Mikhail Konstantinovich Diterichs was born into a family of hereditary military men. The Dieterichs (Dietrichsteins) are an ancient knightly family whose possessions were located in Moravia. In 1735, Johann Dieterichs received an invitation from the Russian Throne to lead the construction of a seaport in Riga, for which he was awarded an estate. His youngest son chose pastoral ministry. His sons chose military service. A well-known representative of the dynasty was Mikhail Konstantinovich’s grandfather, Major General Alexander Ivanovich Diterichs 3rd. With the rank of lieutenant colonel of artillery, he took part in the Patriotic War of 1812 and fought on the Borodino field. After the end of the Napoleonic wars, he participated in the Russian-Turkish war of 1828-1829. As a sign of respect for the bravery of the Russians, the Turkish Pasha presented the general with a blade made of Damascus steel. This saber hung under the portrait of the general in the office of Konstantin Aleksandrovich Deteriks (father of Mikhail Konstantinovich). Infantry General Konstantin Aleksandrovich Deteriks (Diterichs) gained fame as one of the military leaders of the Caucasian War. L.N. knew him. Tolstoy, who widely used his Notes on the Caucasian War when writing Hadji Murad.
Mikhail Konstantinovich Diterichs was born on April 5, 1874, on Friday of Holy Week, (all dates before 1918 - according to the old style) in St. Petersburg. Upon reaching twelve years of age, by the Highest Order he was enrolled in the pupils of His Imperial Majesty's Page Corps. The director of the Corps was then his uncle, Lieutenant General Fyodor Karlovich Diterichs, and according to a rescript approved by Catherine the Great, only children and grandchildren of generals from the infantry, cavalry or artillery could become pages.
Acquaintance with family chronicles, stories about the war with Napoleon, about battles with the highlanders, award certificates, orders and badges, ancient weapons - all this took shape in the minds of the future officer into a single image of the Fatherland and its Supreme Head - the Sovereign, the Anointed of God, in the Name and For whose Glory one must sacrifice everything, even one’s own life.
Each page was given the Gospel and the Testaments of the Knights of Malta, carved on the Sacred Tablets: “You will be faithful to everything that the Church teaches, you will protect it; You will respect the weak and become his protector; You will love the country in which you were born ; You will not retreat before the enemy; You will wage a merciless war with the infidels; You will not lie and remain true to your given word; You will be generous and do good to everyone; You will be a champion of justice and good against injustice and evil everywhere." After graduating from the Corps, pages received a badge - a white Maltese cross and a ring with a steel outer part and a gold inner part. Engraved on it was another, the last Testament of the Knights of the Order of Malta: “You will be as hard as steel and pure as gold.” Mikhail Konstantinovich always remembered these symbols of knightly valor. Obliged to be present at all court ceremonies, Dieterichs constantly saw representatives of the Royal House. Training and education in devotion to the Throne left an indelible mark on his soul.
On August 8, 1894, Mikhail Diterichs received the junior officer rank of second lieutenant and went to his new duty station, in distant Turkestan. The position of clerk of the Horse-Mountain Battery did not offer prospects for growth. And a year after the start of his service, Second Lieutenant Dieterikhs submitted a report of expulsion.
In 1897, he passed the exams at the Nikolaev Academy of the General Staff with excellent marks and returned to his native St. Petersburg. At that time, this was a kind of “record”, considering that Diterichs’s classmates at the Academy were not young officers, but those who already had considerable service experience.
Studying at the Academy was easy for Dieterichs. All his certifications were exemplary; particular successes were noted in field practice, as well as in exact disciplines. At the same time, the course “History of Russian Military Art” was taught at the Academy by Prof. Mikhail Vasilyevich Alekseev, future Chief of Staff of the Supreme Commander-in-Chief of the Russian Army Nicholas II and the founder of the Volunteer Army. He singled out a young, diligent officer among his listeners. This subsequently played an important role during their service together.
Dieterichs met the 20th century with the rank of lieutenant, completed his studies in the 2nd grade of the Academy in the first category, and in May 1900, for “excellent success in the sciences,” he was promoted to staff captain and assigned to serve in the Moscow Military District. His personal life also changed. In the fall of 1897, after enrolling in the Academy, his wedding took place with the daughter of Lieutenant General Povalo-Sheveikovsky, Maria Alexandrovna. Soon they had a son, Nikolai, and a daughter, Natalya. The heirs of this line were destined to remain in the USSR and continue the Diterichs family name.
Service in staff positions in parts of the Moscow Military District was accompanied by business trips and inspections. In 1902, he was promoted to the rank of captain, and he received the first order: St. Stanislaus, 3rd degree. In 1903, Captain Diterichs was assigned to the 3rd Sumy Dragoon Regiment. The regiment received Dieterichs kindly and he was elected a member of the regimental court.
The Russian-Japanese War began, which became for Dieterichs, as for many generals of the White armies, the first military campaign. He was appointed chief officer for special assignments at the Headquarters of the 17th Army Corps. Dieterichs was immediately sent to the front lines. On September 18, for participation in the battles near Liaoyang, Dieterichs was awarded the Order of St. Anne, 3rd class. with swords and bow. Dieterichs also took part in the battle on the river. Shahe and in the battle of Mukden. The war ended for him with promotion to lieutenant colonel, the position of staff officer for special assignments at Corps Headquarters and the awarding of the Order of St. Anne, 2nd class with swords. In the biography of Dieterichs of the period 1904-1905. there were no striking combat episodes or participation in attacks. His style of staff work was distinguished by internal discipline and self-confidence.
During the war, another major event occurred in his life. Dieterichs was awarded the high honor of becoming the Successor from the font of the long-awaited Heir to the Russian Throne, Alexei Nikolaevich Romanov. To the former page, such a reward seemed associated with some kind of Divine Providence, because he actually became the “godson” of the Tsarevich, responsible for his fate. Would it have been possible to think then that a little more than 15 years would pass and Dieterichs would have to lead the investigation into the martyrdom of the royal family?
In February 1909, Diterichs was transferred to the position of staff officer for special assignments at the headquarters of the Kyiv Military District. The crowning achievement of his pre-war career was the rank of colonel and the position of Head of Section in the Mobilization Department of the Main Directorate of the General Staff on June 30, 1913.
With the outbreak of hostilities, Dieterichs became the head of the Operations Department of the headquarters of the South-Western Front. In the autumn months of 1914, he had to supervise almost all staff work. At the decisive moment of the Battle of Galicia, Colonel Dieterichs became acting. Chief of Staff of the 3rd Army. He coped brilliantly with the responsibilities assigned to him. The merits of Mikhail Konstantinovich did not go unnoticed by the chief of staff of the Southwestern Front, General. M.V. Alekseev. He remembered his student and sent a telegram to Headquarters: “The leadership of the 3rd Army is diligently petitioning... to send Colonel Dieterichs to the post of Quartermaster General. I ask you to convincingly carry out this for the benefit of the service, a more trained officer cannot be found, the work ahead is serious.” In March 1915, Dieterichs was appointed quartermaster general of the headquarters of the Southwestern Front.
But in the spring of 1915, instead of the expected offensive along the entire front and reaching the Hungarian Plain, a counterattack by Austro-German troops followed - the Gorlitsky breakthrough. Dieterikhs sought to establish operational interaction between different sections of the front and conduct a systematic retreat. The battles of 1915 became for him a kind of “retreat experience”, which was useful later, during the Civil War.
In May 1915, he was promoted to major general, and in October, “for excellent and diligent service and labor incurred during military operations,” he was awarded the Order of St. Stanislaus, 1st degree with swords.
In December 1915, Adjutant General A.A. took command of the Southwestern Front. Brusilov. He entrusted Dieterichs with developing plans for the famous counter-offensive, which later went down in history under the name “Brusilovsky breakthrough”. In his memoirs, Brusilov wrote: “... I asked for Quartermaster General Dieterichs, a very capable man who knew his business very well. He gave me a detailed report that completely satisfied me...”. At this time, future participants in the White Movement served at the front headquarters under the leadership of Diterichs: Major General N.N. Dukhonin, Lieutenant Colonel K.V. Sakharov, captain V.O. Kappel. The headquarters was developing a strategy for a powerful strike, with the help of which it would be possible to push back the enemy on several sectors of the front at the same time, without making it possible to bring up reinforcements from the rear.
However, Mikhail Konstantinovich did not have a chance to see the results of his plan. On May 22, 1916, the offensive of the Southwestern Front began, and on May 25 it was announced that Dieterichs was leaving for a new duty station. This was the distant Thessaloniki Front, where he was to become the head of the 2nd Special Brigade.
Changes also occurred in Dieterichs’ personal life. The marriage to Maria Alexandrovna Povalo-Sheveykovskaya broke up. But soon the general got married to Sofia Emilievna Bredova. Her brothers were later famous white generals in the south of Russia.
Having become the commander of the 2nd Special Brigade, General Dieterichs accepted a very responsible assignment, because the brigade was part of the inter-allied military contingents formed specifically for operations in the Balkans. Her boss required the qualities of an experienced leader and diplomatic abilities. The supreme command of the inter-allied forces was entrusted to the French General Sarrail.
Its dispatch took place by sea, through Arkhangelsk, Brest and Marseille in June 1916. In August, units arrived in Thessaloniki, and in September fighting began with Bulgarian and German troops. Serbian units were attacked near the city of Florin. To eliminate the breakthrough, Sarrail abandoned the Russian Brigade. Having only one regiment and his own headquarters at his disposal, General Dieterichs went to the front. On September 10, the first battle of Russian units took place. Having repelled the advance of the Bulgarian infantry, the allied forces began to prepare to occupy the city of Monastery in the south of Serbian Macedonia. Dieterichs' brigade was at the forefront of the attack. The offensive took place in difficult mountain conditions. There was not enough food and ammunition. But the Allies persistently advanced and captured a key position on the approaches to the Monastery - the city of Florina. For this, the 3rd Special Infantry Regiment was awarded the French Croix de Guerre with a palm branch on the banner. General Dieterichs was also awarded the same award.
The brigade soon encountered strong resistance from Bulgarian troops. However, while the Russian regiments pinned down the Bulgarians in the center, the Serbs broke through to the rear of the enemy positions. Under threat of encirclement, the Bulgarians began to retreat. Dieterichs gave the order for pursuit. And on November 19, 1916, on the shoulders of the retreating enemy, the 1st battalion of the 3rd Special Russian Regiment burst into the Monastery. Allied troops entered the territory of Serbia for the first time, beginning the liberation of the Serbian people from the occupiers. A longtime friend of Russia, the Serbian prince Alexander Karageorgievich, who arrived two days later at the liberated Monastery, expressed special gratitude to the Russian troops. Dieterichs received the highest award in France - the Order of the Legion of Honor. In Russia he received the Order of St. Vladimir, 2nd degree with swords.
In 1935, a monument to Russian glory was erected in Belgrade, made in the shape of a projectile with the figure of the Archangel of God Michael (the heavenly patron of Michael Dieterichs) on top. The monument was carved with the Russian Imperial eagle and inscriptions in Russian and Serbian: “Eternal memory to Emperor Nicholas II and 2,000,000 Russian soldiers of the Great War,” “Bravely fallen Russian brothers on the Thessaloniki front. 1914-1918.” Under the steps leading to the monument there is a chapel in which the remains of soldiers and officers of the Russian Imperial Army who gave their lives for the freedom of Serbia are buried. The symbolic grave of Dieterichs is also located here.
After the liberation of the Monastery, the advance of the allied forces stopped. In hopes of a general spring offensive and a quick end to the war, we received sudden news: on March 2, 1917, Emperor Nicholas II abdicated the throne. Dieterichs had to explain to his subordinates what had happened. And he acted like a soldier, faithful to the principle “The Army is out of politics,” declaring that the main goal should now be only victory. After all, the Emperor also called for this in his Manifesto...
On the eve of the spring offensive, all allied forces were united into the Strike Group. On May 9, 1917, the brigade regiments broke through the enemy front. But the Serbs and French did not support the Russian attack and retreated from their positions. The brigade suffered heavy losses, and Dieterichs turned to Sarrail with a report on the need to send the Brigade to the rear, because since the fall of 1916 the Russian regiments had been on the front line. Gene. Sarrail, regretting this, signed an order to remove the brigade from the front. And in early July, Dieterichs was urgently summoned to Russia.
