Soviet military leader, lieutenant general of engineering troops (1940), professor at the Military Academy General Staff(1938), Doctor of Military Sciences (1941), Hero Soviet Union(1946, posthumously).

Dmitry Mikhailovich Karbyshev was born on October 14 (26), 1880 in the city in the family of M. I. Karbyshev, a clerk in the district commissariat.

In 1891-1898, D. M. Karbyshev studied at the Siberian Cadet Corps, in 1900 he graduated from the Nikolaev Military Engineering School (first class). With the rank of second lieutenant, he was appointed company commander in the East Siberian sapper battalion, stationed in Manchuria.

D. M. Karbyshev took part in the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-1905, was the head of the cable department of the 4th telegraph company of the 1st East Siberian engineer battalion. Participated in the battle of Mukden (1905). During the war years, he was promoted to lieutenant and awarded five orders - St. Vladimir 4th degree with swords and a bow (1904), St. Stanislav 3rd degree with a bow (1904), St. Anna 3rd degree with swords and a bow ( 1905), St. Stanislaus 2nd class with swords (1905), St. Anne 4th class for wearing personal weapons on the hilt (1905).

In 1906, D. M. Karbyshev was transferred to the reserve. He was charged with agitation among the soldiers, the case was examined by an officer's "court of honor." A year later, due to the lack of experienced officers, he was again invited to serve. In 1907-1908, D. M. Karbyshev was a company commander of the Vladivostok fortress sapper battalion, took part in the restructuring of fortifications.

In 1908-1911, D. M. Karbyshev studied at the Nikolaev Military Engineering Academy, from which he graduated with honors. In 1911 he was sent to serve in Brest-Litovsk (now in Belarus), where he took part in the construction of forts. Brest Fortress.

During the First World War, D. M. Karbyshev fought on the South-Western Front as part of the 8th army of the general. He was a divisional engineer of the 78th and 69th infantry divisions of the 22nd Finnish rifle corps. In early 1915, he took part in the assault on the Przemysl fortress, where he was wounded in the leg. For courage and courage, D. M. Karbyshev was awarded the Order of St. Anna, 2nd degree, and promoted to lieutenant colonel. In 1916 he took part in the Brusilov breakthrough.

After the October Revolution of 1917, D. M. Karbyshev supported the Bolsheviks and recognized Soviet power. In December 1917, in the city of Mogilev-Podolsky (now in Ukraine), he joined the Red Guard, from 1918 he served in the Red Army. During civil wars You participated in the construction of the Simbirsk, Samara, Saratov, Chelyabinsk, Zlatoust, Troitsk, Kurgan fortified regions, and was engaged in the engineering support of the Kakhovka bridgehead. He held responsible positions at the headquarters of the North Caucasian Military District.

In 1920, D. M. Karbyshev was appointed chief of engineers of the 5th Army Eastern Front. Supervised the strengthening of the Trans-Baikal bridgehead. In the autumn of 1920 he became assistant chief of engineers of the Southern Front. He led the engineering support for the assault on Chongar and Perekop, for which he was awarded a personalized gold watch.

In 1921-1936, D. M. Karbyshev served in the engineering troops, was chairman of the Engineering Committee of the Main Military Engineering Directorate of the Red Army. From November 1926 he taught at the Military Academy. . In February 1934, he was appointed head of the military engineering department of the Military Academy of the General Staff. Since 1936, D. M. Karbyshev was an assistant to the head of the department of tactics higher compounds Military Academy of the General Staff. In 1938 he graduated military academy General Staff. In the same year, D. M. Karbyshev was approved in the academic rank of professor. In 1940 he was awarded the rank of lieutenant general of the engineering troops. In the same year he joined the CPSU (b).

D. M. Karbyshev was the author of many scientific works: "Engineering preparation of the borders of the USSR" (book 1, 1924), "Destruction and obstacles" (1931, together with I. Kiselev and I. Maslov), "Engineering support for combat operations of rifle formations "(1939-1940), etc. He developed the foundations of the theory of engineering support for operations and the combat use of engineer troops.

D. M. Karbyshev took part in the Soviet-Finnish war of 1939-1940. As part of the group of the Deputy Head of the Main Military Engineering Directorate for Defensive Construction, he developed recommendations for the troops on engineering support for the breakthrough of the Mannerheim Line. In the prewar years he was awarded with orders Red Star (1938) and Red Banner (1940).

In early June 1941, D. M. Karbyshev was sent to the Western Special Military District. The Great Patriotic War found him at the headquarters of the 3rd Army in Grodno (Belarus). Two days later, he moved to the headquarters of the 10th Army, which on June 27, 1941 was surrounded. In August 1941, when trying to get out of the encirclement, Lieutenant General D. M. Karbyshev was seriously shell-shocked in a battle near the village of Dobreika, Mogilev Region (Belarus) and was taken prisoner.

In 1941-1945, D. M. Karbyshev was kept in the German concentration camps Zamostye, Hammelburg, Flossenburg, Majdanek, Auschwitz, Sachsenhausen. Adamantly remained faithful to the oath, resolutely suppressed the numerous attempts of the Nazis to persuade him to treason. Conducted anti-fascist agitation among prisoners of war.

On the night of February 18, 1945, D. M. Karbyshev died in the Mauthausen concentration camp (Austria) during the Nazi massacre of prisoners - revenge for the escape they organized two weeks ago. Among other prisoners (about 500 people), he was poured with water in the cold.

By the Decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR of August 16, 1946, D. M. Karbyshev “for the exceptional stamina and courage shown in the fight against the German invaders in the Great Patriotic Wars e" was awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union (posthumously).

Unbroken. Dmitry Mikhailovich Karbyshev

Dmitry Mikhailovich Karbyshev was born on October 14, 1880 in the city of Omsk. He was the sixth and last child in the family of court adviser Mikhail Ilyich Karbyshev and his wife Alexandra Efimovna. Parents wanted to give all their sons (Vladimir, Mikhail, Sergey and Dmitry) higher education, and first of all they wanted to see them as doctors. However, the cramped financial situation forced them to reorient themselves to the fact that the younger children in the government boarding school "went into officers." In addition, the Karbyshev family was considered "unreliable" and was under the supervision of the gendarmerie and the police. The reason for this was the activities of the elder brother Dmitry Vladimir, who studied at medical faculty Kazan University and took part in student demonstrations and distribution of leaflets. In the summer of 1888, Vladimir was arrested and sent into exile in Ust-Kamenogorsk, where he lived for the rest of his life.
The arrest and exile of the eldest son, summons for interrogation to the gendarme department, police surveillance of the family affected the health of sixty-year-old Mikhail Ilyich, who worked as an assistant accountant of the District Quartermaster Department. He died in 1892. The younger children, Sergei and Dmitry, who entered hometown in the Siberian Cadet Corps, had to endure many hardships during the years of study.

Subsequently, Karbyshev wrote: “Because of the arrest of my brother, I was not accepted into the corps for training at state expense, and as an exception, I studied at my own, despite the fact that my mother was a widow and had no means.” However, he studied diligently, becoming the best in his class when he graduated in 1898. And in the fall of the same year, Dmitry entered the Nikolaev Military Engineering School in St. Petersburg, and two years later he graduated from it "in the first category."

Mikhailovsky Castle - Nikolaev Military Engineering School

With the rank of second lieutenant, a twenty-year-old youth was sent to the Far East.

At the headquarters of the Amur Military District, located in the city of Khabarovsk, in the fall of 1900, a young officer was seconded to the first East Siberian engineer battalion, based near Vladivostok. The first position of Dmitry Mikhailovich on military service was the head of the cable department of the telegraph company.

