The meaning of the word shhors. A bullet for Comrade Shchors. From whose hand did the “Ukrainian Chapaev” die? Shchors biography briefly
SHCHORS NIKOLAY ALEKSANDROVICH (1895-1919)
Bernard Shaw, in his play The Devil's Apprentice, asked, as it turned out, the age-old question: "What will history say in the end?" And his answer was unequivocal: "And she, as always, will lie." But it is not history that lies, but those who seek to rewrite it in order to hide the crime committed. This is exactly what happened to the national hero of Ukraine Mykola Shchors.
In almost every encyclopedia published in the USSR after 1935, one can read the following article: “Shchors Nikolai Aleksandrovich (1895–1919), participant in the Civil War. Member of the CPSU since 1918. In 1918–1919. commander of a detachment in battles with German invaders, Bohunsky regiment, 1st Ukrainian Soviet and 44th rifle divisions in battles against Petliurists and Polish troops. Killed in battle." How many of them - commanders, brigade commanders - perished in the cruel post-revolutionary meat grinder! But the name of Shchors became legendary. Poems, songs have been written about him, a huge historiography has been created, a feature film has been shot. Monuments to Shchors stand in Kiev, which he courageously defended, Samara, where he organized the red partisan movement, Zhytomyr, Klintsy, where he smashed the enemies of Soviet power, and near Korosten, where his life was cut short. Museums dedicated to the red commander are also open there. And they have a lot of archival documents. But, as it turns out, not all of them can be trusted.
It is difficult to judge now what kind of commander Shchors was, but he became one of the first officers of the tsarist army to appear in the Cossack red freemen. Nikolai Alexandrovich was not going to be a military man. The son of a railway engineer from the village of Snovsk, Chernihiv province, after graduating from a parochial school, wanted to go to the clergy and enter the seminary, but with the outbreak of the First World War he was drafted into the army. A literate young man was immediately assigned to the Kiev school of military paramedics. Then there was the Southwestern Front. For the courage shown in battles, the commander sent him to the Poltava Military School, which trained junior warrant officers for the army in an accelerated four-month course, and again into the thick of the battle. By the time of the February Revolution, Shchors was already a second lieutenant, but when the front collapsed after the events of the Great October Revolution, Nikolai, having healed in the Crimea from tuberculosis earned in the war, returned to his native city.
As a military officer, Shchors could not stand aside when Ukraine was threatened by German occupation after the Brest Peace. He created a small partisan detachment in his native Snovsk, which gradually grew into a larger one, with the loud name "First Revolutionary Army". The leader of the partisans joined the RCP(b) and successfully coped with the military tasks that the party set for him. In October 1918, he already commanded the 2nd brigade of the Ukrainian Soviet division, consisting of loyal Bohuns and the Tarashchansky regiment. The partisans, proven in battle, led by Shchors, literally in a few months defeated the Haidamaks and parts of the Polish army in the direction of Chernigov - Kiev - Fastov. On February 5, Nikolai Alexandrovich was appointed commandant of Kiev, and the Provisional Workers 'and Peasants' Government of Ukraine awarded him an honorary weapon. The fighters loved their commander, despite the strict disposition (he shot violators with his own hands). He knew how to organize the course of the battle, while combining the skills and experience of an officer with partisan methods of struggle. Therefore, it is not surprising that soon the entire division was under his command. And then, during the reorganization of the Red Army, other Ukrainian units joined it, and Shchors led the 44th Rifle Division of the Red Army.
The situation in Ukraine by the summer of 1919 was extremely difficult for the Soviet government. Denikin and Petliurists tried to capture Kiev, but it was possible to break through to it only by capturing the strategic railway junction in Korosten. It was he who defended the division of Shchors. When, after the raid of the cavalry corps of General Mamontov, the 14th Army fled and the fall of Kiev was a foregone conclusion, the difficult task fell on the units entrusted to Shchors - to buy time to evacuate Soviet institutions and organize the retreat of the 12th Army of the Southern Front. The divisional commander and his fighters stood as a wall, but on August 30, 1919, near a small village near Korosten, during another counterattack on the front line of the enemy, a bullet from an enemy machine gun, hitting just above the left eye and coming out in the back of the head on the right, cut off Shchors' life. There was no equivalent replacement. On the same day, the Petliurites entered Kiev, and the next day they were driven out by the White Guards.
