Biography of Pavel Dybenko. Pavel Dybenko. Hero or executioner? Pavel Dybenko the fate of the main sailor of the revolution
Born in the village of Lyudkov, Chernigov province, into a peasant family. Baltic sailor, anarchist, in the revolutionary movement since 1907. Since 1911 in the Baltic Fleet, one of the leaders of the anti-war protest of sailors on the battleship "Emperor Paul I" in 1915. After a 6-month imprisonment he was sent to the front, then again arrested for anti-war propaganda and released February Revolution of 1917. He was a member of the Helsingfors Council, and from April 1917 chairman of the Tsentrobalt (Central Committee of the Baltic Fleet). He took an active part in preparing the fleet for the October armed uprising.
Revolution and Civil War
During the October Revolution, he commanded the red detachments in Gatchina and Krasnoye Selo, and arrested General P.N. Krasnov. At the II All-Russian Congress of Soviets he joined the Council of People's Commissars as a member of the Committee on Military and Naval Affairs. Until March 1918 - People's Commissar for Maritime Affairs. During the years of the civil war and peaceful construction, he held command positions in the Red Army. In February 1918, he commanded a detachment of sailors near Narva, was defeated and surrendered the city, for which he was put on trial in May 1918, but acquitted (later this battle - February 23 - was declared a great victory and Soviet Army Day). At the first clashes with a reconnaissance patrol sent by the German command, near Narva, Dybenko’s sailors, who had spent the entire war in the ports, wavered and ran all the way to Gatchina (120 kilometers). In Gatchina they captured a train and moved across the country. As a result, the revolutionary detachment disappeared for several weeks, and was found thousands of kilometers from the Baltic states - on the Volga, in Samara. In pursuit, the head of the Supreme Military Council, Bonch-Bruevich, sends telegrams around the country: to catch him and deliver him to Moscow under escort. The communists initially wanted to shoot Dybenko, but Larisa Reisner and Alexandra Kollontai stood up for him. Nevertheless, Dybenko was expelled from the party. Although just sending Dybenko’s “brothers” to the front, Lenin told Bonch-Bruevich: “You and your comrades must immediately start thinking about measures for the defense of Petrograd. We have no troops. None." However, all these events did not become the property of official Soviet history, and February 23 was subsequently declared the Day of the Navy and the Day of the Red Army, and then the Day of the Soviet Army. In the summer of 1918 he was sent to underground work in Ukraine. In August 1918 he was arrested, but in October he was exchanged for captured German officers. Since November 1918, commander of a regiment, brigade, group of troops, division. Since the spring of 1919, commander of the Crimean Army and People's Commissar for Military and Naval Affairs of the Crimean Soviet Republic. In 1919-20 he commanded formations near Tsaritsyn and in the Caucasus. Dybenko becomes commander of the 1st Trans-Dnieper Ukrainian Soviet Division. The division consisted of thousands of detachments of the most famous partisan chieftains in Ukraine - Nikifor Grigoriev and Nestor Makhno. Under the general command of M. N. Tukhachevsky, Dybenko, at the head of the Consolidated Division, was one of the leaders of the suppression of the Kronstadt uprising (1921). Participated in the suppression of the peasant uprising in the Tambov province.
Post-war career
In 1922 he was reinstated in the RCP (b) with the credit for party service since 1912. He married A. M. Kollontai, see First Soviet Marriage. This became the reason for many jokes in the leadership of the RCP (b): both Dybenko and Kollontai were distinguished by extreme sexual promiscuity. Graduated from the Military Academy (1922). In fact, all homework and the diploma were completed by A. M. Kollontai. In 1928-38, commander of the troops of the Central Asian, Volga and Leningrad military districts. He was a member of the Revolutionary Military Council of the USSR, a member of the Central Executive Committee of the USSR.
