Speaking of the classic Soviet And Russian World War II spy war films "The Exploits of the Scout" and "Fourteen Moments of Spring" and other films, I think many fans will be familiar with the deeds of the protagonists of Fedotov, Stritz and other films, but it seems that the deeds of Soviet military agents in the Soviet Civil War have rarely heard of them. Today I would like to introduce the deeds of Pavel Makarov, a senior Soviet agent during the five-year civil war between 1917 and 1922, whose story was also filmed as a five-episode mini-drama "Your Excellency the Adjutant" (Адъютант его превосходительствва, 1969).
Poster and DVD of "Your Excellency the Lieutenant"
Makarov joined the White Guards
Pavel Vasilyevich Makarov (Па вел Васи льевич Мака ров, 1897-1970), a Ukrainian whose father was the conductor of a railway freight train and was killed in an accident in 1903. Due to the death of his father, the Makarov family had to move to Crimea, and he also began to work as a printer, painter, bookbinder and tram conductor at an early age. During his part-time job, Makarov, as a proletarian, was successfully developed into a member of the League by the Bu Party.
Makarov in film and television dramas
After the outbreak of World War I, Makarov was also conscripted into the army and was assigned to the Imperial Russian 134th Fyodosian Infantry Regiment, where he was promoted to the rank of lieutenant at the time of the armistice because of his heroic and honorable wounds in the war. Affected by the chaotic situation in the rear after the October Revolution, the Imperial Russian troops stationed at the front were scattered, and soon Lenin announced the dissolution of the old army in order to sign a contract with Germany, and Makarov was able to demobilize and return home from the front.
But a more difficult task awaited him, and in order to form a new army— they called it the Red Army — the superiors sent Makarov with a few men to the Crimean Peninsula to recruit troops. The matter did not unfold much, and since the contract was not signed, the German army of 2 million began to attack the entire Eastern Front, and soon occupied most of Ukraine. Makarov was arrested by a patrol of the White Guards' Chozdov Division while trying to retreat.
"What are you doing and where are you going?" A White Officer rudely interrogated Makarov, who apparently would not tell him the truth, and after a moment's thought he reported that he was a captain officer of the 134th Regiment, which had been stationed on the banks of the Celette River before the end of the war. The White Officer was delighted to hear this and immediately arranged for Makarov to be a company commander under him. Makarov was initially resistant to this arrangement, and he wanted to run, but then he thought about it: The civil war has broken out, the whole of Southern Russia has fallen into flames, where can he run? It is better to take the opportunity to stay in the White Army and find an opportunity to secretly help the Red Army.
Makarov's identification with the White Guards
Makarov's work on the Romanian front, which for a time as a radio decipherer, provided him with a good opportunity, and after inadvertently revealing that he could send and receive codes, the news soon reached the ears of the Commander of the White Army, Major General Drozdowski. Drozdowski, who was short of a translator, immediately summoned Makarov, asked him a few professional questions, recognized his identity, and transferred him to his headquarters to work on codemailing.
2. Become an aide-de-camp to the commander-in-chief of the White Guards
After Major General Drozdowski was wounded, Lieutenant General Mayevsky took over the command of the White Army, and Mayevsky also asked Makarov some questions about his family and origin, and Makarov lied that he was the descendant of a large family in the Ryazan region, with a large estate and a father who was a railway operation contractor. Since Ryazan was located in the core control area of the Red Army, the White Army could not send people to verify Makarov's true identity, so it could only believe his words.
Maevsky admired Makarov, a well-behaved lad, and appointed him as his aide-de-camp. Soon Maevsky was promoted to commander-in-chief of the White Army on the Southern Front, so that Makarov, a poor boy, became the aide-de-camp of the commander-in-chief, and was able to take the opportunity to enter the core social circle of the White Guards, to get acquainted with the former princes, counts and sons of the nobles, to kiss the delicate jade hands of the noble ladies and to dance the aristocratic social dance in their arms.
Makarov carried his hands behind his back and accompanied Mayevsky in inspecting the soldiers' equipment
Of course, it was not that no one doubted Makarov, and the aristocratic general Prince Murat was indignant about this: an unknown junior officer was more influential in the White Guards than he was behind the general. For this reason, the prince often sent people to follow Makarov to find his handle, and Makarov, in order to get rid of this threat, also used every opportunity to report to the lieutenant general on the various arbitrary and brutal acts of Prince Murat (these are facts).
Maevsky, convinced of Makarov's report, soon sent Prince Murat to the front and, at his suggestion, appointed Prince Adamov to succeed him. Prince Adamov knew that Makarov had helped him and became his best helper ever since. However, Makarov had one more task to be done, namely how to get in touch with the organization, which he had tried several times to contact the underground parties in Rostov and Kharkov, but these organizations were destroyed in advance by the intelligence agencies of the white army general Denikin.
Stills: Makarov recommends his brother to Mayevsky
Makarov decided to find a reliable transporter to help him with the task of finding the organization, and this person was his brother Vladimir. Makarov took a break from work and made a run to his home in Sevastopol, Crimea, where Vladimir, also a member of the regiment, was surprised to see his brother suddenly appear in a white army uniform, but quickly figured out the situation. Under Makarov's arrangement, Vladimir went to Kharkiv to find the organization, but was equally unsuccessful.