The Red Army soldiers said goodbye to their beloved commander. Shchors' wound was carefully covered with bandages. Then the body in a zinc coffin (!) was loaded into a train freight car and buried in Samara. None of the Shchorsovites accompanied the funeral train.
Years have passed. The hero of the Civil War was practically forgotten, although his name was mentioned quite often in special and memoir literature. Thus, in one of the most fundamental works on the history of the Civil War, the multi-volume Notes on the Civil War (1932–1933), the former commander of the Ukrainian Front, V. Antonov-Ovseenko, wrote: “In Brovary, the units of the first regiment were reviewed. We got acquainted with the commanding staff of the division. Shchors - commander of the 1st regiment (former staff captain), dryish, tucked up, with a firm look, sharp, clear movements. The Red Army soldiers loved him for his diligence and courage, the commanders respected him for his intelligence, clarity and resourcefulness.
It gradually became clear that not so many people witnessed the tragic death of the divisional commander. Even General S.I. Petrikovsky (Petrenko), who at that time commanded the cavalry brigade of the 44th division, although he was located nearby, arrived in time for the commander when he was already dead and his head was bandaged. It turns out that at that moment, assistant commander Ivan Dubovoi and a political inspector from the headquarters of the 12th Army, a certain Tankhil-Tankhilevich, were next to Shchors. Sergei Ivanovich himself knew about the death of Shchors only from the words of Oak, who personally bandaged the commander and did not allow Anna Rosenblum, the nurse of the Bogunsky regiment, to change the bandage. Dubovoy himself, in his memoirs, published in 1935, continued to assert that Shchors was killed by an enemy machine gunner, saturating his story with many details: “The enemy opened heavy machine-gun fire, and especially, I remember, one machine gun of a railway booth showed “dashing”. Shchors took the binoculars and began to look where the machine-gun fire was coming from. But a moment passed, and the binoculars from Shchors' hands fell to the ground, and Shchors' head too. And not a single word about the political instructor.
As it turned out, the name of the hero of the Civil War was not lost in time. Long before Stalin remembered him and instructed A. Dovzhenko to create a film about the "Ukrainian Chapaev", there was a Shchors movement, which by the beginning of the 30s united about 20 thousand soldiers from the 44th division. They met regularly and even published a book of documents and memoirs (the 44th Kiev Division, 1923). True, in 1931 in Kiev, at the suggestion of the OGPU, the so-called “Spring” case was promoted, according to which several dozen commanders of the Shchors division were repressed. The wife of the divisional commander, Fruma Efimovna Khaikina-Rostova, also passed through the camps, and his younger brother Grigory, one of the deputy commissars of the Navy for construction, was poisoned in Reval in the late 30s. But in Ukraine, the hero was remembered, and in 1935 the village of Snovsk became the city of Shchors. But only after the release of the Dovzhenkov film in 1939, Nikolai Aleksandrovich entered the cohort of the most famous heroes of the struggle for Soviet power and the creators of the Red Army in Ukraine. At the same time, many feats were attributed to him, up to the creation of the Bogunsky regiment, because by that time one part of the command staff had already been mowed down, and the other was considered an enemy of the people. Shchors, on the other hand, died “on time” and did not pose a threat to the leader of the peoples.