'37 and arrest
In 1937 he was elected as a deputy of the Supreme Council of the 1st convocation. In 1936-37, under his leadership, large-scale purges of command personnel for political reasons were carried out in the Leningrad Military District. He was part of the Special Judicial Presence, which convicted a group of senior Soviet military leaders in the “Tukhachevsky Case” (June 1937). On February 26, 1938, Dybenko himself was arrested. During the investigation he was subjected to beatings and torture. He pleaded guilty to participating in an anti-Soviet, Trotskyist, military-fascist conspiracy and on July 29, 1938 he was sentenced to death. Dybenko was also recognized as an American spy (trying to justify himself, Dybenko told the investigation: “I don’t even speak the American language”). The basis for this accusation was the fact that Dybenko’s sister lived in America. Dybenko had official meetings with American military representatives and, taking advantage of this, in private conversations asked for assistance in obtaining benefits for his sister. As a result, the army commander’s sister received benefits regularly in America. Dybenko was shot on the day of his sentencing. Rehabilitated in 1956.
Pavel Efimovich Dybenko(1889-1938) was born in Novozybkov (then Chernigov province), into a peasant family. Russian. Education – primary. According to Dybenko’s own statements, he has been a participant in the revolutionary movement since 1907, but this is not confirmed by facts, as is his statement about party experience since 1912: in fact, he joined the Bolsheviks only after the overthrow of the monarchy.
In 1911 Dybenko was drafted into the army, into the Baltic Fleet. He began his service on the penal ship Dvina. With the beginning of the First World War, he conducted anti-war agitation among the sailors of the battleship "Emperor Pavel the First", for which he was arrested in 1915, after imprisonment he was sent to the front in the infantry, but continued to do the same thing, was arrested again, and was released after the February Revolution 1917
After his release, he was a member of the Council in Helsingfors (Helsinki), and then became chairman of Tsentrobalt, a sailor organization that was strongly influenced by anarchists and controlled the Baltic Fleet. He persuaded "Tsentrobalt" to an alliance with the Bolsheviks, an active participant in the preparation of the Bolshevik coup, after which he became a member of the Council of People's Commissars - Commissioner for Naval Affairs. In January 1918 P. Dybenko was sent to Finland with the task of assisting the local Bolsheviks in seizing power. Arriving in Helsingfors, P.E. Dybenko organized mass reprisals against the officers of the tsarist fleet who were in the city, then against all officers in general, after which he “switched” to the “bourgeois”: the sailors subordinate to Dybenko grabbed and, after brutal torture, killed people directly on the streets of Helsinki. The total number of victims of Dybenko's terror in Helsinki is still unclear. Dybenko's accomplice in the murders in Helsinki was F. Raskolnikov.
When in February 1918 The Germans went on the offensive, and there was a threat of the capture of St. Petersburg, V.I. Lenin instructed P. Dybenko to organize a rebuff to the German troops with the forces of the Baltic sailors subordinate to him. He, without entering into battle, not seeing the enemy in front of him, ordered a retreat, and the sailors fled, abandoning Narva and opening the way for the Germans to the capital. In Gatchina, sailors captured an armored train, and, led by Dybenko, “evacuated.” A month later they were found in Samara, beyond the Volga. P. Dybenko was removed from his post and expelled from the party for cowardice and desertion.
According to the official version, in 1918. he was sent to work underground in Ukraine, but this is unlikely. In fact, the situation was like this: he went into hiding, fearing the overthrow of Soviet power.
In August 1918 arrested by the Germans, but released in October, he soon heads the 1st Ukrainian Trans-Dnieper Division, which included the troops of the atamans Grigoriev and Makhno. This division was weakly subordinate to the central authorities, mass robberies and pogroms against Jews were practiced, and anyone suspected of sympathizing with the whites or belonging to the “property classes” was shot without trial. All this was done with the direct approval of P. Dybenko.
In the spring of 1919 - People's Commissar for Military and Naval Affairs of the Crimean Soviet Republic, one of the organizers of the Red Terror in this region, then fought on the Caucasian Front, and was close to M.N. Tukhachevsky.
In February 1921 P.E. Dybenko commands the Combined Division during the suppression of the Kronstadt uprising. This division included those members of the Bolshevik Party who were guilty of committing serious crimes - a kind of “penalties”. Dybenko ordered those who refused to go on the attack to be shot on the spot. After the suppression of the uprising, P. Dybenko headed the tribunal in the case of the uprising, and in 2 days he handed down 2,107 death sentences. He became the commandant of Kronstadt and led its “cleansing” of “counter-revolutionary elements.” For the demonstrated “qualities” he was sent by M.N. Tukhachevsky to suppress another uprising - the Tambov one. He “distinguished himself” there, for which in 1922. was reinstated in the party.
