Knights of the Ukrainian Red Cossacks: Vitaly Primakov
The name of the founder and permanent commander of the first regular Ukrainian red military formation, Vitaly Primakov, unlike the big names of Chapaev, Kotovsky, Shchors, is not very well known. But at one time he was a star of the first magnitude.
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"Pecheneg!"
The fate of the son of a rural teacher, Vitaly Primakov, is closely intertwined with the family of the famous Ukrainian writer Mikhail Kotsyubinsky. In addition to the fact that he often visited the hospitable house of the Kotsyubinskys on Severyanskaya Street in Chernigov, his gymnasium friendship with his son Yuri was cemented by common deeds. Together they attended a Bolshevik circle and learned oratory from each other. Together they took part in the storming of the Winter Palace. Together in January 1918 they took Kyiv. Vitaly even became related to a friend, marrying the daughter of Mikhail Mikhailovich Kotsyubinsky Oksana.
The shadows of the Cossack ancestors flashed on the high-cheekboned, dark face of the short but well-developed strong man when he saw how the older schoolchildren offended the younger ones. Regardless of faces, Vitaly rushed into battle, and for these passionate impulses his classmates nicknamed him “Pecheneg.” He began to look even more like a Pecheneg after he returned to his native land from a two-year exile in Siberia for distributing leaflets, freed by the revolution. Primakov was not even twenty, but it was not a youth, but a husband who rushed into the crucible of the revolution. In exile, I strengthened my will and went through a real university of life. He invariably surprised many with his thoroughness of conviction, knowledge, skills and erudition.
Fate provided a chance to realize himself when Vitaly and his friend Yuri, a member of the first government of Soviet Ukraine, get from Kyiv to Kharkov.
Iron Knight
The newspaper "Bulletin of the Ukrainian People's Republic" in its fifth issue dated January 10, 1918 reported: "Instead of the Second Ukrainian Reserve Regiment, the First Ukrainian Regiment of Red Cossacks, loyal to the Workers' and Peasants' Republic, is being hastily formed." Here we are talking about Primakov. The great-grandson of the Cossacks became the ataman of the Red Cossacks, whose military routes were located in a quadrangle with vertices: Moscow, Lvov, Tsaritsyn, Perekop.
The commander’s courage and equanimity in the face of danger and the desire to avoid unjustified bloodshed became the reason why the Cossacks called him the iron knight. A participant in the civil war, Dubinsky, in a book about Primakov, claims that folk kobzars and lyre singers in the bazaars sang: “Oh, Primak, the soul of the naked, the faces of you, having gutted without Miri, the wealth of the enemies of Vitchin!” (oh, Primak, soul of the poor, you are an iron knight, you beat beyond measure the enemies of the Fatherland!).
The first campaign of Vitaly Primakov, which ended with the capture of Kyiv on January 26, 1918, causes a lot of controversy among modern historians. This was the first military conquest of the city, and the civilians of Kiev were shocked by the sight of casualties, both among the military and among civilians. But still, how does the image of a knight fit in with the victims of Bolshevik terror?
During any revolution, adventurers and rogues always rise to the very top of power. This happened this time too. The forces of the “chervonets” alone were clearly not enough to capture Kyiv. Therefore, from the direction of Chernigov, Berzin’s group moved along the railway line with Latvians and St. Petersburgers, and the army of a lieutenant colonel of the old army, a left Socialist Revolutionary, joined the Chervontsy M. A. Muravyova. There was a catastrophic shortage of military specialists, which is why they agreed to hire a defector from the camp of the Provisional Government. This was a fatal mistake and cost many thousands of lives. Tukhachevsky described him as follows: “Muravyov was distinguished by wild ambition, remarkable personal courage and the ability to electrify the masses of soldiers... The thought of “becoming Napoleon” haunted him, and this was definitely evident in all his manners, conversations and actions. He did not know how to assess the situation. His tasks were completely unviable. He didn't know how to drive. He interfered in small things, even commanded companies. He curried favor with the Red Army soldiers. In order to gain their love, he allowed them to rob with impunity, used the most shameless demagoguery, and so on. He was extremely cruel. In general, Muravyov’s abilities were many times inferior to the scale of his claims. He was a selfish adventurer, and nothing more.”
