Maria Vladislavovna Zakharchenko Schultz. Revolution and Civil War
Zakharchenko-Schultz Maria Vladislavovna
Maria Vladislavovna (née Lysova) was born in 1892 in Penza into the family of a court councilor, a member of the Penza District Court. Many historians point to her origins from an old noble family, but their family was noble only in the third generation. Constant life in the village developed in her from childhood a love for nature and horses, of which she was a great connoisseur. There she became addicted to horse hunting. At the age of fourteen she entered the third grade of the Smolny Institute for Noble Maidens, from which she graduated in 1911 with a gold medal. Then he spends a year in a boarding house in Lausanne, Switzerland. In the winter of 1913, while in St. Petersburg visiting the family of the captain of the Semenovsky Life Guards Regiment, Stein, she met Lieutenant of the same regiment Ivan Sergeevich Mikhno, a participant in the Japanese campaign, whom she married on October 14, 1913.
With the outbreak of the First World War, Staff Captain Mikhno went with the regiment to the front to serve as commander of a team of mounted reconnaissance officers. In the fall, he received a severe concussion and, after being transported to Penza, died on November 19 in the arms of his wife. Maria Vladislavovna was pregnant at that time, the child was born seven days after the death of her father.
Most likely, this shock was the reason for her subsequent choice. She applied to join the 3rd Elisavetgrad Hussar Regiment. However, realizing the obviousness of the future refusal of admission, she turned directly to the chief of the regiment - Grand Duchess Olga Nikolaevna, the eldest august daughter of Nikolai Alexandrovich. Back in 1909, the Emperor appointed the Grand Duchess as chief of the Elizavetgrad Hussars. Olga Nikolaevna loved her regiment very much, provided it with all kinds of patronage, the officers responded to her with mutual love and were very proud of such patronage. Maria Vladislavovna turned to her, as well as to Empress Alexandra Feodorovna, with such an unusual request. The Empress personally asked Nicholas II to help assign her to the regiment.
In the early spring of 1915, Maria Vladislavovna went to the front. With the rank of volunteer under the fictitious name of Andrei Mikhno, she joins the 5th squadron of the Elisavetgrad Hussar Regiment. At first, Maria Vladislavovna stayed with the people of her platoon: she cleaned and fed her horse, cleaned weapons and equipment. Then, like other volunteers, she was placed with the officers and ate in the officers' canteen. She was assigned a messenger to take care of the horse. But she still carried out her service, i.e. along with other hussars, she was assigned as a sentry, sentinel, and on travel. The promotion was not long in coming. One day, during a reconnaissance raid, she found herself next to an officer of the Novorossiysk Dragoon Regiment. Both of them came under gunfire. The officer was seriously wounded, and Maria Vladislavovna carried him out in her arms. For which she was awarded the St. George Cross, IV degree, with subsequent promotion to non-commissioned officer.
During another sortie, she and two privates came close to a German ambush, located 20-30 steps away from them behind the railroad tracks. One soldier was killed immediately, the other, wounded in the abdominal cavity, she, being by that time already wounded in the arm, carried her to her own under hurricane fire from the Germans. After examining the overcoat, it turned out that it was pierced in several places.
In November 1915, during the next “hunt”, she volunteered to be a guide for a group of scouts near the village of Loknitsa. Approaching the rear of the German position, they forded an icy river and passed through swamps overgrown with forest. As a result, the German outpost was partly bayoneted, partly captured and taken to our trenches. The commander of the cavalry corps, Lieutenant General von Gielenschmidt, signed an order awarding her the St. George Cross, III degree.
At the end of 1915 - beginning of 1916 in Belarus, in Polesie, Maria Vladislavovna, as part of the partisan detachment of Lieutenant Khmelevsky, participated in the destruction of a German guard post. Taken by surprise, the Germans tried to hide in a haystack, but the hussars discovered them and stabbed them with bayonets and pulled them out by their legs. As a result, the partisan party returned “home” to the trenches without losses with several prisoners.
