Young cadets in the White Army. Education system built on the best traditions

Our youth burned to the ground And we, in general, did not see it, But someday they will remember your deeds And us who were offended... We have been fighting since we were thirteen. Do I need to talk about this? And in the future they will say with pride: cadet This is one of those who did not fall. M. Nadezhdin,
Cadet of the Vladikavkaz Cadet Coop.

Before the revolution in Russia there were 31 cadet corps, which were paramilitary secondary educational institutions. Each corps was usually divided into three companies. The first company, which included the senior classes (6th and 7th), was considered a combat company. This company was armed with rifles and in it the cadets, young men 16-17 years old, became acquainted with the basics of military affairs. The number of such a company in each corps was about 100 people, i.e. in all Russian corps, in combat companies, in October 1917 there were approximately 3,000 people. The figure for Russia is more than minuscule, less than a drop in the ocean, and scattered throughout its vast expanses.

There were very few of them, but nevertheless, speaking about those “damned” days, as Bunin called them, one cannot pass over in silence what they had to endure and what they did. Without them, some pages of the history of the White struggle would have lost their special colorfulness and heroism.

Alexander Amfiteatrov, a famous writer and journalist, before the revolution of the extreme left, wrote at the end of the 20s:
“I didn’t know you, gentlemen, cadets, I honestly admit, and only now I realized the full depth of your asceticism.”

I personally met the October Revolution in Moscow, within the walls of the 2nd Moscow Cadre. housings. The Bolshevik uprising in Moscow began, as is known, on October 26, Art. Art., almost a week later than in Petrograd. By this time the fighting was already over. The Provisional Government was overthrown and power passed into the hands of the Bolsheviks.

In our building we felt this only on Saturday, October 27th. At the big break, when we lined up to go for breakfast, the commander of our third company, regiment. Voznitsyn announced that since there was unrest in the city, none of the cadets would be released on leave. For us who were going on vacation, this was a big disappointment. At first, we, the kids who were upset by this, accepted this news about this point. After breakfast, as always, there were lessons. But nevertheless, it was felt that something was happening and something new was approaching that would disrupt the normal flow of our lives. Our officers were talking among themselves about something quietly but excitedly. At the entrance to the building, pairs of sentries with rifles were posted, from the cadets of the 1st company, who dashingly, like corporals, saluted each passing officer. After lunch, a group of senior cadets in the courtyard of the building were preparing for something, moving boxes of ammunition somewhere. We, first-graders, left to our own devices more than ever, hung on the windows and watched what was happening with interest and envy.
Moscow, as you know, resisted the Bolsheviks longer than Petrograd. The fighting continued for more than a week with varying success. In Moscow, the cadets of the Alekseevsky and Aleksandrovsky schools, cadets and only part of the young officers and students in Moscow spoke out against the Bolsheviks. The majority of the intelligentsia and even the officers preferred to take a wait-and-see approach...

Three Moscow buildings, and next to them the Alekseevsky School, were located in Lefortovo, that is, quite far from the Kremlin and the center of Moscow, where the outcome of the fight against the Bolsheviks was largely decided. Here, in Lefortovo, it was necessary to create a separate center of struggle, which fragmented and weakened the forces fighting against the Bolsheviks.
Our first company is the order of the corps director, General. Svintsitsky, - the cadets should remain neutral - was not fulfilled. In the evening, our 1st company, having contacted the cadets of other corps, at the command of its vice-sergeant major Slonimsky, lined up in the assembly hall and asked the director for permission to go to the aid of the cadets who had already opposed the Bolsheviks. A categorical refusal followed. He said that he had no right to do this, that he was responsible to his parents for the lives of the cadets entrusted to him. Despite this, the vice sergeant-major ordered the rifles to be dismantled and, with the banner at their head, led the company to the exit from the building. There, blocking the door with himself, the director once again tried to persuade them not to go. But he was politely lifted by the right flank cadets and carried aside.
And the cadet company, consisting of young men 16-17 years old, marched as if in a parade, in last time past his director.
It was a gross violation of discipline, unprecedented within the walls of the building. But what could they do when in Russia at that moment, alas, there was no one else except these green youth?.. I think our director understood this and the cadet approved of this in his heart. My detached teacher, the regiment, also left with the cadets. Matveev, no longer young, is a strict, but fair, always smart officer. I never saw him again; he never returned to the building. After the Bolshevik victory, he and a group of cadets made their way to the Don and, as those who saw him there said, died in the Kuban campaign.

I would also like to add that on the night from Saturday to Sunday, more than a dozen cadets of the 2nd company, that is, boys 14-15 years old, disappeared. As they said, they went down the drainpipe at night and also went to help the cadets.

This happened not only in the Moscow corps, this happened in all corps of Russia: in Odessa, and in Kiev, and in Simbirsk, and in Omsk, and in others. As a result, the Bolsheviks’ hatred of the cadets and terror, which sometimes took on monstrous proportions. Anatoly Markov in his book “Cadets and Junkers” writes:
“In the first days of Bolshevism, in the autumn and winter of 1917, all cadet corps on the Volga were destroyed, namely: Yaroslavl, Simbirsk and Nizhny Novgorod. The Red Guards caught cadets in cities and at railway stations, in carriages, on ships, beat them, mutilated them, threw them out of windows on moving trains and threw them into the water.”

In Tashkent, the October days were especially bloody. There, as elsewhere, a combat company of Tashkent cadets joined the cadets and together with them defended the Tashkent fortress from the Bolsheviks. What kind of revenge there was for this. brutal reprisal: the Bolsheviks slaughtered all the corps personnel and the remaining junior cadets. The White struggle began.

We see the cadets on the Don, and with Kornilov in the Kuban campaign, and near Orel, and on the Volga with Kappel, and in Siberia with Kolchak, and on the approaches to Petrograd with Yudenich, and on Perekop with Wrangel. They walked in the forefront and all of them had a good reputation. Their unmarked graves are scattered everywhere where the fight against the Bolsheviks was fought.
They did not need to be called and mobilized - they walked on their own. And if they didn’t want to be accepted because they were young, they begged. To look older, they spoke in a deep voice, made themselves look older, convinced that everyone in their family was short, and tried not to show that the rifle was too heavy for them!

November 2nd Art. from. 1917 is considered the birth day of the White Army. On this day, i.e. a week after the Bolshevik coup, gene. Alekseev arrived in Novocherkassk to see Kaledin and began organizing the fight against the Bolsheviks. The cadets were among the first to respond to his call. The first unit formed by Alekseev was the Junker Battalion, which consisted of two companies: the first - the cadets and the second - the cadets, under the command of Staff Captain Mizernitsky.
The battalion was formed within two weeks and already on November 27th. Art., this battalion took part in the battle for Rostov. A platoon of caps was almost completely killed in it. Donskoy, consisting of cadets from the Oryol and Odessa corps. The corpses found after the battle were mutilated and stabbed with bayonets. Thus, in the first battle of the Volunteers, the first blood of Russian cadet boys was shed.

The self-glorified partisans Chernetsov and Semiletov in those days defended the approaches to Novocherkassk. These were also green youth - cadets, high school students, students. There were very few of them and they suffered heavy losses.
Every day in Novocherkassk a mournful death knell was heard. It was Russian youths who were buried. The coffins were usually followed by either General Alekseev or Ataman Kaledin. Once, at an open grave, General Alekseev said:
“I see the monument that Russia will erect for these children: on a bare rock there is a ruined eagle’s nest and killed eaglets. Where were the eagles?

These tragic words will forever remain a monument to the feat of youth and the criminal indifference of the majority of the older generation.
Gene. Denikin, touching on the same issue, also writes bitterly:
“The pressure of the Bolsheviks (in those days) was overcome by several hundred officers, high school students, cadets, and the panels and cafes of Rostov-Novocherkassk were full of healthy, young officers who had not entered the army.”

In February 1918, a small volunteer army set out on its first Kuban campaign. In the village of Olginskaya, Gen. Kornilov inspected the cadet battalion and promoted all the cadets to ensigns, and gave the senior class cadets the title of “marching cadets.”
Under Art. Vyselki (March 3) The partisan detachment, which was later named Alekseevok, had to endure a difficult battle. The village was taken, but the regiment suffered heavy losses. Gene. Bogaevsky, later Donskoy ataman, who then commanded this regiment, later wrote in his memoirs:
“I especially felt sorry for several boys - cadets of the Don Corps, who died in this battle... What fine fellows they went into battle! There was no danger for them, as if these children did not understand it. And there was no strength to stop them in the rear, in the convoy. They still ran away from there into the ranks and fearlessly went into battle.”
On the same campaign in the same regiment, on March 17, 1918, a cadet of the 5th class of the Don Corps, Alexey Tikhonov, 15 years old, died from wounds. His last words (according to the sister of mercy who was present) were: “I know that I will die soon, but I can happily accept death for my faith, for Russia.”

