Yakov Tryapitsyn


Yakov Ivanovich Tryapitsyn was a Russian and Soviet military and political figure. A wartime officer holding the rank of Praporshchik in the Imperial Russian Army during the First World War, he subsequently joined the Red Guards, and was appointed the Commander of the Nikolayevsk Front and the Nikolayevsk Military District of the Red Army of the Russian SFSR and the Okhotsk Front of the People's Revolutionary Army of the Far Eastern Republic. He took an active role in establishing Soviet power in Siberia and the Far East as a participant in the Civil War. He is best known for the role he played in the Nikolayevsk incident in 1920, in which he massacred the entire population of Nikolayevsk-on-Amur and burned the town to the ground.

Early life and career

Yakov Ivanovich Tryapitsin was born on April 25, 1897 in the village of Savasleyka in the Muromsky District of the Vladimir Province of the Russian Empire, in the family of a peasant, Ivan Stepanovich Sidorov-Tryapitsyn. He studied at the 4-year school, which he graduated from with a commendable record. In 1915 he entered the work of an assistant to the machinist on a locomotive in the factory's inner yard of the Mordovshchik shipyard.
In the summer of 1916, he was enlisted in the Kexholm Regiment of the Imperial Russian Army. He fought in the First World War - rose to the rank of Ensign, and was twice awarded the Cross of St. George. In the spring of 1918, he was demobilized from the active army, in connection with the Peace of Brest-Litovsk, and upon returning to Russia, he joined the Red Guard.
He subsequently participated in the suppression of the Samara insurrection from June to October 1918. In the autumn of 1918, he was sent through the Eastern Front to Siberia.

Partisan commander

At the end of 1918, traveling through Omsk, where he met with a fellow soldier, he left for Eastern Siberia and the Far East, according to the memoirs of the soldier to, "Fight for Soviet Power."
In January 1919, he was arrested in Irkutsk by Admiral Kolchak's forces, but managed to escape from prison. At the end of March of the same year, Tryapitsyn arrived in Vladivostok, where he joined an underground organization consisting of port loaders, who stocked up weapons and recruited volunteers to fight the Japanese interventionists supporting the White Movement. Under the leadership of Tryapitsyn, a raid was carried out on the Vladivostok military garrison depot, after which, fearing persecution, he fled with other underground workers into the taiga.
From the end of the spring of 1919 - he served in the Tsimikhinsky Partisan detachment, led by G.M. Shevchenko in Primorye, and engaged in combat with the Japanese, Americans, and White Russians near the town of Suchan. As a result of disagreements with the commander of the detachment, he left to the river Iman, where he organized his own Partisan detachment.
In the summer of 1919, he moved with his detachment to the Amur River, to the Khabarovsk District, where he continued his fight against the White Army and the intervening Allies. The operational area of the actions of the Partisan detachment, under his leadership, was in the district of the Kruglikovo and Verino stations of the Ussuri railway. On November 2 and 3 of 1919, at a meeting of representatives of various Partisan detachments in the village of Anastasievka in the Khabarovsk District, it was decided to create a military revolutionary headquarters under the command of D.I. Boyko-Pavlov. Disagreeing with the decision by the assembled council, Tryapitsyn left Anastasievka before the arrival of the Red Army with his detachment of only 19 fighters.
Fulfilling his vow, on November 10, 1919, a detachment of Tryapitsyn consisting of 35 initial fighters began their march from Vyatka to Nikolayevsk-on-Amur. In the village of Malmyzh, a meeting was held with the Partisan detachment of Ocevilli-Pavlutsky. The former commander of this detachment, Mizin, became the first deputy of Tryapitsyn. On November 26, the Partisan cavalry detachment near the Pulsa telegraph and postal station was ambushed by a punitive detachment of Kolchak's main force, and was defeated. After that, the White Guards moved to Zimmermanovka, where the main forces of the Partisan detachment of Tryapitsyn were concentrated.
During the defense of Zimmermanovka, the guerrillas, under the leadership of Tryapitsyn, routed the attackers. Pursuing the surviving White Guards, the Partisans took the village of Kalinovka. After learning of this defeat, the chief of the Nikolayevsk-on-Amur garrison, Colonel Medvedev, mobilized carts from the local population, assigned soldiers and volunteers, and sent a detachment to assist his beleaguered forces. Tryapitsyn left to engage in negotiations with the commanding officer of the White detachment, Colonel Witz. The appearance of the commander of the Partisan movement, from the position of Kolchak's men, and the transfer of letters and gifts from their relatives had a strong demoralizing effect on them. During the negotiations, Witz responded to Tryapitsyn with a refusal to surrender, but, realizing that his detachment was disintegrating, gave an order to retreat to De-Kastri Bay, as the road to Nikolayevsk was cut off. However, this order was carried out by only a few, the bulk of the soldiers subsequently defected to the side of the Partisans of Tryapitsyn. As a result, the Partisans detachment began to number about 1,400 soldiers.