In 1916, in the Dobrudka (Dobruzhe) region, the 5th squadron under the command of Colonel von Baumgarten occupied one village. When Maria Vladislavovna rode her horse into one of the courtyards, she unexpectedly came across a Bulgarian soldier of the infantry regiment and began shouting at him in such a frantic voice that the soldier was confused, threw his rifle and raised his hands. Then he was very embarrassed when he was told that he had been captivated by a woman.
In winter, the regiment was withdrawn from the front to rest and at the end of January 1917 was stationed in Bessarabia. Soon news came of unrest in Petrograd. Maria Vladislavovna experienced the February “bloodless” revolution and the collapse of Russian statehood, which later led to the Bolshevik coup, as a national disaster. At Christmas 1917, almost all the officers left the regiment without recognizing Soviet power. The regiment commander and several other officers tried to make their way to the Volunteer Army in the south of Russia, but on the way they were arrested by the Bolsheviks and later shot.
Russian empire
V. G. Lysov
I. S. Mikhno;
G. A. Zakharchenko
Maria Vladislavovna Zakharchenko-Schultz(nee Lysova, in first marriage Mikhno) - political activist of the white movement. From the nobles. Participant in the First World War, Civil War, White Movement, Gallipoli resident, one of the leaders of the Military Organization of the EMRO, terrorist, intelligence officer.
Biography
Personality formation
Masha Lysova was born into the family of active state councilor V. G. Lysov. Masha's mother died shortly after giving birth. Masha spent the first years of her life in the Penza province, on her parents’ estate, and in the city of Penza, where she received a good home education. From a young age, horses were her passion. She continued her studies at, from which she graduated in 1911 with a gold medal. After graduating from Smolny, she spent a year studying in Lausanne. Returning to her native estate, she put the farm in order and created a small exemplary stud farm. In 1913, she married a participant in the Japanese war, captain of the Semenovsky Life Guards regiment I. S. Mikhno. The young people settled in St. Petersburg on Zagorodny Prospekt, house 54 - in this house there were government apartments for the officers of the regiment.
Participation in the First World War
With the outbreak of the First World War, Mikhno went to the front with his regiment, where he was soon seriously wounded and died in the arms of his wife. Three days after her husband's death, Maria gave birth to a daughter. She decided to take the place of her deceased husband at the front. By the Highest permission, obtained with the help of the Empress and her eldest daughter, Maria, under the name of her first husband, Mikhno, leaving her daughter in the care of her relatives, at the beginning of 1915 she volunteered in the 3rd Elizavetgrad Hussar Regiment of Her Imperial Highness Grand Duchess Olga Nikolaevna - a regiment of the Russian Imperial Army, whose chief was Grand Duchess Olga. She was immediately enrolled in the fifth squadron of captain P.P. Obukh. Subsequently, one of Maria’s fellow soldiers, staff captain B. N. Arkhipov, recalled her first time in the regiment:
Maria Vladislavovna was not bad at riding like a man, but, of course, she was never trained in the use of weapons and reconnaissance: this means that from a combat point of view she was useless. Moreover, the constant presence of a young woman, dressed as a hussar, day and night, greatly embarrassed the officers and soldiers. The regiment commander would not have been averse to getting rid of such a volunteer, but he was confirmed that everything was done at the personal request of the Sovereign Emperor. I had to come to terms with a fait accompli
However, soon such a skeptical attitude towards the woman changed. As the same Arkhipov recalled: “It should be mentioned that during the period spent in the ranks of the regiment, being constantly in combat, M. V. Mikhno learned everything that was required of a combat hussar, and could compete on equal terms with men, distinguished by fearlessness, especially in intelligence." Maria received her St. George Crosses like this: in November 1915, having volunteered as a guide to the reconnaissance team of her division, at night she led her detachment to the rear of the German company. The enemy was cut down and captured. During another reconnaissance, Maria, accompanied by two soldiers, went to a German outpost, which opened fire on the hussars. One of the soldiers was killed, the other was wounded. Maria, herself wounded, under enemy fire, managed to carry her wounded colleague out of the fire. The next incident that happened to Maria, by that time already a non-commissioned officer, occurred in 1916 in Dobruja, when a squadron of hussars under the command of Captain von Baumgarten occupied a Bulgarian village. Riding a horse into a courtyard, Maria came across a Bulgarian infantryman. Undeterred, she began to shout at him in such a frantic voice that the soldier became confused, threw down his rifle and surrendered. Subsequently, he was embarrassed to learn that he had been captivated by a young woman.
