Anton Ivanovich Denikin (born December 4 (16), 1872 - died August 7, 1947) Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of the South of Russia during the Civil War. Russian Lieutenant General. Political and public figure, writer.
Childhood and youth
Anton Ivanovich Denikin was born in the family of a retired major of the border guard Denikin Ivan Efimovich, a former serf peasant in the Saratov province, who was given up as a soldier by the landowner, who took part in three military campaigns. Ivan Efimovich rose to the rank of an officer - an army ensign, then became a Russian border guard (guard) in the Kingdom of Poland, retired in 62 g. There, a retired major's son Anton was born. At the age of 12, he was left without a father, and his mother Elizaveta Fedorovna, with great difficulty, was able to educate him in full at a real school.
The beginning of military service
Upon graduation, Anton Denikin first entered a rifle regiment as a volunteer, and in the fall of 1890 - at the Kiev infantry cadet school, which he graduated after 2 years. He began his officer service with the rank of second lieutenant of an artillery brigade near Warsaw. 1895 - Denikin enters the Academy of the General Staff, but studies there surprisingly poorly, being the last in graduation who had the right to be enrolled in the corps of officers of the General Staff.
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Russo-Japanese war
After graduating from the academy, he commanded a company, battalion, served in the headquarters of the infantry and cavalry divisions. At the beginning of the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-1905. Denikin asked to be transferred to the Far East. For his distinction in battles with the Japanese, he was promoted to colonel ahead of schedule and appointed chief of staff of the Ural-Transbaikal Cossack Division.
When the Russo-Japanese War ended, Colonel Denikin served as chief of staff of the reserve brigade, commander of the 17th Arkhangelsk infantry regiment, stationed in the city of Zhitomir.
World War I
The First World War 1914-1918 met in the post of quartermaster general, that is, the chief of the operational service, under the commander of the 8th Army, General A. A. Brusilov. Soon, at his own request, he transferred from headquarters to active units, having received under the command of the 4th rifle brigade, better known in the Russian army as the Iron Brigade. The brigade received this name for the heroism shown in the last Russian-Turkish war during the liberation of Bulgaria from Ottoman rule.
During the offensive in Galicia, Denikin's brigade of "iron shooters" repeatedly distinguished itself in matters against the Austro-Hungarians and made its way into the snow-covered Carpathians. Until the very spring of 1915, stubborn and bloody battles were fought there, for which Major General A. I. Denikin was awarded the honorary St. George weapon and the military order of St. George, 4th and 3rd degrees. These front-line awards could best testify to his abilities as a military leader.
During the hostilities in the Carpathians, the front-line neighbor of Denikin's "iron shooters" was a division under the command of General L. G. Kornilov, his future ally in the White movement in the South of Russia.
Colonel Denikin in a ceremonial uniform
The rank of Lieutenant General A. I. Denikin was given for the capture of "iron shooters" who broke through six lines of enemy defense during the offensive operation, strategically important city of Lutsk. At Czartorysk, his division was able to defeat the German 1st East Prussian Infantry Division and capture the Crown Prince's elite 1st Grenadier Regiment. In total, about 6,000 Germans were captured, 9 guns and 40 machine guns were taken as trophies.
During the famous offensive of the Southwestern Front, which went down in military history as the Brusilov breakthrough, the Denikin division again broke into the city of Lutsk. On the approaches to it, the attacking Russian riflemen were opposed by the German "Steel Division".
“In particular, a brutal battle broke out at the Zaturts … where the Braunschweig Steel 20th Infantry Division was crushed by our Iron 4th Infantry Division of General Denikin,” one of the historians wrote about these battles.
1916, September - General Anton Ivanovich Denikin was appointed commander of the 8th Army Corps, which at the end of the year as part of the 9th Army was transferred to the Romanian front.
By that time, the general had already gained fame as a talented military leader. One of his contemporary wrote: “There was not a single operation that he did not win brilliantly, there was not a single battle that he did not win … There was no case that General Denikin said that his troops were tired, or that he asked for help his reserve … He was always calm during the battles and was always personally where the situation required his presence, he was loved by both officers and soldiers …"
After the February revolution
The general met the February revolution on the Romanian front. When General M. V. Alekseev was appointed Supreme Commander of Russia, Denikin, on the recommendation of the new Minister of War Guchkov and the decision of the Provisional Government, became Chief of Staff of the Supreme Commander-in-Chief Headquarters (April - May 1917)
Then Lieutenant General A. I. Denikin consistently held the posts of commander-in-chief of the Western and Southwestern Fronts. After the failure of the July offensive, he openly blamed the Provisional Government and its Prime Minister Kerensky for the collapse of the Russian army. Having become an active participant in the unsuccessful Kornilov rebellion, Denikin, together with the generals and officers loyal to Kornilov, were arrested and imprisoned in the city of Bykhov.
Leader of the White Movement
Creation of the Volunteer Army
After liberation, he arrived in the capital of the Don Cossacks, the city of Novocherkassk, where, together with generals Alekseev and Kornilov, he began to form the White Guard Volunteer Army. 1917, December - was elected a member of the Don Civil Council (Don government), which, according to Denikin, was to become “the first all-Russian anti-Bolshevik government”.
First, Lieutenant General A. I. Denikin was appointed head of the Volunteer Division, but after the reorganization of the White Guard troops, he was transferred to the post of assistant army commander. He took part in the famous 1st Kuban ("Ice") campaign, sharing with the soldiers all its hardships and hardships. After the death of General L. G. Kornilov on April 13, 1918, during the storming of the Kuban capital, the city of Yekaterinodar, Denikin became commander of the Volunteer Army, and in September of the same year - its commander-in-chief.
