Biography. Lazo, Sergei Georgievich Sergei Lazo, hero of the civil war

Sergei Georgievich Lazo(1894-1920) - Russian nobleman, second lieutenant of the Russian Imperial Army. During the collapse of the Russian Empire, he was a Soviet military leader and statesman who took an active part in establishing Soviet power in Siberia and the Far East, and a participant in the Civil War. In 1917 he became a Left Socialist Revolutionary, and in the spring of 1918 - a Bolshevik.

It is no coincidence that Sergei Lazo is sometimes called the Don Quixote of the revolution. He renounced his origins, everything that had been instilled in him since childhood, fought and died at the age of twenty-six, distant lands from his home - and all for ideals.

Only ideals could force a nobleman, an officer of the Imperial Army who received a good education, to rush into the abyss of revolutionary activity.

Sergei Lazo before the revolution

Sergei Georgievich Lazo was born in 1894 in Bessarabia, into a noble family of Moldavian origin. He studied at the St. Petersburg Institute of Technology and Moscow University. From an early age, he was distinguished by extreme maximalism and a desire for justice, so it is not at all surprising that during his student years he was a participant in the activities of revolutionary circles, of which there were plenty in the university environment.

In July 1916, Sergei Lazo was mobilized into the Imperial Army, and in December of the same year, Ensign Lazo was assigned to the 15th Siberian Reserve Rifle Regiment, which was stationed in Krasnoyarsk. Here, in Krasnoyarsk, Lazo became close to political exiles, joined the Socialist Revolutionary Party (SRs) and began, together with his party comrades, to conduct propaganda against the war among the soldiers.

In March 1917, news of the February revolution in St. Petersburg reached Krasnoyarsk. At a general meeting, the soldiers of the 4th company of the rifle regiment decided to remove from their duties Second Lieutenant Smirnov, who declared allegiance to the oath, and to elect Warrant Officer Lazo as their commander. In June, the Krasnoyarsk Council sent Sergei Lazo as a delegate to Petrograd to the First All-Russian Congress of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies. At the congress, Lazo was greatly impressed by Lenin’s speech; the ideas that were voiced by the leader of the world proletariat in this speech seemed to him even more radical, and, therefore, even more attractive to him than the ideas of the Socialist Revolutionaries. Sergei Lazo joined the Bolsheviks.

Sergei Lazo during the Civil War

At the end of 1917, Soviet power was established in Irkutsk, Omsk, and other Siberian cities, and Lazo took a direct part in this. However, already in the fall of 1918, Soviet power in Siberia fell and the dictatorship of the Supreme Ruler Admiral Kolchak was established. The Bolshevik Party goes underground.

Sergei Lazo becomes a member of the underground Far Eastern Regional Committee of the RCP (b), commands a partisan detachment of Primorye.

The Lazo detachment, like most partisan detachments during the Civil War, was very colorful. It consisted, for the most part, of the poorest proletariat, that is, from the very poor, as well as from criminals from the Chita prison, who were released by the Bolsheviks on the condition that the lads would go to fight for the world revolution.

In addition, two female commissars served in the detachment. One of them, a former high school student, daughter of the governor of Transbaikalia, is a convinced anarchist. She communicated with criminals exclusively “over a hairdryer” and famously handled a huge Mauser. The second - Olga Grabenko - was a Ukrainian beauty and a real Bolshevik. It was with her that Lazo had an affair, which ended in marriage. The young people spent their honeymoon trying to get out of the encirclement. Such are the vicissitudes of the Civil War.

Arrest of Sergei Lazo

In 1920, the Kolchak government fell. The partisans decided that the right moment had come to overthrow Kolchak’s governor, General Rozanov, in Vladivostok. And Lazo began to implement the plan.

On January 31, 1920, partisans, numbering several hundred, captured the city, primarily occupying the station, post office and telegraph office. Rozanov fled from Vladivostok. However, for some reason Lazo did not take into account the fact that Vladivostok was occupied by Japanese invaders. For the time being, they observed the events with samurai restraint, however, the famous Nikolaev incident, during which partisans and anarchists burned the city of Nikolaevsk and destroyed the Japanese garrison located in it, prompted them to action.

Lazo was arrested right in the Kolchak counterintelligence building. Together with him, two other active members of the underground, Sibirtsev and Lutsky, were arrested. They were kept there for several days, in the counterintelligence building. Then they transported it somewhere. Olga Lazo was looking for her husband, but the Japanese headquarters did not tell her where he was.

The mystery of the death of Sergei Lazo

The textbook version says that the Japanese handed Lazo, as well as Sibirtsev and Lutsky, over to the White Cossacks, and they, after torture, burned Lazo alive in a locomotive firebox, and his associates were first shot and then burned too. This was apparently told by a certain nameless driver who saw how the Japanese handed over to the Cossacks three bags in which people were fighting, and this was either at the Ruzhino station, or at Muravyevo-Amurskaya (now the Lazo station). However, this is difficult to believe for two reasons.

Firstly, why would the Japanese hand over those arrested to the Cossacks, and even drag them so far from Vladivostok? Secondly, the opening of the locomotive firebox was not large enough to push a person inside. It seems, fortunately for Lazo, such a terrible death is nothing more than a legend.

Monument to Sergei Lazo in Pereyaslavka, Khabarovsk Territory

Back in 1920, the Italian journalist Klempasco, an employee of the Japan Chronicle, reported that Lazo was shot at Cape Egersheld in Vladivostok, and his corpse was burned. Since Klempasko, and this is a documented fact, was not only a journalist, but also an intelligence officer who communicated with Japanese officers, this information has a high degree of reliability.

