Paintings by Konstantin Tretyakov about the civil war. The Spanish artist painted a painting dedicated to the Russian Civil War, “Beat the Whites with a Red Wedge”

In The Revolution and Civil War in Russia through the eyes of the artist Ivan Vladimirov (part 1)

Original taken from tipolog in Russia: the realities of revolution and civil war through the eyes of the artist Ivan Vladimirov (part 1)

Russia: the realities of revolution and civil war through the eyes of the artist Ivan Vladimirov (part 1)

Capture of White Guard spies

Peasant uprising on the estate of Prince Shakhovsky

Ivan Vladimirov is considered a Soviet artist. He received government awards, and among his works there is a portrait of the “leader.” But his main legacy is his illustrations of the Civil War. They were given “ideologically correct” names, the cycle included several anti-white drawings (by the way, noticeably inferior to the others - the author clearly did not draw them from the heart), but everything else is such an indictment of Bolshevism that it is even surprising how blind the “comrades” were. And the accusation is that Vladimirov, a documentary artist, simply reflected what he saw, and the Bolsheviks in his drawings turned out to be what they were - gopniks who mocked people. "A true artist must be truthful." In these drawings, Vladimirov was truthful and, thanks to him, we have an exceptional pictorial chronicle of the era.

Russia: the realities of revolution and civil war through the eyes of the artist Ivan Vladimirov (part 1)

Capture of White Guard spies

Peasant uprising on the estate of Prince Shakhovsky

Execution of peasants by White Cossacks

Capture of Wrangel tanks by the Red Army near Kakhovka

Flight of the bourgeoisie from Novorossiysk in 1920

In Russia: the realities of revolution and civil war through the eyes of the artist Ivan Vladimirov (part 2)

Russia: the realities of revolution and civil war through the eyes of the artist Ivan Vladimirov (part 2)

So, friends, today there will be an interesting post about what it really looked like. Not many photographs of those years have survived, but many drawings from documentary artists remain.

The pictures that I will show you in today’s post made a huge impression on me at the time. Even more surprising is that the artist who painted them lived in - quite successfully survived the Stalinist terror of the 1930s and for some reason his paintings were not destroyed. He painted a lot almost until the last days of his life, and even in the 1930s he continued to troll the scoop from time to time with pictures like “Fighting on the Beach - a cultural achievement in sports!”

First, a little history. The author of the paintings below is the artist Ivan Vladimirov(1869-1947). As can be seen from the years of the artist’s life - during the years of the October Revolution and the subsequent Civil War, Ivan was already a fairly mature person and an accomplished artist, who had already gained some fame.

At the beginning of the 20th century, Vladimirov positioned himself as a documentary artist - he worked so-called. "art correspondent" in the Russian-Japanese (1904-905), Balkan (1912-13) and First World Wars. The subjects of his paintings of those years can be judged by the titles - “A Gun in Danger”, “Artillery Battle”, “Returned from the War”, “Reconnaissance in the Rain”, “Interrogation of a Prisoner”, “Enhanced Reconnaissance”.

In 1917-1918, Vladimirov worked in the Petrograd police, where he painted photographic portraits of wanted criminals from the words of victims (analogous to an artistic “photo identikit”). During the coup of 1917, Vladimirov made many sketches, which later became the subjects of his paintings - which clearly show the realities of those days and the true face of the Bolsheviks.

This is surprising, but for some reason Ivan Vladimirov was not repressed in the 1930s - he survived the repressions and the siege in Leningrad, during which he painted posters and kept a diary of the siege. Even more surprising is that many of his works were exhibited even during Soviet times at the Tretyakov Gallery.

Now let's look at the paintings.

02. Capture of the Winter Palace in the fall of 1917. The faces and types of Red Army soldiers are far from those “strong-willed and purposeful comrades” who were later depicted in all Soviet textbooks. Their actions are also far from ideal - a gang of Red Army soldiers behaves like ordinary drunken rioters, shooting at paintings and destroying ancient statues. 22 years later, the children of these Red Army soldiers would behave the same way during the “annexation of Western Belarus” - with dull anger, chopping the parquet floors in the Radziwill castle in Nesvizh with sabers.