The first order of the new commander of the Volunteer Army was an order to withdraw troops from Yekaterinodar back to the Don with only one purpose - to preserve its personnel. There, the Cossacks, who rose up against the Soviet regime, joined the White Army.
General Denikin established relations with the Germans who temporarily occupied the city of Rostov, which he called "armed neutrality", because he condemned in principle any foreign intervention against the Russian state. The German command, for its part, also tried not to exacerbate relations with the volunteers.
On the Don, the 1st brigade of Russian volunteers under the command of Colonel Drozdovsky joined the Volunteer Army. Having gained strength and replenished its ranks, the white army went on the offensive and recaptured the line of the Torgovaya - Velikoknyazheskaya railway from the Reds. The White Don Cossack Army of General Krasnov now interacted with her.
Second Kuban campaign
After that, the army of Lieutenant General A. I. Denikin began, this time successful, the Second Kuban campaign. Soon the entire south of Russia was in the flames of the Civil War. Most of the Kuban, Don and Terek Cossacks went over to the side of the White movement. Some of the mountain peoples also joined him. The Circassian Cavalry Division and the Kabardian Cavalry Division appeared in the White Army of the South of Russia. Denikin also subjugated the White Cossack Don, Kuban and Caucasian armies (but only in operational terms; the Cossack armies retained a certain autonomy).
Denikin in the tank units of his army, 1919
In January, the general becomes the commander-in-chief of the Armed Forces of the South of Russia. On January 4, 1920 (after the defeat of the Kolchak armies) he was proclaimed the Supreme Ruler of Russia.
In his political views, General Denikin was a supporter of a bourgeois parliamentary republic. 1919, April - he turned to the representatives of the allies of Russia in the Entente during the First World War with a corresponding declaration defining the goals of the White Volunteer Army.
Time of victories
The capture of the city of Yekaterinodar, the Kuban region and the North Caucasus inspired the soldiers of the Volunteer Army. It was largely replenished with the Kuban Cossacks and officers. Now the Volunteer Army numbered 30–35,000 people, yet it was noticeably inferior to General Krasnov's Don White Cossack Army. But on January 1, 1919, the Volunteer Army already consisted of 82,600 bayonets and 12,320 sabers. She became the main striking force of the White movement.
A. I. Denikin moved his headquarters of the commander-in-chief, first to Rostov, then to Taganrog. 1919, June - his armies had more than 160,000 bayonets and sabers, about 600 guns, more than 1,500 machine guns. With these forces, he launched a broad offensive against Moscow.
Denikin's cavalry with a massive blow was able to break through the front of the 8th and 9th Red Armies and united with the insurgent Cossacks of the Upper Don, participants in the Veshensky uprising against Soviet power. A few days earlier, Denikin's troops dealt a strong blow at the junction of the Ukrainian and Southern enemy fronts and broke through to the north of Donbass.
The White Volunteer, Don and Caucasian armies began a rapid advance northward. During June 1919, they were able to capture the entire Dobass, Don region, Crimea and part of Ukraine. They took Kharkov and Tsaritsyn with battles. In the first half of July, the front of Denikin's troops entered the territory of the provinces of the central regions of Soviet Russia.
Fracture
1919, July 3 - Lieutenant General Anton Ivanovich Denikin issued the so-called Moscow directive, setting the ultimate goal of the White forces' offensive to capture Moscow. The situation in mid-July, according to the Soviet high command, assumed the dimensions of a strategic disaster. But the military-political leadership of Soviet Russia, after taking a number of urgent measures, managed to turn the tide of the Civil War in the South in their favor. During the counterattack of the Red Southern and Southeastern Fronts, Denikin's armies were defeated, and by the beginning of 1920 they were defeated in the Don, the North Caucasus and Ukraine.
In emigration
Denikin himself with part of the white troops retreated to the Crimea, where on April 4 in the same year he handed over the power of the Supreme Commander-in-Chief to General P. N. Wrangel. After that, he and his family sailed to Constantinople (Istanbul) on an English destroyer, then emigrated to France, where he settled in one of the suburbs of Paris. Denikin did not take an active part in the political life of the Russian emigration. 1939 - he, while remaining a principled enemy of the Soviet regime, made an appeal to the Russian emigrants not to support the fascist army in the event of a campaign against the USSR. This appeal had a great public response. During the occupation of France by Nazi troops, Denikin flatly refused to cooperate with them.
The grave of Denikin with his wife in the Donskoy monastery
Anton Ivanovich Denikin left his memoirs, which were published in Russia in the 1990s: Essays on the Russian Troubles, Officers, The Old Army and The Way of a Russian Officer. In them, he tried to analyze the reasons for the collapse of the Russian army and Russian statehood in the revolutionary 1917 and the collapse of the White movement during the Civil War.
Death of General Denikin
Anton Ivanovich died of a heart attack on August 7, 1947 at the University of Michigan Hospital in Ann Arbor, he was buried in a cemetery in Detroit. The American authorities buried him as the commander-in-chief of the allied army with military honors. 1952, December 15 - by decision of the White Cossack community of America, the remains of General Denikin were transferred to the Orthodox Cossack St. Vladimirskoye cemetery in the town of Kesville, in the Jackson area (New Jersey.)
2005, October 3 - the ashes of General Anton Ivanovich Denikin and his wife Ksenia Vasilievna were transported to Moscow for burial in the Donskoy Monastery.
A. Shishov