Floor man Full name
from birth Sergei Georgievich Lazo Parents Wiki page wikipedia:ru:Lazo,_Sergey_Georgievich

Events

marriage: Olga Andreevna Grabenko (Lazo) [Grabenki] b. 1898 d. 1971

1919 birth of a child: Vladivostok, Ada Sergeevna Lazo [Lazo] b. 1919 d. 1993

May 1920 death:

Notes

Sergei Lazo was born in 1894 in Bessarabia, and died 26 years later, far away.

Sergei Georgievich Lazo (February 23 (March 7) 1894, village of Pyatra, Orhei district, Bessarabian province, Russian Empire - May 1920, Muravyovo-Amurskaya station) - Russian revolutionary, one of the Soviet leaders in Siberia and the Far East, participant in the Civil War . Left Socialist Revolutionary, since the spring of 1918 - Bolshevik.

He studied at the St. Petersburg Institute of Technology, then at the Faculty of Physics and Mathematics of the Imperial Moscow University, and participated in the work of revolutionary student circles.

In July 1916, he was mobilized into the Imperial Army, graduated from the Alekseevsky Infantry School in Moscow and was promoted to officer (ensign, then second lieutenant). In December 1916, he was assigned to the 15th Siberian Reserve Rifle Regiment in Krasnoyarsk. There he became close to political exiles and, together with them, began to conduct defeatist propaganda among the soldiers.

He joined the Socialist Revolutionary Party and joined the left faction.

During the February Revolution, Lazo arrested the governor of the Yenisei province Ya. G. Gololobov and local senior officials. In March 1917 - member of the regimental committee, chairman of the soldiers' section of the Council. In the spring of 1917, he came to Petrograd as a deputy from the Krasnoyarsk Soviet and saw V. I. Ulyanov-Lenin for the only time in his life. Lazo really liked the radicalism of the Bolshevik leader. Returning to Krasnoyarsk, he organized a Red Guard detachment there. In October 1917 - delegate to the First All-Siberian Congress of Soviets. In October 1917, he took power in Krasnoyarsk into his own hands. The Commissioner of the Provisional Government telegraphed in those days to Petrograd:

“The Bolsheviks occupied the treasury, banks and all government offices. The garrison is in the hands of Ensign Lazo.”

Participated in the suppression of the uprising of cadets in Omsk and cadets, Cossacks, officers and students in December 1917 in Irkutsk. After this, he was appointed head of the garrison and military commandant of Irkutsk.

From the beginning of 1918 - a member of Centrosiberia, in February-August 1918 - commander of the troops of the Trans-Baikal Front. Under the command of Lazo, the red troops defeated the detachment of Ataman G. M. Semenov. At the same time, Lazo switched from the Socialist Revolutionary Party to the Bolshevik party. In the fall of 1918, after the fall of Bolshevik power in eastern Russia, he went underground and began organizing a partisan movement directed against the Provisional Siberian Government, and then the Supreme Ruler Admiral A.V. Kolchak. Since the fall of 1918 - a member of the underground Far Eastern Regional Committee of the RCP (b) in Vladivostok. From the spring of 1919 he commanded the partisan detachments of Primorye. Since December 1919 - head of the Military Revolutionary Headquarters for the preparation of the uprising in Primorye. One of the organizers of the coup in Vladivostok on January 31, 1920, as a result of which the power of the Kolchak governor - the chief commander of the Amur region, Lieutenant General S. N. Rozanov was overthrown and the Provisional Government of the Far East, controlled by the Bolsheviks, was formed - the Primorsky Regional Zemstvo Council.

The success of the uprising largely depended on the position of the officers of the ensign school on Russian Island. Lazo arrived to them on behalf of the leadership of the rebels and addressed them with a speech:

“Who are you, Russian people, Russian youth? Who are you for?! So I came to you alone, unarmed, you can take me hostage... you can kill me... This wonderful Russian city is the last one on your road! You have nowhere to retreat: then a foreign country... a foreign land... and a foreign sun... No, we did not sell the Russian soul in foreign taverns, we did not exchange it for overseas gold and guns... We are not hired, we defend our land with our own hands, we defend our land with our own breasts , we will fight with our lives for our homeland against foreign invasion! We will die for this Russian land on which I now stand, but we will not give it to anyone!” As a result, the school of warrant officers declared its neutrality in relation to the uprising, which made the fall of Rozanov's power inevitable.

On March 6, 1920, Lazo was appointed deputy chairman of the Military Council of the Provisional Government of the Far East - the Primorsky Regional Zemstvo Council, and at about the same time - a member of the Far Bureau of the Central Committee of the RCP (b).

A few months later, allegations appeared citing an unnamed driver who saw how at the Ussuri station the Japanese handed over three bags containing three people to the Cossacks from Bochkarev’s detachment. The Cossacks tried to push them into the firebox of the locomotive, but they resisted, then they were shot and stuffed dead into the firebox.

“Soon help arrived in Irkutsk from other cities. The counter-revolutionary rebellion was liquidated, power passed to the Soviets. Sergei Lazo remained in Irkutsk. He was appointed commandant of the city and head of the garrison, being at the same time a member of the military commissariat of Central Siberia. Great assistance in this work was provided to him by the former "Tsarist General Alexei Taube, who went over to the side of the revolution. He was a major military specialist and, working hand in hand with Lazo, passed on his experience and knowledge to him."

Twelve thousand kilometers separate the Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic from the shores of the Pacific Ocean. In one of the regions of the republic, not far from the city of Orhei, there is the village of Piatra (now the village of Lazo).