03. And this picture depicts the Bolsheviks on the streets of “revolutionary Petrograd”. As you can see, the Red Army soldiers not only marched in formation to bravura songs about Budyonny, but also did not disdain banal robberies - the picture depicts how the valiant “Ilyich’s Red Guards” destroyed a liquor store and got drunk right at the entrance.

04. Extrajudicial execution of “ideological opponents-whites.” Pay attention to the faces of the Red Army soldiers - these are the real Sharikovs. There is no doubt that the artist is on the side of those being executed, and it is a big mystery to me how he managed to survive the terror of the 1930s. Maybe the whole point is that the Soviet authorities did not see any contradictions in the paintings - “well, everything is similar! This is me with a rifle, and this is my sidekick Kolya!”

05. And these are executions in basements, which began, in fact, immediately after the coup. The faces are also very distinctive; as Joseph Brodsky would later say, “after the coup of 1917 and repressions in Russia, an anthropological shift occurred, from which it would take several centuries to recover.”

06. Realities of 1918. There doesn’t seem to be anything special going on in the picture, unless you know its title: “Robbing a Carriage with Help from the Red Cross.” Most likely, the carriage is being robbed by the same “Red Army soldiers” who are guarding the railway - having appropriated for themselves the food that was intended for the starving.

07. Also robbery - this time of bank safe deposit boxes, under the abstruse name of “seizure of stolen goods.” The fact that ordinary townspeople kept their deposits and valuables in these cells was of no interest to anyone. Do you have anything more than tattered bast shoes? That means the enemy.

08. Painting entitled “Entertainment of teenagers in the imperial garden.” Here, as they say, without comment - art after the revolution became “accessible to everyone.” Including throwing stones at him.

09. But here is a simply stunning picture called “No One to Protect” - so to speak, the triumph of the winners. Two bully “Red Army men” sit down with an intelligent lady in a cafe, one of the Red bandits holds her hand tightly, and you can understand that this meeting will not end well.

10. And another stunning picture from the same series, with the faces of the “winners” in the box of the opera or theater. The types are noted just perfectly.

11. A little more “post-revolutionary realities”. Famine in Petrograd - people cut pieces of meat from the corpse of a fallen horse, while bravura rallies under red flags take place in the background.

12. And a little more about the life of those years:

13. Ivan Vladimirov also has pictures of village life in those years. Let's see what is depicted on them - maybe at least life in the village was better? No, it was still the same robbery. This picture shows how peasants, incited by commissars, plunder a rich estate:

14. But the same peasants are dragging stolen things home. I just want to ask, “Well, have you gotten rich? Have you improved your life a lot?”

15. However, the peasants did not rejoice at the looted “good” for long - soon surplus appropriation detachments arrived at their houses and raked out all the grain reserves from the barns, dooming the people to starvation.

16. And this is work in the village of the so-called “bed committee”, which recruited all sorts of rural alcoholics - the more declassed a person was and the more asocial lifestyle he led, the more likely he could get a place in the “bed committee” - it was believed that he “a revolutionary fighter” and generally a good guy, “he didn’t work for the Tsar.”

Yesterday's alcoholics and lumpen people received complete power over the destinies of people whom the Soviet government considered their enemies. Economic peasants, hard-working wealthy people, priests, and officials were tried by the “Bed Committee” and often sentenced to death.

17. Robbery of valuables from a rural church. Most of the goods that were taken from churches and former rich people were sold to the West, and the proceeds from this went to “Soviet industrialization.” This is the real person whom the Stalinists love to praise; in the 1920s and 30s he did exactly the same thing he did before the revolution - robbed people and spent money on his projects.

These are the pictures. In my opinion, a very strong series. It seems to me that if they had been published from the Soviets, instead of pretentious pictures with “revolutionary sailors,” then people’s attitude towards the events of 1917 would have been completely different.

What do you think about this?

Afanasy Ivanovich Sheloumov (1892-1983) is another simple and sonorous name of the “past” Russia. The Russian Empire, swept away by the First World War and the October Revolution... White Guard Russia, which lost the Civil War... White émigré Russia with its misadventures and ideological vacillations...
Having lived a long and eventful life, A.I. Sheloumov was endowed with a lucky talent for the painter’s brush and embodied on his canvases many turbulent and tragic events of Russian history of the twentieth century, of which he was a witness and participant.