The promotion was not long in coming - already in 1903 the diligent young guy was promoted to lieutenant. In the same period, the cable department of Karbyshev was recognized as the best unit of the military unit for the successful completion of complex assignments for laying telegraph lines and providing communications.

The first East Siberian engineer battalion deployed to Mukden was at the forefront from the very beginning of the Russo-Japanese War.

Very little is known about the life of Dmitry Mikhailovich at that time - his company installed communications, strengthened positions, conducted reconnaissance in force and built bridges. Karbyshev, together with his people, ensured uninterrupted communication between the headquarters of military formations and with the troops leading the battle. The losses of the engineering units were enormous - by the end of the war, their composition was actually halved.

attack near Mukden

For excellent knowledge of the matter, courage and resourcefulness, humane attitude towards the "lower ranks", the lieutenant of the engineering troops became one of the heroes of the lost war, and about him combat way can be judged by the awards received. Dmitry Mikhailovich successively received five orders - the most honorary "St. Vladimir of the fourth degree" (September 2, 1904), "St. Stanislav of the third degree" (November 4, 1904), "St. Anna of the third degree" (January 2, 1905), "St. Stanislav of the second degree" (February 20, 1905) and "Saint Anna of the fourth degree" (for distinction in battles from February to March 1905).

However, the military officer did not make a career. The soldiers of the garrison of the Vladivostok fortress, where Karbyshev returned as part of his battalion, opposed the old order - more than once it even came to armed clashes with the police. The unwillingness of Dmitry Mikhailovich to testify and, moreover, denunciations of the soldiers with whom he fought together, led to the dismissal of Karbyshev. In his autobiography, he wrote: “In 1906 I retired from military service. The reason was the unwillingness to serve in the army of the king. The reason was the accusations against me of agitation among the soldiers, for which I was brought to trial by the Society of Officers. As a civilian, Dmitry Mikhailovich settled in Vladivostok, getting a job as a private draftsman. However, by the will of fate, a year later, in 1907, he again found himself in the ranks of the military. The reason was the announcement of the formation of a special sapper battalion in the local garrison, created to serve the fortress city. The command appointed Karbyshev head of the company in the emerging battalion.

Dmitry Mikhailovich's six-month service was interrupted by his call to the headquarters of the Amur Military District, where all officers who expressed a desire to enter an academy were to undergo a preliminary knowledge test. Tests in the spring of 1908 were successful, and six months later Karbyshev went to take entrance exams to the Nikolaev military engineering academy. His knowledge amazed many - during the twenty-five-day exams, he received the highest scores in almost all twenty-three (!) Subjects. For three years, Dmitry Mikhailovich studied with the most first-class specialists in our country and was one of the best on the course. Studying in military academies, by the way, has always been extremely difficult. According to the memoirs of classmates, Karbyshev was distinguished by diligence and perseverance, he was always strictly smart, he liked to visit the fencing hall and the shooting gallery. Upon graduation from the academy, Dmitry Mikhailovich with a certificate "for excellent success" was promoted to the rank of staff captain and approved in the rank of military engineer.
By that time it was 1911. Dmitry Mikhailovich, who now has an academic badge, was assigned to the first Sevastopol fortress mine company of engineering troops, starting work on strengthening western borders Russian Empire. In October 1912, he, along with several fellow students at the academy, was transferred "to the disposal of the chief of engineers of the Warsaw military district." Under the command of the masters of military engineering, major generals Buynitsky and Ovchinnikov, Dmitry Mikhailovich took part in the construction of the forts of the Brest Fortress, carrying out engineering and reconnaissance work near Bialystok, as well as on the Dubno-Lutsk line.

construction of “Fort V” of the Brest Fortress

Brest Fortress

He worked there first as a junior foreman, and then as a senior foreman. Karbyshev's technical projects were sent to St. Petersburg and Warsaw as exemplary ones. In Brest, Dmitry Mikhailovich had a major personal misfortune - in 1913 his wife Alisa Karlovna tragically passed away, whom he met while serving on Far East and lived together for six years.

In the summer of 1914 the First World War. From the very beginning, Dmitry Mikhailovich asked the leadership to send him to the front line. Soon the report was satisfied, and already in the fall of this year, the engineer-captain was in the army on the South-Western Front. He fought in the Carpathians in the Eighth Army of General Alexei Brusilov and was an engineer in the 69th and 78th Infantry Divisions, and later the head of the engineering service of the 22nd Finnish Rifle Corps. Many advances and retreats, positional battles, along with Russian soldiers, artillerymen and cavalrymen, went through the courageous commander of a sapper company, and then the battalion Karbyshev. Repeatedly he had to go into bayonet attacks, many of his fellow officers and subordinate sappers fell, who, as usual, were under enemy fire in the rearguard of the retreating and in the vanguard of the advancing troops.

engineer-captain D.M. Karbyshev

In March 1915, in the battle for the capture of the Przemysl fortress, he was wounded. The bullet passed right through the soft parts of the leg without touching the bone. After the cure, the courageous captain expressed a desire to return to the front. However, Dmitry Mikhailovich went to the front line not alone. Together with him, the nurse Lydia Vasilievna Opatskaya, who cared for Karbyshev in the hospital, left, becoming his wife and taking his last name. Subsequently, they had three children: Elena, Tatiana and Alexei.

In the life of a military engineer, new battles and new orders followed, received both for the skilful leadership of the troops subordinate to him, and for personally shown courage. Dmitry Mikhailovich was promoted to lieutenant colonel, in 1916 he, among others, participated in the famous Brusilov breakthrough, and in 1917 he participated in work to strengthen positions on the Romanian border. October Revolution found Dmitry Mikhailovich on the Southwestern Front. After painful reflection, Karbyshev decided to go over to the side of the Bolsheviks and part with both the royal shoulder straps and all the regalia and ranks. At the end of December 1918, meetings of soldiers were held in many units of the Sixth and Eighth Armies. The engineering company of the Siberian division was no exception. Dmitry Mikhailovich was elected chairman of the meeting. After a heated debate, 215 sappers of the company adopted a resolution in which they announced support for Soviet power by all available means. The text of this resolution was published by the newspaper of the army committee called "Warrior-Citizen" in January 1918. And soon an order was issued by the commander of the Romanian Front, General Shcherbachev, who refused to obey Soviet power, to destroy the sixth and eighth "rebellious" armies.

Dmitry Grigorievich Shcherbachev

The punitive detachments moved to Mogilev-Podolsky, where the Military Revolutionary Committee was located together with the field headquarters of the Eighth Army. Thus was born a new front of the civil war. Karbyshev was instructed to build defensive fortifications around the city, as well as to bring bridges across the Dniester into a defensive state. Special Red Guard detachments were created against the advancing units of General Shcherbachev, and some time later Dmitry Mikhailovich was sent to one of these units as a detachment engineer.

