Grigory Kotovsky after being pardoned at the Opera House. What did Kotovsky arrange at the Odessa Opera House on the day of pardon from the death penalty? Personal life of Grigory Kotovsky

Grigory Ivanovich Kotovsky. Born on June 12 (24), 1881 in the village of Ganceshty (now the city of Hyncheshty in Moldova) - killed on August 6, 1925 in the village of Chabanka (near Odessa). Soviet military and political figure, participant in the Civil War. Legendary hero of Soviet folklore.

Grigory Kotovsky was born on June 12 (24 according to the new style) June 1881 in the village of Gancheshty (now the city of Hincheshty in Moldova), 36 km from Chisinau.

Father - a Russified Orthodox Pole, a mechanical engineer by education, belonged to the bourgeois class and worked as a mechanic at a distillery in the Manuk-Beev estate in Hinchesht.

Mother is Russian.

According to Kotovsky himself, he came from a noble family that owned an estate in the Podolsk province. Grandfather of Kotovsky for connections with the participants of the Polish national movement was allegedly early dismissed and went bankrupt.

In the family, besides Gregory, there were five more children.

He suffered from logoneurosis. Lefty.

At the age of two he lost his mother, and at sixteen - his father. Grisha's godmother Sofia Schall, a young widow, the daughter of an engineer, a Belgian citizen who worked in the neighborhood and was a friend of the boy's father, and the godfather, landowner Grigory Ivanovich Mirzoyan Manuk-Bey, grandson of Manuk-Bey Mirzoyan, took care of Grisha's upbringing. The godfather helped the young man enter the Kokorozen Agronomic School and paid for the entire boarding school.

At the school, Gregory especially carefully studied agronomy and German, since Manuk-Bey promised to send him for "additional education" to Germany at the Higher Agricultural Courses, but the godfather died in 1902.

During his stay at the agronomic school, he met with a circle of Socialist-Revolutionaries. After graduating from an agricultural school in 1900, he worked as an assistant manager in various landlord estates in Bessarabia, but did not stay anywhere for a long time. Either he was expelled "for seducing the landowner's wife", then "for stealing 200 rubles of the master's money."

For the protection of farm laborers, Kotovsky was arrested in 1902 and 1903.

By 1904, leading such a lifestyle and periodically getting into prison for petty crimes, Kotovsky became the recognized leader of the Bessarabian gangster world.

Contrary to the legends, he was not a hero, of medium height, but densely built. He was fond of volitional gymnastics, which he practiced under any circumstances.

Growth of Grigory Kotovsky: 174 centimeters.

During Russo-Japanese War in 1904 he did not appear at the recruiting station. The following year, he was arrested for evading military service and assigned to serve in the 19th Kostroma Infantry Regiment stationed in Zhytomyr.

Soon he deserted and organized a detachment, at the head of which he made robbery raids - burned estates, destroyed debt receipts. The peasants provided assistance to the Kotovsky detachment, sheltered him from the gendarmes, supplied him with food, clothing, and weapons. Thanks to this, the detachment remained elusive for a long time, and legends circulated about the audacity of their attacks.

Kotovsky was arrested on January 18, 1906, but was able to escape from the Kishinev prison six months later. On September 24 of the same year, he was arrested again, a year later he was sentenced to 12 years of hard labor and sent to Siberia through the Yelisavetograd and Smolensk prisons. In 1910 he was delivered to the Oryol Central.

In 1911 he was transferred to the place of serving his sentence - to the Nerchinsk penal servitude. In hard labor, he collaborated with the authorities, became a foreman in construction railway, which made him a candidate for an amnesty on the occasion of the 300th anniversary of the Romanov dynasty. However, under the amnesty, the bandits were not released, and then on February 27, 1913, Kotovsky fled from Nerchinsk and returned to Bessarabia. Hiding, working as a loader, a laborer, and then again led a group of raiders.

The activity of the group acquired a particularly daring character from the beginning of 1915, when the militants switched from robbing private individuals to raiding offices and banks. In particular, they made major robbery Bendery Treasury, which raised the entire police of Bessarabia and Odessa to their feet.

A secret dispatch received by district police officers and heads of detective departments described Kotovsky as follows: "He speaks excellent Russian, Romanian, and Jewish, and can also speak German and almost French. He gives the impression of a completely intelligent person, smart and energetic. In his treatment, he tries to be graceful with everyone, which easily attracts the sympathy of everyone who has contact with him. He can pretend to be a manager of estates, or even a landowner, a machinist, a gardener, an employee of a firm or enterprise, a representative for the procurement of products for the army, and so on. He tries to make acquaintances and relationships in the appropriate circle ... He stutters noticeably in conversation. He dresses decently and can act like a real gentleman. Likes to eat well and deliciously".

On June 25, 1916, after the raid, he could not escape the chase, was surrounded by a whole squad of detective police, was wounded in the chest and arrested again. Sentenced by the Odessa Military District Court to death penalty through hanging. On death row, Kotovsky wrote letters of repentance and asked to be sent to the front.

The Odessa Military District Court was subordinate to the commander of the Southwestern Front, the illustrious General A. A. Brusilov, and it was he who had to approve the death sentence. Kotovsky sent one of his letters to Brusilov's wife, which produced desired effect. At first, General Brusilov, in accordance with the convictions of his wife, achieved a reprieve of execution.

After receiving the news of the abdication of the throne, a riot broke out in the Odessa prison, and self-government was established in the prison. The provisional government announced a broad political amnesty.

When it broke out in Russia February Revolution, Kotovsky immediately showed all possible support for the Provisional Government. Minister Guchkov and Admiral Kolchak interceded for him. Alexander Kerensky himself released him by personal order in May 1917.

On the day of the pardon, Kotovsky showed up at the Odessa Opera House, where they were giving Carmen, and caused a wild ovation by delivering a fiery revolutionary speech. He immediately arranged an auction for the sale of his shackles. The auction was won by the merchant Gomberg, who bought the relic for three thousand rubles.

In May 1917, Kotovsky was conditionally released and sent to the army on the Romanian front. Already in October 1917, by decree of the Provisional Government, he was promoted to ensign and awarded the St. George Cross for bravery in battle. At the front, he became a member of the regimental committee of the 136th Taganrog Infantry Regiment.

In November 1917, he joined the Left SRs and was elected a member of the Soldiers' Committee of the 6th Army. Then Kotovsky, with a detachment devoted to him, was authorized by Rumcherod to establish new order in Chisinau and its environs.

Grigory Kotovsky in the Red Army

In January 1918, Kotovsky led a detachment that covered the retreat of the Bolsheviks from Chisinau. In January-March 1918, he commanded a cavalry group in the Tiraspol detachment of the armed forces of the Odessa Soviet Republic, who fought against the Romanian interventionists who occupied Bessarabia.

In March 1918, the Odessa Soviet Republic was liquidated by the Austro-German troops who entered Ukraine after a separate peace concluded by the Ukrainian Central Rada. The Red Guard detachments leave with battles for the Donbass, after the occupation of the Donetsk-Krivoy Rog Republic - further to the east.

In July 1918 Kotovsky returned to Odessa and was here in an illegal position.

Several times he is captured by the whites. He is being smashed by the anarchist Marusya Nikiforova. Nestor Makhno is trying to achieve his friendship. But in May 1918, having escaped from the Drozdovites, he ended up in Moscow. What he did in the capital is still unknown to anyone. Either he participated in the rebellion of the Left Socialist-Revolutionaries and anarchists, or he suppressed this rebellion.

Already in July 1918, Kotovsky was again in Odessa. He made friends with another Odessa legend -. The Jap saw his own in him and treated him as a well-deserved godfather. Kotovsky paid Mishka the same. He supported Yaponchik when he seized power over the entire Odessa criminal world.

On April 5, 1919, when parts of the White Army and the French invaders began to evacuate from Odessa, Kotovsky quietly removed all the money and jewelry from the State Bank on three trucks. The fate of this wealth is unknown.

With the departure of the French troops, on April 19, 1919, Kotovsky received from the Odessa Commissariat an appointment to the post of head of the military commissariat in Ovidiopol.

