Denikin's participation in the civil war. Denikin A.I.

General Staff Lieutenant General A.I. Denikin *)

DENIKIN Anton Ivanovich (1872-1947), Russian military leader, lieutenant general (1916). In World War I he commanded an infantry brigade and division, an army corps; from April 1918 commander, from October commander-in-chief of the Volunteer Army, from January 1919 commander-in-chief of the “Armed Forces of the South of Russia” (Volunteer Army, Don and Caucasian Cossack Armies, Turkestan Army, Black Sea Fleet); simultaneously from January 1920 "Supreme Ruler of the Russian State". Since April 1920 in exile.

Commander-in-Chief of the AFSR, General Staff, Lieutenant General A.I. Denikin,
1919, Taganrog. *)

DENIKIN Anton Ivanovich (1872, Shpetal Dolny village, Warsaw province - 1947, Ann Arbor, Michigan, USA) - military leader, one of the leaders of the white movement. Born into a poor family of a retired major, a former serf. In 1882 - 1890 he studied at the Łovichi Real School and showed brilliant abilities in mathematics. Dreaming of military service since childhood, he graduated from the Kiev Infantry Junker School in 1892. In 1899 he graduated from the General Staff Academy and was promoted to captain. In 1898, in a military journal. "Scout" was Denikin's first story, after which he worked a lot in military journalism. He expressed the essence of his political sympathies as follows: “1) Constitutional monarchy, 2) Radical reforms and 3) Peaceful ways to renew the country. I conveyed these worldviews inviolably to the revolution of 1917, without taking an active part in politics and devoting all my strength and labor to the army.” During Russo-Japanese War 1904 - 1905 showed excellent qualities as a combat officer, rising to the rank of colonel, and was awarded two orders. He reacted extremely negatively to the revolution of 1905, but welcomed the Manifesto of October 17, considering it the beginning of transformations. Believed that reforms P.A. Stolypin will be able to resolve the main issue in Russia - the peasant one. Denikin served successfully and in 1914 was promoted to major general.

With the outbreak of the First World War, he commanded a brigade and division. Denikin's valor demonstrated in battles and the highest awards (two St. George's crosses, the St. George's weapon decorated with diamonds) elevated him to the top of the military hierarchy. The February Revolution of 1917 stunned Denikin: “We were not at all prepared for such an unexpectedly rapid outcome, nor for the forms that it took.” Denikin was appointed assistant chief of staff under the Supreme Commander-in-Chief, commanded the West, then the South-West. front. In an effort to contain the collapse of the empire, he demanded the introduction of the death penalty not only at the front, but also in the rear. He saw a strong personality in L. G. Kornilov and supported his rebellion, for which he was arrested. Liberated N.N. Dukhonin Denikin, like other generals, fled to the Don, where, along with M.V. Alekseev , L.G. Kornilov , A. M. Kaledin was involved in the formation of the Volunteer Army. Participated in the 1st Kuban (“Ice”) campaign.

After the death of Kornilov in 1918, he took over the post of Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of the South of Russia. Having an army of 85 thousand, material assistance from England, France, and the USA, Denikin hatched plans to capture Moscow. Taking advantage of the fact that the main forces of the Red Army fought against A.V. Kolchak , Denikin in the spring of 1919 launched the Volunteer Army on the offensive. In the summer of 1919, Denikin occupied Donbass and reached a strategically important line: Tsaritsyn, Kharkov, Poltava. In Oct. he took Orel and threatened Tula, but Denikin could not overcome the remaining 200 miles to Moscow. The mass mobilization of the population into Denikin's army, robberies, violence, the establishment of military discipline in militarized enterprises, and most importantly, the restoration of landowners' property rights to land doomed Denikin to failure. Denikin was personally honest, but his declarative and vague statements could not captivate the people. Denikin’s situation was aggravated by internal contradictions between him and the Cossack elite, who strived for separatism and did not want the restoration of a “united and indivisible Russia.” The power struggle between Kolchak and Denikin prevented coordinated military action. Denikin's army, suffering heavy losses, was forced to retreat. In 1920, Denikin evacuated the remnants of his army to the Crimea and on April 4. 1920 left Russia on an English destroyer. Lived in England. Having abandoned the armed struggle against the Bolsheviks, Denikin wrote a 5-volume memoir and study, “Essays on the Russian Troubles,” an important source on the history of the civil war. Financial difficulties forced Denikin to wander around Europe. In 1931 he completed work on a major military-historical study, The Old Army. After Hitler came to power, Denikin declared that it was necessary to support the Red Army, which, after the defeat of the fascists, could be used to “overthrow communist power.” He denounced emigrant organizations that collaborated with Nazi Germany. In 1945, under the influence of rumors about the possibility of forced deportation to the USSR, the United States emigrated. Denikin worked on the book. "The Path of the Russian Officer" and "The Second World War. Russia and Abroad", which I did not have time to complete. Died of a heart attack.

Book materials used: Shikman A.P. Figures of Russian history. Biographical reference book. Moscow, 1997

General for assignments at the headquarters of the Kyiv Military District,
General Staff Major General Denikin A.I. *)

In the revolution of 1917

DENIKIN Anton Ivanovich (December 4, 1872, Lowicz, near Warsaw, - August 7, 1947. Ann Arbor, Michigan, USA). The son of a major, a descendant of serfs. He graduated from the Lovichi Real School, and in 1892 from the Kiev Infantry School. cadet school, in 1899 - the Academy of the General Staff. Served in the military headquarters of the Warsaw Military District. Russian-Japanese participant war 1904-05. From March 1914 at the headquarters of the Kyiv Military District; from June - Major General. After the start of the 1st world. war com. brigades, divisions, from Sept. 1916 - 8th Arm. Corps of the 4th Army Rum. front.

From the end March 1917 at Headquarters, room. beginning Headquarters of the Supreme Commander, from April 5. to May 31 beginning headquarters of the Supreme Commander General. M.V. Alekseeva . Fought for limiting the powers of the soldiers. housekeeping company functions, for increasing the representation of officers in them, sought to prevent the creation of committees in divisions, corps, armies and at the fronts. To the sent military. min. A.I. Guchkov project to create a soldier system. organizations with fairly broad powers, developed in the West. front, responded with a telegram: “The project is aimed at destroying the army” (Miller V.I., Soldiers' Committee of the Russian Army in 1917, M., 1974, p. 151).

Speaking at the officers' congress in Mogilev (May 7-22), he said: " Due to inevitable historical laws, the autocracy fell, and the country passed to democracy. We stand on the brink of a new life... for which many thousands of idealists have been carried to the chopping block, languished in the mines, wasted away in the tundra“However, Denikin emphasized: “we look into the future with anxiety and bewilderment,” “for there is no freedom in the roar. dungeon", "there is no truth in the forgery of people. voices”, “there is no equality in the persecution of classes” and “there is no strength in that insane bacchanalia, where everyone around is trying to snatch everything that is possible at the expense of the tormented Motherland, where thousands of greedy hands reach out to power, shaking its foundations” (Denikin A.I. ., Essays on the Russian Time of Troubles. The collapse of power and the army. February - September 1917, M., 1991, p. 363. After Alekseev’s dismissal from the post of Commander-in-Chief (on the night of May 22), speaking at the closing of the congress, he emphasized: that with the Russian officers remained “everything that is honest, thinking, everything that stopped on the verge of common sense, which is now being abolished.” “Take care of the officer! - Denikin called - For from century to now he has stood faithfully and invariably on guard over the Russians. statehood" (ibid., pp. 367-68).

New Commander-in-Chief A.A. On May 31, Brusilov appointed Denikin as commander-in-chief of the West. front. On June 8, announcing his assumption of office to the front troops, he stated: I firmly believe that victory over the enemy is the key to the bright existence of the Russian land. On the eve of the offensive that will decide the fate of the Motherland, I urge everyone who has a feeling of love for it to fulfill their duty. There is no other way to freedom and happiness of the Motherland" ("Orders of the Commander-in-Chief of the Armies of the Western Front. 1917", No. 1834, Central State Military Academy. B-ka, No. 16383).

After the failure of the front offensive (July 9-10), at a meeting at Headquarters in the presence of members of the Provisional Government, he made a speech on July 16 in which he accused the government of the collapse of the army and put forward an 8-point program for its strengthening: " 1) Consciousness of their mistake and guilt by the Provisional Government, which did not understand and did not appreciate the noble and sincere impulse of the officers, who joyfully accepted the news of the coup and were giving countless lives for the Motherland. 2) Petrograd, completely alien to the army, not knowing its way of life, life and the historical foundations of its existence, stop all military legislation. Full power to the Supreme Commander-in-Chief, responsible only to the Provisional Government. 3) Take politics out of the army. 4) Cancel the “declaration” (of the rights of a soldier) in its main part. Abolish commissioners and committees, gradually changing the functions of the latter. 5) Return power to the bosses. Restore discipline and outward forms of order and decorum. 6) Make appointments to senior positions not only on the basis of youth and determination, but, at the same time, on combat and service experience. 7) Create selected, law-abiding units of the three types of weapons in the reserve of commanders as a support against military rebellion and the horrors of the upcoming demobilization. 8) Introduce military revolutionary courts and the death penalty for the rear - troops and civilians who commit identical crimes"("Essays on Russian Troubles", pp. 439-40). "You trampled our banners into the mud," Denikin addressed the Time. pr-vu- Now the time has come: lift them up and bow before them" (ibid., p. 440). Later, assessing Denikin's program, outlined on July 16, emigrant historian General N.N. Golovin wrote: "Although General Denikin and does not utter these words ["military dictatorship." - Authors], but the demands set out in paragraphs 2, 3, 4, 5 and 8 could only be implemented by military force" (see: Polikarpov VD., Military Counter-Revolution -tion in Russia. 1904-1917, M., 1990, p. 215).