But now a situation has arisen when there is a hero, but there is no grave. And for official canonization, they urgently demanded to find a burial place in order to give proper honors. Tireless searches on the eve of the film's release turned out to be fruitless, despite the fact that everyone understood how such "negligence" could end. Only in 1949 was the only eyewitness to a rather unusual funeral found. It turned out to be the adoptive of the cemetery watchman - Ferapontov. He told how late in the autumn evening a freight train arrived in Samara, a sealed zinc coffin was unloaded from it - an unusual rarity at that time - and under the cover of darkness and in the strictest secrecy was transported to the cemetery. At the “funeral meeting” several visitors spoke, they also fired a triple revolver salute. They hastily covered the grave with earth and erected a wooden tombstone they had brought with them. And since the city authorities did not know about this event, there was no care for the grave. Now, 30 years later, Ferapontov unmistakably led the commission to the burial place on the territory of the Kuibyshev cable plant. Shchors' grave was found under a half-meter layer of gravel. A little more - and the building of the electrical shop would have been a monument to the hero of the Civil War.
The hermetically sealed coffin was opened. It turned out that without access to oxygen, the body was preserved almost perfectly, especially since it was also hastily, but embalmed. Why were such "excesses" needed in the formidable war years that they wanted to hide? This question was answered immediately. A forensic medical examination confirmed what the Shchorsovites had been muffled whispering about all these years. “The inlet is a hole in the back of the head on the right, and the outlet is in the region of the left parietal bone. Therefore, the direction of the bullet's flight is from back to front and from right to left. It can be assumed that the bullet was revolver in its diameter. The shot was fired at close range, presumably 5-10 meters. Of course, these materials were kept secret for a long time. They were discovered in the archives and published by the journalist Y. Safonov after the collapse of the USSR. And then the remains of Nikolai Shchors, after a thorough study, were reburied in another cemetery and finally a monument was erected.
The fact that the divisional commander was killed by his own is now clear, but the question remains: to whom did he interfere so much? It turns out that although Shchors was accepted into the party, they were more likely referred to as the so-called fellow travelers. He had his own position on any issue. He had little regard for the military command, and if the staff decision did not suit him, Shchors stubbornly defended his point of view. The authorities, suspecting Nikolai of disobedience and partisanship, did not like him very much, especially the Bolshevik "strategists" were jarred by the burning Shchorsov look that never descended to the bottom. But still, this was not the reason for the removal of the commander who skillfully led the troops, who at that time was in great need of the Soviet government.
At first, historians suspected the Baltic sailor Pavel Efimovich Dybenko, who during the October Revolution held the most important post of chairman of the Central Balt, and then was promoted to the most responsible state and party posts, as well as military posts. But the "brother" with his mental abilities invariably failed all assignments. I missed Krasnov and other generals, who, having gone to the Don, raised the Cossacks and created the White Army. Then, commanding a sailor detachment, he surrendered Narva to the Germans, for which he was even expelled from the party, albeit for a while. Dybenko also became "famous" as commander of the Crimean army, people's commissar for military and naval affairs and chairman of the Revolutionary Military Council of the Crimean Republic - he surrendered the peninsula to the whites. And he, having mediocrely failed the defense of Kiev, fled with the 14th Army, leaving Shchors and his fighters to their fate. All these failures he got away with thanks to his wife, the famous Alexandra Kollontai. In addition, Lenin always remembered the role that Dybenko played in October 1917. But if Shchors had managed to eliminate his "mistakes", perhaps the "brother" would not have lived to see the accusation of an attempt on Stalin and execution in 1938. But, as it turned out, it was not he who “prevented” the division commander from successfully defending Kiev.