In July 1919 he was appointed commander of the 2nd brigade of the 45th rifle division. The brigade was created on the basis of the Transnistrian regiment formed in Transnistria. After the capture of Ukraine by Denikin's troops, the Kotovsky brigade as part of the Southern Group of Forces of the 12th Army makes a heroic campaign behind enemy lines and enters the territory of Soviet Russia.

In November 1919, a critical situation developed on the outskirts of Petrograd. The White Guard troops of General Yudenich came close to the city. Kotovsky's cavalry group, along with other parts of the Southern Front, is sent against Yudenich, but when they arrive near Petrograd, it turns out that the White Guards have already been defeated. This was very useful for the Kotovites, who were practically incompetent: 70% of them were sick, and besides, they did not have winter uniforms.

In November 1919, Kotovsky fell ill with pneumonia. From January 1920 he commanded a cavalry brigade of the 45th Infantry Division, fighting in Ukraine and on the Soviet-Polish front.

In April 1920 he joined the RCP(b).

From December 1920, Kotovsky was the commander of the 17th Cavalry Division of the Red Cossacks. In 1921 he commanded cavalry units, including suppressing uprisings of the Makhnovists, Antonovites and Petliurists. In September 1921, Kotovsky was appointed commander of the 9th Cavalry Division, and in October 1922, commander of the 2nd Cavalry Corps.

In Tiraspol in 1920-1921, in the building of the former hotel "Paris", the headquarters of Kotovsky was located (now - the headquarters museum). According to the unconfirmed statement of his son, in the summer of 1925 the People's Commissar allegedly intended to appoint Kotovsky as his deputy.

For military merits, Kotovsky was awarded the St. George Cross of the 4th degree, three Orders of the Red Banner (twice in 1921 and 1924) and the Honorary Revolutionary Weapon - an inlaid cavalry saber with the sign of the Order of the Red Banner superimposed on the hilt in 1921 (pictured above).

The murder of Grigory Kotovsky

Kotovsky was shot dead on August 6, 1925, while relaxing at his dacha in the village of Chabanka, on the Black Sea coast, 30 km from Odessa. Murder committed Meyer Seider nicknamed Mayorchik, who in 1919 was the adjutant of Mishka Yaponchik. According to another version, Zaider had nothing to do with military service and was not an adjutant of the "criminal authority" of Odessa, but was the former owner of the Odessa brothel, where in 1918 Kotovsky was hiding from the police. Documents in the case of the murder of Kotovsky were classified.

Meyer Seider did not hide from the investigation and immediately announced the crime. In August 1926, the killer was sentenced to 10 years in prison. While in prison, he almost immediately became the head of the prison club and received the right to freely enter the city.

In 1928, Seider was released with the wording "For exemplary behavior." He worked as a train operator on the railroad. In the autumn of 1930, he was killed by three veterans of the Kotovsky division. The researchers have reason to believe that the competent authorities had information about the impending murder of Zayder. Zayder's liquidators were not convicted.

The authorities arranged a magnificent funeral for the legendary commander, comparable in scope to the funeral of V.I. Lenin.

The body arrived at the Odessa railway station solemnly, surrounded by a guard of honor, the coffin was buried in flowers and wreaths. In the columned hall of the district executive committee, "wide access to all workers" was opened to the coffin. And Odessa half-mast mourning flags. In the quartering towns of the 2nd Cavalry Corps, a salute of 20 guns was fired.

Odessa, Berdichev, Balta (then the capital of the Moldavian ASSR) offered to bury Kotovsky on their territory.

Prominent military leaders and A. I. Yegorov arrived at Kotovsky’s funeral in Birzula, I. E. Yakir, commander of the Ukrainian military district, and one of the leaders of the Ukrainian government, A. I. Butsenko, arrived from Kyiv.

The day after the murder, on August 7, 1925, a group of embalmers headed by Professor Vorobyov was urgently sent from Moscow to Odessa.

The mausoleum was made according to the type of the mausoleum of N. I. Pirogov in Vinnitsa and Lenin in Moscow. On August 6, 1941, exactly 16 years after the murder of the commander, the mausoleum was destroyed by the occupying forces. The mausoleum was restored in 1965 in a reduced form.

On September 28, 2016, the deputies of the city council of Podolsk (former Kotovsk) decided to bury the remains of Grigory Kotovsky in the city cemetery No. 1.

Grigory Kotovsky. True story"hellish" chieftain

Personal life of Grigory Kotovsky:

Wife - Olga Petrovna Kotovskaya (after Shakin's first husband) (1894-1961).

Olga was from Syzran, from a peasant family, a graduate of the medical faculty of Moscow University, was a student of the surgeon N. N. Burdenko. She was a member of the Bolshevik Party, volunteered for the Southern Front, where Kotovsky met her in the autumn of 1918 on the train - at that moment Kotovsky was catching up with the brigade after suffering typhus. At the end of 1918 they got married. Olga served as a doctor in cavalry brigade Kotovsky. After the death of her husband, she worked for 18 years in the Kiev district hospital, as a major in the medical service.

Olga Petrovna - Grigory Kotovsky's wife

The couple had a son on June 30, 1923 - Grigory Grigoryevich Kotovsky (died in Moscow in 2001), a Soviet and Russian orientalist-Indologist, historian and public figure who made a great contribution to the study of Indian history. Author of over 500 scientific works, laureate of the international award. Jawaharlal Nehru, founder and head of the Russian-Indian commission for cooperation in the field of social sciences. From 1956 to 2001 - researcher at the Institute of Oriental Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences. The main area of ​​scientific interests of G. G. Kotovsky was the study of economic and social history India XIX - XX centuries.

The name of Kotovsky was given to plants and factories, collective farms and state farms, steamships, a cavalry division, partisan detachment during the Great Patriotic War.

Three Orders of the Red Banner and the honorary revolutionary weapon of Kotovsky were stolen by the Romanian troops from the mausoleum during the occupation. After the war, Romania officially transferred the awards of Kotovsky to the USSR.

In honor of Grigory Kotovsky are named:

City of Kotovsk in the Tambov region;
- the city of Kotovsk (formerly Birzula) in Odessa region where Kotovsky is buried (May 12, 2016, the city of Kotovsk, Odessa region, was renamed Podolsk);
- the city of Hincheshty, the birthplace of Kotovsky, - from 1965 to 1990 it was called Kotovsk;
- the village of Kotovskoye in the Razdolnensky district of the Republic of Crimea;
- Kotovskoe village, Komrat district, Gagauzia;
- the village of Kotovsky - a district of the city of Odessa;
- Kotovsky road street in Odessa (renamed to Nikolaevskaya road);
- streets in dozens of settlements on the territory of the former USSR;
- museum to them. G. G. Kotovsky in the village of Stepanovka, Razdelnyansky district, Odessa region;
- musical group - rock group "Barber named after. Kotovsky.

The image of Grigory Kotovsky in literature:

Kotovsky is dedicated to the biographical story "The Golden Checker" by Roman Sef.

On the mythologized figure of Kotovsky, the eponymous character of the novel "Chapaev and Emptiness" is based.

G. I. Kotovsky and the Kotovites are mentioned in the book How the Steel Was Tempered.

The image of G.I. Kotovsky appears several times in the ironic novel by V. Tikhomirov "Gold in the Wind".

Writer Roman Gul described him in the book "Red Marshals: Voroshilov, Budyonny, Blucher, Kotovsky".

The image of Grigory Kotovsky in the cinema:

1926 - P. K. P. (actor Boris Zubritsky in the role of Kotovsky);
1942 - Kotovsky (actor Nikolai Mordvinov as Kotovsky);
1965 - The squadron goes west (actor Boris Petelin in the role of Kotovsky);
1972 - The last haiduk (actor Valery Gataev in the role of Kotovsky);
1976 - On the trail of the wolf (in the role of Kotovsky, actor Evgeny Lazarev);
1980 - Big small war(actor Yevgeny Lazarev in the role of Kotovsky);
2010 - Kotovsky (actor as Kotovsky);
2011 - The life and adventures of Mishka Yaponchik (in the role of Kotovsky actor Kirill Polukhin)

Grigory Kotovsky also appears in songwriting.

The group "Forbidden Drummers" performs the song "Kotovsky" to the music of V. Pivtorypavlo and the words of I. Trofimov.

The Ukrainian singer and composer Andriy Mykolaichuk has the song "Kotovsky".