Aug 2 appointed commander-in-chief of the Yugo-Zal Front (instead of General. L.G. Kornilov , from July 19 of the Supreme Commander). Upon taking office on August 3. issued an order in which he called on “all ranks in whom the love for the Motherland has not been extinguished, to stand firmly in defense of Russian statehood and devote their labor, mind and heart to the cause of the revival of the army. Put these two principles above political hobbies, party. intolerance and grave insults inflicted on many in the days of madness, for only fully armed with state order and strength will we turn the “fields of shame” into fields of glory and through the darkness of anarchy will lead the country to the Uchrei. ("Orders of the Commander-in-Chief of the Armies of the South-Western Front, 1917", No. 875, TsGVIA, B-ka, No. 16571). Aug 4 in Order No. 876 announced the limitation of the activities of military committees within the framework of the existing military. legislation; ordered the authorities not to expand, and the bosses not to narrow their competence (ibid.).

On August 27, having received a message about Kornilov’s speech, he sent the Temp. pr-vu telegram: "...Today I received news that General Kornilov, who presented well-known demands that could still save the country and the army, is being removed from the post of Commander-in-Chief. Seeing in this the return of power to the path of systematic destruction of the army and, consequently, the death of the country , I consider it my duty to bring to the attention of the Provisional Government that I will not go down this path with him" ("Essays on Russian Troubles", pp. 467-68).

Aug 29 Denikin and his supporters in the South-West. front were arrested and imprisoned in Berdichev, later transferred to Bykhov. 19 Nov by order of the Supreme Commander General. N.N. Dukhonina was released from arrest along with other generals. He fled to the Don and arrived in Novocherkassk 3 days later. Participated in the formation of Dobrovolch. army. In an effort to resolve differences between Alekseev and Kornilov, initiated a compromise, in accordance with which Alekseev was in charge of the Crimea. control, ext. relations and finances, and Kornilov had military. power; ataman A. M. Kaledin belonged to the administration of the Don region. During the 1st Kuban (“Ice”) campaign, Denikin was the beginning. Volunteer divisions of almost all formations of the Dobrarmiya), then assistant. commands Kornilov’s army, and after his death he was appointed army commander by Alekseev on April 12, 1918. In December 1918, he assumed command of “all ground and naval forces operating in the south of Russia.” In the spring of 1920, after the defeat of the White Guard troops, he was evacuated to Crimea, where he transferred command to General. P.N. Wrangel . and went abroad. Lived in France; retired from political activity. In the 1930s, anticipating Germany's war against the USSR, " wanted the Red Army to repulse the German invasion, defeat the German army, and then eliminate Bolshevism"(Meisner D., Mirages and Reality, M., 1966. pp. 230-31). During the 2nd World War 1939-45, he condemned emigrant organizations that collaborated with Nazi Germany.

Materials used in the article by V.I. Miller, I.V. Obedkova and V.V. Yurchenko in the book: Political figures of Russia 1917. biographical dictionary. Moscow, 1993 .

Romanovsky, Denikin, K.N. Sokolov. Standing N.I. Astrov, N.V.S.
1919, Taganrog. *)

In the White movement

Denikin Anton Ivanovich (1872-1947) - Lieutenant General of the General Staff. The son of a border guard officer who rose through the ranks of the soldiers. He graduated from the Lovichi Real School, military school courses at the Kiev Infantry Junker School and the Nikolaev Academy of the General Staff (1899). From the school he joined the 2nd Artillery Brigade. In 1902 he was transferred to the General Staff and appointed to the post of senior adjutant of the 2nd Infantry Division. From 1903 to March 1904 - senior adjutant of the headquarters of the 2nd Cavalry Corps. During the Russo-Japanese War in March 1904, he submitted a report on transfer to the active army and was appointed as a staff officer for special assignments at the headquarters of the 8th Army Corps, where he served as chief of staff of the 3rd Zaamur Border Guard Brigade. Lieutenant colonel. From September 1904, he was a staff officer for special assignments at the headquarters of the 8th Army Corps, where on October 28 of the same year he was appointed to the post of chief of staff of the Transbaikal Cossack Division of General Rennenkampf. In February 1905, he took up the post of chief of staff of the Ural-Transbaikal division as part of the cavalry detachment of General Mishchenko. In August 1905, he was appointed chief of staff of the Consolidated Cavalry Corps of General Mishchenko. Awarded the Order of St. Stanislav and St. Anne, 3rd degree with swords and bows and 2nd degree with swords. Promoted to the rank of colonel - “for military distinction.”

After the end of the Russo-Japanese War, from January to December 1906, he served as a staff officer for special assignments at the headquarters of the 2nd Cavalry Corps, from December 1906 to January 1910, a staff officer at the department (chief of staff) 57 1st Infantry Reserve Brigade. On June 29, 1910, he was appointed commander of the 17th Arkhangelsk Infantry Regiment. In March 1914 he was appointed acting. D. general for assignments of the Kyiv Military District and in June of the same year was promoted to major general.

At the beginning of the Great War, he was appointed to the post of Quartermaster General of the 8th Army of General Brusilov. At his own request, he joined the ranks and was appointed on September 6, 1914 as commander of the 4th Infantry (“Iron”) Brigade, which was deployed to a division in 1915. General Denikin's "iron" division became famous in many battles during the Battle of Galicia and in the Carpathians. During the retreat in September 1915, the division took Lutsk with a counterattack, for which General Denikin was promoted to lieutenant general. General Denikin took Lutsk for the second time during the Brusilov offensive in June 1916. In the fall of 1914, for the battles at Grodek, General Denikin was awarded the Arms of St. George, and then for the bold maneuver at Gorny Meadow - the Order of St. George, 4th degree. In 1915, for the battles at Lutovisko - the Order of St. George, 3rd degree. For breaking through enemy positions during the Brusilov offensive in 1916 and for the second capture of Lutsk, he was again awarded the Arms of St. George, showered with diamonds with the inscription “For the double liberation of Lutsk.” On September 9, 1916, he was appointed commander of the 8th Army Corps. In March 1917, under the Provisional Government, he was appointed assistant chief of staff of the Supreme Commander-in-Chief, and in May of the same year - Commander-in-Chief of the armies of the Western Front. In July 1917, after the appointment of General Kornilov as Supreme Commander-in-Chief, he was appointed in his place as Commander-in-Chief of the armies of the Southwestern Front. For active support of General Kornilov in August 1917, he was removed from office by the Provisional Government and imprisoned in Bykhov prison.

On November 19, 1917, he fled from Bykhov with papers addressed to a Polish landowner and arrived in Novocherkassk, where he took part in the organization and formation of the Volunteer Army. On January 30, 1918, he was appointed head of the 1st Volunteer Division. During the 1st Kuban Campaign he served as Deputy Commander of the Volunteer Army of General Kornilov. On March 31, 1918, when General Kornilov was killed during the assault on Yekaterinodar, he took command of the Volunteer Army. In June 1918 he led the Volunteer Army on the 2nd Kuban campaign. On July 3, 1918, Yekaterinodar was taken. On September 25 (October 8), 1918, after the death of General Alekseev, he became Commander-in-Chief of the Volunteer Army. On December 26, 1918, after a meeting at Torgovaya station with Don Ataman General Krasnov, who recognized the need for unified command and agreed to subordinate the Don Army to General Denikin, he became Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of the South of Russia (AFSR). In 1919, from the headquarters of the AFSR in Taganrog, General Denikin exercised the main command of the Caucasian Volunteer Army of General Wrangel, the Don Army of General Sidorin, the Volunteer Army of General May-Mayevsky, and also directed the actions of the commander-in-chief in the North Caucasus, General Erdeli, the commander-in-chief in Novorossiya, General Schilling, the commander-in-chief current in the Kiev region, General Dragomirov and the commander of the Black Sea Fleet, Admiral Gerasimov. The administration of the occupied regions, except for the Cossack ones, was carried out with the participation of a Special Meeting created by General Alekseev. After the retreat of the AFSR troops in the fall of 1919 - winter of 1920, General Denikin, shocked by the disaster during the evacuation of Novorossiysk, decided to convene the Military Council in order for it to elect a new Commander-in-Chief. On March 22, 1920, after the election of General Wrangel at the Military Council, General Denikin gave the last order for the AFSR and appointed General Wrangel Commander-in-Chief.