After the conclusion of a peace treaty humiliating for our country, Soviet troops were withdrawn beyond the demarcation line, and Karbyshev and his wife arrived in Voronezh in April 1918. However, he stayed there for a few days, having received an order to go to the capital of Russia. In Moscow, Dmitry Mikhailovich was appointed to the Collegium for Engineering Defense of the new state, formed under the Main Military Engineering Directorate, which was headed by the most experienced engineer-general Konstantin Velichko. During the period of peaceful respite, Kardyshev left Moscow only twice. In May 1918, he left for Tula, and from there went to the border with German-occupied Ukraine in order to inspect engineering work in border curtains and detachments. And in the middle of summer, he visited the Smolensk defensive region for the same purpose. The next trip in August 1918 was already to the front. Karbyshev was heading to Kizlyar to take the place of the head of the engineering department of the North Caucasian Military District. However, he never reached his destination, "stuck" in Tsaritsyn. This city, from August 1918 until the end of the year, repelled the offensive of the White Cossacks three times. Based on the experience gained in the bloody battles near Tsaritsyn, Dmitry Mikhailovich formulated a position that became his motto for life: “It is not the walls that defend themselves, but the people. The walls only help."

defense of Tsaritsyn

In early November 1918, the situation on the Eastern Front changed dramatically, and Dmitry Mikhailovich was sent to strengthen the lines on the banks of the Volga. Reconnaissance over five hundred kilometers from Syzran to the town of Tetyush was carried out by Karbyshev in a record short time in just eight days. By that time, the military engineer already knew the field fortification perfectly and had a rare gift to combine it with the operational art of the troops and tactics. His final project included a detailed explanatory note, the exact locations of the batteries and their required caliber, showed panoramic views of the most important fortifications from different positions, and a brief estimate for the work. Kamenev, commander of the Eastern Front, expressed gratitude to Dmitry Mikhailovich, calling the project exemplary.

Sergei Sergeevich Kamenev

The reproduced materials were sent to the troops, and later the Main Military Engineering Directorate issued them as a separate brochure.
At the end of 1918, Karbyshev arrived in Samara and immediately began to form the Office of the Military Field Construction of the Eastern Front. The task assigned to Dmitry Mikhailovich was extremely difficult - in the region of Samarskaya Luka, in the shortest possible time, create the Volga defensive line, stretching for more than two hundred kilometers. To do this, it was necessary to extract and move entire mountains of land, to build strong fortifications, barracks and dugouts for sapper units and civilian workers from scratch. Karbyshev did not have construction earthmoving mechanisms, and the local peasants did not want to work for money, demanding sugar, kerosene, nails, matches, horseshoes - in a word, everything that the village needed. Having none of this, Karbyshev turned quartermaster rations into a salary. However, this did not help either - there were a catastrophic shortage of workers, besides, the time for plowing was approaching, and an increasing number of villagers left for the spring field harvest. After painful deliberation, Dmitry Mikhailovich suggested that the command form separate working squads in the deep rear along with the Red Army units. Since time did not wait, Karbyshev, having received permission from the chief of engineers of the Eastern Front, undertook to independently organize them. And in December 1918, the initiative Mikhail Frunze was appointed commander of the Fourth Army of the Eastern Front.

Mikhail Vasilievich Frunze

Thanks to his help, construction began to boil in in full along the entire front. In a short time, defensive centers were built in the most important directions in Samara, Simbirsk, Saratov, Zlatoust, Kurgan, Chelyabinsk, Troitsk and many other cities, which played a huge role in defeating the White Guards. Karbyshev followed the construction of fortifications and designed new ones, performed complex calculations, wrote instructions, instructions and memos. By the way, everything he wrote was distinguished by a special, unique style, accessible even to people ignorant of military engineering.
In March 1919, Kolchak's army launched an offensive, separate parts of the White Guards came close to Samara. A threatening situation also developed near the city of Simbirsk (now Ulyanovsk). While Frunze was assembling a powerful strike group to defeat Kolchak, Karbyshev, who had been appointed the chief leader of the defensive work of the Eastern Front, received an urgent task to organize another line of defense in Samara on the northeastern side of the city. It passed five to seven kilometers from the center, now Karbysheva Street is located at this place. All work was completed on time, and the frontier became an insurmountable obstacle for the Whites. However, Dmitry Mikhailovich became famous after organizing the defense of the city of Uralsk - a key link in the plans of the command of the Eastern Front to prevent the unification of the troops of Kolchak and Denikin. Having carried out reconnaissance and the necessary calculations, the military engineer convincingly proved that if the enemy did not have heavy artillery, Uralsk could be held even when completely surrounded. Commanding a hundred sappers, with the help of local residents, he managed to build fortifications that made it possible for the three thousandth garrison in a complete blockade to hold out against a six-fold superior enemy for two months.

After the defeat of Kolchak, Karbyshev was appointed chief of engineers of the Fifth Army of the Eastern Front and was engaged in strengthening the Trans-Baikal bridgehead against the White Guards of Ataman Semenov and the Japanese invaders. In addition, Dmitry Mikhailovich devoted a lot of time to the restoration of the railway transport in Siberia. Thanks to his initiative and organizational skills, over a hundred kilometers of tracks, dozens of bridges, telegraph and telephone communications in cities, as well as in the offensive zone of the Fifth Red Army, were established in a short time. Frunze wrote about him: "Karbyshev is a man of amazing capacity for work and extraordinary talents."

In 1920 the Southern Front became the key one. In August of this year, a military engineer arrived in the Crimea, and in the battles with the Wrangelites near Kakhovka for the first time in national history successfully organized anti-tank defense - the Red Army not only repelled the attack of armored monsters, but also captured seven tanks.

In the future, Dmitry Mikhailovich was responsible for engineering support for the assault on the fortifications of the Turkish Wall at Perekop and the Chongar Isthmus. And a year later, in 1921, Karbyshev was already in Ukraine and took part in the development of plans for operations to capture and destroy Makhno's gangs.

In the end, the civil war ended, and a period of peaceful and creative work began in the life of the young Republic of Soviets. The Karbyshev family settled in the capital on Smolensky Boulevard. In March 1923, Dmitry Mikhailovich was appointed chairman of the engineering committee (soon transformed into the military technical committee) of the Main Military Engineering Directorate. Since 1924, part-time Karbyshev began lecturing at once in a number of military academies. In 1926 he began teaching at the Military Academy. Frunze, and eight years later he took the post of head of the military engineering department of the Military Academy of the General Staff, educating a whole galaxy of domestic military engineers. It is curious that at the same time Dmitry Mikhailovich himself did not have an academic education. To eliminate this shortcoming, Karbyshev sat down at the desk in the fifty-sixth year and in 1938 graduated with brilliance from the Military Academy of the General Staff of the Red Army. All this time he did not leave any scientific, teaching or practical activities. The Patriarch of the Russian Engineering Troops, Major General Ivan Belinsky, characterized Karbyshev as follows:

“Proportionately built, small in stature. Differs in sharp agility in movements. All like a stretched string. The face is slightly pockmarked, the eyes are shiny and black. He jokes very well, very witty.

Twenty years after the end of the civil war, Karbyshev devoted to the development of new means of military engineering equipment, the study of various kinds of inventive and rationalization proposals, the creation of advanced subversive means. He participated in the development of the first prototypes of Soviet anti-tank and anti-personnel mines, proposed a number of technical innovations to strengthen defensive facilities, reduce the cost and facilitate the construction of fortifications. Special attention Dmitry Mikhailovich paid attention to the problems of forcing water barriers, their engineering support. Karbyshev wrote more than a hundred scientific papers, articles and teaching aids. His works, devoted to the problems of the tactics of the engineering troops and the engineering support of the battle, became the main materials in the pre-war years in the training of Red Army commanders. In 1940, Karbyshev was awarded the rank of lieutenant general of the engineering troops, and on the eve of the war in February 1941 he received a doctorate in military sciences.

Before the start of World War II, Karbyshev was sent to the Western Special Military District. The war found him at the headquarters of the third army, located in Grodno. On the morning of June 22, 1941, Dmitry Mikhailovich woke up from frequent and strong explosions of air bombs. Having quickly dressed, he went to the headquarters, which had already announced a combat alert. All staff officers moved to a shelter arranged in the basement of the house. Enemy aircraft bombed the city in waves. After one of the explosions, the city power plant went out of order, and the lights went out. The telephone connection stopped working, with difficulty the headquarters of the third army communicated by radio with its units. Two days later, Karbyshev moved to the headquarters of the tenth army, which by June 27 was surrounded. From the memoirs of the surviving participants, it follows that Karbyshev constantly participated in battles, and also refused personal protection. In August 1941, when the situation worsened, he, among others, attempted a breakthrough. When crossing the Dnieper just north of Mogilev, Dmitry Mikhailovich was shell-shocked and captured in an unconscious state.

