In the very north of Ukrainian Polissia, at the intersection of the borders between Ukraine, Belarus, and Russia, on the banks of the picturesque Snov River lies a small district town Shchors (Snovsk before 1935), Chernihiv oblast, with a population of 13,500. Founded after the 1861 reform near the village of Korzhivka, it still lives an unhurried life. What made the town famous was Mykola Oleksandrovych Shchors, born in Snovsk, one of the most illustrious personalities of the Civil War in Ukraine.
The history of the 1918-1921 Civil War knows many outstanding and charismatic figures, especially in the camp of Reds, the winners, about whom everything seems to be known: Chapayev, Budionny, Kotovsky, Yakir, Lazo, Shchors. Workers’ and Peasants’ Red Army commanders became the heroes of countless books, dozens of fictionalized and rather mythologized biographies (or even autobiographies of those who were lucky enough to weather those stormy times and, later, reprisals of the 1930s), and reminiscences of their comrades-in-arms in the fight for a “radiant future.”
However, far from all legendary Red commanders fitted in with the rigid and omnipotent Bolshevik pattern. This is why they would often leave the arena of a bloody fratricidal drama with the aid of revolutionary tribunals or under mysterious circumstances (Frunze and Kotovsky). Sometimes, to serve ideological purposes, they were taken out of the mothballs of oblivion. For instance, Pylyp Myronov and Borys Dumenko, the leaders of Red Cossacks, were declared traitors and executed by firing squad. They were rehabilitated as late as in the 1990s, that is, seventy years later. In the case of Dumenko, the main reason was his popularity: his comrades-in-arms Budionny and Voroshilov (commanders of the First Mounted Army), so to speak, made short work of a more successful and well- known rival, the darling of the Cossack masses.
What played by no means the least role in the destiny of Mykola Shchors, a celebrated and very talented Ukrainian Red division commander, was the envy of those who had fought side by side in the Civil War. The native of Snovsk, Horodniansk district, achieved very much in his short lifetime (1895- 1919): he graduated from a military medical school in Kyiv, took part in World War I (after graduating from the Vilna Military Academy evacuated deep to the rear, to Poltava, because of the advance of the Kaiser’s troops, Shchors was sent to the Southwest Front as a junior company commander), where months of hard trench life cost him tuberculosis. In 1918-1919 the Tsarist army second lieutenant made a breathtaking career from one of the commanders of a small Semenovsky Red Guards detachment to the commanding officer of the First Ukrainian Soviet Division (from March 6, 1919). A brigade in this division was commanded by Vasyl Bozhenko, a no less colorful figure that requires a special story.
82 years ago, on August 30, 1919, the division commander arrived at the Bohun Brigade located near the village of Biloshytsa (now Shchorsivka). Here is the official version of Shchors’ death (duly reproduced in Oleksandr Dovzhenko’s 1939 movie Shchors): having trained his field glasses on Petliura’s soldiers, the division commander was listening to the reports of commanders. The Bohun Brigade soldiers mounted an attack, but an enemy machine-gun on the flank suddenly fired a burst, making the Red Army men duck to the ground. At this moment Shchors dropped his binoculars: he was fatally wounded and died fifteen minutes later, lying in the arms of his comrades-in-arms.
To find out whether this was really so, let us suggest at least one version. In early September 1919 Shchors’ remains were evacuated to far-away Saratov. Perhaps in order to hide the truth about his death? Thirty years later, in 1949, the division commander’s remains were exhumed and reburied, still in Saratov, on the anniversary of his death. The reburial procedure was conducted at a high official level. When the coffin was opened and the skull examined, the medical commission, composed of the best forensic doctors, concluded that Shchors had been shot dead with a small-bore pistol at a distance of a mere 10-15 meters. As was to be expected, this fact was hushed up. The government commission’s records were kept at a special storage place of NKVD and, later, KGB of the USSR.