And here is an excerpt from the regiment's diary. Zaitseva:
“To the camp. A small detachment caught up with the cheerful volunteers. In this detachment there were 4 officers, 6 cadets and 9 Don Cossacks. He made the journey from Novocherkassk at great risk.” As we can see, there were cadets here too!
In January 1918, a detachment was formed in Ekaterinodar under the command of the regiment. Lesevitsky, called the “Kuban Rescue Squad.” The fifth platoon of this detachment was called “cadet”. It consisted of cadets from the Vladikavkaz Corps and other corps. At first, this detachment defended Ekaterinodar. But there were too many Bolsheviks, and there were too few of them, so we had to retreat. Having met the Volunteer Army marching towards Yekaterinodar, the detachment joined it. The losses were great. In its ranks, cadets heroically gave their lives:
Georgy Pereverzev - 3rd Moscow Corps,
Sergey Ozarovsky - Voronezh,
Danilov - Vladikavkazsky and many, many others, whose names have not been preserved.
But they are written down by the Lord God...
Then, already in exile, cadet K. Fialkovsky wrote to Pereverzev’s parents:
“George took part in the battles before and during the 1st Kuban campaign. In the battle near Ekaterinodar on March 27, 1918, along with many others, he died a heroic death. Due to the fact that the city of Yekaterinodar was not taken by us and we retreated from it, we were unable to remove George’s body from the battle and it remained near the Samur barracks. He and I were in a company that was all cadets and felt like brothers. On him, like on many others, there was the imprint of some kind of premonition, something inevitable. He was somehow especially meek and kind in relation to others. I personally saw him dead, he was killed in the chest, the bullet hit the heart, so his face was not disfigured, only blood froze on his lips. Don’t be sad, he fell for a holy cause.”

This is how Georgy Pereverzev died, he was only 15 years old. In November 1917, Ataman of Orenburg Cossack army, A.I. Dutov, having formed a detachment of his Cossacks, took power in Orenburg. Combat company of the Orenburg Neplyuevsky cad. The entire corps, led by its vice-sergeant Yuzbashev, joined this detachment, took part in many battles in its ranks, suffered heavy losses and showed exceptional resilience. After the Cossacks abandoned Orenburg, the cadets, uniting with the cadets of the Orenburg School, went through the steppes to the South and, having made their way to the Volga, came to join the Volunteers.
There, the Orenburg cadets subsequently made up almost the entire team of the Vityaz armored train.

It must be said that armored trains played a very important role in the Civil War, so their teams were made up of especially loyal and persistent people, mainly student youth. The most famous armored trains of the Volunteer Army were the “Glory of the Officer” and “Russia”, the teams of which mainly consisted of cadets.

In 1917, when there was a threat that Pskov might be occupied by the Germans. Pskov cad. The corps was evacuated to Kazan. During the October uprising of local Bolsheviks, Pskovites, like Moscow cadets, joined the Kazan cadets and fought with them against the Reds.
Then we see senior Pskov cadets at Kappel and in other parts of the Siberian White Army. One cadet Pskovich even managed to create his own partisan detachment, who successfully operated in the rear of the Reds.
When Kazan was left to the Whites, all the remaining Pskov cadets, of all ages, set out in marching order for Irkutsk. Kolchak had a large shortage of officers in Siberia, and therefore it was necessary to quickly increase the productivity of the cadet schools. The best and most loyal cadets for military schools were provided by cadet corps. It was decided to speed up their releases too. At that time, there were 6 cadres on the territory of White Siberia. buildings: 1st Siberian, Irkutsk, Khabarovsk, Orenburg-Neplyuevok, 2nd Orenburg and Pskov. At the end of the 1918-1919 academic year, the cadets who entered the 7th grade were ordered to immediately continue their studies in order to complete the corps course by Christmas 1919, an unprecedented phenomenon in the history of the Russian corps. For other averages educational institutions no such order was given.

In the summer of 1919, when Voroiezh was occupied by the division of General. Shkuro, many cadets of the Voronezh corps, hiding in the city, volunteered to join the whites who came. Of these new arrivals, Voronezh cadets were killed already in the first battles:
Gusev, Glonti, Zolotrubov, Selivanov and Grotkevich.

Gene. Turkul also writes in his memoirs about cadets and high school students:

“The cadets made their way to us from all over Russia...
The boys managed to squeeze through all the fronts. They reached the Kuban steppes from Moscow, St. Petersburg, Kyiv, Irkutsk, and Warsaw. How many times have I had to interrogate such vagabonds, tanned, ragged in dusty, worn-out shoes, emaciated white-toothed boys. They wanted to volunteer and named their relatives, the city, the building or the gymnasium where they studied.
- And how old are you? —
“Eighteen,” blurts out the newcomer, although he himself is called three inches from the pot. You just shake your head.
The boy, seeing that they don’t believe him, wipes the dirty sweat from his cheek and shifts from foot to foot.
- Seventeen, Mr. Colonel. —
- Don't lie, don't lie! —
So it came to fourteen. All the cadets, as agreed, announced that they were seventeen.
- But why are you so small? - you sometimes ask such an eagle.
“But we don’t have any tall people in our family.” We are all so short... I remember what reinforcements came to us on the hike. Just boys. I remember, near Bakhmut, near the station. Pits, with the echelon of the 1st battalion, up to a hundred volunteers came... I looked, and the most yellow-throated suckers, literally chicks, fell out of the cars like peas...

I really didn’t want to accept them into the battalion - mere children... I sent them for training... I didn’t want to split them into companies, I didn’t want to lead the children into battle. They found out, or rather sensed, that I did not want to accept them. They followed me on my heels, begged me, they all swore that they knew how to shoot and attack...
With a constricted heart, I ordered them to be divided into companies, and an hour later, under the fire of machine guns and a red armored train, we advanced on the station. Pits, and I listened to the ringing voices of my daring boys. We took the pits. Only one of us was killed. It was a boy from the new addition. I forgot his name. A boy in a rolled-up soldier's overcoat with raindrops on it was lying in a rut on the road...
How many hundreds of thousands of adults, big ones, should have gone into the fire for their fatherland, for their people, for themselves, instead of this little boy. Then the child would not go into attacks with us...”
At gen. Turkul had a cousin, Pavlik Turkul, a cadet in the Odessa Corps. When the detachment of the gen. Drozdovsky walked from Romania to the Don to the general. Kornilov, Pavlik fled from home and joined the Drozdovites. During the 2nd Kuban campaign he was wounded and became disabled, but remained in service. Much later, heading to the rear on vacation, he was captured by the Red partisans. They beat him, tortured him, and then lowered him under the ice while still alive. It was December 1919. A peasant, a carrier who was taking him to the rear, told about his death.

The cadets, as I already said, were interspersed almost in the military units of the White Army. D. F. Pronin, who volunteered as an artilleryman right from school, in the collection of essays “The Seventh Howitzer, 1918-1921”, touching on the environment where he ended up, writes:

“The company gathered was quite motley: Sergeevsky’s artillery cadet. schools, two. cadets, two students, two captured Red Army soldiers - from Permians mobilized by the Bolsheviks, two Stavropol farmers. Everyone was united by hatred of communism, and life full of danger welded them all into a compact mass of numbers and mounts of the 4th gun of our battery.”

In one of the essays, Pronin, among other things, describes the fate and all the misadventures of the cadet who came to them:

“He appeared at the battery shortly after we destroyed Sum. He was a cadet of the Poltava Corps, and together with many of his classmates he joined the advancing Dobrov. Army... The cadet's name was Karpinsky. He was 13-14 years old. This is nothing, but he was small in height and looked even younger than his age. The battery, obviously, was not the first part he tried to enter. They sent him home, feeling sorry for him and not wanting to take on the responsibility and care of the child. When he appeared with us, he carefully hid from the commander and officers. He was not on payroll and the soldiers, feeling sorry for the boy, fed him from their kettles.”