When he left Russia a year ago, at the height of the Brusilov breakthrough, he believed that his participation in the battles in the Balkans would bring victory closer. He returned to a country intoxicated by the intoxication of freedom, where it was believed that military discipline was a relic of the “old regime”, and even a white Maltese cross about the end of the Corps of Pages could become a reason for accusations of “reactionism”.
Obeying the orders of Prime Minister A.F. Kerensky, Diterichs arrived in Petrograd on August 10. Kerensky, in a conversation with him, spoke about the inadmissibility of “counter-revolution on the left and counter-revolution on the right” and announced the possible appointment of Diterichs as Minister of War. Without waiting for the final decision, Diterichs went to Kyiv to visit his family. However, he was unable to get home.
Driving through Mogilev, Dieterichs met with the commander of the 3rd Cavalry Corps, Lieutenant General A.M. Krymov. This meeting made Dieterichs an eyewitness to the Kornilov speech. The fact that by the time he arrived at the 3rd Cavalry Corps, he did not formally hold any position, saved him from the “Bykhov imprisonment.” Dieterichs received the rank of lieutenant general and became quartermaster general of the Supreme Commander-in-Chief Headquarters. Diterichs’s colleague on the Southwestern Front, Lieutenant General N.N., became the Chief of Staff of the Headquarters. Dukhonin.
After the fall of the Provisional Government, Dukhonin assumed the duties of Supreme Commander-in-Chief, and Dieterichs became his chief of staff. Dieterichs perceived October 1917 as a natural result of the lack of will of the Provisional Government. Realizing the impossibility of compromise with the Bolsheviks, he hoped to make Headquarters the center of resistance. Gen., who was in Novocherkassk. Alekseev, in a letter dated November 8, 1917, wrote to him about the need to use Headquarters to form volunteer detachments: “we need to work a lot together... we will always have time to die, but first we need to do everything achievable in order to die with a clear conscience...”.
However, on the day when the letter to Headquarters was written by Alekseev, Diterichs resigned from his post as chief of staff of the Commander-in-Chief. After the murder of Dukhonin by the Red Guards, Mikhail Konstantinovich turned to the French military mission for help. The French, remembering the merits of the general awarded the Order of the Legion of Honor, saved his life. From Headquarters, Diterichs moved to Kyiv, where he lived with his wife using a false passport, writing his last name backwards (“Skhiretidov”).
This is how the civil war began for Dieterichs...
His further fate turned out to be connected with the Czechoslovak Corps. In November, Dieterichs accepted the position of chief of staff of the corps. Most of the soldiers and officers treated Dieterichs very confidentially (the Moravian roots of the Dietrichsteins played a role). One of the reasons for the rapprochement with the Czechs was his authority among representatives of the French command, because since December 1917 the Corps was formally subordinate to the military leadership of France. Together with his family, Dieterichs arrived in Vladivostok in June 1918, intending to go further to the Western Front, where the war continued.
Initially, Czech units sought to maintain neutrality. But soon the local Council ordered them to disarm. In response, Dieterichs demanded that the Red Army soldiers be disarmed. The Czechs were the first to act, and on the night of June 29, 1918, Soviet power in Vladivostok was overthrown. Dieterichs took command of the Vladivostok group and launched an offensive to the west along the Trans-Siberian Railway. August 31st at the station. Tin she united with the Czechs advancing from Transbaikalia. In October 1918, Diterichs arrived in Omsk, where the first anti-Bolshevik All-Russian government, the Ufa Directory, worked. But her time was short-lived.
On November 18, 1918, the Omsk Council of Ministers announced Vice Admiral A.V. Kolchak Supreme Ruler of Russia. In November 1918, the Western Front was created, and Dieterichs was the front's chief of staff until mid-February 1919. He left the Czechoslovak Corps, and on January 8, 1919 he was transferred to serve in the Russian Army under Admiral A.V. Kolchak.
By a special order dated January 17, 1919, Dieterichs was entrusted with “general leadership of the investigation and investigation into the murder of Members of the August Family and other Members of the House of Romanov in the Urals.” The investigation into the death of the Royal Family began immediately after the liberation of Yekaterinburg from the Bolsheviks in the summer of 1918. From the very beginning of the investigation, the question arose: was anyone from the Royal Family still alive and could any government existing on the territory of the former Russian Empire be considered legitimate?
The thoroughness of the investigation was as thorough as possible under those conditions. The slightest evidence that had any relation to the regicide was scrupulously analyzed. Kolchak ordered all things that belonged to the royal family to be sent to England. The collected items were carefully packed and sent to Vladivostok, from where they were to be delivered to London. However, of all the relics of the royal Martyrs, only the Bible with the marks of the Sovereign and Empress has survived. Discovered in a room in the Ipatiev House, it was kept by Dieterichs himself and was then transferred to the “Society of Veterans of the Great War” in San Francisco, where it is still kept.
But in addition to purely investigative questions, Dieterichs tried to understand the reasons for the crime that had occurred. He came to the conclusion that the act of regicide was the result of a deep split in government and society, and the lack of a sense of statehood among the “Western boyars.” The tragedy of the dynasty was that the Russian people themselves refused allegiance to it, breaking the kiss of the cross given at the Zemsky Council of 1613. The people turned out to be blinded by the demagoguery coming first from the “Western boyars” and then from the left radical Bolsheviks.
Participation in the investigation of the regicide strengthened Dieterichs in the belief that the Civil War was not just a confrontation between whites and reds, but a confrontation between Christ and Antichrist, a struggle between Good and Evil, which should take place under the banner of the Orthodox Faith. It is no coincidence that the general’s staff car was decorated with numerous icons, which were later carefully preserved abroad.
In May 1919, Kolchak decided to use the knowledge and experience of Dieterichs, appointing him Commander of the Siberian Army. And on July 14, 1919, he received a new position - commander-in-chief of the armies of the Eastern Front. After the Ufa and Chelyabinsk operations, units of the Red Army began their “crossing the Urals.” White slowly retreated, trying to linger at every convenient line. Siberia continued to live with hopes for recognition of Kolchak by world powers. The telegraph brought news of the capture of Gen. Denikin Kharkov, Ekaterinoslav and Tsaritsyn, about the beginning of the “march against Moscow”.
On July 19, 1919, Dieterichs gave the first directive in his new position. The troops were given the task of retreating to the rear, regrouping forces, bringing up reserves and, after fire preparation, striking simultaneously along the entire front line. On September 1, 1919, the last offensive of the Eastern Front began - the famous “Tobolsk Operation”. Along the Tyumen - Ishim - Omsk railway, pinning down units of the 3rd Soviet Army, the 1st Siberian Army Gen. Pepelyaev. The blow from the right flank to the rear of the 5th Soviet Army was delivered by the 2nd Siberian Army Gen. Lokhvitsky; the frontal attack on the 5th Soviet Army was assigned to the 3rd Army Gen. Sakharov. The blow to the rear was to be delivered by the Separate Siberian Cossack Corps. The corps was supposed to pass along the red rear, contributing to the deep encirclement of the 5th Army.
At the beginning of September, the offensive of the 3rd Army and the Siberian Cossack Corps developed successfully. Quite quickly it was possible to knock down the red units from the front, but it soon became clear that the 2nd Army could not develop an offensive, the 1st Army was only able to hold off the regiments of the 3rd Soviet Army, and the Siberian Cossack Corps, having defeated two Soviet divisions, did not go on a raid on the red rear. Having learned about the failure of the raid, the usually calm Dieterichs was extremely annoyed, but continued the offensive. As a result of the fighting, Soviet troops retreated 150-200 km and lost about 20 thousand people. But White's offensive impulse was running out. The regiments also suffered heavy losses (about 25 thousand killed and wounded). Reserves were urgently needed.
Dieterichs decided to turn to new volunteers. In Omsk, Krasnoyarsk, and Irkutsk there were posters calling on Siberians to follow the example of General Denikin’s armies and volunteer for the front. The creation of completely new volunteer units began - the Squads of the Holy Cross and the Green Banner. The general management of their formation was entrusted to the gene. V.V. Golitsyn and prof. D.V. Boldyreva. Spiritual guidance was provided by mitred archpriest Fr. Peter Rozhdestvensky. He was also “chairman of the Brotherhood for organizing the Squad of the Holy Cross and Green Banner in memory of Patriarch Hermogenes.”
Just as in the Time of Troubles of the early 17th century, at the call of Patriarch Hermogenes, the Russian people rose up against the foreign occupiers, so three hundred years later the White Movement raised Banners with the Holy Cross embroidered on them against the godless pentagram of the Third International. Dieterichs proclaimed a crusade against Bolshevism (volunteer crusaders sewed white crosses onto their chests). The oath that volunteers took on the Holy Cross and the Gospel became a symbol of their self-denial. The number of squads reached 6 thousand people. They had to not only numerically strengthen the ranks of the thinned units, but also become an example of sacrifice in the name of victory.
On October 14, 1919, units of the Soviet armies launched a counteroffensive. Stubborn fighting continued for ten days. On October 25, Dieterichs gave the order to withdraw the armies beyond the river. Ishim. Carrying out this maneuver required the concession of a significant territory of White Siberia to the enemy, including its capital, Omsk. Diterichs did not believe that the loss of Omsk would lead to the defeat of the White Cause. But he underestimated the political consequences of the surrender of Omsk. This mistake sealed his fate in the fall of 1919.
Kolchak was categorically against leaving Omsk. The loss of Omsk made the power of the Supreme Ruler meaningless. Having accused Diterichs of passivity, Kolchak unexpectedly faced a strong protest: “Your Excellency, defending Omsk is tantamount to complete defeat and loss of our entire army. I cannot take on this task and have no moral right to do so. I ask you to dismiss me and transfer army more worthy." Dieterichs lost faith in the possibility of eliminating Bolshevism through military efforts alone, without a general national upsurge, without unity of the front and rear. It became obvious to him that at this stage the victory of the White cause was impossible.
On November 4, 1919, Dieterichs was dismissed. His successor was Gen. Sakharov, who convinced Kolchak of the possibility of defending Omsk. But the combat effectiveness of the white armies was already low. Less than a week has passed since Gen. Sakharov also ordered a retreat. On November 14, the city was surrendered. The armies of the Eastern Front set out on the Great Siberian Ice Campaign. This campaign led to the defeat of the entire White movement in Siberia, the death of tens of thousands of soldiers and officers, civilian refugees, Kolchak himself and his ministers.
Diterichs left for Irkutsk ten days before leaving Omsk. Together with his wife, he managed to get to Chita and then to Harbin. The first period of his emigrant life began. Now his main concern was preserving materials about the murder of the Royal Family. A sense of duty to the memory of the martyr king, the consciousness that perhaps no one else would be able to tell the world the facts revealed as a result of the investigation, prompted Dieterichs to immediately begin work on the book. During 1920-1921 he wrote his famous work “The Murder of the Royal Family and Members of the House of Romanov in the Urals.” Published in 1922 in Vladivostok, the book consisted of two parts. The first part reflected the facts related to the regicide. The second part, entitled “Materials and Thoughts” by the author, contained a study of the reasons that led Russia to the catastrophe of 1917. An outline of the history of the dynasty since 1613, a detailed analysis of the events of February and October and a convincing conclusion about Russia’s return to the values of Orthodoxy, Autocracy and Nationality are distinguished this part. Dieterichs’ work became the first wreath to be placed on the unknown grave of the royal family...
The general's life abroad was difficult. On July 1, 1921, daughter Agnia was born. To feed his family, 47-year-old Mikhail Konstantinovich had to look for any job (even in a shoe workshop). And only small personal savings made it possible to “make ends meet.”