Command of the Nikolayevsk Front

In the village of Lyci, a council of Red Army commanders was convened, at which a number of decisions were taken on regarding the transformation of the Partisan army into a Front of the regular Red Army, subsequently known as the Nikolayevsk Front. The staff of the Red Army headquarters of the Nikolayevsk Front included Yakov I. Tryapitsyn as Front Commander, D.S. Buzin-Beach as Deputy Commander, T.B. Naumov-Medved as Chief of Staff, A.I. Pokrovsky-Cherny as Staff Secretary, and F.V. Zhelezin, A.I Komarov, and S.I Sheriy as senior staff members. It was this headquarters that began to reorganize Partisan detachments into regular regiments of the Red Army.
Since September 1918, Nikolayevsk was occupied by Japanese troops during the intervention in the Far East. By early 1920, in the city, in addition to the Russian population of around 15,000, and White detachments of about 300 men, a Japanese garrison of 350 men from the 14th Infantry Division of the Japanese Imperial Army under the command of Major Ishikawa was stationed, in addition to about 450 Japanese civilians.
On February 10, 1920, the soldiers and partisans of the Nikolayevsk Front, with the assistance of some former soldiers and officers of the former fortress of Chnyrra, who controlled the approaches to Nikolayevsk-on-Amur, captured and transferred it to the Sakhalin Revkom, together with its weapons. After the shelling of the positions of the Japanese units near Nikolayevsk from the guns captured by the Red Army in the fortress of Chnyrra, under the pressure of foreign consulates, the Japanese recalled the declaration of Lieutenant General Shiroodzu, commander of the 14th Japanese Infantry Division, on the observance by the Japanese army of neutrality in the civil war in Russia from 4 February 1920, and they sent representatives to the negotiations that took place on February 25-28, 1920. Two White Army officers were in attendance as observers: Captains Murgabov and Nemchinov. The Japanese were forced to sign an agreement on neutrality, on the basis of which parts of the Red Army entered the city. Under the agreement, parts of the Japanese Army were to maintain neutrality and remain in the places of their deployment.
At the funeral of 19 former Soviet and party officials who were arrested and executed by White and Japanese forces earlier that year, Tryapitsyn addressed a speech to the inhabitants of Nikolayevsk:
In the hands of the Extraordinary Commission, were almost all documents of the White counterintelligence, with which nearly all employees implicated were arrested and subsequently shot. Those officials and representatives of the pre-revolutionary city council, who in 1918 signed a joint petition to the Japanese Emperor with the request to send troops to the Amur to aid them in defeating the Red Army were also arrested and executed.
On March 12, 1920, a congress of Soviets of the Sakhalin Region was held in Nikolayevsk-on-Amur, which marked the restoration of Soviet power in the whole region and enshrined the legal sovereignty of the Russian SFSR over the territory of Northern Sakhalin and the Lower Amur.