The authorities found out about the cadet when the battery was already far from his home. So he remained with the battery. In Crimea, having grown up and matured, he was transferred to a team of mounted reconnaissance officers. In a battle against Zhloba’s cavalry corps, Karpinsky himself captured a machine gun and a good horse for himself. An exploding shell threw him off his horse. Shaking himself off, he sat back down. To the commander's question: - “Did you get hurt?”- he famously replied: - “ No, Mr. Colonel, it was just knocked down by the air.” —

On January 25, 1920, Odessa was evacuated by whites. Most of them, who did not want to stay with the Bolsheviks, did not get on the ships. They had to retreat on foot to the Romanian border.
The huge city, where there were more than 20 thousand officers alone, gave a detachment of 600 active fighters, under the command of a regiment. Stessel, who covered the retreat. About 400 cadets of the Odessa and Kyiv corps retreated with him. Among the cadets, many were junior classes, aged from 12 to 14 years. Near the villages of Kondel and Zelts, the Bolsheviks blocked the path of the whites in large forces. There was a battle that opened the way for the Volunteers. The defense of the left flank was entrusted to the cadets, under the command of Cap. Remerta. The Bolsheviks directed their main attack on this section of the battle. After brutal artillery and machine-gun training, the Bolsheviks asked for their cavalry to serve as cadets. This was the decisive moment.

The cavalry breakthrough brought complete defeat to the whites. But this did not happen, the cadet ranks did not waver. With friendly volleys they met the rushing cavalry. Not expecting such a rebuff, the red cavalry, suffering heavy losses, retreated. The battle continued with short breaks from 9 am to 6 pm. All attempts by the Bolsheviks to shake the cadet ranks remained fruitless.

In his order of April 1920, the Military Representative of the South of Russia in Romania, Gen. Gerua, referring to this battle, wrote:

“The courage and valor of the cadets, who suffered huge losses in these battles, places them in the ranks of experienced warriors. On behalf of the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of the South of Russia, I thank the valiant heroic cadets for their complete dedication and courage in participating in the battles of Kandel and Seltz... I believe that, having shown so much courage in their youth for the cause of the suffering Motherland, the cadets will write their names in golden letters in history revival of Russia."
Genuinely signed
Lieutenant General Gerua.

I, too, as a fourteen-year-old boy, went on a campaign from Orel to Novorossiysk with the Alekseevsky Partisan Regiment, and then the Crimean epic. During the combat history of our regiment, many young people passed through its ranks and among them were cadets from various corps. Many of them, starting from the 1st Kuban campaign, gave their lives for the white cause in the ranks of the Alekseevsky Partisan Regiment. Of the few who survived, in 1919 (this was the year I joined the regiment), most had already become officers.
Particularly vivid in my memory is Georges Ivanov, a cadet of the 3rd Moscow Corps, who did a lot for me. He was several years older than me and took me, a small cadet, and also a cadet of the Moscow Corps, under his protection. In October 1917, Georges, as a cadet of the 6th class, 16 years old, took part in battles with the Bolsheviks in Moscow. Then he fled to the Don to General Alekseev. In the 1st Kuban campaign he was wounded - his left arm was broken and dried up and he remained disabled for life, but nevertheless remained in the army. Extremely brave, in the Crimea under Wrangel, he was promoted to Staff Captain at less than 20 years old.
In the summer of 1920, Gen. Wrangel ordered all students in the army to be sent to schools to continue their education. I also fell under this order, and to my great chagrin I had to part with the Alekseevsky regiment, which had become dear to me...
In September I was sent to the Combined Cadet Company at the Konstantinovsky Military School, which was located in Feodosia. There I met cadets, without exaggeration, from all over Russia, who had come there from the regiments of the White Army. There were cadets from Petrograd, Moscow, Pskov, Sumy, Simbirsk, Nizhny Novgorod, Odessa, Warsaw, Tashkent, etc. From teenagers to over-aged seventh graders with mustaches.
In Crimea, Gen. Wrangel formed the Crimean Cadets from the Poltava and Vladikavkaz cadet corps. frame. It was later joined by cadets from Feodosia, who actively took part in the Civil War.

Later, in Bila Tserkva (Yugoslavia), in our Crimean Corps, on the Honorable Marble Board (there was no money for marble, there was a board painted to look like marble), the names of 46 Knights of St. George, heroes of the Civil War, who studied in this building, were written.
I entered the Crimean Corps in the 3rd grade, my classmates were boys 13-15 years old. At least half of my squad came from the front. Among them are three Knights of St. George.

Three times “Hurray!” met by the pupils preparatory group“Rainbow” of kindergarten No. 13 “Teremok” congratulations on Defender of the Fatherland Day. On the eve of the most masculine holiday, a solemn ceremony of initiating preschool children into cadets took place here.

The event started off very brightly: the white shirts and orange berets of the little cadets created a festive atmosphere. When the children began to show their skills, marching around the hall with various transitions, sometimes in one column, sometimes in two, strictly following the commands of the mentor, it was a fascinating sight.
The guests present in the hall: the head of the education department Irina Romanova, the deputy head of the department for civil and emergency situations Vladimir Antonov, the chairman of the Novocheboksarsk branch of the VDPO Elena Pavlova, the parents of the pupils froze, as if they were afraid to disturb the clear movements of the kids.
The children prepared for a whole year: they mastered the drill step, learned what each word of the oath of young cadets means, and learned to apply it in life. With every minute it became clear that this was something more than just a holiday.
When the preschool children sang the anthem of Russia from start to finish, then the anthem of Chuvashia, it became clear that patriotism was not just a word for them. Teachers and parents managed to instill in them that same attitude towards everything native, which is commonly called patriotism. After all, the defenders
Fatherland exists not only in war. We often forget that patriotism is a system of living with special treatment to your home, city, friends and older comrades.
Their older comrades, students of the 11th grade of school No. 10, came to congratulate the young cadets on taking the oath. “Cadet Lyceum named after Hero of the Soviet Union Mikhail Kuznetsov,” the guys proudly correct me.
Maxim Nikolaev, Dmitry Shuryashkin and Vitaly Yudin said that they often visit kindergartens in the city and communicate with future cadets. “We took patronage over them and therefore personal example“We will show what cadets should be,” say the high school students. “When we came for a demonstration last time, the kids really enjoyed watching how we dismantled the machine gun.” They asked to touch the weapon. Even the girls participated.”
In her speech, the head of kindergarten No. 13, Valentina Gusarova, thanked the parents for supporting the initiative of the teachers in raising true patriots of the city and country.
Deputy Head of the Department for Civil Defense and Emergency Situations Vladimir Antonov noted: “I see your eyes are burning. I wish you to grow up brave and strong. I am confident that you will become worthy rescuers and defenders of our Motherland.”
When the words of the oath were pronounced and the fanfare died down, we asked one of the young cadets, Maxim Khotenov, to tell us why this was necessary. “I want to become a true defender of our Motherland and my family. I will train hard and study well. This is the custom among cadets. And being a cadet is very responsible!” - he said.

Changes in the life of the cadet corps began at the end of February 1917, when the Provisional Government came to power in Russia. The new leadership of the War Ministry declared the need for a radical transformation of the entire system of officer training in accordance with “new”, “democratic” principles. By order of the War Ministry of March 13, 1917, a commission was established under the Main Directorate of Military Educational Institutions, chaired by the head of the department, Z.A. Maksheev to develop regulations on military educational institutions. Representatives of the cadet corps and military schools of Petrograd were delegated to the commission. The Milyutin military gymnasiums were proposed as a model for the reformed cadet corps. At the same time, the return to cadet corps in 1882 was called a reactionary measure, “preferring limited German drilling and artificial militarization to the broad plans of great thinkers.” Former cadet corps became accessible to representatives of all classes. On July 7, 1917, the Minister of War approved the “Regulations on the educational part for gymnasiums of the military department.” According to this provision, all cadet corps were transformed into military gymnasiums with the elimination of the previous cadet paraphernalia. The military system and shoulder straps were abolished, ranks were eliminated, a five-point knowledge assessment system was introduced, and companies were converted into age groups. Civilian teachers were invited to fill the positions of educators. Pedagogical committees received the right to appoint educators and teachers and propose their candidates for the post of directors and class inspectors for consideration by the State University of Higher Education. Learning programs remained the same.

A significant portion of the cadets greeted the innovations with extreme hostility. Brought up in the spirit of devotion to the monarchy and love of military affairs, they resolutely denied the changes that were taking place. The Cadets did not want to take the oath of allegiance to the Provisional Government. They continued to wear shoulder straps, with a white scarf under the shoulder strap, which was supposed to signify loyalty to the monarchy. It was a spontaneous boyish protest. Sometimes gymnasium students came into conflict with those teachers who demonstrated loyalty to the new government. The reform of the cadet corps begun by the Provisional Government was not completed.

