Teddy Bear

Born in the family of the van Meer-Wolf Mordkovich Vinnitsky in Odessa on Moldavanka ^[1] . At birth he received the double name Moyshe-Yankel (Moses-Yakov), which is why he is sometimes incorrectly called "Moses Yakovlevich." At 6, he lost his father. He worked as a student in a mattress workshop, while attending a Jewish school , then entered as an electrician at the Odessa plant of Anatra airplanes (department on 22 Kanatnaya Street ) ^[6] .

During the Jewish pogroms in October 1905 he participated in Jewish self-defense . After that he joined the Young Will detachment of anarchist communists . After the murder of the police chief of the Mikhailovsky district, Lieutenant Colonel V. Kozhukhar was sentenced to death, which was replaced by 12 years of hard labor ( 1907 ). In prison, met with G.I. Kotovsky .

According to researcher Savchenko V.A. , the investigative materials on the Yaponchik case included raids on the flour shop of Lanzberg and on Lander’s rich apartment, carried out in 1907 together with anarchists from the Young Will.

Leonid Utesov , who personally knew Jap, described him as follows:

... Short, stocky, quick movements, slanting eyes - this is the Bear "Jap". "Jap" - for slanting eyes ...

At Babel, he is Benya Creek , a raider and a romantic.

The “Jap” has good organizational skills. This made him the king of the criminal world on an Odessa scale. Brave, enterprising, he managed to seize the whole Odessa thugs shack. In American conditions, he would undoubtedly have made a great career and could have firmly stepped on the corn even Al Capone ...

He has a bold army of well-armed Urkagans. Wet things he does not recognize. At the sight of blood it turns pale. There was a case when one of his subjects bit his finger. Bear shouted as if stabbed.

He does not like the White Guards ...

- ^[6]

Criminal activity

In 1917 he was released under an amnesty , organized a large gang of raiders and became the "thunderstorm of Odessa." Already in the fall of 1917, the Yaponchik’s gang made a series of daring raids, including robbing a Romanian gambling club during the day. On New Year's days of 1918, Goldstein’s store and sugar factory Yu. G. Gepner were robbed.

At the same time, Yaponchik organized the so-called Jewish revolutionary self-defense squad under the pretext of fighting possible pogroms and issued an "appeal" urging to rob "only the bourgeoisie and officers." In November 1917, one of the robbers was even killed by Yaponchik himself for robbing a worker.

Established contacts with the Odessa anarchist movement. In November-December 1917, a group of so-called "anarchist-rip-offists" ("ripping off" the "bourgeoisie") appeared in Odessa; According to researcher Savchenko V. A., the “rip-offs” staged a powerful explosion in 1917 at Deribasovskaya Street , demanding an end to the lynching of the captured bandits. In December 1917, anarchists and bandits captured Eisenberg’s brothel on Dvoryanskaya Street, setting up their headquarters there.

In January 1918, the Yaponchik squad, together with the Bolsheviks, anarchists and left Socialist-Revolutionaries, participated in street battles . The bandits took advantage of these events for a raid on the Registration Bureau of Police , during which a file cabinet for 16 thousand Odessa criminals was burned.

On December 12, 1918 , during the evacuation of the Austro-German troops from Odessa, he organized a successful attack on the Odessa prison, which resulted in a mass escape of prisoners.

At the beginning of 1919, he actively collaborated with the Bolshevik underground (including through G.I. Kotovsky). According to a friend of his Leonid Utesov , he tried to avoid murders and patronized the artists.

During the Franco-Greek intervention, the Yaponschik gang committed many new impudent robberies, also engaged in abductions and racketeering . A number of entrepreneurs who did not want to pay the bandits were killed: Masman, Liteiman, Engel. In January-February 1919, a daring raid was made on the Civil Public Assembly of Odessa during a gala dinner, and the apartment of Princess Lubomyrska and the number of the Spanish consul at the Londonskaya Hotel were also robbed.

After in April, Odessa passed into the hands of the Reds, according to some allegations, commanded the Soviet armored train No. 870932, directed against Ataman Grigoryev . In May 1919, rumors spread in Odessa that Mishka Yaponchik supposedly serves as secretary of the Odessa Cheka . On May 28, the chairman of the Cheka was forced to publish a refutation in the official newspaper Izvestia of the Odessa Council of Workers' Deputies, in which he said that in reality the secretary of the Cheka was Mikhail Grinberg, who had nothing to do with Mishka Jap.

