In 1999, one newspaper published an article about the assassination of the legendary commander of the Civil War, Grigory Ivanovich Kotovsky. It said that Kotovsky, who was resting at the Chabank state farm near Odessa in August 1925, had been shot by his associate in the Odessa underground, Mayer Seider. At the trial, Zayder argued that when he shot at his wife's lover he had tracked down, he did not even suspect that it was his former commander. Convicted of murder on domestic grounds, Zayder was released three years later and was soon found dead on the rails at the Kharkov railway junction, where he worked as a car coupler.
And now - new circumstances of the mysterious murder.
According to the official version, Seider fired two bullets from a ladies' small-bore pistol. One of them, hitting the heart, and caused the death of the commander. But at the funeral, many Kotovites noticed a deep gaping wound near the dead man's right ear. How could it arise from a shot in the heart?
There were also witnesses who asserted: the corps commander was shot not in Chabanka, but on the beach in Luzanovka, where he lay down to rest after performing in a pioneer camp. The murder near the dacha was staged.
For some reason, the court immediately rejected this version, and now it is no longer possible to verify it: over the past years, not only documentary evidence has been lost, but even the remains of Kotovsky themselves. For sixteen years, his body lay in the mausoleum built in the city of Birzul, Odessa region. But in 1941, the Romanian occupation authorities blew up the mausoleum, and Kotovsky's ashes were taken out in an unknown direction. The corps commander's heart, which was kept together with other exhibits at the Department of Forensic Medicine at the Odessa Medical Institute, was also lost. The laboratory assistant, who tore the labels from the cans where the alcoholized exhibits were kept, subsequently died, and now it is impossible to identify Kotovsky's heart.
The commander's son, Grigory Grigorievich Kotovsky, considers the murder of his father political. And it is impossible not to agree with this: Grigory Ivanovich greatly interfered with someone. But to whom? Stalin or Trotsky?
Since 1918, the Workers 'and Peasants' Red Army was under the full control of the chairman of the Revolutionary Military Council of the Republic, Leon Trotsky, and his deputy, Efroim Sklyansky. In December 1924, Stalin managed to withdraw Sklyansky from the RVS, and in January 1925, Trotsky. At the same time, Mikhail Frunze was put in this place, who offered the post of his deputy to Kotovsky. In June 1925, during a business trip to the United States, Sklyansky drowned under mysterious circumstances, and in August, without starting work, Kotovsky was shot dead. In October 1925, after a simple operation, he died in the Frunze hospital. And only fifteen years later in Mexico, the Chekist Mercader liquidated Trotsky.
So judge who interfered with Stalin, and who - Trotsky …
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