The path of Russian cadet corps into emigration actually began on October 19, 1919, when the Petrovsky-Poltava cadet corps, due to the prevailing circumstances of the Civil War, left Poltava and moved to Vladikavkaz, where it was hospitably received by the Vladikavkaz cadet corps. In total, up to 900 cadets gathered in Vladikavkaz.

In the spring of 1920, a decision was made to evacuate the cadet corps from Vladikavkaz to Crimea. It was decided to carry out the evacuation through the ports of Georgia. The transition along the Georgian Military Road was mainly carried out on foot; there were very few carts, and they were mainly intended for provisions. The convoy covered 20-25 km per day. It should be taken into account that the cadets were 9-10 years old. The refugees covered themselves from bad weather with burkas, which were issued to all participants in the campaign. Burkas provided shelter from wind and rain.

Only on March 23, 1920, the corps arrived in Kutaisi. The Georgian authorities did not provide any assistance to the cadets. The corps were placed in some kind of camp, behind wire, and ate the food that they managed to take with them. On June 9, 1920, the cadet corps was transported to Crimea on the steamship Kizil Arvat. Upon arrival in Crimea, it was possible to quickly merge the corps and single cadets of other corps into one. The corps was located in Oreanda (Yalta). In early July, the corps, by order of the Commander-in-Chief of the Russian Army in the South of Russia, Lieutenant General Baron P.N. Wrangel headed former director 1st Moscow Empress Catherine II Cadet Corps, Lieutenant General Vladimir Valeryanovich Rimsky-Korsakov.

Evacuation

General P.N. By this time, Wrangel had already issued an order to expel all cadets, minors and children who had not graduated from secondary schools from the ranks of the White Army, and to send them to the disposal of Lieutenant General V.V. Rimsky-Korsakov. Cadets from various corps and young people who had interrupted their studies and ended up in the ranks of the White Army began to arrive in the corps. In the newly created cadet corps Almost all cadet corps were represented except Siberian, Irkutsk, Khabarovsk and Don.

From October 22, 1920, in accordance with the order of P.N. Wrangel's corps became known as the "Crimean Cadet Corps". The corps was assigned a scarlet shoulder strap with white piping and two separate letters “KK” in yellow. By this time, the strength of the corps was approximately 500 people, and it was decided to place some of the students in premises adapted for barracks in Massandra.

On the night of November 1, 1920, the evacuation of the corps from Crimea began. The junior company was loaded onto the steamer "Konstantin", and the main part - onto the steam barge "Chrisi". They did not want to use this old flat-bottomed barge to transport evacuees at all. But when there were no ships left in the Yalta port to load the Crimean Cadet Corps, an order was given to evacuate the corps on this ship. The ship's mechanics, not wanting to work for whites, declared that the machine was faulty. When they were threatened with execution, the car was “quickly repaired” and the barge went out to sea. V.V. Rimsky-Korsakov, not trusting the ship's crew, ordered two cadets who had experience in the navy to keep an eye on the helmsman so that he did not change course.

It soon became clear that the ship was not going to Constantinople, but to Odessa. The captain and helmsman were immediately arrested, and cadet M. Karateev, who had sailed for eight months before entering the cadet corps as a signalman on a destroyer, took the helm. Together with another cadet, they steered the ship in the right direction, but discovered that the compass readings were incorrect. Next to the steering wheel were iron gymnastic apparatus. With great difficulty, the cadets managed to take the ship to Constantinople.

On the fifth day, the barge and steamer arrived at the Constantinople roadstead. On the roadstead of Constantinople, the Crimean cadets managed to show themselves worthily in an environment that required from them not only endurance and patience, but also a certain courage. Russian ships were met in Constantinople by ships from many countries. On the ship “Chrisi”, where the Crimean Cadet Corps was located, on the initiative of Vice-Non-Commissioned Officer Mikhail Karateev, signals went up on the yards: “we suffer hunger” and “we suffer thirst.”

These signals had an effect. After some time, an English ship approached the barge “Chrisi”, where the cadets were located. A film camera was installed on its upper deck, and next to it stood a table on which stood a pile of white bread cut into slices. There were also smartly dressed women and men, including one Russian. When asked if the cadets were hungry, they answered in the affirmative.

The cadets expected to be photographed and then fed. It turned out that the British wanted to capture the moment when bread would be thrown to the cadets and the hungry cadets would rush to pick it up from the deck. When the women began to throw slices of bread into the crowd of cadets, some of them already rushed to pick it up. The authorities were confused, and at that moment the voice of the “general” of the release, L. Lazarevich, was heard, who, assessing the situation, shouted: “Don’t touch this bread. Don’t you see what this bastard wants to film to show “Russian savages” fighting over food.”

Chunks of bread fell on the cadets' heads, but they stood motionless, as if not noticing it. L. Lazarevich asked the British to leave them alone. Offended by this behavior of the Russian youth, the English ship soon departed from the Chrissi. The quarantine at the Constantinople roadstead dragged on, as it turned out that by that time no country had shown interest in Russian youths. Finally, news was received that the cadet was ready to accept the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes. On December 8, 1920, the corps arrived at Baqar Bay in the Kingdom of S.H.S. and from there it was transported by rail to the city of Strnishte. The Crimean Cadet Corps was located in barracks built by the Austrians for prisoners of war.

The 1921-1922 academic year began in barracks converted into classrooms. There were not enough teaching aids, textbooks and notebooks. The cadets simply had to memorize a lot of things during the lessons themselves. On December 2, 1921, the Supreme Council considered the issue of transferring the Crimean Cadet Corps from Strnishche to Bila Tserkva. By that time, the Nikolaev Cavalry School and the Donskoy Mariinsky Institute were already located in Bila Tserkva. The sovereign commission feared that the appearance of the Crimean Corps in Bila Tserkva could negatively affect the situation in the Russian colony and in the city as a whole. Colonel Bazarevich, who spoke at a meeting of the Sovereign Commission on behalf of the Russian military attache, Major General Pototsky, had to give guarantees “that in the event of the Crimean Cadet Corps transferring to Bila Tserkva, he vouches for complete order in this corps and guarantees that the corps will not interfere into the life of the local colony and the Nikolaev Cavalry School and the Don Mariinsky Institute located there.” In the second half of October 1922, the Crimean Corps was provided with two stone three-story barracks-type buildings on the outskirts of the city in Bila Tserkva for placement. The buildings were not suitable for accommodating children.

The Educational Council, at its meeting on August 17, 1929, in pursuance of the proposal of the State Commission on June 23, 1929, decided:

1. In view of the message from the War Ministry to the State Commission about the need for the Military Department of the building now occupied by the Russian Corps in Sarajevo, to recognize that the currently existing three cadet corps, namely the Crimean one - in Bila Tserkva, Don Emperor Alexandra III- in Goradzha and Russian - in Sarajevo, are subject to consolidation into two buildings with the location of the first in Bila Tserkva and the second - in Goradzh and with the assignment to the corps in Bila Tserkva of the name “First Russian Cadet Corps” and to the corps in Goradzh the name “Second Russian of Emperor Alexander III Don Cadet Corps.

The Kiev Cadet Corps, after great upheavals in Ukraine and regime changes of the Provisional Government, Petliurists, Hetman, and Bolsheviks, arrived in Odessa in an organized manner in December 1919 and was housed in the building of the Odessa Cadet Corps. By this time, the 2nd company of the Polotsk Cadet Corps, evacuated from Polotsk in 1915, was already in the Odessa Corps.

All three buildings lived their own lives in Odessa and with their directors. There were no special measures for the evacuation of cadet corps from Odessa. On the night of January 25, 1920, part of the cadets, under the command of officers, headed to the port, where they were taken on board by the English cruiser Ceres.

The hesitation and lack of management of the director of the Odessa corps, Colonel V.A. Bernatsky, according to eyewitnesses, led to the fact that time was lost. On the morning of January 25, two cadets of the 5th class of the Odessa corps, on their own initiative, gathered all 350 cadets who were in the corps building, lined them up, and under the command of senior cadets, the column headed to the port. The cruiser Ceres was still in the roadstead and took them on board. Later, the first group was transferred to the steamer "Rio Negro", which delivered the cadets to the Greek port of Thessaloniki, from where the cadets traveled by train to the Kingdom of S.H.S.

The second group of 350 cadets was transferred to the Bulgarian steamer Tsar Ferdinand, which delivered the cadets to the port of Varna. From Varna, the cadets were taken to the city of Sisak in the Kingdom of S.H.S. With this group, the treasury of the Volunteer Army was taken away, money in the amount of 2,711,588 rubles, and the treasury of the Odessa Corps - 30,445 rubles. In Belgrade, money was exchanged for Serbian currency.