At Soviet poet Mikhail Kulchitsky has verses “The most terrible thing in the world is to be reassured”, where Kotovsky is mentioned.

The poet described G. I. Kotovsky in the poem “The Thought about Opanas” (1926).

Alexander Kharchikov's song "Kotovsky" is famous.

On August 6, 1925, Grigory Kotovsky was killed. The man is extraordinary. Some called him Grishka the Cat, others called him Robin Hood. Even during his lifetime, Kotovsky became a legend, his death only added questions.

Grigory Ivanovich Kotovsky ... A legendary figure in the USSR ... Few knew then that the "fiery revolutionary" had been a bandit for fifteen years and only a revolutionary for seven and a half years ...

Grigory Ivanovich Kotovsky was born on July 12, 1881 in the town of Gancheshty (Hyncheshty), the Chisinau district of Bessarabia, in the family of a distillery mechanic, which belonged to the noble Bessarabian prince Manuk-Bey.

Grigory's parents - father Ivan Nikolaevich and mother Akulina Romanovna - raised six children.

It is a fact, but Kotovsky constantly falsifies his biography: either he indicates other years of birth - mainly 1887 or 1888, then he claims that he comes from “nobles”, and in Soviet encyclopedias we read “from workers”.

By the way, the fact of "rejuvenation" of Grigory Ivanovich Kotovsky for 6-7 years, that is, that Kotovsky was born in 1881, became known only after his death in 1925.

Even in the application forms for entry into communist party Grigory Ivanovich indicated an imaginary age, carefully concealing the secrets of his youth.

Yes, and the nationality indicated non-existent - "Bessarabian", although he was connected with Bessarabia only by the place of birth and neither his father nor mother considered themselves either Moldavians or "Bessarabians". His father was apparently a Russified Orthodox Pole, perhaps a Ukrainian, his mother was Russian.

An extreme egocentrist and "narcissist", he could not reconcile all his life with the fact that his father came from "the burghers of the city of Balta", and not from the "counts". Even after the revolution, when belonging to the nobility was very harmful to people, Grigory Kotovsky indicated in the questionnaires that he came from the nobility, and his grandfather was a "colonel of the Kamenetz-Podolsk province."

Grigory Ivanovich recalled about his childhood that “he was a weak boy, nervous and impressionable. Suffering from childhood fears, often at night, breaking out of bed, he ran to his mother (Akulina Romanovna), pale and frightened, and lay down with her. Fell off a roof at the age of five and has been a stutterer ever since. AT early years lost his mother…

Since then, Kotovsky suffered from epilepsy, mental disorders, fears ....

After the death of his mother, his godmother Sophia Schall, a young widow, the daughter of an engineer, a Belgian citizen who worked in the neighborhood and was a friend of the boy's father, and the godfather, the landowner Manuk-Bey, took care of Grisha's upbringing.

Grigory's father died in 1895 from consumption, as Kotovsky writes - "in poverty", but this is again a lie: the Kotovsky family lived well, did not feel need, had their own house.

In the same 1895, the owner of the "Ganchesti" estate and the godfather of Gregory - Manuk-Bey - arranges him in the Chisinau real school and pays for his education.

Manuk-Bey took an active part in the life of the Kotovsky family, for example, an allowance for teaching was also granted to one of the Kotovsky sisters, and during the one-year illness of Ivan Kotovsky, Manuk-Bey paid the patient a salary and paid for the visits of doctors.

Grigory Kotovsky, for the first time getting into such Big City like Chisinau, and left there completely unattended, he began to skip classes at a real school, to hooligan, and after three months he was expelled from it.

A fellow student of Kotovsky, Chemansky, who later became a policeman, recalls that the guys called Grisha "Birch" - that's what they call brave, pugnacious guys with the manners of leaders in the villages.

After Kotovsky was expelled from the real school, Manuk-Bey arranges him for the Kokorozen Agricultural School and pays the entire pension.

Kotovsky, recalling his years of study, wrote that at the school he "showed the features of that stormy, freedom-loving nature, which later unfolded to its full extent ... haunting school mentors."

In 1900, Grigory Ivanovich graduated from the Kokorozensky school, where he especially studied agronomy and the German language, because his godfather Manuk-Bey promised to send him to continue his studies at the Higher Agricultural Courses in Germany.

In separate books about Kotovsky, it was indicated, apparently from his words, that he was graduating from college in 1904. What did Kotovsky want to hide? Probably his first criminal cases and arrests.

In his autobiography, he wrote that in the school in 1903 he met a circle of social democrats, for which he first went to prison, but, nevertheless, there is no data on the participation of Grigory Ivanovich Kotovsky in revolutionary movement in those years, historians could not find ...

In 1900, Grigory Kotovsky, as a trainee, worked as an assistant manager on the estate "Valya-Karbuna" for the young landowner M. Skopovsky (in other documents - Skokovsky) in the Bendery district and was expelled from the estate after two months of his practice for seducing the landowner's wife .

The practice of the landowner Yakunin in the Maksimovka estate in the Odessa district did not work either - in October of the same year, Grigory was expelled for stealing 200 rubles of his master's money ...

Since the practice was not completed, Kotovsky did not receive documents on graduation.

Manuk Bay dies in 1902. Kotovsky is again hired as an assistant manager to the landowner Skopovsky, who by this time had already divorced his wife. This time, having learned that he was threatened with an imminent draft into the army, Grigory appropriates 77 rubles received from the sale of landowner's pigs and went on the run, but was caught by Skopovsky. The landowner whipped Kotovsky with a whip, and the landowner's servants severely beat him and threw him bound in the February steppe.

In March - April 1902, Kotovsky tries to get a job as a manager for the landowner Semigradov, but he agrees to give him a job only if he has letters of recommendation from previous employers. Since Kotovsky did not have any recommendations, let alone positive ones, he forges documents about his “exemplary” work with the landowner Yakunin, but the “low” style and illiteracy of this document forced Semigradov to double-check the authenticity of this recommendation.
Semigradov, having contacted Yakunin, found out that a handsome young agronomist was a thief and a swindler, and Kotovsky received four months in prison for this forgery ...

The period from December 1903 to February 1906 is the time when Grigory Ivanovich Kotovsky becomes the recognized leader of the gangster world.

Kotovsky recalled that in 1904 he entered "an intern in agriculture"to the economy of Cantacuzino, where "the peasants worked for the landowner for 20 hours a day." He was practically an overseer there, however, he claimed that he “could hardly endure the regime ... with tight threads he got in touch with the farm laborers”

The owner of the estate, Prince Kantokuzino, having learned that his wife "was carried away by a young trainee", swung a whip at Grisha, for which, allegedly, Grigory "decides to take revenge on the environment in which he grew up and burns the prince's estate."
And again a lie - at that time Grigory worked as a forest ranger in the village of Moleshty for the landowner Averbukh, and later as a worker at the Rappa brewery ...

In January 1904, the Russo-Japanese War began, and Grigory was hiding from mobilization in Odessa, Kyiv and Kharkov. In these cities, he alone or as part of the Socialist-Revolutionary terrorist groups takes part in raids to expropriate valuables.

In the fall of 1904, Kotovsky became the head of the Chisinau Socialist-Revolutionary group, which was engaged in robbery and extortion.

In 1905, Grigory was arrested for draft evasion, and the police then did not know about his participation in raids and robberies. Despite a criminal record, Kotovsky was sent to the army, to the 19th Kostroma Infantry Regiment, which was then in Zhitomir for resupply.

In May 1905, Kotovsky fled from the regiment and, with the help of the Zhytomyr Socialist-Revolutionaries, who provided him with false documents and money, went to Odessa.

About his desertion Soviet time Grigory Kotovsky did not remember ...

For desertion, hard labor was then supposed, therefore, from May 1905, the times of the “criminal underground” began for Kotovsky.

In his notes, which Kotovsky kept in 1916 in the Odessa prison and called "Confession", he wrote that he committed the first robbery under the influence of the revolution in the summer of 1905. It turns out that the revolution was to blame for the fact that he became a bandit ...

In his autobiography, he writes: “... From the first moment of my conscious life, having no idea about the Bolsheviks, Mensheviks and revolutionaries in general, I was a spontaneous communist ...” However, in fact, Grigory Ivanovich Kotovsky’s bandit career began with participation in small raids on apartments, shops and landowners' estates ...