In the 20s, he held a number of command posts in the army, but did not stay anywhere for long: his passion for alcohol got in the way. In 1937 became a deputy of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR. Since 1936 – an active participant in mass repressions in the Red Army. In 1936-1937 Dybenko, together with the head of the Leningrad NKVD L.M. Zakovsky, carried out a “cleansing” of the command staff of the Leningrad Military District. In 1937, having been sent to the post of commander of the Volga Military District, he helped the security officers arrest his first deputy Kutyakov, and publicly boasted that he had helped send a man to death (Kutyakov was shot after torture). As a reward for “assistance” to the “authorities”, P. Dybenko was appointed a member of the Special Judicial Presence, which tried the group of M.N. Tukhachevsky in May-June 1937, and insisted on the execution of all the accused
Dybenko Pavel Efimovich- (18891938), revolutionary and military leader, army commander of the 2nd rank (1935). Member of the Communist Party since 1912. In the revolutionary movement since 1907. Since 1911, a sailor of the Baltic Fleet, one of the leaders of the uprising on the battleship “Emperor Paul I”... ... Encyclopedic reference book "St. Petersburg"
- (1889 1938), revolutionary and military leader, commander of the 2nd rank (1935). Member of the Communist Party since 1912. In the revolutionary movement since 1907. Since 1911, a sailor of the Baltic Fleet, one of the leaders of the uprising on the battleship "Emperor Paul I" ... St. Petersburg (encyclopedia)
Soviet military leader, commander of the 2nd rank (1935). Member of the Communist Party since 1912. Born in the village. Lyudkov of the Chernigov province in a peasant family. In the revolutionary movement since 1907. Since 1911 in the Baltic Fleet,... ... Great Soviet Encyclopedia
- (1889 1938) commander of the 2nd rank (1935). In 1917 chairman of Tsentrobalt. During the October Revolution, he was a member of the Petrograd Military Revolutionary Committee, a member of the Committee for Military and Naval Affairs, and in 1918, the People's Commissar for Naval Affairs. During the Civil War, the commander of a group of troops,... ... Big Encyclopedic Dictionary
- (1889 1938), commander of the 2nd rank (1935). In 1917 chairman of Tsentrobalt. During the October Revolution, he was a member of the Petrograd Military Revolutionary Committee, a member of the Committee for Military and Naval Affairs, and in 1918, the People's Commissar for Naval Affairs. During the Civil War, the commander of a group of troops,... ... encyclopedic Dictionary
Dybenko P. E. (1889 1938; autobiography). Born on February 16, 1889. A native of the village of Lyudkov, Novozybkovsky district, Chernigov province. (now Gomel). Comes from peasants. His family, mother, father, brother and sister still live in the village of Lyudkov and... ... Large biographical encyclopedia
February 16 (28), 1889 July 29, 1938 Place of birth, village of Lyudkov, Chernigov province, Russian Empire Years of service 1911 ... Wikipedia
Pavel Efimovich Dybenko February 16 (28), 1889 July 29, 1938 Place of birth, village of Lyudkov, Chernigov province, Russian Empire Years of service 1911 ... Wikipedia
Pavel Efimovich Dybenko February 16 (28), 1889 July 29, 1938 Place of birth, village of Lyudkov, Chernigov province, Russian Empire Years of service 1911 ... Wikipedia
Books
- , Dybenko Pavel Efimovich. The memoirs of the first People's Commissar for Maritime Affairs P.E. Dybenko tell about the revolutionary events in Russia. At the center of the story are the sailors of the Baltic Fleet and their role in the revolution.…
- From the depths of the tsarist fleet to the Great October Revolution, P. E. Dybenko. Moscow, 1958. Military Publishing House Military Publishing House of the Ministry of Defense of the USSR, Military Publishing House of the Ministry of Defense of the USSR. Publisher's binding. The condition is good. In his book, Paul...
In the struggle for the victory of the Great October Socialist Revolution, for the establishment and strengthening of Soviet power, along with the Red Guards and revolutionary-minded soldiers, a significant role was played by the sailors of the Baltic Fleet, where our fellow countryman Pavel Efimovich Dybenko served.
P.EDybenko was born on February 16 /28/ 1889 in the family of a poor peasant in the village of Lyudkovo, Novozybkovsky district, Chernigov province. From childhood he knew hard work and hardship. The parents were able to give their son only a three-year education.
