Anton Ivanovitch Dénikine

Anton Ivanovitch Dénikine (Ru АнтонИвановичДеникин): December 16th 1872, Włocławek (Poland) - August 8th 1947, Ann Arbor (E. - U.). Russian general, Head of State major in the armies of the imperial Russia during the First World War, commander-in-chief of the army of the volunteers during the Russian civil war.

During the First World War

Wire of a subaltern born in serfdom, Dénikine engages very early in a military career. It follows the teacher training school of Lovitch, then the military academy of the juniors by Kiev and finally the academy of the general Staff. Patented staff in 1899, it takes the command of the military region of Warsaw.

Its first assignment leads it on the theater of the Guerre Russo-Japanese woman. In August 1914, he is chief of staff and ordering military region of Kiev. He joined VIIIe army corps and ensures in September the command of the 4th division of infantry, known as “Division of iron”.

In 1916, it is named commander-in-chief of VIIIe armed and coordinates the Offensive Broussilov in Romania. After the Revolution of February, he becomes assistant chief staff of the commander-in-chief, initially of Alexéiev, then of Broussilov, and finally of Kornilov.

During the Russian Revolution

The army of the volunteers and the countryside of ice

In September 1917, Dénikine supports the attempt at putsch of Kornilov (the Affaire Kornilov).

The November 19th, 1917, the generals escape and join Novotcherkassk in the area of the Don. At the sides of Aléxeïev and Kornilov, Dénikine creates the Armée with the Volunteers, armed mainly formed officers; it occupies there the place of assistant of the commander-in-chief. Important facts of weapons are to be put in the active of this army of which " the countryside of ice " who was held on the territories of the Kouban and the Don.

In April 1918, Kornilov is killed close to Ékaterinodar. Dénikine becomes commander-in-chief of the armed forces of the South. In July 1919, it launches the great offensive on Moscow (200.000 combatants, 2.000 guns and 30 tanks). Most of Western Russia is occupied but a counter-offensive of the Red Army at the end of October stops it in the north of Orel. Consequently, the white forces will not cease moving back until in the Crimea.

In April 1920, Dénikine resigns in favor of the general Wrangel.

Pogroms and war crimes

Certain units of the troops of Dénikine were made guilty of several Pogroms in the areas which they occupied. October 17th, 1918, a soldier of the third regiment of cavalry of Tcherginov (pertaining to the army of Dénikine) written thus with his/her parents: “We went in Konotop rosser the youpins, I succeeded in cutting the throat of three Jews and an old man youpin, and for that one touched 500 roubles per soldier”. The revolutionary Socialist of Kakhovskaia left describes in 1919 the entry of the white troops of Dénikine to Kiev by evoking “carts of Jewish corpses”. The most important pogroms took place with Fastov in September 1919 and Kiev in October, making a thousand respectively and more than 250 dead, “without the military authorities or civil higher having good year to interpose”.

Dénikine published a declaration condemning the anti-semitism. However, according to the Marxist historian Arno Joseph Mayer, “it acted of a primarily tactical step, intended to court the allies; indeed, holding them Western forces anti-Bolsheviks did not cease recalling that excesses anti-semites their alienated the public opinion and compromised the maintenance of their assistance to the white”. More generally, there be few protests at the tops of the political apparatus and military of the white government in Ukraine to protest against the blazes of anti-semitism. The Juniors members by the general headquarter of Dénikine did not protest against the pogroms, their party going until “asking the Jews to repudiate the Bolchevism to run away itself them same”. Osvag, service of propaganda of the government of Dénikine, made run of many rumors on the existence of plots warped by the Jews. A proclamation of one of the white generals encouraged the people thus “to be armed and to be drawn up against the Communists Bolsheviks Jews, the common enemy of our Russian ground”, in order to extirpate “the bad and diabolic force which lies in the heart of the Jewish Communists”.

However, according to the studies of Nahum Gergel, quoted by Alexandre Soljenitsyne, the pogroms carried out by the white Armed in Ukraine, accounts for only 17% of the 887 of the time (against 40% charged by the author to the forces of the Ukrainian freedom fighter Simon Petlioura, 25% with the country armies and the bands which were controlled per none the principal belligerents and 8,5% with the Red Army and the Tchéka). With the difference of the white, the Bolsheviks sought to identify and punish the officers responsible for pogroms (such as Bogouni and Taratchani), and affected as from June 1919 of the funds to support the victims of pogroms.

The Wrangel general, however monarchist convinced and combined of Dénikine, described the anarchy which reigns on the immense territory controlled by this last when it takes the head in March 1920 of it: “The country was directed by a whole series of small satraps, to start with the governors to finish by any graded army the indiscipline of the troops, the vice and the arbitrary one reigning with the back was not a secrecy for anybody the army, badly supplied, was nourished exclusively on the back of the population, thus burdened with an unbearable burden. ”

The exile

It is exiled in France, then emigrates with the the United States in 1945.

After the arrival of Adolf Hitler with the capacity in Germany in 1933 and in spite of its intransigent hostility with respect to Communism, Dénikine affirms its support for the Red Army vis-a-vis the threat of an invasion the Soviet Union by the Nazi Germany, qualifying Hitler of “worse enemy of Russia and the Russian people”.

It dies out peacefully in its bed in 1947 with Ann Arbor in the Michigan. Little before dying, it completes more than 2000 pages of Memories, whose book III opens by a reflection on the nature and the extent of the Russian revolution of 1917.

The October 3rd, 2005 its ashes were buried in a tomb of the cemetery of the Monastère of Donskoï, not far from those of the Russian philosopher Ivan Ilyne, also buried this same October 3rd. In the same cemetery, there are also those of the writer Ivan Chmelev died in exile and buried in the year 2000 and that of the last patriarch of imperial Russia Tikhon, held until its death in the monastery. Before dying, Ivan Chmelev had sent a photograph with Dénikine to the back of which he had written: Perhaps “We will find ourselves a day in Moscow”.

His/her daughter Marina Grey, producing and historian married Jean-François Chiappe, him-also historian.

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