M. D. Bonch-Bruevich — One of the Founders of the Red Army: Pages of a Biography

Abstract

This article examines the separate, little-known facts from the life of one of the founders of the Workers’ and Peasants’ Red Army (RKKA) Mikhail Dmitrievich Bonch-Bruevich. The authors draw attention to the willingness and ability of the Major General to adapt to various changing circumstances, calmly stepping through the rules of morality. In his officer’s youth for the sake of successfully continuing his career, he could expose his ex-wife in an extremely “unprofitable light” by going through a divorce procedure and making the circumstances of his personal life the subject of discussion not only of the spiritual court, but also of the higher authorities. Similarly, already being under arms in the Red Army, our hero could calmly report on his colleagues. Such forms of behavior no longer contradicted the “code of officer’s honor” and did not seem to be anything inappropriate to contemporaries. On the contrary, they were supported in every possible way by the people in power, regardless of the type of state structure that existed in the country. A real, far from rare, type reflects the priority of private and material interests, which was formed in the imperial era among Russian officers, for the achievement of which personal “ties” and “profitable acquaintances” were used. With “correct and skillful” use, interested individuals could “get out of the water”, from the seemingly most critical situations — from family breakdown and criminal prosecution, to the destruction of the state administration.