Young cadets in the White Army. Cadets and cadets in the white movement. Establishment of cadet corps in Russia

Life is for the fatherland, honor is for no one!
(cadet motto)

For many Russians, especially the older generation, the word “cadet” evokes rather negative associations. To some, the cadets seem to be a kind of anachronism, associated either with the last years of the reign of the Romanov family, or with the era of Russia in the early 90s. Some people are even sure that the Cadets are representatives of the Constitutional Democrats of the times of the first State Dumas. All this confusion arose after we decided overnight to abandon those youth movements that were cultivated during the Soviet era, but did not have time to formulate the idea of ​​​​a new youth vector.

It was at this moment, and this is 1992-1993, that in Russia, instead of pioneers, Boy and Girl Scouts began to appear, and instead of Suvorovites, or, at best, on a par with Suvorovites, those same cadets. At the same time, as often happens with us, the youth were gathered, but they forgot to tell why they were gathered. For many young people, wealthy parents did not fail to buy a new uniform with golden epaulettes, caps with sparkling cockades, and took their children, yesterday’s schoolchildren, to where, as it was said, the cadets would study. The main thing is that they managed to tell the very young guys that they are the glory and pride of the new Russia and that they have nothing to do with some Suvorovites and other Nakhimovites, and are ABOVE all these remnants of socialism.

With this thought, the youth began to comprehend the difficult cadet science. The only trouble was that the high leadership decided to get rid of Soviet remnants, but among the teaching corps there were increasingly those same teachers who had seen nothing else but these remnants in their lives. And they began to teach the cadets the same way they were taught in party schools. So it turned out that during the day the new Russian cadets had to either read the Lord’s Prayer aloud or sing bravura Soviet songs about the Red commander Shchors and the defeat of the White Army. The textbooks seemed to remain mostly Soviet, but the history teacher tried to convey something completely anti-Soviet. At the same time, ministers of the surrounding churches, former repressed people, and retired intelligence service generals, that is, those who carried out repression, were invited to the holidays. In general, something in this system had to be changed, since the cadets themselves had difficulty understanding what awaited them in the future and what kind of education they were receiving here. But they were in no hurry to change anything...

And the most surprising thing was that from year to year the number of young boys and even girls wishing to study at cadet schools only increased. At the same time, the youth were not embarrassed that the prospects for continuing to serve military affairs in Russia after graduating from cadet school, to put it mildly, were not the most promising. To be more precise, most military universities today do not guarantee any benefits to graduates of cadet schools. And with the introduction of the Unified State Exam, the chances of a graduate of a cadet corps and a regular school being admitted to a military university are absolutely equal.

However, it must be recognized that young people are often driven not so much by the desire to devote their future lives to military service, but to receive a truly high-quality education - an education that those same pre-revolutionary cadets were proud of. And he had something to be proud of!

If we touch on the historical stages of the development of the cadet movement in Russia, the first cadet corps was established in 1732 by Field Marshal von Minich. The very word “cadet” was borrowed from Prussian young people who connected their lives with military affairs. They, in turn, borrowed it from the French: cadet (French) - junior.

Graduation from the cadet corps guaranteed a further brilliant military career. During the training process, the cadets received very extensive knowledge not only in military affairs, but also learned the humanities, mathematics, physics, chemistry, fencing, ballroom dancing, and truly knightly manners. In those years, the unofficial name of the cadets appeared - “young knights”. Von Minich even called the cadet corps itself a “Knight’s Academy.” In this case, 13-year-old boys were attracted not by the name, but by the level of education they received and very serious prospects, as they say now, for career growth. Von Minich's cadet corps was located in St. Petersburg and graduated several hundred students. Many outstanding people of Russia of that time graduated from the cadet corps.

At the same time, oddly enough, there were no cadet corps in Moscow until 1992. It is not surprising that real cadet traditions have not yet had time to take shape not only in the current capital, but also in other Russian cities. Behind bright signs in Russian regions there may be educational institutions (“cadet corps”) of a very dubious reputation. It often happens that as part of the implementation of a program to level out homelessness and neglect in boarding schools for orphans, the sign simply changes, and the boarding school is declared nothing less than a cadet corps. It is not uncommon for entire cadet academies to emerge in the same buildings that previously housed secondary schools. What is this connected with? Is it really with the general desire of the leadership of educational institutions to introduce young people to military culture, gallantry and the art of being human in general? I don’t argue, there are, thank God, such cases in Russia. However, they can be counted on the fingers of one hand. All other cadet corps are just another move by the leadership in the conditions of a demographic hole to attract students into the walls of their educational institutions. One can also understand the leaders, because the notorious per capita funding puts them in an awkward position - “get students as best you can.”

Naturally, the question arises, where can managers find such gallant teachers who will dance a square dance, whistle in the air with a sword, and solve a trigonometric equation, because with the new Federal standards, Russia needs just such teachers...

As a result, such a cadet studies and suffers in his cadet corps and cannot understand how he fundamentally (except for the cap and shoulder straps, of course) differs from Vasya from the next door, who also wipes his pants, only in a regular school...

And at this time, the leaders are again concocting reports on the work successfully done: about how shooting was carried out with only wooden machine guns, how the cadets held a ball in a gym with a leaking roof, how voluntary (and what else!) donations were made by the parents of the cadets a cadet temple was built in the school yard, to which the local priest drives up in a BMW X5 (of course, they keep silent about the BMW report).

In general, no matter what the child amuses himself with, as they say, as long as he doesn’t hang himself. This, it seems, is the doctrine of modern youth movements, which includes the cadet movement. After all, our country does not yet have any unified legislative framework that would place cadet schools on some kind of legal basis. Something will happen next...

2013 marks the 170th anniversary of the Orlov Bakhtin Cadet Corps, founded in 1843 by the highest order of the Sovereign Emperor Nicholas I.

In December 1841, the Tsar, having accepted a gift from retired Lieutenant Colonel Mikhail Pavlovich Bakhtin for the establishment of a corps in Orel - 1 million 100 thousand rubles and a large estate, deigned to call the corps “Orlovsky Bakhtin”. Much has become known about the history and traditions of the corps in recent years thanks to the asceticism of the late Oleg Vladimirovich Levitsky and his daughter Natalya Olegovna Petrovanova-Levitskaya, whose father and grandfather Vladimir Vladimirovich Levitsky was a teacher at the OBKK. About some of his pets after October 1917.  - graduates of the corps of different years - this article.

About the heroesGMost fellow citizens know the Civil War from the films “Red Little Devils”, “White Sun of the Desert”, shown periodically by electronic media on TV, or, at best, from the films “Quiet Don”, “White Guard” or “Days of the Turbins”, where cadets and cadets are depicted neurotic, hysterical or, conversely, infantile personalities. The indispensable attributes of officers are cards, roulette, drunken stupor. In addition to the state order issued by the ideologists, the film directors probably took images from the portraits of the political workers supervising them, who led the country and the army to disintegration, where the moral level of officers for the most part differs little from the level of soldiers, and “hazing” no longer occurs only in the troops, but also in some Suvorov and Nakhimov schools, where admission is guaranteed for $.e.

About real heroesBof the entire civil war movement - very little is known to the natives of the Oryol province who lived or were associated with it, one might say, nothing or almost nothing. Museum exhibitions still tell stories about the Red commanders - ascetic commissars and wise security officers who established Soviet power in the Oryol region. The heroes of the White Guard are given quite a bit of space in the exhibitions, and then only mostly to portraits of the generals: Denikin, Kornilov, Alekseev, Mai-Maevsky, Kolchak, Wrangel and Yudenich.

One of the pages in the history of the White movement is the participation in it of cadets of the Orlovsky Bakhtin cadet corps, mention of which can be found in the magazines “Cadet Roll Call”, “Sentry”, “Military Story” and other emigrant publications.

As Sergei Vladimirovich Volkov writes in the book “The Tragedy of the Russian Officers”:

“The best element were the officers from among the former students of the cadet corps, who served in the white armies almost without exception, which is fully confirmed by the available data.”

“Bolshevism and the revolution led to the destruction of all military schools and 23 cadet corps out of 31 existing before March 1917 in Russia in the period 1917-1918. The death of most of them was terrible, and impartial history will never record the bloody events that accompanied this death. Complete beating of personnel and cadets, which can be equated to the beating of infants at the dawn of the New Testament" (A. Markov. "Cadets and Junkers in the White Movement").

Let us give some names and surnames of Bakhtin's graduates of the cadet corps - officers, generals and cadets.

The banner of the Orlovsky Bakhtin cadet corps was secretly taken from the Church of the Archangel Michael by the officer-educator V.D. Trofimov together with two cadets and hidden in a safe place. The further fate of the banner is still unknown.

The banner of the Sumy Cadet Corps was saved and carried on his chest from Kyiv besieged by the Petliurites to Odessa by a native of the city of Orel, cadet Dmitry Potemkin, the son of a teacher of the Oryol and Sumy Cadet Corps A.D. Potemkin. As part of the Markov Regiment, 16-year-old Dmitry Potemkin took part in the battles near Orel in 1919. He graduated from the Crimean Corps in Yugoslavia, the University of Strasbourg. He worked as a worker and mining engineer in France, Germany, Brazil, and the USA, where he died in 1978.

Immediately after October 1917, many Oryol cadets rushed south and joined the detachments of the newly created Volunteer Army. 5th class cadet Prince Nakashidze, instead of going to his mother in Georgia, made his way to the Don. He fought in the cavalry reconnaissance detachment of Colonel Gershelman's division, who later sent him, in order to protect him from death, to General Alekseev's guard, consisting of cadets and cadets (the general called them his boys). For participation in the 1st Kuban Ice Campaign, Vasily Nakashidze, nicknamed Bicho by his friends, received the title of cornet. INRRussian army after the evacuation from Crimea on the ship "Lazarev" in 1920.  - staff captain. Died March 9, 1965 in New York.

From A. Markov’s book “Cadets and Junkers in the White Movement”:

“The first volunteer detachments that began to fight the Reds near Rostov and Taganrog were overwhelmingly made up of cadets and cadets, just like the detachments of Chernetsov, Semiletov and other founders of the fight against the Reds. The first coffins, invariably escorted to Novocherkassk by the sad Ataman Kaledin, contained the bodies of killed cadets and cadets. At their funeral, General Alekseev, standing at the open grave, said:

- I see a monument that Russia will erect for these children, and this monument should depict an eagle’s nest and the eaglets killed in it...