N. Shchors had more ambitious and cunning opponents. As it turned out, with his intractable character, he greatly annoyed S. I. Aralov, who at that time held the positions of a member of the Revolutionary Military Council of the 12th and 14th armies, as well as the head of the intelligence department of the Field Headquarters of the Revolutionary Military Council of the Republic and temporarily the position of commander of the 14th Army. And if the command of the front and the army considered the Shchors division to be one of the best and most combat-ready formations, then Commissar S. Aralov had a different point of view. He was convinced that the Shchorsovites should be dealt with by a military tribunal. Relations with the divisional commander he developed disgusting. In his letters to the Central Committee, Aralov exposed Shchors as an anti-Soviet, pointed out his uncontrollability, and characterized the division led by him, and especially the Bogunsky regiment, almost as a bandit freemen, representing a danger to Soviet power. In his opinion, in the "decayed" division, a purge of "untrustworthy" commanders was urgently needed. And his signals that “it’s impossible to work with the local Ukrainians” and that, first of all, a new division commander is needed to replace Shchors, were heard. Being a direct protege of the People's Commissar of the Navy L. Trotsky, Aralov was vested with great powers. In response to his denunciations, Trotsky's telegram arrived demanding that the strictest order be restored and that the command staff be purged.
Aralov himself had already twice tried to remove Shchors from command of the division, but he failed, because the authority and popularity of the division commander among his subordinates were unspeakably great, and this could cause a scandal with the most unpredictable consequences. And so Aralov managed to find "worthy" performers. On August 19, 1919, by order of the commander of the 12th Army, the 1st Ukrainian division of Shchors and the 44th rifle division of Dubovoy were merged. Moreover, Shchors became the commander of the 44th division, and Dubovoy became his deputy, and this despite the fact that until recently he was the chief of staff of the army, commander of the army. But in order to divert the slightest suspicion from Dubovoy, a young man with the habits of an experienced criminal arrived at the division by order of S.I. Aralov. His appearance did not go unnoticed, because the representative of the Revolutionary Military Council of the 12th Army, Pavel Tankhil-Tankhilevich, did not at all look like a military man. He arrived in the division dressed to the nines and pomaded like a dandy, and after the death of Shchors, he disappeared, as he had never been. And Ivan Dubovoy himself in his memoirs did not say anything about this mysterious person. But on the other hand, when historians and journalists began to "dig" this version, they stumbled upon some facts in the memoirs that were clearly missed by the censors.
It turned out that back in March 1935, a small article signed by the former commander of the Bogunsky regiment K. Kvyatek slipped through the Ukrainian newspaper Kommunist, who reported that “August 30 at dawn. arrived head of division comrade. Shchors, his deputy comrade. Dubovoy and authorized representative of the Revolutionary Military Council of the 12th Army Comrade. Tankhil-Tankhilevich. After some time Comrade. Shchors and those accompanying him drove up to our front line. We lay down. Tov. Shchors raised his head, took binoculars to look. At that moment, an enemy bullet hit him. But in this version there is not a word about the "dashing" machine gunner. And in the book of the former fighter of the Shchorsovskaya division, Dmitry Petrovsky, “The Tale of the Regiments of Bogunsky and Tarashchansky”, published in 1947, the author claimed that the bullet struck down Shchors when. the machine gun is already dead. The same version was confirmed by the former commander of a separate cavalry brigade of the 44th division, later Major General S. Petrikovsky (Petrenko) in his memoirs, written in 1962, but partially published only more than a quarter of a century later. He also testified that the political inspector was armed with Browning, and said that he had conducted his investigation on fresh tracks. It turns out that near Shchors, on one side, Dubovoy lay down, and on the other, Tankhil-Tankhilevich. The general cites Dubovoy's words that during the skirmish, the political inspector, contrary to common sense, fired at a distant enemy with a Browning gun. And here the general makes a completely unexpected conclusion about the cause of the death of Shchors. “I still think that it was the political inspector who shot, not Dubova. But without the assistance of Oak, the murder could not have happened. Only relying on the assistance of the authorities in the person of Deputy Shchors - Dubovoy, on the support of the Revolutionary Military Council of the 12th Army, the criminal committed this terrorist act. I knew Dubovoy not only from the Civil War. He seemed like an honest man to me. But he also seemed weak-willed to me, without special talents. He was nominated, and he wanted to be nominated. That's why I think he was made an accomplice. And he did not have the courage to prevent the murder.” And S. I. Aralov himself, in the manuscript of his memoirs about the Civil War “In Ukraine 40 years ago (1919),” seemed to accidentally say a very remarkable phrase: “Unfortunately, persistence in personal behavior led him [Shchors] to an untimely death.”