On March 23 (April 5), 1920, General Denikin left with his family for England, where he remained for a short time. In August 1920, he moved to Belgium, not wanting to remain in England during negotiations with Soviet Russia. In Brussels, he began work on his fundamental five-volume work, “Essays on the Russian Troubles.” He continued this work in difficult living conditions on Lake Balaton, in Hungary. The 5th volume was completed by him in 1926 in Brussels. In 1926, General Denikin moved to France and began literary work. At this time, his books “The Old Army” and “Officers” were published, written mainly in Capbreton, where the general often communicated with the writer I. O. Shmelev. During the Parisian period of his life, General Denikin often gave reports on political topics, and in 1936 he began publishing the newspaper “Volunteer”. The declaration of war on September 1, 1939 found General Denikin in the south of France in the village of Montay-au-Vicomte, where he left Paris to begin work on his last work, “The Path of the Russian Officer.” Autobiographical in its genre, the new book was, according to the general’s plan, to serve as an introduction and addition to his five-volume “Essays on the Russian Troubles.” The German invasion of France in May-June 1940 forced General Denikin, who did not want to be under German occupation, to urgently leave Bourg-la-Reine (near Paris) and drive towards the Spanish border in the car of one of his comrades, Colonel Glotov. The fugitives only managed to reach their friends’ villa in Mimizan, north of Biaritz, as German motorized units overtook them here. General Denikin had to leave his friends’ villa on the beach and spend several years, until France was liberated from German occupation, in a cold barracks, where, needing everything and often starving, he continued to work on his work “The Path of the Russian Officer.” General Denikin condemned Hitler's policies and called him "Russia's worst enemy." At the same time, he hoped that after the defeat of Germany, the army would overthrow communist power. In May 1946, in one of his letters to Colonel Koltyshev, he wrote: “After the brilliant victories of the Red Army, many people had an aberration... somehow the side of the Bolshevik invasion and occupation of neighboring states, which brought them ruin, faded and faded into the background , terror, Bolshevisation and enslavement... - Then he continued: - You know my point of view. The Soviets are bringing a terrible disaster to the peoples, striving for world domination. Insolent, provocative, threatening former allies, raising a wave of hatred, their policies threaten to turn into dust everything that has been achieved by the patriotic upsurge and blood of the Russian people... and therefore, true to our slogan - “Defense of Russia”, defending the inviolability of Russian territory and the vital interests of the country , we do not dare in any form to identify ourselves with Soviet policy - the policy of communist imperialism" 1).

In May 1945, he returned to Paris and soon, at the end of November of the same year, taking advantage of the invitation of one of his comrades, he went to the USA. His extensive interview was published in the New Russian Word on December 9, 1945. In America, General Denikin spoke at numerous meetings and wrote a letter to General Eisenhower calling on him to stop the forced rendition of Russian prisoners of war. He died of a heart attack on August 7, 1947 at the University of Michigan Hospital and was buried in a Detroit cemetery. On December 15, 1952, the remains of General Denikin were transferred to St. Vladimir Orthodox Cemetery in Cassville, New Jersey. He owns:

Essays on the Russian Time of Troubles: In 5 volumes. Paris: Publishing house. Povolotsky, 1921-1926. T. 1. 1921; T. II. 1922; Berlin: Slovo, 1924. T. III; Berlin: Slovo, 1925. T. IV; Berlin: Bronze Horseman, 1926. T. V.

Books: “Officers” (Paris, 1928); “The Old Army” (Paris, 1929. Vol. 1; Paris, 1931. Vol. II); “The Russian Question in the Far East” (Paris, 1932); "Brest-Litovsk" (Paris, 1933); “Who saved Soviet power from destruction?” (Paris, 1937); “World Events and the Russian Question” (Paris, 1939).

Memoirs: “The Path of a Russian Officer” (New York: Chekhov Publishing House, 1953).

Numerous articles in S.P. Melgunov’s magazine “Struggle for Russia”, in “Illustrated Russia”, in “Volunteer” (1936-1938), etc. General Denikin’s last article - “In Soviet Paradise” - was published posthumously in No. 8 Parisian magazine "Renaissance" for March-April 1950

1) General Denikin A.I. Letters. Part 1 // Edges. 1983. No. 128 P. 25-26.

Materials used from the book: Nikolai Rutych Biographical reference book of the highest ranks of the Volunteer Army and the Armed Forces of the South of Russia. Materials on the history of the White movement M., 2002

Lieutenant Denikin A.I. 1895 *)

Member of the First World War

DENIKIN Anton Ivanovich (December 4, 1872, Wloclawek, Warsaw province - July 8, 1947, Detroit, USA), Russian. Lieutenant General (1916). The son of a retired major who came from serfs. He received his education at the military school courses of the Kyiv Infantry. cadet school (1892) and the Nikolaev Academy of the General Staff (1899). Released in the 2nd art. brigade. From July 23, 1902, senior adjutant of the 2nd Infantry headquarters. divisions, from March 17, 1903 - 2nd Cav. housings. Participant in the Russian-Japanese War of 1904-05: from March 28, 1904 he served as a staff officer for special assignments at the IX headquarters, from 3 Lent. - VIII AK; first D. acted as chief of staff of the Zaamursky district brigade of a separate border guard corps, then chief of staff of the Transbaikal kaz. division general PC. Rennenkampf and Ural-Transbaikal kazakhstan. divisions. Participant in a raid behind enemy lines (May 1905), during which communications of the Japanese army were disrupted, warehouses were destroyed, etc. From January 12, 1906, staff officer for special assignments at the headquarters of the 2nd Cavalry. corps, from December 30, 1906, headquarters officer at the command of the 57th infantry. reserve brigade, from June 29, 1910 commander of the 17th infantry. Arkhangelsk Regiment. At the beginning of 1914 he was appointed acting director. general for assignments to the commander of the Kyiv Military District.

With the outbreak of the World War on July 19, 1914, he was appointed quartermaster general of the headquarters of the 8th Army. From 19 Sep. - head of the 4th Infantry Brigade (during the Russian-Turkish War of 1877-1878 it was called the “Iron Brigade”), which in Aug. 1915 deployed to division. For the battles of October 2-11, 1914 near Sambir, he was awarded the Order of St. George, 4th degree (order of April 24, 1915). In the battles of January 18. - Feb 2 1915, near the Lutovskaya part of D., they knocked out the enemy from the trenches and threw him back beyond the San in the Smolnik-Zhuravlin sector; for these actions, D. was awarded the Order of St. George, 3rd degree (11/3/1915). For the battles of August 26-30. 1915, near the village of Grodeka, D. received the St. George weapon (11/10/1915), and for distinctions near Lutsk (May 1916), when the division took a large number of prisoners and carried out a successful assault on enemy positions, - the St. George weapon, decorated with diamonds (order 9/22/1916) . 10(23) Sept. Lutsk took Lutsk in 1915, but after two days he was forced to leave it. On Sept. The division became part of the newly formed XL AK Gen. rifle units. ON THE. Kashtalinsky. 5(18) Oct. Division D. took Czartorysk, St. was captured. 6 thousand people, 9 guns and 40 machine guns. He took part in the offensive of the Southwestern Front in 1916, operating in the Lutsk direction. He broke through 6 lines of enemy positions, and then took Lutsk on May 25 (June 7). From 9.9.1916 the commander of the VIII AK, who on December. 1916, as part of the 9th Army, was transferred to the Romanian Front. For several months, during the battles near the settlements of Buzeo, Ramnic and Focsani, D. also had 2 Romanian corps under his command.

After the February Revolution, when Gen. M.V. Alekseev was appointed Supreme Commander-in-Chief, D., at the request of the Provisional Government on March 28, was appointed its chief of staff. He took part in the development of operational plans (including the future June offensive of 1917); opposed “revolutionary” transformations and “democratization” of the army; tried to limit the functions of soldiers' committees only to economic problems. After replacing Alekseev, Gen. A.A. Brusilov D. On May 31, he was transferred to the post of Commander-in-Chief of the armies of the Western Front. Before the start of the June offensive, the front (under the chief of staff, Lieutenant General S.L. Markov) included the 3rd (General M.F. Kvetsinsky), 10th (General N.M. Kiselevsky) and 2nd (Gen. A.A. Veselovsky) of the army, the XLVIII AK (which included special-purpose heavy artillery) was in the front reserve. According to the plan of the command of the front army, to help the Southwestern Front, which was delivering the main blow, they were supposed to launch an auxiliary attack on Smorgon-Krevo. The armies of the front took part in the offensive in the summer of 1917, delivering the main blow in the direction of Vilna. After a successful art. In preparation, the forces of the 10th Army of the Front went on the offensive on July 9 (22), occupied 2 lines of enemy trenches and then returned to their positions. Due to the beginning of the disintegration of the army, the offensive was a complete failure. July 10 (23) D. refused to resume the offensive. During the meeting on July 16 (29) at Headquarters in the presence of Minister-Chairman A.F. Kerensky and Foreign Minister M.I. Tereshchenko D. made an extremely harsh speech accusing the Provisional Government of destroying the army. Having announced his program for saving the army and the country, D. incl. demanded to “stop all military” lawmaking, “remove politics from the army... abolish commissars and committees... introduce the death penalty in the rear,” etc. After the appointment of General. L.G. Kornilov Supreme Commander-in-Chief D. 2 Aug. received the post of Commander-in-Chief of the armies of the Southwestern Front. Aug 4 by his order he limited the activities of committees in the armies of the front. When Kornilov spoke on August 27, 1917, D. openly expressed his full support for him, for which on August 29. “expelled from office and put on trial for rebellion”, arrested in Berdichev (together with his chief of staff, General Markov, Quartermaster General, Major General M.I. Orlov) and sent to prison in Bykhov, where Kornilov and others were already imprisoned. From there, by order of the general. N.N. Dukhonin, he, along with others, was released on November 19. and three days later arrived by rail in Novocherkassk. Closest assistant to Gen. Alekseev and Kornilov in the formation of the Volunteer Army, tried to smooth out their constant clashes. Initially, D. was appointed head of the Volunteer Division, but after reorganization he was transferred to the position of assistant commander.