At the entrance to the village there is an obelisk topped with a five-pointed star. The inscription on it says: “In this village, the legendary hero of the Civil War Sergei Georgievich Lazo was born in 1894 and spent his childhood.” In the house where Sergei Lazo spent his childhood, there is a school named after him and a classroom-museum.

Sergei Lazo's parents came from an old Moldovan noble family with advanced democratic traditions. Sergei's father Georgy Ivanovich Lazo in 1887, during the period of repressions by the tsarist government against revolutionary-minded students, was expelled from St. Petersburg University and moved to permanent residence in Bessarabia. Sergei's mother Elena Stepanovna had a higher agronomic education and devoted a lot of time to socially useful work among local peasants. Lazo's house had a large library, which was freely used by children. Parents did not fence their children off from communicating with peasants and village children, instilled in them work skills, discipline, toughened them physically, instilled in them honesty and respect for working people,

At that time, Moldova was a backward, oppressed outskirts of Russia. The situation of working Moldovans, especially peasants, was completely intolerable. They were mercilessly exploited by landowners and tsarist officials, brutally suppressing the slightest manifestations of national self-awareness.

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Lazo Sergey Georgievich Ambatelo, Lazo Sergey Georgievich Kara-Murza
politician

Sergei Georgievich Lazo(February 23, 1894, village of Pyatra, Orhei district, Bessarabia province, Russian Empire - May 1920, Muravyov-Amursky station, near the city of Iman) - Russian nobleman, wartime officer of the Russian Imperial Army, during the collapse of the Russian Empire - Soviet military leader and state figure who took an active part in establishing Soviet power in Siberia and the Far East, participant in the Civil War.

In 1917 - Left Socialist Revolutionary, from the spring of 1918 - Bolshevik.

1 Biography
- 1.1 February Revolution
- 1.2 Autumn-winter 1917. Krasnoyarsk. Omsk. Irkutsk
- 1.3 Civil War (1918-1920)
- 1.4 Arrest and death
2 Memory
- 2.1 art
- 2.2 Philately
3 Family
4 Essays
5 See also
6 Notes
7 Literature
8 Links

Biography

Born on February 23 (March 7), 1894 in the village of Piatra, Orhei district, Bessarabia province (now Orhei district of the Republic of Moldova) into a noble family of Moldavian origin.

February Revolution

The soldiers of the 4th company of the 15th Siberian Rifle Regiment at their meeting decided to remove from their duties the company commander, Second Lieutenant Smirnov, who had declared allegiance to the oath, and elected warrant officer Sergei Lazo as their commander, simultaneously electing him as a delegate to the Krasnoyarsk Council of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies. On the night of March 2-3, elections to the Council were held in almost all companies.

On March 4, an order came from Petrograd to dismiss the governor. Gololobov reported ill and was placed under house arrest. Representatives of the Krasnoyarsk Council - five armed detachments under the command of Ensign Lazo - arrested Governor Gololobov. The head of the gendarme department, gendarmerie officers and the police chief were also arrested. The police in Krasnoyarsk were disbanded and replaced by militia. The chairman of the district court was removed from office. In the evening, the city council met with the participation of representatives of public organizations. The meeting of the Duma took place on the stage of the city theater. A public safety committee was created. Power passed to the bureau of representatives of this committee and the Council of Workers', Soldiers' and Cossacks' Deputies. The representative of the bureau was the famous public figure Dr. V. M. Krutovsky.

In March 1917, 23-year-old Sergei Lazo was a member of the regimental committee, chairman of the soldiers' section of the Council. The Chairman of the Council itself was Yakov Dubrovinsky.

In June, the Krasnoyarsk Soviet sent Sergei Lazo as its delegate to Petrograd to the First All-Russian Congress of Soviets of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies. It was at this congress that the demarche of Lenin and the Bolsheviks took place, who were in the minority, making up only 13.5% of the delegates to the Congress. Lenin's speech made a great impression on Lazo; he really liked the radicalism of the Bolshevik leader. Returning to Krasnoyarsk, Lazo organized a Red Guard detachment there.

On June 27, 1917, the provincial executive committee of the Krasnoyarsk Council of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies was formed.

Autumn-winter 1917. Krasnoyarsk. Omsk. Irkutsk

In October 1917 - delegate to the First All-Siberian Congress of Soviets (October 16-23, 1917, Irkutsk), which was attended by 184 delegates representing 69 Soviets of Siberia and the Far East.

On October 24, an armed Bolshevik uprising began in Petrograd, aimed at overthrowing the Provisional Government. On October 28 in Krasnoyarsk, at a meeting of the executive committee of the Krasnoyarsk Soviet, the bloc of Bolsheviks, left Socialist Revolutionaries and anarchists (the so-called “left bloc”), aiming to further develop the revolution, supported the seizure of power by the Soviet. At this meeting, the Council instructed Lazo to occupy all government offices and arrest representatives of the Provisional Government in the city.

On the night of October 29, Ensign Lazo raised a combat alert for the military units of the garrison loyal to the Bolsheviks. They occupied all government institutions and imprisoned senior officials. The Commissioner of the Provisional Government under the Irkutsk Military District reported this to the headquarters of the High Command: “The Bolsheviks occupied the treasury, banks and all government institutions. The garrison is in the hands of Ensign Lazo.” On October 30, the provincial EC was the first in Siberia to announce the transfer of all power in the province to it.

After the Bolshevik coup in Omsk, with the participation of cadets and Socialist Revolutionaries, the anti-Bolshevik organization “Union for the Salvation of the Fatherland, Freedom and Order” was created. On November 1, 1917, there was a speech by the cadets of the Omsk school of warrant officers, who supported Kerensky and were part of the anti-Bolshevik organization “Union for the Salvation of the Fatherland, Freedom and Order.” They captured the weapons depot of one of the regiments, occupied the district headquarters and detained the commander of the troops who was called to the school. Red Guard detachments, among which was Sergei Lazo, suppressed the performance of the cadets.