In November 1917, in the city of Novocherkassk, a cadet battalion was formed, consisting of two companies: the first - cadet, under the command of Captain Skosyrsky, and the second - cadet, under the command of Staff Captain Mizernitsky. On November 27, he received an order to board a train and with fifty Don Cossack Military School was sent to Nakhichevan. Having unloaded under enemy fire, the battalion quickly formed up, as if in a training exercise, and, walking at full speed, rushed to attack the Reds. Having knocked them out of the Balabanovskaya grove, he entrenched himself in it and continued the shooting battle with the support of two of our guns. In this battle, almost the entire platoon of Captain Donskov, consisting of cadets from the Oryol and Odessa corps, was killed. The corpses found after the battle were mutilated and stabbed with bayonets. Thus, the Russian soil was stained with the blood of Russian child cadets in the first battle, which laid the foundation for the Volunteer Army and the White Struggle during the capture of Rostov-on-Don.”

OBKK cadet Alexey Ivanovich Komarevsky fought in the Volunteer Army and on the armored train “General Drozdovsky” in the Russian Army before being evacuated from Crimea. Gallipolitan. In 1926, as part of a guards detachment in Bulgaria, second lieutenant. In exile - in Belgium. He died in 1982 in Brussels.

Among the graduates of the OBKK there are many generals who played an important role in the White movement.

Major General Cherepov Alexander Nikolaevich (1877-1964). One of the founders of the Volunteer Army. Knight of St. George. Commander of the 1st volunteer detachment he formed in Rostov, which participated in the 1st Kuban Ice Campaign. In exile in Yugoslavia and France, he was the chairman of the Union of Pioneers and the Union of Disabled People. Died in France.

General of Infantry Shcherbachev Dmitry Grigorievich (1857-1932). Commander of the troops of the Romanian Front in the 1st World War. Knight of St. George. INGDuring the civil war, he was a representative of the white armies under the allied governments, head of the supply department for the white armies in Paris. He died in 1932 in Nice (France).

Major General Mikhail Fedorovich Danilov (1879-1943), commander of Her Majesty's Life Guards Cuirassier Regiment until 1917. In the Russian Army - commander of the 1st brigade of the cavalry division. In exile in France - chairman of the association of the Life Guards of Her Majesty's Cuirassier Regiment in Paris. He died in 1943 in Hungary.

Major General Subbotin Vladimir Fedorovich (1874 -?). During the First World War, he was the chief of engineers of the Romanian Front. Commandant and commander of the Sevastopol garrison in 1920.

Major General Baron von Nolken Alexander Ludwigovich (1879 –1957) in the First World War General Quartermaster. In the Volunteer Army since 1918. At the headquarters of the Commander-in-Chief of the AFSR. In exile in Yugoslavia and France - chairman of the guards association.

Major General of the General Staff Mikhail Nikolaevich Vakhrushev (1865-1934) - participant in the Russo-Japanese and First World Wars. In the AFSR - Chief of Staff of the Kyiv Group of Forces. In exile - in the Kingdom of SHS (Yugoslavia) in Sarajevo. Served in the state commission. Honorary Chairman of the Sarajevo Society of Officers. He was buried in the New Cemetery in Belgrade.

Lieutenant General t Lekhovich Vladimir Andreevich (1860-1941). During the First World War, Head of the Main Artillery Directorate. In the AFSR - in the Army Artillery Supply Directorate. In exile in Belgrade. Chairman of the Artillery Society. Since 1924 in the USA. He was the head of the All-Guards Association and an Honorary member of the board of the Union of Russian Military Disabled Persons. Died in New York.

Lieutenant General of the General Staff Pokatov (Tseil) Sergei Vladimirovich (1868-1934). Participant in the Russian-Japanese and First World Wars. By 1917, commander of the XXXV Army Corps. In 1918 he took part in the uprising against the Bolsheviks in Ashgabat. Chairman of the Provisional Government of the Trans-Caspian Region. In exile he served in the Czechoslovak Army. Chairman of the Rescue Fund in Bratislava. He died there.

Lieutenant General Polzikov Mikhail Nikolaevich (1876-1938). Participant in the First World War. Knight of St. George. In the AFSR and the Russian Army, commander of the Drozdovskaya artillery brigade. In exile - in Bulgaria and Luxembourg. Died in Vasserbilig.

Major General of the General Staff Dmitry Ivanovich Andrievsky (1875-1951). In the First World War he fought on the Caucasian front. Commander of the 1st Kuban Plastun Brigade. Knight of St. George. Representative of the AFSR in Transcaucasia. In exile - in Persia and France. Died near Paris. He was buried in the Russian cemetery of Sainte-Genevieve des Bois.

Major General Alexey Pavlovich Budberg (1869-1945). Participant in the Russian-Japanese and First World Wars. Commander of the XIV Army Corps. Awarded the Arms of St. George. Minister of War in the government of A.IN. Kolchak. In exile - in Japan, China, USA. Chairman of the Society of Russian Veterans of the Great War. Died in San Francisco.

General of Infantry Palitsyn Fedor Fedorovich (1851-1923). In the First World War, Chief of Staff of the Guards Corps. Chief of the General Staff. Member of the State Council. In exile - in Germany. Died in Berlin.

Major General Skobeltsyn Vladimir Stepanovich (1872-1944). In the First World War, chief of staff of the XVII, then XI Army Corps. Participant of the Brusilov breakthrough. In the white troops of the Northern Front. Commander of the Murmansk region troops. In exile - in Finland and France. Died near the city of Pau (France).

Lieutenant General t Gavrilov Alexander (Alexey) Nilovich (1855 –1926). During the First World War, he was the head of the Minsk local brigade. In exile - in Poland. Died in Vilna.

Lieutenant General Teplov Alexander Nikolaevich (1877-1964). Participant in the First World War. Commander of the Life Guards Finnish Regiment, 2nd Guards Infantry Division. Commander of the Petrograd Military District. In the Russian Army he commanded the 34th Infantry Division. In exile - in France. Died in Paris.

Major General Grevs Alexander Petrovich (1876-1936). Participant in the Russian-Japanese and First World Wars. Commander of the Life Guards Horse Grenadier Regiment. In the AFSR he commanded the Svodno-Gorsk cavalry division. In exile - in Serbia, France, member of the board of the association of the Nikolaev Cavalry School. Died near Paris.

Cavalry General Vasily Ivanovich Pokotilo (1856 - after 1919). Military governor of Fergana, Semirechensk, Ural regions. Assistant to the Turkestan Governor General and commander of the Turkestan Military District. During the First World War, he led the formation of Cossack units on the Don for the active army. He was a marching ataman and ataman of the Don Army. Then he was appointed chief supply officer for the armies of the Northern Front. Member of the Military Council. In 1919, he was a member of the Cassation Presence at the headquarters of the Commander-in-Chief of the AFSR.

Their eyes were like stars -

Ordinary Russian cadets;

Nobody described them here

And he didn’t sing it in the poet’s verses.

Those children were our stronghold.

And Rus' will bow to their grave;

They're all there

Died in snowdrifts...

Together with his father, the nephew of the officer-educator, El V., went to the Volunteer Army.IN. Levitsky, a graduate of the OBKK Gogolev Boris Lvovich is the cousin of Oleg Vladimirovich Levitsky and the uncle of Natalya Olegovna Petrovanova-Levitskaya, who continues the work of her father and grandfather in the popularization and study of the cadet movement. B.L. Gogolev fought in the Armed Forces of southern Russia in the Life Guards Jaeger Regiment. By 1925, he retired in Bulgaria with the rank of second lieutenant.

Many of the former cadets passed on the knowledge and warmth received within the walls of the OBKK from their teachers to the children of emigrants, instilling a love for the Motherland and the traditions of the Russian Army.

Artillery Colonel Vissarion Andreevich Boguslavsky led recruitment into the Volunteer Army in 1919 in Germany under the Inter-Union Company for Prisoners. In exile in France. In 1937, he became the head of the “Young Volunteer” organization (until 1932, “Young Scout”). Died in 1964 in Gagny (France).

Colonel Brendel Viktor Alexandrovich. In the 1st World Chief of Staff of the 2nd Guards Horse Grenadier Division. In 1918 in the Hetman's army. Military agent in Romania. In 1919, in the White troopsINeastern front. He taught in cadet corps abroad in Yugoslavia and Bulgaria. Died in 1969 in San Francisco.

Midshipman of individual midshipman classes Ivanov Emelyan Egorovich (1897R.), a native of the city of Bolkhov, Oryol province, was sailing on the cruiser "Eagle" in 1917-1918. Since 1919 - in the naval company of the Siberian Flotilla, second lieutenant. Since 1923, in exile in China, teacher at the Khabarovsk Cadet Corps in Shanghai. From 1927 he served in the French municipal police. Died during the arrest of criminals on June 30, 1940 in Shanghai.

In issue 95, January 1969, in the magazine “Military True”, published in Paris, there is an article by former cadet A. Levitsky, dedicated to the 125th anniversary of the Orlovsky Bakhtin cadet corps, telling about the history of the OBKK and about his years of study here. The article begins with the heartfelt lines of a poem by his OBKK classmate Mesnyaev:

Friends, tell me, was it

Or is this just a reflection of a dream?

Oryol cadet uniform

And Bakhtin's glorious corpus.

Let's answer: yes! Everything was, it was:

And the King and the banners of glory,

And our heart has not forgotten

Bakhtin's Oryol Corps.

The cadet family is united,

We are equal in soul and thought,

And the appearance of Prince Constantine

A star shines for us from the darkness.

These lines belong to Oryol cadet Grigory Valerianovich Myasnyaev (1892-196?), writer and public figure of the Russian emigration. After graduating from the corps, due to heart disease, he was unable to enter a military school and graduated from the Faculty of Law of Kyiv University. But he nevertheless became an officer during the Great War. For several years he participated in battles on the fronts of the First World War, and then the Civil War in the ranks of volunteers. Due to typhus and pneumonia, he remained in Rostov-on-Don after the retreat of the Whites. He described his fate before going abroad in the 1940s in the story “Old Time.”

“An officer who gave his youth, his health, his blood for the Russia of his fathers, will now have to grovel to save his life. The entire naked, cynical style of the Soviet system, its dullness and squalor, reflected in this ugly, non-Russian language of their newspapers, appeals, decrees, repulsive images of leaders, dirt, deliberate contempt for everything that had hitherto decorated life,  - all this was organically alien to him, everything breathed with enmity and hatred towards everything that was dear and close to him.”

In emigration to Bavaria in Germany and later in America G.IN. Myasnyaev was able to realize his literary gift. He also wrote the stories “Fields of an Unknown Land”, “In the Footsteps of the Past”, essays about General M.D. Skobelev, poet N.WITH. Gumilyov and other works. Abroad, he became close to the famous public figure and historian S.P. Melgunov, in New York he was elected chairman of the society named after A.S. Pushkin. Died in the 1960s in the USA.