Thus began the bitter and terrible journey of the general through the fascist dungeons. Unfortunately, there are no special studies on the long years of the military engineer's stay in German captivity. All stories about him are based either on the recollections of eyewitnesses or on documents found by the Nazis, closely intertwined with the legends that arose around the name of the famous general. In addition, almost all high-ranking representatives of the Red Army command staff who were imprisoned with Karbyshev did not live to see the Victory.

One of the first camps where Dmitry Mikhailovich ended up was a former artillery range, located five kilometers from the Polish town of Ostrow Mazowiecka. A place of ten square kilometers became a haven for eighty thousand Soviet prisoners of war. Private, junior and middle commanders of the Red Army were kept in the corrals of the main camp, officers of the senior and senior command staff were placed in the other two. Most of the prisoners were in summer uniforms and lived in the open, hiding in holes dug in the sand. The extermination of prisoners of war began very soon - according to some sources, over six months (from June to December) more than forty thousand Soviet soldiers were hanged, shot, died of disease, hunger and cold.

The Nazis, who learned that a Russian general was in front of them, watched Karbyshev especially carefully. At the end of August, Dmitry Mikhailovich collapsed with dysentery. Comrades looked after him, taking out rice water and other "delicacies". Together, he was saved. And soon after recovery, the Germans for the first time offered Karbyshev to go to their service. However, Dmitry Mikhailovich flatly refused. In September 1941, the general, along with a large group of prisoners of war, was transferred to another camp for officers, also located on Polish territory in the city of Zamosc. At the end of the year, a terrible epidemic of typhus began in this place. Hundreds of prisoners died, and their corpses did not have time to be taken out. Dmitri Mikhailovich also caught typhus. And again, the Russian officers did not leave him to the mercy of fate. By common efforts, Karbyshev was well-groomed and began to recover.

The Nazis repeatedly tried to persuade the Soviet general to work for them, offering him money and tempting posts. Once Dmitry Mikhailovich answered them with a legendary phrase: “My convictions do not fall out along with my teeth ... I am a soldier and will remain faithful to my duty. And he forbids me to work for a country that is at war with my homeland.” After six months of fruitless persuasion and torture, in April 1942 the Nazis sent the general to the Hammelburg officer concentration camp in Lower Bavaria. His appearance there did not go unnoticed. Dmitry Mikhailovich strove to address the prisoners as often as possible, to explain to people the situation on the fronts, to inspire confidence in victory and good spirits. He often repeated to his comrades: "We are prisoners, but not slaves, The main thing is not to fall on our knees." They believed him own example he made people remember that they were representatives of the mighty Russian people. A particularly sharp change in the mood of the prisoners of war occurred after the destruction of the Nazi group near Stalingrad. In the evenings, after work was completed, Soviet prisoners, led by Karbyshev, gathered near the wire fence of the generals' block and exchanged news about the situation on the fronts, about the victories of the Red Army. By the way, the authorship of the general is credited with the “Rules of conduct for Soviet commanders and fighters in German captivity”, which the prisoners retold to each other and which helped people survive in inhuman conditions. It is not known whether he compiled them alone or together with like-minded friends, however, from Hammelburg, the “Rules” with various additions spread to other concentration camps, in fact, turning into a people's document.

A special place during Karbyshev's Hammelburg captivity is occupied by his trip to Berlin in early February 1943. There, the Soviet general was offered a place in the scientific laboratory of engineering fortification. Despite meeting with Wilhelm von Keitel himself, Dmitry Mikhailovich categorically refused to cooperate, went on a hunger strike and demanded an immediate return to the concentration camp. After that, he spent some time in a solitary cell in the Gestapo building on Prinz Albert Strasse. The Germans, convinced of the futility of attempts to persuade the general to their side, gave the following conclusion on his case: "... a prominent Soviet fortifier is fanatically devoted to the ideas of loyalty to military duty and patriotism ... It can be considered hopeless attempts to use him as an expert in military engineering ". At the end of the document there was a resolution: “Send to hard labor in Flossenbürg. Do not make allowances for age and rank.

Flossenbürg concentration camp

In the middle of 1943, under a reinforced SS escort, a handcuffed military engineer was sent to the extermination camp in Flossenbürg. This place was surrounded by six rows of electric barbed wire. Stone towers allowed the guards to shoot from machine guns and machine guns throughout the area adjacent to the camp. Two crematorium furnaces worked behind the wire, and in 1944 eleven gas chambers were put into operation here. After the war, a memorial plaque was installed on the chimney of the crematorium. The numbers of burned people are engraved on it - eighty thousand people of twenty different nationalities. It was here that the Nazis sent most of the Soviet captured generals, many of whom died here.

In this terrible place, Karbyshev was engaged in the hard work of dragging stones. By that time, in a dried up and hunched old man, dressed in tattered soldier's uniforms, and close people would not immediately recognize the always toned, slender lieutenant general. A month and a half later, the completely exhausted Dmitry Mikhailovich was transferred to the hospital due to illness and stayed there from mid-May until the end of summer. The Gestapo took Karbyshev from the hospital. What he was accused of is unknown, but he was shackled and thrown into the Nuremberg prison. But Dmitry Mikhailovich survived this, and again returned to Flossenbürg, and again worked in the quarries until the end of January 1944. And in February, the selection of prisoners for sending to other camps began. The move did not please anyone, it was clear to everyone that they were not being taken for treatment. Among others, Dmitry Mikhailovich also left this terrible place. Soon he recognized the final destination of his "journey" - the Majdanek camp, located near the Polish city of Lublin.

Majdanek furnaces for burning prisoners

It was another concentration camp of death, in which the number of people killed at that time had already exceeded one million. It was in this place that the Nazis first used gas chambers. There were seven of them in total, accommodating up to two thousand people. Karbyshev stayed in the camp until mid-April 1944. In connection with rumors about the approach of Red Army units and Polish partisans, Majdanek was hastily evacuated. Again, for the umpteenth time, the military engineer set off on the road. Majdanek, which became front-line, was replaced by rear Auschwitz, located in Silesia, sixty kilometers from Krakow on the right bank of the Sola. A different name for the camp and a different landscape, but the essence remained the same. If one and a half million people were killed in Majdanek, then more than four million were killed in Auschwitz. Karbyshev did not know these figures. He saw only hanged, tortured, shot, black smoke from crematoria and ditches clogged with human bodies. In Auschwitz, the prisoners ceased to be people with a surname and a given name - they only had a number. 1944 was the most difficult year for the prisoners of the camp.

From different countries Europe daily arrived transports with captives. Thousands of them were sent to gas chambers, crematoriums smoked day and night. Sometimes more than fifteen thousand people were killed here in a day. General Karbyshev worked in the camp cleaning team. From early morning until evening, he walked with a broom and cleaned the garbage pits. According to the stories of the survivors, the camp commandant and his entourage repeatedly mocked the Soviet general. Nevertheless, Karbyshev did not give up, and dozens of Soviet people supported him.

Meanwhile, Soviet troops were driving the Germans west. At the end of 1944, the Gestapo selected several Soviet officers in Auschwitz, including Dmitry Mikhailovich, and took them to Sachsenhausen, the famous “death factory”, located thirty kilometers from Berlin. It was here that the Nazis trained new cadres of executioners, who were then sent to other concentration camps and to the occupied territories. Sachsenhausen was a transit point, from where tens of thousands of prisoners were sent to Auschwitz, Flossenbürg, Majdanek ... In mid-February, Dmitry Mikhailovich passed through the gates of Mauthausen, spread out on the flat top of a rocky hill.