At the end of 1916, the regiment was withdrawn from the front for rest and at the end of January 1917 was stationed in Bessarabia. The February Revolution found him there.
Revolution and Civil War
The Elizavetgrad regiment remained one of the few units of the Russian army that was not affected by decomposition. The hussars maintained discipline, relations between officers and privates remained within the framework of the regulations. However, by the end of 1917, after the Bolshevik coup, the regiment's employees left its location, going home.
Arriving in her native land, Maria was faced with terrible pictures of the revolution - her estate and stud farm were ruined, in the city of Penza crowds robbed shops, in the villages they burned landowners' estates. And they killed everywhere - mercilessly, senselessly, with impunity. Maria organized the Self-Defense Union and a partisan detachment of Penza student youth to protect private property in the Penza district. Memoirists Roman Gul and staff captain Arkhipov reported that Maria’s detachment cruelly took revenge on the peasants whose villages took part in the destruction of landowners’ estates, burning peasant huts, but later researchers are inclined to believe that Maria’s detachments never completed the formation stage and did not take part in real affairs.
Maria’s real business was the transfer of officers from Penza to the White armies. No one helped her - she alone, with the help of an old maid, sheltered former officers and, providing them with documents, sent them to the whites. This was her first experience of underground work behind Bolshevik lines. Then she met her old acquaintance, an officer of the 15th Uhlan Regiment, who in the spring of 1918 became her second husband, under whose name she gained subsequent fame - G. A. Zakharchenko - wounded, he ended up in Maria’s house, while he was recovering - they got closer. When Maria’s activities nevertheless came to the attention of the Bolsheviks, they both had to make their way to the whites themselves. The path to the Volunteer Army was roundabout and very long - G. A. Zakharchenko managed to get documents of Persian subjects. So, under the guise of “Persians,” the Zakharchenko couple traveled from Moscow through Astrakhan to the Middle East - according to one version, through Mesopotamia, occupied by the British, they ended up in Armenia, making a sea voyage through the Persian Gulf and the Suez Canal, according to another version, their path ran via India.
In 1919-1920 - volunteering in the All-Russian Socialist Republic, in the 15th Uhlan Regiment, commanded by her husband, Colonel Zakharchenko. She was distinguished by her fearlessness in battles and cruelty towards prisoners, whom she preferred not to take, for which she received the nickname “Mad Maria”. In the fall of 1920, having buried her husband, who died of blood poisoning after being seriously wounded, she was seriously wounded near Kakhovka - early frosts set in, and frostbite in the extremities was added to the gunshot wound. After the Crimean evacuation, Maria ended up in the Gallipoli camp.
Emigration. In the Combat Organization of General Kutepov
After the Gallipoli camp, it first came to the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, and then to Western Europe. Probably, Maria Zakharchenko became one of the first participants in the Combat Organization of General Kutepov, which set as its task the continuation of the armed struggle against Bolshevism, including by committing terrorist acts on the territory of the USSR.