As we see, the fate of Oryol cadets from the lower ranks to generals is scattered all over the world. But, despite the distances and distance from each other, they retained their cadet brotherhood and love for the place from which they came into adulthood. Often the memories of former cadets were published decades later by colleagues, friends, and relatives.

An article by Lieutenant General E. was published on the pages of the magazine “Military True” for 1969.A. Milodanovich “Memories of Bakhtin’s Oryol Cadet Corps,” telling about his years of study in the corps with a detailed description of the city of Oryol at that time. The publication was carried out by his son, a former cadet, employee of the magazine "Military True", professor, leaderINhigher officer courses, Colonel Vsevolod Evgenievich Milodanovich, who, like his father, served as an artilleryman in the 1st World War. During the Civil War he fought in the Hetman Army in 1918, and from 1919 in the Armed Forces of southern Russia. In exile he served in the Czechoslovak Army. After 1945 in Germany, Yugoslavia. Died in 1977 in Australia.

Another employee of the magazine “Military Story” was Oryol cadet Georgy Aleksandrovich Kutorga, a participant in the Civil War. In exile, he graduated from the Crimean Cadet Corps and the Nikolaev Cavalry School in the city of Belaya Tserkov in the Kingdom of SHS (Yugoslavia). He was released with the rank of cornet into the 17th Chernigov Hussar Regiment of His Imperial Highness Grand Duke Mikhail Alexandrovich, where for many years he was the secretary of the regimental association, kept the chronicle of the regiment in exile, and was also the secretary of the general cadet association. G. diedA. Kutorg on October 12, 1975 in San Francisco (USA). The funeral was attended by more than 100 veterans from the cadet society and graduates of the Nikolaev Cavalry School, led by Major General V.N. Won. The funeral service was served by a classmate in the Crimean Cadet Corps, Archbishop Anthony, and several other priests.

The permanent editor of the Sentinel magazine, in which many cadets were published, was a native of the village of Gostinoye, Mtsensk district, Oryol province, staff captain Vasily Vasilyevich Orekhov. Veteran of the First World War, the Civil War and the Spanish War on the side of General Franco. A prominent social and political figure of the Russian military emigration, who died in Brussels (Belgium) in 1990.

A special page in the history of the Civil War is associated with the cruise on the cruiser "Oryol", which bore the name of the city of Oryol, in 1917-1920. midshipman of the Vladivostok Naval School, among whom were graduates of the Oryol Bakhtin Cadet Corps Vyacheslav Uzunov, Boris Afrosimov, Ivan Malygin, Onisim Liming, Sergei Aksakov, Nikolai Nedbal and others, maintaining contact with their 1920 graduation through publications and bulletins of the Naval School in the 20-70s . XX century in Bizerte (Tunisia), Belgrade (Yugoslavia), Brno (Czechoslovakia), New York, Lakewood (USA). (Details about this in the collections “For Faith and Loyalty” Nos. 34 and 45 of the magazine “History of the Russian Province”).

This is what the writer in exile, a former cadet, a native of the Shchigrovsky district of the Kursk province, a regular contributor to the magazine “Cadet Roll Call”, who was engaged in literary activities in San Francisco in the last years of his life, Anatoly Lvovich Markov, will write in exile:

“The cadets of all Russian corps, who fought alongside their older cadet brothers on the Orenburg Front, with General Miller in the North, with General Yudenich near Luga and Petrograd, with Admiral Kolchak in Siberia, with General Dieterichs in the Far East, covered themselves with glory and honor. , among Cossack atamans in the Urals, Don, Kuban, Orenburg, Transbaikalia, Mongolia, Crimea and the Caucasus. All these cadets and cadets had one impulse, one dream - to sacrifice themselves for the Motherland. This high rise in spirit led to victory. Only they explained the entire success of the volunteers against a numerous enemy. This was also reflected in the songs of the volunteers, the most typical of which is their song during the Ice March in Kuban:

…In the evening, closed in formation,

We sing our quiet song

About how they went to the distant steppes

We, the children of a crazy, unhappy land,

And in the feat we saw one goal -

Save your native country from shame.

The blizzards and the cold of the night scared us.

It was not for nothing that we were given the Ice Campaign...

“The impulse in its sublimity, its selflessness, its self-sacrifice is so exceptional,  - wrote one of our glorious cadet writers,  - that it is difficult to find someone like him in history. This feat is all the more significant because it was completely disinterested, little appreciated by people and deprived of the laurel wreath of victory...”

One thoughtful Englishman, who was in the south of Russia duringGCivil War, said that “in the history of the world he does not know anything more remarkable than the child volunteers of the White movement. To all the fathers and mothers who gave their children for the Motherland, he must say that their children brought a sacred spirit to the battlefield and, in the purity of their youth, lay down for Russia. And if people did not appreciate their sacrifices and did not yet erect a worthy monument to them, then God saw their sacrifice and accepted their souls into His heavenly abode...”

Grand Duke Konstantin Konstantinovich, anticipating the bright role that in the future would fall to the lot of his beloved cadets, long before the revolution, dedicated prophetic lines to them:

Even though you are a boy, you are aware in your heart

Kinship with a great military family,

He was proud to belong to her soul;

You are not alone - you are a flock of eagles.

The day will come, and, spreading its wings,

Happy to sacrifice themselves,

You will rush bravely into mortal combat,   -

Death for the honor of one’s native land is enviable!..”