Participant of the 1st Kuban (Ice) campaign. After the gi-. Beli Kornilova Apr 13 during the storming of Ekaterinodar, D. accepted the post of commander of the army and took it back to the Don. From 31 Aug. he was simultaneously the 1st Deputy Chairman of the Special Meeting. After the death of Gen. Alekseeva D. 8 Oct. became commander-in-chief of the Volunteer Army, uniting military and civil power in his hands. Since January 8, 1919, Commander-in-Chief of the AFSR. Under D., a Special Meeting was created under the chairmanship of General. A. M. Dragomirova, who performed the functions of the government. 12/30/1919 D. abolished the Special Meeting and created a government under the commander-in-chief. 4.1.1920 A.V. Kolchak declared D. Supreme Ruler of Russia. In March 1920 D. created the South Russian government. D.'s military actions against the Bolsheviks, despite the initial successes, ended in a severe defeat for the White armies, and on April 4, 1920 D. was forced to transfer the post of commander in chief to General. P.N. Wrangel. After this he left for Constantinople. In April 1920 arrived in London (Great Britain), in Aug. 1920 moved to Belgium, where he lived in the vicinity of Brussels. From June 1922 he lived in Budapest (Hungary). In mid-1925 he moved to Belgium, and in the spring of 1926 - to France (to the suburbs of Paris). He did not take an active part in political activities in exile. When the Germans entered France in 1940. troops, D. and his family went south to Mimizan, where he spent the entire occupation. During the 2nd World War he opposed cooperation with the Germans and supported the Soviet army. On Nov. 1945 left for the USA. Author of the memoirs “Essays on Russian. Troubles" (vols. 1-5, 1921-26), etc.

Book materials used: Zalessky K.A. Who was who in the Second World War. Allies of Germany. Moscow, 2003

Patriot emigrant

Denikin Anton Ivanovich (1872-1947) - Lieutenant General of the General Staff. The son of a border guard officer who rose through the ranks of the soldiers. Grandson of a serf peasant. He graduated from the Lovichi Real School, military school courses at the Kiev Infantry Junker School and the Nikolaev Academy of the General Staff (1899). During the Russo-Japanese War, being a senior adjutant at the headquarters of the 2nd Cavalry Corps in March 1904, he submitted a report on transfer to the active army and was appointed as a staff officer for special assignments at the headquarters of the 8th Army Corps. Lieutenant colonel. Awarded the Order of St. Stanislav and St. Anne, 3rd degree with swords and bows and 2nd degree with swords. Promoted to the rank of colonel - "for military distinction." In March 1914 he was promoted to major general.

At the beginning of the First World War, he was appointed to the post of Quartermaster General of the 8th Army of General Brusilov. At his own request, he joined the ranks and was appointed on September 6, 1914 as commander of the 4th Infantry ("Iron") Brigade, which was deployed to a division in 1915. General Denikin's "iron" division became famous in many battles during the Battle of Galicia and in the Carpathians. During the retreat in September 1915, the division took Lutsk with a counterattack, for which General Denikin was promoted to lieutenant general. General Denikin took Lutsk for the second time during the Brusilov offensive in June 1916. In the fall of 1914, for the battles at Grodek, General Denikin was awarded the Arms of St. George, and then for the bold maneuver at Gorny Meadow - the Order of St. George, 4th degree. In 1915, for the battles at Lutovisko - the Order of St. George, 3rd degree. For breaking through enemy positions during the Brusilov offensive in 1916 and for the second capture of Lutsk, he was again awarded the Arms of St. George, showered with diamonds with the inscription “For the double liberation of Lutsk.” On September 9, 1916, he was appointed commander of the 8th Army Corps. In March 1917, under the Provisional Government, he was appointed assistant chief of staff of the Supreme Commander-in-Chief, and in May of the same year - commander-in-chief of the armies of the Western Front. In July 1917, after the appointment of General Kornilov as Supreme Commander-in-Chief, he was appointed in his place as Commander-in-Chief of the armies of the Southwestern Front. For active support of General Kornilov in August 1917, he was removed from office by the Provisional Government and imprisoned in Bykhov prison.

On November 19, 1917, he fled from Bykhov with papers addressed to a Polish landowner and arrived in Novocherkassk, where he took part in the organization and formation of the Volunteer Army. On January 30, 1918, he was appointed head of the 1st Volunteer Division. During the 1st Kuban Campaign he served as Deputy Commander of the Volunteer Army of General Kornilov. March 31. 1918, when General Kornilov was killed during the assault on Yekaterinodar, he took command of the Volunteer Army. In June 1918 he led the Volunteer Army on the 2nd Kuban campaign. On July 3, 1918, Yekaterinodar was taken. On September 25 (October 8), 1918, after the death of General Alekseev, he became Commander-in-Chief of the Volunteer Army. On December 26, 1918, after a meeting at Torgovaya station with Don Ataman General Krasnov, who recognized the need for unified command and agreed to subordinate the Don Army to General Denikin, he became Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces in the South of Russia (AFSR). In 1919, from the headquarters of the AFSR in Taganrog, General Denikin exercised the main command of the Caucasian Volunteer Army of General Wrangel, the Don Army of General Sidorin, the Volunteer Army of General May-Mayevsky, and also directed the actions of the commander-in-chief in the North Caucasus, General Erdeli, the commander-in-chief in Novorossiya, General Schilling, the commander-in-chief current in the Kiev region, General Dragomirov and the commander of the Black Sea Fleet, Admiral Gerasimov. The administration of the occupied regions, except for the Cossack ones, was carried out with the participation of a Special Meeting created by General Alekseev. After the retreat of the Armed Forces of Southern Russia in the fall of 1919 and winter of 1920, General Denikin, shocked by the disaster during the evacuation of Novorossiysk, decided to convene the Military Council to elect a new Commander-in-Chief. On March 22, 1920, after the election of General Wrangel at the Military Council, General Denikin gave the last order for the AFSR and appointed General Wrangel Commander-in-Chief.

On March 23 (April 5), 1920, General Denikin left with his family for England, where he remained for a short time. In August 1920, he moved to Belgium, not wanting to stay in England during the negotiations with Soviet Russia. In Brussels, he began work on his fundamental five-volume work, “Essays on the Russian Troubles.” He continued this work in difficult living conditions on Lake Balaton, in Hungary; the 5th volume was completed by him in 1926 in Brussels. In 1926, General Denikin moved to France and began literary work. At this time, his books “The Old Army” and “Officers” were published, written mainly in Capbreton, where the general often communicated with the writer I. O. Shmelev. During the Parisian period of his life, General Denikin often gave presentations on political topics and in 1936 he began publishing the newspaper “Volunteer”.

Denikin 30s, Paris. *)

The declaration of war on September 1, 1939 found General Denikin in the south of France in the village of Montay-au-Vicomte, where he left Paris to begin work on his last work, “The Way of the Russian Officer.” Autobiographical in its genre, the new book was, according to the general’s plan, to serve as an introduction and addition to his five-volume “Essays on the Russian Troubles.” The German invasion of France in May-June 1940 forced General Denikin, who did not want to be under German occupation, to urgently leave Bourg-la-Reine (near Paris) and drive towards the Spanish border in the car of one of his comrades, Colonel Glotov. The fugitives only managed to reach their friends’ villa in Mimizan, north of Biaritz, as German motorized units overtook them here. General Denikin had to leave his friends’ villa on the beach and spend several years, until the liberation of France from the German occupation, in a cold barracks, where he, needing everything and often starving, continued to work on his work “The Path of the Russian Officer.” General Denikin condemned Hitler's policies and called him "Russia's worst enemy." At the same time, he hoped that after the defeat of Germany, the army would overthrow communist power. In May 1946, in one of his letters to Colonel Koltyshev, he wrote: “After the brilliant victories of the Red Army, many people had an aberration... somehow the side of the Bolshevik invasion and occupation of neighboring states that brought them ruin, terror, Bolshevisation and enslavement... - further, he continued: - You know my point of view. The Soviets are bringing a terrible disaster to the peoples, striving for world domination. An impudent, provocative policy that threatens former allies, raising a wave of hatred threatens to turn them into dust is everything that was achieved by the patriotic fervor and blood of the Russian people... and therefore, true to our slogan - “Defense of Russia”, defending the inviolability of Russian territory and the vital interests of the country, we do not dare in any form to identify with Soviet policy - the policies of communist imperialism."

In May 1945, he returned to Paris and soon, at the end of November of the same year, taking advantage of the invitation of one of his comrades, he went to the USA. In America, General Denikin spoke at numerous meetings and wrote a letter to General Eisenhower calling on him to stop the forced rendition of Russian prisoners of war. He died of a heart attack on August 7, 1947 at the University of Michigan Hospital and was buried in a Detroit cemetery. On December 15, 1952, the remains of General Denikin were transferred to St. Vladimir Orthodox Cemetery in Cassville, New Jersey. He owns the books: “Essays on the Russian Troubles” (5 volumes, 1926), “Officers” (1928), “The Old Army” (1929), “The Russian Question in the Far East” (1932), “Brest-Litovsk " (1933), "Who saved Soviet power from destruction?" (1937), “World Events and the Russian Question” (1939), “The Path of a Russian Officer” (1953).