In October 1923, she, together with her colleague - Captain G.N. Radkovich, a former life huntsman, who became her third, civilian husband, with whom she got along while still in the Gallipoli camp - under the guise of a married couple named Schultz, illegally crossed the Soviet-Estonian border and visited Petrograd and Moscow on a secret mission for General Kutepov. This was her first underground illegal visit to Soviet Russia. In subsequent years there will be many more such illegal visits and long stays in the USSR.
Zakharchenko-Schultz became one of the key figures in Operation Trust, carried out by the security officers, a provocation designed to discredit and destroy the EMRO and reduce the “activism” of the White emigration. Using the Schultz spouses blindly, the security officers for a long time managed to control and even direct the activities of the EMRO. Zakharchenko-Schultz was used to lure English intelligence officer Sidney Reilly to Soviet territory.
However, it became more and more difficult over time to restrain the “activism” of Kutepov’s militants and Zakharchenko-Schultz personally. Despite the calls of the NKVD agents who were in the leadership of the Trust to abandon terrorist attacks and “accumulate strength,” Zakharchenko-Schultz sought to change the policy of the EMRO and personally of Kutepov, whom she knew well, towards carrying out active sabotage and terrorist actions against the Bolshevik leadership. She proposed creating the Union of National Terrorists (SNT) - an organization that would engage in terror on the territory of the USSR.
I was given to Maria Vladislavovna Zakharchenko-Schultz and her husband under special protection. Her husband was an officer... According to her cards taken in her youth, she was a pretty woman, not to say beautiful. I recognized her already at the age of fading, but still something remained in her features. She was slightly above average height, with delicate features. She experienced a lot, and her face, of course, bore the mark of all the trials, but the woman was resilient and had absolutely exceptional energy... she worked “on chemistry,” that is, she developed and retyped secret correspondence that was written with chemical ink... I had to have frank conversations with Maria Vladislavovna. One day she told me: “I’m getting old. I feel like this is my last strength. I invested everything in Trust, if it ends, I won’t live.”
On the opposite edge of the forest, in the interval between the targets, a man and a woman stand next to each other, each holding a revolver. They raise their revolvers up. A woman turns to us and shouts: “For Russia!” - and shoots himself in the temple. The man also shoots, but in the mouth. Both fall.
...I saw this heroine again two hours later. In a modest gray dress, she was lying right on the ground at the headquarters of our regiment. Below average height. Middle-aged. Brown haired. Deathly pale face, pointed nose, closed eyes. Barely noticeable breathing. Unconscious.
Relatives
In the research literature, Maria Vladislavovna is mentioned as the niece of A.P. Kutepov. Researcher A. S. Gasparyan, however, rejected this relationship, pointing out that although Kutepov himself called Maria Dmitrievna and her husband Radkovich “nephews,” this was nothing more than a nickname.
First husband Ivan Sergeevich Mikhno (??-1914) - a guard officer, a participant in the Russian-Japanese War. He died in the first months of the Great War, while serving as the head of a team of mounted reconnaissance officers.
Second husband Grigory Aleksandrovich Zakharchenko (1875-1920), headquarters captain. Served in the Persian Brigade. Colonel of the 15th Lancer Regiment. In the Volunteer Army from June 1919 in the division of the 15th Uhlan Regiment. He was wounded near Kakhovka and died of his wounds in the summer of 1920.
Third husband Georgy Nikolaevich Radkovich (1898-1928) (underground pseudonym Shultz), participant in the Kutepov Combat Organization and Operation Trust.
In culture
Zakharchenko-Schultz was one of the characters in the novel “Dead Swell” by the Soviet writer L.V. Nikulin, which tells about the Chekist operation “Trust”. The role of Maria Vladislavovna in the film “Operation Trust”, staged in 1967 based on this novel, was played by Soviet theater actress Lyudmila Kasatkina.
see also
Notes
- Zakharchenko-Schultz Maria Vladislavovna (Russian) // Bulletin of the EMRO: Magazine. - 2003. - No. 6-7.
