The Askhabad commissars (Ashkhabad commissars) are nine communist leaders of the Transcaspian region , who were shot dead by insurgents on the night of July 23, 1918, near Askhabad.
Content
History
Beginning of the uprising
On July 12, 1918, an anti-Bolshevik uprising began in Ashgabat . The leaders of the uprising were mainly the Social Revolutionaries and Mensheviks ( F. A. Funtikov , V. Dokhov, and others); also joined the uprising Cadets (Count Dorrer A. I. [*]), Dashnaks, Turkmen tribal leaders, officers Tekinskogo horse units. The strike committee was formed, and then the Executive Council (also known as the Transcaspian Provisional Government ), headed by the former member of the Council of Deputies, the right-wing Socialist-Revolutionary, the machinist F. Funtikov.
The rebels were on the same day busy Kizyl-Arvat and Ashgabat. In Ashgabat, having broken into the Council building, they destroyed the Red Army soldiers guarding it, including the Turkmen detachment commanded by Ovezberdy Kuliev. In the bloody battles that flared up later on the streets, many Bolsheviks and Soviet workers perished. The strike committee in Ashgabat is headed by F. A. Funtikov . From this moment on, the rebels begin to act completely openly. Their slogans: “Down with the Bolsheviks! Long live the All-Russian Constituent Assembly! ” A committee sent telegrams along the entire railway line from Krasnovodsk to Tashkent with a call to join the fight against the red commissars. They also sent volunteer detachments to large-scale workplaces along the railway, which explain the state of affairs. So the uprising spreads along the Central Asian Railway.
Spread Rebellion
Turkmen tribes began to join the workers. By July 21, the authority of the Transcaspian Interim Government (SGP) and its local bodies, the strike committees, was established almost throughout the Transcaspian region.
According to its composition, the ZVK, for the most part, consisted of the Social Revolutionaries. The accountant of the department of the Central Asian Railway, SR Kuriliv, became a friend of the chairman of the Executive Committee. The Committee also included LA Simin, a right-wing SR, a former director of a real school in the city of Merv , and a railway engineer V. Dokhov, who became Commissar for Foreign Affairs. The Turkestan Union was represented by the former attorney at law Count Dorrer and the former commander of the 2nd Turkestan Corps, Lieutenant General I.V. Savitsky . Representatives of the local nobility were not forgotten: from the Turkmen, the committee included General Uraz-Serdar, son of the last Turkmen Khan Tykma-Serdar, and officers of the Russian service - Hadji Murat, Khan Iomudsky, Ovozbaev [1] .
As a result of the Ashgabat uprising of railway workers, the power in the city passed to the Transcaspian interim government . The rebels arrested members of the Council of People's Commissars and the Council of the Transcaspian region of the Turkestan Republic .
To restore order from Tashkent, the Commissioner of the Turkestan Council of People's Commissars Pavel Poltoratsky was sent with hundreds of Red Guards, who reached Merv only. A detachment of six hundred former front-line soldiers and 1,500 Turkmen were sent to meet him. Upon learning of the approaching rebels, Poltoratsky tried to take out the values of a local bank, but the residents of Merv prevented him by unhooking the train from the locomotive. Poltoratsky tried to ride in carts, but residents sawed the axle. He was arrested and shot on the night of July 22, along with his companions and the chairman of the Mervsky Cheka, IK Kallenichenko. The next night near Ashgabat, nine commissioners of the Transcaspian region were shot.
Commissioners shot dead
Among those arrested and executed were:
- Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars Vissarion Telia, SR-maximalist;
- the Commissioner of Food and the head of the city organization of the RCP (b) Yakov Zhitnikov ;
- military commissar, member of the RCP (b) Sergey Molibozhko;
- Commissar of Finance and Foreign Affairs, left Social Revolutionary Party Nikolai Rozanov;
- Chairman of the Ashgabat Council, member of the RCP (b) Vasily Batminov;
- the former commander of the Buzuluk front, the former chairman of the Ural regional council Kolostov D. B. (who, after the White Cossacks captured Orenburg, made his way through the Transcaspian to Soviet Russia);
- Adjutant Kolostova Smelyansky;
- Komzvod Red Army Peter Petrosov;
- Baku printer, member of the RCP (b) Andrei Khrenov [2] .
| At one o'clock in the morning, the Askhabad commissars were taken out of the basement and put into a freight car attached to a bat. Going to death, they still hoped for the best. After all, there was no investigation, no trial. Zhitnikov was arrested on the train when he was returning from Merv. Telia was also captured on the train - on the way back from Krasnovodsk to Ashkhabad. Rozanov, when the Social Revolutionaries stormed the building of the Council of People's Commissars and the unequal battle was boiling on the Gymnasium Square, managed to escape and get out of the city. He walked, hiding from human eyes, a full hundred miles, and at one of the stations asked the driver to ride him to Merv. The driver agreed, but immediately, having left, told by telephone in Askhabad that he had commissioner Rozanov. Immediately he was caught. Batminov fought to the last bullet, but surrounded by the Social Revolutionaries on the Ashgabat "Gorka", near the Grand Hotel, he surrendered. Prior to this, Vasily Mikhailovich, leaving the building of the City Council under the onslaught of the militants, managed to burn down the entire Soviet archive so that he would not fall into the hands of enemies. The commander of the Armenian squad Petrosov was captured. Before throwing him into the basement, the SRs remembered the case when he, seeing how they were pulling weapons from the arsenal, informed the commissar Kopylov about this. Military Commissar Molibozhko acted naively and too trustingly when he got off the train and learned about the rebellion. He rushed to the depot to keep the railway workers from extremes, but was immediately captured by the militants. From Orenburg to Astrakhan, the Bolsheviks Kolostov and Smelyansky made their way through Turkestan, and found themselves in the same basement with the Askhabad commissars. A printing worker, a Bolshevik Khrenov, was traveling from Baku to Tashkent and was also arrested by the White Guards ...V.F. Rybin "Transcaspian" (historical-revolutionary novel) |
On the night of July 23, 1918, all those arrested were taken out in a freight train and shot between the railway stations of Annau and Gyaurs, 18 km from Ashgabat .
Further events
Until November, fighting between the red and white units, supported by British military units, continued in the territory of Turkmenistan.
On January 1-2, 1919, under pressure from the British, the Provisional Government, headed by F. A. Funtikov, resigned, transferring power to the Committee of Public Safety, consisting of 5 people.
In order to fight the rebels and the British, the Red Army of Turkestan was organized in the spring of 1919 by the decision of the government of Turkrestate.
In April-July 1919, British troops were mainly withdrawn from the Trans-Caspian; the leadership of the anti-Soviet forces in the region passed to Denikin .
After the occupation of Ashgabat on July 9, 1919 by the Red Army, the ashes of the executed were transferred to the city and buried in a mass grave on July 26 [2] . On the place of execution in 1957 a monument-obelisk was installed (architect A. Akhmedov).
See also
- Turkestan commissars
- Baku commissars
Notes
- ↑ < Nine Ashgabat Commissioners >
- ↑ 1 2 Civil war and British military intervention in Turkmenistan, vol. 1, Ashgabat, 1974, p. 68-69