Mauthausen

On the second day after arriving at the camp (February 18, 1945), Dmitry Mikhailovich, together with a group of prisoners, was taken out into the yard. There they were ordered to undress and left to stand in the cold. It was about -10 degrees Celsius, it was blowing from the mountains cold wind, and many emaciated prisoners fell dead, unable to withstand this test. In the evening, the surviving prisoners were driven into the bathhouse and put under the shower, and after half an hour they were again driven out into the cold. The prisoners who did not want to die were watered with hoses. According to the memoirs, Karbyshev's last words were: “Comrades! Think of the Motherland, and courage will not leave you.”

monument to D.M. Karbyshev in Mauthausen

memorial at Mauthausen

For three and a half years, Dmitry Mikhailovich visited thirteen (!) death camps. For exceptional courage and stamina shown in captivity, on August 16, 1946, he was posthumously awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union. The eldest daughter of the patriot general Elena followed the path of her father, becoming a famous military engineer.

monument to D.M. Karbyshev in Moscow

monument to D.M. Karbyshev in Omsk

Dmitry Mikhailovich Karbyshev was born on October 26 in the city of Omsk. He came from a well-known in the Siberian Cossack army officer dynasty. At the beginning of the 19th century, the Siberian Cossacks settled in the southern Siberian lands, founded their capital - Omsk, to secure the northern outskirts of the Kirghiz (Kazakh) steppe for Russia, they began to build field fortifications in it, which became Cossack villages, and develop fertile lands.
In those years, centurion Ivan Karbyshev was known among the Siberian Cossacks, who took an active part in a number of scientific expeditions to study the natural resources of Semirechie, the southeastern corner of modern Kazakhstan. With his "light hand", when he was already in the rank of colonel, in 1854 in Semirechye, on the site of the Kazakh settlement of Almaty, the Vernoye fortification was laid, which thirteen years later became the city of Verny.

Dmitry Karbyshev's grandfather graduated from military school Siberian Cossack army, then transformed into the Omsk (Siberian) Cadet Corps. Dmitry Mikhailovich's father graduated from the same building. He distinguished himself in the Crimean (Eastern) War of 1853-1856, was awarded the military orders of Saints Anna and Stanislav, 3rd degree.
twelve years oldKarbyshevleft without a father. The children were raised by their mother.The elder brother, Vladimir, was expelled from Kazan University and arrested in 1887 for participating in the student revolutionary movement, the family was under police supervision andDmitryKarbyshev was not admitted to the Siberian Cadet Corps for training at public expense.

September 6, 1891 DMitriy Karbyshev wasenlisted in the corps "coming for a fee." Despite great financial difficulties, Karbyshev brilliantly graduated from the Siberian Cadet Corps and in 1898 was admitted tometropolitanNikolaev Engineering School. In 1900, after graduating from college, he was sent to serve in the 1st East Siberian sapper battalion, head of the cable department of the telegraph company. The battalion was stationed in Manchuria. In 1903 he was promoted to lieutenant.
fightThe first baptism for the young officer was the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-1905. He served in an infantry division, doingwhat military engineers were supposed to doin the fields of Manchuria: erected field fortifications, improved roads, built bridges.

In 1911, Dmitry Mikhailovich Karbyshev graduated with honors from the Nikolaev Military Engineering Academy. According to the distribution, staff captain Karbyshev was sent to Brest-Litovsk to the post of commander of a mine company. There he took part in the construction of the forts of the Brest Fortress.

Member of the First World War from the first day. Fought in the Carpathians in the 8th Army of General Brusilov ( southwestern front). He was a divisional engineer of the 78th and 69th infantry divisions, then the head of the engineering service of the 22nd Finnish Rifle Corps. In early 1915 he took part in the assault on the fortress of Przemysl. Was wounded in the leg. For bravery and courage he was awarded the Order of St. Anna and promoted to lieutenant colonel. In 1916 he was a member of the famous Brusilovsky breakthrough. In 1917, the manufacturer of works to strengthen positions on the border with Romania.

In December 1917, in Mogilev-Podolsky, D. M. Karbyshev joined the Red Guard. Since 1918 in the Red Army - a participant in the Civil War.
Since October 1920, Karbyshev served as deputy chief of engineers of the Southern Front, supervised the construction of fortifications on the Kakhovka bridgehead. In November 1920, he led the engineering support for the assault on the Chongar fortifications and Perekop. In 1921-1923, Dmitry Mikhailovich was an assistant, deputy, and then head of engineers of the armed forces of Ukraine and Crimea.

In 1923-1926Karbyshev- Chairman of the Engineering Committee of the Main Military Engineering Directorate of the Red Army. From 1926 he taught at the Frunze Military Academy. In 1929 Karbyshev was appointed the author of the Molotov and Stalin Lines project. In February 1934 he was appointed head of the military engineering department of the Military Academy of the General Staff. On December 5, 1935, he was awarded the rank of division engineer.

Since 1936, he was assistant head of the department of tactics of higher formations for engineering troops of the Military Academy of the General Staff. In 1938 he graduated from the Military Academy of the General Staff. On October 23, 1938, he was approved as a professor.

Dmitry Mikhailovich Karbyshev, a participant in the Soviet-Finnish war of 1939-1940. As part of the group of the Deputy Chief of the Main Military Engineering Directorate for Defensive Construction, he developed recommendations for the troops on engineering support for the breakthrough of the Mannerheim Line.

In 1940, Karbyshev was awarded the rank of lieutenant general of the engineering troops. In 1941 - academic degree doctor of military sciences.

In early June 1941 Karbyshev was sent to the Western Special Military District. The Great Patriotic War found him at the headquarters of the 3rd Army in Grodno. After 2 days, he moved to the headquarters of the 10th Army. On June 27, the army headquarters was surrounded. On August 8, 1941, while trying to get out of the encirclement, General Karbyshev was seriously shell-shocked in battle in the Dnieper region, near the village of Dobreika, Mogilev Region. In an unconscious state, he was captured.

Karbyshev spent three and a half years in fascist dungeons. Unfortunately, there is still no scientific research(or at least truthful publications) about that tragic and heroic period in the life of the great Soviet general. For several years, nothing was known about the fate of Karbyshev in Moscow. It is noteworthy that in his "Personal File" in 1941 an official note was made: "Missing."

In early 1943, Soviet intelligence learned that the commander of one of the German infantry units, Colonel Pelit, was urgently recalled from the Eastern Front and appointed commandant of the camp in Hammelburg. At one time, the colonel graduated from the cadet school in St. Petersburg and was fluent in Russian. But it is especially noteworthy that the former officer of the tsarist army, Pelit, once served in Brest together with Captain Karbyshev. But this fact did not cause special associations among Soviet intelligence officers. Say, both traitors and real Bolsheviks served in the tsarist army.
But the fact is that it was Pelit who was instructed to conduct personal work with the "prisoner of war, lieutenant general of the engineering troops." At the same time, the colonel was warned that the Russian scientist was of "special interest" to the Wehrmacht and, in particular, to the main department of the German engineering service. We must make every effort to make him work for the Germans.