Finally, it remains to add that on October 23, 1919, almost two months after the death of Shchors and a hastily conducted investigation, it was I. Dubovoy who headed the command of the 44th division, and Tankhil-Tankhilevich, who suddenly disappeared from Ukraine, appeared in the Revolutionary Military Council of the 10th Army Southern front. Both the killer, and the accomplice, and the customer were very successful in their dirty business and believed that they had safely hidden all the evidence. They did not care that, left without a real commander, the division had lost most of its combat capability. Shchors interfered with them, and that was enough. As a former member of the Revolutionary Military Council of the Ukrainian Front and a hero of the Civil War, E. Shchadenko, said: “Only enemies could tear Shchors away from the division, into whose consciousness he had grown roots. And they tore it off."
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The meaning of the word shhors
shchors in the crossword dictionary
shhors
Encyclopedic Dictionary, 1998
shhors
SCHORS (until 1935 Snovsk) a city (since 1924) in Ukraine, Chernihiv region, on the river. Dreams. Railroad station. 13.6 thousand inhabitants (1991). Furniture factory, railway transport and food industry enterprises. Named after N. A. Shchors, who was born in Snovsk (memorial museum).
shhors
SCHORS Nikolai Alexandrovich (1895-1919) hero of the Civil War. In 1918-19 he was commander of a detachment in battles with German invaders, of the Bohunsky regiment, brigade, 1st Ukrainian Soviet and 44th rifle divisions in battles against Petliura and Polish troops. Killed in battle.
Shchors (film)
Shchors- film by Alexander Dovzhenko 1939. Historical and revolutionary film about the legendary commander of the Civil War Nikolai Shchors.
Shchors
Shchors:
Shchors (opera)
Shchors(also known as commander”) is an opera by Boris Lyatoshinsky, written in 1938 and first staged at the Kiev Opera House. Libretto by I. Kocherga and M. Rylsky
Examples of the use of the word shchors in the literature.
Oh, through the Forge to Totma Ivan the terrible ruler Sing, balalaika, collect onion tea in Kustanai, Gorky from to the pakhanov name, Kirov, Shchors and Grozny In the furnace of our silver fret to the Chinese-Malay alas and Tuva collect.
After all, my student Khalatnikov, having married Valya Shchors, remained Khalatnikov, although we all bow before the name of the hero.
Then the Civil War began, and now he was already the deputy head of the division, and the head was Shchors.
Pavlovsky - an old Chernihiv partisan of the civil war, commissar of the regiment of the times Shchors, back in the nineteenth year, received the military order of the Red Banner, - remained in the rear of the Germans and was Kovpak's assistant in the economic department.
It was not far to go, to Maly Prospekt, the former Shchors, Lekha walked all the way, from door to door, in half an hour of a walking step: first along the Makarov Embankment, then across the Tuchkov Bridge, then along the Zhdanovskaya Embankment.
May 25, 1895 - August 30, 1919
red commander, commander of the Civil War in Russia
Biography
Youth
Born and raised in the village of Korzhovka, Velikoschimelsky volost, Gorodnyansky district, Chernihiv province (since 1924 - Snovsk, now the regional center of Shchors, Chernihiv region of Ukraine). Born into the family of a wealthy peasant landowner (according to another version - from the family of a railway worker).
In 1914 he graduated from the military paramedic school in Kiev. At the end of the year, the Russian Empire entered the First World War. Nikolai went to the front first as a military paramedic.