...The civil war was ending in Russia. Only in the Far East, under the cover of the Japanese army, did the power of the Provisional Amur Government still remain. In the summer of 1922, Japan began negotiations with the Far Eastern Republic, preparing for the withdrawal of troops. Internal strife, typical of the Russian Troubles of the early twentieth century, also began. The struggle was between the People's Assembly, which was dominated by representatives of left-wing, socialist groups, and the Provisional Amur Government. The only way out seemed to be the establishment of a new government capable of uniting the remaining forces. General Dieterichs seemed most suitable for this. He was not associated with any of the opposing political groups in Primorye, and had undoubted authority as the former commander-in-chief of the Eastern Front. On June 8, 1922 he arrived in Vladivostok.
Preparations began for the convening of the Zemsky Sobor, the last in the history of Russia. In the order of its convening, a return to the old principles of Zemsky Councils was obvious, when the interests of individual classes and, most importantly, the Russian Orthodox Church were expressed first of all. The interests of political struggle had to give way to work on the revival of Russian Statehood.
On July 23, 1922, after a military parade, procession and prayer service, the meetings of the Council opened. The first act, adopted on July 31, was of great importance: “The Amur Zemsky Sobor recognizes that the right to exercise Supreme Power in Russia belongs to the dynasty of the House of Romanov.”
For the first time in the history of the White movement, the House of Romanov was recognized as “Reigning”. From March 1917 to July 1922 the question of the form of government in Russia was postponed until the decision of the Constituent Assembly. Therefore, all white governments and the Supreme Ruler of Russia himself, Admiral A.V. Kolchak took the position of “non-decision”, considering the main task to be the fight against Bolshevism and ending the internecine war. “In the white camp,” conflicts often arose between individual political leaders and the military, based on mutual suspicions of a desire to seize power. After this decision, the ideology of the White movement received a solid foundation on which it was possible to begin building a new political system.
Due to the impossibility of representatives of the House of Romanov arriving in Vladivostok, it was necessary to elect a Ruler of the Amur region. He had to later “give an answer to the Russian Tsar and the Russian Land.” On August 8, 1922, Dieterichs was proclaimed “Head of the Amur State Education.” A special Letter to the Ruler said: “... Calling upon you the Blessing of God, the Russian Land of the Far Russian Region in the person of the Amur Zemsky Sobor unites around you, as its Ruler and Leader, with a fiery desire to return freedom to the Russian people and to bring together the Russians wandering separately in troubled times people under the high hand of the Orthodox Tsar. May Holy Rus' be restored to its former greatness and glory...”
After the announcement of the letter, Dieterichs, surrounded by a crowd of thousands of townspeople, proceeded to the Assumption Cathedral, where he took the oath. On the same day, Diterikhs read out his Decree No. 1, which contained provisions on the foundations of state building in White Primorye.
The ruler ordered the Amur state formation to be called the Amur Zemsky Territory. The Zemsky Sobor should have chosen from among its members the Zemstvo Duma, which would become the representative authority in the region, together with the Amur Church Council. The troops of the Provisional Amur Government were renamed the Zemstvo Army, and General Diterichs became the Voivode of the Zemstvo Army. This emphasized the continuity from the Zemstvo army of Minin and Pozharsky, which, as in the 17th century, opposed the “thieves’ army” of impostors and foreigners. Local self-government was supposed to be built in accordance with the peculiarities of national statehood: “Only religious people can take part in the construction of the Amur state. A church parish is taken as the basis. Each citizen, according to his faith, must be assigned his religion at the parish. Church parishes are united into a council of church parishes of the city and zemstvo districts. Unions of church parishes will have to replace what is now called city and zemstvo self-government."
On August 10, 1922, the Zemsky Sobor completed its work. A parade took place, after which the warriors, on behalf of the Council and the Ruler, were solemnly presented with the icon of the Kolomna Mother of God, called the Sovereign. Diterichs was presented with an icon of the Savior Not Made by Hands. To commemorate the end of the work of the Council, a medal “The Miracle of St. George on the Serpent” was established on a black, yellow and white ribbon of “Romanov colors”. The meetings of the Council ended with a solemn prayer service and the singing of the Russian anthem “God Save the Tsar.”
Getting acquainted with the documents of that time, peering into the faces of the participants of the Zemsky Sobor, the soldiers of the Zemsky army, you involuntarily catch yourself thinking: what did these people hope for, what did these people believe in? Did they really think that just one call for the salvation of the Orthodox Faith, for the revival of the Dynasty, for a “national militia” “as in 1612” would return Russia to the path along which the country developed before February 1917? Could the Zemsky Territory, with its four cities (Vladivostok, Nikolsk-Ussuriysky, Spassky and border Posyet) and 8 thousand bayonets, resist the huge Soviet Russia with its 5 million army? After all, the NEP had already triumphed, and the last soldier of the Russian Army, General, left the camp in Gallipoli. Wrangel. In Moscow and Petrograd, motley “Ostaps Bendery” reigned, making their own “geshefts”. The peasant, on whose conservatism and anti-Bolshevism the participants of the Zemsky Sobor counted, buried his sawn-off shotgun and conscientiously took the food tax to the dumping points. And although the lids of the chests in the huts were still decorated with portraits of the Tsar, on the shelves there were brochures about “Grishka, Sashka and Nikolashka,” or “The Tale of How the Tsar and the Priests deceived the working people.” It became obvious that the Act of Return of the Dynasty could be the result not of nostalgic “sighs”, but, first of all, an Act of nationwide Repentance for what happened in 1917. But, as you know, nothing is more difficult than repentance for your own sins...
On the other hand, all Western newspapers wrote about the terrible famine that gripped the south of Russia and the Volga region. In Vladivostok they knew about the persecution of the Church, about the fight against the heresy of “renovationism,” about the persecution of Patriarch Tikhon (there is information that the Patriarch conveyed his blessing to the Zemsky Council and Dieterichs himself through Bishop Nestor of Kamchatka). It is no coincidence that His Holiness was unanimously elected honorary chairman of the Zemsky Sobor. There were news of ongoing uprisings in Siberia, Ukraine, the Caucasus and near Tambov. Good prospects were seen in the development of the rebel movement in Yakutia (by order of Diterichs, the Siberian Volunteer Squad of General Pepelyaev was sent there). There remained hope that Japan would recognize the Amur Region de facto. And a Miracle will happen... A Miracle for which it was worth living and fighting.
White Primorye in 1922 rested not on calculation, but on Vera. Inspired by this Faith, the zemstvo warriors went to battle. The life-giving fire of Faith passed through all the years of the civil war. In 1922, this was a challenge to both the “Red Terror” and the NEP “gesheftmakhers” - the “nouveau riche”. It was the same act of irreconcilable confrontation between Good and Evil...
On August 23, 1922, in accordance with Diterichs’ decree, the headquarters of the Zemstvo Rati, the residence of the Ruler and the Zemskaya Duma moved to Nikolsk-Ussuriysky - “closer to the front.” And on September 2, 1922, the Headquarters ordered the troops to go on the offensive against Khabarovsk. The final offensive of the last White Army in Russia has begun. As a result of stubborn fighting, the Whites occupied the station. Shmakovka, but could not advance further. Meanwhile, the reforms proclaimed by the Zemsky Sobor continued. By October, Parish Councils were created in Vladivostok and Nikolsk-Ussuriysk. The Zemstvo Duma was working. But for further struggle it was necessary to mobilize all forces. Every day, every hour was expensive. But, alas, the Ruler’s call remained unanswered. In early October, Dieterichs received an application from the Vladivostok Chamber of Commerce and Industry. It stated “an almost complete lack of funds and the absolute impossibility of selling real estate and the small remains of goods available in the city.” Probably, the financial situation of the coastal businessmen was really difficult. But how strikingly different their statement was from the modest feat of two Vladivostok girls who donated their earrings, rings and... silver sugar tweezers to the Ruler’s fund. Dieterichs was amazed by the indifference of Vladivostok “businessmen”. After all, the Zemskaya Rat protected them from the “Red Terror”! But he did not threaten (in Primorye the death penalty was replaced by deportation to the Far Eastern Republic). The Decree of October 11 noted: “... in relation to those citizens who have shown themselves to be incapable of voluntary sacrifice of life and property in the name of the idea headed by the Zemsky Sobor, do not resort to violent and repressive measures.
Such a result, knowing the “mores” of the white rear throughout the civil war, could, in principle, have been foreseen. The rear was silent, and students and cadets went to the front. The youth of Russia, its future, perished with prayer on their lips. Reinforcements of volunteers did not save the front and the doom of Primorye, the impossibility of the expected Miracle, became more and more obvious every day.
On October 3, fighting resumed on the Ussuri Railway line. Volga region group of gene. Molchanova clashed with units of the People's Revolutionary Army of the Far Eastern Republic. In the oncoming battles, the Kappelites and the Izhevsk generals. Molchanov could not hold back the superior forces of the Reds. On October 8, the battles for Spassk began. In Soviet historiography, it is customary to evaluate the assault on Spassk as carried out according to all the rules of military art, with fierce battles for each of the forts. In fact, after 8 thousand shells were fired at the fortifications over the course of two days, the general who led the defense. Molchanov received an order to leave the city. The forts were occupied by the Reds after they were abandoned by the Whites. The “assault nights of Spassk” (there was only one night, from October 8 to October 9) were hardly like that.
On October 13-14, 1922, a general battle took place. The overall command of the Reds was carried out by the legendary V.K. Blucher, who stormed the “impregnable Perekop” two years ago. October 13 was successful for the Whites. However, after the main forces of the NRA arrived, the pressure on the Zemskaya Rati front intensified noticeably and it became clear: the general battle for White Primorye was lost. Realizing that further resistance was pointless, on October 14, 1922, Dieterichs gave the order to retreat. The troops should have broken away from the enemy and retreated to Vladivostok and Posyet. Now Dieterichs had only one thing left to do - to organize the evacuation of the army and refugees correctly and in a timely manner.
This task was solved very successfully. The general personally supervised the boarding of troops and refugees on the ships of the Siberian Flotilla of Admiral G.K. Stark, and later - crossing the border by ground forces. On October 26, 1922, Vladivostok - the last stronghold of Russian statehood - was abandoned by white troops.
On October 17, Diterikhs issued the last Decree (No. 68), which became the finale of the White movement in Russia: “The forces of the Zemstvo Amur Rati are broken. Twelve difficult days of struggle with only cadres of the immortal heroes of Siberia and the Ice Campaign, without replenishment, without ammunition, decided the fate of the Zemstvo Amur Region. Soon he will no longer be. He will die as a body. But only as a body. In spiritual terms, in the meaning of the Russian, historical, moral and religious ideology that flared up brightly within his boundaries - he will never die in the future history of the revival of the great holy Rus'. Seed abandoned. It has now fallen on still poorly prepared soil; but the coming storm of horrors of communist power will spread this seed across the wide field of the Russian land and, with the help of the boundless mercy of God, will bring its fruitful results. I fervently believe that Russia will be reborn again into the Russia of Christ, the Russia of the Anointed One God, but that now we were still unworthy of this great mercy of the Almighty Creator."
The ruler of the Amur Region joined the troops in Posyet. Here the ships of the Siberian flotilla, having landed part of the military, went further to the Korean port of Genzan, and then to Shanghai and the Philippines. Dieterichs agreed with the administration of the Chinese city of Hunchun that the troops would switch to the position of refugees. Early in the morning of November 2, 1922 (exactly five years after the start of the White Movement in Russia!) Mikhail Konstantinovich Diterichs, together with the Rati headquarters, were the first to cross the border (in total, about 20 thousand people left the Far East).
The last page of the civil war is over...
After placing some of the refugees in the border villages, Diterikhs, at the head of the “refugee groups” of the Zemskaya Rati, made a long, difficult journey to Mukden. In the summer of 1923, he moved to Shanghai with his wife and daughter. The foreign period of his life began.