A. Sheloumov. Attack by P.N. Wrangel with a squadron of Life Guards. Cavalry regiment to the German battery on August 6. 1914

Briefly summarized, the milestones of this path are as follows.
Afanasy Sheloumov was born in the Kherson province (according to other sources - in Kamenets-Podolsk), came from the “routine intelligentsia.” Since childhood, his passions were horses (he was an excellent rider and, as they say, “a crazy guy”) and drawing. Two hobbies organically intertwined - horses became the heroes of almost all of the artist’s paintings; he is an excellent animal painter.


After graduating from the Odessa Art School, A. Sheloumov entered the Petrograd Imperial Academy of Arts, where he studied with the famous battle painter N.S. Samokish.
In 1914, the war trumpets of the First World War, which sang over Europe (soon becoming for it akin to the trumpets of the Apocalypse), called a young talented battle painter to volunteer in the ranks of the Russian Imperial Army. With the 10th Odessa Uhlan Regiment he marched through the Southwestern and Romanian fronts. Tall (185 cm), athletically built, Sheloumov, distinguished by fearlessness and love for the most dangerous adventures (the constant “hunter” of all equestrian reconnaissance), became an excellent fighter. For his bravery, he was awarded the soldier's St. George Cross (possibly two) and promoted to cornet, and then to second lieutenant; received the "Annensky lanyard" (Order of St. Anne, 4th class) for a weapon.


Officers of the Odessa Uhlan Regiment at the front. Perhaps among them is the cornet Sheloumov.

Fate protected the brave rider from serious injuries, but he almost died when in September 1916, in the battles of Dobrich (then Romania), Bulgarian cavalrymen surrounded him and knocked him out of the saddle, but for some reason they did not finish him off or take him prisoner. ... Probably, the indestructible (regardless of the vicissitudes of military alliances of monarchs and states) Slavic brotherhood or hereditary appreciation these Balkan peasant boys to the Russian liberators of Bulgaria in 1877-78.


Winners of Sheloumov's cornet - Bulgarian cavalry on the Romanian front, 1916. From a distance, almost indistinguishable from the Russian... Grimaces of war!

Then there was the revolution, first the February, and then the October, the collapse of the front and the “self-demobilization” of the Russian army. Second Lieutenant Sheloumov, who saw loyalty to the oath and the Fatherland in the restoration of the “single and indivisible Empire,” joined the brigade of the General Staff of Major General M.G. Drozdovsky and fought his way with it from Yassy to the Don, to join the Volunteer Army of General Kornilov . There, the typhus epidemic that decimated the ranks of volunteers knocked him down, and our hero was able to get back into service only in November 1918.
As part of the 3rd Officer Rifle Division of General Drozdovsky of the 1st Army Corps of the Armed Forces of the South of Russia, Afanasy Sheloumov, already a lieutenant, experienced plenty of the cruelty of the Civil War. In his own words, he “saw a lot of things that it would have been better not to have seen at all” and “was bleeding with the blood of yesterday’s comrades in the trenches.” In 1920, as part of the Russian army defeated by the Reds, Gen. P.N. Wrangel, he was evacuated from Crimea to the notorious Gallipoli camp. Presumably, his last place of service in the Civil War was the Separate Cavalry Division of General Drozdovsky.


Drozdovites.

During the hungry and cold “Gallipoli sitting”, the excess of time that suddenly fell upon the 28-year-old officer, disillusioned with everything except art, prompted him to take up a pencil and brush again. Sheloumov’s “Gallipoli Albums,” which included camp sketches from life and battle scenes recreated from memory, aroused warm approval from his fellow sufferers - the servicemen of Wrangel’s army, an army without a state. They actually paved the way for a proven warrior, but a novice artist, to enter professional art.


A. Sheloumov. Cavalry of the Volunteer Army on the march.


A. Sheloumov. Horse reconnaissance spent the night.


And Sheloumov. Cossack patrol.


A. Sheloumov. Red cavalry in the battle for the village.

From the end of 1921, the officer-artist Sheloumov, along with the remnants of Wrangel’s army and thousands of Russian refugees, found himself in the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes (SHS, future Yugoslavia). It must be said that our hero was lucky with his emigration, as far as this expression can generally be attributed to exile. The small Balkan kingdom, which suffered severely in the First World War, was sincerely happy about the sudden influx of fraternal workers, especially qualified personnel with higher education, of whom there were plenty among those who fled from Russia. In addition to the sincere affection of the Serbs, Montenegrins, Macedonians and other multinational subjects of the CXC, which was met by the “brothers of Rus',” official Belgrade also created a climate of maximum favorability for the employment and social life of emigrants. Russian military structures were, however, slowly being squeezed by local authorities, but this is understandable...