Konstantin Grammatchikov

“History of the Russian Province” No. 51

Cadets and cadets in the White movement Brought up in the firm principles of service for the Faith, the Tsar and the Fatherland, cadets and cadets, for whom. this formula was the meaning and goal of their entire future life; they accepted the revolution of 1917 as a huge misfortune and the death of everything they were preparing to serve and believed in. From the very first days of its appearance, they considered the red flag, which replaced the Russian national flag, to be what it really was, namely a dirty rag, symbolizing violence, rebellion and desecration of everything dear and sacred to them. Knowing well about these sentiments, which the cadets and cadets did not consider necessary to hide from the new government, she hastened to radically change the life and order of military educational institutions. In the very first months of the revolution, the Soviets hastened to rename the cadet corps “gymnasiums of the military department”, and the companies in them to “ages”, abolish drills and shoulder straps, and put “pedagogical committees” at the head of the corps administration, where, along with officers, educators, directors and company commanders, soldiers-drummers, men and military paramedics entered and began to play a dominant role in them. In addition, the revolutionary government appointed a “commissar” to each corps, who was the “eye of the revolution.” The main duty of such “commissars” was to stop all “counter-revolutionary actions” in the bud. Officer-educators began to be replaced by civilian teachers, under the name of “class mentors,” as in civilian educational institutions. All these reforms were met with unanimous indignation among the cadets. At the first news of the civil war breaking out in different places in Russia, cadets began to leave their corps en masse to join the ranks of the White armies fighting against the Bolsheviks. However, as young people brought up in the firm principles of military honor, the cadets, represented by their combat companies, before leaving their native corps forever, took all measures in their power in order to save their banners - a symbol of their military duty - to prevent them from falling into red hands. The cadet corps, which managed to evacuate to the areas of the White armies in the first months of the revolution, took the banners with them. The cadets of the corps that found themselves on the territory of Soviet power did everything in their power and possible to hide their banners in safe places. The banner of the Oryol Bakhtin Corps was secretly taken from the temple by the officer-educator Lieutenant Colonel V.D. Trofimov, together with two cadets, and hidden in a safe place under very difficult circumstances. The cadets of the Polotsk Cadet Corps, at the risk of their own lives, saved the banner from the hands of the Reds and took it to Yugoslavia, where the eye was then transferred to the Russian Cadet Corps. In the Voronezh corps, the cadets of the combat company secretly took the banner out of the temple, and in its place they put a sheet in a cover. The Reds noticed the disappearance of the banner only when it was already in a safe place, from where it was then taken to the Don. Among the well-known cases of saving banners that belonged to the cadet corps, the most significant thing was accomplished by the Simbirsk cadets, who, along with the banner of their corps, saved the two banners of the Polotsk cadet corps that were kept with it. This glorious deed stands out not only by the number of banners saved, but also by the number of people who took part in this or that. By the beginning of March 1918, the Simbirsk Cadet Corps was already under the control of local Bolsheviks. There were sentries at the entrance to the main building. The main guard with machine guns was located in the lobby. The banners were in the corps church, the door of which was locked and guarded by a sentry. And nearby, in the dining room, there was a guard of five Red Guards. The intention of the Bolsheviks to take away the banners was announced by Colonel Tsarkov, one of the corps teachers who came to the 2nd department of the 7th grade, one of the corps teachers, especially loved by the cadets. By kissing a nearby cadet, the colonel hinted to the cadets about their responsibilities in relation to the corps shrine. The squad understood the hint and, without initiating other cadets, drew up a plan to steal the banners, in the execution of which all, without exception, the cadets of the glorious second squad took part, carrying out the assigned, jointly thought out and distributed tasks. Cadets A. Pirsky and N. Ipatov were lucky enough to quietly take a cast of the key to the church door. And in the evening, when cunning managed to divert the attention of the sentry and the guard, they opened the church with a key prepared from a cast, tore down the banners and, guarded by “mashals” placed everywhere, delivered the banners to their classroom. The banners were taken down by: A. Pirsky, N. Ipatov, K. Rossin and Kachalov - a seconded cadet of the 2nd St. Petersburg Cadet Corps. The Bolsheviks, who noticed the disappearance of the banners in the morning, searched all the premises of the building, but to no avail. The banners, very resourcefully, were hidden in the classroom, at the bottom of barrels with palm trees. But a new task arose - to remove the banners from the building. Two days later, when, by agreement, the banners were to be handed over to Ensign Petrov, who was in the city, who only graduated from the Simbirsk Corps in 1917, they decided to act with a bang. The strongest cadets of the squad hid their banners in their bosoms, they were surrounded by a crowd and at once rushed through the Swiss, past the confused sentries, into the street. Then, when the banners had already been handed over, they returned to the building and explained their antics by the desire to get some fresh air and take a walk. Subsequently, after the dissolution of the corps, the Bolsheviks arrested a number of corps officers, accusing them of hiding the banners. The cadets of the glorious second section, who were still in the city, gathered to discuss the issue of how to rescue officers from prison who did not even know where the banners were. Cadets A. Pirsky, K. Rossiy and Kachalov suggested that they confess to the Bolsheviks in stealing the banners, and during interrogation they would declare that the banners were taken by N. Ipatov, who left for Manchuria more than a month ago. That's what they did. The teachers left prison, and their places were taken by cadets. But God rewarded their spirit: it so happened that the court found them innocent... And they managed to escape from the revenge of the Bolsheviks. The banners were handed over to the care of sister of mercy Evgenia Viktorovna Ovtrakht. She hid them and handed them over to the general Baron Wrangel after the volunteers occupied the mountains. Tsaritsyn. By order No. 66 of June 29, 1919, she was awarded the St. George Medal for this feat. In January 1955, the banner, saved by Ms. Ovtrakht, who became Abbess Emilia, arrived in the United States and is now in the Metropolitan Church of the Synod of the Church Abroad. The cadets of the Omsk Corps in 1918, having received an order from the Red Command to remove their shoulder straps, in the evening of the same day all the corps gathered in the assembly hall, put all the shoulder straps in a coffin, which was then buried in the ground by the senior cadets. The banner of the Sumy Cadet Corps, now also located in the USA, was saved at risk to its life by cadet Dimitry Potemkin. In the White struggle for Russia, the first to act against the Reds in October 1917 were the Alexander Military School and the cadets of three Moscow corps. The cadets defended Moscow from being captured by the Bolsheviks for several days in a row, and the third company of the School, which even after the defeat did not want to surrender its weapons, was completely destroyed by the Reds. Having learned about the performance of the Alexander cadets against the Reds, the combat company of the Third Moscow Emperor Alexander II Corps joined the cadets and took a position along the Yauza River, while the combat company of the First Moscow Corps covered the cadet front from the rear. Under fire from the enemy, who outnumbered them, the cadets and cadets, shot from all sides, began to retreat to the Yauza River, where they lingered. At this time, the combat company of the Second Moscow Corps, having lined up in the assembly hall under the command of its vice-sergeant-major Slonimsky, asked the director of the corps to allow him to come to the aid of the cadets and cadets of the other two corps. This was met with a categorical refusal, after which Slonimsky ordered the rifles to be dismantled and, with the banner at the head, led the company to the exit, which was blocked by the director of the corps, who declared that “the company will only pass through his corpse.” The general was politely removed from the path by the right-flank cadets and the company was placed at the disposal of the commander of the combined cadet cadet detachment on the Yauza River. The cadets of the three Moscow corps and the Alexander cadets covered themselves with immortal glory in the fight against the Reds these days. They fought for two weeks, proving in practice what comradely chemistry and mutual assistance mean to a Russian cadet and cadet. During the days of the Bolshevik revolution in October 1917, almost all military schools, headed by the Nikolaev Engineering School, which especially suffered in this fight, fought against the Bolsheviks in Petrograd with arms in hand. In the first days of the revolution, the Naval Cadet Corps in Petrograd was attacked by the rebellious mob and soldiers, led by disobedient lower ranks of the Life Guards of the Finnish Regiment and spare parts. The director of the Naval Corps, Admiral Kartsev, ordered the distribution of weapons to midshipmen and senior cadets, and the corps offered armed resistance to the rebels. Wanting to save the midshipmen and cadets, the director of the Naval Corps went out into the lobby and entered into negotiations with the attackers, telling them that he would not allow the crowd into the corps building, since he was responsible for government property, but was ready to issue a certain number of rifles and allow delegates to inspect all the premises , in order to make sure that there were no machine guns, which the agitators accused the Marine Corps of firing. However, while, by order of Admiral Kartsev, his assistant - class inspector, Lieutenant General. Briger went with delegates to inspect the hull, the admiral was attacked, he was hit on the head with a butt and was taken to the State Duma building, where he seriously wounded himself, attempting suicide. Lieutenant General Briger, who replaced Admiral Kartsev as director of the corps, dismissed the cadets and midshipmen to their homes, and on this day, in essence, the 216-year service of the corps to the Russian Empire ended. In the Voronezh Cadet Corps, when the manifesto on the abdication of the Sovereign Emperor arrived, which the director read in the church, the rector of the temple, the corps’ teacher of law, Fr. Archpriest Stefan (Zverev), and after him all the cadets burst into tears. On the same day, the cadets of the drill company tore the red rag hung by the clerks from the flagpole and, with the windows open, played the national anthem, echoed by the voices of the entire corps. This caused the arrival of the Red Guards at the corps building, who intended to kill the cadets. The latter was prevented with great difficulty by the director, Major General Belogorsky. In the first days of Bolshevism, in the autumn and winter of 1917, all cadet corps on the Volga were destroyed, namely: Yaroslavl, Simbirsk and Nizhny Novgorod. The Red Guards caught cadets in cities and at railway stations, in carriages, on ships, beat them, mutilated them, threw them out of the windows of trains and threw them into the water. The surviving cadets of these corps arrived in single order in Orenburg and joined two local corps, subsequently sharing their fate. The Pskov Cadet Corps, transferred in 1917 from Pskov to Kazan and located in the building of the Theological Seminary on the Arsk Field, during the October Bolshevik uprising in this city, like the Moscow cadets, joined the local cadets fighting the Reds. In 1918, Pskov cadets set out on a march to Irkutsk, where again, already in 1920, they fought against the Red regime with arms in hand. Some of them died in battle, and the survivors, having moved to Orenburg, continued the fight against the Reds. One cadet even managed to organize his own partisan detachment in Siberia. The banner of the Pskov Corps was saved from the hands of the Reds by the corps priest, rector Fr. Vasily. The commander of the second company of the Simbirsk Cadet Corps, Colonel Gorizontov, overcoming thousands of difficulties and dangers, led the remnants of the corps to Irkutsk, where in December 1917, the cadets of the local military school did not allow the local Bolsheviks to seize power in the city, fighting with the Red Guard for eight days. During these days, the cadets lost more than 50 people and several officers killed and wounded, but they themselves killed over 400 Reds. On December 17, 1917, a combat company of the Orenburg Neplyuevsky Corps, under the command of its vice-sergeant Yuzbashev, left the corps and joined the detachment of the Orenburg Cossacks of Ataman Dutov. In their ranks, the cadets took part in the battles with the Reds near Karaganda and Kargada, suffering losses in the wounded and killed, and then the remnants of the company, together with the cadets of the Orenburg Cossack School, left Orenburg and moved south through the steppes. This campaign is described by the talented pen of cadet-writer Evgeniy Yakonovsky. The cadets of the Orenburg Neplyuevsky Corps (graduating class) subsequently almost entirely made up the team of the armored train “Vityaz”, just as other cadets made up the teams of the armored trains “Glory of the Officer” and “Russia”. In January 1918, the cadets of the Odessa Infantry School, together with their officers, were surrounded in the school building from all sides by Red Guard gangs. Having offered them vigorous resistance, the cadets only left the building in single formations and groups only on the third day of the battle, and then on the orders of the head of the School, Colonel Kislov, in order to make their way to the Don and join the ranks of the Volunteer Army. In October 1917, the Kiev Infantry School named after Grand Duke Konstantin Konstantinovich entered into battle with the Reds for the first time on the streets of Kyiv and suffered its first losses in this battle. Having seized the train at the station by force of arms, it moved to Kuban, where, in the ranks of the Kuban units, it participated in the Ice Campaign and in the capture of Yekaterinodar. From the autumn of 1917 until the winter of 1923, vast areas of Russia were engulfed in the Civil War. In this grandiose struggle, Russian cadets and cadets took the most honorable place, confirming the principle that “cadets have different shoulder straps, but one soul.” The cadets and their senior comrades and brothers - cadets - suffered terrible losses in killed, wounded and tortured, not to mention forever crippled physically and morally for the rest of their lives. These children and youth volunteers were the most beautiful and, at the same time, the most painful of all in the White movement. Entire books should subsequently be written about their participation in this most terrible of wars, about how these children and youth made their way into the White armies, how they abandoned their families, and how they found, after much work and searching, the promised army. The first volunteer detachments that began to fight the Reds near Rostov and Taganrog were overwhelmingly made up of cadets and cadets, just like the detachments of Chernetsov, Semiletov and other founders of the fight against the Reds. The first coffins, invariably escorted to Novocherkassk by the sad Ataman Kaledin, contained the bodies of killed cadets and cadets. At their funeral, General Alekseev, standing at the open grave, said: “I see a monument that Russia will erect for these children, and this monument should depict an eagle’s nest and the eaglets killed in it... In November 1917 in the mountains. Novocherkassk formed the Junker Battalion, which consisted of two companies: the first cadet, under the command of Captain Skosyrsky, and the second cadet, under the command of Staff Captain Mizernitsky. On November 27, he received an order to board a train and with fifty Don Cossack Military School was sent to Nakhichevan. Having unloaded under enemy fire, the battalion quickly formed up, as if in a training exercise, and, walking at full height, rushed to attack the Reds. Having knocked them out of the Balabinskaya grove, he entrenched himself in it and continued the shooting battle with the support of two of our guns. In this battle, almost the entire platoon of Captain Donskov, consisting of cadets from the Oryol and Odessa corps, was killed. The corpses found after the battle were mutilated and stabbed with bayonets. Thus, the Russian soil was stained with the blood of Russian child cadets in the first battle, which laid the foundation for the Volunteer Army and the White Struggle during the capture of Rostov-on-Don. In January 1918, a volunteer detachment named “Salvation of the Kuban” was created in Yekaterinodar, under the command of Colonel Lesevitsky, consisting of cadets from various corps and cadets of the Nikolaev Cavalry School. In its ranks, cadets heroically fell on the field of honor: Georgy Pereverzev - of the Third Moscow Corps, Sergei von Ozarovsky - Voronezh, Danilov - Vladikavkaz and many others, whose names are recorded by the Lord God... After the capture of Voronezh by the detachment of General Shkuro, many cadets of the local corps , hiding from the Reds in the city, volunteered for the detachment. Of these, Voronezh cadets were killed in subsequent battles: Gusev, Glonti, Zolotrubov, Selivanov and Grotkevich. The poet Snasareva-Kazakova dedicated her soul-tearing poems to the volunteer cadets who died near Irkutsk: “Their eyes were like stars. Simple, Russian cadets; No one described them here and did not sing them in the poet’s verses. Those children were our stronghold, And Rus' will bow to their grave; Every single one of them there Died in the snowdrifts...” The cadets of all Russian corps, who fought alongside their older cadet brothers on the Orenburg front, with General Miller in the North, with General Yudenich near Duga and Petrograd, with General Miller in the North, covered themselves with glory and honor. Admiral Kolchak in Siberia, General Diederichs in the Far East, Cossack atamans in the Urals, Don, Kuban, Orenburg, Transbaikalia, Mongolia, Crimea and the Caucasus. All these cadets and cadets had one impulse, one dream - to sacrifice themselves for the Motherland. This high rise in spirit led to victory. Only they explained the entire success of the volunteers against a numerous enemy. This was reflected in the songs of the volunteers. The most characteristic of which is their song on the Ice March in the Kuban: In the evening, closed in formation, We sing our quiet song About how We, the children of a crazy, unhappy land, went to the distant steppes, And in In this feat, we saw one goal - to save our native country from shame. : The blizzards and the cold of the night scared us. “It was not for nothing that we were given the Ice Campaign...” “The impulse in its sublimity, its selflessness, its self-sacrifice is so exceptional,” wrote one of our glorious cadet writers, “that it is difficult to find anything similar to it in history. This feat is all the more significant because it was completely disinterested, little appreciated by people and deprived of the laurel wreath of victory...” One thoughtful Englishman, who was in the south of Russia during the civil war, said that “in the history of the world he knows nothing more remarkable than child volunteers of the White movement. To all the fathers and mothers who gave their children for the Motherland, he must say that their children brought a sacred spirit to the battlefield and, in the purity of their youth, lay down for Russia. And if people did not appreciate their sacrifices and did not yet erect a worthy monument to them, then God saw their sacrifice and accepted their souls into His heavenly abode...” Grand Duke Konstantin Konstantinovich, anticipating the bright role that he would receive in the future: I share this the cadets he loved, long before the revolution he dedicated prophetic lines to them: “Even though you are a boy, but in your heart you are aware of your kinship with the great military family, You are proud to belong to it in soul; You are not alone - you are a flock of eagles. The day will come and, spreading your wings, Happy to sacrifice yourself, you will rush bravely into mortal combat, - Death for the honor of your native land is enviable! in Kiev, Sumy, Poltava and Odessa. Likewise, the cadet corps opened again: Khabarovsk, Irkutsk, Novocherkassk and Vladikavkaz, so on. how the revolution and Bolshevism led to the destruction of all military schools and 23 cadet corps out of 31 that existed before March 1917 in Russia during the period 1917–18. The death of most of them was terrible, and impartial history will ever note the bloody events that accompanied this death, such as the general beating of personnel and cadets of the Tashkent corps, which can only be equated to the beating of infants at the dawn of the New Testament... This there was an unworthy revenge of the Bolsheviks for the fact that a combat company of Tashkent cadets took part in the defense of the Tashkent fortress along with cadets and ensign schools. After the defeat of the White movement, the fate of the cadet corps that were on the territory of the White armies was very difficult and sad. So, on the day of the evacuation of Odessa, January 25, 1920, only part of the Odessa and Kyiv corps managed to board the ships under Red fire. The other part, unable to get into the port, was forced to turn back and join the white troops retreating from the city; Captain Remmert commanded this unit. On January 31, 1920, in the detachment of Colonel Stessel, during the retreat to the Romanian border, she heroically defended the left flank of the detachment in the battles of Kendel and Seltz, after which the cadets managed to cross to Romania. The order of the Military Representative in Romania dated April 2/15, 1920, attached to this book, speaks quite eloquently about this feat of the cadet. The terrible days they experienced were brilliantly described by cadet-writer Yevgeny Yakonovsky in his best work, “Kandel.” The Khabarovsk Corps, after the death of the White Army in Siberia, had to be evacuated to Vladivostok on the Russian Island, and then to Shanghai. The Siberian Emperor Alexander I Corps entered Yugoslavia through Vladivostok and China. On December 19, 1919, the Red offensive on Novocherkassk forced the Don Corps, led by its director, General Chebotarev, to move in marching order to the south. Through Novorossiysk the corps was evacuated to Egypt and then to Yugoslavia. After the evacuation of General Wrangel’s army, the cadet corps also ended up here, finding shelter in Crimea and forming the Crimean Cadet Corps. In Yugoslavia, thanks to this, after the liquidation of the White movement in Russia, there were three cadet corps from the remnants of the former corps of tsarist times, namely: 1) Crimean - from the cadet corps of the Petrovsky - Potavsky and Vladikavkaz corps in the mountains. White church; 2) First Russian - from the remnants of the Kyiv, Polotsk and Odessa corps in the mountains. Sarajevo; 3) Donskoy - from the cadets of the Novocherkassk, First Siberian and Khabarovsk corps in the mountains. Garazhde. Subsequently, all these three corps were consolidated into one, called the First Russian V.K. Konstantin Konstantinovich Cadet Corps, the cadets of which call themselves: “princes of Konstantinovtsy”; patronage was given by order of the King of Yugoslavia ALEXANDER I. This corps existed in Yugoslavia until it was occupied by the Red Army in the last world war. As for military schools, during the White struggle in the Kuban and Don from Kyiv, as mentioned above, the Kiev Infantry School was the first to arrive. After the battles on the streets of its native city, it went to Kuban and took part in its liberation, after which it resumed military training work in Yekaterinodar, and then in Feodosia. This work was interrupted by the school’s participation in battles, as, for example, in the Crimea near Perekop, when it left two officer and 36 cadet graves there, and then, in August 1920, took part in the landing on the Kuban of General Ulagai. In the fall of 1920, residents of the mountains. Feodosia intended to erect a monument on the embankment, representing the snow-covered figure of a cadet defending the Crimea. This monument was supposed to perpetuate the feat of the School, which saved Crimea from the Reds in the January cold of 1920. In addition to the Kyiv School, the Alexander Infantry School was also revived in the Volunteer Army in the South of Russia, under the command of General A. A. Kurbatov. It was awarded by General Wrangel with silver pipes with Nikolaev ribbons for the landing operation on Taman, under the command of General Khamin. The Nikolaev Cavalry School was formed in Gallipoli, and then, after the army moved to Yugoslavia, it settled in Bila Tserkva, where it gave 3 graduations, namely: in November 1922, in July 1923 and in September 1923. In addition, before its Closing in 1923, it produced Estandard Junkers. A total of 352 people graduated from it and were promoted to cornets. In Bulgaria for some time there existed the Sergievsky Artillery School, the Alekseevsky Infantry School, the Engineering School and the Nikolaevsky Artillery School, which arrived from Gallipoli. The Naval Cadet Corps, after the evacuation of General Wrangel’s army from Crimea, settled in Bizerte, where it continued to exist for several years in order to enable midshipmen and cadets to complete their course. It is also necessary to mention the Russian Military School in China, opened by the ruler of Manchuria, Marshal Zhang Tzuo-Ling, to recruit officers for his army that fought the Reds in Manchuria. The school was formed according to the program of Russian peacetime military schools with a two-year course, and the teachers and officers in it were Russians. Its first release took place in 1927, the second in 1928. All the cadets promoted from him to officers, Russian by nationality, were recognized by order of the All-Military Union as second lieutenants of the Russian army. Finally, now in France, in the vicinity of Paris, there is a Russian Corps-Lyceum named after Emperor Nicholas II, thanks to the donation and annual financial assistance to this educational institution by Lady Lydia Pavlovna Deterling. Its first director was General Rimsky-Korsakov, according to whose ideas the lyceum was founded. The patron of the corps, until his death in 1955, was the august cadet and cadet - Grand Duke Gabriel Konstantinovich. In 1936, the Head of the House of Romanov granted Lady Deterling, in gratitude for the great Russian cause she supported, the title of Princess Donskoy, under the Highest Decree. To all of the above, it would not be superfluous to add that since the revolution, the view of Russian educated society abroad on Russian military educational institutions, which showed so much heroism and selflessness in defending their homeland during the Civil War in Russia, has changed dramatically. The best evidence of this is the recognition of one of the leaders of public opinion before the revolution, writer and publicist Alexander Amfitheatrov, who in one of his articles in the foreign press exclaimed, amazed at the self-sacrifice and heroism of the cadets: “I didn’t know you, gentlemen, cadets, I honestly admit and only now realized the depth of your asceticism...” Finishing this book, I must admit with great satisfaction that the cadets of the Russian foreign corps completely absorbed the best traditions of the cadets of the tsarist era, in the person of the princes of Konstantinov, now being the core and main support of the All-Cadet Association abroad. May the Lord God grant them happiness to live until that bright day when they can pass the torch of our continuity to the cadets of the future free national Russia. Meeting the wishes of many cadets and fulfilling their request, I am pleased to add to my work the following articles: written by Sergei Paleolog, Mikhail Zalessky and Cherepov - all touching on the same “cadet” topic. A. Markov.