3. Disturbances at the General Headquarters of the White Guards
Makarov had no choice but to settle Vladimir by his side first, but his brother had never been a soldier and did not look like a soldier at all, so he had to explain to Majevsky that his brother was a military cadet who had not yet graduated and had to withdraw from school because he had been disturbed by the Red Army gang. Maevsky, too, trusted Makarov so much that he easily listened to his remarks and appointed Vladimir as his attendant.
Stills: Makarov is on the rich side
As commander-in-chief of the White Guard, the wealthy Kharkov merchants Zymudsky's family soon came to marry Mayevsky and recommended their adopted daughter Anna Petrovna to him, Makarov, as Mayevsky's aide-de-camp, and gradually fell in love with Katya, the youngest daughter of the Zhmudsky family, and eventually became a husband and wife, which is really a winner in life. Of course, Makarov had not forgotten his mission, and since he could not find organizational relations, he had to make trouble for the White Guard's chain of command as much as possible.
Taking advantage of Katya and Anna's sisterly relationship, whenever the situation was tense across the board, Makarov would invite Katya to the house for a drink and instruct him to bring his sister Anna, and Mayevsky, as Anna's boyfriend, naturally had to participate together. As a result, on the one hand, the urgent telegrams of the front command were like snowflakes, and on the other hand, Mayevsky, as commander-in-chief, accompanied the two little sisters and was so drunk at Makarov's house that he could not wake up the next day when the sun was basking.
Makarov accompanied Maevsky on a review of the White Guards
In addition to interfering with Maevsky's command, Makarov also actively undermined the relationship between the senior generals of the White Army, and the commander of the White Army, General Kudebov, and General Yuzefuvic, quickly fought, and Makarov designed to provoke them to fight among themselves, so that when the Red Army attacked Kutepov with all its strength, Yuzefuvic ran away with his troops, as if he did not see the friendly forces asking for help.
In addition, when the commanders of the front line sent the battle situation report to the General Command, Makarov and Vladimir, who were the recipients of the documents, often destroyed these documents on the spot, so that the General Headquarters of the White Guards often could not grasp the changes in the war situation on the front line very well, deepening the confusion in command. Colonel Eugene, the head of the White Army's intelligence service, felt something was wrong, and although he tried his best to catch a few spies, he was never able to find Makarov's head.
4. Exposure, Arrest and Flight
In November 1919, as a result of the defeat of the company, The Commander-in-Chief of the White Army, General Denikin, transferred the power of Mayevsky to the famous general Baron Flangel, and assigned the former the idle post of commander-in-chief of the nominal Confederate Army, headquartered in Sevastopol, the hometown of Makarov and Vladimir. The adventurous Vladimir took the opportunity to contact the local underground organization and prepare to launch a local workers' uprising to cooperate with the Red Army in liberating the Crimean Peninsula.
The uprising was scheduled for January 23, 1920, and some of the young officers of the White Army and naval vessels also promised to participate in the uprising. But the day before the uprising, the counter-espionage department of the White Army Navy preemptively arrested the leaders of the uprising, including Vladimir, and Makarov felt that there might be trouble. He tried to beg Maevsky to release his brother, but the latter angrily said to him: "Don't you know that your brother is a leader of the underground party?" ”
Makarov touched his cheek and took a picture with his Fellow White Guards
Soon, a group of officers rushed into Mayevsky's headquarters and arrested Makarov. The next day he was told that the main leaders of the uprising, including his brother Vladimir, had been shot and that it would be his turn to eat the gun a few days later. Makarov, of course, did not want to sit still, and he escaped from his cell with five fellow prisoners and ran to the mountains of Crimea to form a guerrilla group, which became stronger and stronger, and by the time the Red Army liberated Crimea in 1920, the guerrilla group had grown to the size of a regiment.
When Makarov's identity as a spy was revealed, Maevsky was completely disgraced, refusing the exile arrangements arranged for him by others, and instead continued to live in the headquarters of Sevastopol, drunk himself all day. On October 30, 1920, on the eve of the liberation of Crimea, Majevsky died of excessive alcoholism at the age of 53, although some say he committed suicide with a small pistol.
5. Post-war aftermath
After the liberation of Crimea, Makarov was transferred to the Cheka, the Russian intelligence service, where he was responsible for suppressing local White Army guerrillas and criminal gangs. After the outbreak of World War II, Makarov, who was in his 40s, fought a guerrilla war in the crimean mountains and persisted until the liberation of the peninsula in 1944, and his mother and father-in-law were killed by the Germans. For this reason, Makarov was awarded the Order of the Red Banner, the Order of the Red Star, the Order of the "Guerrilla of the Great Patriotic War" first class after the war, and published a memoir of his guerrilla activities in World War II, "The Partisans of Tavria".
In 1969, the Bulgarian-Russian playwright Igor Yakovlevich Bulgarin adapted his novel Your Excellency the Adjutant into a screenplay, which was made into a 5-episode miniseries of the same name by director Yevgeny Tashkov. The drama is a true reproduction of the spying activities of Lieutenant Korzov lurking in the White Guard headquarters based on Makarov, and once it was broadcast, it was a great success, and Bulgarin later wrote 7 follow-up novels in the series "Your Excellency the Adjutant" and earned a lot of money.
"Your Excellency the Adjutant" series of novels
However, since Makarov's name is not mentioned in either the miniseries or the series of novels, whenever Makarov tells people that he is the prototype of Korzov, he is questioned by many people, including some well-known writers, because at the end of the film, Korzov is arrested and shot after destroying the White Army's train. Makarov could not stand many arguments with his skeptics and eventually died a year after the miniseries aired at the age of 73.