In December 1917, a performance of cadets, Cossacks, officers and students took place in Irkutsk. The “Left Bloc” sent detachments of Red Guards, led by V.K. Kaminsky, S.G. Lazo, and B.Z. Shumyatsky, to help the Bolsheviks in Irkutsk.

On December 26, the fiercest fighting took place in Irkutsk. A combined detachment of soldiers and Red Guards under the command of S. G. Lazo, after many hours of fighting, captured the Tikhvin Church and launched an offensive along Amurskaya Street, trying to break through to the White House, but by the evening a counterattack by the cadets drove the red units out of the city, S. G. Lazo and the soldiers were taken prisoner, and the pontoon bridge across the Angara was raised. On December 29, a truce was declared, but in the following days, Soviet power in Irkutsk was restored. Lazo was appointed military commandant and head of the garrison of Irkutsk.

Civil War (1918-1920)

From the beginning of 1918 - a member of Centrosiberia, in February-August 1918 - commander of the troops of the Trans-Baikal Front. At the same time, Lazo switched from the Social Revolutionaries to the Bolsheviks.

In the fall of 1918, after the fall of Bolshevik power in eastern Russia, he went underground and began organizing a partisan movement directed against the Provisional Siberian Government, and then the Supreme Ruler Admiral A.V. Kolchak. Since the fall of 1918 - a member of the underground Far Eastern Regional Committee of the RCP (b) in Vladivostok. Since the spring of 1919, he commanded the partisan detachments of Primorye. Since December 1919 - head of the Military Revolutionary Headquarters for the preparation of the uprising in Primorye.

One of the organizers of the coup in Vladivostok on January 31, 1920, as a result of which the power of the Kolchak governor - the chief commander of the Amur region, Lieutenant General S. N. Rozanov was overthrown and the Provisional Government of the Far East, controlled by the Bolsheviks, was formed - the Primorsky Regional Zemstvo Council.

“It is for this Russian land on which I now stand that we will die. But we won’t give it to anyone.”
Monument to Sergei Lazo in Vladivostok.

These words are immortalized in bronze on the monument to Sergei Lazo in Vladivostok.

Arrest and death

After the Nikolaev incident, during which the Japanese garrison was destroyed, on the night of April 4-5, 1920, Lazo was arrested by the Japanese, and at the end of May 1920, Lazo and his comrades A.N. Lutsky and V.M. Sibirtsev were taken out by the Japanese troops from Vladivostok and handed over to the White Guard Cossacks. According to the widespread version, after torture, Sergei Lazo was burned alive in a locomotive firebox, and Lutsky and Sibirtsev were first shot and then burned in bags. However, the death of Lazo and his comrades was reported already in April 1920 by the Japanese newspaper “Japan Chronicle” - according to the newspaper, he was shot in Vladivostok, and the corpse was burned. A few months later, allegations appeared citing an unnamed driver who saw how at the Ussuri station the Japanese handed over three bags containing three people to the Cossacks from Bochkarev’s detachment. The Cossacks tried to push them into the firebox of the locomotive, but they resisted, then they were shot and stuffed dead into the firebox.

In the latest edition of the History of the Russian Far East, this version of Lazo’s death is described as a legend.

According to researcher P. A. Novikov, the execution of Soviet leaders was the response of the Whites for the murder of 123 officers by the Reds at Verino station on the night of Easter, April 25, whose bodies were thrown into the Khor River.

The El-629 steam locomotive, in the furnace of which Sergei Lazo was burned, was erected as a monument at the Ussuriysk station in 1972

Memorial plaque on the tender of the steam locomotive El−629

Memory

During the years of Soviet power, streets in many cities and towns in the USSR were named after Sergei Lazo. A massive renaming of streets took place in 1967 in connection with the 50th anniversary of Soviet power and in order to perpetuate the memory of the heroes of the Great October Socialist Revolution and the Civil War. Streets and squares named after Sergei Lazo still bear this name in dozens of cities in the former USSR.

In the Far East:

After the death of S.G. Lazo, the Muravyov-Amursky station of the Ussuri Railway, where he died, was renamed the Lazo station.
In the Primorsky Territory there is the Lazovsky district, the regional center is the village of Lazo, in the Dalnerechensky urban district - the village of Lazo.
In the Khabarovsk Territory - the Lazo district.
In Ulan-Ude there is a village within the city called Lazo.
In the Amur region there is a village called Lazo.
In the city of Borzya (Trans-Baikal Territory) there is a street named Lazo, and his former place of residence is also approximately indicated.
In Vladivostok, in the park next to the Primorsky Drama Theater, a monument to Sergei Lazo was erected on the pedestal of the destroyed monument to Admiral Zavoiko.
In the Verkhnebureinsky district of the Khabarovsk Territory, in the rural settlement of Alonka (the station of the same name on the BAM), a bust of Sergei Lazo was erected near school No. 19. This is due to the fact that this facility was designed and built by the Moldavian SSR.
In the city of Ussuriysk, Primorsky Territory, on October 25, 1972, on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the end of the Civil War in the Far East, a locomotive-monument El-629 was erected, in the firebox of which revolutionaries were burned.
In the city of Chita, a monument to Sergei Lazo was erected and a street was named in his honor.
In the city of Spassk-Dalniy, Primorsky Territory, there is a microdistrict named after Sergei Lazo.

Memorial plaque in Minsk, on Lazo Street

Monument to Sergei Lazo in Vladivostok

Monument to Sergei Lazo in Pereyaslavka (District named after Lazo, Khabarovsk Territory)

Memorial plaque on the headquarters building of the Eastern Military District in Khabarovsk.