Many of our citizens have a rather superficial idea of ​​cadet education. They say, “retired officers dressed the children in military uniforms and instilled in them a love for the army.” However, everything is much more complicated. Among the students of the cadet corps there have always been many outstanding people: statesmen, generals, representatives of science and art. And military uniform alone (and even love for the army) cannot raise such personalities out of boys.

The revival of cadet educational institutions began in Russia almost 20 years ago - in 1992. This happened most often due to the pure enthusiasm of individual citizens concerned about the fate of the younger generations; Often newborn buildings did not have the most necessary things. However, many public organizations did not stand aside and began to help cadet educational institutions.

One of such organizations was the Alexey Jordan Foundation for Assistance to Cadet Corps. Today he actively helps the development of the cadet upbringing and education system in our country, develops the necessary programs and projects, and regularly publishes the magazine “Russian Cadet Roll Call”. For several years now, the foundation has been successfully operating in fraternal Serbia; not so long ago, with the help of students from the cadet corps, he put in order the memorial Russian cemetery in the city of Belaya Tserkov.

Olga Barkovets, General Director of the Alexey Jordan Cadet Corps Assistance Fund, talks about the work of the foundation, cadet education, its prospects and advantages.

It is difficult today to talk about work that began at the beginning of the 1990s, took shape in the mid-1990s and continues to this day. Then, in the 1990s, when ideals began to crumble in our society, when many children ended up on the street because their parents had no time to raise them, the idea was born among several generations of military school graduates to revive cadet corps. This coincided with the arrival in Russia of graduates of cadet corps that operated in the Russian diaspora in 1920 - 1940s. We call them senior cadets.

In the early 1990s, an amazing unity of “whites” and “reds” took place, because those who left in the 1920s shared the ideology of white officers, and their descendants (many were born in exile) came to their historical homeland and met here are people who graduated from the Soviet Suvorov and Nakhimov schools. This is one of the amazing phenomena of that time: people did not begin to sort out ideological differences and show any political ambitions. They united on the main thing: we need to think about how to save the country’s younger generation. The first buildings appeared in 1992 in Novosibirsk, in 1994 - in Novocherkassk and Moscow. It was an “initiative from below,” an initiative of enthusiasts who were passionate about the idea of ​​reviving the cadet corps. I think that in new Russia there is not yet such a social phenomenon, such a successfully implemented “social order” as cadet institutions. Precisely the order of civil society.

It has long been known that nothing artificial, “stillborn” can be imposed on society. Real life will still reject it. Sometimes government officials come up with some innovation and begin to intensively “implement” it. As a rule, in vain. I remember they came up with a slogan: “Let’s take all the street children and send them to the cadet corps.” Nothing worked out because the idea was initially wrong and ill-conceived. But what was able to be revived by initiative “from below”, thanks to the efforts of citizens, - this is the real, lasting, necessary.