By order of the authorized Russian military agent (military attache) General V.A. Artamonov On March 10, 1920, the cadets of the Kyiv, Odessa and Polotsk corps were consolidated into one, which received the name “Consolidated Cadet Corps”.

Lieutenant General Boris Viktorovich Adamovich, the former head of the Vilna Military School, was appointed director of the corps. B.V. Adamovich recalled: “I accepted 95 cadets and 18 personnel as part of the Kyiv corps, and 126 cadets and 20 personnel as part of the Odessa corps. On April 25, another 42 cadets arrived, making their way by land with battles and losses across the Dniester to Romania under the command of Colonel Gushchin and Captain Remmert. Thus, a total of 263 cadets and 40 personnel gathered in the first corps.”

The cadets who arrived in Yugoslavia were initially stationed in two places - in Pancevo near Belgrade and in Sisak near Zagreb; in June they united in Sarajevo and began to settle in the Kralja Petra provided to the corps. The complex of buildings was ideal for housing the cadet corps. On June 17, the first meeting of the Pedagogical Committee took place and the revival of the cadet corps began.

Russian Cadet Corps. 1929 academic year. In a workshop

Within a short time, the corps changed its name several times according to the orders of the Commander-in-Chief of the Russian Army, General P.N. Wrangel and his representative in Constantinople, General A.S. Lukomsky.

On September 1, 1929, the corps received the name “First Russian Cadet Corps,” and on December 6, on the day of the corps holiday in the same year, King Alexander I of Yugoslavia appointed Grand Duke Konstantin Konstantinovich as chief of the corps. The corps became known as the “First Russian Cadet Corps of Grand Duke Konstantin Konstantinovich.”

The strength of the corps was set at 300 cadets, distributed among 3 companies. From the first days of its existence in the corps, by order of General B.V. Adamovich, pedagogical, educational and economic committees were created.

In material terms, the situation of the corps was difficult throughout the entire period of its existence. Initially, funds for maintaining the corps in Sarajevo were allocated by the Office of the Russian Military Agent (Attache) and the Representative of the Commander-in-Chief and by exchanging the brought Volunteer Army money for Serbian currency. Things, food, beds were given partly by the American Red Cross. In Sarajevo, furnishings, food, clothing, linen, and medicine were received from the Serbian commissariat and military warehouses. After the creation of the State Commission, financing of the corps was carried out by this commission.

Training sessions in the cadet corps began according to the program of 1915 and were conducted mainly according to notes from teachers. Textbooks, geographical maps, and other teaching aids were very rare. There were no pens, pencils, or writing paper. At first, the main efforts of the teaching staff of the corps were aimed at ensuring that pupils of the 7th grade, if possible, mastered the program and graduated from the corps in the shortest possible time.

Class inspector Colonel V.A. Rozanov, speaking at the 300th meeting of the Pedagogical Committee, noted: “The first graduation was in August 1920. Let me remind you of the atmosphere at the beginning of classes: instead of desks there are tables and stools, familiar to you from exams, the absence of blackboards and textbooks. Classes are recorded by teachers, in their words. Picture of activities foreign language: A sheet of wrapping paper is pinned on the wall, the teacher writes with colored chalk, this is how the class learns to read. First book French: “Popovich’s” reading is the same for all classes.” Russian language: we were glad when we got from Prague the book “Native Speech” - as an anthology for the first grade, and for the senior classes, Mandelkern’s anthology with a German-Russian dictionary for Germans studying the Russian language. Geography lesson of grades VI-VII - on the wall is a map of Russia, torn from a randomly found textbook from one of the cadets. We were glad to see every teaching aid. In May 1928, Lieutenant General B.V. Adamovich visited the residence of King Alexander I on the occasion of a state holiday and presented him, on behalf of the cadet corps, with an album with photographs depicting the life of the corps. The king accepted the album presented to him with satisfaction and sent a check to the corps in the amount of 5,000 dinars for the needs of graduates of the cadet corps in 1928. In 1929, the issue of preserving the corps was decided. Thanks to the intervention of King Alexander I, the corps was preserved, transferred from Sarajevo to Bila Tserkva and united with the Crimean corps. Classes I, II, and III were reopened in the building. Summarizing the results of the work of the cadet corps in the 1932-1933 academic year, B.V. Adamovich noted at a meeting of the Pedagogical Committee: “My assessment of the entire cadet mass is that it is a blessing to have such a composition. “I, as a director, with such an exceptionally good condition of the building, find time for both personal work and personal relaxation.”

The next academic year 1933-1934 once again became a year of new great tests for the First Russian Cadet Corps. Already in March 1933, the decision of the Sovereign Commission to unite the First and Second Russian Don Emperor Alexander III cadet corps became known in the First Russian Cadet Corps. In this regard, at the end of the first half of the year B.V. Adamovich asked teachers to be more attentive to assessing the knowledge of students in the corps. The merger of the two cadet corps completely unexpectedly revealed a problem that had not yet existed in the First Russian Cadet Corps. It turned out that VI class cadets Maksimov, Chirko and some others who arrived with the Don Corps were “infected with Bolshevism.” For the cadet corps this was an unheard of, extraordinary incident. During the proceedings in Maksimov’s case, it was established that this case was isolated, and Maksimov’s views were not shared by the VI class cadets, the entire cadet mass was above suspicion, none of the old cadets.

On January 27, 1935, the 300th meeting of the Pedagogical Committee took place, which to a certain extent summed up the activities of the cadet corps over the 15 years of its existence. The report of the director of the corps on this occasion said: “Our Corps, formed by combining the preserved personnel of the Kiev and Odessa Corps, which accepted the legal seniority of the Kiev Corps and united living people, memories and traditions of Polotsk, Petrovsky-Poltava, Vladikavkaz, Don, Siberian and Khabarovsk Cadet Corps, is now the first of the foreign and the last of the surviving Russian cadet corps, which continued their history and Russian cadetship for 15 years... Let us note that the cadetship itself turned out to be more resilient than all other corporations of former pupils of Russian educational institutions, more and more clearly expressed in the struggle for old Russia and life continues in the person of associations of all corps and societies - cadets, scattered throughout the world and not reconciled with the death of either their homeland or the nests that raised them, strong with two centuries of legends.” In March 1936, General Boris Viktorovich Adamovich died after a serious illness. Class inspector Colonel V.A. was appointed acting director of the corps. Rozanov.

V.V. Sobolevsky wrote the poem “On the grave of the director of the corps, Lieutenant General Adamovich”:

In exile for the Russian cause,

For the cause of our dear Fatherland

You fought steadfastly and bravely,

Walking along a straight road.

Your soul and body have merged,

In the fight, sparing no effort,

I stood for him and did not bow down

And he laid down his life for the cadet.

And your business will be preserved

It lives in our hearts,

Every cadet will be inspired by them,

He will die bravely for his homeland.

So sleep well, my love,

In the monastery of Russian people,

Protected by foreign land

Far from your native fields!

The Russian Cadet Corps owed many of its successes to exceptionally strict discipline, which was maintained in the corps by General B.V. Adamovich from the moment of evacuation until his death. And later - General A.G. Popov. Lieutenant General B.V. Adamovich, who had the experience of commanding a battalion of cadets at the Kiev Military School and the Vilna Military School, which were exemplary in the Russian army, treated the cadets more like cadets of military schools, and not like children sent to be raised in the cadet corps.

The very difficult academic year 1939-1940 was approaching. Started in September 1939. Second World War excited the cadet. At the beginning of the school year, there was no deterioration in discipline or drop in academic performance. However, the director of the corps and the officers-educators somehow sensed that some kind of change was taking place in the inner world of the students. Some of them became more thoughtful and focused, others became more irritated and had a desire to disrupt the internal order in the building.

Mikhail Aleksandrovich Lermontov, one of the descendants of the great Russian poet on his father’s side, was born on January 26, 1925 in Yugoslavia. My father served in the Russian army, took part in the civil war on the side of the whites, and was evacuated to Yugoslavia with the Volunteer Army. His mother died. In 1933, Mikhail entered the First Russian Cadet Corps. Often, for some offense, the senior cadets locked him alone in the class and gave him the task, as a “descendant of the great Russian poet,” to write poetry and did not let him out of the class until he was ready to present to them what he had written.