Maria Vladislavovna Zakharchenko-Schultz(nee Lysova, in first marriage Mikhno; 1893-1927) - political activist of the white movement. From the nobles. Participant in the First World War, Civil War, White Movement, Gallipoli resident, one of the leaders of the Military Organization of the EMRO, terrorist, intelligence officer.
Biography
Personality formation
Masha Lysova was born into the family of active state councilor V. G. Lysov. Masha's mother died shortly after giving birth. Masha spent the first years of her life in the Penza province, on her parents’ estate, and in the city of Penza, where she received a good home education. From a young age, horses were her passion. She continued her studies at the Smolny Institute, from which she graduated in 1911 with a gold medal. After graduating from Smolny, she spent a year studying in Lausanne. Returning to her native estate, she put the farm in order and created a small exemplary stud farm. In 1913, she married a participant in the Japanese war, captain of the Semenovsky Life Guards Regiment, Ivan Sergeevich Mikhno. The young people settled in St. Petersburg on Zagorodny Prospekt, building 54 - in this house there were government apartments for the officers of the regiment.
Participation in the First World War
With the outbreak of the First World War, Mikhno went to the front with his regiment, where he was soon seriously wounded and died in the arms of his wife. Three days after her husband's death, Maria gave birth to a daughter. She decided to take the place of her deceased husband at the front. By the Highest permission, obtained with the help of the Empress and her eldest daughter, Maria, under the name of her first husband, Mikhno, leaving her daughter in the care of her relatives, at the beginning of 1915 she volunteered in the 3rd Elizavetgrad Hussar Regiment of Her Imperial Highness Grand Duchess Olga Nikolaevna - a regiment of the Russian Imperial Army, whose chief was Grand Duchess Olga. She was immediately enrolled in the fifth squadron of captain P.P. Obukh. Subsequently, one of Maria’s fellow soldiers, staff captain B. N. Arkhipov, recalled her first time in the regiment:
Maria Vladislavovna was not bad at riding like a man, but, of course, she was never trained in the use of weapons and reconnaissance: this means that from a combat point of view she was useless. Moreover, the constant presence of a young woman, dressed as a hussar, day and night, greatly embarrassed the officers and soldiers. The regiment commander would not have been averse to getting rid of such a volunteer, but he was confirmed that everything was done at the personal request of the Sovereign Emperor. I had to come to terms with a fait accompli
However, soon such a skeptical attitude towards the woman changed. As the same Arkhipov recalled: “It should be mentioned that during the period spent in the ranks of the regiment, being constantly in combat, M. V. Mikhno learned everything that was required of a combat hussar, and could compete on equal terms with men, distinguished by fearlessness, especially in intelligence." Maria received her St. George Crosses like this: in November 1915, having volunteered as a guide to the reconnaissance team of her division, at night she led her detachment to the rear of the German company. The enemy was cut down and captured. During another reconnaissance, Maria, accompanied by two soldiers, went to a German outpost, which opened fire on the hussars. One of the soldiers was killed, the other was wounded. Maria, herself wounded, under enemy fire, managed to carry her wounded colleague out of the fire. The next incident that happened to Maria, by that time already a non-commissioned officer, occurred in 1916 in Dobruja, when a squadron of hussars under the command of Captain von Baumgarten occupied a Bulgarian village. Riding a horse into a courtyard, Maria came across a Bulgarian infantryman. Undeterred, she began to shout at him in such a frantic voice that the soldier became confused, threw down his rifle and surrendered. Subsequently, he was embarrassed to learn that he had been captivated by a young woman.
At the end of 1916, the regiment was withdrawn from the front for rest and at the end of January 1917 was stationed in Bessarabia. The February Revolution found him there.
Revolution and Civil War
The Elizavetgrad regiment remained one of the few units of the Russian army that was not affected by decay. The hussars maintained discipline, relations between officers and privates remained within the framework of the regulations. However, by the end of 1917, after the October Revolution, the regiment's employees left its location, going home.