The revival of the cadet model in the country clearly demonstrates that the development of the system of educating children and adolescents must be taken care of daily and hourly. And not on the occasion of either major holidays, for example, the next anniversary of Victory Day, or dramatic events, for example, like on Manezhnaya Square. When suddenly they remembered again that the children, it turns out, need to be educated. And not only in the family, but also at school.

In our country today there are more than 150 cadet educational institutions in the education and science system alone. Imagine the dynamics: in 1992 the first cadet corps appeared, 18 years have passed - there are already more than 150 of them! This means that this is a living, vitally important matter! Let me remind you that in 1917 there were 31 cadet corps in Imperial Russia. Where the elite of the Russian Empire was raised: outstanding commanders, military men, teachers, artists, writers.

And now about our foundation. One of the senior cadets who came to Russia in the early 1990s was Alexey Borisovich Yordan, the father of the founder of our Cadet Corps Assistance Fund. He, like his classmates, graduated from the Russian Cadet Corps of Grand Duke Konstantin Konstantinovich in Serbia. Alexey Borisovich was one of the most active figures who wanted to revive the cadet corps.

From intentions they quickly moved to action: together with their new Suvorov friends, senior cadets traveled around Russia, helped create cadet corps, and gave money to buy shoulder straps, uniforms, and boots. Once Alexey Borisovich came to one of the oldest cadet corps, the Voronezh Mikhailovsky Cadet Corps, and saw that students were walking around classes to study various subjects with their own chairs. He asked: “Why do children carry chairs around?” He was told that there were not enough chairs, and the building did not have money for new ones. Alexey Borisovich immediately found the money.

Then Boris Alekseevich decided that it was necessary to work systematically: it was necessary to create a charitable foundation operating according to European standards, transparent in reporting, working not for immediate needs, but for solving the main task - creating an education system based on cadet educational institutions.

We started in 1999. We registered a private charitable foundation and since then we have been giving grants to cadet educational institutions for the implementation of various programs related to raising children; We are developing our own projects aimed at preserving traditions in cadet corps, so that our children do not grow up as consumers, but engage in charity and volunteering.

We support the system of spiritual and moral education of children. For this purpose, we have prepared the “Let’s Do Good Together” program. It is primarily aimed at developing mercy and compassion among students of cadet corps.

We help build or revive corps churches; I can proudly say that we revived one of the most beautiful corps churches in St. Petersburg, in the cadet rocket and artillery corps, together with the head of the corps, Colonel Yevgeny Ermolov. This year the temple turned 200 years old. And again cadets come there, lessons in Orthodox culture are held there, and the students have a confessor.

I can talk about the fund for a long time. We have a program related to the preservation of Russian relics in Serbia; We do design projects for museums of cadet corps. You can find out about this and much more on our website. We helped revive the cadet education system, and now we strive to make it perfect.

Your foundation has held many events in Serbia. Please tell us more about this. How is working in Serbia different from working in Russia?

It seems to me that there is not a single Russian person who, having arrived in Serbia, would not fall in love with it. In Serbia, you feel some kind of special connection with our history and culture, a spiritual connection.

It all started in 2006: we supported the initiative to rename the central square of the small Serbian city of Bila Tserkva into Russian Cadet Square. Imagine, for the first time in the history of Serbia, the memory of the presence of Russian cadet corps there will be immortalized! We prepared this event together with the Russian Embassy, ​​with the Russian Cadet Society, with the Russian Cadet Brotherhood. The idea was supported by the mayor of Bila Tserkva. Not only honored guests, but also many residents of Bila Tserkva gathered for the opening ceremony of Russian Cadet Square.

And then a new idea arose.

When we got acquainted with the sights of the city, with places associated with the Russian diaspora, we were struck by the state of the Russian necropolis, where teachers and students of cadet corps, officers of the Russian army are buried. Abandoned graves, half-rusty crosses, weeds... And this discrepancy with the great event that happened two hours ago led us to the idea that we need to bring young cadets from Russia here to restore this necropolis together with them.

It was a good lesson for our guys too. We saw how they immersed themselves in the history of the stay of Russian cadets in Serbia in the 20-40s of the last century, we saw how the faces of teenagers changed, their attitude towards the fact that they wore cadet shoulder straps. Perhaps it was then that they began to feel like part of a large cadet family.

We were amazed that the Serbs came to the necropolis, where boys and girls worked, and brought water and apples, because it was very hot in the summer. Then the mayor of the city told us: “We raise our children in a European way: they know about their rights, but sometimes they do not know their responsibilities. And your children know their responsibilities and only then remember their rights.”

The young cadets surprised both the Serbs and us. We realized that this project needs to be continued. A year later, we brought new students from the cadet corps to Bila Tserkva.

We came to Bila Tserkva in our third year. They waited for us and accepted us, they simply loved us. And Russia was represented on Serbian soil not by some official delegations, but by ordinary funny guys who worked in the morning, then met with their peers, gave concerts for residents, where the famous “Katyusha” thundered to a storm of applause.

- Was everything really so smooth in the work of the fund?

Of course, there were difficulties. But thanks to trials we only become stronger. First of all, the existing legislative framework does not allow us to work at the level of trust in charitable foundations that is necessary. This is a common problem for the charitable community and the state. We had to prove that we have pure intentions. And that sometimes a charitable foundation can do more effectively what the state could not do.

Of course, a personnel retraining system should be organized in the Ministry of Education, but, unfortunately, it has not worked out there yet. Frequent reforms have not consolidated a structure that would systematically deal with cadet institutions.

What are the advantages of cadet education over regular school education? Are students of the cadet corps somehow different from most young people?

Good question. Once, during an interview, a correspondent for one of the Western news agencies asked me quite harshly: “Why militarize education?” I explained and she said she wanted to go and see for herself. A few days later she called with a request: is it possible to place her son in the cadet corps?

I tell you this because it is better to see once than to hear a hundred times. Today's cadet educational institutions are distinguished by a harmonious education system. It is implemented from the day the child enters the cadet boarding school until graduation. It is important that boys (now, however, there are also girls) study in cadet schools (boarding schools) from the age of 10. At the age of 10, you can still shape a child’s worldview and invest some basic values ​​in him. The main difference is the education system, built on the best military-patriotic and spiritual-moral traditions.

- What is the best way to instill in young people a love for Orthodox culture and Russian culture in general?

In my opinion, in order to instill love for a subject, you need to know it deeply. If a child is taught, say, cultural history or military-industrial complex, then a lot depends on the teacher, on how he can interest the student. So that a child, suppose, not only hears that there is such a composer as Rachmaninov, but learns to listen and hear his music. Let’s say, take a cadet class to Ivanovka, in the Tambov region, so that Rachmaninov’s music can be played for the cadets on his own estate. Last year, together with the administration of the city of Uvarovo, we held a wonderful festival “Cadet Symphony” there, in which more than 300 cadets from Moscow, Voronezh, Nizhny Novgorod, Belaya Kalitva, Shakhta, Stary Oskol, Tambov and the Tambov region took part.

You can talk a lot about the artist Repin, but it’s better to come to Nizhny Novgorod once, see the Volga, hear about the unique Volga culture, which inspired many artists, poets, and writers. This year our foundation will continue the “Cadet Symphony” program on the basis of the Nizhny Novgorod Cadet Corps named after General V.F. Margelova.

When instilling culture and knowledge, it is important not to use double standards. How can a child grow as a person if at school he is told one thing, but in life he sees something else?

How to make sure that a child, upon leaving the corps, becomes a leader, including a spiritual leader, for his friends and loved ones? These are the questions that cadet education is trying to solve. As the mother of a boy who graduated from the cadet corps, I can say that the children growing up there are completely different; they have a strong core that helps them become worthy people.

Firstly, the cadet fraternity contributes to this. The boys, after leaving their alma mater, remain friends for life and help each other. Secondly, these children are motivated, they know what they need in life, and these goals are not mercantile. Any person should set a high goal and achieve it. They are ready to serve in the army. Previously, 50 percent of graduates went to civilian universities, the rest to military ones. In total, 96-97 percent of graduates entered higher education institutions. It seems to me that this indicator indicates the high quality of cadet education.

- What are the prospects for cadet education?

I think the growth of cadet corps will continue. Now Cossack cadet corps are actively developing. The prospects are great, but we are alarmed by the number of buildings that have opened. It is high time to move from quantity to quality, because, having opened a cadet school or corps, it is important not just to dress children in military uniforms and force them to march in formation, but to create an education system that corresponds to the high ideals that have always been in the country’s cadet corps. I would say this: “Today we are for the purity of the genre.” If you called yourself a cadet corps, live up to that. If there is no serious education system, there will be no corps, no matter how beautiful the boys’ uniforms are.

Interviewed by Irina Obukhova

Brought up in the firm principles of service for the Faith, the Tsar and the Fatherland, the cadets and cadets, for whom this formula was the meaning and goal of their entire future life, accepted the revolution of 1917 as a huge misfortune and the death of everything they were preparing to serve and believed in. From the very first days of its appearance, they considered the red flag, which replaced the Russian national flag, to be what it really was, namely a dirty rag, symbolizing violence, rebellion and desecration of everything dear and sacred to them.

Knowing well about these sentiments, which the cadets and cadets did not consider necessary to hide from the new government, she hastened to radically change the life and order of military educational institutions. In the very first months of the revolution, the Soviets hastened to rename the cadet corps “gymnasiums of the military department”, and the companies in them to “ages”, abolish drills and shoulder straps, and put “pedagogical committees” at the head of the corps administration, where, along with officers, educators, directors and company commanders, soldiers-drummers, men and military paramedics entered and began to play a dominant role in them. In addition, the revolutionary government appointed a “commissar” to each corps, who was the “eye of the revolution.” The main duty of such “commissars” was to stop all “counter-revolutionary actions” in the bud. Officer-educators began to be replaced by civilian teachers under the name of “class teachers”, as in civilian educational institutions.

All these reforms were met with unanimous indignation among the cadets. At the very first news of the civil war breaking out in different places in Russia, cadets began to leave their corps en masse to join the ranks of the White armies fighting against the Bolsheviks. As young people brought up in the firm principles of military honor, the cadets, represented by their combat companies, before leaving their native corps forever, took all measures in their power in order to save their banners - a symbol of their military duty, and prevent them from falling into the hands of red. The cadet corps, which managed to evacuate to the areas of the White armies in the first months of the revolution, took the banners with them. The cadets of the corps that found themselves on the territory of Soviet power did everything in their power and possible to hide their banners in safe places.

The banner of the Oryol Bakhtin Corps was secretly taken from the temple by the officer-educator, Lieutenant Colonel V.D. Trofimov together with two cadets, and hidden in a safe place under very difficult circumstances. The cadets of the Polotsk Cadet Corps, at the risk of their own lives, saved the banner from the hands of the Reds and took it to Yugoslavia, where it was then transferred to the Russian Cadet Corps. In the Voronezh corps, the cadets of the combat company secretly took the banner out of the temple, and in its place they put a sheet in a cover. The Reds noticed the disappearance of the banner only when it was already in a safe place, from where it was taken to the Don.