54th Regiment

In May 1919, he received permission to form a detachment in the 3rd Ukrainian Soviet Army , which was later transformed into the 54th Soviet Revolutionary Regiment named after Lenin. His adjutant was Meyer Zayder , nicknamed "Majorchik", who later, according to the official version, shot G. I. Kotovsky ^[7] . The Jap regiment was assembled from Odessa criminals , anarchist militants and mobilized students of Novorossiysk University . The Red Army men of Jap were not uniform, many wore boater hats and top hats, but everyone considered it a matter of honor to wear a vest .

Attempts to establish “political work” in the formed unit failed, as many members of the RCP (b) refused to join the regiment to conduct propaganda work in it, claiming that it was life-threatening. Anarchist Alexander Feldman , Sasha, was appointed official commissioner of the regiment. According to researcher Viktor Kovalchuk, “fighters” Yaponchik, who arrived at the regiment of Commissioner Feldman, met with loud laughter.

The regiment was subordinated to the Kotovsky brigade as part of the 45th Infantry Division I.E. Yakir and in July directed against the troops of Simon Petlyura . Before departure, a magnificent banquet was arranged in Odessa, at which the regiment commander Mishka Yaponchik was solemnly presented with a silver saber and a red banner. We managed to start sending only on the fourth day after the banquet, with kegs of beer, wine, crystal and caviar loaded into the convoy of the regiment.

The desertion of the “fighters” -criminals began even before they were sent. According to researcher Savchenko V.A., as a result, only 704 out of 2202 people were at the front. Even then, Commander I. Yakir proposed disarming the Jap regiment as unreliable. Nevertheless, the command of the 45th division recognized the regiment as “battle-worthy,” although the bandits in every possible way resisted attempts to establish military training.

The first attack of the regiment in the Birzuly district against the Petliurites was successful, as a result of which it was possible to capture the village of Vapnyarka and take prisoners and trophies, but the next day the counterattack of the Petliurites led to the complete defeat of the regiment. Criminals Jap threw weapons and fled the battlefield. Then they decided that they had already “made war” and in early August 1919 they seized a passenger train in order to return to Odessa. However, the train did not reach Odessa, and on August 4, 1919, it was stopped by a detachment of the Red Army near the Maryina Roshcha park, not far from the Voznesensk railway station. Jap tried to resist - and was shot dead on the spot. The remaining "fighters" of the 54th regiment were partially killed by cavalrymen of the 17th division of the Red Cossacks , partially caught by special forces. Few survived, in particular, the former "chief of staff" of the regiment, Meyer Seider , who after 6 years shot G. I. Kotovsky. In addition, up to 50 people were sent to forced labor .

According to researcher Savchenko, Feldman arrived at the grave of Jap only four hours after the funeral and demanded to dig it out to make sure that Jap was really buried there. Two days later, the commissar of war of Ukraine N.I. Podvoisky arrived at the scene, demanding that the grave be opened again.

At the same time, according to archival data, in reality, Yushchik’s bear was shot by the county military commissar Nikifor Ursulov. In his report in the name of the Odessa District Commissar for Military Affairs, Ursulov mistakenly called Mishka Yaponchik "Mitka the Japanese."

In 2004, ex-vice-mayor of Boznetsensk Basil Fedorov put a memorial sign at the site of the death of Vinnitsa. The plate on it several times became a victim of vandalism. At the moment, the tablet is restored with a portrait of the Bear Jap, which was not on the original form of the tablet.

Family

Moyshe-Yakov Vinnitsky had four brothers and a sister. Three brothers - Abram, Gregory and Idel (Yuda) (1900) - died at the front during the war. Brother Isaac died in New York. Sister Eugene died in 1919. ^[eight]

The wife of Vinnytsia Tsil Averman, after the death of her husband, leaving her little daughter Udu (Adu) mother-in-law, went with the husband of her late sister Vinnitsa abroad. She lived in India, Bombay, then moved to Paris. ^[eight]

