23, 1918, the Volunteer Army under command. A.I. Denikina began her 2nd Kuban campaign, which ended on August 17 with the capture of Ekaterinodar.

In January 1919, the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of the South of Russia, General A.I. Denikin, transferred his Headquarters to Taganrog.

On January 8, 1919, the Volunteer Army became part of the Armed Forces of the South of Russia (V.S.Yu.R.), becoming their main striking force, and General Denikin headed V.S.Yu.R. On June 12, 1919, he officially recognized the power of Admiral Kolchak as “the Supreme Ruler of the Russian state and the Supreme Commander-in-Chief of the Russian armies.”

By the beginning of 1919, Denikin managed to suppress the Bolshevik resistance in the North Caucasus, subjugate the Cossack troops of the Don and Kuban, removing the pro-German-oriented General Krasnov from the leadership of the Don Cossacks, receive a large amount of weapons, ammunition, equipment through the Black Sea ports from Russia’s Entente allies, and July 1919 to begin a large-scale campaign against Moscow. On July 9, the Bolsheviks proclaimed the slogan “Everyone to fight Denikin!”

September and the first half of October 1919 were the time of greatest success for the anti-Bolshevik forces. Denikin's successfully advancing troops occupied the Donbass and a vast area from Tsaritsyn to Kyiv and Odessa by October. On October 6, Denikin’s troops occupied Voronezh, on October 13 - Oryol and threatened Tula. The Bolsheviks were close to disaster and were preparing to go underground. An underground Moscow Party Committee was created, and government institutions began evacuating to Vologda.

From mid-October 1919, the position of the white armies of the South noticeably worsened. The rear areas were destroyed by Makhno's raid on Ukraine, and troops against Makhno had to be withdrawn from the front, and the Bolsheviks concluded a truce with the Poles and Petliurists, freeing up forces to fight Denikin. Having created a quantitative and qualitative superiority over the enemy in the main, Oryol-Kursk, direction (62 thousand bayonets and sabers for the Reds versus 22 thousand for the Whites), in October the Red Army launched a counteroffensive.

In fierce battles, which went on with varying degrees of success, south of Orel, by the end of October, the troops of the Southern Front (commander V. E. Egorov) defeated the Reds, and then began to push them back along the entire front line. In the winter of 1919-1920, Denikin’s troops abandoned Kharkov, Kyiv, Donbass, and Rostov-on-Don. In February-March 1920, there was a defeat in the battle for Kuban, due to the disintegration of the Kuban army (due to its separatism - the most unstable part of the V.S.Yu.R.). After which the Cossack units of the Kuban armies completely disintegrated and began en masse to surrender to the Reds or go over to the side of the “greens,” which led to the collapse of the White front, the retreat of the remnants of the White Army to Novorossiysk, and from there on March 26-27, 1920, a retreat by sea to Crimea.

After the death of the former Supreme Ruler of Russia, Admiral Kolchak, all-Russian power was supposed to pass to General Denikin. However, Denikin, given the difficult military-political situation of the Whites, did not officially accept these powers. Faced with the intensification of opposition sentiments among the white movement after the defeat of his troops, Denikin resigned as Commander-in-Chief of the V.S.Yu.R. on April 4, 1920, transferred command to Baron Wrangel and on the same day left for England with an intermediate stop in Istanbul.

In the territories controlled by the Armed Forces of the South of Russia, all power belonged to Denikin as commander-in-chief. Under him, there was a “Special Meeting”, which performed the functions of the executive and legislative powers. Possessing essentially dictatorial power and being a supporter of a constitutional monarchy, Denikin did not consider himself to have the right (before the convening of the Constituent Assembly) to predetermine the future state structure of Russia. He tried to unite the widest possible strata of the White movement under the slogans “Fight against Bolshevism to the end”, “Great, United and Indivisible”, “Political freedoms”. This position was the object of criticism both from the right, from the monarchists, and from the left, from the liberal camp. The call to recreate a united and indivisible Russia met resistance from the Cossack state formations of the Don and Kuban, who sought autonomy and a federal structure of the future Russia, and also could not be supported by the nationalist parties of Ukraine, Transcaucasia, and the Baltic states.

At the same time, behind the white lines, attempts were made to establish a normal life. Where the situation allowed, the work of factories and factories, railway and water transport was resumed, banks were opened and everyday trade was carried out. Fixed prices for agricultural products were established, a law was passed on criminal liability for profiteering, the courts, prosecutor's office and legal profession were restored to their previous form, city government bodies were elected, many political parties, including the Socialist-Revolutionaries and Social Democrats, operated freely, and the press was published almost without restrictions. The Denikin Special Meeting adopted progressive labor legislation with an 8-hour working day and labor protection measures, which, however, was not put into practice.

Denikin’s government did not have time to fully implement the land reform he developed, which was supposed to be based on the strengthening of small and medium-sized farms at the expense of state-owned and landed estates. A temporary Kolchak law was in force, prescribing, until the Constituent Assembly, the preservation of land for those owners in whose hands it was actually located. The violent seizure of their lands by the former owners was sharply suppressed. Nevertheless, such incidents still occurred, which, together with robberies in the front-line zone, pushed the peasantry away from the white camp.

A. Denikin’s position on the language issue in Ukraine was expressed in the manifesto “To the Population of Little Russia” (1919): “I declare the Russian language to be the state language throughout Russia, but I consider it completely unacceptable and prohibit the persecution of the Little Russian language. Everyone can speak Little Russian in local institutions, zemstvos, public places and in court. Local schools, maintained with private funds, can teach in any language they wish. In state schools... lessons of the Little Russian folk language may be established... Likewise, there will be no restrictions regarding the Little Russian language in the press...".

Denikin stayed in England for only a few months. In the fall of 1920, he left her with his family, making sure that Great Britain was heading towards recognizing Soviet Russia and refusing to support the white movement. From 1920 to 1922 he lived in Belgium, then in Hungary, and from 1926 in France. He was engaged in literary activities, gave lectures on the international situation, and published the newspaper “Volunteer”. Remaining a staunch opponent of the Soviet system, he called on emigrants not to support Germany in the war with the USSR (the slogan “Defense of Russia and the overthrow of Bolshevism”). After the occupation of France by Germany, he categorically refused the Nazis’ proposals for cooperation and moving to Berlin.

The strengthening of Soviet influence in European countries after World War II forced A. I. Denikin to move to the USA in 1945, where he continued to work on the book “The Path of the Russian Officer” and gave public presentations. In January 1946, Denikin appealed to the general to stop the forced extradition of former Russian citizens to the USSR.

He died in 1947 from a heart attack. Before his death, he bequeathed that his remains be transported to his homeland when Russia becomes free.

On October 2, 2005, the ashes of General Denikin and his wife were transported to Moscow for burial in the Holy Don Monastery. The reburial was carried out at the request of Denikin's daughter, Marina, and on the instructions of the Russian President.

Denikin

Works by Anton Ivanovich Denikin:

1.Essays on the Russian Troubles, in 5 volumes, Paris, 1921-1923
2.Old army. 1929
3.Officers. 1931
4.The path of the Russian officer, 1953.

Life under the Whites - Denikin