In Moldavia:

The Bessarabian village of Piatra, where he was born, was also renamed Lazo after the region was annexed to the USSR, and after Moldova gained independence in 1991, it was again renamed Piatra. Lazo streets in several Moldavian cities and the Lazovsky district of the former Moldavian SSR were also renamed after the collapse of the USSR.
From 1944 to 1991, the Moldovan city of Singerei was called Lazovsk.
In Chisinau, a monument to Sergei Lazo was erected at the intersection of Decebal and Sarmizegetusa streets.
During the Soviet years, the Kotovsky and Lazo Museum functioned in Chisinau, but was liquidated in the 1990s.
The name was given to the Chisinau Polytechnic Institute.

In art

In 1968, a feature biography film of the same name “Sergei Lazo” was shot. the role of Sergei Lazo - Regimantas Adomaitis.
In 1980, the premiere of composer David Gershfeld’s opera “Sergei Lazo” took place, in which Maria Biesu performed one of the main roles.
In 1985, the Moldova-Film film studio produced a three-part feature film directed by Vasile Pascaru, “The Life and Immortality of Sergei Lazo.” The film tells about the life path of Sergei Lazo from the moment of baptism until the last minute of his life. The role of Sergei Lazo was played by Gediminas Storpirshtis.
In the USSR, the IZOGIZ publishing house published a postcard with the image of S. Lazo.
In 1948, a USSR postage stamp dedicated to Lazo was issued.
The song “Waltz” by the rock group “Adaptation” mentions one of the versions of the death of Sergei Lazo.
The death of Sergei Lazo is mentioned in the song “Birds” by the rock group “Mongol Shuudan”: “I saw Lazo beating against the coals in the stove.”
Victor Pelevin’s story “The Yellow Arrow” mentions “a faceted bottle of expensive Lazo cognac with a flaming locomotive firebox on the label.”

In philately

USSR postage stamp, 1948

Family

father - Georgy Ivanovich Lazo (1865-1903). In 1887, during the period of repressions by the tsarist government against revolutionary-minded students, he was expelled from St. Petersburg University and moved to permanent residence in Bessarabia. His parents are Ivan Ivanovich Lazo (1824-1869) and Matilda Fedorovna Fezi (1833-1893). Their graves are still preserved in the churchyard in the village of Piatra, and their former estate houses a functioning museum-estate. Matilda's mother, Maria Egorovna Eichfeldt, née Milo (1798-1855), was a recognized beauty and was friendly with Pushkin during his stay in Bessarabia. The poet mentioned her in his poems. Maria Egorovna was widowed at an early age and remarried a native of Switzerland, Fyodor (Theodor) Fazy. Matilda Fedorovna was brought up at the Kiev Institute of Noble Maidens. On January 6, 1873, she was confirmed as the head of the Chisinau women's gymnasium.

mother - Elena Stepanovna. Received higher agronomic education in Odessa and Paris. She devoted a lot of time to socially useful work among local peasants. In Chisinau she organized a hostel for female workers. Lazo's house had a large library, which was freely used by children. Parents did not fence their children off from communicating with peasants and village children, instilled in them work skills, discipline, strengthened them physically, and instilled in them honesty and respect for working people.

wife - Olga Andreevna Grabenko (1898-1971). Member of the CPSU (b) since 1916, historian, candidate of historical sciences, teacher at the Military Academy. M. V. Frunze. She was buried at the Novodevichy Cemetery (3rd site). Left memories.

daughter - Ada Sergeevna Lazo (1919, Vladivostok-1993, Moscow). Philologist, editor of Detgiz. I prepared a book about my father: “Lazo S. Diaries and Letters.” - Vladivostok, 1959. Husband - since 1940 - Vladimir Vasilyevich Lebedev (1891-1967), artist, recognized master of posters, book and magazine illustration, founder of the Leningrad school of book graphics.

The Moldavian and Romanian fabulist Alexander Donich (1806-1866) and the famous Moldavian writer Alecu Russo (1819-1859) were related to the Lazo family.

Essays

Lazo S. Diaries and letters. Vladivostok, 1959.

Notes

1 2 Parish register of St. Michael's Church in the village of Piatra, 2nd district of Orhei district for 1894 (Russian). Non-profit family history organization FamilySearch International. Retrieved July 21, 2014.
How it came back to haunt St. Petersburg...
Sergey Lazo
1 2 Uninvented history is being returned to the Far East. BBC Russian (05 August 2004). Retrieved June 26, 2009. Archived from the original on August 20, 2011.
Institute of History, Archeology and Ethnography of the Peoples of the Far East, Far Eastern Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences. History of the Russian Far East. - 2004 edition. - Vladivostok: Dalnauka, 2004. - 1000 copies.
The 2002 edition sets out a version of burning in a locomotive firebox.
Revision of Soviet history: Sergei Lazo was not burned in the furnace, newsru.com (June 29, 2004). Retrieved December 29, 2009.
Novikov P. A. Civil war in Eastern Siberia. - M.: ZAO Tsentrpoligraf, 2005. - 415 p. ISBN 5-9524-1400-1, p. 212
National Museum of History of Moldova
Head of State Voronin V.N. visited the estate of the Lazo family in the village of Piatra, Orhei region, the major reconstruction of which is currently the focus of the Ministry of Culture and Tourism. The President also visited a local church, the founders of which were the parents of Sergei Lazo.
Pushkin in Moldova
M. E. Eichfeldt. Neither the brilliance of the mind, nor the slenderness of the dress...
Veresaev V.V. Pushkin's companions. - M.: Soviet writer, 1937.
Heroes of the Revolution and Civil War - Sergei Georgievich Lazo
Lazo S. Diaries and letters. - Vladivostok, 1959.