In 1908, Pavel Dybenko left for Riga, where he worked as a loader in the port and at the same time studied electromechanical courses. Here, in Riga, he read illegal literature for the first time.
In 1911, P.Edybenko was drafted into the navy, where his combat biography began. Due to unreliability, he was enlisted not in the Guards, but in the 1st Baltic crew and sent to Kotlin Island. Soon he was enrolled as a student of the Kronstadt training detachment. In June 1912, P.E. Dybenko joined the ranks of the RSDLP /b/. After completing his studies, Pavel Efimovich served on the training ship “Dvina”, and then was sent to the battleship “Emperor Pavel 1”, which was notorious among sailors due to the cane regime established by the officers. Here P.E. Dybenko contacted the Bolshevik group and went through the first school of underground work.
When, on the eve of 1915, the Bolshevik group of the ship “Emperor Pavel 1” was defeated by the tsarist secret police, Dybenko, by a lucky chance, escaped arrest. He was one of the organizers of the uprising on the ship “Gangut”, after which he was decommissioned from the navy into the land army and sent to the front.
In April 1916, P.E. Dybenko was arrested. After serving his term in a military correctional prison in Helsingfors, he was appointed as a battalion commander in military transport. Here, in Helsingfors, he became one of the main leaders of the Baltic sailors - chairman of the Central Committee of the Baltic Fleet / Tsentrobalt /.
On September 25, 1917, under the chairmanship of P.E. Dybenko, the Second Congress of Sailors of the Baltic Fleet took place. The congress participants adopted a resolution inviting the Petrograd Soviet to take the initiative to convene the All-Russian Congress of Soviets. Together with a group of Bolsheviks, P.E. Dybenko was elected as a deputy to the III All-Russian Congress of Soviets.
The Second Congress of Sailors of the Baltic Fleet united and organized the sailor masses. Tsentrobalt assumed full power in the Baltic Fleet.
Tsentrobalt played a huge role in the October armed uprising. By order of P.E. Dybenko, the cruiser “Aurora” was left in Petrograd, despite the order of the Provisional Government about the ship going to sea.
After taking power in Petrograd and creating the Council of People's Commissars, P.E. Dybenko took part in the defeat of the counter-revolutionary rebellion of Kerensky - Krasnov.
On November 22, 1917, the First All-Russian Congress of Military Sailors took place in Petrograd, at which the first People's Commissar for Military and Naval Affairs (Voenmor) P.E. Dybenko made a report “On the reorganization of the management of the naval department.”
On January 28 and February 11, 1918, the Council of People's Commissars adopted Decrees on the formation of the Workers' and Peasants' Red Army and the creation of the Workers' and Peasants' Fleet. P.E. Dybenko also signed these documents of extreme importance. In accordance with the Decree on the creation of the Workers' and Peasants' Red Fleet, the maritime ministry was renamed the People's Commissariat for Maritime Affairs /NKMD/, which was headed by P.E. Dybenko.
In connection with the advance of German troops into the territory of the young Soviet republic, P.E. Dybenko led a combined detachment of sailors, which on February 28, 1918 was sent to Narva. Lieutenant General D.P. Parsky intervened in the affairs of the head of the defense of Narva, P.E. Dybenko, as a result of which the Red Army troops were defeated and were forced to leave Narva. In May 1918, P.E. Dybenko was brought to trial. He was acquitted in court, but was still expelled from the party.
In the summer of 1918, on instructions from the Central Committee of the RCP/b/, Dybenko was sent to Ukraine to organize underground work in Sevastopol, but already in August he was arrested by the German occupation authorities and thrown into a Simferopol prison.
At the end of September he was exchanged for a group of Kaiser officers captured by the Red Army.
After his release from captivity, P.E. Dybenko was appointed commissar of the 1st brigade of the 2nd Ukrainian Soviet Division, and in February 1919 - commander of the 1st Trans-Dnieper Soviet Rifle Division, which participated in the liberation of Crimea in April 1919.