Since October 1905, Kotovsky declares that he is an anarchist-communist or an anarchist-individualist and acts independently as the chieftain of a detachment of 7-10 militants (Z. Grossu, P. Demyanishin, I. Golovko, I. Pushkarev and others).

The detachment of Kotovsky was based in the Bardar forest, which was located with the relatives of Ganchest, and the ataman chose the legendary Moldavian robber of the 19th century, Vasyl Chumak, as a role model.

Since January 1906, there were already 18 well-armed people in the Kotovsky gang, many of whom operate on horseback. The headquarters of the gang moved to the Ivanchevskiy forest on the outskirts of Chisinau. For Bessarabia, this was a large bandit formation that could compete with the most influential Bujora gang there, which numbered up to forty bandits.

In December 1905, the Kotovites carried out twelve attacks on merchants, tsarist officials, and landlords (including Semigradov's Kishinev apartment). January of the following year was especially "hot". It began with an attack on the first day of the merchant Gershkovich in Ganchesti. However, the merchant's son ran out of the house and raised a cry, to which the police and neighbors fled. Firing back, the Kotovites could hardly carry their legs ...

On January 6-7, the gang committed 11 armed robberies. In total, from January 1 to February 16, 28 robberies were committed. It happened that in one day three apartments or four crews were robbed. It is known that Kotovsky attacked the estate of his benefactor, which was owned by the landowner Nazarov after the death of Manuk Bey.

At the beginning of 1906, the police announced a prize of two thousand rubles for the capture of Kotovsky.

Kotovsky was artistic and proud, styled himself "Ataman of Hell" or "Ataman of Hell", spread legends, rumors, fables about himself, and during his raids he often shouted intimidatingly: "I am Kotovsky!" He was a narcissistic and cynical man, prone to posturing and theatrical gestures.

Many in the Bessarabian and Kherson provinces knew about the robber Kotovsky!

In cities, he always appeared in the guise of a rich, elegant aristocrat, posing as a landowner, businessman, company representative, manager, machinist, representative for the preparation of food for the army ... He loved to visit theaters, loved to brag about his brutal appetite (scrambled eggs from 25 eggs!) , his weakness was thoroughbred horses, gambling and women.

Police reports reproduce the "portrait" of the criminal: height 174 centimeters (he was not at all "heroic, two meters tall", as many wrote), of a dense build, somewhat round-shouldered, has a "fearful" gait, sways while walking. Kotovsky was the owner round head, brown eyes, small mustache. The hair on his head was sparse and black, his forehead was "adorned" with bald patches, under his eyes there were strange small black dots - a tattoo of a thieves' authority, a "godfather". Kotovsky tried to get rid of these tattoos later.

In addition to Russian, Kotovsky spoke Moldovan, Jewish, and German. He gave the impression of an intelligent, courteous person, easily aroused the sympathy of many.

Contemporaries and police reports point to the enormous strength of Gregory. From childhood, he began to engage in weight lifting, boxing, and loved horse racing. In life, and especially in prisons, this was very useful to him. Strength gave him independence, power, frightened enemies and victims.

Kotovsky of that time is steel fists, a frantic temper and a craving for all sorts of pleasures. When he wasn't spending time on prison bunks or on the "high roads" hunting down prey, he wasted his life at the races, in brothels, in fancy restaurants.

In February 1906, Kotovsky was recognized, arrested and placed in a Kishinev prison, where he became a recognized authority. He changed the orders of prisoners, cracked down on those who were objectionable, and in May 1906 he tried unsuccessfully to organize the escape of seventeen criminals and anarchists from prison. Later, Gregory tried to escape twice more, but again to no avail.

On August 31, 1906, shackled, he was able to get out of the solitary cell for especially dangerous criminals, which was constantly guarded by sentries, get into the prison attic and, having broken the iron grate, descend from it into the prison yard along a rope prudently made from a cut blanket and sheets. Thirty meters separated the attic from the ground!

After that, he climbed over the fence and found himself in a cab waiting for him, which his accomplices carefully drove up.

Such a masterfully executed escape leaves no doubt that the guards and, perhaps, the authorities were bribed.

On September 5, 1906, the bailiff of the Chisinau city district, Hadzhi-Koli, with three detectives, tried to detain Kotovsky on one of the streets of Chisinau, but he managed to escape, despite two bullets stuck in his leg.

Finally, on September 24, 1906, the bailiff Hadji-Koli detains the robber, having carried out a general round-up of the most vicious districts of Chisinau. But once in the cell, Kotovsky again prepares an escape, and in his constantly guarded cell during a search they find a revolver, a knife and a long rope!

In April 1907, the trial of Kotovsky took place, which struck many with a relatively mild sentence - ten years of hard labor: then they were executed for smaller crimes ...

Kotovsky himself stated at the trial that he was not engaged in robberies, but in the "fight for the rights of the poor" and "the fight against tyranny."

The higher courts did not agree with the lenient sentence and retried the case. The investigation revealed that Kotovsky's gang was "covered" by police officials, and one of the policemen even sold the loot by the Kotovites.

Seven months later, when the case was retried, Kotovsky received twelve years of hard labor ...

Until January 1911, Kotovsky visited the Nikolaev hard labor prison, as well as the Smolensk and Oryol prisons, and in February 1911 he ended up in real hard labor in the Kazakov prison (Nerchensk district of the Trans-Baikal province), whose prisoners mined gold ore.

He earned the trust of the prison administration and was appointed foreman at the construction of the Amur Railway, where in May 1912 he was transferred from the mine.

February 27, 1913 Kotovsky escapes. In his “Soviet” autobiography, Kotovsky wrote that “while escaping, he killed two guards guarding the mine”: and again a lie ...

On a false passport in the name of Rudkovsky, for some time he worked as a loader on the Volga, a stoker at a mill, a laborer, a coachman, and a hammerer. In Syzran, someone identified him, and on the denunciation of Kotovsky, he was arrested, but he easily escaped from the local prison ...

In the autumn of 1913, Kotovsky returned to Bessarabia, where by the end of the year he again gathered an armed gang of seven people, and in 1915 there were already 16 Kotovites.

Kotovsky made the first raids on the old offender, the landowner Nazarov from Ganchesht, S. Rusnak, the Bandera treasury and the distillery cashier. In March 1916, the Kotovites attacked a prisoner car that was standing on the sidings of the Bendery station. Having changed into an officer's uniform, the bandits disarm the guards and release 60 criminals, several of the released remained in Kotovsky's gang.

The report to the chief of police noted that Kotovsky's gang acted, as a rule, according to one scenario. 5-7 people in black masks with slits for the eyes took part in the raids on the apartments. Despite the fact that his henchmen went to the "case" in masks, Kotovsky did not put on a mask, and sometimes even introduced himself to his victim.

The bandits appeared in the evening and took their places, acting on the instructions of the leader. Interestingly, if the victim asked Kotovsky “not to take everything” or “leave something for bread”, the “ataman of Hell” willingly left the victim a certain amount.

According to criminal statistics, in 1913 Grigory Ivanovich managed to commit five robberies in Bessarabia, in 1914 he began to rob in Chisinau, Tiraspol, Bendery, Balta (up to ten armed raids in total), in 1915 - at the beginning of 1916, the Kotovites committed more twenty raids, including three in Odessa ...

Then Kotovsky dreamed of "personally collecting 70 thousand rubles and leaving forever in Romania"

In September 1915, Kotovsky and his bandits raided the Odessa apartment of Holstein, a large cattle merchant, where Kotovsky, taking out a revolver, suggested that the merchant contribute ten thousand rubles to the “disadvantaged fund to buy milk, since many Odessa old women and babies do not have the means to buy milk ". Aron Golstein offered 500 rubles “for milk”, but the Kotovites, doubting that such a small amount was in such a rich house, seized 8838 rubles “for milk” from the safe and pockets of Holstein and his guest Baron Steiberg. Grigory Ivanovich was a humorist, in 1915 for such money it was possible to drink milk all over Odessa ...