Mikhail Lermontov studied hard in the cadet corps and not because he was incapable of studying, but simply, as his officers-educators noted, he was lazy. And he himself admitted this in a conversation with the author. In the 3rd grade he was retained for the second year, and moved to the 4th grade with a re-examination. When World War II began, M. Lermontov, without graduating from the corps, left it with a group of cadets and entered service in the Russian Security Corps.

On April 6, 1941, troops of Germany and its allies attacked Yugoslavia. The conscription of Russian emigrants living in this country into the Yugoslav army began. Many joined the troops voluntarily, including graduates of Russian cadet corps. About 300 graduates of the cadet corps graduated from Yugoslav military schools and academies and entered service in the Yugoslav army. All of them took part in the first battles against the Wehrmacht - there were killed, wounded, and captured. Two weeks before the attack of Germany and its allies on Yugoslavia, the director of the corps sent almost all the cadets home. In May 1941, the occupation authorities allowed the 21st graduating class to take final exams. With great difficulty, the cadets gathered in the corps by May 25. Written exams began on June 20, and oral exams began on June 22. In the midst state exams On June 22, the cadets learned the news that amazed them: Germany attacked Soviet Union. This was a big shock for the cadets. While preparing for the final exams, the cadet corps was visited by a group of German generals and officers. The Germans learned that the museum of the cadet corps contains German banners captured by the Russian army during the First World War. The Germans wanted to take these banners from the cadet corps. Corps Director General A.G. Popov was forced to give the corresponding order. The museum parted with trophies obtained in the battles of the First World War. In July 1942, the director of the cadet corps received instructions from the Bureau for the Protection of Russian Emigrants to requisition musical instruments cadet corps for the needs of the German army. General A.G. Popov, having received a message about the impending requisition, ordered to identify all the working instruments necessary for the corps orchestra to play and hide them. The German military musicians who came to inspect the instruments and requisition them were shown something that had no significance for the corps. 9 such instruments were taken, then 7 of them were returned. The Germans kept the trumpet and baritone. On March 31, 1942, the Don Mariinsky Institute was liquidated. On April 7, a representative of the German command arrived at the corps and demanded that the corps immediately move to the vacated building of the institute. The occupation forces needed the building of the cadet corps.

In mid-April, under pouring rain, the First Russian Cadet Corps left the barracks, which first housed the Crimean, and since 1929, the First Russian Cadet Corps. Several dozen carts sent by the local population were brought to the building, and the relocation to the new premises began.

The building of the Don Mariinsky Institute, 5 times smaller than the previous building, was not ready to receive new settlers. After the institute moved out of it, the building fell into complete disrepair in a short time: there was no water, the stoves in the kitchen were out of order, the toilets and washrooms were in disrepair.

The Cadet Corps was evacuated from Bila Tserkva in early September 1944 before the arrival of Red Army units. The corps was provided with three semi-open freight cars with low sides, into which the cadets and personnel with their families were loaded, headed by the corps director, General A.G. Popov.

On September 15, a corps of 140 people arrived in Vienna. The further route of the train ran through the territory of Hungary. The cadet was accompanied by a German non-commissioned officer, an Austrian by nationality, who had a document for travel to the “cadet school”. On the way, the train was bombed by Allied aircraft. It was difficult to organize everyday life while the train was traveling. They ate haphazardly and exchanged their clothes for food. The local population did not understand how the Russians fled from the Russians, whom the residents of the occupied cities were eagerly awaiting.

On September 17, 1944, the train arrived in the Austrian city of Eger, which was declared the final point of the journey. After leaving the train, the cadets moved in formation towards the camp where they were asked to stay. Of the personnel ranks, only General A.G. remained with the cadets. Popov. The clothes were sent for disinfection, from where they were not returned to the cadets. At the end of September 1944, the director of the corps, General A.G. Popov announced to the cadets that the corps was disbanding. However, the cadets continued to stick together and remained an organized team in the camp. In January 1945, a platoon of senior cadets joined the Russian Liberation Army of General A. Vlasov. There are 106 cadets left in the camp. In mid-February 1945, the remaining cadets moved to Gmünd. After the liberation of Vienna, the cadets remaining in the camp marched to Salzburg, which was located in the American zone of occupation. In Salzburg, the cadets were sent to a camp for Russian refugees from Yugoslavia. Thus ended the history of the cadet corps created in Yugoslavia in 1920.

The lyceum corps of Emperor Nicholas II was established on January 1, 1930 in Paris, existed until 1964 and became the last foreign Russian cadet corps.

In 1926, during the VII Congress of Foreign Cadets in Paris, a meeting took place between Lieutenant General V.V. Rimsky-Korsakov with a group of graduates of the 1st Moscow Empress Catherine II Cadet Corps. During this meeting, a desire was expressed to open a cadet corps in Paris. Among those who met with V.V. Rimsky-Korsakov, was a graduate of the Naval Corps Belousov, who studied for some time in the 1st Moscow Cadet Corps. Belousov not only showed interest in the idea expressed, but also decided to take an active part in finding funds to purchase a building for the building.

Soon, on official business, Belousov flew to the United States, where he really hoped to find support from one of his many acquaintances. He pinned special hopes on one of his friends from Marine Corps midshipman Anastas Vonsyatsky, married to a rich American.

To make the conversation substantive, Belousov brought with him two illustrated magazines from the history of the Crimean Cadet Corps. In one of the magazines, the photographs depicted small, ragged and dirty cadets who had just arrived from Russia to the Kingdom of S.H.S., and in the other - they were already in cadet uniform as students of the Crimean Corps under the leadership of V.V. Rimsky-Korsakov.

“Having shown these magazines to Vonsiatsky and singing our “Zveriad” with him,” Belousov wrote in a letter to one of his friends, “I said that I was sure that he would help the general in his good endeavor. Vonsiatsky asked: “How much do you need?” I said that I would answer in three days and sent a telegram to Rimsky-Korsakov. Two days later I received an answer: “Okay, if it’s 100 thousand francs.” I told Vonsiatsky - 200 thousand francs. Without saying a word, he signed a check for 200 thousand francs (then $20,000).

With the money received, a house was bought in the town of Villiers-les-Bel, 18 km north of Paris. The building provided to the corps was neglected, no one lived in it. The front of the building faced the street, and on the back side there was a large area overgrown with grass and bushes. The furnishings in the building were modest and sparse. Gradually the building was put in order and adapted for classes. A spacious area adjacent to the building was turned into a parade ground for drills, games and gymnastics classes. The lyceum building began to form from scratch. Everything had to be obtained: beds for bedrooms, desks for classes, textbooks and teaching aids, cadet uniforms. For this purpose, they organized charity balls and collected funds among Russian people who wanted to recreate the cadet corps.

Due to the fact that French law prohibited the existence of foreign military educational institutions on French territory, the educational institution was alternately called the Corps, the Corps Lyceum or the Lyceum of Emperor Nicholas II, or the Russian Lyceum, and before closing in 1964, simply the Russian School. The Russian Committee in charge of the affairs of the corps was headed by General E.K. Miller, and after his abduction by Soviet security officers, Major General E.Yu. Bem.

In accordance with the approved regulations, “The Corps-Lyceum of Emperor Nicholas II is a closed educational institution and aims to educate and educate Russian children and youth in the spirit of the motto of the Imperial Russian Cadet Corps - “Faith, Tsar and Fatherland.” The corps is not a charitable institution and its current needs are supported by receipts from fees for students. Children of refugees are accepted into the corps; during admission, preference is given to the sons of former cadets. The corps course is designed for 8 classes (if necessary, then a preparatory one) with a cadet corps program modified according to the conditions of time and place.

During all the years of its existence, the corps functioned through contributions from parents, private donations, profits from charity concerts and balls, and the annual assistance of Lydia Pavlovna Deterling.

Russian Cadet Corps. Concert by I.P. Komarevskaya. 1938

During its existence (1930-1964), the corps went through three periods in its development:

1930-1937 The corps was located in the town of Villiers-les-Bel, 18 km north of Paris. At this time, the formation of the corps took place. The 1st issue was produced.

1937-1959 The corps was located in Versailles. The new house was rented and restored through the efforts of Captain B.V. Sergeevsky. In the 40s There were over 100 cadets in the corps.

1959-1964 The corps moved to Dieppe, on the English Channel, where it was transported by L.S. Rakitin. In 1964, the building ceased to exist.

For Russian cadets, the new homeland is the USA, Canada, Australia, Venezuela, Chile, Peru, and Mexico. But being absent-minded around the world did not break the cadet bond. From now on, their main motto was: “Scattered, but not dissolved.”

