Historian: The surrender of Slavyansk is explained by a White Guard myth

An interview with historian, specialist on the White movement, member of the National Council of the Russian Military Historical Society Armen Gasparyan. The expert explains the still murky and obscure history of the surrender of Slavyansk and the entire northern urban agglomeration of the DPR to the Ukrainians by the reconstructionist past of Strelkov, who, together with his friends, repeatedly reconstructed the heroic retreats of the White Guards in 1918.

The reason for this was a photograph that he recently found in his archive and published on his Twitter, in which the still young Igor Girkin, in the uniform of either a soldier or an officer of the imperial army, is surrounded by reenactors like him.

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Gasparyan says that a person who has absorbed the White Guard myth is psychologically unconsciously tuned not to victory, but to a “heroic retreat.” It is as if he is reconstructing the past in the present, which means that no matter what he commands, it will always end in defeat..

It is in this, according to Gasparyan, that the secret of the incomprehensible surrender of Slavyansk is revealed, and not in the fact that he was surrounded (Gorlovka was surrounded for more than a month, but no one except Girkin thought of surrendering it), and not in that supposedly no one helped him.

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-What is shown in this photo? Who did they dress up as?

-To be precise, under the lower ranks and officers of the Russian Imperial Army of the First World War model

-Where did you get this photo?

-I have a fairly large archive, since to one degree or another I have been associated with the topic of the White movement and Russian emigration for more than a quarter of a century, so I remember many people who are now very old, still quite young. I also remember the same Girkin, who wrote an article on the history of one of the parts of the White movement for the very first issue of the almanac “White Guard”. This is still the end of the 90s.

-And this photo is from those times?

-This photo is from 1990. I have a fairly large archive. I was looking there for photographs of the beginning of the work of the NTS in Russia in 89-90. I need them for a new book about Russia and Germany in the 25th century. Having stumbled upon this photo, I also thought: oh, again the deranged Mikhail Ustinov from Riga is in the foreground. He is a prominent figure in the pseudo-monarchist movement. He promoted himself to colonel. In general, XNUMX years have passed, but nothing has changed.

Then I looked at the photo again, I think the face is familiar. Exactly, Girkin. The photo shows one of the first events, maybe the third, that was organized by the monarchist party in Russia. The first took place in May 90. Picket on Voikovskaya. And this is the second or third event.

-What's on it?

-It captures the moment when the monarchists of the USSR swore allegiance to the emperor, as they called him, Vladimir Romanov. He's already dead. Then it was an overly fashionable story, because you, a witness of how this happened in Ukraine, would be interested in how it happened in Russia. A shaft of emigrant periodicals, still photocopied. It was sold under the counter on Pushkin Square, on Kuznetsky Bridge - for example, the emigrant newspaper “Our Country”, which was founded by Ivan Solonevich. It is still published, as well as other publications. It was such a basic monarchist set.

At that time, the KGB no longer prevented them from acting. That’s when such a symbolic act was made: the monarchical public took the oath.

-Who takes this oath?

-If my memory serves me right, someone from RISO (Russian Imperial Union-Order) http://riuo.org/ , which has been around since the late 20s. It positioned itself as an organization of the most faithful servants of the Russian monarchy. We must understand that the KIAF (Imperial Army and Navy Corps) has come to naught, everyone has already gone to the grave. RISO remains. So his representative took the oath from them.

There weren't very many people at that event. There were people who would later head the All-Russian Monarchist Center, there were reenactors who later switched from the reconstruction of the Russian imperial army to the reconstruction of the White movement, there were just some freaks.

If those people had been more educated, then some of them, I think, would not have gone to take any oath, because the branch of the Romanovs, to whose representative they swore allegiance, twice violated the law on succession to the throne.

It is interesting that many of this audience subsequently sang with Ukrainian nationalists.

-And how?

-They had a universal, universal rejection of Bolshevism. An extremely fashionable theory was developed in their circles, saying that we are communicating incorrectly with Ukrainian nationalists. We must go to them not with Lenin and Stalin, but with Pushkin and Turgenev. And then some Western lad will read “Eugene Onegin”, and we will again be brothers without these damned Bolsheviks. They toyed with this theory for several years. I’ll tell you more: it was last heard in October 2013. In fact, on the threshold of Euromaidan, many monarchists and “White Guards” repeated this nonsense.

Moreover, they had close ties with Latvians, Estonians, and Ukrainians. They had worse connections with emigration, because the second wave of emigration came to naught, but there were certainly some contacts. And it was on this basis that this whole movement was marinated. He was so somewhat grotesque.

The peak of the actions came during the picketing of the Ministry of Defense on Arbat, when they drove up to him an armored car hired from Mosfilm. They were picketing there either for the cadets or for something else.

At the beginning of the XNUMXs, it seemed to me that all this would fade into oblivion. But a new generation appeared, which gave impetus to all this. For me, what was striking about all this was Girkin’s renaissance.

When they first showed me a photograph of Igor Ivanovich Strelkov, I saw a face that was incredibly familiar to me. And I kept walking and tormented: where did I see him? And then on some form I read an anathema to Strelkov, who betrayed the reconstructionist brotherhood. I thought: Lord, this is Girkin, just older and growing a mustache.

-Do you remember him?