Thus the official version of the division commander’s heroic death by a Petliura soldier’s bullet was called into question. The Mykola Shchors museum in the town of Shchors still does not have a copy of this commission’s conclusion in spite of its repeated referrals to the competent bodies. No formal charges were leveled at Komandarm Third Rank (equivalent to major-general — Ed.) Mykola Dubovy in 1937, when he was arrested and executed. It is no other than Dubovy who commanded the Red Army’s 44th Rifles Division July 1 through August 21, 1919, and after the death of Shchors. Shchors commanded the same division for as few as nine days (the units subordinated to him, two brigades of the First Ukrainian Soviet Division, became part of the 44th division). Of course, the advent of a new commander triggered a mixed reaction among the commanding and staff officers: perhaps some considered this as a vicious insult. Moreover, the Nizhyn Brigade of the 44th division remembered the role Shchors played in disarming and court-martialing the ringleaders of a rebellion.
At the moment when Shchors stood in a trench, he was flanked only by Dubovy and military advisor of the Twelfth Army Tankhil- Tankhilevich, quite a mysterious personality. In addition, the latter found himself on the 44th division’s front line under still unclear circumstances, and he vanished in early September 1919. It is difficult to understand why Dubovy ordered to bandage the division commander’s head and forbade the nurse, who ran over from a nearby trench, to remove the bandage. This raises a supposition that Dubovy and Tankhil-Tankhilevich might have been the contractors, perpetrators of, or accomplices in a crime. I cannot say that this version came up recently. In his memoir-type book, published in 1937 and republished in 1956, Petrenko-Petrikovsky (chief of staff at the 44th division) insisted that this was the true version of Shchors’s death (he was the first to testify that there were only two persons, Dubovy and Tankhil- Tankhilevich, in the trench where Shchors was killed).
Speaking of the partisan methods often ascribed to Mykola Shchors and Vasyl Bozhenko (commander of the Tarashcha Brigade, who died August 19, 1919, poisoned by Petliura’s agents), the whole warpath of these commanders testifies to the opposite. The capture of Kyiv (February 5, 1919), destruction of Petliura’s units near Proskuriv, defense of the Korosten bridgehead, and the organization of a Red Commanders’ School. Is there any partisan method here? In his article, “The Polish-Petliurist Front” (Krasnaya zvezda (Red Star), No. 70 of June 20, 1919), Ukrainian SSR People’s C ommissar for War Mykola Podvoisky thus characterized the units of the First Ukrainian Division and their commanders, “M. Shchors and V. Bozhenko enjoy great prestige among the Red Army men. They maintain iron discipline.”
Of course, there can be no winners or losers in a civil war. All we can assert is that the Red Army showed itself to be the more organized force which took advantage of the many errors of its enemies (as far as strategy, tactics, politics, and the economy were concerned); the Bolsheviks quite successfully exploited appealing slogans, such as land to peasants, factories to workers. Finally, the discipline and cohesion of the Red Army units, the quarrels and ideological disputes among their numerous enemies (the territory of Ukraine in 1918-1921 saw hostilities involving the forces of Hetman Skoropadsky, the Ukrainian People’s Republic (Petliura’s army), the Ukrainian Galician Army, the units of a peasant anarchist Nestor Makhno who fought against all by turns, and the White Army of General Anton Denikin and later Baron Wrangel who recognized none of the aforesaid and fought for a “one and indivisible Russia...”) became the deciding factor in the Bolshevik victory.
Mykola Shchors was one of the most illustrious representatives of the regular Red Army’s new-wave commanders. To what extent the results of the Workers’ and Peasants’ Red Army victory would have satisfied this independent and charismatic personality is a different, far from simple, question. The fruits of this victory were reaped by people of a totally different nature, such as Stalin, Trotsky (they were still formally together), Voroshilov, and Budionny. Most heroes or antiheroes of the Civil War, at least among the winners, failed to survive the repressions of the thirties.
This writer expresses gratitude to employees of the M. A. Shchors Memorial Museum in Shchors and Oleksandr Vystavnoha for assistance in preparing this article.