Literature

Sergey Lazo. Memories and documents. - Sat., M., 1938.
Yaroslavsky E. M. Lazo. - M.: Young Guard, 1956.
Lazo O. The combat path of Sergei Lazo. - M., 1938.
Lazo O. A. People's hero S. Lazo. - Irkutsk, 1957.
Lazo O. A. Sergey Lazo. - M.: DOSAAF, 1965. - 64 p.
Krushanov A.I.S.G. Lazo // These days the glory will not cease. Vladivostok, 1966.
Sergei Lazo: memories and documents / comp. G. E. Reichberg, A. P. Shurygin, A. S. Lazo. - 2nd ed. - M., Politizdat, 1985.

Lazo, Sergey Georgievich Information About

"Fighting in Lazo's cramped stove.."
(from pioneer childhood)

Were these malicious Japanese or our Cossack women - and was there even this firebox and this locomotive... Or maybe there was no steam locomotive at all? .... So:

Sergei Georgievich Lazo
03/07/1894 [Bessarabia] – 1920, Russia

The name of Sergei Lazo was known to everyone in the USSR. The history of his heroic life and death was taught in schools and universities, poems and songs were written about him, plays were staged and films were made, streets and settlements, houses of culture and recreation were named after him, public gardens and parks were decorated with monuments with his sculptures. Little was known about his glorious life, but everyone remembered his terrible death...

Sergey Kornilov

Soviet textbooks and books on the history of the civil war gave the official version of the death of Sergei Lazo: the White Guards threw him, along with Vsevolod Sibirtsev and Alexei Lutsky, into the furnace of a steam locomotive, and they burned there for the cause of the revolution. For some reason, the remaining details varied. At the hands of which White Guards the Red commander and his comrades died, where, at what station, how they ended up there - this was no longer of interest to anyone. But in vain. Upon closer examination, the story reveals itself to be very interesting.

From romanticism to Bolshevism

Sergei Lazo was born in 1894 in Bessarabia, and died 26 years later, far away, for the sake of the utopian idea of communism. Coming from a wealthy noble family, he received a decent education at the Physics and Mathematics Department of Moscow State University, but at the beginning of the First World War he was mobilized. In 1916, with the rank of ensign, he was sent to Krasnoyarsk, where he joined the Socialist Revolutionary Party. This was no coincidence: as contemporaries say, from childhood Lazo was distinguished by maximalism and a heightened sense of justice - to the point of romanticism.

In the spring of 1917, the 20-year-old romantic came to Petrograd as a deputy from the Krasnoyarsk council and saw Lenin for the only time in his life. Sergei really liked the leader’s radicalism, and he became a Bolshevik. Returning to Krasnoyarsk, Lazo led a rebellion. In October 1917, the commissioner of the Provisional Government telegraphed from there to St. Petersburg: “The Bolsheviks occupied the treasury, banks and all government institutions. The garrison is in the hands of Ensign Lazo.”

Ataman Semyonov was too tough for him

I wonder how this young ensign commanded his armies? According to Soviet historical science, in 1918, when the party sent Lazo to Transbaikalia, he successfully defeated Ataman Semenov there. In fact, everything was completely different.

Lazo fought with Semenov for six months, but could not defeat him. He pushed him back to Manchuria several times, but then the chieftain again went on the offensive and drove Lazo north. And in the summer of 1918, squeezed between Semyonov and the Czechoslovaks, Lazo fled from Transbaikalia. He could not defeat the chieftain in principle. Semyonov was a significant figure in Dauria and enjoyed the authority and support of the population, but no one knew Lazo there. And the Lazo army had a negative rating because of its... criminal nature. Lazo's detachments were staffed by proletarians, lowlifes and, most importantly, criminals from the Chita prison, whom the Bolsheviks released on the condition that they would go over to the side of the revolution. The "thieves" caused a lot of trouble for Lazo himself, carrying out unauthorized "requisitions" from the population, but he had to put up with this - every person counted.

Bandera and the princess

Two female commissars served in the Lazo detachment. The personality of one of them, Nina Lebedeva, is very remarkable. The adopted daughter of the former governor of Transbaikalia was an adventurer by nature. As a high school student she joined the Socialist Revolutionary Party, participated in left-wing terror, and then went over to the anarchists. Lebedev and commanded the Lazo detachment, which consisted of a criminal element. Small in stature, wearing a leather jacket, with a huge Mauser at her side, she communicated with the gang exclusively through a hairdryer. Former partisans recalled how she walked in front of her disheveled formation and delivered a speech, peppering it with such obscenities that even seasoned criminals shook their heads and clicked their tongues.

The second commissar was her direct opposite. Olga Grabenko, a beautiful, black-browed Ukrainian, according to the recollections of her colleagues, Lazo really liked. He began to court her, and they got married. But the young people were not lucky. The very next day after the wedding, the detachment was surrounded. Sergei and Olga abandoned their army and tried to hide in Yakutsk, but, having learned that a white coup had taken place there, they went to Vladivostok.

It doesn’t matter where to partisan

In Primorye, the White Guards and interventionists were in power, so Lazo arrived in Vladivostok illegally. However, this soon became known, and a large sum was promised for his capture. Ataman Semenov gave money for the head of the old enemy. When the Vladivostok bloodhounds began to step on Lazo’s heels, the Bolsheviks sent him deep into the region to work in partisan detachments. Official history is silent about what exactly Lazo did among the partisans, but the memories of local residents provide an interesting picture.