• The Japanese became the prototype of the literary and cinematic character of raider Beni Crick from Isaac Babel ’s Odessa Stories and their productions on stage and in films.
• Since the beginning of the 1960s, the Oscar Sandler 's operetta “At Dawn” was playing at the Odessa Musical Comedy Theater, where Mikhail Vodyanoy played the role of Mishka Yaponchik ^[9] . Also, couplets of the Jap from this operetta were performed by Boris Sichkin and G. Plotnik ^[10] . In the film " Day of the Sun and Rain " in a fragment from this operetta, Mikhail Kozakov played the Jap Bear.
• Jap became one of the prototypes of "Semen" in some thieves' songs of the "Odessa" cycle of 1981 - 1984, Alexander Rosenbaum . ^[eleven]
• There is a song by Mikhail Sheleg "Monument to the Bear Jap" ^[12] .
• Bear Yaponchik became the hero of the songs of Konstantin Zhilyakov (also known under the pseudonym Costet), Viktor Tokarev, Anatoly Mogilevsky, Veronika Borodina (the song is also known by Alexander Surov) and other authors and performers.
• Mikhail Vinnitsky became one of the central characters in Valery Smirnov’s novel "The Coffin from Odessa".
• The story of Mishka Yaponchik was described by Anatoly Barbakaru in the book "Gop-stop. Odessa gangster". The story of Vinnitsa is told from the recollections of his friend Leva, who was married to his sister Tsili Averman, and at an advanced age returned to Odessa from France. This character also appears in the series "Life and Adventures of the Bear Jap". His role was played by Odessa actor Ilya Lykov.
• Bear Yaponchik became one of the key characters in the series "Retroroman" Odessa writer Irina Lobusova.
• Books about Mishka Yaponchik were also written by Mikhail Knyazev ("Mishka Yaponchik"), Boris Yuzhny ("Misha Yaponchik is a legend of Odessa") and other authors.

Films

• In 1967, the film "The Intervention " was shot by the Lenfilm studio, where the prototype of Mishka Yaponchik was the character Philip, whose role was played by Yefim Kopelyan .
• In 1968, the film " The First Courier " (USSR-Bulgaria) was shot. The role of Yasha Baronchik was played by Odessa resident Nikolai Gubenko .
• Odessa Odessa Vodyanoy played the role of Bear Jap in the Soviet film " Squadron goes west " (1965).
• In the film of the Polish director Julius Makhulsky “ Deja Vu ” (1989; USSR-Poland), which takes place in Odessa in 1925, there is a Japanese character, his role was played by Nikolai Karachentsov . This character has no relation to the biography of Mikhail Vinnitsky.
• The character Bear-Jap flashes in the biographical series “ Cliffs. Life-long Song ”(2006), in the role - Alexei Gorbunov and Mikhail Shklovsky .
• In 2011, the series “ Life and Adventures of the Bear of the Japanese ” was shot (starring Yevgeny Tkachuk ), which does not pretend to historical authenticity and contradicts it in many ways. So, Yaponchik’s father died when Moishe-Jacob was about six years old; Grishin-Almazov , who was removed from his post in March 1919, the military governor of Odessa, was fired from a machine gun at night and not Jap; there were no whites in May and summer of 1919 in Odessa, although they were in the city after the defeat of the Petliurists in March-April 1919, and when they entered Odessa again on August 23, 1919, Mishka Yaponchik was no longer alive, and t The authors of the series did not pursue the goal of creating a thoroughly historically attached picture, their goal was a love story based on the works of Babel. Also, some scenes from the novel by Valery Smirnov “Coffin from Odessa” and the book by Anatoly Barbakar “Gop-stop. Odessa is a gangster. "
• In 2018, the Ukrainian series “Souvenir from Odessa” was released. Filmed based on the novel by Valery Smirnov "Coffin from Odessa". The plot of the novel is significantly changed. The role of the Bear Jap was played by Artem Alekseev.

• Savchenko V.A. Adventurers of the Civil War . - H .: Folio; M: LLC "Publishing house ACT", 2000. - ISBN 966-03-0845-0 (Folio), ISBN 5-17-002710-9 ("ACT")
• Kovalchuk V. .. “Mikhail Yakovlevich Vinnitsky - Benya Creek”
• Coralli V. Coupletist from Odessa . // Library Spark, 1991, No. 24.
• Lukin A., Polyanovsky D. "Quiet" Odessa.
• Fomin F. T. Notes of the old Chekist. - M .: Politizdat, 1964 .-- 255 p.

• Bear Jap: another "movie"
• Teddy Bear Photos
• Bear "Jap": instead of a legend
• Mikhail Yakovlevich Vinnitsky - Bear Jap
• Thief in Legend
• Odessa Robin Hood - Misha Yaponchik.
• Shklyaev I. M. Mishko Jap . // Ukrainian History Journal. - K .: “ Naukova Dumka ”, 1991. - VIP. 2, (No. 360).
• Bear Jap - "King" of Odessa bandits or a trace in the history of the city
• Shklyaev, Igor. Bear Jap (neopr.) . Chronicle of the Black Sea №1.