The fates of graduates of the Crimean Cadet Corps developed differently. But only a few of them managed to re-enter the gates of those buildings in which they began their cadet life in Russia, and which they left as boys and young men during the tragic years of the Civil War, continuing their cadet destiny in a foreign land. One of them was Boris Mikhailovich Vyshinsky, V graduation of the Crimean Cadet Corps in Bila Tserkva (1925).

About ten minutes later he was invited into the entrance hall, where he saw an officer with the rank of captain with a red bandage on his sleeve. After saluting and quickly introducing himself, the officer asked to see documents. Having flipped through the passport handed to him and listened to the request, he, without hiding his amazement, was silent for some time, and then briefly said: “Wait,” and, continuing to leaf through the passport, hastily left. The visitor and the boy left the checkpoint and began to stroll leisurely, without moving away from the checkpoint. The father was telling his son something, and every now and then he pointed to the school building visible behind the wall.

A year had already passed since he, Boris Vyshinsky, returned from abroad to his hometown, which was now called Ordzhonikidze. The return was long, lasting several decades. There was one more step left for it to be complete. This step for him was to be a visit to the building of the former Vladikavkaz Cadet Corps, of which he always considered himself a student, and whose memory he carried throughout his entire life. When he and other cadets left this building in the spring of 1920, he did not know, and could not know, that a new countdown was beginning in his life. Then he was separated not only from his family and friends who remained in Vladikavkaz, not only from the city in which he was born, but, as it soon became clear, also from his homeland, which generations of the Vyshinskys served faithfully. And now, decades later, he stands in front of his building again.

“The lush dough of the corps of officers of the Russian Imperial Army. The cadet corps instilled love for the Motherland, the army and the navy, created a military caste, imbued through and through with the best historical traditions, and developed that layer of Russian officers, on whose blood Russian military glory was created.”

Cadet - writer Dvigubsky

To the question: “Who were the first to stand on the path of revolutionary bacchanalia?”, one can answer unequivocally - Russian military youth. Brought up on the firm principles and precepts of honest service to the Faith, the Tsar and the Fatherland, the cadets accepted the Bolshevik coup of October 1917. as a harbinger of the death of all of Russia. Indeed, among the cadets there could not be people who thought differently - there were no traitors there. Cadet corps were the best schools of state and national education in Russia, whose students one could always be proud of. But the fight against the red plague began for the cadets much earlier than 1917.

Even during the revolution of 1905, when pernicious unrest penetrated almost all civilian educational institutions, cadet corps remained calm islands of order, discipline and devotion amid the revolutionary storm. So, in one of the buildings there were two cadets who allowed themselves, in a conversation with their comrades, to express some sympathy for the events taking place. The director of the corps put them on trial for cadet honor, but even he, an officer who knew the cadet traditions and environment well, was struck by the court verdict, which read: death penalty! Of course, no one carried it out, but these two cadets were so amazed by the opinion of their comrades that they repented and made a solemn promise to forever renounce their errors, and became worthy officers. In the same year, cadets of one of the capital's corps, at their unanimous request, took part in the armed dispersal of revolutionary demonstrators.

The red flag, which had flown instead of the Russian national flag since October 1917, was taken by the cadets for what it really was - a dirty rag under which they robbed, killed and raped. The facts of the rescue of corps banners are touching and difficult. Those corps that, in the very first months of the revolution, were evacuated to the areas of the White armies, took their banners with them, and those remaining in the Red zone did everything in their power to prevent the shrines from falling into the hands of the Soviets. The banners were removed secretly and at great risk to life.

In all cities where there were military schools and cadet corps, literally from the first days of the Bolshevik revolution, an armed struggle began for White Russia. In Moscow, the cadets of the Alexander School were joined by cadets from three corps. Nothing could stop the hot hearts of these little patriots! Thus, the senior cadets of the 2nd Moscow Corps, having formed under the command of their comrade Vice-Sergeant Slonimsky, turned to the director of the corps with a request for permission to go to the aid of the cadets and cadets of the other two corps. This was met with a categorical refusal. Then Slonimsky orders the rifles to be dismantled and leads the company out with a banner. The director was politely moved out of the way...

In Petrograd, almost all military schools fought on these same days. The Naval Cadet Corps was one of the first to be attacked by the Bolsheviks, and put up worthy resistance. The Yaroslavl, Simbirsk and Nizhny Novgorod corps were defeated by the Red Guards. Cadet were killed, maimed, thrown out of trains and into the water. The surviving boys took an active part in further battles with the Red Army. The cadets of the Orenburg Corps subsequently almost entirely made up the team of the Vityaz armored train. The personnel and cadets of the Tashkent Corps were almost completely beaten for participating in armed resistance along with the cadets.

Books must be written and films made about the paths and thorns through which these children made their way into the White armies. The first volunteer detachments that began the fight on the Don were mostly made up of cadets and cadets. At a time when healthy and strong men turned into Red Guard animals or simply waited on the sidelines, Russian boys went into battle for the desecrated Fatherland. At one of the funerals, General Alekseev said: “I see a monument that Russia will erect for these children, and this monument should depict an eagle’s nest and the eaglets killed in it...”.

A large number of cadets took part and covered themselves in glory in the legendary Ice March. They were always talked about with fatherly love and sadness... With a rifle taller than themselves, going headlong into the water during any ford crossings, they meekly endured all the hardships of the campaign. On all fronts of the Civil War, cadets stood out for their daring and courage, looking up to their senior comrades and trying to be in no way inferior to them. The poet Snasareva-Kazakova dedicated beautiful lines to the cadets who died near Irkutsk:

Their eyes were like stars -
Ordinary Russian cadets;
Nobody described them here
And he didn’t sing it in the poet’s verses.
Those children were our stronghold,
And Rus' will bow to their grave;
They're all there
Died in snowdrifts...

In the famous Drozdovskaya division of the Volunteer Army, all cadets, high school students and realists were jokingly called “eggplants.” It was the children who responded to the call to defend their homeland from the Bolshevik plague. They always added years to themselves and tried to look older and more respectable - just to be enlisted in the army. General Turkul recalled how many times he had to interview these sweet, emaciated and ragged boys who made their way from all corners of Russia. Most were 14-15 years old. What called them to the hell of war? What made you run away from your parents and put yourself in mortal danger? But the Red Army was sometimes much closer to the White Army... Maybe a thirst for adventure and exploits? Dreams of fame and adventurism? Of course, all these assumptions are ridiculous and insulting to their memory. They were simply RUSSIAN CADETS who were not going to live in a communist garbage dump, who loved Russia and were ready to bear responsibility for everything that happened in it.

Nothing dried up the soul and tore the heart more than a dead child lying in a military uniform. Next to him is a rifle and a cap, on the chest, covered in blood, a small cross, and behind the belt is a favorite book or notebook with poems by Pushkin and Lermontov, rewritten according to the cadet tradition. How sometimes I didn’t want to put them in line, which always dictated its own harsh laws! It seemed that the entire future of Russia was here in the army, with a rifle, and not with a pen in hand and not at a school desk. And hundreds of thousands of healthy and adult people were engaged in preserving their human skin, which was still well-fed in those days. Never forget the battle of a white armored train, or rather an armored platform with several red armored trains. When the majority of the team and the commander himself were killed, the site began to retreat and among “... collapsed and burnt bags of earth, sharp holes, bodies in smoldering greatcoats, among blood and smoke, stood blackened from smoke machine gunner boys and madly shouted “Hurray.” " One thoughtful Englishman, who was in the south of Russia during the Civil War, wrote that “in the history of the world he knows nothing more remarkable than the child volunteers of the white movement. To all the fathers and mothers who gave their children for the Motherland, he must say that their children brought a sacred spirit to the battlefield and, in the purity of their youth, lay down for Russia. And if people did not appreciate their sacrifices and did not yet erect a worthy monument to them, then God saw their sacrifice and accepted their souls into his heavenly abode...” The southern Russian corps also made a significant contribution to the defense of the Fatherland. The first cadet blood was shed in battles with the Red Army near Rostov near Balabanova Grove in 1917. Here Odessa cadets Nadolsky and Usachev were killed, Polyakov, Shengelaya and Dumbadze were wounded. How can we forget one of the little cadets who, after the battle, was leading a captured Red Army soldier and hit his foot in the switch of the tram line, sprained his leg, but endured the pain with colossal courage, and after handing over the prisoner, he sat down on the rails and cried bitterly... But in the 1st Kuban campaign The Volunteer Army seemed to have occurred incredible incident heroism, which hardly has analogues in military history. Odessa cadet Kikodze continued to go on the attack with...his legs torn off by an artillery shell, dragging across the arable field in his arms and shouting “Hurray!”