Far Eastern Command

On March 10, 1920, Tryapitsyn issued an ultimatum to the Japanese garrison to voluntarily disarm and turn over their weapons and ammunition to the Red Army, to which he was sure the Japanese would refuse, giving the Red Army the excuse it needed to expel the garrison from the city. In the early morning hours of the 12 of March, however, Japanese soldiers launched an attack on the central command of the Nikolayevsk Front, stationed in Nikolayevsk-on-Amur. As a result of the sudden attack by the Japanese, Tryapitsyn himself was seriously wounded and received two injuries as a result, while his deputy, Mizin, and his Chief of Staff, T.B. Naumov, were both killed. At least 150 soldiers and commanders of the Nikolayevsk Front were killed and more than 500 soldiers were wounded. At the first stage of the fighting in the city, the initiative, thanks to the surprise attack and the loss of leadership by units of the Red Army, belonged to the Japanese garrison, which was supported by a large part of the Japanese population. But a day later, the Gorno-Amguno-Kerbinsk regiment, dislocated in the village of Kerbi, led by its commander, I.A Budrin, approached Nikolayevsk and assumed leadership of the fighting in the city.
The fighting lasted several days and ended with the victory of the Red Army. By the evening of March 14, the main forces of the Japanese were defeated, and on March 15 at noon the last group capitulated, only surrendering when the Japanese High Command ordered them to do so. Most of the Japanese died in battle, while 117 soldiers and 11 women were taken prisoner. Even so, Tryapitsyn decided to take revenge, which resulted in the execution of the surviving garrison along with many Japanese civilians. After this, Tryapitsyn was free to start a reign of terror and execute all those he deemed dangerous to his forces. Among foreign citizens, the British manager of one of the largest fisheries in the town was arrested and shot on the charges of counter-revolutionary activity.
Tryapitsyn believed that the attack on the Red Army in Nikolayevsk was in fact a rehearsal for Japan for the coordinated attack of its occupying forces in the Russian Far East on Soviet authorities and military garrisons of the Far East. During the formation of the Far Eastern Republic, Tryapitsyn expressed his disagreement with this decision. From a telegram to Moscow:
Despite the vehement disagreements of Tryapitsyn with the decision to establish the Far Eastern Republic, on April 22, 1920, according to the order No. 66 of the Commander-in-Chief of the People's Revolutionary Army, he was appointed Commander of the Okhotsk Front. By the same order, Sergey Lazo was appointed commander of the Primorsky Front.

Nikolayevsk incident and death

In late May, as a Japanese relief expedition approached, Tryapitsyn ordered the evacuation of all Red Army soldiers, staff, and Soviet personnel from the city, and subsequently executed all of the remaining inhabitants of the town, both Japanese and Russian, including children and the elderly, and burned the town to the ground. All Japanese still in Nikolayevsk were massacred. Being short on ammunition, one of the methods to execute the victims was to stab them with a bayonet and thrust them in a hole under the ice of the river Amur. Several thousand inhabitants of the town were killed in this fashion, many others were beaten to death with rifles. Hundreds of others were shot on the banks of the Amur. The buildings of the town were set on fire or blown up with explosives following the massacre, as well as the fortress of Chnyrra and any weapons, artillery, ammunition, medical supplies, and provisions that could not be secured by the Red Army. Following the retreating army along the banks of the Amur River, on June 3, 1920, Tryapitsin left with his staff.
Upon learning of the massacre, the Japanese government lodged a protest against the Bolshevik government in Moscow, demanding compensation. Tryapitsin had already lost much of his favor with the Central Committee in Moscow due to his frequent railings against Soviet policy and criticism of the central government. In response to the Japanese demands, Tryapitsin, along with his entire Staff and regimental commanders, were arrested in the town of Kerbi in Primorsky on the orders of the Soviet government on July 7. I.T. Andreev, a member of the Bolshevik-aligned Central Committee of the Sakhalin Region and a former White Army officer, presided over a brief improvised trial in which Tryapitsin, his staff, regimental commanders, and the Chief of Staff of the Okhotsk Front, Nina Lebedeva, 32 in total, were condemned to death and subsequently shot on July 9. Even so, the Japanese government felt that this was not sufficient, and used the incident as an excuse to occupy the northern half of Sakhalin island, and to delay diplomatic recognition of the Soviet Union until 1925.