Belgrade 1920-30s


Russian emigration in the Kingdom of the SHS, 1927. In the first row in a Circassian coat is Lieutenant General. P.N. Wrangel.

It can be noted quite objectively: thanks to Russian emigrants, especially representatives of technical and creative professions, the Kingdom of the CXC in the 1920-30s. made a noticeable leap forward in the field of education and science, restoring the war-depleted economy and rebuilding the national intelligentsia to replace those who had laid down their lives as reserve lieutenants and captains of the 2nd class (there was such a rank in the Serbian army) on the fields of the Balkan and First World Wars.

Afanasy Sheloumov first settled in the hospitable and metropolitan Belgrade, although noticeably destroyed by the Austrians in 1914-15, then in search of work he moved to Veliki Bečkerk (now Zrenjanin, Serbia). He managed to find a relatively well-paid job as a foreman of dyers in railway workshops (his officer's command experience had an effect - Sheloumov was a good organizer). But the main thing is that now he could draw and create. As soon as he had a free hour, he exchanged his work overalls for an artist’s blouse and stood at the easel. In addition, he did not lose contacts with white emigration and spiritual kinship with the Russian diaspora, actively participating in their social and cultural life.
A word from the researcher of the work of A.I. Sheloumov: “For him, as for several other former officer-artists who worked in Yugoslavia, the wounds of the world and civil wars continued to bleed, the images of the Russia they lost did not fade in their memory. For 20 years During his life in this city, the artist created hundreds of beautiful works.Being an adherent of the realistic school, he painted the vast expanses of Russia, herds of horses, Cossacks and Russian soldiers, and hunting scenes.
In 1930, Sheloumov participated in the then most famous exhibition of Russian art in Belgrade. It featured more than a hundred Russian artists who lived in exile in Europe and America. Afanasy Sheloumov presented to the public the painting “General Wrangel’s Attack on a German Battery.” Among other participants in the Belgrade exhibition, one cannot fail to mention Benois, Bilibin, Kolesnikov, Korovin, Repin and Grand Duchess Olga Alexandrovna. To this day, a number of Sheloumov’s paintings are kept in museums in Belgrade. There was not a single Russian house in Bechkerek that was not decorated with Sheloumov’s paintings.”
His talent was extremely multifaceted and fruitful. Historians and art historians still cannot calculate how many paintings and sketches by A.I. Sheloumov have been distributed to museums and private collections in Russia and Europe. Several of his paintings are exhibited at the Central Museum of the Armed Forces in Moscow. Sheloumov is a wonderful battle painter, who is distinguished not only by the dynamics and drama of the plot, but also by the careful depiction of the uniforms, weapons and equipment of the fighters - the knowledge and punctuality of a combat officer is reflected. The heroes of the vast majority of paintings are cavalrymen - his type of weapon!


A. Sheloumov. Attack of the Caucasian Native Cavalry Division against German dragoons.


A. Sheloumov. Battle of Gumbinnen, 1914 (reproduction).

A. Sheloumov. Sketches of Life Guards officers. Dragoon Regiment and His Majesty's Own Convoy.


A. Sheloumov. Imperial review in the Caucasus.

With the authenticity of a military historian, he depicts scenes from the historical past of Russia, the Caucasus, Ukraine (remember, the artist is from the Kherson region, the free Zaporozhye Cossacks are one of his favorite themes)...
Sheloumov has a lot of genre, everyday, and even sometimes moralistic paintings from pre-revolutionary Russian life - from that Russia, which (the only one!) he considered his Motherland. But almost all of his canvases contain masterfully drawn figures of horses.