One of these stories was told by TV journalist Mikhail Voznesensky. In the late 1970s, a regional TV group filmed another story about the red commander. TV crews came to Sergeevka, where the old man who saw Lazo lived. We set up the camera: well, grandfather, come on. And grandfather gave it!

"Yeah... I was a kid then. And I came to our village Lazo. Well, all of us, the boys, came running, sat down on the fence, waiting. The partisans were gathered and called Lazo. He went out onto the porch. Tall, in an overcoat, a hat - in ! Checker - in! And he pushed the speech..."

Do you remember what he said, grandfather?

How come I don’t remember? I remember! He said: “Partisans, fuck your mother, they’re good at robbing men!”

Fatal mistake

At the beginning of 1920, when it became known about the fall of Kolchak in Siberia, the Vladivostok Bolsheviks decided to overthrow Kolchak’s governor, General Rozanov. Lazo himself insisted on this. As it became clear later, this was the biggest mistake of Lazo and his associates.

Storming Vladivostok, which was filled with Japanese troops at that time, was akin to suicide. Nevertheless, on January 31, 1920, several hundred partisans occupied the city according to the well-known scheme: station, post office, telegraph. General Rozanov fled by ship to Japan. At first, the interventionists remained only observers. They were calm: according to various estimates, there were 20-30 thousand Japanese in the city, and only a couple of thousand Reds. Under these conditions, Lazo made another fatal mistake: he set out to proclaim Soviet power in Vladivostok. His comrades barely persuaded him not to do this, but then Lazo’s old friends - anarchists and his former commissar Nina Lebedeva - intervened in the course of events...

In February 1920, a detachment of anarchists under the command of Yakov Tryapitsyn and Lebedeva occupied Nikolaevsk-on-Amur. They proclaimed the Far Eastern Soviet Republic, and Tryapitsyn declared himself dictator. Then the red thugs began building communism “in a separate area.” This was expressed in the fact that Tryapitsyn’s fighters (among them were criminals from Lazo’s detachment) carried out a total confiscation of property and executions of the “bourgeoisie,” which included everyone who did not look like a complete ragamuffin.

The frightened inhabitants requested help from the command of the Japanese garrison stationed in Nikolaevsk. In response, Tryapitsyn’s thugs carried out a bloody reign of terror in the city, slaughtering all Japanese, including civilians, and then began the “complete destruction of the enemies of the people.” The interventionists urgently sent troops to Nikolaevsk, but when they approached the city, they discovered only a conflagration. The anarchists burned Nikolaevsk and shot everyone who did not want to retreat with them. The “Nicholas bathhouse” frightened the Japanese so much that without warning they came out against the partisans in all the cities of Primorye and the Amur region...

Arrest and disappearance

Lazo knew about the events in Nikolaevsk, but... did nothing to prevent the Japanese from attacking and even take care of his own safety. True, he carried with him false documents in the name of Warrant Officer Kozlenko, but this did not help - they knew him well by sight. This speaks of anything, but not of his talent as a commander and politician. He was and remained a romantic from the revolution, who knew how to make bright speeches that ignited the crowd. No more...

The Japanese offensive took place on the night of April 4-5, 1920. Almost all Bolshevik leaders and partisan commanders were arrested. Lazo was captured right in the building of the former Kolchak counterintelligence office on Poltavskaya, 6 (now Lazo, 6). He went there at night, already aware of the Japanese offensive, to destroy important documents. He was kept there for several days, on Poltavskaya, but on April 9, together with Sibirtsev and Lutsky, he was taken towards Gnily Ugol. Olga Lazo rushed to the Japanese headquarters, but she was told that “Warrant Officer Kozlenko has been transferred to the guardhouse on Begovaya” (building on Fadeev Street). She went there, but Sergei was not there. He disappeared.

The mystery of death

Rumors about the deaths of Lazo, Lutsky and Sibirtsev began to spread only a month later, in May 1920, and already in June they began to talk about it as a fact. Soon concrete information appeared. The Italian captain Clempasco, an employee of the Japan Chronicle (he was not only a journalist, but also an intelligence officer, communicated with Japanese officers, and therefore the information conveyed to him has a high degree of reliability), said that Lazo was shot on Egersheld, and his corpse was burned. This message was reprinted by many newspapers and distributed by world news agencies.

But the Bolsheviks were not satisfied with this version of the death of the Red commander, and they decided to invent a more beautiful one. A year and a half later, in September 1921, a certain locomotive driver “suddenly” showed up, who in May 1920 allegedly saw at the Ussuri station (now Ruzhino) how the Japanese handed over three bags to the Cossacks from Bochkarev’s detachment. From there they pulled out people “who looked like comrades Lazo, Lutsky and Sibirtsev” and tried to push them into the locomotive firebox. They resisted and a fight broke out (?!). Then the Bochkarevites got tired of it, and they shot the prisoners and put them in the furnace already dead.

This story has been told a thousand times, but its author has never been named. Apparently, it never happened, because this thriller was clearly invented to order and therefore does not stand up to any criticism. Firstly, a hefty man like Lazo was, plus two more of his associates, there was no way the three of them could fit through or fit into the firebox of a steam locomotive made in the 1910s. Secondly, the writers did not bother to agree on which station all this took place. The nameless driver indicated the Ruzhino station, but then the Muravyevo-Amurskaya (now Lazo) station appeared from somewhere in the historical literature. And why did the Japanese need to hand over Lazo and his friends to the Bochkarevites and then take them hundreds of kilometers to places that were infested with partisans? No one explained this - the Bolsheviks were not interested in details.