1916 - the pinnacle of the "thieves' popularity" of Grigory Ivanovich Kotovsky. The Odessa Post newspaper publishes an article entitled "The Legendary Robber". Kotovsky is called "Bessarabian Zelem Khan", "new Pugachev or Karl Moor", "romantic bandit". He becomes the hero of the "yellow" press, the "popular robber", whose adventures he dreamed of as a child. Moreover, he was a “fair” hero who avoided killing during raids and robbed only the rich…

Odessa News wrote: “The further, the more the peculiar personality of this person becomes clear. We have to admit that the name "legendary" is well deserved by them. Kotovsky, as it were, flaunted his selfless prowess, his amazing fearlessness ...

Living on a false passport, he calmly walked the streets of Chisinau, sat for hours on the veranda of the local cafe "Robin", occupied a room in the most fashionable local hotel"

At the end of February 1916, Kotovsky transferred his "activities" to Vinnitsa.

The governor-general of the Kherson province, M. Ebelov, sent large police forces to catch the Kotovites. continued World War, the Romanian front passed nearby, and the Kotovites undermined the reliability of the rear. Again in all settlements leaflets appeared offering a reward of 2,000 rubles for indicating the place where the bandit Kotovsky was hiding.

From the end of January 1916, arrests of gang members began. The first to be arrested were Ivchenko, Afanasiev and the well-known leader of the criminal world, Isaac Rutgaiser. When leaving Tiraspol, the wagon in which these criminals were traveling was overtaken by the police, a shootout ensued, and the bandits were captured.

The assistant to the head of the Odessa detective Don-Dontsov detained 12 Kotovites, but the ataman himself disappeared ...

At the beginning of June 1916, Kotovsky showed up on the farm of Kainary, in Bessarabia. It soon became clear that he was hiding under the name of Romashkan and was working as an overseer of agricultural workers on the farm of the landowner Stamatov.

On June 25, the police officer Hadji-Koli, who had already arrested Kotovsky three times, began an operation to detain him. The farm was surrounded by thirty policemen and gendarmes. When arrested, Kotovsky resisted, tried to escape, they chased him for 12 miles ...

Like a hunted animal, he hid in high loaves, but was wounded in the chest by two bullets, captured and shackled in hand and foot shackles.

In the arrest of Kotovsky, his fellow student, who became the assistant bailiff, Pyotr Chemansky, took part. Interestingly, twenty-four years later, when the troops of the Red Army entered Bessarabia, the old man Chemansky was tried by a military tribunal and sentenced to death for participating in the arrest of Kotovsky ...

In October 1916, the trial of Grigory Kotovsky took place. Well aware that he would inevitably face execution, Kotovsky completely repented and stated in his defense that he gave part of the captured money to the poor and to the Red Cross, to help the wounded in the war. But for all that, he did not present any evidence of these noble deeds ...

Kotovsky justified himself by the fact that not only did he not kill people, but he never fired a weapon, but wore it for the sake of force, because “he respected a person, his human dignity ... without committing any physical violence because he always treated human beings with love.” life."

Grigory asked to send him as a “penalty box” to the front, where he “will gladly die for the king” ...

However, in mid-October 1916, he was sentenced by the Odessa Military District Court to be hanged.

While the authorities were in no hurry to execute the sentence, Kotovsky bombarded the royal office with petitions for clemency. At the same time, he sent a request to the local administration to replace the hanging with execution.
The then popular commander of the Southwestern Front, General Brusilov, and his wife, Nadezhda Brusilova-Zhelikhovskaya, interceded for the robber. Kotovsky, knowing that Madame Brusilova is engaged in charity work and takes care of the convicts, writes a letter to her, begging her to save him.

Here are the lines from this letter: “... put by my crimes in the face of a shameful death, shocked by the realization that, leaving this life, I leave behind such a terrible moral baggage, such a shameful memory and experiencing a passionate, burning need and thirst to correct and atone for the evil done ... feeling the strength in me that will help me to be reborn again and become again in the full and absolute sense an honest person and useful for my Great Fatherland, which I have always loved so passionately, passionately and selflessly, I dare to turn to Your Excellency and kneel begging you to intercede for me and save my life"

In the letter, he calls himself this: "... not a villain, not a born dangerous criminal, but an accidentally fallen person."

A letter to Nadezhda Brusilova saved the life of the condemned. Mrs. Brusilova was very receptive and compassionate, and most importantly, her husband, commander of the Southwestern Front, directly approved the death sentences. At the insistence of his wife, General Brusilov first asked the governor and the prosecutor to postpone the execution, and subsequently, by his order, replaced the execution with hard labor for life. Later, meeting with Madame Brusilova, Kotovsky thanked her for saving his life and stated that now he "will live for others."

After the February Revolution of 1917, the gates of the prisons were thrown open for the revolutionaries, but they decided not to let Kotovsky go free, and instead of life imprisonment, he was awarded 12 years of hard labor with a ban on engaging in social and political activities ...

On March 8, 1917, a riot of prisoners broke out in the Odessa prison, during which the prisoner Kotovsky distinguished himself, urging the criminals to stop the riot. He hoped that such an act would be credited to him. The result of this revolt was a new “revolutionary” prison order, which, according to the newspaper, was expressed as follows: “All cells are open. There are no overseers inside the fence. Introduced full self-government of prisoners. At the head of the prison Kotovsky and assistant barrister Zvonky. Kotovsky kindly leads tours around the prison.

At the end of March 1917, the newspapers reported that Kotovsky had been temporarily released from prison, and he appeared before the head of the Odessa military district, General Marx, with a proposal for his release. Kotovsky convinced the general that he could be of great benefit to the new regime as an organizer of the "revolutionary militia".

He stated that he knew all the criminals of Odessa and could help in their arrest or re-education. There were reports in the press that Kotovsky managed to render some services to the Public Security Section in the capture of provocateurs and criminals. In particular, he went along with the police to searches and arrests, while being a prisoner ...

Incredible resourcefulness and the ability to sacrifice ... your accomplices!

However, his proposal was rejected by the Odessa city authorities, but Kotovsky did not let up ...

He sent a telegram to the Minister of Justice A. Kerensky, to whom he informed about the "bullying of the old revolutionary", and asked to be sent to the front, but he, not daring to release the robber himself, returned the petition "to the discretion of the local authorities."

On May 5, 1917, by order of the chief of staff of the Odessa District and by a court decision, Grigory Ivanovich Kotovsky was finally conditionally released, moreover, with the condition of immediate “expulsion” to the front. However, Kotovsky later claimed that he was released "on Kerensky's personal order." Even before that, Kotovsky had a “special status” as a prisoner, wore civilian clothes, and often came to prison only to sleep!

In March - May 1917, "all of Odessa" carried Kotovsky literally in her arms. in Odessa opera house Grigory Kotovsky is offering his “revolutionary” shackles for auction: the liberal lawyer K. Gomberg bought the leg shackles for a huge sum of 3,100 rubles and donated them to the theater museum, while the hand shackles were purchased by the owner of the Café Fanconi for 75 rubles, and they are several for months served as an advertisement for a cafe, showing off in a shop window. During the auction in the theater, young Leonid Utyosov cheered him up with a reprise: “Kotovsky appeared, the bourgeois was alarmed!”

783 rubles, from the proceeds for the shackles, Kotovsky transferred to the fund for helping prisoners in the Odessa prison ...

In the summer of 1917, Grigory Ivanovich Kotovsky, as a volunteer of the 136th Taganrog Infantry Regiment of the 34th Division (according to other sources, the Life Guards of the Lancers Regiment) already on the Romanian Front, “washes away shame with blood.”

Kotovsky did not have to participate in real hostilities, but he told the world about hot battles, dangerous raids behind enemy lines ... and he himself “awarded” himself for his courage with the St. George Cross and the rank of ensign, although in reality he was promoted only to non-commissioned officers! And again lies...

In early January 1918, Kotovsky, in the company of anarchists, helps the Bolsheviks to seize power in Odessa and Tiraspol. Although, for some reason, he did not like to remember the days of the revolution, and these days became another "blank spot" in his biography. It is known that Kotovsky becomes a representative of Rumcherod and travels to Bolgrad to prevent a Jewish pogrom.

In Tiraspol in January 1918, Kotovsky gathers a detachment of former criminals and anarchists to fight against the Romanian royal troops. On January 14, the Kotovsky detachment covers the withdrawal of the Red troops from Chisinau, then he leads the southern sector of the defense of Bendery from the Romanian troops, and on January 24, the Kotovsky detachment of 400 fighters headed for Dubossary, defeating the Romanian advanced units.