In 1916, the 21-year-old Shchors was sent to a four-month crash course at the Vilna Military School, which by that time had been evacuated to Poltava. Then a junior officer on the Southwestern Front. As part of the 335th Anapa Infantry Regiment of the 84th Infantry Division of the Southwestern Front, Shchors spent almost three years. During the war, Nikolai fell ill with tuberculosis, and on December 30, 1917 (after the October Revolution of 1917), Lieutenant Shchors was released from military service due to illness and left for his native farm.
Civil War
In February 1918, in Korzhovka, Shchors created a Red Guard partisan detachment, in March - April he commanded a united detachment of the Novozybkovsky district, which, as part of the 1st revolutionary army, participated in battles with German invaders.
In September 1918, in the Unecha region, he formed the 1st Ukrainian Soviet Regiment named after P.I. Bohun. In October - November, he commanded the Bogunsky regiment in battles with the German interventionists and hetmans, from November 1918 - the 2nd brigade of the 1st Ukrainian Soviet division (Bogunsky and Tarashchansky regiments), which captured Chernigov, Kiev and Fastov, repelling them from the troops of the Ukrainian directory .
On February 5, 1919, he was appointed commandant of Kiev and, by decision of the Provisional Workers' and Peasants' Government of Ukraine, was awarded an honorary weapon.
From March 6 to August 15, 1919, Shchors commanded the 1st Ukrainian Soviet Division, which, during a swift offensive, recaptured Zhytomyr, Vinnitsa, Zhmerinka from the Petliurists, defeated the main forces of the Petliurists in the area of Sarny - Rovno - Brody - Proskurov, and then in the summer of 1919 defended in the region of Sarny - Novograd-Volynsky - Shepetovka from the troops of the Polish Republic and the Petliurists, but was forced to retreat to the east under pressure from superior forces.
From August 21, 1919 - commander of the 44th Infantry Division (the 1st Ukrainian Soviet Division joined it), which stubbornly defended the Korosten railway junction, which ensured the evacuation of Kiev (August 31, captured by Denikin's troops) and the exit from the encirclement of the Southern Group of the 12th army.
On August 30, 1919, while in the advanced chains of the Bogunsky regiment, in a battle against the 7th brigade of the II Corps of the UGA near the village of Beloshitsa (now the village of Shchorsovka, Korostensky district, Zhytomyr region, Ukraine), Shchors was killed under unclear circumstances. He was shot in the back of the head at close range, presumably from 5-10 paces.
Propaganda is an amazing thing, it has the power to elevate the insignificant and destroy the great. Nikolai Shchors was neither one nor the other, but he was remembered at the right time and in the right place.
At the request of the leader
In March 1935 Joseph Stalin once again met with the so-called representatives of culture. “Why do the Russian people have the hero Chapaev and a film about the hero, but the Ukrainian people don’t have such a hero?” Stalin allegedly said. And soon the whole country learned about the red commander Nicholas Shchors. There were also witnesses to the front-line exploits of the newly-born hero.
Alexander Dovzhenko, by that time had already begun shooting a film about Vitaly Primakov(later he will go to work Tukhachevsky), quickly reoriented and made an amazing film "Shchors". Prosecutor Vladimir Antonov-Ovseenko, who also had very little left, began to heartfeltly tell how Shchors was loved by both commanders and fighters.
It turned out that the newly appeared hero did not have an official burial place. They began to search for his grave in order to bury him with honors. The widow of the hero restored the surname Shchors, took an active part in the campaign to revive the memory of her heroically deceased husband, and as a result, by order of Stalin, in 1940 she received an apartment in a government building.
Painting by Nikolay Shchors (1895–1919) cor
Songs and poems were composed about Shchors, unknown until that moment. Streets and state farms, ships and military formations were named in his honor. Every schoolchild was familiar with the heroic song ballad "A detachment was walking along the shore... A regiment commander was walking under a red banner... His head was tied... a bloody trail spreads over the damp earth...". And this trail has been spreading for more than 80 years.
Life and career
Leafing through the pages of the history of the Civil War, it is difficult to determine where truth ends and fiction begins. Shchors really existed - he was born, studied, fought, there are documents, photographs, memories. Moreover, historians are still arguing from whom the 24-year-old commander received a bullet in the head.