The most famous was the work of Diterikhs as Chairman of the Far Eastern Department of the Russian All-Military Union (ROVS). Without denying the need to fight under monarchist slogans, he stated that in foreign countries everyone “is looking for unification not around homogeneous monarchical principles, but again around individuals and figures,” “... the revival of monarchism in Russia is for them only in the formally accessory restoration of the throne , the erection of one or another of the Romanovichs on it." Dieterikhs saw the possibility of reviving the monarchy not in dynastic disputes, not in the search for the “miraculously saved” Tsarevichs and Tsarevnas, but in building state power on the principles of “the ideology of historical national-religious autocratic monarchism,” which, in turn, should be based only on “ The Teachings of Christ." "...Nothing will remain in the Russian people that is not with Christ and not from Christ. Sooner or later, if only the Lord wants to forgive the temporary deviation of the Russian people from Christ, they will return firmly only to the beginnings of their historical, national-religious ideology, coming from Christ and with Christ..."
Dieterichs did not recognize the Manifesto of Grand Duke Kirill Vladimirovich. And when, in 1928, the Grand Duke began to make statements in the spirit of the Young Russians, considering it possible to maintain Soviet power in the USSR and wait for the internal evolution of the Stalinist regime (for patriotism, against internationalism), Dieterichs condemned such declarations. The slogan “The Tsar and the Soviets” caused Diterichs to be sharply alienated.
The general saw the prospects of the House of Romanov in its young representatives. He corresponded with Grand Duke Nikita Alexandrovich, grandson of Emperor Alexander III. At the same time, Diterichs believed that a representative of the Dynasty could take the lead in the White struggle only after the creation of a united anti-Soviet front. In the early 1930s, when the power of communism seemed enormous to many abroad, Dieterichs’ calls for a revival of the monarchy might have seemed even more anachronistic than in 1922. But the general continued to believe in the salvation of Russia through a return to national statehood.
In Shanghai, Dieterichs worked as chief cashier of the Franco-Chinese Bank and provided support to the Society for the Distribution of Russian National and Patriotic Literature. The work of Prof. was published with his donations. S.S. Oldenburg "History of the Reign of Emperor Nicholas II". Through the care of the Dieterichs, a beautiful house church was built.
But the main thing remained the fight. Under his leadership, combat groups were trained as part of the Far Eastern Department of the EMRO. Unfortunately, there is very little data on this aspect of Diterichs’ activities. The EMRO maintained close contacts with the Brotherhood of Russian Truth (BRP), a military organization focused on preparing the insurgent movement in the USSR. On March 20, 1931, Mikhail Konstantinovich was elected Honorary Brother of the BRP. During 1931-1932 The 31st issue of the Voice of Russia magazine, edited by Diterichs, was published. The organ of the Far Eastern Department of the EMRO provided its pages for materials of the BRP, as well as the National Labor Union of the New Generation (NTSL).
In the last years of his life, Dieterichs, due to worsening lung disease, could no longer lead the Union as the situation required. October 8, 1937, the day of the death of St. Sergius, abbot of Radonezh, wonderworker of all Russia, at the age of sixty-three, Mikhail Konstantinovich Diterichs died. A stone cross in the old Russian style with a lamp was installed on his grave. The turbulent events of the 20th century did not spare the general’s grave. At the height of the Cultural Revolution, the cemetery was destroyed and residential buildings were built in its place.
But the ideas to which Dieterichs dedicated his life continue to excite our compatriots. And now, when there are debates about what the “Russian national idea” should be and whether a revival of the monarchy is possible, it would not be amiss to remember the decisions made by the last Russian Zemsky Sobor in 1922.
“You will be everywhere a champion of justice and goodness against injustice and evil” - this covenant of the Knights of Malta became the guiding star of life for Dieterichs...
"You will be faithful to everything that the Church teaches, you will protect it; You will respect the weak and become his defender; You will love the country in which you were born; You will not retreat from the enemy; You will wage a merciless war with the infidels ; You will not lie and will remain true to your given word; You will be generous and do good to everyone; You will be a champion of justice and goodness against injustice and evil everywhere.”
Mikhail Konstantinovich Diterichs
Diterikhs Mikhail Konstantinovich (5/17.04.1874-9.10.1937), Russian general and public figure. One of the organizers of the White movement in Siberia. In July 1919 he commanded the Siberian Army of A.V. Kolchak, in July - November 1919 - the Eastern Front. Personally supervised the investigation into the murder of the Royal Family, conducted by the investigator N. A. Sokolov. He defended Orthodox-monarchist positions. He managed to rally Orthodox Russian people around himself and lead them to Primorye in 1922 Priamursky Zemsky Cathedral, at which its participants announced that “The Supreme All-Russian power belongs to the Royal House Romanovs.” At this council, the general was elected “ruler and governor of the zemstvo army,” “ruler of the Amur Zemsky region.” From October 1922 in exile, where, based on the investigative case of N. A. Sokolova, he published a book about the murder of the Royal Family and other members of the House of Romanov (see. Murder of the royal family and members of the House of Romanov in the Urals. Causes, goals and consequences ).
ABOUT. Platonov
Lieutenant General M.K., Dieterichs
(The original photo is in the personal archive of S.P. Petrov).
Diterichs Mikhail Konstantinovich (April 5, 1874 – September 9, 1937), from the family of an officer of Czech origin who served in the Russian army in the Caucasus. He received his education at the Corps of Pages and the Academy of the General Staff in 1900. He served in Turkestan. After participating in the Russo-Japanese War, he served in the Main Directorate of the General Staff. A participant in the First World War, at the beginning of 1915 he was the Quartermaster General of the Southwestern Front, under his control all the main operations of the front were developed. Major General since December 1915. Chief of Staff of the 3rd Army in Greece, commander of the Expeditionary Force in Thessaloniki in 1916. Was close to Alekseev. Chief of Staff of the Special Petrograd Army under Krimov during Kornilov’s campaign against Petrograd. In August 1917, he was offered the post of Minister of War, refused it, from September 1917 he was appointed Quartermaster General of the Commander-in-Chief Headquarters, and from November 3 - Chief of Staff of Headquarters; when it was captured by the Bolsheviks, he escaped arrest. On November 8, 1917, Dieterichs left for Kyiv to join his family, and soon became the chief of staff of the Czechoslovak Corps at the suggestion of the Czechs and Slovaks themselves (March 1918 - January 1919).
In 1918, he was one of the organizers of the successful performance of the Czechoslovak Corps against Soviet power at the end of May of the same year. Commander of the Trans-Baikal group of forces of the Siberian group of the Czechoslovak Corps in the Irkutsk - Chita - Vladivostok region. Being at the head of its advanced echelons, he took Vladivostok in June 1918. Advancing to Siberia, he joined forces with Gaida on July 11, 1918 in the Irkutsk region. In response to requests from Woitsekhovsky and Kappel to send reinforcements to Ufa, he stated that he would be able to send the 1st Ural units there only at the beginning of December 1918. During the coup of Kolchak on November 18, 1918, he was in Ufa. He received an order from Kolchak: to arrest the leaders of KOMUCH for their subversive activities against the establishment of the power of the Supreme Ruler, but he hesitated for some time and only on November 26, 1918 he carried out the order and “retired” from the ranks of the Czechoslovak Corps, having quarreled with the Czechs and Slovaks. This episode of his biography delayed for a long time Dieterichs’s advance to the highest command posts of the white forces in eastern Russia. Immediately after leaving the Czechoslovak Corps, he asks Kolchak for personal permission to leave for the Far East with a special task - to deliver there the relics of the Imperial Family, collected by him on the Ural Front. In April 1919, he arrived in Omsk on the “Japanophile train”, at the disposal of the Russian White Army in eastern Russia, and was candidate No. 1 for the post of Chief of Staff of Kolchak’s army. He was not selected under the pretext of being in the Czechoslovak service. General for assignments under Kolchak.
In 1919, he spent some time studying the circumstances of the murder of the royal family, the head of the investigation commission from January to July 1919. In July 1919, he commanded the Siberian Army of Kolchak, Lieutenant General. He opposed the Chelyabinsk operation in the summer of 1919, believing that it could not be entrusted to the weakened forces of the Western Army alone. July 22 - November 17, 1919 - the commander of the White Eastern Front, at the same time, after Lebedev left the post of Chief of Staff, he was appointed in his place, as well as the Minister of War. Initiator of the struggle against the Bolsheviks as a religious one. Thanks to him, volunteer detachments were created - squads of the Holy Cross and Crescent, which completely died in battles against the Reds. Conducts the Tobolsk offensive operation of August - September 1919, after a series of outstanding successes (the Bolsheviks were thrown back beyond the Tobol, suffering heavy losses), which ended unsuccessfully largely due to the criminal slowness of the commander of the Cossack Siberian corps Ivanov-Rinov, whose resignation he soon achieved. In November 1919, Kolchak was removed from command of the Eastern Front, largely because of Sakharov’s intrigues against him at a time when, in order to save the White Army in eastern Russia, he proposed leaving Omsk in advance and removing all valuables and rear units from there. Soon Kolchak again offered him this post, but Dieterichs made it a condition for him to take over Kolchak’s resignation and his departure abroad. He made the Great Ice March with the remnants of Kolchak's army. He proposed to Kolchak a plan according to which, in order to preserve the army, it was necessary to retreat beyond the Irtysh. Emigrated after his offer was rejected. Lived in Harbin from late December 1919 to June 1922. with breaks.
Until the end of the summer of 1920 - Manager of the Military Department of Transbaikalia. In July - August 1920, he was sent by Semenov to negotiate with the Primorye coalition government regarding the further transfer of white forces to Primorye for their installation and reorganization there. Semenov's envoys disrupted his negotiations with Vladivostok. Semenov believed that Dieterichs was the main initiator of the campaign launched among the troops against him in 1920. Due to intrigues in Verzhbitsky’s army against Lokhvitsky, he decided to withdraw from participation in the struggle in Transbaikalia and went to Harbin, since, in his opinion, a “non-working situation” had developed there. After the fall of the Merkulov government on June 1, 1922, he took command of the white forces of Primorye after Verzhbitsky left. He officially took office after the transfer of powers to him by the acting commander of the White forces in Primorye, General Molchanov, on June 8, 1922. On the same day, he hosted the parade of the troops that overthrew Merkulov and became Chairman of the Government. The managers of the Government Departments joined him on June 9, 1922. Dieterichs did not want the Merkulov government to be eliminated and wanted, relying on it, to fight against the Bolsheviks. On June 10, 1922, he achieved the self-dissolution of the People's Assembly. Diterikhs announced that in conditions of unrest he was subordinate to the Amur Provisional Government until the convening of the Zemsky Sobor in Primorye. By convening the Zemsky Sobor, he hoped to create an authoritative government and attract ordinary people to his side. Despite the preservation of the Merkulov government and apparently good relations, there was a struggle between Dieterichs and the Government, since the Merkulovs did not want army representatives to be included in the government. With Japan's announcement in the summer of 1922 about the evacuation of its troops, he called on everyone in Primorye to remain calm.
Diterichs opened the monarchical Zemsky Sobor in Primorye on July 23, 1922 and elected him “the sole ruler and commander of the zemstvo army” - by the forces of the Primorye White Guards. This was due to disagreements between Semyonovites and Kappelevites on the issue of state administration of white Primorye. In fact, power was transferred to him by the Merkulovs. Nominated Gondatti for the post of Prime Minister. Almost unanimously, on August 8, 1922, Diterichs was elected Chairman of the Government and on August 9, 1922, he declared himself the Ruler of the Amur Zemsky Territory and the Voivode of the Zemsky Rati. He announced a reorganization in the army: corps became groups, regiments became squads. This caused controversy in the army. Dieterichs reduced the rear units, reorganized the supply of troops, taking into account all the features of the war when the white forces were located within Primorye. Abolished the counterintelligence system. Despite all his measures to increase the combat effectiveness of the army, he failed to achieve this. Rebuilt civil life in the region: organized the Zemstvo Duma, the Council of External Affairs, the Local Council, prepared the Local Council; The Council of the Zemstvo Group was supposed to decide all civil matters. He was always against the claims of all white governments to be “all-Russian”, wanting to prepare the conditions for the future reconstruction of Russia gradually. He declared a “crusade” against Soviet Russia and advocated the restoration of the monarchy. In the army, especially in the Semyonovtsy units, he was called by the title “Your Eminence.”