By the end of October 1942, the Germans realized that it was impossible to win over to the side of Nazi Germany from Karbyshev. Here is the content of one of the secret letters that Colonel Pelit received from a "higher authority": "The High Command of the Engineering Service again turned to me about the prisoner Karbyshev, professor, Lieutenant General of the Engineering Troops, who is in your camp. I was forced to delay the resolution of the issue, since I counted on the fact that you will follow my instructions regarding the named prisoner, you will be able to find with him mutual language and convince him that if he correctly assesses the situation that has developed for him and meets our desires, a good future awaits him. However, Major Peltzer, who I sent to you for inspection, in his report stated the general unsatisfactory fulfillment of all plans regarding the Hammelburg camp and, in particular, the captive Karbyshev.

The general was placed in a solitary cell with no windows, with a bright, constantly flashing electric lamp. While in the cell, Karbyshev lost track of time. The day here was not divided into day and night, there were no walks. But, as he later told his comrades in captivity, apparently at least two or three weeks passed before he was summoned for the first interrogation. It was the usual reception of jailers, - Karbyshev later recalled, analyzing all this "event" with professorial accuracy: the prisoner is brought into a state of complete apathy, atrophy of the will, before being taken "in promotion".
After carefully listening to the conditions of "cooperation", Dmitry Mikhailovich calmly replied: "My convictions do not fall out along with my teeth from a lack of vitamins in the camp diet. I am a soldier and remain true to my duty. And he forbids me to work for that country that is at war with my motherland."
“I don’t have long to live,” the major said to a Soviet officer, “that’s why I’m worried about the fact that the facts of the heroic death of a Soviet general known to me, the noble memory of which should live in the hearts of people, don’t go to the grave with me. I’m talking about the general - Lieutenant Karbyshev, with whom I had to visit the German camps.

Dmitry Mikhailovich Karbyshev owns the most complete research and development of the issues of the use of destruction and barriers. His contribution to the scientific development of issues of forcing rivers and other water barriers is significant. He has published more than 100 scientific papers on military engineering and military history. His articles and manuals on the theory of engineering support for combat and operations, the tactics of engineering troops were the main materials for the training of Red Army commanders in the prewar years. Karbyshev was a consultant of the Academic Council on restoration work at the Trinity-Sergius Lavra.

Monument to D. M. Karbyshev. Moscow, boulevard of General Karbyshev

fishki.net › 1712205-dmitrij…karbyshev.html

Vladimir Kruzhkov

At the entrance to the former Nazi concentration camp“Mauthausen” (located in Austria) on the so-called “Wailing Wall” a marble plaque hangs: “At this place, a lieutenant general of the engineering troops died a painful death Soviet army Hero of the Soviet Union Karbyshev Dmitry Mikhailovich. 1880-1945".

On the night of February 17-18, 1945, after brutal torture, the German fascists took General Karbyshev out into the cold, took off all his clothes and poured cold water over him until the general's body turned into an ice column. The corpse of the general was burned by the Nazis in the ovens of Mauthausen. Torture and bullying did not break the will of the fiery fighter for the liberation of the peoples of the world from the fascist yoke. General Karbyshev died a hero's death." On the territory of the memorial complex in Mauthausen, which, by the way, was established at the insistence of the Soviet side, a monument to the general was subsequently erected as well.

The surname of Karbyshev is well-known: in addition to memorial buildings in Russia and other countries, there are numerous streets and squares (there are more than 160 of them in Russia alone!), schools, shipping facilities, and even minor planet solar system(between Mars and Jupiter) bearing his name. Nevertheless, those who are younger, knowing in principle about this or that hero, unfortunately, cannot always tell anything intelligibly about him. In addition, in the publications of the Soviet period, as a rule, the period of life of certain outstanding personalities of the Soviet Union under the tsar was, as a rule, poorly covered for the sake of ideological considerations. On the anniversary of the 70th anniversary of the death of the general, we will try to answer the question posed in the title of this article.

On the military and scientific path

D.M. Karbyshev was born on October 26 (14), 1880 in Omsk in the family of a military official. The father died when the boy was only 12 years old. His older brother was arrested for participating in the student revolutionary movement, and for this reason the family was in the field of police attention. Dmitry was not accepted into the Siberian Cadet Corps for education at the state expense, but was enrolled as "coming for a fee." Despite the financial need of his single mother, Karbyshev graduated with honors from the Siberian Cadet Corps and continued his studies at the Nikolaev Engineering School in St. Petersburg.
He began his military service in 1900 in the telegraph company of a sapper battalion in Manchuria. He also participated in the Russo-Japanese War. He was awarded many orders and medals. In 1906, apparently on a far-fetched charge of agitation among the soldiers, he was forced to resign from military service at his own request. Tried to make a living drawing in Vladivostok, but not very successful.

In 1907 he returned to military service - in the newly formed sapper battalion in Vladivostok. After some time, he entered the Nikolaev Military Engineering Academy in St. Petersburg, which he graduated with honors in 1911. According to the distribution, staff captain Karbyshev was sent to Brest-Litovsk, where he took part in the construction of fortifications of the subsequently legendary Brest Fortress, which the Nazi troops could not capture for a long time, despite the absolute numerical and fire superiority over heroic defenders completely surrounded military facility.

During the First World War, Karbyshev fought with the troops of Austria-Hungary in the Carpathians as part of the army of the valiant General A. A. Brusilov as a military engineer. Participated in the assault on the Przemysl fortress in early 1915. He was wounded in the leg. For courage and courage he was awarded the Order of St. Anna and promoted to lieutenant colonel. In 1916, he participated in the legendary Brusilovsky breakthrough, as a result of which the military machine of Austria-Hungary received a blow from which it could not recover, and the Russian army managed to recapture part of Galicia and all of Bukovina.

In December 1917, D. M. Karbyshev, in the conditions of a deep political split in Russian society, adopted difficult decision in favor of the revolutionary forces and remained on the side of the "reds" during the civil war as a sought-after head of engineering work in the Urals, Siberia, the Caucasus, and the Volga region. In 1921-23. was first assistant, deputy, and then chief of engineers of the armed forces of Ukraine and Crimea.

In 1923-1926. he was appointed chairman of the Engineering Committee of the Main Military Engineering Directorate of the Red Army. Since 1926 he worked as a teacher at the Military Academy. M.V. Frunze, and since 1934 - the head of the department of military engineering. Since 1936 he was an assistant to the beginning. department of tactics of higher formations in engineering of the Military Academy of the General Staff of the Red Army. In 1938 he graduated from this academy and was approved as a professor. In 1940, he was awarded the rank of lieutenant general of the engineering troops. In the same year he became a member of the Communist Party.

On the scientific path, D.M. Karbyshev made a significant contribution to the development of military engineering art and military history, publishing more than 100 scientific papers. His materials on the theory of engineering support for combat operations were actively used in the pre-war period in the preparation of the leadership of the Red Army. Karbyshev also proved himself in the civil sphere, advising the Academic Council on restoration work at the Trinity-Sergius Lavra in Sergiev Posad. During the Soviet-Finnish war of 1939-1940. Dmitry Mikhailovich developed recommendations for the troops on engineering support for a successful breakthrough of the Mannerheim Line.

In Nazi captivity

The Great Patriotic War found him in Belarus at staff work. On June 27, 1941, the headquarters of the 10th Army was surrounded, and on August 8, when trying to get out of it, General Karbyshev was seriously shell-shocked in battle in the Mogilev region and was captured by the Germans in an unconscious state. Military historian V.A. Mirkiskin in the publication “Unbroken General” (“Independent Military Review”, November 14, 2003) outlined the main ups and downs of Karbyshev’s stay in Nazi dungeons, which lasted three and a half years.