Later, Kotovsky becomes the commander of the "Partisan Revolutionary Detachment Fighting against the Romanian Oligarchy" as part of the Odessa Soviet army.

In February 1918, Kotovsky's cavalry hundred was included in one of the units of the Special Soviet Army - in the Tiraspol detachment. This hundred raids the Moldovan territory, attacking small Romanian units in the Bendery region, but already on February 19, Kotovsky, having disbanded his hundred, leaves the command and begins to act independently. In fact, the gang remained a gang, and they were more interested in requisitions than military operations ...

At the beginning of March 1918, the troops of Germany and Austria-Hungary launched an offensive in Ukraine, Kyiv was captured, the threat loomed over Odessa ... While the army commander Muravyov was preparing the defense of Odessa, Kotovsky's "partisan-reconnaissance detachment" fled from Transnistria through Razdelnaya and Berezovka to Elizavetgrad and further to Yekaterinoslav - to the rear.

It was then that fate brought Kotovsky to the anarchists - Marusya Nikiforova and Nester Makhno. However, Gregory at that time had already made a choice far from the romantic fantasies of the anarchists. Traces of Kotovsky are lost in the confusion of the Red Army's retreat from Ukraine. In April, he disbands his detachment and goes on vacation at this fateful time for the revolution.

This became a new defection of the "hero with shattered nerves" ...

Soon Kotovsky is captured by the Drozdov White Guards, who marched along the red rear from Moldova to the Don, but Kotovsky fled from them in Mariupol, escaping from another inevitable execution.
It was rumored that at the beginning of 1919 Kotovsky began a stormy romance with screen star Vera Kholodnaya. This charming woman found herself in the midst of political intrigues: intelligence and counterintelligence of the Reds and Whites tried to use her popularity and secular connections. But in February 1919, she suddenly died, or perhaps was killed, and the mystery of her death remained unsolved ...

At that time, along with the administrators of the hetman of Ukraine and the Austrian military command, Odessa was ruled by the “king of thieves” Mishka Yaponchik. It was with him that Kotovsky established close "business" relations. Kotovsky at that time organized a terrorist, sabotage squad, which, having connections with the Bolshevik, anarchist and Left SR underground, actually obeyed no one and acted at its own peril and risk. The number of this squad in different sources is different - from 20 to 200 people. The first digit looks more real ...

This squad "became famous" for the murders of provocateurs, extortion of money from manufacturers, owners of hotels and restaurants. Usually Kotovsky sent a letter to the victim demanding that money be given to Kotovsky for the Revolution.

Primitive racket alternated with major robberies ...

The terrorist squad of Kotovsky helped Yaponchik establish himself as the "king" of the Odessa bandits, because Yaponchik was considered an anarchist revolutionary. Then there was not much difference between Yaponchik and Kotovsky: both recidivists were former convicts, anarchists. Together with the “people of Yaponchik”, the Kotovites attack the Odessa prison and free the prisoners, together they smash Yaponchik’s competitors, “bomb” shops, warehouses, and cash desks.

Their joint cause is the uprising of revolutionaries and bandits in the suburbs of Odessa, on Moldovanka, at the end of March 1919. The armed action of the outskirts had a pronounced political coloring and was directed against the authorities in Odessa of the White Guards and the interventionists of the Entente.

Each of the “allied parties” had its own views on the uprising: the people of Yaponchik reveled in chaos and sought to expropriate bourgeois and state values, and the revolutionaries hoped to use the bandit freemen to create chaos and panic in the city, which, in turn, was supposed to help the Soviet besieged Odessa troops.

Then several thousand rebels seize the outskirts of Odessa and carry out armed raids into the city center. The White Guards sent troops and armored cars against them, but the Whites were no longer able to restore their power on the outskirts of Odessa ...

While the White Guard troops began to leave the city and converge on the Odessa port, Kotovsky's squad, taking advantage of the panic, stopped the officers on the streets and killed them. Sitting on the slopes above the port, the Kotovites fired at the public, which was loaded onto ships, trying to leave Odessa.

At the same time, some unknown bandits (maybe Kotovites?) managed to raid the state-owned Odessa bank and take out of it on three trucks money and valuables worth five million gold rubles. The fate of these valuables remains unknown. Only among the people in the 1920s and 30s there were rumors about the treasures of Kotovsky, allegedly buried somewhere near Odessa ...

Source - Wikipedia

Kotovsky Grigory Ivanovich (June 12 (24), 1881 - August 6, 1925) - Soviet military and political leader, participant in the Civil War.
He made a career from a criminal to a member of the Union, Ukrainian and Moldavian Central Executive Committee. Member of the Revolutionary Military Council of the USSR. The legendary hero of Soviet folklore and fiction. Father of Russian Indologist Grigory Grigorievich Kotovsky. He died under unclear circumstances from the shot of his friend Meyer Seider.

Grigory Kotovsky was born on June 12 (24), 1881 in the village of Ganceshty (now the city of Hyncheshty in Moldova), in the family of a tradesman in the city of Balta, Podolsk province. In addition to him, the parents had five more children. Kotovsky's father was a Russified Orthodox Pole, his mother was Russian. On the paternal side, Grigory Kotovsky came from an old Polish aristocratic family, who owned an estate in the Podolsk province. Kotovsky's grandfather was early dismissed for his connections with members of the Polish national movement. Later, he went bankrupt, and the father of Grigory Kotovsky, a mechanical engineer by education, was forced to move to the bourgeois class and go to Bessarabia to work.
According to the memoirs of Kotovsky himself, in childhood he loved sports and adventurous novels. From childhood, he was athletic and had the makings of a leader. He possessed exceptional courage, courage and audacity of character, combined with great personal charm, natural intelligence and dexterity. He suffered from logoneurosis. Lefty. At the age of two, Kotovsky lost his mother, and at sixteen, his father. Grisha's godmother Sofia Schall, a young widow, the daughter of an engineer, a Belgian citizen who worked in the neighborhood and was a friend of the boy's father, and the godfather, the landowner Manuk-Bey, took care of Grisha's upbringing. Manuk-Bey helped the young man enter the Kokorozen Agronomic School and paid for the entire boarding school. At the school, Gregory especially carefully studied agronomy and the German language, since Manuk-Bey promised to send him for "additional education" to Germany at the Higher Agricultural Courses. These hopes were not realized due to the death of Manuk Bey in 1902.

According to Kotovsky himself, during his stay at the agronomic school, he met with a circle of Socialist-Revolutionaries. After graduating from an agricultural school in 1900, he worked as an assistant manager in various landowner estates in Bessarabia, but did not stay anywhere for a long time - he was expelled either for theft, or for a love affair with the landowner, or he hid himself, taking the master's money given to him, by 1904, leading such way of life and periodically getting into prison for petty crimes, Kotovsky becomes the recognized leader of the Bessarabian gangster world. During the Russo-Japanese War in 1904, he did not appear at the recruiting station. In 1905, he was arrested for evading military service and assigned to serve in the 19th Kostroma Infantry Regiment stationed in Zhytomyr.
Soon he deserted and organized a detachment, at the head of which he made robbery raids - he burned estates, destroyed debt receipts, and robbed the population. The peasants provided assistance to the Kotovsky detachment, sheltered him from the gendarmes, supplied him with food, clothing, and weapons. Thanks to this, the detachment remained elusive for a long time, and legends circulated about the audacity of their attacks. Kotovsky was arrested on January 18, 1906, but was able to escape six months later from the Chisinau prison. September 24, 1906 - arrested again, and in 1907 he was sentenced to 12 years of hard labor and sent to Siberia through the Yelisavetograd and Smolensk prisons. In 1910 he was delivered to the Oryol Central. In 1911 he was transferred to the place of serving his sentence - to the Nerchinsk penal servitude. In hard labor, he collaborated with the authorities, became a foreman on the construction of the railway, which made him a candidate for an amnesty on the occasion of the 300th anniversary of the Romanov dynasty. However, under the amnesty, the bandits were not released, and then on February 27, 1913, Kotovsky fled from Nerchinsk and returned to Bessarabia. Hiding, working as a loader, laborer, and then again led a group of raiders. The activity of the group acquired a particularly daring character from the beginning of 1915, when the militants switched from robbing private individuals to raiding offices and banks. In particular, they committed a major robbery of the Bendery Treasury, which brought the entire police of Bessarabia and Odessa to their feet. This is how Kotovsky was described in a secret dispatch received by district police officers and heads of detective departments:

He speaks excellent Russian, Romanian, and Jewish, and can also speak German and almost French. He gives the impression of a completely intelligent person, smart and energetic. In his treatment, he tries to be graceful with everyone, which easily attracts the sympathy of everyone who has contact with him. He can pretend to be a manager of estates, or even a landowner, a machinist, a gardener, an employee of a firm or enterprise, a representative for the procurement of products for the army, and so on. He tries to make acquaintances and relationships in the appropriate circle ... He stutters noticeably in conversation. He dresses decently and can act like a real gentleman. He loves to eat well...
On June 25, 1916, after the raid, he could not escape the chase, was surrounded by a whole squad of detective police, was wounded in the chest and arrested again. Sentenced by the Odessa Military District Court to death by hanging. On death row, Kotovsky wrote letters of repentance and asked to be sent to the front. The Odessa Military District Court was subordinate to the commander of the Southwestern Front, the illustrious General A. A. Brusilov, and it was Brusilov who had to approve the death sentence. Kotovsky sent one of his letters to Brusilov's wife, which had the desired effect.

At first, General Brusilov, in accordance with the convictions of his wife, achieved a reprieve of execution. And then the February Revolution broke out. Kotovsky immediately showed all possible support for the Provisional Government. Paradoxically, Minister Guchkov and Admiral Kolchak interceded for him. Kerensky himself released him by personal order in May 1917. Although before this official verdict, Kotovsky had been walking free for several weeks. And on the day of the pardon, our hero appeared at the Odessa Opera House, they gave "Carmen", and caused a wild ovation, delivering a fiery revolutionary speech, immediately arranged an auction for the sale of his shackles. The auction was won by the merchant Gomberg, who bought the relic for three thousand rubles. It is interesting that the authorities were ready to pay only two thousand rubles for Kotovsky's head a year ago.

After receiving the news of the abdication of Nicholas II from the throne, a riot broke out in the Odessa prison, and self-government was established in the prison. The provisional government announced a broad political amnesty.

Member of the First World War
In May 1917, Kotovsky was conditionally released and sent to the army on the Romanian front. Already in October 1917, by decree of the Provisional Government, he was promoted to ensign and awarded the St. George Cross for bravery in battle. At the front, he became a member of the regimental committee of the 136th Taganrog Infantry Regiment. In November 1917, he joined the Left SRs and was elected a member of the Soldiers' Committee of the 6th Army. Then Kotovsky, with a detachment devoted to him, was authorized by Rumcherod to establish new order in Chisinau and its environs.

Civil War
In January 1918, Kotovsky led a detachment that covered the retreat of the Bolsheviks from Chisinau. In January-March 1918, he commanded a cavalry group in the Tiraspol detachment of the armed forces of the Odessa Soviet Republic, who fought against the Romanian invaders who occupied Bessarabia.
In March 1918, the Odessa Soviet Republic was liquidated by the Austro-German troops who entered Ukraine after a separate peace concluded by the Ukrainian Central Rada. The Red Guard detachments leave with battles for the Donbass, then for Russia.
In July 1918 Kotovsky returned to Odessa and was here in an illegal position.
Several times he is captured by the whites. He is being smashed by the anarchist Marusya Nikiforova. Nestor Makhno is trying to achieve his friendship. But in May 1918, having escaped from the Drozdovites, he ended up in Moscow. What he did in the capital is still unknown to anyone. Either he participated in the rebellion of the Left Socialist-Revolutionaries and anarchists, or he suppressed this rebellion ... But already in July Kotovsky was back in Odessa. He makes friends with no less Odessa legend - Mishka Yaponchik. Jap, by the way, saw him as his own and treated him as a well-deserved godfather. Kotovsky pays Mishka in kind. In any case, he supports Yaponchik when he seizes power over the entire local criminal world. On April 5, 1919, when parts of the White Army and the French invaders began to evacuate from Odessa, Kotovsky quietly removed all the money and jewelry from the State Bank on three trucks. The fate of this wealth is unknown.
With the departure of the French troops, on April 19, 1919, Kotovsky received from the Odessa Commissariat an appointment to the post of head of the military commissariat in Ovidiopol. In July 1919 he was appointed commander of the 2nd brigade of the 45th rifle division. The brigade was created on the basis of the Transnistrian regiment formed in Transnistria.
After the capture of Ukraine by Denikin's troops, the Kotovsky brigade, as part of the Southern Group of Forces of the 12th Army, makes a heroic campaign behind enemy lines and enters the territory of Soviet Russia.
In November 1919, a critical situation developed on the outskirts of Petrograd. The White Guard troops of General Yudenich came close to the city. Kotovsky's cavalry group, along with other parts of the Southern Front, is sent against Yudenich, but when they arrive near Petrograd, it turns out that the White Guards have already been defeated. This was very useful for the Kotovites, who were practically incompetent: 70% of them were sick, and besides, they did not have winter uniforms.
In November 1919, Kotovsky fell ill with pneumonia. From January 1920 he commanded a cavalry brigade of the 45th Infantry Division, fighting in Ukraine and on the Soviet-Polish front. In April 1920 he joined the RCP(b).
From December 1920, Kotovsky was the commander of the 17th Cavalry Division of the Red Cossacks. In 1921 he commanded cavalry units, including suppressing uprisings of the Makhnovists, Antonovites and Petliurists. In September 1921, Kotovsky was appointed commander of the 9th Cavalry Division, in October 1922 - commander of the 2nd Cavalry Corps. In Tiraspol in 1920-1921, in the building of the former hotel "Paris", the headquarters of Kotovsky was located (now - the headquarters museum). In the summer of 1925, People's Commissar Frunze appointed Kotovsky as his deputy. Grigory Ivanovich did not have time to take office.

Murder
Kotovsky was shot dead on August 6, 1925, while on vacation at the state farm Chebanka (on the Black Sea coast, 30 km from Odessa) by Meyer Seider, nicknamed Mayorchik (Mayorov), who in 1919 was Mishka Yaponchik's adjutant. According to another version, Zayder had nothing to do with military service and was not an adjutant of the "criminal authority" of Odessa, but was the former owner of the Odessa brothel, where in 1918 Kotovsky was hiding from the police. Documents in the case of the murder of Kotovsky were classified.
Meyer Seider did not hide from the investigation and immediately announced the crime. In August 1926, the killer was sentenced to 10 years in prison. While in prison, he almost immediately became the head of the prison club and received the right to freely enter the city. In 1928, Seider was released with the wording "For exemplary behavior." He worked as a train operator on the railroad. In the autumn of 1930, he was killed by three veterans of the Kotovsky division. The researchers have reason to believe that the competent authorities had information about the impending murder of Zayder. Zayder's liquidators were not convicted.

Funeral
The Soviet authorities arranged a magnificent funeral for the legendary commander, comparable in scope to the funeral of V.I. Lenin.

The body arrived at the Odessa railway station solemnly, surrounded by a guard of honor, the coffin was buried in flowers and wreaths. In the columned hall of the district executive committee, "wide access to all workers" was opened to the coffin. And Odessa half-mast mourning flags. In the quartering towns of the 2nd Cavalry Corps, a salute of 20 guns was fired. On August 11, 1925, a special funeral train delivered the coffin with the body of Kotovsky to Birzulu.

Odessa, Berdichev, Balta (then the capital of the AMSSR) offered to bury Kotovsky on their territory.
Prominent military leaders S. M. Budyonny and A. I. Yegorov arrived at Kotovsky’s funeral in Birzula, and I. E. Yakir, commander of the Ukrainian military district, and one of the leaders of the Ukrainian government, A. I. Butsenko, arrived from Kyiv.

Mausoleum
The day after the murder, on August 7, 1925, a group of embalmers headed by Professor Vorobyov was urgently sent from Moscow to Odessa.
The mausoleum was made according to the type of the mausoleum of N. I. Pirogov near Vinnitsa and Lenin in Moscow. On August 6, 1941, exactly 16 years after the murder of the commander, the mausoleum was destroyed by the occupying forces.
The mausoleum was restored in 1965 in a reduced form.