For his participation in the liberation of Crimea, P.E. Dybenko was awarded the Order of the Red Banner of Battle. Subsequently, the Trans-Dnieper division was transformed into the Crimean Red Army, whose commander was P.E. Dybenko. In May 1919, Pavel Efimovich was appointed People's Commissar for Military and Naval Affairs of the Crimean Soviet Socialist Republic. Then he goes to study at the Academy of the General Staff of the Red Army. But because of the onset of the Volunteer Army's offensive, he did not have to study. He was sent to the southern front, where he commanded the 37th Infantry Division of the 8th Army near Tsaritsyn. For the battles near Tsaritsyn, P.E. Dybenko was awarded the second Order of the Red Banner of Battle.
In February-November 1920, P.E. Dybenko commanded the 1st Caucasian Cavalry and 2nd Cavalry Divisions of the Southern Front. He also took part in the defeat of Baron Wrangel’s troops in Crimea.
In March 1921, P.E. Dybenko participated in the suppression of the Kronstadt rebellion, for which he was awarded the third Order of the Red Banner of Battle.
In May 1921 - April 1924, Pavel Efimovich Dybenko was the head of the Western Black Sea sector, commander of the Perekop division, 1st and 5th rifle corps. In 1922 he graduated from the Academy of the General Staff of the Red Army. At the same time, he was reinstated in the RCP / b / with credit for party experience for 1912-1922. In 1925, P.E. Dybenko was appointed head of the Artillery Directorate of the Red Army, and a little later - chief of supply of the Red Army.
In 1928-1938, P.E. Dybenko commanded the troops of the Central Asian, Volga, and Leningrad military districts. For the defeat of Basmachi gangs in Central Asia, Dybenko was awarded the Order of the Red Banner of Labor of the Turkmen and Tajik SSR.
P.E. Dybenko was a deputy of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR of the 1st convocation, was a member of the Revolutionary Military Council of the USSR, the Central Executive Committee of the USSR, and was elected as a delegate to the XV, XVI and XVII Congresses of the CPSU /b/. He authored the books “From the Bowels of the Tsarist Fleet to the Great October Revolution”, “Revolutionary Baltic People”, “Rebels”, “Military Doctrine and the Evolution of the Army”.
Pavel Efimovich Dybenko visited Novozybkov several times in 1918-1921 and in 1934.
In 1938, P.E. Dybenko was arrested and executed. Only almost twenty years later his name was returned to history.
Our fellow countryman P.E. Dybenko traveled a remarkable path from an ordinary sailor to a talented military leader of the Red Army. People say that “heroes have two lives. One is short, breaks off at the grave, and the other passes through centuries, does not fade over the centuries.”
Streets are named after P.E. Dybenko not only in Novozybkov, but also in St. Petersburg, Simferopol, and Sevastopol.
Paying tribute and gratitude to their glorious fellow countryman, the workers of the city of Novozybkov erected two monuments to him.
Commander of the second rank Pavel Efimovich Dybenko. Bryansk region.
Revolutionary, politician and red army commander P.E. Dybenko is an extremely controversial personality, known from different sides - both bright and heroic, and very negative and scary. And there is no unambiguous assessment of the events themselves, in which he took an active part throughout his life, and probably cannot be. However, one way or another, this is our famous fellow countryman, which means whether it is good or dark, it is a significant piece of our Bryansk history and the history of our country, and without this page history will be incomplete.
Pavel was born on February 16 (28), 1889 in a large family of a strong middle peasant (the family owned two cows, a horse and five hectares of land) in the village of Lyudkovo, Chernigov province (now within the city of Novozybkov, Bryansk region). He learned to read and write at a public school. In 1899 he entered and in 1903 graduated from a three-year city school in Novozybkov. He served in the treasury, but was fired for unreliability and went to Riga, where he became a port loader, while simultaneously studying electrical engineering courses. In Riga since 1907, he participated in the work of the Bolshevik circle and naturally came under the secret surveillance of the police.
As a Bolshevik revolutionary, Dybenko tried to evade military service, but in 1911 he was arrested by the police and sent to a recruiting station by convoy. So, in 1911, he became a sailor of the Baltic Fleet on the penal training ship Dvina. In 1913, sailor Dybenko graduated from mine school and entered service on the battleship (squadron battleship) "Emperor Paul I" as a non-commissioned officer, where he again entered the Bolshevik underground. On this warship, Dybenko took part in the campaign to Portland and Brest.