The general's imprisonment began in a distribution camp near the city of Ostrov-Mazowiecki (Poland). There Karbyshev fell ill with a severe form of dysentery. Then Dmitry Mikhailovich was transferred to a camp in the Polish town of Zamosc, where more or less tolerable conditions were created. The Nazis, carefully watching the Soviet general even before the start of the war, hoped that he, feeling "gratitude" for the "good" conditions of imprisonment, would agree to cooperate with them. The famous Soviet military engineer was undoubtedly of particular interest to German intelligence, not only as a specialist, but also as a valuable symbol in terms of promoting fascist propaganda, if he went on a betrayal - like the infamous General Vlasov.

Karbyshev, however, did not give the enemies the slightest reason to doubt his stamina. In the spring of 1942, Dmitry Mikhailovich was transferred to the concentration camp in Hammelburg in Bavaria. This special institution contained exclusively Soviet generals and officers. Revealing the cowardly, the Nazis tried to recruit them using ingenious methods. That is why the illusion of "humane treatment" with prisoners was created in this camp. But these "charms" of the Nazis did not work on our general. It was there that his motto was born: “There is no greater victory than victory over yourself! The main thing is not to fall on your knees before the enemy.”

Since 1943, a former officer of the Russian tsarist army, by the name of Pelit, joined in the recruitment of Karbyshev (it is important that this same Pelit served together with Dmitry Mikhailovich in Brest). Pelit let in all his cunning. Under the guise of an experienced officer, "far from politics", he proved to Karbyshev the "advantages" of cooperation with the Germans. Dmitry Mikhailovich, however, stood his ground: "I do not betray the Motherland." Moreover, he was able to dissuade most of the other prisoners of war from participating in the Goebbels adventure.

The German secret services continued to subtly and methodically stick to their line. Karbyshev is sent to Berlin and placed in solitary confinement without windows, with a bright, constantly flashing light bulb. According to the subsequent stories of the general to his comrades in captivity, at least two to three weeks passed before he was summoned for the first interrogation. Classic technique: the prisoner is brought to a state of physical exhaustion, apathy, a breakdown of will, before making an "interesting offer." The Germans organize a meeting with the famous German professor and expert in fortification engineering G. Raubenheimer and offer him release with attractive conditions: work and residence in Germany, or even the opportunity to travel to one of the neutral countries. The Soviet general is adamant and presents another surprise to the Nazis: “My convictions do not fall out along with my teeth from a lack of vitamins in the camp diet. I am a soldier and I remain true to my duty. And he forbids me to work for the country that is at war with my Motherland.”

This position leads to another change in recruiting tactics - Karbyshev is transported to the Flossenbürg concentration camp, famous for exhausting hard labor and extremely inhuman conditions for prisoners. One of the Soviet captured officers recalled after the war: “Once Dmitry Mikhailovich and I worked in a barn, hewn granite columns for roads, facing and tombstones. Regarding the latter, Karbyshev (who, even in the most difficult situation, did not change his sense of humor), suddenly remarked: "Here is a job that gives me real pleasure. The more tombstones the Germans demand from us, the better, it means, our affairs are going at the front" ".

After 6 months, the general is transferred to the Gestapo prison in Nuremberg. Then followed Majdanek, Auschwitz, Sachsenhausen, where, despite his 64 years, he was one of the activists of the camp resistance movement, convincing his comrades of the inevitability of the USSR's victory over the enemy. The final destination was Mauthausen. As follows from the documents of the Nazis found after the liberation of Berlin, Dmitry Mikhailovich was put an end to: unfortunately, he turned out to be thoroughly infected with the Bolshevik spirit, fanatically devoted to the idea of ​​loyalty, military duty and patriotism.

General's death

On the night of February 18, 1945, when Soviet troops smashed the Nazis already in Hungary and Czechoslovakia, neighboring Austria, Karbyshev was killed among other prisoners (about 500 people) in the Mauthausen concentration camp. This execution was observed by some Soviet prisoners from the windows of the barracks, not knowing who exactly the massacre took place. The martyrdom of our general in February 1946 was told by Canadian Army Major Seddon De St. Clair, who was imprisoned in Mauthausen, but survived: “As soon as we entered the camp, the Germans drove us into the shower room, ordered us to undress and let us in. us from above jets of icy water. This went on for a long time. Everyone turned blue. Many fell to the floor and immediately died: the heart could not stand it. Then we were told to put on only underwear and wooden blocks for our feet and were driven out into the yard. General Karbyshev was standing in a group of Russian comrades not far from me. We understood that we were living out the last hours. A couple of minutes later, the Gestapo men, who were standing behind us with fire hoses in their hands, began to pour streams of cold water on us. Those who tried to evade the jet were beaten with clubs on the head. Hundreds of people fell frozen or with crushed skulls. I saw how General Karbyshev also fell. In August 1946, the general was posthumously awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union.

According to the stories of the grandchildren of Dmitry Mikhailovich, he was very sensitive to the cold throughout his life. Fate, however, decreed that he was martyred precisely in the cold (cf. documentary"General Karbyshev. Death and Life”, 2005, directed by O. Olgina).

Personal life and descendants

Some little-known moments in the life of the general and members of his family seem interesting. Engineer Colonel V.M. Dogadin, who, together with D.M. Karbyshev, studied at the Nikolaev Academy of Engineering, and then worked on the construction of the Brest Fortress before the First World War, wrote his memoirs in 1956 under the heading “Together with D.M. Karbyshev". The manuscript was donated to the Historical Museum and the Central Historical Military Engineering Museum, and was published in the National Archives magazine (Nos. 1 and 2) only in 2002. Its text is also posted on the website of the Young Karbyshevites patriotic movement. Here are some observations of V.M. Dogadin from a simple human side, which, we must take into account, may be partly subjective.

“He was taller than all the other officers. His hair was black, short, combed up, and wore a small mustache, twisted at the ends. His oblong face bore the marks of smallpox. In his build, he was thin, slender and well-built. He spoke quietly, without raising his voice, in a quick accent, in jerky phrases, equipping them with aphorisms and sharp words. In the pronunciation of words, a softening of the sound "r" towards "l" was noticed;

- “He was the same as all the other comrades, only distinguished by greater restraint and, as it were, alertness, which seemed dry to us. Only now did I understand his reticence, when I read the following words in his autobiography: “In 1906, I left the military service for the reserve. Reason: unwillingness to serve in the tsarist army. I was brought before the court of the “society of officers.” Having such a “past”, Karbyshev involuntarily had to be especially careful in his behavior”;

- “Karbyshev impressed us with his exceptional ability to make drawings. In particular, he surprised us with his ability to work by hand with a drawing pen. While we were all carefully drawing horizontal lines on the plan with a special curved drawing pen rotating on an axis, his ordinary drafting pen briskly and unmistakably ran across the sheet of paper. In response to our exclamations of admiration, he only remarked: “What is surprising here, because for about six months I earned my bread by this business” ”;

- “Women always liked Karbyshev, although he could not be called handsome”;

Here, to complete the picture of the life of Dmitry Mikhailovich, it should be mentioned that he was married twice. With his first wife, Alisa Karlovna Troyanovich (born 1874, of German origin), who was 6 years older than him, he met in Vladivostok. Having fallen in love, she left her former husband. After 6 years of marriage with Dmitry Mikhailovich, Alisa Karlovna tragically passed away in 1913. Here is what V. M. Dogadin recalls in this regard.

