Ataman Boris Annenkov: the story of one of the darkest figures of the Civil War

The debate that has been going on for over a century about who was more evil and merciless during the Civil War, the "Whites" or the "Reds", is obviously meaningless. There were many notorious scoundrels and murderers on both sides. Boris Annenkov, a participant in the White movement, can be an excellent example of this phenomenon. This man went down in the history of the 20th century as a sadist and murderer who spared neither enemies nor comrades.

Ataman Annenkov's activities are inextricably linked with Semirechye. This is a historical region in Central Asia, located on the territory of Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan. In the north, it is bounded by Lake Balkhash, and in the south by the border with China. This vast desert territory became a real "appanage principality" of the ataman, where he had unlimited power.

Boris Vladimirovich Annenkov was born on February 9, 1889 in the Volyn province, into the family of a retired colonel. His family was noble, and one of the ancestors of the future ataman was considered to be the Decembrist Ivan Annenkov. Boris followed in his father's footsteps, choosing a military career. In 1906, he graduated from the Odessa Cadet Corps, and in 1908 - the Alexander Military School in Moscow.

Apparently, Annenkov was a talented and intelligent person. He was an excellent horseman and marksman, a good fencer and gymnast. Also in the archives were found drawings, prose and poems attributed to the ataman. Experts acknowledged that their author was a well-read and gifted person. And the ataman was also an incredibly vain person, as evidenced by hundreds of photos with his person in a variety of images.

On the fronts of the First World War, Annenkov showed himself to be a brave warrior and a good commander. He rallied around himself about 200 loyal people who were ready to follow him anywhere. In March 1917, Annenkov and his people swore allegiance to the Provisional Government. After the October Revolution, he planned to join the Bolsheviks, but they treated the nobleman with distrust. In December 1917, Annenkov was ordered to go to Omsk to disband the detachment.

But in Omsk, Annenkov refused to lay down his arms and, having replenished his unit with local residents, went underground. Now the Bolsheviks became his enemies. In February 1918, Annenkov captured Omsk. His spoils were warehouses with weapons and provisions and an ancient Cossack relic - the banner of Ermak. In the summer of 1918, the 29-year-old ataman and his unit successfully fought the Red Army near Omsk and in the Southern Urals.

By October, Annenkov's partisan detachment had grown so much that it began to be called the Ataman Annenkov Partisan Division. In December 1918, the White Movement command sent the division to Semirechye to suppress the uprising. Annenkov's men drowned it in blood, for which Admiral Kolchak awarded the ataman the Order of St. George, 4th degree, and the rank of major general. A little later, Annenkov began to command the Separate Semirechye Army of the Whites, which numbered 7,200 fighters.

During the Civil War, the parties were not distinguished by mercy. But against the background of Boris Annenkov, the personalities of most of the bloody executioners looked pale. Annenkov's men resorted to mass murder for the first time in September 1918. This happened during the suppression of a peasant uprising in the Slavgorod region of the Altai province. After that, punitive operations became the general's "trademark".

Kolchak's Prime Minister P. V. Vologodsky wrote indignantly about Annenkov's actions in his diary:

One might think that violence was limited to corporal punishment. Alas, this was not the case. In Slavgorod, people's deputies elected by the peasants were hacked to death with sabres right on the main square of the city. In total, the punitive forces dealt with 1,667 residents of the Slavgorod district. After the bloody suppression of the rebellion, Annenkov forcibly took thousands of peasants into his army. Annenkov's methods are eloquently described by his words, spoken at one of the military councils:

The ataman not only gave orders to exterminate people. He himself took part in the massacres with pleasure. His comrades also noted the special sadistic inclinations of their commander. Annenkov loved to drive a car "with the wind in his hair". At the same time, he did not miss the opportunity to deliberately run over a cat, dog or chicken. He often said that he dreamed of "running over some Kirghiz boy".

The subordinates did not lag behind their ataman. In the ranks of the Semirechye army there were many people with a criminal past and simply with a disturbed psyche. Many used opium and cocaine, completely losing touch with the real world. In order to keep all this rabble in submission, it was necessary to act as cruelly as possible. Annenkov centurion Yefremov recalled the order in the detachments as follows:

Former soldiers of Annenkov's army later said that they never felt safe. Life in the division was worthless and they could do anything to a person that the ataman or his henchmen thought of. One of the most horrific events was the massacre of their own Orenburg Cossacks and women in the spring of 1920.

Then Annenkov's army retreated at the Selke Pass. By order of the ataman, forty families of officers of his detachment with their families were robbed and brutally killed. Girls and women from 7 to 18 years old were raped before death. The reason was the refusal of these people to follow the army further, to certain death.

In the same year of 1920, the Red Army pressed Annenkov's detachment to the Chinese border. Most of the fighters refused to leave Russia. Then, having promised to let them go peacefully, they were disarmed, and then a bloody massacre was arranged. The "traitors" were hacked with sabers and stabbed with bayonets by their former comrades-in-arms. Later, 70 miles from the Chinese border, hundreds of skulls were found in pits. According to various estimates, the executioners killed from 500 to 1000 people.

Another passion of Ataman Annenkov was robbery. He loved to live in grand style, so in the captured cities and towns he did not disdain anything. The White General's henchmen stole everything they could from the houses of residents and institutions. Bank safes, jewelry, furs, fabrics and cutlery, furniture and food.

In May 1920, the Bolshevik Red Army drove Annenkov's men out of Semirechye to the border with China. The ataman was offered to surrender, but he refused once again. Instead, the badly battered detachment attacked the Chinese fortress of Guanchu and took it by storm. The ataman did not get away with it, and in response, the Chinese attacked his men. Annenkov was utterly defeated and ended up in captivity. He was tried and sentenced to three years in prison.

After serving his sentence, Boris Annenkov seemed to have settled down. He became interested in horse breeding and began to live as an ordinary farmer. But when civil war broke out in China, he took up arms again. The former ataman gathered a small detachment and fought on the side of General Zhang Zuolin.

But in 1926, the military career of the former White General ended ingloriously. During a special operation by the OGPU, Annenkov was kidnapped. His trial took place in Semipalatinsk in July and August 1927, and the verdict was predetermined. On the night of August 24-25, 1927, Boris Annenkov and his right-hand man, General Denisov, were shot in the basement of the Semipalatinsk prison.