Among the well-known cases of saving banners that belonged to the cadet corps, the most significant thing was accomplished by the Simbirsk cadets, who, together with the banner of their corps, saved the two banners of the Polotsk cadet corps that were kept with it.

This glorious deed stands out not only by the number of banners saved, but also by the number of people who took part in this or that.

By the beginning of March 1918, the Simbirsk Cadet Corps was already under the control of local Bolsheviks. There were sentries at the entrance to the main building. The main guard with machine guns was located in the lobby. The banners were in the corps church, the door of which was locked and guarded by a sentry. And nearby, in the dining room, there was a guard of five Red Guards.

The intention of the Bolsheviks to take away the banners was announced by Colonel Tsarkov, who came to the 2nd department of the 7th grade, one of the corps teachers, especially loved by the cadets. By kissing a nearby cadet, the colonel hinted to the cadets about their responsibilities in relation to the corps shrine.

The squad took the hint and, without initiating other cadets, drew up a plan to steal the banners, in the execution of which all the cadets of the glorious second squad, without exception, took part, performing jointly thought-out and distributed tasks.

Cadets A. Pirsky and N. Ipatov were lucky enough to quietly take a cast of the key to the church door. And in the evening, when cunning managed to divert the attention of the sentry and the guard, they opened the church with a key prepared from the cast, tore down the panels and, guarded by “mashals” placed everywhere, delivered the banners to their classroom.

The banners were taken down by: A. Pirsky, N. Ipatov, K. Rossin and Kachalov, a seconded cadet of the 2nd St. Petersburg Cadet Corps.

The Bolsheviks, who noticed the disappearance of the banners in the morning, searched all the premises of the building, but to no avail. The banners were very resourcefully hidden in the classroom at the bottom of barrels with palm trees. But a new task arose - to remove the banners from the building. Two days later, when, by agreement, the banners were to be handed over to Ensign Petrov, who was in the city, who only graduated from the Simbirsk Corps in 1917, they decided to act with a bang. The strongest cadets of the squad hid their banners in their bosoms, they were surrounded by a crowd and at once rushed through the Swiss, past the confused sentries, into the street.

Then, when the banners had already been handed over, they returned to the building and explained their antics by the desire to breathe fresh air and take a walk.

Subsequently, after the dissolution of the corps, the Bolsheviks arrested a number of corps officers, accusing them of hiding the banners. The cadets of the glorious second section, who were still in the city, gathered to discuss the issue - how to rescue officers from prison who did not even know where the banners were. Cadets A. Pirsky, K. Rossin and Kachalov suggested that they confess to the Bolsheviks in stealing the banners, and during interrogation they would declare that the banners were taken by N. Ipatov, who left for Manchuria more than a month ago.

That's what they did. The teachers left prison, and their places were taken by cadets. But God rewarded their spirit: it so happened that the court found them innocent... And they managed to escape from the revenge of the Bolsheviks.

The banners were transferred for safekeeping to sister of mercy Evgenia Viktorovna Ovtrakht. She hid them and handed them over to the general Baron Wrangel after the volunteers occupied Tsaritsyn. By order No. 66 of June 29, 1919, she was awarded the St. George Medal for this feat. In January 1955, the banner, saved by Ms. Ovtrakht, who became Abbess Emilia, arrived in the USA and is now in the Metropolitan Church of the Synod of the Russian Church Abroad.

The cadets of the Omsk Corps in 1918, having received an order from the Red Command to remove their shoulder straps, in the evening of the same day all the corps gathered in the assembly hall, put all the shoulder straps in a coffin, which was then buried in the ground by the senior cadets. The banner of the Sumy Cadet Corps, now also located in the USA, was saved at risk to its life by cadet Dimitry Potemkin.

In the White struggle for Russia, the first to act against the Reds in October 1917 were the Alexander Military School and the cadets of three Moscow corps. The cadets defended Moscow from being captured by the Bolsheviks for several days in a row, and the third company of the school, which even after the defeat did not want to surrender its weapons, was completely destroyed by the Reds. Having learned about the performance of the Alexander cadets against the Reds, the combat company of the 3rd Moscow Emperor Alexander II Corps joined the cadets and took a position along the Yauza River, while the combat company of the 1st Moscow Corps covered the cadet front from the rear. Under fire from the enemy, who outnumbered them, the cadets and cadets, shot from all sides, began to retreat to the Yauza River, where they lingered. At this time, the combat company of the 2nd Moscow Corps, having lined up in the assembly hall under the command of its vice-sergeant Slonimsky, asked the director of the corps to allow him to go to the aid of the cadets and cadets of the other two corps. This was met with a categorical refusal, after which Slonimsky ordered the rifles to be dismantled and, with the banner at the head, led the company to the exit, which was blocked by the director of the corps, who declared that “the company will only pass through his corpse.” The general was politely removed from the path by the right-flank cadets, and the company was at the disposal of the commander of the combined cadet cadet detachment on the Yauza River. The cadets of the three Moscow corps and the Alexandrovite cadets covered themselves with immortal glory in the fight against the Reds these days. They fought for two weeks, proving in practice what comradely chemistry and mutual assistance mean to a Russian cadet and cadet.

During the days of the Bolshevik revolution in October 1917, almost all military schools, headed by the Nikolaev Engineering School, which especially suffered in this fight, fought against the Bolsheviks in Petrograd with arms in hand.

In the first days of the revolution, the Naval Cadet Corps in Petrograd was attacked by the rebellious mob and soldiers, led by disobedient lower ranks of the Life Guards of the Finnish Regiment and spare parts. The director of the Naval Corps, Admiral Kartsev, ordered the distribution of weapons to midshipmen and senior cadets, and the corps offered armed resistance to the rebels.

Wanting to save the midshipmen and cadets, the director of the Naval Corps went out into the lobby and entered into negotiations with the attackers, telling them that he would not allow the crowd into the corps building, since he was responsible for state property, but was ready to issue a certain number of rifles and allow delegates to inspect all the premises , in order to make sure that there were no machine guns, which the agitators accused the Marine Corps of firing. While, on the orders of Admiral Kartsev, his assistant, class inspector, Lieutenant General Briger, went with delegates to inspect the hull, the admiral was attacked, he was hit on the head with a rifle butt and was taken to the State Duma building, where he seriously wounded himself, attempting suicide. Lieutenant General Briger, who replaced Admiral Kartsev as director of the corps, dismissed the cadets and midshipmen to their homes. On this day, in essence, the 216-year service of the Naval Corps of the Russian Empire ended.

In the Voronezh Cadet Corps, when the manifesto about the abdication of the Emperor arrived, which the director read in the church, the rector of the temple, the corps’ teacher of law, Fr. Archpriest Stefan (Zverev), and after him all the cadets burst into tears. That same day, the cadets of the drill company tore the red rag hung by the clerks from the flagpole, and with the windows open, they played the national anthem, echoed by the voices of the entire corps. This caused the arrival of the Red Guards at the corps building, who intended to kill the cadets. The latter was prevented with great difficulty by the director, Major General Belogorsky.

In the first days of Bolshevism, in the autumn and winter of 1917, all cadet corps on the Volga were destroyed, namely: Yaroslavl, Simbirsk and Nizhny Novgorod. The Red Guards caught cadets in cities and at railway stations, in carriages, on ships, beat them, mutilated them, threw them out of the windows of trains and threw them into the water. The surviving cadets of these corps arrived in single order in Orenburg and joined two local corps, subsequently sharing their fate.

The Pskov Cadet Corps, transferred in 1917 from Pskov to Kazan and located in the building of the Theological Seminary on the Arsk Field, during the October Bolshevik uprising in this city, like the Moscow cadets, joined the local cadets fighting the Reds. In 1918, the Pskov cadets set out on a march to Irkutsk, where again, already in 1920, they fought against the Red regime with arms in hand. Some of them died in battle, and the survivors, having moved to Orenburg, continued the fight against the Reds. One cadet even managed to organize his own partisan detachment in Siberia. The banner of the Pskov Corps was saved from the hands of the Reds by the corps priest, rector Fr. Vasily.

The commander of the second company of the Simbirsk Cadet Corps, Colonel Gorizontov, overcoming thousands of difficulties and dangers, led the remnants of the corps to Irkutsk, where in December 1917, the cadets of the local military school did not allow the local Bolsheviks to seize power in the city, fighting with the Red Guard for eight days. During these days, the cadets lost more than 50 people and several officers killed and wounded, but they themselves killed over 400 Reds.

On December 17, 1917, a combat company of the Orenburg Neplyuevsky Corps, under the command of its vice-sergeant Yuzbashev, left the corps and joined the detachment of the Orenburg Cossacks of Ataman Dutov. In their ranks, the cadets took part in the battles with the Reds near Karaganda and Kargada, suffering losses in the wounded and killed, and then the remnants of the company, together with the cadets of the Orenburg Cossack School, left Orenburg and moved south through the steppes. This campaign is described by the talented pen of cadet-writer Evgeniy Yakonovsky. The cadets of the Orenburg Neplyuevsky Corps (graduating class) subsequently almost entirely made up the team of the armored train “Vityaz”, just as other cadets made up the teams of the armored trains “Glory of the Officer” and “Russia”.

In January 1918, cadets of the Odessa Infantry School, together with their officers, were surrounded in the school building by Red Guard gangs. Having offered them vigorous resistance, the cadets only left the building on the third day of the battle, and then on the orders of the head of the school, Colonel Kislov, in single formations and groups in order to make their way to the Don and join the ranks of the Volunteer Army.

In October 1917, the Kiev Infantry School named after Grand Duke Konstantin Konstantinovich entered into battle with the Reds on the streets of Kyiv and suffered its first losses in this battle. Having seized the train at the station by force of arms, it moved to Kuban, where, in the ranks of the Kuban units, it participated in the Ice Campaign and in the capture of Yekaterinodar.

From the autumn of 1917 until the winter of 1923, vast areas of Russia were engulfed in civil war. In this grandiose struggle, Russian cadets and cadets took the most honorable place, confirming the principle that “cadets have different shoulder straps, but one soul.” The cadets and their senior comrades and brothers - cadets - suffered terrible losses in killed, wounded and tortured, not to mention forever crippled physically and morally for the rest of their lives. These children and youth volunteers were the most beautiful and, at the same time, the most painful of all in the White movement. Entire books should subsequently be written about their participation in this most terrible of wars, about how these children and youths made their way into the white armies, how they abandoned their families, and how they found, after much work and searching, the promised army.