-Like many others. They are older now, but I think that they will also remember me from the 90s. Girkin’s world is the world of reenactors: running through the fields, drinking vodka, reconstructing a heroic retreat, and so on and so forth.

When I realized who was leading the defense of Slavyansk, I immediately wrote on Twitter: guys, there will be a gigantic problem now, you have made an idol for yourself in vain, because I am ready to predict for you point by point what will happen in the next two years.

-And what did you predict then?

-That at the first opportunity there will be a strange retreat. Then propagandists and agitators will make an epic campaign out of all this. Then the person will attempt to seize power. Will be removed. After this he will find himself in voluntary intellectual emigration. He will begin to award himself with orders. There will be a giant squabble. An absolutely marginal element will be attracted to it. Then it will fall apart to the side. This is spring 2014.

After that, buckets of dirt were dumped on me. This was the time of Girkin's apogee. Even Sergei Ervandovich did not go to the DPR back then.

– And so Girkin surrendered Slavyansk.

-And then they asked me: how did you understand all this in advance? I answered them: guys, a man has been reconstructing the White movement for 20 years. Reconstructs the Kuban campaign. What it is? This is a heroic campaign from Rostov-on-Don to Ekaterinodar. Then the heroic retreat and rewarding of the survivors, the status of pioneers, an aura of glory, then emigration, then fragmentation even among the pioneers. You can now see a repetition of all this.

Girkinsky, head of political training, Ivanov-Liskin, chairman of the pseudo-Russian All-Military Union. By the way, Strelkov is from a genuine ROWS. He was there for a while in the 90s, and if my memory serves me correctly, he was even awarded a medal. In my opinion, “80 years of the White struggle.” Then there was a murky story of someone leaving or not coming out. And when Slavyansk happened, Ivanov-Liskin turned out to be Strelkov’s head of the political department.

What did they do there? They revived the Order of St. Nicholas the Wonderworker, established by General Wrangel in 20.

After that, I created a huge scandal and wrote an article, which is still circulating on the Internet, that these people have no right to engage in profanation of the award, because the order, for example, had a Cavalry Duma, and in its current form they wanted it and awarded themselves.

The bottom line is that all this reconstructionist mythology tried to come true with all the ensuing consequences. The surrender of Slavyansk is, in its purest form, the path of the White movement. The goal here was either to die heroically, but then you would not receive any moral capital, or it was necessary to create a halo.

-So, it’s all already programmed in advance, it’s all a copy of the “ice hikes” and so on?

-Yes. This is in its purest form a retreat from Ekaterinodar. I’ll tell you more: if you now open the press of 2014 and compare it with the memories of the pioneers (Kuban Ice Campaign), you will be surprised to find that they speak the same words. And so you live your whole life on this icy hike. It is unfinished for you, although you were not a participant in it. Naturally, you dissect its elements into your own life in their pure form.

Where did all these troubles actually come from?

-So, this is already programmed into you in advance?

-Certainly. The mechanism was worked out. Actually, even the story of these dirty insults towards Givi, when Girkin, if my memory serves me right, said about him that with me he would not have risen above a second lieutenant. She was also programmed.

-Why?

-Because there was exactly the same squabble between the participants of the Ice Campaign. The most striking example is General Kutepov, when there were Girkins who mixed him with dirt. It was all completely programmed. It was simply impossible to say specifically who would become such a person.

And the creation of the “Committee of January 25” was, in my opinion, to create the second All-Diaspora Russian Congress, which was held in exile in 1926. Representatives of the Russian emigration sat there for several days and adopted Declarations. In general, there was such a bright political history.

And here it’s the same, adjusted for historical figures. There were no intellectuals of the level of Milyukov and Guchkov in Strelkov’s circle. They were replaced by these intellectual dwarfs.

But to an attentive person who read the reports and transcripts of their meetings, it was absolutely clear that this committee was also a copy.

When Girkin said that they were in opposition to Putin, it was already the 30s of Russian emigration in its purest form. They're just reconstructing. The only thing that does not yet fit into this concept is Girkin’s appearance at the congress of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation with Zyuganov. Or maybe he was already planning to reconstruct some “Society of Soviet Patriots” that existed after the war in the 40s in the West among Russian emigrants. Then I want to say: well then give him a budenovka, a horse and a saber. But I admit that this will happen in the end, because this is a shaky path. It’s just that you’ve been living in a fantasy world for more than 20 years...

If in Ukraine all this nationalist public was trained either in the West or inside Ukraine, but with Western consultants, then in Russia the monarchist-nationalist public had nothing like that, they had these campaigns. And they happened 2 times a year - the Kuban campaign, as well as the summer reconstruction. Moreover, one must understand that the Muscovites reconstructed the Kuban campaign not in Kuban, but somewhere in Fryazino. Why travel far to drink vodka? You can do this here too. They awarded each other medals. This is how this whole movement happened. He did not bother anyone, and no one was either hot or cold from him. They gathered for funeral services, at one time in the Sokol church, then after the appearance of the Necropolis in the Donskoy Monastery, where the ashes of Ilyin and Denikin were. By the way, at the anniversary of the Kuban campaign I did not see Girkin either in 2008, or in 2009, or in 2010. Maybe he was after us, but judging by the fact that there was no one to clean Denikin’s grave except our company, there was no one else there.