In 1915, Pavel Efimovich became one of the organizers and leaders of the anti-war demonstration of sailors on the battleship. He was arrested and, after a tribunal and six-month imprisonment, in 1916 he was sent as part of a naval battalion to the front near Riga. For refusal to carry out the order to attack, the battalion was disbanded, and P.E. Dybenko was sentenced to two months in prison for anti-war agitation. Then, from the summer of 1916, he continued to serve on a transport ship in Helsingfors.
After February 1917, he was elected by the sailors who trusted him as a member of the Helsingfors Council, and from April as chairman of the Tsentrobalt (Central Committee of the Baltic Fleet). He spent two summer months in custody in the Kresty prison, but in early September, under pressure from Tsentrobalt sailors, he was released. During the Battle of Moonsund on September 29 - October 6 with the German fleet P.E. Dybenko took part in the battles near the islands of Dago and Ezel.
In the whirlwind of revolutionary events of 1917, a companion appears in his life - Alexandra Mikhailovna Kollontai (nee Princess Domontovich) - a member of the central committee of the Bolshevik party and friend of V.I. Lenin. The famous revolutionary became the common-law wife of Pavel Efimovich; in many ways she contributed to the further military-political career of her husband. Years later, after the Civil War, Pavel and Alexandra came together to Lyudkovo to visit the Dybenko family.
Since the end of September, Dybenko has been a member of the Finnish Regional Bureau of the RSDLP(b), then a delegate to the Congress of Soviets of the Northern Region (October 11-13), where he was elected to the regional executive committee. Having joined the Petrograd Provisional Revolutionary Committee, he was elected as a delegate to the Second All-Russian Congress of Soviets, but was unable to arrive in Petrograd, since he headed the “troika” in preparing an armed uprising.
During the October armed uprising of 1917, Dybenko supervised the formation and dispatch of detachments of revolutionary sailors and warships from Helsingfors and Kronstadt to Petrograd. From October 28, he personally commanded the red detachments in Gatchina and Krasnoe Selo, arrested General P.N. Krasnova. He became part of the first Bolshevik government - the Council of People's Commissars. From November 21, 1917 to March 1918, former sailor P.E. Dybenko, by Lenin’s personal order, occupies the admiral’s position - he is the first people’s commissar for maritime affairs in history. Under his leadership, the wholesale extermination of military personnel in the Russian fleet began. In Petrograd and at the Baltic Fleet bases alone, several hundred officers and midshipmen were tortured and brutally killed. P.E. Dybenko tirelessly called on the “brothers” - as he called the revolutionary sailors - to “cut the opposition.”
He also participated in the dispersal of the only surviving legitimate body of power in revolutionary Petrograd - the Constituent Assembly, bringing over five thousand sailors into the city. Before this, at a meeting of the Constituent Assembly on January 5, 1918, he spoke on behalf of the sailors of the Baltic Fleet: “We recognize only Soviet power; Our bayonets, our weapons are for Soviet power, and everything else is us against them. Down with them! When about 60 thousand people took to the streets of Petrograd in support of the popularly elected Constituent Assembly, on the corner of Nevsky and Liteiny Prospekts, sailors stationed on the roofs at Dybenko’s command met the peaceful demonstration with machine-gun fire. This is how the Bolsheviks consolidated their power.
In February 1918, the German offensive against Petrograd began. P.E. Dybenko, at the head of a detachment of sailors, was sent to Narva with the task of stopping the Germans. The area was defended by soldiers under the leadership of former General Parsky and Commissar Bonch-Bruevich. Dybenko refused to obey them, declaring that “the brothers themselves will deal with the nonsense.” From the surviving documents it follows that in February 1918, a group of sailors led by Pavel Dybenko, after giving a short battle, fled from the front. The Germans advanced hundreds of kilometers into Russian territory. About what happened, the leader of the Bolsheviks V.I. Lenin wrote about it as a “bitter, offensive, difficult lesson.” The commander of the flight was expelled from the party (he was reinstated there only in 1922, after the Civil War); on March 16, at the IV Congress of Soviets, he was deprived of all posts and arrested. Soon, on March 25, however, the former People's Commissar, as “one of our own,” was released on bail with the condition of staying in Moscow until the trial. Dybenko did not wait for trial and fled to Samara, from where in May he was returned to Moscow and finally appeared before the Revolutionary Tribunal. Leon Trotsky angrily demanded execution, but Dybenko was acquitted due to repentance: “I am to blame for the fact that the sailors reached Gatchina,” said the defendant.