Biographical information is reprinted from the magazine "Russian World" (educational almanac), No. 2, 2000.

General Denikin with his daughter. *)

General Denikin A.I. with my wife. *)

Lieutenant General

Anton Ivanovich Denikin 1872 -1947. A.I. Denikin is best known as the “white general” who almost defeated the Bolsheviks in 1919. He is less known as a commander of the Russian army during the First World War, a writer and historiographer. Considering himself a Russian officer and patriot, Denikin throughout his long life retained a deep hostility towards the Bolsheviks, who had gained the upper hand in Russia, and a belief in the national revival of Russia.

Anton Denikin was born in the city of Wloclawsk, Warsaw province, and was the son of a retired major who came from a peasant background. Anton's mother was Polish; love for her and the memory of his childhood years on the Vistula instilled in Denikin a good attitude towards the Polish people. His childhood was not easy. “Poverty, a 25-ruble pension after the death of my father. Youth was about working for bread,” he recalled. After graduating from a real school in Lovich, 17-year-old Denikin entered the Kiev Infantry Junker School. Upon completion of two years of study, he graduated as a second lieutenant of the 2nd Field Artillery Brigade, stationed in Poland.

In the fall of 1895, Anton Ivanovich passed the exams at the Academy of the General Staff. It was not easy for a provincial officer to study in the capital. Upon its completion, Denikin, instead of enlisting as an officer of the general staff, was appointed to a combat position in the former artillery brigade. Having appealed this appointment to the Minister of War, two years later he achieved the transfer of general staff officers to the staff. He served as a staff officer in the Warsaw Military District - first in the 2nd Infantry Division, then in the 2nd Infantry Corps. The Russo-Japanese War found him with the rank of captain.

Although the troops of the Warsaw Military District were not to be sent to the Far East, Denikin immediately submitted a report with a request to be sent to the theater of military operations. During the war, he headed the headquarters of various formations and more than once commanded combat sectors. “Denikinskaya Sopka”, near the positions of the Tsinghechansky battle, is named after the battle in which Anton Ivanovich repulsed the enemy’s advance with bayonets. For his distinction in battles, Denikin received the ranks of lieutenant colonel and colonel. Returning from the Far East, Anton Ivanovich first observed the unrest in connection with the revolution of 1905. Even then, he was a supporter of the idea of ​​a constitutional monarchy and was of the opinion that radical reforms were necessary provided that civil peace was preserved.

After the Russo-Japanese War, Denikin served in staff positions in Warsaw and Saratov, and in 1910 he was appointed commander of the 17th Arkhangelsk Regiment in the Kiev Military District. In September 1911, Russian Prime Minister P. Stolypin was killed nearby, in the Kiev theater; his death deeply saddened Anton Ivanovich, who saw in Stolypin a great patriot, an intelligent and strong man. But the service continued. In June 1914, Denikin was promoted to major general and approved as a general for assignments under the commander of the Kyiv Military District. A month later, the First World War broke out.

With the beginning of the war, Anton Ivanovich was appointed quartermaster general of the 8th Army of A. Brusilov, but already on August 24 he was entrusted with a command position: he headed the 4th brigade of the 8th Army. From the very first battles, the riflemen saw Denikin in the advanced lines, and the general quickly won their trust. For valor in the Battle of Gorodok, Anton Ivanovich was awarded the Arms of St. George. In October, he distinguished himself with a bold and unexpected counterattack against the Austrians in Galicia and received the Order of St. George, 4th class. After the breakthrough into the Carpathians and the capture of the Hungarian city of Meso-Laborcs, army commander Brusilov telegraphed Denikin: “To the brave brigade for the dashing actions, for the brilliant execution of the task assigned to it, I send my deepest bow and thank you from the bottom of my heart.” Grand Duke Nikolai Nikolaevich congratulated the brigade commander and Supreme Commander-in-Chief.

The harsh mountain winter of 1914-1915. The 4th brigade, which earned the nickname "Iron", as part of the 12th Army Corps of General A. Kaledin, heroically defended the passes in the Carpathians; For these battles, Anton Ivanovich was awarded the Order of St. George, 3rd degree. During the difficult period of the spring and summer of 1915, the brigade, reorganized into a division, was constantly being transferred from one hot spot to another, to where it was difficult, where there was a breakthrough, where there was a threat of encirclement. In September, the “Iron Division”, unexpectedly counterattacking the enemy, captured the city of Lutsk, capturing about 20 thousand people, which was equal to the strength of Denikin’s division. His reward was the rank of lieutenant general. In October, his formation distinguished itself again, breaking through the enemy front and driving the enemy out of Czartorysk; When breaking through, the regiments had to fight on three, and sometimes on all four sides.

During the famous offensive of Brusilov's Southwestern Front (May - June 1916), the main blow was delivered by Kaledin's 8th Army, and within it, the 4th Iron Division. Denikin fulfilled his task with valor, becoming one of the heroes of the Lutsk breakthrough. For his demonstrated military skill and personal courage, he received a rare award - the Arms of St. George, decorated with diamonds. His name became popular in the army. But he still remained simple and friendly in his interactions with soldiers, unpretentious and modest in everyday life.

The officers valued his intelligence, his unfailing calm, his ability for apt words and gentle humor.

Since September 1916, Denikin, commanding the 8th Army Corps, acted on the Romanian Front, helping Allied divisions escape from defeat. Meanwhile, 1917 arrived, foreshadowing internal turmoil for Russia. Denikin saw that the tsarist autocracy had exhausted itself, and thought with alarm about the fate of the army. The abdication of Nicholas II and the rise to power of the Provisional Government gave him some hope. On the initiative of Minister of War A. Guchkov, Anton Ivanovich was appointed chief of staff of the Supreme Commander-in-Chief, M. Alekseev, on April 5. Two talented and selfless military leaders sought to preserve the combat effectiveness of the army and protect it from revolutionary rallies. Having received from the Minister of War Guchkov a project for organizing a system of soldiers’ organizations, Denikin responded with a telegram: “The project is aimed at destroying the army.” Speaking at an officers' congress in Mogilev, Anton Ivanovich said: “There is no strength in that insane bacchanalia, where everyone around is trying to snatch everything possible at the expense of the tormented homeland.” Addressing the authorities, he called: “Take care of the officer! For from century to now he has stood faithfully and invariably guarding statehood.”

On May 22, the Provisional Government replaced Alekseev as Supreme Commander-in-Chief with the “more democratic” Brusilov, and Denikin chose to leave Headquarters; on May 31, he became commander of the Western Front. In the summer offensive of 1917, the Western Front, like others, was not successful: the morale of the troops was undermined. On July 16, at a meeting at Headquarters, Denikin proposed a program of urgent and firm measures to restore order at the front and in the rear. Addressing members of the Provisional Government, he declared: “You trampled our banners into the mud, raise them and bow before them... If you have a conscience!” Kerensky then shook the general’s hand, thanking him for his “brave, sincere word.” But later he characterized Denikin’s speech as a program for the future “Kornilov rebellion”, “the music of the future military reaction.”

On August 2, Denikin was appointed commander of the Southwestern Front (instead of Kornilov, Supreme Commander-in-Chief from July 19). In the days when the commander-in-chief was declared a “rebel” and removed from his post, Anton Ivanovich openly expressed his support to Kornilov. On August 29, by order of the Commissioner of the Southwestern Front, Jordan, Denikin and his assistants were arrested and imprisoned in Berdichev, later they were transferred to Bykhov, where Kornilov and other generals were kept in custody. On November 19, after the Bolsheviks came to power, all prisoners were released by order of the commander in chief, General Dukhonin, who paid for this with his life.

At the beginning of December, Denikin barely reached Novocherkassk. On the Don, he became an associate of generals Alekseev, Kornilov and Kaledin in organizing the White movement. With Kornilov assuming the post of commander of the Volunteer Army on December 27, Anton Ivanovich was appointed head of the Volunteer Division. In Novocherkassk, 45-year-old Denikin married Ksenia Vasilievna Chizh, who came to him from Kyiv, where they first met in 1914. His wife will accompany him in all subsequent years, supporting him in all the trials of fate.

During the retreat of the Volunteer Army to the Kuban, Denikin served as assistant commander, and after the death of Kornilov (April 13, 1918), with the consent and proposal of Alekseev, he led the small white army. In May, the army returned to the Don, where Ataman Krasnov managed to overthrow Soviet power. A period began of strengthening the Volunteer Army, growing its ranks and conducting active offensive operations. In the summer and autumn, Denikin and her again moved south, occupied Kuban and advanced to the North Caucasus. Lacking material and technical supplies, he began to accept help from the Entente countries, considering them still allies. The volunteer army grew to 40 thousand bayonets and sabers. In January 1919, Denikin headed the Armed Forces of the South of Russia, which included the Volunteer and Don Armies, and later also the Caucasian (Kuban) Army, the Black Sea Fleet and other formations.

