With this publication I begin the electronic edition of the memoirs of General
Boris Aleksandrovich Shteifon "Kharkiv Main Center of the Volunteer Army. 1918", timed to the 100th anniversary of the events described in the memoirs.
The manuscript of memoirs is kept in the State Archives of the Russian Federation (GARF. F. 5881. Op.2. D. 754). The memoirs were written by General Steinfonn in emigration to Yugoslavia in the 1930s (exact date unknown). I copied them in the archive by hand, typed in electronic form, provided them with illustrations and applications, wrote some comments. Memories will be published in fragments with captions-quotes. Appendices and comments - under the text.
Major General B. Steyfon. Kharkiv Main Center for the Volunteer Army. 1918
In the abundant historical and memoir literature devoted to the southern volunteer saga, there are almost no indications of the activities of the “Main Centers of the Volunteer Army”. Meanwhile, the work of the Centers extremely clearly reflected the psychological and formal content of the turbulent 1918 year. In the Volunteer Centers of that period, the whole diversity of political and social relationships created in the South of Russia, as in a fancy kaleidoscope of rapidly changing attitudes and events, gathered, as in focus. Volunteers and Bolsheviks, hetmans and Petliurists, German troops and gangs of robbers, the cynicism of anarchy and sacrificial service to the Motherland passed by.
The work of the Centers was strictly conspiratorial. This condition explains the fact that even those who specifically studied the history of the Russian turmoil have little knowledge of the activities of the Centers today. Moreover, even those who took a close part in the work of the Centers were usually familiar only with the area in which they directly acted. The conspiracy has its own laws, and experience has convinced how dangerous it is to violate these laws. And only the head of the Main Center was a fully informed person, a person in whose hands all the threads of complex control were concentrated. In the further presentation, for example, how many even the most responsible employees of the Center, almost the only meeting with me about the Center’s affairs, did not suspect that they were in direct contact with the head of the Kharkov Main Center. ... And only a limited circle of those closest to me and trusted people knew my true official position.
The idea of the Centers was contrived and carried out the gene. Mv Alekseev - the founder of the Volunteer Army. The insignificant means with which the gene disposed. Alekseev in the first period of life of the Volunteer Army, encouraged him to create such an organization, which could ensure the arrival of all the necessary means to the army. Then it seemed necessary to widely popularize among the population of the South of Russia both the fact of existence and the idea of the Volunteer Army. It seemed necessary because the South of Russia was planned to be the object of the nearest actions of the Volunteer Army. The experience of the revolution convinced General Alekseev of how important and necessary propaganda organs are. According to General Alekseev, the South of Russia was divided into a number of Main Centers - Kiev, Kharkov, Odessa, Crimea and Tiflis. Each Main Center was completely independent in its activities and carried out military administrative, political and financial tasks. He was directly subordinated first to General Alekseev, and after his death - to the high command.
Having created the organization of the Centers, General Alekseev connected the Volunteer Army with the vast rich South of Russia and greatly paralyzed the initial evil of the Volunteer Army - its lack of rear. Such a reform not only improved the moral and material conditions of the army, but also rooted the authority of the high command in the eyes of foreigners. The latter were forced to reckon with the fact that the volunteer movement is not limited only to the Kuban region, but is organically linked with the South Russian regions.
Creating the Main Centers, General Alekseev believed that in the future, as the Volunteer Army advanced to the north, the Main Centers would be transformed into the appropriate administrative bodies - governorships or general governorships. He considered such a transformation desirable because such organizations transferred the future civilian control to "local" people, that is, elements well acquainted with the needs, aspirations and moods of the region.
As is known, the political life of the South of Russia in 1918 developed bizarrely and motley. Communication Centers with the Volunteer Army is often broken. Therefore, the head of the Main Center was guided in his work by the directives of General Alekseyev, in fact, he had dictatorial powers, which he used in accordance with both the local situation and the peculiarities of his character, his temperament.
The selection of the chiefs of the Main Centers was made personally by General Alekseev from among the senior generals living in the area. They were appointed: in Kiev - Lieutenant-General Lomnovsky, in Odessa - Vice-Admiral Nenyukov, in the Crimea - Lieutenant-General Bode, in the Crimea - Lieutenant-General Shatilov
* . The post of chief of the Kharkov Main Center, despite the presence in the area of many generals, was appointed by me, then the young colonel of the General Staff. Meanwhile, the Kharkov region was one of the most important, for it was outlined by the closest object of action for both the Bolsheviks and volunteers. This area was the control center of the Donetsk basin and served as an arena for numerous political experiments of Ukrainians of all kinds.
In those days of horror, grief and suffering, Kharkiv was the only major center of southern Russia, in which there was no terror, shaking Kiev, Odessa, Sevastopol in 1918 ... In particular, there was no terror directed against the officers. It was not because the terror attempts on the part of the Bolsheviks and left-Ukrainians invariably and quickly manifested counter-terror, an eye for an eye!
Now, against the background of a historical perspective, it can be stated with complete impartiality that the leaders of the Kharkov Main Center managed to save thousands of human lives and prevent in Kharkov neither massive Sevastopol beatings, nor the tragedy of the legendary Odessa “Almaz”, nor the sad and bloody events of the Kiev Museum ...
Kharkiv, however, survived its share of suffering, but already in 1919, when the Center’s activities were curtailed and the head of the Center was in the Volunteer Army. However, even then there was no terror against the officers as such. In 1919, the Bolsheviks directed their cruelty mainly against the unorganized, and therefore defenseless Kharkiv intelligentsia.
* Not PN Shatilov, the former chief of staff of General Wrangel, and his relative, the former chief of the Caucasian Grenadier Division. (Approx. B. Steyfona)
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