Awards
Kotovsky was awarded the St. George Cross of the 4th degree, three Orders of the Red Banner and the Honorary Revolutionary Weapon - an inlaid cavalry saber with the sign of the Order of the Red Banner superimposed on the hilt.

Family
Wife - Olga Petrovna Kotovskaya, after Shakin's first husband (1894-1961). According to the published testimonies of her son, G. G. Kotovsky, Olga Petrovna, originally from Syzran, from a peasant family, a graduate of the medical faculty of Moscow University, was a student of the surgeon N.N. Burdenko; As a member of the Bolshevik Party, she volunteered for the Southern Front. She met her future husband in the autumn of 1918 on the train, when Kotovsky was catching up with the brigade after suffering from typhus, and at the end of the same year they got married. Olga served as a doctor in Kotovsky's cavalry brigade. After the death of her husband, she worked for 18 years in the Kiev district hospital, as a major in the medical service.
There were two children. Son - Indologist Grigory Grigoryevich Kotovsky (1923-2001), during the Great Patriotic War, lieutenant, commander of an anti-aircraft machine-gun platoon. Daughter Elena Grigorievna Kotovskaya (by her husband Pashchenko) was born five days after the death of her father, on August 11, 1925. Philologist, worked as a teacher of Russian language and literature at the Kiev State University.

Interesting Facts
TSB (Big Soviet Encyclopedia) in an article about G. I. Kotovsky reports that in January - March 1918, Grigory Ivanovich commanded the Tiraspol detachment. In fact, the Tiraspol detachment was commanded by Yevgeny Mikhailovich Venediktov, who also headed the Second Revolutionary Army for a short time.
In 1939, in Romania, Ion Vetrila created the revolutionary anarcho-communist organization "Haiduki Kotovsky".
When Soviet troops in 1940 they occupied Bessarabia, a police officer was found, convicted and executed, who in 1916 caught Grigory Kotovsky, the former bailiff Hadji-Koli, who in 1916 performed his official duty to catch a criminal. As Kotovsky's biographer Roman Gul noted, "only the Soviet judicial system could sentence a person to death for this 'crime'."
Three Orders of the Red Banner of War and the honorary revolutionary weapon of Kotovsky were stolen by the Romanian troops from the mausoleum during the occupation. After the war, Romania officially transferred the awards of the Kotovsky USSR. Awards are stored in Central Museum Armed Forces in Moscow.
A shaved head is sometimes called a "Kotovsky haircut".
In 2005, a prisoner from the Chisinau prison repeated the escape from Kotovsky's cell, dismantling the brickwork.
The Odessa authorities were going to erect a monument to Kotovsky on Primorsky Boulevard, using the pedestal of the monument to Duke de Richelieu for this, but subsequently abandoned these plans.

The legendary red commander of the times of the Civil War and the no less legendary Bessarabian bandit, who was hunted by gendarmes throughout the South. "Ataman of hell", whose name is one of the Odessa districts. The robber, whose remains lie in the mausoleum of the regional center near Odessa, which for a long time bore his name. A person whose biography resembles an adventure novel is Grigory Ivanovich Kotovsky.

Born in 1881 in the Moldavian village of Gancheshty. Graduated from agricultural school; classmates called him "Birch", for his courageous character and physical strength. Kotovsky was in excellent shape all his life, he lifted weights and went in for boxing, he did not stop exercising either in prison or at the front.

After college, he got a job as an assistant manager for a local landowner, but was expelled (for seducing the owner's wife). Changes several more jobs, "borrowing" money from employers and disappearing. Gradually, Kotovsky becomes a master of scams and a swindler, several times he ends up in prison. In 1905, with the beginning of the revolution, he connected with a group of terrorist SRs and was engaged in "ex" and robbery. Calls himself a "spontaneous communist."

The detachment of Kotovsky sat down in the forest near the relatives of Ganchest, robbing merchants and landlords. Showing a penchant for beautiful romantic gestures, the "spontaneous communist" loudly shouts during the raids: "It's me, Kotovsky!" Once in the Kishinev prison, Kotovsky ("Cat") becomes an authority there, "godfather", dictates his own rules. After several attempts, he escapes from prison, gaining an aura of heroism even more.

In freedom, Kotovsky lives in grand style, in Odessa and Chisinau he pretends to be an aristocrat or a wealthy businessman, appears in theaters and restaurants, has a weakness for gambling and beautiful women. In 1907 he was arrested again, at the trial he declares that he did not rob, but helped the poor and fought tyranny. The court was not impressed by loud statements, Kotovsky receives 12 years of hard labor. Escape again, returning from Siberia to the South, constantly moving between Odessa, Chisinau and Tiraspol. In 1916, the newspaper "Odessa Post" publishes an article "The Legendary Robber", in which Grigory is called the "new Pugachev". The public begins to sympathize with the romantic robber who only robs the rich and avoids excess blood. Of course, those who met with the Kotovsky gang are less sympathetic.

In October 1916, a noisy trial of Kotovsky took place in Odessa. "Hell chieftain" swears that he gave the loot to the poor and the Red Cross, that he is ready to volunteer for the front and atone for his guilt. The Odessa military district court sentences Kotovsky to hang, but the execution of the sentence is postponed.

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Panorama: Opera House

where Kotovsky auctioned the shackles

Kotovsky was born in Moldova, in the small village of Gancheshty. His father was a Russified Pole, an engineer by education. Mother was Russian. In addition to him, 5 more children grew up in the family.

Kotovsky lost his parents early. He was brought up by his godfather, the owner of the estate in which his father Grigory Ivanovich Mirzoyan worked, Manuk-Bey. It was Manuk-Bey who paid for Kotovsky's education at a real school and promised the young man to send him to study in Germany. Unfortunately, the plan was never implemented. Manuk Bey died in 1902.

Leader of the Bessarabian underworld

During his studies, Kotovsky became close friends with a group of Socialist-Revolutionaries, imbued with the spirit of revolutionary ideas. From 1902 to 1904 he tried to work according to the received agrotechnical specialty, but he was constantly fired and even arrested several times. Gradually he was able to gain authority in underworld and put together your gang, which was engaged in petty robbery. In 1904 he was arrested and sent to serve in the army in Zhytomyr, but soon deserted from service and returned to robbery.

In 1906 he was arrested, fled and got caught again, then sent along the stage to Nerchinsk. He managed to achieve a certain position in hard labor and even expected to be released under an amnesty, but this did not happen, so in 1913 he fled again and returned to Bessarabia.

From 1913 to 1915 he tried to lead a normal life, although he broke away from the police, but then returned to robbery again, and now he robbed not estates, but offices and banks.

In 1916, he was arrested again and sentenced to death, but he managed to obtain a pardon, finding defenders in the person of General A. Brusilov. In 1917, he was released at the personal request of the head of the Provisional Government A. Kerensky.

Military service

Immediately after his release, Kotovsky was sent to the Romanian front. He served bravely and was even awarded the George Cross. At the front, he joined the Left SRs and even headed one of the many soldiers' committees. After the end of hostilities, by order of the Provisional Government, he was sent to restore order in Chisinau.

Member of the Civil War

In 1918 Kotovsky tried to fight foreign intervention in Moldova, and also fought with the whites, after several failures, he fled first to the Donbass, and then to Odessa.

In Odessa, he made acquaintance with such figures of the times civil war, like Nestor Makhno and Mishka Yaponchik, and he had business relations with the latter.

Since 1919, Kotovsky served in the Red Army, fought with Denikin and Yudenich. In 1920, he took part in the battles against Petliura in Ukraine, then units under his command were transferred to the Polish front. After the signing of peace with Poland, Kotovsky again ended up near Odessa, where he fought against the Ukrainian Galician army. After the capture of Odessa, he was sent by the Bolsheviks to suppress the uprising of the Antonovites, then the Makhnos.

Murder

Kotovsky was killed in August 1925 by Zeider Meyer, possibly close to Yaponchik. But this has not been proven.

Other biography options

• Kotovsky's personal life was very stormy, but he was married only once to Olga Petrovna Shakina. They had an only son.
• Kotovsky had a very colorful appearance (the photo is presented), he loved expensive clothes and accessories. According to the memoirs of contemporaries, if desired, he could easily pass himself off as an aristocrat.

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