The first volunteer detachments that began to fight the Reds near Rostov and Taganrog were overwhelmingly made up of cadets and cadets, just like the detachments of Chernetsov, Semiletov and other founders of the fight against the Reds. The first coffins, invariably escorted to Novocherkassk by the sad Ataman Kaledin, contained the bodies of killed cadets and cadets. At their funeral, General Alekseev, standing at the open grave, said:

– I see a monument that Russia will erect for these children, and this monument should depict an eagle’s nest and the eaglets killed in it...

In November 1917, the Junker Battalion was formed in Novocherkassk, consisting of two companies: the first cadet under the command of Captain Skosyrsky, and the second cadet under the command of Staff Captain Mizernitsky. On November 27, he received an order to board a train and with fifty Don Cossack Military School was sent to Nakhichevan. Having unloaded under enemy fire, the battalion quickly formed up, as if in a training exercise, and, walking at full speed, rushed to attack the Reds. Having knocked them out of the Balabinskaya grove, he entrenched himself in it and continued the shooting battle with the support of two of our guns. In this battle, almost the entire platoon of Captain Donskov, consisting of cadets from the Oryol and Odessa corps, was killed. The corpses found after the battle were mutilated and stabbed with bayonets. Thus, the Russian soil was stained with the blood of Russian child cadets in the first battle, which laid the foundation for the Volunteer Army and the White struggle during the capture of Rostov-on-Don. In January 1918, a volunteer detachment “Salvation of the Kuban” was created in Yekaterinodar under the command of Colonel Lesevitsky, consisting of cadets from various corps and cadets of the Nikolaev Cavalry School. In its ranks, cadets heroically fell on the field of honor: Georgy Pereverzev - 3rd Moscow Corps, Sergei von Ozarovsky - Voronezh, Danilov - Vladikavkaz and many others, whose names are recorded by the Lord God...

After the capture of Voronezh by General Shkuro’s detachment, many cadets of the local corps, hiding from the Reds in the city, volunteered for the detachment. Of these, Voronezh cadets were killed in subsequent battles: Gusev, Glonti, Zolotrubov, Selivanov and Grotkevich.

The poetess Snasareva-Kazakova dedicated her soul-tearing poems to the volunteer cadets who died near Irkutsk:

The cadets of all Russian corps covered themselves with glory and honor, fighting alongside their older cadet brothers on the Orenburg Front, with General Miller in the North, with General Yudenich near Duga and Petrograd, with Admiral Kolchak in Siberia, with General Diederichs in the Far East, with Cossack atamans in the Urals, Don, Kuban, Orenburg, Transbaikalia, Mongolia, Crimea and the Caucasus. All these cadets and cadets had one impulse, one dream - to sacrifice themselves for their homeland. This high rise in spirit led to victory. Only they explained the entire success of the volunteers against a numerous enemy. This was also reflected in the songs of the volunteers, the most typical of which is their song about the Ice March in Kuban:

In the evening, closed in formation, We sing our quiet song About how they went to the distant steppes We, the children of a crazy, unhappy land, And in the feat we saw one goal - Save your native country from shame. The blizzards and the cold of the night scared us. It was not for nothing that we were given the Ice Campaign...

“The impulse in its sublimity, its selflessness, its self-sacrifice is so exceptional,” wrote one of our glorious cadet writers, “that it is difficult to find anything similar to it in history. This feat is all the more significant because it was completely disinterested, little appreciated by people and deprived of the laurel wreath of victory...”

One thoughtful Englishman, who was in the south of Russia during the civil war, said that “in the history of the world he knows nothing more remarkable than the child volunteers of the White movement. To all the fathers and mothers who gave their children for their homeland, he must say that their children brought a sacred spirit to the battlefield and, in the purity of their youth, lay down for Russia. And if people did not appreciate their sacrifices and did not yet erect a worthy monument to them, then God saw their sacrifice and accepted their souls into His heavenly abode...”

Grand Duke Konstantin Konstantinovich, anticipating the bright role that in the future would fall to the lot of his beloved cadets, long before the revolution, dedicated prophetic lines to them:

Even though you are a boy, you are aware in your heart Kinship with a great military family, Be proud to belong to her soul; You are not alone - you are a flock of eagles. The day will come and, spreading its wings, Happy to sacrifice themselves, You will rush bravely into mortal combat, Death for the honor of one’s native land is enviable!..

During the days of the White movement in Ukraine, under Hetman Skoropadsky, cadet corps were restored under the name of “military bursas” in Kyiv, Sumy, Poltava and Odessa. Likewise, the cadet corps opened again: Khabarovsk, Irkutsk, Novocherkassk and Vladikavkaz, since the revolution and Bolshevism led to the destruction of all military schools and 23 cadet corps out of 31 that existed before March 1917 in Russia during the period 1917-18. The death of most of them was terrible, and impartial history will ever note the bloody events that accompanied this death, such as the general beating of personnel and cadets of the Tashkent corps, which can only be equated to the beating of infants at the dawn of the New Testament... It was an unworthy Bolshevik revenge for the fact that a combat company of Tashkent cadets took part in the defense of the Tashkent fortress along with cadets and ensign schools.

After the defeat of the White movement, the fate of the cadet corps that were on the territory of the White armies was very difficult and sad. On the day of the evacuation of Odessa, January 25, 1920, only part of the Odessa and Kyiv corps managed to board ships under Red fire. The other part, unable to get into the port, was forced to turn back and join the white troops retreating from the city; Captain Remmert commanded this unit. On January 31, 1920, in the detachment of Colonel Stessel, during the retreat to the Romanian border, she heroically defended the left flank of the detachment in the battles of Kandel and Seltz, after which the cadets managed to cross to Romania. The terrible days they experienced were brilliantly described by cadet-writer Yevgeny Yakonovsky in his best work, “Kandel.”

After the death of the White Army in Siberia, the Khabarovsk Corps had to be evacuated to Vladivostok on the Russian Island, and then to Shanghai. The Siberian Emperor Alexander I Corps entered Yugoslavia through Vladivostok and China.

On December 19, 1919, the Red offensive on Novocherkassk forced the Don Corps, led by its director General Chebotarev, to move south in marching order. Through Novorossiysk the corps was evacuated to Egypt and then to Yugoslavia. After the evacuation of General Wrangel’s army, the cadet corps also ended up here, finding shelter in the Crimea and consolidated into the Crimean Cadet Corps. Thanks to this, in Yugoslavia, after the liquidation of the White movement in Russia, there were three cadet corps from the remnants of the previous corps of the tsarist era, namely:

1) Crimean - from the cadets of the Petrovsky Poltava and Vladikavkaz corps in the mountains. White church;

2) First Russian - from the remains of the Kyiv, Polotsk and Odessa corps in the mountains. Sarajevo;

3) Donskoy - from the cadets of the Novocherkassk, 1st Siberian and Khabarovsk corps in the mountains. Garazhde.

Subsequently, all these three corps were consolidated into one, called the First Russian Cadet Corps of Grand Duke Konstantin Konstantinovich, whose cadets call themselves “Prince Konstantinovtsy”; patronage was given by order of King Alexander I of Yugoslavia. This corps existed in Yugoslavia until it was occupied by the Red Army during the last world war.

As for military schools, during the White struggle the Kiev Infantry School was the first to arrive from Kyiv to the Kuban and Don. After the battles on the streets of its hometown, it went to Kuban and took part in its liberation, after which it resumed military training work in Yekaterinodar, and then in Feodosia. This work was interrupted by the school’s participation in battles, as, for example, in the Crimea near Perekop, when it left two officer and 36 cadet graves there, and then in August 1920 it took part in the landing on the Kuban of General Ulagai.

In the fall of 1920, the residents of Feodosia intended to erect a monument on the embankment, representing the snow-covered figure of a cadet defending the Crimea. This monument was supposed to perpetuate the feat of the school, which saved Crimea from the Reds in the January cold of 1920.

In addition to the Kyiv School, the Alexander Infantry School was revived in the Volunteer Army in the South of Russia under the command of General A.A. Kurbatova. It was awarded by General Wrangel with silver pipes with St. Nicholas ribbons for the landing operation on Taman under the command of General Khamin.

The Nikolaev Cavalry School was formed in Gallipoli, and then, after the army moved to Yugoslavia, it settled in Bila Tserkva, where it gave 3 graduations, namely: in November 1922, in July 1923 and in September 1923. In addition, before its Closing in 1923, it produced Estandard Junkers. A total of 352 people graduated from it and were promoted to cornets.

In Bulgaria for some time there existed the Sergievsky Artillery School, the Alekseevsky Infantry School, the Engineering School and the Nikolaevsky Artillery School, which arrived from Gallipoli.

After the evacuation of General Wrangel’s army from Crimea, the Naval Cadet Corps settled in Bizerte, where it continued to exist for several years in order to enable midshipmen and cadets to complete the course.

It is necessary to mention the Russian Military School in China, opened by the ruler of Manchuria, Marshal Zhang Zi Ling, to recruit officers for his army that fought the Reds in Manchuria. The school was formed according to the program of Russian peacetime military schools with a two-year course, and the teachers and officers in it were Russians. Its first release took place in 1927, the second in 1928. All the cadets promoted from him to officers, Russian by nationality, were recognized by order of the All-Military Union as second lieutenants of the Russian army.

Nowadays in France, in the vicinity of Paris, there is a Russian Lyceum Corps named after Emperor Nicholas II, thanks to the donation and annual financial assistance to this educational institution by Lady Lydia Pavlovna Deterling. Its first director was General Rimsky-Korsakov, according to whose plans the lyceum was founded. The patron of the corps until his death in 1955 was the august cadet and cadet Grand Duke Gabriel Konstantinovich. In 1936, the head of the House of Romanov granted Lady Deterling, in gratitude for the great Russian cause she supported, the title of Princess Donskoy.

To all of the above, it would not be out of place to add that since the revolution, the view of Russian educated society abroad on Russian military educational institutions, whose students showed so much heroism and selflessness in defending their homeland during the Civil War in Russia, has changed dramatically. The best evidence of this is the recognition of one of the leaders of public opinion before the revolution, writer and publicist Alexander Amfitheatrov, who in one of his articles in the foreign press exclaimed, amazed at the self-sacrifice and heroism of the cadets: “I didn’t know you, gentlemen, cadets, I honestly admit, and only I have now realized the depth of your asceticism..."

Finishing this book, I must admit with great satisfaction that the cadets of the Russian foreign corps have completely absorbed the best traditions of the cadets of the tsarist era, in the person of the princes of Konstantinov, now being the core and main support of the General Cadet Association abroad. May the Lord God grant them happiness to live until that bright day when they can pass the torch of our continuity to the cadets of the future free national Russia.

San Francisco, 1961