With the field headquarters and the Zemstvo Duma on August 26, 1922, Dieterichs moved to Nikolsk-Ussuriysky to strengthen the defense of the white troops in connection with the departure of the Japanese. Established the church parish as the main administrative unit of Southern Primorye. He contributed to the strengthening of the anti-Bolshevik struggle in Yakutia in 1922. Diterichs went to Spassk on September 5, 1922 to familiarize himself with the situation near the city and personally meet with the local population to inform them about further government actions. During this trip I fell ill. Being ill, on September 15, 1922 he spoke at the opening of the National Congress. In this speech he called on Primorye residents to sacrifice in favor of the White Army, as a result of which a large sum of money and a lot of warm clothes were received. Under the leadership of Dieterichs, mobilization was successfully carried out. Failed to re-engage Japan in the campaign against the Communists. He wanted to replenish his supplies of weapons and ammunition at her expense. In Vladivostok he published his research on the case of the murder of the Royal Family: “The Murder of the Royal Family and Members of the House of Romanov in the Urals.” Under his command, the White troops defeated the Reds near Khabarovsk, but for various reasons, the most important of which was the sharp deterioration of weather conditions in Primorye, they were unable to eliminate the Red Anuchinsky partisan region. After the failure of his forces near Spassk in October, he announced a withdrawal to China and Korea, “but not to the Japanese.” At the same time, Dieterichs achieved the evacuation of military families on Japanese ships, and also attracted the Red Cross of the USA and Great Britain for this, which, at his insistence, took care of the wounded and sick. He himself retreated at the head of the largest group of whites from Primorye, numbering 9 thousand people and 3 thousand horses.
He retreated with them to Posyet and New Kyiv, where he remained until the surrender of Vladivostok on October 25, 1922. He retreated with this group to Genzan. Since October 25, 1922 - emigrant, one of the main leaders of white emigration in the Far East. Until May 1923 he was in an emigrant camp. Head of the Far Eastern Department of the EMRO. In 1931, from Shanghai he sent a leaflet “To the White Russian Emigration of the Whole World,” in which he called for a fight against Soviet Russia. Died in September 1937 in Shanghai.
Materials from the website of A.V. were used. Kvakina http://akvakin.narod.ru/
M.K. Dieterichs during a trip to Beijing in the spring of 1922.
DITERICHS Mikhail Konstantinovich (04/05/1874-09/09/1937). Major General (12/06/1915). Lieutenant General (1919). He graduated from the Corps of Pages (1894) and the Nikolaev Academy of the General Staff (1900). Participant in the Russian-Japanese War of 1904-1905. Participant of the First World War: from 05/28/1916 commander of the Expeditionary Force (2nd Special Infantry Brigade of the Russian Army) in Thessaloniki (Greece). Returning from Greece, he was appointed chief of staff of the Special Petrograd Army (commander - General Krymov), 08/24-09/1917. Quartermaster General of the Headquarters (Stavka) of the Supreme Commander-in-Chief (Kerensky), 09-03.11.1917; Chief of Staff of the Supreme Commander-in-Chief Headquarters (Dukhonin), 03 - 08.11.1917. In the White movement: fled to Ukraine, appointed chief of staff of the Czechoslovak Army Corps. *), 03.1918-01.1919.
Head of the commission to investigate the murder of the royal family, 01 - 07.1919. Commander of the Siberian Army (07.11 - 22.1919) and the Eastern Front, at the same time (08.12-10.06.1910) Chief of Staff of the Supreme Ruler of Russia Admiral Kolchak, 07.22 - 11.17.1919. To save from complete defeat and destruction of the Siberian armies of the Eastern Front, on November 15, 1919, he proposed to Admiral Kolchak to withdraw the remnants of the troops beyond the Ob, taking into account that on November 14, 1919, Omsk was surrendered to Soviet troops. After Admiral Kolchak rejected the plan and refused to leave the Ob water barrier, General Dieterichs decided to resign and emigrated to Manchuria, Harbin. In exile: Harbin, 12.1919-07.1922. Elected on 06/1922 at the Zemsky Council in Vladivostok as the Ruler of the Far East, Zemsky Voivode and on 07/23/1922 - commander of the Zemsky Army - the former Far Eastern army that moved to southern Primorye (successor of General Verzhbitsky). 07/08/1922 headed the Zemsky Amur Provisional Government in Vladivostok (successor of Merkulov). The Zemstvo Army of General Diterichs was defeated in the battles of 09-10.1922 by the troops of the People's Revolutionary Army of the Far Eastern Republic (commanded by Army Commander I.V. Smorodinov). On October 25, 1922, Soviet troops entered Vladivostok. The remnants of the troops of the Zemstvo Rati of General Dieterichs retreated south to Posyet Bay, from where they were evacuated to Genzan (Korea) on the ships of the Far Eastern Flotilla of Admiral Stark and a few days later to Shanghai, 10/26/1922. In exile in China since 11.1922. Died in Shanghai (China).
Notes:
*) The Czechoslovak Corps was formed (11.1917) from Czech prisoners of war, soldiers of the Austro-Hungarian Army. Commander - Russian General V.N. Shokorov. Consisted of two divisions and a reserve brigade. The total number is about 30,000 soldiers and officers. He was stationed in Ukraine in the rear of the Southwestern Front. The Czechoslovak Corps (during the Brest-Litovsk peace negotiations) was declared by the Entente on January 15, 1918, an integral part of the French army, and the question was raised before Soviet Russia about its evacuation to Western Europe. On 03.1918, parts of the corps left Ukraine and reached Vladivostok in railway trains, sequentially located from the Volga to Vladivostok, with the goal of evacuating to Europe. By the end of May 1918, approximately 45,000 bayonets of the Czechoslovak Corps were concentrated in this chain. In May 1918, the Czech command of the corps adopted the slogan “advance to Vladivostok by force.” On May 25, 1918, units of the Czechoslovak Corps launched an anti-Soviet rebellion along the entire chain of Czech troops. Including Chechek's group, about 8,000 soldiers in the area of the cities of Penza and (later) Samara; Voitsekhovsky group, about 8800 in the Chelyabinsk region; Gaida's group, about 4,500 in the Novonikolaevsk area, and General Dieterichs' group, 14,000 Czechoslovak legionnaires in Vladivostok. In total there are approximately 35-40,000 soldiers.
Materials used from the book: Valery Klaving, Civil War in Russia: White Armies. Military-historical library. M., 2003.
Dieterichs (Diederichs, Dieteriks) Mikhail Konstantinovich (04/5/1874-10/8/1937), military leader, the last head of Russian statehood on Russian territory. Of the Baltic nobles of Swedish origin who appeared in Russia during the reign of Empress Anna Ivanovna and were related to the Lermontovs and Aksakovs. Born into the family of an officer who served in the Caucasus for 40 years. Many of his ancestors were also military. After graduating from the Corps of Pages (1894), he was promoted to second lieutenant and sent to the Turkestan Horse-Mountain Battery. After graduating from the Imperial Nicholas Academy of the General Staff (1900), he was assigned to the General Staff. Participant in the Russian-Japanese War of 1904-1905 as part of the 17th Army Corps. Fought near Liaoyang, on the river. Shahe, near Mukden. Head of the mobilization department of the headquarters of the Kyiv Military District (1910). He was sent abroad legally and illegally, where he studied in detail the fortifications of Przemysl, the Carpathian passes and the approaches to Lviv. For the successful fulfillment of instructions, he was promoted more than once.
By the beginning of the First World War - colonel; head of the operational department of the 3rd Army headquarters formed on the basis of the Kyiv Military District (1914); Quartermaster General, Quartermaster General of the headquarters of the Southwestern Front (April 1915). The appointment was received on the eve of the operation in the Carpathians, the so-called. the Brusilov breakthrough, in the development of which General Dieterikhs, who knew the theater of military operations very well, took a direct part; Major General (Dec. 1915); commander of the 2nd Special Brigade (May 1916), which fought on the Thessaloniki Front. Awarded golden arms and the French Legion of Honor. After the liquidation of the front - in the reserve of ranks at the headquarters of the Petrograd Military District (July 1917). In Aug. he was offered the post of Minister of War, but he refused. Chief of Staff of the Special Petrograd Army (commander General A. M. Krymov) (Aug. 1917); Quartermaster General of the Headquarters of the Supreme Commander-in-Chief (Sept. 1917); temporarily correcting the post of chief of staff of the Supreme Commander-in-Chief (November 1917), which became Lieutenant General N. N. Dukhonin. He contributed to softening the regime of General Kornilov and his associates who were in Bykhov prison. He ensured that the internal security of those arrested was carried out by the Tekinsky Cavalry Regiment - Kornilov’s personal escort.
He was appointed to the disposal of the Commander-in-Chief of the Caucasian Front, but did not go to his destination, remaining at Headquarters. During the occupation of Mogilev by the Bolsheviks, Dieterichs took refuge in the French military mission and, dressed in a French uniform, went with the mission to Kyiv (1917), where his family was located. Chief of Staff of the Separate Czechoslovak Corps (1918-19); headed the Far Eastern group of the corps (about 14 thousand people) in Vladivostok (1918); Chief of Staff of the Russian troops of the Western Front (1919); Lieutenant General The Supreme Ruler and Supreme Commander-in-Chief, Admiral A.V. Kolchak, entrusted him with “general leadership of the investigation and investigation of the murders in the Urals of Members of the August Family and other Members of the House of Romanov” (01/17/1919). The head of the Military Administrative Department of the Yekaterinburg District, Major General S. A. Domantovich, was appointed as an assistant for carrying out search work and excavations. The investigation continued from February 7. until July 10, 1919. Commander of the Siberian Army (06/28-07/11/1919); Commander-in-Chief of the Eastern Front with the subordination of all troops of the Siberian and Western armies, as well as the Tyumen and Kurgan districts in the theater of military operations (07/14/1919); Minister of War of the Omsk government and acting chief of staff of the Supreme Commander-in-Chief (Aug. 1919). Having organized resistance to Tukhachevsky’s 5th Army, he did not give him the opportunity to transfer part of his troops against Denikin. According to Lieutenant General A.P. Budberg, Dieterichs “adopted the Siberian point of view that a civil war requires senior commanders who go on the attack with a rifle in their hand.” Well understanding the spiritual essence of the struggle against the Bolsheviks, he stood at the origins of the formation of the “Drugs of the Holy Cross”. He created a boarding house for officer orphans “Ochag”, initially located in the general’s house, and then taken by him abroad. As a result of a disagreement with Kolchak over the advisability of defending Omsk, he left his position; appointed to the disposal of the Supreme Ruler (11/4/1919). Contributed to the transportation of the coffins of the Alapaevsk Martyrs, first to Eastern Siberia, and then to China (1919); preservation and export to France of investigative documents and material evidence in the case of the Regicide (March 1920). “God was pleased,” he wrote later, “to allow me to get too close to the place of death of these unforgettable Royal Martyrs and to save everything that was possible to collect from the August Bodies and things barbarously destroyed by the Bolsheviks. ..” Under pressure from the brothers V.N. and A.N. Pepelyaev in December. 1919 Admiral A.V. Kolchak contacted Diterichs, who was in Vladivostok, via direct wire, offering him again the post of Commander-in-Chief. As a condition, the general demanded the resignation of the Supreme Ruler and his departure abroad, which, of course, was not accepted. In Vladivostok, on behalf of Ataman G.M. Semenov, he conducted unsuccessful negotiations with the Primorsky Regional Zemstvo Administration on the formation of a buffer state (July 1920). He went to Harbin, where he opened a shoe shop, in which he worked. Successor to Lieutenant General G. A. Verzhbitsky (born 1941) as commander of the Transbaikal (Siberian) Kolchak-Kappel army (1922).