After the trial, the Bolsheviks send Dybenko to underground work in Sevastopol. Here he and the city underground began propaganda activities among German soldiers. However, the enemy’s counterintelligence worked clearly: a month later, Dybenko was arrested and, after an unsuccessful escape from prison, sentenced to death. He was again incredibly lucky: in October, at the request of his wife Alexandra Kollontai, the Soviet government was able to exchange Dybenko for a group of captured officers.
P.E. Dybenko and N.I. Makhno. 1918
Since November 1918, Dybenko was already the commander of a regiment, brigade, and group of troops. He headed the 1st Trans-Dnieper Ukrainian Soviet Division, which included thousands of detachments of the most famous partisan atamans in Ukraine - Nikifor Grigoriev and the “father” Nestor Makhno. At Makhno’s wedding, he was even the “planted father.” From the spring of 1919, he commanded units of the Red Army that took part in the assault on the Perekop and Chongar positions and soon after the victory, he became the People's Commissar of Military Affairs of the Crimean Soviet Republic. After the fall of the Republic in July 1919, he was sent to new fronts, where he participated in leading the capture of Tsaritsyn. From March 3 to May 11, 1920, he commanded the 1st Caucasian Cavalry Division; June 28 - July 17, commanding the 2nd Stavropol Cavalry Division named after M.F. Blinova.
Under the general command of M.N. Tukhachevsky P.E. Dybenko, at the head of the Combined Division, was one of the main leaders of the suppression of the Kronstadt uprising (March 1921), organizing a massacre of his recent comrades in the Baltic Fleet.
The further military career of Pavel Efimovich is as follows:
October 1928 - December 1933 commander of the troops of the Central Asian Military District, during this period he was on an internship in Berlin for six months, where German military experts-teachers certified him briefly and succinctly: “From a military point of view, he is an absolute zero, but from a political point of view, he is considered especially reliable.”
Member of the RVS, commander P.E. Dybenko in his office. Photo from the Central State Archive of Film and Photo Documents
In September 1937, Dybenko was unexpectedly removed from his post as commander of the Leningrad Military District, and in early January 1938 he was completely dismissed from the Red Army and appointed deputy people's commissar of the forest industry and manager of the Kamlesosplav trust, closely associated with the Gulag.
On February 26, 1938, Dybenko was arrested in Sverdlovsk (now Yekaterinburg). During the investigation, he was subjected to severe beatings and torture, under which he pleaded guilty to participating in an anti-Soviet Trotskyist military-fascist conspiracy. He was declared a US spy, although he swore that he “did not know the American language.” Dybenko was also accused of having connections with M.N. Tukhachevsky, whom he himself recently sent to be shot. On July 29, 1938, the former member of the RVS was sentenced to death and executed on the day of sentencing. The burial place of Dybenko’s remains is the Kommunarka training ground. Rehabilitated posthumously in 1956 by N.S. Khrushchev.
The name of Pavel Efimovich Dybenko was glorified and immortalized many times during the years of Soviet power. A memorial stele with a high relief of the People's Commissar of Military Affairs was installed in Simferopol in 1968, where the headquarters of the Crimean Red Army was located in 1919. The memorial plaque is installed on the square in front of the Great Gatchina Palace. The image of the famous participant in the revolution and the Civil War, Dybenko, was repeatedly captured in cinema (the films “Aurora Salvo” (1965), “December 20” (1981), “Moonzund” (1987), “Mrs. Kollontai” (1996), “ Nine lives of Nestor Makhno" (2007)). There is a portrait of him on a Soviet postage stamp, and a biography of Dybenko was published in the series “The Life of Remarkable People.” Currently, there are more than 130 streets in Russian cities that perpetuate the name of Dybenko. Among them is the longest street in his homeland - in the city of Novozybkov. For the most part it runs through the territory of the former volost village of Lyudkovo, which has been included within the city since the 1930s. And in the city center, on Lenin Street, there is a monument to P.E. Dybenko, on the territory of school No. 6 there is his bust.
Postage stamp and book dedicated to P.E. Dybenko and his monument in Novozybkov