In a number of his declarations, the commander-in-chief defined the main directions of his policy: the restoration of “Great, United and Indivisible Russia”, “the fight against the Bolsheviks to the end”, defense of the faith, economic reform taking into account the interests of all classes, determination of the form of government in the country after the convening of the Constituent Assembly , chosen by the people. “As for me personally,” said Anton Ivanovich, “I will not fight for the form of government, I am fighting only for Russia.” In June 1919, he recognized the supremacy of the “Supreme Ruler of Russia” Admiral Kolchak over himself.

Denikin did not seek power; it came to him by chance and weighed heavily on him. He still remained an example of personal modesty, dreaming of the birth of his son Vanka (in February 1919 his daughter Marina was born). Preaching high principles, he noticed with pain how a disease of moral degradation developed in his army. “There is no peace of mind,” he wrote to his wife. “Every day is a picture of theft, robbery, violence throughout the entire territory of the armed forces. The Russian people from top to bottom have fallen so low that I don’t know when they will be able to rise from the mud.” The commander-in-chief was never able to take decisive measures to restore order in his army, which had disastrous consequences. But Denikin’s main weakness was the delay in economic reform in the countryside, and the Bolsheviks eventually managed to win the peasants over to their side,

On July 3, Denikin issued the “Moscow Directive”, setting the goal of an attack on Moscow. In September, his troops captured Kursk and Orel, but the Bolsheviks, mobilizing all their forces, first stopped the enemy and then threw him back to the Don and Ukraine. Failures, criticism from General Wrangel and other military leaders who had lost faith in their leader, and moral loneliness broke Denikin. At the beginning of April 1920, he resigned and, by decision of the Military Council, transferred the post of Commander-in-Chief to Wrangel. On April 4, his last order was made public: “Lieutenant General Baron Wrangel is appointed Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of the South of Russia. A low bow to everyone who honestly followed me in a difficult struggle. Lord, give victory to the army and save Russia.”

Having sailed to Constantinople, Denikin left Russia forever. The entire capital of the former commander-in-chief, translated into hard currency, amounted to less than 13 pounds sterling. Then life began in a foreign land - in England, Hungary, Belgium, and from 1926 - in France. Not wanting to accept handouts, Anton Ivanovich earned money to support his family through literary work. In 1921 - 1926 he prepared and published a 5-volume work, “Essays on the Russian Troubles,” which became a major monument to the Russian army and the White movement. Denikin avoided participation in white emigrant organizations. With the outbreak of the Second World War, he fervently wished for the victory of the Red Army in the name of great Russia and the Russian people. “Remaining irreconcilable in relation to Bolshevism and not recognizing Soviet power,” Denikin wrote, “I have always considered myself, and still consider myself, a citizen of the Russian Empire.” Living in occupied France, he rejected all German offers of cooperation.

With the end of World War II, Denikin moved to live in the USA. There he continued his literary works, wrote an autobiographical book “The Path of a Russian Officer” (remained unfinished), gave lectures, and began work on a new work “The Second World War and Emigration.” The Russian general died at the age of 75. American authorities buried him with military honors. Denikin's ashes rest in the town of Jackson, New Jersey. Anton Ivanovich’s last wish was for the coffin with his remains to be transported to his homeland over time, when the situation in Russia changed.

Book materials used: Kovalevsky N.F. History of Russian Goverment. Biographies of famous military figures of the 18th - early 20th centuries. M. 1997

Colonel A.I. Denikin, commander of the Arkhangelsk regiment, Zhitomir, 1912 *)

DENIKIN Anton Ivanovich (12/04/1872-08/08/1947) Major General (06/1914). Lieutenant General (09/24/1915). He graduated from the Lovichi Real School, the Kiev Infantry Junker School (1892) and the Nikolaev Academy of the General Staff (1899). Participant in the Russian-Japanese War of 1904-1905. Participant of the First World War: Quartermaster General of the 8th Army of General Brusilov. 09/06/1914 was appointed commander of the 4th Infantry (“Iron”) Brigade, which in 1915 was deployed into a division. Participated in battles in Golicia and the Carpathian Mountains; captured Lutsk and on 06.1916 captured this city a second time during the “Brusilov” breakthrough. 09/09/1916 appointed commander of the 8th Army Corps on the Romanian Front, 09/1916-04/18/1917. Chief of Staff of the Supreme Commander-in-Chief, 04 - 05/31/1917. Commander of the Western Front (05/31 - 08/02/1917). Commander of the troops of the Southwestern Front, 02.08 - 10.1917. For supporting the rebellion of General Kornilov, he was imprisoned in the city of Bykhov. On November 19, 1917, he escaped with Kornilov and other generals from the Bykhov prison to the Don, where, together with generals Alekseev and Kornilov, he created the Volunteer (White) Army. Chief of Staff of the Volunteer Army, 12.1917 -13.04.1918. Commander of the Volunteer Army (after the death of Kornilov), 04/13 - 09/25/1918. Commander-in-Chief of the Volunteer Army (after the death of Alekseev), 09.25 - 12.26.1918. Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of the South of Russia - VSYUR, 12/26/1918 (01/08/1919) - 03/22/1920. He was evacuated on March 14, 1920, being the last to leave Novorossiysk on board the destroyer Captain Saken. From 06/01/1919 - Deputy of the Supreme Ruler of Russia Admiral Kolchak, recognizing on 05/30/1919 the authority of the Supreme Ruler of Russia Admiral Kolchak over himself, 12/26/1918-03/22/1920. By decree of Admiral Kolchak on 01/05/1920 he was declared the Supreme Ruler of Russia, that is, he became Kolchak’s successor in Russia. On March 22, 1920, he handed over command of the All-Soviet Union to Wrangel and on April 4, 1920 he left Crimea to emigrate on an English destroyer to England. 08.1920 moved to Belgium, Brussels. 07.1922-03.1926 - in Hungary. Since 1926 he lived in France. During the German occupation of France, on 06/1940 he moved to the south of France; lived in the Biarritz area, hiding in a cold barracks. After World War II, he returned to Paris on 5/1945 and moved to the USA on 11/1945. Died at the University of Michigan Anne Erber Hospital (USA).

Materials used from the book: Valery Klaving, Civil War in Russia: White Armies. Military-historical library. M., 2003.

Notes:

*) Digital photographs from the personal collection of Igor A. Marchenko, NJ, USA

Contemporary testimony:

General Denikin received me in the presence of his chief of staff, General Romanovsky. Of medium height, stocky, somewhat plump, with a small beard and a long black mustache with significant graying, and a rough, low voice, General Denikin gave the impression of a thoughtful, firm, stocky, purely Russian man. He had a reputation as an honest soldier, a brave, capable commander with great military erudition. His name has become especially popular since our time of unrest, when, first as chief of staff of the Supreme Commander-in-Chief, and then as commander-in-chief of the southwestern front, he independently, boldly and firmly raised his voice in defense of the honor and dignity of his native army and Russian officers.

Contemporary testimony:

I still had no connection with my corps (We are talking about military operations in June 1916 - CHRONOS). It was stated that Lutsk, 25 kilometers to the north, had already been captured, and I decided to try to cross the Tam River. We walked all night - the fourth night in a row - and by morning we reached Lutsk, which was indeed taken by Russian units.
General Denikin, whose rifle division took part in the capture of the city, explained the situation to me as he understood it. Right now, on the western outskirts of Lutsk, battles were taking place against enemy infantry.
In order to disrupt the enemy’s communication with Vladimir-Volynsky, in accordance with the instructions I received, I decided to first capture the town of Torchin, which stood at a crossroads twenty kilometers west of Lutsk. This crossroads was very important for the movements of our infantry and the supply of units. It turned out to be very difficult to break through the front line in order to go deeper into enemy territory; fierce fighting continued all day and all the next night. This was the fifth night that the division had not dismounted, and horses and men were in dire need of food and rest. The next day we captured the village of Boratyn, north of Torchin, and after a midday rest the battle for Torchin began, which lasted all night.
Now it was necessary to move deep into enemy territory towards Vladimir-Volynsky. On the morning of June 11, even before Torchin fell, I concentrated my main forces approximately ten kilometers from him - opposite a small village. When Torchin was captured, the retreating columns of the enemy passed through this village, and then my division managed to break into enemy territory. We headed towards the highway leading to Vladimir-Volynsky in order to cut it twenty kilometers from the city. These battles lasted three days.
Meanwhile, the Austrians threw their reserves into battle, and the battle reached its climax. I received an order to urgently transfer the division to the western outskirts of the city of Kiselin to cover the redeployment of infantry formations. The division's soldiers were terribly exhausted, the horses were completely exhausted, so quickly transferring it to new positions seemed to be a very difficult task.
The division was already halfway to Kovel. Not far from my column rose several hills. Apparently, General Denikin, whose division we left behind, did not see any practical meaning in them. Since the general did not take care of capturing the heights, I decided to do it on my own initiative. But as soon as my units went on the attack, the battle for these heights began literally from all sides. From information received from prisoners, we learned that the forces we attacked were the advanced units of German troops transferred from Kovel. Apparently, reserves from Germany began to arrive. I called Denikin and suggested that he change my units on these heights during the day if he did not want the hills to fall into enemy hands. The general refused - he had already begun redeployment, but in the future, if he needed the heights, he could always capture them. To which I replied that after some time it would be very difficult to push the Germans back.
-Where do you see the Germans? - Denikin shouted. - There are no Germans here!
I dryly remarked that it was easier for me to see them since I was standing right in front of them. This example clearly reflects the inherent desire of Russian commanders to downplay those circumstances that, for one reason or another, do not fit into their plans.
When my division was withdrawn to the army corps reserve at nightfall, the hills were again in German hands. General Denikin realized the significance of this fact the very next day.