From July 10 to July 28 Aug. 1922 The Amur Zemsky Council was held in Vladivostok, electing General Diterichs as ruler of the Amur region (July 1922). In the oath he took, he promised to “give an answer for everything done in accordance with the Ruler’s duty to the Russian Tsar and the Russian land.” The state entity was named the Amur Zemsky Territory, and its armed forces - the Zemskaya Rat, of which Diterikhs became the Voivode. In honor of this event, a special medal was established - the last sign of national Russia. On the front side of the round (diameter 28 mm) medal there is an image of a SVM. George slaying a serpent with a spear; on the reverse there is an inscription framed by a laurel wreath in 6 lines: “July 23 - August 10. July 1922 - Amur Zemsky Sobor." The medal was worn on a white, blue and red ribbon. With Diterichs coming to power, according to General V.G. Boldyrev, the “open proclamation of the monarchical principle as a guiding political slogan” began; he “quite definitely and openly expressed the idea of monarchy, expressed what secretly, with caution and caution, or, conversely, in a drunken stupor, was sometimes completely anarchically revealed before him by ideological and sincere or crafty and calculating supporters of the monarchical principle.” “Our first task,” stated the Ruler’s Decree No. 1 (1922), “is a single, exclusive and definite struggle against Soviet power - its overthrow. Next, it’s no longer us. Next is the future Zemsky Sobor. This is extremely important, because until now this principle was not pure, and the constantly emerging Russian authorities, except for the Amur region, constantly pursued the principle of the Supremacy of the All-Russian, since they set not only the principle of fighting the Soviet regime, but also the leadership of all of Russia. It was a strange mistake. And the fact that the Zemsky Sobor rejected this principle, at least in the form that it rejected the title of Supreme Ruler, thereby emphasized our idea. We can lead our struggle with a Dynastic figure, but still we now face one task - the fight against Soviet power, its overthrow. After this, we can say to the Lord God: “Now You are releasing us. Others will work.” The third principle is the ideology established by the Zemsky Sobor, which says that the current rulers called for this struggle, whoever they are, even from the Romanov dynasty, can look at themselves at this moment as the Supreme Anointed of the future Russia, for this question again it is not resolved by us. The Romanov dynasty may have been the Anointed Ones, but for us mortals we cannot even dream of taking upon ourselves the title of Rulers of all Russia. We are the Rulers of the struggle against Soviet power and the Rulers of those State associations that are born for this purpose. When I heard these three principles, I received deep moral satisfaction within myself and that colossal faith that gives me the courage to say: “On these three principles we will go to success and achieve success.” About some practical steps of state building in the last piece of free land from the Bolsheviks of the Russian land, Major General V.A. Babushkin, assistant to the Ruler as Minister of Internal Affairs, wrote: "Only religious people can take part in the construction of the Amur state. A church parish is taken as the basis. Every citizen according to his faith must be assigned to the parish of their religion. Church parishes are united into a council of church parishes of the city and zemstvo districts [...] Unions of church parishes will have to replace what is now called city and zemstvo self-government. All citizens must be assigned to the parishes [...] On the appointed day parishioners gather in the church.After prayer, an urn is installed in the church, into which parishioners put their personal numbers. The priest then takes out the required number of them; This is how the ward council is formed. The parishes will be headed by persons appointed by the supreme authority. Unworthy and inappropriate persons will be replaced by the next ones who receive the next lot. Thanks to this, the discretion and will of God will be put into the principle of future self-government. One must think that the new self-government bodies will be quite authoritative among the population. There probably won't be any police. Citizens will be given the right to organize self-defense under the control of church parishes.” Dieterichs’s firm Orthodox faith gave food to numerous rumors in the already godless army environment. Many such wits called him (behind the eyes, of course) “Your Eminence.” Among the first steps of the new government was the replacement of the death penalty for the Bolsheviks with their deportation to the Amur region. In Oct. 1922, under the blows of the Bolsheviks (after the battles of Spassk and Monastyrische), the Amur Zemsky Territory ceased to exist. Of decisive importance was the cessation of Japan's supply of weapons and other assistance to Primorye. This was done at the categorical request of the United States. “The forces of the Land of the Amur Rati are broken,” we read in the last decree of the Ruler on October 17. 1922. - Twelve difficult days of struggle alone with the cadres of the immortal heroes of Siberia and the Ice March, without reinforcements, without ammunition, decided the fate of the Zemsky Amur Region. Soon he will be gone. He is like a body - he will die. But only as a body. In spiritual terms, in the meaning of the Russian, historical, moral and religious ideology that flared up brightly within his boundaries, he will never die in the future history of the revival of the Great Holy Rus'. The seed is thrown. It has now fallen onto unprepared soil. But the coming storm of horrors of Soviet power will spread this seed across the wide field of the Great Mother Fatherland. And in the future it will come across the limit of our repentance and, by the infinite mercy of the Lord, to a fertile and prepared piece of the Russian Land and then give the desired fruit. I believe in this goodness of the Lord; I believe that the spiritual significance of the short-term existence of the Amur region will leave deep, indelible traces even among the people of the region. I believe that Russia will return to the Russia of Christ, the Russia of God’s Anointed, but that we were not yet worthy of this mercy of the Most High Creator.” Vladivostok was abandoned by the Zemstvo Army on October 26. 1922. With the surviving warriors and refugees (up to 9 thousand people in total), Dieterichs crossed the Russian-Chinese border near the city of Hunchun. We walked in the direction: Girin-Mukden. For some time he lived with a group of officers in a camp in Girin. After the Chinese authorities proposed that all Russian senior officials leave Girin, the general moved to Shanghai (1923). He worked as a clerk and later as chief cashier at the French-Chinese Bank. He was involved in charity work. He took care of orphanages for children he brought from Russia in Harbin and Shanghai. Meanwhile, Diterichs’s own daughter, Natalia Poluektova (her godfather was Grand Duke Mikhail Alexandrovich), remained in Russia, subsequently serving 13 years in camps and exile. With the help of his wife Sofia Emilievna (born after 1943), a former teacher and teacher at the Smolny Institute, he opened an institute-school for Russian girls in Shanghai (1933). This educational institution, which enjoyed the support of the League of Russian Women, differed from other Russian schools in its education. He was a member of the Russian National Committee, which united representatives of different movements of Russian emigration and was in charge of the entire life of the Russian colony in Shanghai. After the abduction by NKVD agents of the chairman of the EMRO, General A.P. Kutepov (Jan. 1930), Diterichs declared himself the head of the Far Eastern department of the EMRO. The previous boss, General M.V. Khanzhin, who lived in Dairen, immediately resigned from his post. The Chairman of the EMRO, Lieutenant General E.K. Miller, approved this appointment. In 1931, Dieterichs addressed a special leaflet “To the White Russian emigration of the whole world,” calling for a fight against Soviet Russia. He transferred his activities to Harbin, choosing Lieutenant General G. A. Verzhbitsky as his assistant. Non-commissioned officer courses were approved there, and then courses at the cadet school. Dieterichs is of great importance in revealing the ritual nature of the regicide as a result of an international conspiracy. On the general's train between Chita and Verkhne-Udinsk, copies of the investigative file were made (1920); during his stay in Harbin (1920-22), based on them, he wrote and in 1922 published his 2-volume work “The Murder of the Royal Family and Members of the House of Romanov in the Urals.” The book was printed in Vladivostok in the printing house of the Military Academy on the island. Russian. Most of the circulation that remained unsold due to political events was, fortunately, exported abroad. Proceeds from the sale of these books went to charity. This is evidenced by the inscriptions on the miraculously preserved copies of this publication: “Price 5 rubles in gold. All proceeds from this publication go to the Home for Lonely Teenage Refugees.” Next, the addresses of the publication’s warehouses were indicated: “Harbin - Old Town, Furazhnaya, 44” and “Harbin - New Town, Book Publishing House “Russkoe Delo””. Shortly before his death, Diterikhs ordered the transfer of his copy of the investigative file to the central department of the EMRO, however, shortly before his death, he learned shortly before his death about the abduction in Paris (September 1937) by NKVD agents of the chairman of the EMRO, Lieutenant General E. K. Miller, he changed his intention. Died of tuberculosis. A memorial service was served in St. Nicholas Cathedral in Harbin on October 10. at 7 o'clock evenings. The investigative file remaining with the widow was later “transferred for safekeeping to a safe place in one of the Western countries.” According to some reports, it is still privately owned by the general’s relatives. There is evidence that the widow handed over her husband’s archive to her brother, Major General F. E. Bredov (04/22/1884-03/15/1959), who fought in the ranks of the Russian Corps during the Second World War and died in San Francisco.
Materials used from the site Great Encyclopedia of the Russian People - http://www.rusinst.ru
Diterikhs Mikhail Konstantinovich (5.4.1874 -8.10.1937, Shanghai, China), lieutenant general (1919). He received his education in the Corps of Pages (1894) and the Nikolaev Academy of the General Staff (1900). From April 2, 1910, senior adjutant of the headquarters of the Kyiv Military District, from June 30, 1913, head of the GUGS department. During mobilization on August 23, 1914, he was appointed as acting. general for office work and assignments under the Supreme Commander-in-Chief, was involved in the development of various aspects of Russian operations. army. From 30.9.1914 etc. Quartermaster General of the 3rd Army headquarters, during the battles near Krakow he served as chief of staff. On April 1, 1915, he was appointed Quartermaster General of the Army Headquarters of the Southwestern Front. One of the closest assistants to Gen. A.A. Brusilov, played a big role in preparing the offensive of the Southwestern Front (Brusilovsky breakthrough). On April 11, 1915 he was awarded the Arms of St. George. On May 28, 1916 he was appointed commander of the 2nd Special Infantry. brigade (3rd and 4th special infantry regiments), intended to be sent to the Thessaloniki front. In July 1917 he was recalled from Russia and enlisted in the reserve of ranks at the headquarters of the Petrograd Military District. On September 10, 1917, he was appointed Quartermaster General under the Supreme Commander-in-Chief. On November 8, 1917, he fled to Ukraine, where he soon took up the post of chief of staff of the Czechoslovak Corps (until January 1919). 17.1.1919 on behalf of A.V. Kolchak headed the commission of inquiry into the murder of members of the royal family and other members of the Romanov dynasty in the Urals. From Jan. 1919 Chief of Staff of the Western Front. 11-22.7.1919 commander of the Siberian separate army. From July 22 to November 4 1919 commander of the Eastern Front; simultaneously with 10 Aug. to Oct. 1919 Chief of Staff of the Supreme Ruler, and Aug. 10-27. - Minister of War. After the defeat of Kolchak’s troops, who did not accept D.’s plan to withdraw troops from the Irtysh line, he went to Harbin, where he lived until 1922. On June 1, 1922, after the overthrow of the Merkulov government, he assumed power as commander of the troops of the Provisional Amur Government. 8.8:1922 The Council transferred power to him as the governor of the Zemstvo Army and the ruler of the Primorsky Territory. In September-October 1922, his troops were defeated by units of the Red Army, after which D. emigrated to China. 19.6.1930 replaced by general. Khanzhina as head of the Far Eastern Department of the EMRO; was an honorary member of the Officers' Assembly in Shanghai. Author of the book “The Murder of the Royal Family and Members of the House of Romanov in the Urals” (M., 1991).
Book materials used: Zalessky K.A. Who was who in the Second World War. Allies of Germany. Moscow, 2003
General Dieterichs' plan for a deep withdrawal
General Dieterichs was clearly aware that Kolchak’s idea of permanently delaying the armies on the Irtysh River was impracticable; but even if it were feasible, it was impossible to look at Omsk as a capital with the Government residing there, as soon as this city would enter the front line. We also had to reckon with the approaching onset of winter, when the Irtysh ceased to be a barrier and a defensive line. For all these reasons, Dieterichs ordered the armies to begin a deep retreat, and Kolchak had to reluctantly order the evacuation of government buildings.
According to Diterikhs's plan, the First Army was supposed to retreat to Tomsk for recruitment, the remaining two to Omsk, Novonikolaevsk, Mariinsk and further, depending on the situation. Some government agencies began to move to Irkutsk. Unfortunately, this plan was not implemented in a timely manner; how and why, I will say below. Now I want to dwell on the considerations that this plan promised us if it were carried out, or, clarifying the question, decide whether the White offensive struggle in Siberia could then be revived again with the hope of defeating the Reds. Undoubtedly, it could, but under the indispensable presence of one of two conditions: either that the Reds were completely defeated in European Russia by Denikin, and then the Siberian Army would not allow them to hold out in Siberia, where they would naturally have to rush after the Volga. Another possibility of holding out was clearly incredible - that the Japanese would decide to support our army with their troops, for which they would demand large land compensation, and Kolchak would not agree to this.