In 1920, during the evacuation of Odessa, part of the Volunteer Army troops, as well as a mass of refugees with children, retreated to the borders of Romania under the onslaught of the Reds. Among those retreating were several hundred cadets of the Odessa Grand Duke Konstantin Konstantinovich of the cadet corps, as well as a number of other corps. On January 31, a battle broke out between Colonel Stessel’s detachment and superior Red forces consisting of an infantry division and Kotovsky’s cavalry brigade near Kandel. The battle was necessary to save refugees, women and children. The detachment consisted of only 600 fighters. The left flank was entrusted to a combined composition of cadets under the command of Captain Remert. It was on the left flank that the main attack of the Reds was directed. But neither the brutal artillery and machine-gun fire, nor the frantic attacks of the red cavalry could break the cadets. Friendly volleys and solid bayonets constantly greeted the cavalry of the famous Bessarabian criminal. The success of the left flank allowed the entire detachment to launch a counteroffensive and push back the Reds. The battle lasted intermittently from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m.

The Kyiv Vladimir Cadet Corps managed to avoid defeat and disbandment. However, already in the first days of the revolution, the left-wing writer Amphiteatrov published an article in the newspaper “Kievskaya Mysl” entitled “Wolf Cubs”, in which he persecuted the Kiev cadets for not wearing red bows at the general parade in honor of the revolution, without disgracing their white shoulder straps with them . True, in emigration he saw the light after reading Zurov’s book “Cadets”, and publicly repented, admitting that “I didn’t know you, gentlemen, Cadets, I honestly admit, and only now I realized the depth of your asceticism.” With the liberation of Kyiv by General Denikin's Volunteer Army in 1919, most of the cadets immediately went to the front. One of the batteries was fully staffed by Kyiv cadets. Perhaps some Kiev residents will recognize names dear to them - Sergei Yakimovich, Polinovsky, Levitsky, Porai-Koshits, Berezhetsky, Zakharzhevsky. Also, the cadets of the Sumy and Poltava corps fearlessly fought the Bolsheviks. Grand Duke Konstantin Konstantinovich, who at one time was in charge of all military educational institutions in Russia, a famous poet under the pseudonym “K.R.” and a man who enjoyed great love from all cadets and cadets wrote beautiful lines:

"Cadet"
Even though you are a boy, you are aware in your heart
Kinship with a great military family,
Be proud to belong to her soul.
You are not alone: ​​you are a flock of eagles.
The day will come, and, spreading its wings,
Happy to sacrifice themselves,
You will rush bravely into mortal combat,
Death for the honor of one's native land is enviable.

In the Parisian suburb of Sainte-Geneviève-des-Bois, at the famous cemetery of Russian emigrants, there is also a cadet station. White birch trees and white crosses, and on each white stone grave there is a colored shoulder strap of the cadet corps from which the deceased graduated. Don't forget to bow, passerby!

The country that can raise such sons as the Russian cadets were is happy and has the right to exist.

Life is for the fatherland, honor is for no one!
(cadet motto)

For many Russians, especially the older generation, the word “cadet” evokes rather negative associations. To some, the cadets seem to be some kind of anachronism, connected either with in recent years the reign of the Romanov family, or with the era of Russia in the early 90s. Some people are even sure that the Cadets are representatives of the Constitutional Democrats of the times of the first State Dumas. All this confusion arose after we decided overnight to abandon those youth movements that were cultivated during the Soviet era, but did not have time to formulate the idea of ​​​​a new youth vector.

It was at this moment, and this is 1992-1993, that in Russia, instead of pioneers, Boy and Girl Scouts began to appear, and instead of Suvorovites, or, at best, on a par with Suvorovites, those same cadets. At the same time, as often happens with us, the youth were gathered, but they forgot to tell why they were gathered. For many young people, wealthy parents did not fail to buy a new uniform with golden epaulettes, caps with sparkling cockades, and took their children, yesterday’s schoolchildren, to where, as it was said, the cadets would study. The main thing is that they managed to tell very young guys that they are glory and pride new Russia and that they have nothing to do with some Suvorovites and other Nakhimovites, and are ABOVE all these remnants of socialism.

With this thought, the youth began to comprehend the difficult cadet science. The only trouble was that the high leadership decided to get rid of Soviet remnants, but among the teaching corps there were increasingly those same teachers who had seen nothing else but these remnants in their lives. And they began to teach the cadets the same way they were taught in party schools. So it turned out that during the day the new Russian cadets had to either read the Lord’s Prayer aloud or sing bravura Soviet songs about the Red commander Shchors and the defeat of the White Army. The textbooks seemed to remain mostly Soviet, but the history teacher tried to convey something completely anti-Soviet. At the same time, ministers of the surrounding churches, former repressed people, and retired intelligence service generals, that is, those who carried out repression, were invited to the holidays. In general, something in this system had to be changed, since the cadets themselves had difficulty understanding what awaited them in the future and what kind of education they were receiving here. But they were in no hurry to change anything...

And the most surprising thing was that from year to year the number of young boys and even girls wishing to study at cadet schools only increased. At the same time, the youth were not embarrassed that the prospects for continuing to serve military affairs in Russia after graduating from cadet school, to put it mildly, were not the most promising. To be more precise, most military universities today do not guarantee any benefits to graduates of cadet schools. And with the introduction of the Unified State Exam, the chances of a graduate of a cadet corps and a regular school being admitted to a military university are absolutely equal.

However, it must be recognized that young people are often driven not so much by the desire to devote their future lives to military service, how much it takes to get a truly high-quality education - the education that those very pre-revolutionary cadets were proud of. And he had something to be proud of!

If you touch historical stages development of the cadet movement in Russia, the first cadet corps was established in 1732 by Field Marshal von Minich. The very word “cadet” was borrowed from Prussian young people who connected their lives with military affairs. They, in turn, borrowed it from the French: cadet (French) - junior.

Graduation from the cadet corps guaranteed a further brilliant military career. During the training process, the cadets received very extensive knowledge not only in military affairs, but also learned the humanities, mathematics, physics, chemistry, fencing, ballroom dancing, and truly knightly manners. In those years, the unofficial name of the cadets appeared - “young knights”. Von Minich even called the cadet corps itself a “Knight’s Academy.” In this case, 13-year-old boys were not attracted by the name, but by the level of education they were receiving and very serious prospects, as they say now, career growth. Von Minich's cadet corps was located in St. Petersburg and graduated several hundred students. Many outstanding people of Russia of that time graduated from the cadet corps.

At the same time, oddly enough, there were no cadet corps in Moscow until 1992. It is not surprising that real cadet traditions have not yet had time to take shape not only in the current capital, but also in other Russian cities. Behind the bright signs in Russian regions there may be educational institutions (“cadet corps”) of a very dubious reputation. It often happens that as part of the implementation of a program to level out homelessness and neglect in boarding schools for orphans, the sign simply changes, and the boarding school is declared nothing less than a cadet corps. It is not uncommon for entire cadet academies to emerge in the same buildings that previously housed secondary schools. What is this connected with? Is it really with the general desire of the leadership of educational institutions to introduce young people to military culture, gallantry and the art of being human in general? I don’t argue, there are, thank God, such cases in Russia. However, they can be counted on the fingers of one hand. All other cadet corps are just another move by the leadership in the conditions of a demographic hole to attract students into the walls of their educational institutions. One can also understand the leaders, because the notorious per capita funding puts them in an awkward position - “get students as best you can.”

Naturally, the question arises, where can managers find such gallant teachers who will dance a square dance, whistle in the air with a sword, and solve a trigonometric equation, because with the new Federal standards, Russia needs just such teachers...

As a result, such a cadet studies and suffers in his cadet corps and cannot understand how he fundamentally (except for the cap and shoulder straps, of course) differs from Vasya from the next door, who also wipes his pants, only in a regular school...

And at this time, the leaders are again concocting reports on the work successfully done: about how shooting was carried out with only wooden machine guns, how the cadets held a ball in a gym with a leaking roof, how voluntary (and what else!) donations were made by the parents of the cadets a cadet temple was built in the school yard, to which the local priest drives up in a BMW X5 (of course, they keep silent about the BMW report).

In general, no matter what the child amuses himself with, as they say, as long as he doesn’t hang himself. This, it seems, is the doctrine of modern youth movements, which includes the cadet movement. After all, there is no single legislative framework We do not yet have one in our country that puts cadet schools on some kind of legal basis. Something will happen next...