Essays:

Denikin A.I. Essays on Russian Troubles. T.I-5.- Paris; Berlin, 1921 -1926.

Denikin A.I. The path of a Russian officer: [Autobiography]. - M.: Sovremennik, 1991.-300 p.

Denikin A.I. Officers. Essays, Paris. 1928;

Denikin A.I. Old Army, Paris. 1929;

Literature:

Gordeev Yu.N. General Denikin: Military History. feature article. M. Publishing house "Arkayur", 1993. - 190 p.

Vasilevsky I.M., Gen. Denikin and his memoirs, Berlin, 1924

Egorov A.I. The defeat of Denikin, 1919. - M.: Voenizdat, 1931. - 232 p.: diagrams.

History of the First World War 1914 - 1918: In 2 volumes / Ed. I.I. Rostunova. - M.: Nauka, 1975. See Decree. names

Who is the gene? Denikin?, Kharkov, 1919;

Lekhovich D.V. Whites against reds. The fate of General Anton Denikin. - M.: "Sunday", 1992. - 368 p.: ill.

Lukomsky A.S. Memoirs of General A.S. Lukomsky: Period of Europe. war. The beginning of devastation in Russia. Fight against the Bolsheviks. - Berlin: Kirchner, 1922.

Makhrov P.S. In the White Army of General Denikin: Zap. beginning headquarters of the commanders-in-chief. armed forces of the South of Russia. - St. Petersburg: Publishing house "Logos", 1994.-301 p.

All-Great Don Army

Kara-Murza Sergey. The true essence of the “white movement”(article)

DENIKIN, ANTON IVANOVICH(1872–1947), Russian military and political figure, one of the leaders of the White movement. Born on December 4 (17), 1872 in the suburbs of Wloclawsk, Warsaw province. Father I.E. Denikin is a serf peasant who rose to the rank of major of the border guard; mother E.F. Wrzhesinskaya is an impoverished Polish noblewoman. He graduated from the Lovichi Real School (1890), the Kiev Infantry Junker School (1892), and the Academy of the General Staff (1899). In 1892 and 1900–1901 he served in the 2nd Field Artillery Brigade with the rank of second lieutenant (1892), then captain (1900). In 1901 he was assigned to the General Staff. In 1902–1910 (with short breaks) he held various staff positions at the brigade, division and corps level. In 1904 he was promoted to lieutenant colonel. Participant in the Russo-Japanese War; for military merits he received the rank of colonel ahead of schedule (1905). In 1910–1914 he commanded the 17th Arkhangelsk Infantry Regiment on the Austrian border. During the First World War, with the rank of major general (1914), he served in the 8th Army of A.A. Brusilov (quartermaster general, head of the 4th Infantry “Iron” Brigade, then division). Participant in the Carpathian Battle, Lviv and Lutsk operations (1915); for the capture of Lutsk, he was promoted to lieutenant general ahead of schedule. Participant of the Brusilov breakthrough (1916). In September 1916 he became commander of the 8th Army Corps on the Romanian Front, and in February 1917 - assistant chief of the General Staff. From April 5 to May 31, he served as Chief of the General Staff. On May 31 he was appointed commander-in-chief of the Western Front, on August 2 – commander-in-chief of the Southwestern Front.

The February revolution was met with hostility. He opposed the democratization of the army in every possible way and fought against soldiers' committees. He sharply criticized the military policy of the Provisional Government. He supported the Kornilov rebellion (August 1917), was arrested on August 29 and spent almost three months in prison.

The October revolution was met with hostility. On November 19, he was released by order of the Supreme Commander-in-Chief General N.N. Dukhonin and fled to the Don, where, together with generals M.V. Alekseev and L.G. Kornilov, he formed the Volunteer Army. In February 1918 he was appointed deputy commander of this army and governor-general of the Kuban region. Participant in the Ice March to Ekaterinodar (February–April 1918). After the death of L.G. Kornilov on April 13, 1918, he became commander of the Volunteer Army; lifted the siege of Yekaterinodar and took the army to the Don region, where the Cossacks sympathized with the whites. In June-September 1918, he abolished Soviet power in the Kuban, Stavropol and Black Sea provinces. On August 31, he became the first deputy chairman of the Special Meeting created to manage the occupied territories. Denikin's attempt to establish military and political control over the Cossack regions of the Don and Kuban led to a conflict with the Kuban autonomists and with the Don ataman P.N. Krasnov. After the death of Alekseev on October 8, 1918, he was proclaimed Supreme Leader of the Volunteer Army. The defeat of Germany in November 1918 strengthened the position of Denikin, who was oriented towards the Entente countries, which, having relied on him, began to provide the Volunteer Army with significant material and political support. Under their pressure, Krasnov had to agree to subordinate the Don Cossack Army to Denikin, who on January 8, 1919 declared himself commander-in-chief of the Armed Forces of the South of Russia.

At the end of 1918 - beginning of 1919, the Volunteer Army completely ousted the Bolsheviks from the North Caucasus. This allowed Denikin to transfer troops to the Don, which prevented the defeat of the Cossack detachments and eliminated the threat of the Reds capturing Rostov and Novocherkassk. In the spring of 1919, Denikin’s troops launched a broad offensive against Central Russia. In May-June they took Kharkov and Tsaritsyn, captured Donbass and the Don region; in July-October they occupied Central Ukraine (Kyiv fell on August 31), Voronezh, Kursk and Oryol provinces.

A military dictatorship was established in the controlled territories. All power functions were concentrated in the hands of Denikin; An administrative and legislative body (Special Meeting) acted under him. Certain regions were governed by governors-general with unlimited powers.

By his convictions, Denikin was a liberal monarchist, a supporter of limited democracy (property qualifications); focused on cadets. In conditions of war, however, he considered it untimely to raise the question of restoring the monarchy. The main thing for him was the preservation of a united Russia. He resolutely suppressed autonomist movements, refused to recognize the independence of the states formed on Russian territory, which undermined the possibility of creating a broad anti-Bolshevik front (conflicts with the Ukrainian Directory, the Menshevik government of Georgia).

The successful counter-offensive of the Reds in October 1919 – March 1920 led to the collapse of Denikin’s army, the loss of most of the territories of the South and a political crisis in the white movement (a new outbreak of Cossack separatism, the strengthening of the right-wing monarchist and Socialist-Revolutionary-Menshevik opposition). To turn the situation around, Denikin tried, on the one hand, to strengthen the rear, combining repressions against the leaders of the Kuban independentists with some liberalization of the regime (the creation of the Legislative Commission), and on the other, to receive help from the “peripheral” governments (Poland, Transcaucasian republics), recognizing them de facto. However, a new conflict with the Kuban Cossacks and the approach of the Red Army forced Denikin to evacuate the remnants of his troops from Novorossiysk to Crimea on March 25–27, 1920. The decline in the authority of the commander-in-chief and pressure from the right (P.N. Wrangel, A.S. Lukomsky, A.V. Krivoshein) forced him to transfer power to Wrangel on April 4 and emigrate to England.

In 1920–1922 he lived in Belgium, in 1922–1926 in Hungary, where he wrote memoirs Essays on Russian Troubles. In 1926 he settled in France; was engaged in literary and social activities. Actively opposed plans for a new armed intervention in Russia; condemned that part of the emigration that cooperated with Hitler. During the occupation of France, he rejected the Germans' offer to move to Germany. At the end of 1945, fearing forced deportation to the USSR, he moved to the USA; lived mainly in New York. Published a number of books - The path of the Russian officer, World War II, Russia and abroad, Libel against the White movement. He died on August 7, 1947 at the University of Michigan Hospital (Ann Arbor) and was buried with military honors at Evergreen Cemetery in Detroit. In 1952, his remains were moved to St. Vladimir's Russian Cemetery in New Jersey. On October 3, 2005, the ashes of General Denikin were reburied in the Donskoy Monastery in Moscow.

Ivan Krivushin

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 city.

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 took a train to Moscow, from where he had to get to Harbin. On the same train, Admiral Stepan Makarov and General Pavel Rennenkampf were traveling to the Far East. 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 rear and clashed 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 repulsed 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 positional 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 victims 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, Supreme Commander 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), Kiev (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, in contrast to earlier Soviet history, 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 politics, 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 regions. 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 refuted Curzon’s statement about any influence of the lord on his leaving the post of Commander-in-Chief of the AFSR, explaining his 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."

Russian military leader, lieutenant general (1915). Participant in the Civil War of 1918-1920, one of the leaders of the white movement. Commander of the Volunteer Army (1918 - 1919), Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of the South of Russia (1919-1920).

Anton Ivanovich Denikin was born on December 4 (16), 1872 in the village of Shpetal Dolny, a suburb of Wloclawek, a county town in the Warsaw province (now in Poland), in the family of a retired border guard major Ivan Efimovich Denikin (1807-1885).

In 1890, A.I. Denikin graduated from the Lovichi Real School. In 1890-1892, he studied at the Kiev Infantry Junker School, after which he was promoted to second lieutenant and assigned to the 2nd Field Artillery Brigade.