Outside of these two conditions, there was not one hundred percent chance of a successful resumption of the struggle in the spring of 1920. I'm talking, of course, about offensive combat. Neither Dieterichs' plan nor any other promised us success. The war was lost through the loss of time, space and manpower due to a series of colossal strategic and political mistakes. A year ago, from the Perm-Ekaterinburg-Chelyabinsk line, it cost nothing to reach the Volga between Samara and Tsaritsyn with 50 thousand Czechs, reinforce the Orenburg and Ural Cossacks along the way and unite with Denikin. This operation was worth going through even with the risk of opening a passage to Siberia through the Ural ridge. It was much more difficult, but still not impossible, to approach Moscow through Vyatka, for which it was necessary to act with combined forces in this direction, slowly, methodically and coordinating their actions with what was happening among the volunteers. Kolchak, instead of one plan or another, went for Lebedev’s adventurist strategy. The result of this strategy was that by mid-July the troops had suffered a number of major defeats and were in disarray. But at this time, not everything was lost, and if they had listened to the advice of experienced generals and retreated beyond the Ishim River for reorganization and recruitment, the campaign could have been started anew in one direction or another or switched to active defense until the spring of next year . Of course, Lebedev, Sakharov and Co. could not count on understanding this situation, because they did not understand anything at all, but how Admiral Kolchak did not understand such a simple thing is inexplicable, for everyone who knew him could not help but see that he is a very smart and widely educated man, and also an outstanding naval strategist, tactician and technician. After all, if in the Baltic or Black Seas the fleet under his command had suffered a number of failures, he probably would not have continued to hit the wall with his forehead, but would have turned to studying the reasons for the failures suffered and would have subsequently changed his strategy or tactics. It is incomprehensible to his mind that the same thing did not occur to him in land affairs, where, moreover, he could take advantage of other people’s knowledge, gleaned from many years of service. It seems that Kolchak was either afraid or ashamed to admit his land-based ignorance and not only did not ask for help from experienced people, but pushed it away when it was offered to him. So, he took Budberg with him on a trip to Sakharov’s army, but did not invite him to the operational report and did not talk to him about upcoming operations. Another time, Budberg, in his capacity as Minister of War, invited him to submit his written opinion on the strategic position of our armies and the possible course of their actions. Kolchak dryly replied that he had all the information from his Chief of Staff. This is no longer heightened pride, but positively some kind of eclipse.
From these two examples, it is undoubtedly clear that Budberg also suffered from the same disease that I mentioned above - a lack of will and firmness of opinion in front of the senior boss. As an experienced old general, he had every right to be listened to, especially by Kolchak, who was clearly ignorant of land affairs, and by Sakharov, who was too young and inexperienced in managing large-scale operations. Consequently, since Kolchak did not think to call him for an operational report, Budberg himself had to ask for it, putting his pride aside.
In the second case, there was no need to ask Kolchak’s permission to present his opinion on operational issues, but should have directly submitted the report. It was up to Kolchak to read it or not, to agree with it or not. Budberg would have done his duty. There is nothing more stupid than the widely developed passive interpretation of the also rather stupid saying: “Don’t ask for service, don’t refuse service,” or, even worse, “Every cricket knows its nest.” It was this bashful passivity that ruined Russia. They looked at the service as some kind of private and personal matter of the senior boss and, if he did not ask, they were afraid to even hint at their opinion. This had a particularly disastrous effect during the time of the Provisional Government, which so quickly collapsed the army with the complete lack of resistance of the military command.
Returning to Dieterichs's plan, I repeat once again that the retreat from Omsk into the depths of Siberia, in the winter and after the loss of most of the army and military equipment, no longer left hope for the possibility of a new offensive campaign next summer. The Bolsheviks, of course, would have continued the pursuit of the Siberian troops, and it is possible that these latter would have had to retreat even to Transbaikalia. But if we had been able to complete the withdrawal planned by Dieterichs in complete order, we would still have had very significant benefits. First of all, the lives of many thousands of people who died in the subsequent panic retreat would have been preserved, and Kolchak himself, who embodied the symbol of all-Russian power, would have survived. The entire gold reserve would have been preserved in his hands, due to which Wrangel’s army from the Crimea could have been transferred to the east. Having gone to Transbaikalia, it was possible for a long time, if not for the entire reign of the Bolsheviks, to form an independent part of the Russian state from the Transbaikal, Amur and Primorsky regions. Geographical conditions, the navigable Amur, two railways and the availability of troops and money made the defense of this territory quite feasible. The Russian emigration, now scattered all over the world, would find refuge and work there.
But this possible small piece of Russian happiness floated from our hands thanks to Kolchak’s hesitation and his easy responsiveness to activity, even if it was obviously absurd.
World War I(chronological table).
Participants of the First World War(biographical reference book).
Civil war 1918-1920 in Russia(chronological table).
White movement in faces(biographical reference book).
Russian general and public figure, one of the organizers of the White movement in Siberia, Mikhail Konstantinovich Diterichs was born on April 5 (April 17, new style) 1874 into a family of Baltic nobles of Swedish origin who appeared in Russia during the reign of Empress Anna Ivanovna and were related to the Lermontovs and Aksakov. His father is an officer who served in the Caucasus for 40 years. Many of his ancestors were also military.
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In July 1919 he commanded the Siberian Army of A.V. Kolchak, in July - November 1919 - the Eastern Front. Personally supervised the investigation into the murder of the Royal Family, conducted by investigator N.A. Sokolov. He defended Orthodox-monarchist positions. He managed to rally the Orthodox Russian people around himself and hold the Amur Zemsky Council in Primorye in 1922, at which its participants declared that “The Supreme All-Russian power belongs to the Royal House of the Romanovs.” At this council, the general was elected "ruler and governor of the zemstvo army", "ruler of the Amur Zemsky region."
From October 1922 in exile, where, on the basis of the investigative case of N.A. Sokolova published a book about the murder of the Royal Family and other members of the House of Romanov.
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Returning to Dieterichs's plan, I repeat once again that the retreat from Omsk into the depths of Siberia, in the winter and after the loss of most of the army and military equipment, no longer left hope for the possibility of a new offensive campaign next summer. The Bolsheviks, of course, would have continued the pursuit of the Siberian troops, and it is possible that these latter would have had to retreat even to Transbaikalia. But if we had been able to complete the withdrawal planned by Dieterichs in complete order, we would still have had very significant benefits. First of all, the lives of many thousands of people who died in the subsequent panic retreat would have been preserved, and Kolchak himself, who embodied the symbol of all-Russian power, would have survived. The entire gold reserve would have been preserved in his hands, due to which Wrangel’s army from the Crimea could have been transferred to the east. Having gone to Transbaikalia, it was possible for a long time, if not for the entire reign of the Bolsheviks, to form an independent part of the Russian state from the Transbaikal, Amur and Primorsky regions. Geographical conditions, the navigable Amur, two railways and the availability of troops and money made the defense of this territory quite feasible. The Russian emigration, now scattered all over the world, would find refuge and work there. |
8.10.1937. – White general Mikhail Konstantinovich Diterikhs, the last leader of the White Army, ruler of the Amur region, died in Shanghai
White Knight of the Russian Monarchy
(04/05/1874–10/08/1937), - Lieutenant General, an outstanding figure in the White movement. Born into a hereditary officer family. The Dieterichs are an ancient knightly family with roots from Czech Moravia, one of whose descendants was invited to Russia in 1735 to build a port in Riga. Mikhail Konstantinovich received his education in the elite Corps of Pages (1894) and at the Academy of the General Staff (1900). started as a captain, ended up as a lieutenant colonel, awarded the Order of St. Anna 3rd degree with swords and bow, Order of St. Vladimir 4th degree, Order of St. Anna 2nd degree with swords. Then he served as a staff officer in Moscow, Odessa, and Kyiv.
From May 1916, Mikhail Konstantinovich had to continue participating in the war already in the camp of Russia’s allies in the Entente, in the Balkans. After successfully commanding a 10,000-strong brigade (at first he had to fight with his Serbian brothers against the Bulgarian brothers - allies of Germany...) he was appointed commander of the Franco-Russian division. Thus, the Russian general laid the foundation for the liberation of Serbia, earning the gratitude of Prince Alexander; from November 1916, the Russian brigade became part of the Serbian army. He was awarded the highest French award - the Order of the Legion of Honor, and in Russia the Order of St. Vladimir 2nd degree.
I found him on the Thessaloniki front, where the Russians were dying in the interests of the Entente countries - the initiators of this revolution. But, of course, Dieterichs could not have known this then. The army's recognition of the power of the Provisional Government was dictated by the call itself. When Mikhail Konstantinovich was called to Russia in the summer of 1917, he saw a completely different country, engulfed in chaos and madness. In August 1917, he refused Kerensky's offer to take the post of Minister of War. As the chief of staff of the special Petrograd army under General Krymov, he participated in the assault on Petrograd, but avoided arrest and from September 1917 he was even appointed quartermaster general of the Commander-in-Chief Headquarters, and from November 3 - chief of staff of the Headquarters under the command of General Dukhonin (on his initiative). When headquarters was captured by the Bolsheviks, he escaped with the help of a French military mission (the order came in handy...) and went to Kyiv to join his family.
Almost immediately, he became the chief of staff of the Czechoslovak Corps stationed in Ukraine at the suggestion of the Czechs and Slovaks themselves, who saw in the noble Russian general their “countryman”, a native of the Czech Republic. These 50 thousand former Austrian soldiers were mobilized by the Austrians against Russia, but preferred Russian captivity. The corps was created under the Provisional Government to fight as part of the Russian army at the front, after which it was subordinate to the command of the Entente, which also hoped to use it for the war against the Central Powers, and therefore after the corps was sent through Siberia and Vladivostok to the front in Europe, without entering into conflicts with the Red authorities. But since it was in an alliance with Germany, the Bolsheviks began to obstruct the corps and demanded its disarmament.
Nevertheless, among the Czechoslovaks, many, out of a personal sense of duty, were ready to help the whites. Dieterichs became one of the organizers of the action of the Czechoslovak Corps against the Red regime at the end of May 1918. Dieterichs commanded the Transbaikal group of forces of the Czechoslovak Corps and took Vladivostok in June 1918. After this, the Czechoslovak Corps turned west along the Trans-Siberian Railway, liberating one city after another with battles and uniting with the army and other white units. Representatives of the Entente were unable to prevent this, but again hoped to send the Czechoslovakians against the Germans on their eastern front.
In October 1918, Dieterichs arrived in Ufa, where the mainly Socialist-Revolutionary anti-Bolshevik government was located - the so-called Directory of members of the one dispersed by the Bolsheviks. In November 1918, Diterikhs joined the Omsk coup against the February socialists and, while in Ufa, received an order to arrest the leaders of the Directory there. In connection with this coup and the recognition of Kolchak’s power as the Supreme Ruler of Russia, Dieterichs left the ranks of the Czechoslovak Corps, where the attitude towards Kolchak ranged from restrained to negative. He took the position of chief of staff, then acting. Commander-in-Chief of the Western Front, Admiral Kolchak.
In January 1919, Mikhail Konstantinovich was appointed head of the commission to investigate the murder of the Royal Family, entrusting the work to N.A. Sokolov and finally giving the investigation a targeted character. Dieterichs (like the English journalist R. Wilton, who helped him) came to the conclusion and summarized the results in the book “The Murder of the Royal Family and Members of the House of Romanov in the Urals” - it was urgently written and published in Vladivostok in 1922 (Unfortunately, when After the Whites retreated, a significant part of the collected evidence and documents disappeared, including through the fault of representatives of the Entente, who apparently did not want such an inconvenient truth to be established.)