- “There was an opinion that the Germans are excellent craftsmen to cook deliciously. If this is so, then Alisa Karlovna Karbysheva served as a vivid confirmation of this opinion. There were only four of us with the owners. However, the table prepared for dinner was not only beautifully served, but the dishes served were distinguished by their sophistication and originality. We were particularly impressed by the variety of appetizers served with various vodkas before dinner. The hosts were cordial and affable, Dmitry Mikhailovich, as usual, talkative, playful and witty ”;

- “The Karbyshevs continued to live apart and cut off from the rest of the society of fortress engineers. And if, over time, our circle of young engineers was expanding due to the families of senior engineers, with whom obligatory big receptions were arranged for the Christmas holidays and for Shrovetide for each of us, when the number of those present reached 15 - 20 or more people, then the Karbyshevs absolutely never happened at such evenings”;

- “The conscious avoidance of the Karbyshevs from the rest of the society of engineers could not help but attract our general attention, and, searching for the reasons for their strange behavior, everyone came to the unanimous opinion that Alisa Karlovna carefully protected Dmitry Mikhailovich from the society of ladies, fearing that she she herself will lose greatly when compared with them ”;

- “Never being a beauty, at that time, at the age of under forty, she had a very faded appearance and therefore could not be compared with them either in beauty, or in her development and manners. That is why Alisa Karlovna, in our opinion, protected her husband from the company of our ladies, seeing in this a danger to his marital fidelity. After all, she had already experienced the power of his charms on herself, forgetting her first husband for him. However, all preventive measures did not save Alisa Karlovna from disaster”;

- “While on a business trip, Karbyshev always carefully wrote letters to his wife, although we were absent for only three days. And when they returned from a business trip, Dmitry Mikhailovich called Alisa Karlovna to Warsaw to be there with her. This shows what an attentive husband he was in relation to her ”;

- “As soon as Karbyshev returned to his apartment and began to wash his hands, his wife approached him, and a conversation took place between them as follows: “Where were you?” asked Alisa Karlovna. "At a meeting of officers," he replied. "Why don't you say who you met along the way?" (Alissa Karlovna, apparently, had already been informed that Karbyshev met the wife of an infantry officer, whom the Karbyshevs knew from the officers' meeting of the regiment, which was stationed in Brest-Litovsk near the station in Graevskaya Sloboda.) - "Let me wash my hands first." - "No, you wanted to hide this meeting from me." - "Well, if you talk like that, then I will not take you with me to Petersburg." - "Oh, you are!" - exclaimed Alisa Karlovna, rushed into the bedroom, threw a hook on the door and, seizing a small Browning revolver, began to shoot at herself. While Karbyshev was breaking open the door, she managed to fire five bullets, of which one hit her left arm, and the other from above into her stomach. The last bullet turned out to be fatal, and on the second or third day Alisa Karlovna died, begging the doctors before her death to save her, because she wants to live ... ";

- “The loss of his wife greatly shocked Dmitry Mikhailovich. Even now I clearly imagine him, as he, leaning his left hand on the edge of the coffin and leaning his head on it, stood in a frozen pose, not taking his eyes off the face of the deceased. I did not have the courage to interrupt his thoughts with banal phrases of consolation, and I quietly left. After the funeral of his wife, Dmitry Mikhailovich closed himself even more, did not show himself anywhere, and the attempts of some women to distract him were unsuccessful. Soon, as planned, he left for St. Petersburg to defend and approve his fort project”;

It can be assumed that the tragic deep nervous breakdown of Alisa Karlovna, apparently, accumulated for a long time. Its cause could be not only her painful jealousy, the fear of a fading woman to lose her beloved husband, but also, apparently, the inability to have children. Meanwhile, according to the recollections of colleagues, Dmitry Mikhailovich was very fond of children, played with them and, apparently, dreamed of having his own.

In January 1916, Dmitry Mikhailovich married a Muscovite sister of mercy Lidia Vasilievna Opatskaya (1892-1976), who was 12 years younger than him. She was with her husband on the front lines. For providing first aid to wounded soldiers medical care under enemy fire, Karbyshev's wife was awarded a medal. “In all subsequent years, Lydia Vasilievna followed her husband everywhere, shared with him all the hardships and trials of camp life. Often they had to live in dugouts or dilapidated houses, close to the front line, in the zones of shelling of enemy artillery. A caring wife and an excellent hostess, Lidia Vasilievna, even in front-line conditions, knew how to create home comfort in any uninhabited place, surrounded her husband with care and attention ”(Reshin E.G. General Karbyshev. M .: DOSAAF, 1987).

Three children were born in this marriage - Elena (1919-2006), Tatyana (1926-2003, graduated from the Institute of Foreign Trade, worked as an economist) and Alexei (1929-1988, also a graduate of the Institute of Foreign Trade, headed the department at Moscow Financial Institute).

As for the eldest daughter, Elena Dmitrievna followed in her father's footsteps. Participated in the defense of Leningrad, had military awards. In 1945 she graduated from college with honors in military engineering and was in military service, including in the main headquarters of the Navy with her husband. Elena Dmitrievna received the rank of colonel. She raised two sons. Senior - Vladimir, professor, candidate of technical sciences, lectured at the Civil Engineering Institute. The younger one, Oleg, worked for a long time as a geologist in Chukotka, then worked in Moscow at one of the research institutes (author - information from the site of the Young Karbyshevites movement, which took shape back in the 60s). Elena Dmitrievna rallied the “Karbyshevites” around herself, conducted active correspondence with them, was the organizer and participant of numerous rallies. According to various reviews, a very beautiful, surprisingly honest and wise, exceptionally intelligent woman, whose performances were always very bright and interesting.

I would like to believe that the life and death of General Karbyshev - the story of a martyr, a heroic man with an iron will who did not betray his ideals, will remain a vivid example of love for the Motherland also for new generations - the successors of those citizens of the USSR who defeated fascism, which seemed to many at one time invincible

Magazine "Wider Circle", No. 2 2015

Karbyshev, Dmitry Mikhailovich October 26, 1880 (18801026) February 18, 1945 Place of birth Omsk Place ... Wikipedia

Karbyshev Dmitry Mikhailovich- (1880-1945), military engineer, lieutenant general of engineering troops (1940), professor (1938), doctor of military sciences (1941), Hero of the Soviet Union (1946, posthumously). Member of the Communist Party since 1940. Graduated from the Nikolaev Engineering Academy ... ... Encyclopedic reference book "St. Petersburg"

- (1880 1945) military engineer, lieutenant general of engineering troops (1940), professor, doctor of military sciences, Hero of the Soviet Union (1946, posthumously). Member of the 1st World War and the Civil War. Since 1926 on teaching work, professor of a number of military ... ... Big Encyclopedic Dictionary

Soviet military commander, lieutenant general of engineering troops (1940), professor, doctor of military sciences (1941), Hero of the Soviet Union (8/16/1946). Member of the CPSU since 1940. Born in ... ... Great Soviet Encyclopedia

- (1880 1945), military engineer, lieutenant general of engineering troops (1940), professor (1938), doctor of military sciences (1941), Hero of the Soviet Union (1946, posthumously). Member of the Communist Party since 1940. Graduated from the Nikolaev Engineering Academy ... ... St. Petersburg (encyclopedia)

- (1880 1945), military engineer, lieutenant general of engineering troops (1940), professor, doctor of military sciences, Hero of the Soviet Union (1946, posthumously). Member of the 1st World War and the Civil War. From 1926 on teaching work, professor of a number of military ... encyclopedic Dictionary

- (1880, Omsk - 1945), military engineer and scientist, lieutenant general of engineering troops (1940), Hero of the Soviet Union (1946, posthumously). From the family of a military official. He graduated from the Nikolaev Engineering Academy in St. Petersburg (1911). Member of the Russian ... ... Moscow (encyclopedia)

Genus. 1880, d. (died) 1945. Military engineer, military leader. Member of the First World, Civil and Great Patriotic Wars. Since 1940, lieutenant general of engineering troops, Hero of the Soviet Union (1946, posthumously) ... Big biographical encyclopedia