In 1895-1899, A.I. Denikin studied at the Nikolaev Academy of the General Staff. He was enlisted as an officer of the General Staff in 1902.

With the beginning of the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-1905, A.I. Denikin obtained permission to be seconded to the active army. He took part in battles and reconnaissance operations, and in February-March 1905 he took part in the Battle of Mukden. For distinction in cases against the enemy, he was promoted to colonel and awarded the Order of St. Stanislav, 2nd degree with swords, and St. Anne, 2nd degree with swords.

In 1906, A.I. Denikin served as a staff officer for special assignments at the headquarters of the 2nd Cavalry Corps in Warsaw, and in 1907-1910 he was the chief of staff of the 57th Infantry Reserve Brigade in.

In 1910-1914, A.I. Denikin commanded the 17th Arkhangelsk Infantry Regiment in Zhitomir (now in Ukraine). In March 1914, he was appointed acting general for assignments under the Commander of the Kyiv Military District. On the eve of the outbreak of the First World War, A. I. Denikin was promoted to major general and confirmed in the post of quartermaster general of the 8th Army of General A. A. Brusilov.

In September 1914, A.I. Denikin was appointed commander of the 4th Infantry (“Iron”) Brigade, which in 1915 was deployed into a division. For the battle at Grodek in September 1914, he was awarded the honorary Arms of St. George; for the capture of the village of Gorny Luzhok, where the headquarters of the Austrian Archduke Joseph was located, he was awarded the Order of St. George, 4th degree. A.I. Denikin took part in battles in Galicia and the Carpathian Mountains. For the battles on the San River he was awarded the Order of St. George, 3rd degree. Twice (in September 1915 and June 1916) troops under his command captured the city of Lutsk. For the first operation he was promoted to lieutenant general, for the second he was again awarded the honorary St. George's Arms with diamonds.

In September 1916, A.I. Denikin became commander of the 8th Army Corps on the Romanian Front. From September 1916 to April 1917 he was chief of staff of the Supreme Commander-in-Chief, in April - May 1917 he commanded the Western Front, and in August 1917 he became commander of the troops of the Southwestern Front.

For supporting the rebellion of General A.I. Denikin was imprisoned in the city of Bykhov. In November 1917, together with other generals, he fled to the Don, where he took part in the creation of the Volunteer Army. From December 1917 to April 1918, A.I. Denikin was the chief of staff of the Volunteer Army, after his death he took command of it, in September 1918 he became the Commander-in-Chief of the Volunteer Army, and from December 1918 to March 1920 he was the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of the South. In May 1919, A.I. Denikin recognized the power of the Supreme Ruler of the Admiral over himself, and from June 1919 he was considered the Deputy Supreme Ruler. After abdicating power in January 1920, he was announced as the admiral's successor as Supreme Ruler.

After the retreat of the White armies in the fall of 1919 - winter of 1920 and the catastrophic evacuation from A.I. Denikin was forced to transfer command of the Armed Forces of the South to Baron P.N. Wrangel. In April 1920, he left Crimea to emigrate on an English destroyer. Until August 1920, A.I. Denikin lived in England, in 1920-1922 - in Belgium, in 1922-1926 - in Hungary, in 1926-1945 - in France. In November 1945 he moved to the USA. During the years of emigration, A.I. Denikin published memoirs and works on the history of the Russian army and the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-1905. The most famous were his five-volume work “Essays on the Russian Troubles” (1921-1923) and the book of memoirs “The Path of a Russian Officer” (1953).

A.I. Denikin died on August 8, 1947 at the University of Michigan Hospital Ann Arbor (USA). He was initially buried in Detroit; in 1952, his remains were transferred to the Orthodox Cossack St. Vladimir Cemetery in Keesville, New Jersey. In 2005, the remains of A.I. Denikin were transported to and reburied in the Donskoy Monastery cemetery.

Anton Ivanovich Denikin- Russian military leader, political and public figure, writer, memoirist, publicist and military documentarian.

Denikin Anton Ivanovich - Russian military leader, hero of the Russo-Japanese and First World Wars, General Staff lieutenant general (1916), pioneer, one of the main leaders (1918-1920) of the White movement during the Civil War. Deputy Supreme Ruler of Russia (1919-1920). Anton Ivanovich 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 Wrzesińska, 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.

Service in the Russian army

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 1897 he entered the Academy of the General Staff (graduated with 1st class in 1899). He received his first combat experience in the Russo-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 “Denikin”. Awarded the Order of St. Stanislaus and St. Anne with Swords. After the war, he served in staff positions (staff officer at the command of the 57th Infantry Reserve Brigade). In June 1910, he was appointed commander of the 17th Arkhangelsk Infantry Regiment, which he commanded until March 1914. On March 23, 1914, he was appointed acting general for assignments under the Commander of the Kyiv Military District. In June 1914 he was promoted to the rank of major general. With the outbreak of the First World War, he was appointed Quartermaster General of the 8th Army, but already in September, at his own request, he was transferred to a combat position - commander of the 4th Infantry Brigade (in August 1915, deployed to a division). For its steadfastness and combat distinction, Denikin’s brigade received the nickname “Iron”. Participant of the Lutsk breakthrough (the so-called “Brusilov breakthrough” of 1916). For successful operations and personal heroism he was awarded the Order of St. George of the 3rd and 4th degrees, the Arms of St. George and other orders. In 1916, he was promoted to the rank of lieutenant general and was assigned to command the 8th Corps on the Romanian Front, where he was awarded the highest military order of Romania.

After the oath to the provisional government

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 Lavr Georgievich Kornilov in a sharp telegram to the Provisional Government. Together with Kornilov, he was held in Bykhov prison on charges of rebellion (Kornilov speech). General Kornilov and the senior officers arrested with him demanded an open trial in order to clear themselves of slander and express their program to Russia.

Civil War

After the fall of the Provisional Government, the charge of rebellion lost its meaning, and on November 19 (December 2), 1917, Supreme Commander 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 one of its divisions, and after the death of Kornilov on April 13, 1918, the entire army. 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. 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. A desperate slogan was proclaimed: “Everyone to fight Denikin!” All the forces of the Southern Front and part of the forces of the South-Eastern Front were thrown against the V.S.Yu.R.

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.

Denikin's politics

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...”

Emigration

Denikin stayed in England for only a few months. In the fall of 1920, a telegram from Lord Curzon to Chicherin was published in England, which read:

I used all my influence with General Denikin to persuade him to give up the fight, promising him that if he did so, I would use every effort to make peace between his forces and yours, ensuring the integrity of all his comrades, as well as the population of the Crimea. General Denikin eventually followed this advice and left Russia, handing over command to General Wrangel.

Denikin issued a sharp refutation in The Times:

Lord Curzon could not have any influence on me, since I was not in any relationship with him.

I categorically rejected the proposal (of the British military representative for a truce) and, although with the loss of material, I transferred the army to the Crimea, where I immediately began to continue the fight.
The note from the English government to begin peace negotiations with the Bolsheviks was, as you know, handed not to me, but to my successor in command of the Armed Forces of Southern Russia, General Wrangel, whose negative response was at one time published in the press.
My resignation from the post of Commander-in-Chief was caused by complex reasons, but had no connection with the policies of Lord Curzon. As before, so now I consider it inevitable and necessary to wage an armed struggle against the Bolsheviks until they are completely defeated. Otherwise, not only Russia, but all of Europe will turn into ruins.

In 1920, Denikin moved with his family to Belgium. He lived there until 1922, 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 refused German offers to cooperate and move to Berlin. Lack of money forced Denikin to change his place of residence so often. 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 General D. Eisenhower to stop the forced extradition of Soviet prisoners of war to the USSR.

Writer and military historian

Since 1898, Denikin wrote stories and highly journalistic articles on military topics, published in the magazines “Scout”, “Russian Invalid” and “Warsaw Diary” under the pseudonym I. Nochin. In exile, he began creating a documentary study about the Civil War, “Essays on the Russian Troubles.” He published a collection of stories “Officers” (1928), a book “The Old Army” (1929-1931); did not have time to complete the autobiographical story “The Path of a Russian Officer” (first published posthumously in 1953).

Death and funeral

The general died of a heart attack on August 7, 1947 at the University of Michigan Hospital in Ann Arbor and was buried in a cemetery in Detroit. 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.
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 with the consent of Denikin’s daughter Marina Antonovna Denikina-Grey (1919-2005) and organized by the Russian Cultural Foundation.

Awards

Order of St. George

Badge of the 1st Kuban (Ice) campaign No. 3 (1918)

St. George's weapon, decorated with diamonds, with the inscription “For the double liberation of Lutsk” (09/22/1916)

St. George's weapon (11/10/1915)

Order of St. George, 3rd class (11/3/1915)

Order of St. George, 4th class (04/24/1915)

Order of St. Vladimir, 3rd degree (04/18/1914)

Order of St. Vladimir, 4th degree (12/6/1909)

Order of St. Anne, 2nd class with swords (1905)

Order of St. Stanislaus, 2nd class with swords (1904)

Order of St. Anne, 3rd class with swords and bows (1904)

Order of St. Stanislaus, 3rd class (1902)

Foreign:

Honorary Knight Commander of the Order of the Bath (Great Britain, 1919)

Order of Michael the Brave, 3rd class (Romania, 1917)

Military Cross 1914-1918 (France, 1917)