A. Sheloumov. Ukrainian Cossacks of the 17th century.


A. Sheloumov. Cossacks in the snowy steppe.


A. Sheloumov. Imam Shamil and his murids.

A. Sheloumov. Caucasian horseman.

A sharp turning point in the fate of the accomplished artist and honest worker Afanasy Sheloumov was the Second World War, which struck the Kingdom of Yugoslavia with the April blitzkrieg thunderstorm of 1941.
The first months of the German-Italian-Bulgarian-Hungarian war (well, each of Hitler’s allies wanted to grab a piece!) did not bring significant changes in the lives of Russian emigrants in Yugoslavia. The flags on government buildings changed, patrols in the "feldgrau" appeared on the streets and the harsh speech of the occupiers began to sound - for emigrants accustomed to living in their own closed world, the changes came down to only this. However, with the attack of Nazi Germany on the USSR, which echoed thunderously in the Balkans, war came to them.


Wehrmacht units enter Belgrade, April 1941.

It makes no sense to deny that many emigrant organizations, including almost all unions of military white emigration in 1941, blinded by hatred, saw Hitler’s aggression in the East as a “crusade against Bolshevism.” A significant part of the white émigré circles of Yugoslavia was also pushed to an alliance with the Germans by the armed national liberation struggle of the Yugoslav peoples that had unfolded since the summer of 1941, in which the communists, the local “red danger”, began to play a leading role.
When the Nazis created the so-called to fight the Yugoslav partisans. "Russian Security Corps" (Russisches Schutzkorps Serbien), about 11.5 thousand white emigrants joined its ranks. Among them, unfortunately, was our hero, who suddenly remembered the Civil War two decades later. Or did he just want to return to his youth?


Review of the 4th regiment of the "Russian Security Corps", Belgrade, 1942. White emigrant officers are in front of the formation.


Cossacks from the Russian Security Corps.


Yugoslav partisans captured by punitive forces.


A. Sheloumov. Farewell to a friend.
Judging by the uniform of the cavalrymen, the plot may be dedicated to the “Russian Security Corps” in Serbia.

One way or another, Afanasy Sheloumov was enlisted in the “Russian Corps” as a private in 1942. Initially, he did not have to participate in hostilities; he was mainly engaged in the protection of various objects and communications. However, as the partisan People's Liberation Army of Yugoslavia pushed back the occupiers and collaborators with fierce battles, a combat use was found for the 50-year-old volunteer.
In 1944-45. Afanasy Sheloumov again fought with a rifle in his hands “against the Reds”, just as desperately as he once did in the Civil War - alas, on the wrong and criminal side of the war... This time he did not feel remorse - who were these Serbian or Bosnian ones? guys with red “petocrats” (stars - Serbian-Croatian) on their caps, caught in his deadly sight, verified on the fronts of the last war?
And when it was all over, and on May 12, 1945, the remnants of the “corps” completed their bloody epic by surrendering to British troops in Austria, fate again took pity on the artist, probably because of his rare talent. Sheloumov was not subject to extradition to the Soviet military authorities as “he had never been a Soviet citizen” and escaped with several months of half-starvation in a prisoner of war camp - another sad chance to refresh the memories of his youth, this time about Gallipoli.


Freed from captivity, Afanasy Sheloumov settled in Bavarian Starnberg, near Munich. Despite the hardships he endured and his health undermined by war and captivity, he continued to write selflessly, as if wanting to wash away the terrible memories with bright colors. He dedicated his first exhibition in Germany in 1962 to the 150th anniversary of the Patriotic War of 1812, presenting a series of military-historical paintings on this topic.


A. Sheloumov. Attack of the Kharkov Dragoon Regiment against French cuirassiers.

Real wide fame came to A.I. Sheloumov precisely during these years. Russian-language publications in Europe wrote with admiration about the remarkable artist; in 1966, reproductions of his battle paintings were published as a separate album. In the 1960s New York publisher K. Martyanov began publishing New Year, Christmas and Easter greetings postcards with paintings by A.I. Sheloumov.
In 1982, the 90th birthday of the remarkable Russian artist Sheloumov, who by that time had become a local celebrity, was solemnly celebrated in Starnberg. From grateful fellow citizens he received the title of honorary citizen of the city and in return presented the town hall with the painting “Russian Troika”.

A.I. Sheloumov at work.

Having passed his 90th birthday and maintaining his ability to work and a clear mind until the end of his days, Afanasy Ivanovich Sheloumov passed away in 1983.
He experienced the fire of three wars, knew the hardships of exile and poverty, made mistakes and paid for his mistakes, but through his long life he carried two unchanging feelings - the desire for creativity and love for Russia. For this, everything will be forgiven him.
________________________________________ ____________________________________ Mikha il Kozhemyakin.