Subsequently, another historical incident arose: in the 1970s, a steam locomotive was installed in Ussuriysk, in the furnace of which Lazo was allegedly burned. They did it in such a hurry that on the pedestal there ended up... an American locomotive from the 1930s.

P.S. There is a methodological justification for the birth of the myth about Sergei Lazo. The legend of his death fit well into the scheme of the civil war drawn by Soviet historians: the best of heroes always die, and the more terrible the death of a hero, the more instructive his example is for posterity.

Born on February 23 (March 7), 1894 in the village of Piatra, Orhei district, Bessarabia province (now Orhei district of the Republic of Moldova) into a noble family.

In the fall of 1918, after the fall of Bolshevik power in eastern Russia, he went underground and began organizing a partisan movement directed against the Provisional Siberian Government, and then the Supreme Ruler Admiral A.V. Kolchak. Since the fall of 1918 - a member of the underground Far Eastern Regional Committee of the RCP (b) in Vladivostok. From the spring of 1919 he commanded the partisan detachments of Primorye. Since December 1919 - head of the Military Revolutionary Headquarters for the preparation of the uprising in Primorye.

As a result, the school of warrant officers declared its neutrality in relation to the uprising, which made the fall of Rozanov's power inevitable.

Arrest and death

After the Nikolaev incident, during which the Japanese garrison was destroyed, on the night of April 4-5, 1920, Lazo was arrested by the Japanese, and at the end of May 1920, Lazo and his comrades A.N. Lutsky and V.M. Sibirtsev were taken out by the Japanese troops from Vladivostok and handed over to the White Guard Cossacks. According to the widespread version, after torture, Sergei Lazo was burned alive in a locomotive firebox, and Lutsky and Sibirtsev were first shot and then burned in bags. However, the death of Lazo and his comrades was reported in April 1920 by the Japanese newspaper Japan Chronicle - according to the newspaper, he was shot in Vladivostok, and the corpse was burned. A few months later, allegations appeared citing an unnamed driver who saw how at the Ussuri station the Japanese handed over three bags containing three people to the Cossacks from Bochkarev’s detachment. The Cossacks tried to push them into the firebox of the locomotive, but they resisted, then they were shot and stuffed dead into the firebox.

In the latest edition of the History of the Russian Far East, this version of Lazo’s death is described as a legend. Also, “refutations” often appear in the press and on the Internet, according to which the steam locomotive Ea was allegedly installed in Ussuriysk as a monument. According to these “statements”, Lazo could not have been burned in that locomotive because such a series would appear only 21 years after his death (Ea locomotives were supplied from the USA to the USSR during the Second World War under Lend-Lease). However, in Ussuriysk it is not the “Lend-Lease” Ea that is installed, but a steam locomotive from the times of the Civil War - El, and these are two similar (especially for non-specialists) varieties of E-series locomotives, on which in the 1990s, during the next “cosmetic” painting, a painter mistakenly wrote "Ea" series. El steam locomotives were built by American factories in 1916-1917; a total of 475 locomotives were built. Further along the sea, these locomotives were sent to Vladivostok, from where they were already distributed throughout the country. At the end of 1922, there were 277 E-series steam locomotives on the roads of Siberia, the bulk of which were the El variety. Thus, if Lazo was burned in a steam locomotive, then it is most likely that this locomotive was El (locomotives more powerful than E were not available in Siberia at that time).

Memory

After his death, the Muravyovo-Amurskaya station on the Ussuri Railway, where he died, was renamed Lazo. Also, in Vladivostok and Blagoveshchensk, one of the streets is named after Sergei Lazo.
The Bessarabian village of Piatra, where he was born, was also renamed Lazo after the region was annexed to the USSR, and after Moldova gained independence in 1991, it was again renamed Piatra.
From 1944 to 1991, the Moldovan city of Singerei was called Lazovsk.
Lazo streets in several Moldavian cities and the Lazovsky district of the former Moldavian SSR were also renamed after the collapse of the USSR.
In Chisinau, a monument to Sergei Lazo was erected at the intersection of Decebal and Sarmizegetusa streets.
During the Soviet years, the Kotovsky and Lazo Museum functioned in Chisinau, but was liquidated in the 1990s.
Streets and squares named after Sergei Lazo still bear this name in dozens of cities in the former USSR.
In Vladivostok, in the area of Lazo Street, a monument to Lazo was erected on the pedestal of the destroyed monument to Admiral Vasily Stepanovich Zavoiko.

In art

In 1968, a feature biography film of the same name “Sergei Lazo” was shot. Regimantas Adomaitis plays the role of Sergei Lazo.
In 1980, the premiere of composer David Gershfeld’s opera “Sergei Lazo” took place, in which Maria Biesu performed one of the main roles.
In 1985, the Moldova-Film film studio produced a three-part feature film directed by Vasile Pascaru, “The Life and Immortality of Sergei Lazo.” The film tells about the life path of Sergei Lazo from the moment of baptism until the last minute of his life. The role of Sergei Lazo was played by Gediminas Storpirshtis.
In the USSR, the IZOGIZ publishing house published a postcard with the image of S. Lazo.
In 1948, a USSR postage stamp dedicated to Lazo was issued.
The song “Waltz” by the rock group “Adaptation” mentions one of the versions of the death of Sergei Lazo.

Sergei Lazo before the revolution

Sergei Lazo during the Civil War

Arrest of Sergei Lazo

The mystery of the death of Sergei Lazo

Events

Notes

Biography

February Revolution

Autumn-winter 1917. Krasnoyarsk. Omsk. Irkutsk

Civil War (1918-1920)

Arrest and death

Memory

In art

In philately

Family

Essays

see also

Notes

Literature

Links

Lazo, Sergey Georgievich Information About

Arrest and death

Memory

In art