On June 23, 1927, in a shootout with OGPU officers at the Dretun station near Polotsk, a participant in the First World War and the Civil War, a political figure in the white movement, one of the leaders of the Military Organization of the EMRO, an intelligence officer, Zakharchenko, Maria Vladislavovna Shultz, died - a woman of extraordinary destiny! She fit many heroic deeds into her 33 years of life. She performed most of her feats in secret, but even what we know arouses genuine admiration.
Masha was born in 1893 on an estate in Penza province. in the family of State Councilor Lysov. She graduated from the Smolny Institute, married Lieutenant of the Semenovsky Life Guards Regiment Ivan Sergeevich Mikhno, but in 1914 her husband died from severe wounds received in battle. In the spring of 1915, she achieved enrollment as a volunteer in the 5th squadron of the 3rd Elisavetgrad Hussar Regiment under the name of Andrei Mikhno, fought bravely and desperately (awarded two St. George's crosses and a medal for bravery). In the fall of 1917, after the Bolshevik coup, she returned to her estate and hid volunteer officers. She had a whole system for transporting White Guards with convoys going east for salt, and with her faithful old maid she personally checked this road. In the thickets of her Penza garden and under the stairs in the closet of the outbuilding, many, many officers who fled from the Bolshevik bullet found shelter and help. By the way, General Rozanov, later Kolchak’s chief of staff, was also transported across the front. She married the former captain of the 15th Ulan Tatar Regiment Zakharchenko for the second time, made her way to the Kuban with him, fought in the troops of Denikin and Wrangel in the Crimea, was seriously wounded in the chest, and suffered from typhus. And a new loss: in the battles near Kakhovka, the commander of the 2nd cavalry regiment, Colonel Zakharchenko, died of blood poisoning. The frantic avenger received the nickname “Mad Maria” from the Reds. They say that she personally shot captured commissars and security officers with a machine gun. She went to Turkey with Wrangel’s army and was in the Gallipoli camp. She married a friend from her youth, a life huntsman, captain Georgy Nikolaevich Radkovich. At the end of September 1923, together with her husband, she secretly crossed the Soviet-Estonian border and arrived in Petrograd under the surname Schultz, and later to Moscow under the surname Krasnoshtanova (her humor was also fine). At the Central Market, she and her husband opened a stall selling small consumer goods; To strengthen confidence in the monarchical organization "Trust", she was offered secretarial and cryptographic work: mail sent by the "Trust" members now went through her. She crossed the border through the “window” several times, was in Finland, Poland, Paris, met with Kutepov.
At the beginning of June 1927 - after the April scandal with the failure and debunking of the "Trust", Maria Vladislavovna’s group carried out an unsuccessful arson of the security officers’ dormitory on Malaya Lubyanka, building 3/6. The attempt ended in failure - the terrorists were discovered by security before everything was prepared for sabotage. It was not possible to activate the landmine; only one melinite bomb managed to explode, which caused a fire that was easily extinguished. They tried to go abroad, but On June 23, 1927, in the forest near the village of Sitno near the Dretun station of the Moscow-Belarusian-Baltic Railway, Maria and her comrade-in-arms Yuri took the last battle with the Red Army soldiers and committed suicide, not wanting to surrender.
As one of the eyewitnesses to the death of Zakharchenko-Schultz, a Red Army soldier who was present at the shooting range at that moment, reported:
“On the opposite edge of the forest, in the interval between the targets, a man and a woman stand next to each other, each with a revolver in their hands. They raise their revolvers up. The woman turns to us, shouts: “For Russia!” and shoots herself in the temple. The man also shoots , but in the mouth. Both fall. ...I saw this heroine again about two hours later. In a modest gray dress, she was lying right on the ground at the headquarters of our regiment. Below average height. Middle aged. Brown-haired. Deathly pale face, pointed nose, closed eyes. Barely noticeable breathing. Unconscious."