Participation in the investigation of the ritual regicide prompted Mikhail Konstantinovich to a more spiritual awareness of the revolution and civil war. He increasingly realizes that military efforts alone will not defeat the Bolsheviks. He felt what was happening as the culmination of a struggle between the holding Christian forces, whose stronghold was the monarchy, and the attacking anti-Christian forces; and in this struggle only the restoration of the Orthodox monarchy could stop the destruction of Russia and the world. Since the summer of 1919, Dieterichs has been hatching plans to convene a Zemsky Sobor for this purpose. It was also important for him that in January 1919 he blessed the Supreme Ruler of Russia, Admiral Kolchak, to fight against the God-fighting Bolsheviks. In order to raise the Orthodox spirit of the army, Dieterichs initiated the creation of sacrificial volunteer white detachments (teams) of the Holy Cross and the Green Banner; the soldiers took an oath on the Gospel and sewed white crosses onto their chests.
Since the summer of 1919, Dieterichs became commander of the Siberian Army, Commander-in-Chief of the Eastern Front, and then also Minister of War. The measures he took to strengthen the army made it possible to initially stop the onslaught of the Reds, and in September to push them back (Tobolsk operation). But defeat in the European part allowed Trotsky to transfer superior forces to the east against Kolchak. The subversive activities of the Social Revolutionaries and Red partisans in the rear intensified, and human reserves were drying up. Strategic differences with Kolchak led to Dieterichs' dismissal in early November; At the same time, the Reds took the Siberian capital - Omsk. The Czechoslovakians had previously received an order from the Entente to evacuate home through Vladivostok (the war with Germany was over, and the Entente was not going to fight against the Bolsheviks), for which they seized the entire train. The army under the command of General Kappel entered the three-month Siberian Ice Campaign on foot, bypassing Irkutsk through frozen Baikal - to Chita...
During the retreat of the Whites, until the end of the summer of 1920, Dieterichs was the Manager of the Military Department of Transbaikalia under, to whom, by the last decree of Admiral Kolchak of January 4, 1920, the fullness of military and civil power was transferred as the Supreme Ruler of Siberia. In the territories under his control, Semenov established a military dictatorship with the restoration of the pre-February order. In July–August 1920, Diterichs was sent by Semenov to negotiate with the Primorye coalition government regarding the further transfer of white forces to Primorye for their organization and reorganization there. The negotiations ended in failure. In November of the same 1920, Semenov suffered a final defeat in Transbaikalia, his troops retreated to a neutral zone on the border of China and Primorye. (At the same time, in the summer of 1921, an independent attempt to attack from Mongolia ended in failure...)
After Semenov’s defeat, Diterikhs left for Harbin, where he even had to work in a shoe workshop to support his family. But after the collapse of the motley coalition government in Vladivostok on June 1, 1922, Mikhail Konstantinovich was called there and took command of the White forces of Primorye with the goal of creating at least a fragment of Russian statehood in the Far East to continue the White struggle. On June 8, he became Chairman of the Government until the convocation, a dream of which he began to realize.
The cathedral opened on July 23, 1922 and elected Diterichs as Ruler of the Amur Zemsky Territory and Voivode of the Zemsky Rati. The Council, led by Dieterichs, recognized the sins of the Russian people as the cause of the revolution, called for repentance and proclaimed the only way to save Russia was the restoration of the legitimate Orthodox monarchy. The Council recognized the Romanov Dynasty as reigning despite the turmoil and restored it in the Amur region. Accordingly, Mikhail Konstantinovich took the oath in the Assumption Cathedral and restructured the entire civil life in the region: he organized the Zemstvo Duma, the Council of External Affairs, the Local Council, prepared the Local Council; The Council of the Zemstvo Group was supposed to decide all civil matters. The church parish was established as the main administrative unit of Southern Primorye.
After the Japanese left, mobilization was successfully carried out. Under the command of Dieterichs, the White troops defeated the Reds near Khabarovsk, but were unable to suppress the Red partisan detachments. After the failure of the White forces near Spassk in October, they retreated to China and Korea. At the same time, Dieterichs achieved the evacuation of military families on Japanese ships, and also attracted the US and British Red Cross to evacuate the wounded and sick.
Mikhail Konstantinovich himself left Russia on October 25, 1922, settling with his family in Shanghai. I had to work as the chief cashier at the Franco-Chinese Bank. His wife Sofya Emilievna has long been involved in caring for children - and in Shanghai she created an orphanage for Russian children, as well as a “School at home” for girls with training in the gymnasium course, this was the first stage of the gradually growing Russian girls’ gymnasium, the first graduate of which took place in 1937. The Diterichs family also provided financial support to the Society for the Dissemination of Russian National Literature.
Mikhail Konstantinovich also could not leave his political activities: he became the recognized leader of the white emigration in the Far East - the head of the Far Eastern department (they prepared combat groups to be sent to the USSR), an honorary member of the Brotherhood of Russian Truth (which did the same). After the occupation of Manchuria by Japan (1932), Dieterichs expressed support for the Japanese government, which soon entered into the Anti-Comintern Pact. In emigration, hopes for the formation of a Russian state in the Far East were revived, in connection with which Dieterichs wrote “An Appeal to the White Russian Emigration of the Whole World.” In 1933, Mikhail Konstantinovich began correspondence with the Prince of the Imperial Blood Nikita Alexandrovich (great-grandson on the male side and son of the sister of Sovereign Nicholas II on the female side), who did not recognize the impostor of Grand Duke Kirill. But for this, as Dieterichs planned, a general impulse of Russian emigration was needed, which no longer appeared...
Thank you very much for the unique article about one of the Russian generals who adorn the history
riya of Russian military science (just don’t write
about the white general). They are all Russian - both red and white. They don't need to be divided...
It’s doubly pleasant that I wrote a book about M.M. Diterichs, a Soviet surgeon (this is his
nephew, whose name was not published anywhere for a long time due to his relationship with M.K. Dieterichs).
May their memory be blessed!!!
Serving the Motherland faithfully is hard and sometimes thankless work.
“The idea of power in my hands was inspired by God to the Zemsky Sobor. He imposed on me the task of protecting the remaining principles: the Faith and the people. It is for the Faith, for the rights of the people that I will fight. Fight to the end. For the Faith of Christ I will die... "
From the speech of M.K. Diterikhs at the village congress
Ussuri Cossack Army in the village of Grodekovo.
History knows many examples when seemingly completely hopeless actions suddenly turned into success. In traditional historiography, the opinion is firmly established that “history does not tolerate the subjunctive mood” and “it is impossible to reverse events.” Starting the construction of the Russian National State in Primorye, on this, in the full sense of the word, “the last inch of Russian land”, proclaiming the principle of the “Revival of the Orthodox Monarchy”, the last fighters of the White Army hardly believed that they would march victoriously from Vladivostok to Moscow, they will hoist the National Banner over the Kremlin and save our Motherland from Bolshevism. And yet, it was necessary to show all of Russia, and, perhaps, the whole world, that the White struggle, which began in 1917 under the slogans of defending the Constituent Assembly, ends in 1922 under the slogan of a return to the traditional values of the Russian State - Orthodoxy, Autocracy and Nationalities. The finale of the White movement in Russia was supposed to be an act of restoring national continuity, torn by the civil war, that very continuity on the basis of which it would be possible to talk about “accord and reconciliation” in Russian society. This ending meant, first of all, the Spiritual Victory of the White movement...
By the providence of God, this Sacred Mission was destined to be fulfilled by a man of an unusual, interesting destiny.
The third book in the "White Warriors" series is dedicated to Lieutenant General Mikhail Konstantinovich Diterichs. A talented General Staff officer who developed plans for the famous “Brusilov Breakthrough”, a brave head of the Russian Special Brigade, who performed “allied duty” on the Thessaloniki Front of the Great War, the last Quartermaster General of the Supreme Commander-in-Chief Headquarters until October 1917, the head of the investigation into the death of the August Family, who carefully, scrupulously collected the slightest evidence of the martyrdom of the Sovereign Emperor Nikolai Alexandrovich and his relatives, the Commander of the Eastern Front of the White Movement, who launched the last offensive of the White armies on the river in the fall of 1919. Tobol, the organizer of the volunteer squads of the Holy Cross, finally, the last Ruler of White Russia - the Ruler of the Amur Zemsky Territory in 1922, and abroad - the head of the Far Eastern Department of the Russian All-Military Union, an honorary member of the rebel Brotherhood of Russian Truth. All these aspects of the biography of General Dieterichs are reflected in numerous documents, excerpts from the memoirs of participants in the White movement, representatives of the Russian Abroad.
In this book I would like to present the image of General Dieterichs as the most multifaceted. Therefore, focusing on the activities of General Diterichs as Ruler of the Amur Region, the compilers could not leave aside other pages of the military and political biography of Mikhail Konstantinovich. Materials were collected, literally, “bit by bit.” The work turned out to be lengthy, but interesting and, hopefully, useful and relevant for our contemporaries.
The book "General Dieterichs", like previous editions of the "White Warriors" series, is built on the basis of previously unpublished sources unknown to most Russian readers. Materials were used from the State Archive of the Russian Federation, the Russian State Military Historical Archive and the Russian State Military Archive.
The publication of the book became possible thanks to the support of the Director of the State Archive of the Russian Federation S.V. Mironenko and the head of the Russian Abroad funds L.I. Petrusheva, as well as the director of the Russian State Military Archive V.N. Kuzelenkov and his staff.
The value of this book lies in the publication of unique documents and photographic materials from the personal archive of General Dieterichs, kindly provided by one of his heirs, the oldest member of the People's Labor Union of Russian Solidarists, Andrei Anatolyevich Vasiliev, who now lives in Denmark. K.A. also provided support in collecting photographic materials. Tatarinova (Melbourne, Australia), A.A. Petrov (Moscow), R.V. Polchaninov (USA).
S.S. provided great assistance in the technical preparation of the book for publication. Pushkarev, M.V. Slavinsky and H.R. Paul (Frankfurt am Main).
The scientific editor and compiler of the “White Warriors” series expresses special gratitude to his wife E.A. Tsvetkova, who did a very large amount of work preparing the book for publication.
The book is illustrated with drawings of the uniforms of soldiers of the Special Brigade of the Thessaloniki Front, the Brigades of the Holy Cross, as well as the Amur Zemstvo Rati, made by Moscow artist A.V. Lebedeva.
Vasily Tsvetkov -
editor-in-chief of the almanac "White Guard",
Candidate of Historical Sciences
GENERAL DITERICHS, LAST DEFENDER OF THE EMPIRE
Soviet historians did not often write about the leaders of the White movement. With increased interest in the fate of the “legendary Kraskom and commissars” (even at the level of platoon and unit commanders), among the white generals, as a rule, “leaders” were attracted: Kornilov, Kolchak, Denikin, Yudenich, Wrangel. Less often they wrote about Krasnov, Mamantov, Shkuro, Semenov. There was practically no mention of “mid-level” generals, not to mention hundreds of “unknown lieutenants and staff captains.” Lieutenant General Mikhail Konstantinovich Diterichs was no exception - the last head of White Russia, the Ruler of the Amur Zemsky Territory, the man who decided to proclaim the restoration of the monarchy as the slogan of the White movement, the last Commander-in-Chief of the last White Army that fought on the territory of Russia - the Zemsky Rati.
His rare assessments in Soviet literature were not very diverse. “A complete reactionary”, “ideologist of the clerical counter-revolution”, “Black Hundred reaction”, “ardent monarchist”, spokesman for “religious extremism”, “protégé of American-Japanese imperialism”. But even in the historiography of the Russian Abroad, the figure of General Dieterichs was not awarded numerous flattering epithets. “Mystic”, “Joan of Arc in trousers”, a person “not of this world”, “naive monarchist”, “fanatic” - these are assessments already from the “white camp”. The battles in Primorye in the summer-autumn of 1922 are described much less than, for example, the offensive in the spring of 1919 by the Russian army of Admiral A.V. Kolchak on the Volga, battles in the Urals or the legendary Great Siberian Ice March. There is even less documentary evidence about the battles of Russian troops under the command of Dieterichs on the Thessaloniki front in 1916-1917, the period of his life in China is practically unknown, and little is known about his participation in the investigation of the regicide. And in modern Russian historiography there are very few works devoted to the White movement in the Far East, White Primorye in 1922, not to mention studies of the biography of General Dieterichs himself. It can be argued that his fate is one of the “blank spots” in the military and political history of Russia in the first half of the twentieth century.