Nikolai Shchors was born in the village of Snovsk, Chernihiv province, into a large family of a railway worker. He graduated from the military paramedic school in Kiev. After graduating from the cadet school, he was sent to the Southwestern Front as a junior company commander. There, as a result of a difficult trench life on the fields of the First World War, Shchors developed tuberculosis. But he was not noticed in the commission of any military feats, unlike, for example, Chapaev or other officers who later transferred to serve in the Red Army.
On December 30, 1917, Nikolai Shchors, as suffering from tuberculosis, was released from military service and left for his homeland. And the country was changing rapidly. What Shchors did from December 1917 to March 1918, there is no reliable information - only mention of his contacts with the Left SRs. Probably, they seduced the young countryman to go to the outbreak of the Civil War.
In March 1918, when German troops occupied Ukraine, Nikolai Shchors with a group of comrades moved to Semyonovka and led a united insurgent partisan detachment there - the so-called Bogunsky regiment.
Having understood in time which way the wind was blowing, in the fall of that year, Shchors became a member of the Bolshevik Party. This led to rapid career growth - in less than a year, the former ensign of the tsarist army rose to the commander of the 1st Ukrainian Soviet division. He managed to visit the military commandant of Kiev.
The rebuke of chieftains Shchors and Bozhenko to the "pan-hetman" Petlyura. 1919 wikimedia In August 1919, Shchorsa, which was joined by the 1st Ukrainian Soviet Division under the command of N. Dubovoy, who became the deputy commander, was part of the 12th Army.
On August 10, as a result of a raid by the Don Cavalry Corps under General Mamontov, the Cossacks broke through the Southern Front of the Bolsheviks and moved towards Moscow. The Red Army began to hastily retreat. Between the Whites and the Reds, only the 44th Streltsy Division of Shchors, which was fairly battered in battles (the 1st Ukrainian Soviet Division joined it), consisted of four brigades, which stubbornly defended the Korosten railway junction, remained to ensure the evacuation of Kiev and the exit from the encirclement of the Southern Group .
The fact that Kiev cannot be defended was clear to everyone. The Reds simply had to hold out to organize and cover the retreat. Nikolai Shchors and his fighters managed to do it. But on August 30, 1919, in a battle near the village of Beloshitsa (in Soviet times, the village of Shchorsovka, Korostensky district, Zhytomyr region, Ukraine), while on the front line, Shchors was killed under mysterious circumstances.
Shot in the back of the head
The official version is that the promising commander died from a Petliurist bullet while repelling an attack. Witnesses of the mortal wound confirmed the heroic version of death, however, in an informal setting, they said that the bullet was fired by one of their own.
During the reburial of the body of the division commander in 1949, the examination concluded that the bullet entered the back of the head and was fired from a very close distance. Eyewitnesses recalled that Shchors' deputy N. Oak did not allow the nurse to change the bandage on Shchors' head.
The death of the red commander has several versions. According to one of them, Shchors was removed by order Trotsky. The political inspector who was at the command post together with Shchors and Dubov P. Tankhil-Tankhilevich was from the neighborhood S. Aralova, a member of the Revolutionary Military Council of the 12th Army, close to Trotsky. According to another version, the murder of Shchors was beneficial to the "revolutionary sailor" Pavel Dybenko(husband Alexandra Kollontai, old party member, friend Lenin), who, according to historians, flunked all the tasks assigned to him and was very afraid that the party leadership would find out about this.
One way or another, Shchors was quickly forgotten, because there was nothing out of the ordinary in the biography of the deceased commander. In that bloody war, both sides lost such commanders in batches for a variety of reasons - by denunciation, on the battlefield, from illness, at the hands of envious people and traitors.
And fifteen and a half years later, in the spring of 1935, the fortune of posthumous fame made a choice in favor of Shchors.