The workers' uprising at the Arsenal was brutally suppressed by the Petliurists
While students were dying near Kruty, a considerable army gathered in Kyiv to defend the Ukrainian Central Rada. This guard fortified the city and successfully suppressed the uprising at the Arsenal plant, killing more than fifteen hundred workers. But Pechersk and Podol of Kyiv were seething. Every day of delay in taking Kyiv cost hundreds of lives of proletarians in the city. Muravyov threw more and more forces into a frontal assault, which ended in nothing, and at the same time sent telegrams about unprecedented victories to newspapers and V.I. Lenin. In these difficult combat conditions, Primakov took the initiative. He organized a night crossing of a squadron (about two hundred) of fighters across the Dnieper and attacked from the rear. Such cavalry rear raids became the calling card of the Chervonets, and Primakov conducted more than fourteen of them. Meanwhile, the capture of Podol determined the fate of Kyiv. Primakov meets in Podol with Bozhenko, the leader of the Bolshevik workers of Podol, who started the uprising. This is the same Bozhenko who later fought together with Shchors!
The raid of the Ukrainian Chervony Cossacks to the rear of the Petliurists or White Poles invariably brought success
Upon entering Kyiv, it was Muravyov who carried out real terror. Most of the soldiers and sailors of this red would-be Napoleon chose to desert. The number of chervonets has increased significantly.
The Adventures of the Golden Cigarette Case
The army had a tradition of celebrating the special military achievements of military leaders with valuable gifts. They gave weapons, watches and cigarette cases. After one of the raids, Primakov was awarded a valuable gift - a gold cigarette case. The inscription was visible on it: “To the fearless raider, commander of the Red Cossack Corps, Comrade. Primakov in memory of 13 raids from Army Commander Uborevich.” But the old inscription remained: “To the most dear creature. Nikolasha." At one time, Nicholas II gave a cigarette case to his favorite ballerina Matilda Kshesinskaya, even before her wedding to Princess Alice. Since the cigarette case was for women, Vitaly Markovich gave it to his third wife, Lilya Brik. Oksana Kotsyubynskaya died during childbirth back in 1920, and his life with another woman did not work out. And Lilya Brik is the same Lilya Brik who was the muse of Vladimir Mayakovsky. They lived together for just over six years, the last years of Vitaly Primakov. As historians suggest, she became the femme fatale who destroyed him. The hot-tempered Vitaly Markovich spoke unflatteringly in the family circle about the power elite, and believed that he was being passed over in the ranks. And Lilya, as an employee of the secret services, reported everything she heard. In 1937, Vitaly Primakov was shot.
It was not the bullets of the Petliurites that killed the commander of the Chervony Cossacks, but, apparently, the femme fatale - Lilya Brik.
Reading the diaries, or rather the scattered entries of Lily Brik from the period of her marriage to Primakov, one cannot shake the feeling that these are the entries of our contemporary on some social network. The same cats and dogs, wisdom in the style of Paolo Coelho, deeds and impressions. But one entry still attracts attention. There is no doubt that it was made under the influence of communication with Vitaly Markovich. Lilya Brik discovers Saltykov-Shchedrin. He reads Marx and, observing Primakov, draws a conclusion about what Bolshevism is. “2.3.1931. Bolshevism, in my opinion, is not a belief, but a character. Conviction is a fragile thing, it is the human construct that matters. And knowledge is useful only to an intelligent person, but if you are a fool, then the less you know, the safer it is, otherwise you will get confused - there are so many books and all of them are different. You can’t tell where the truth is.”
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