April 10, 1894
В Lyutsina, Vitebsk province (now Latvia), was born into a family of a military paramedic Ivan Strode — one of the military leaders during the Civil War, the "Yakut Chapayev." A writer and battle painter and a victim of Stalin's repressions.
At the outbreak of World War I, he volunteered for the front in the Tsarist Army. By the age of 23, he had become a full Knight of the Cross of St. George (he was awarded four Crosses of St. George).
From the spring of 1917, he served in units that remained loyal to the Provisional Government. After the October Revolution of 1917, he joined the Red Army.
At that time I didn’t understand much about politics, but my class instinct told me that I had to hold on to a truly popular Soviet power and fight for it.
Fought with the "whites" in Eastern Siberia и Transbaikalia. After one of the massacres, he miraculously survived and ended up in a Yakut prison with his comrades. It was they who later helped local Socialist Revolutionaries overthrow the "White" government and establish Soviet power.
He served in the People's Revolutionary Army Far Eastern Republic. He took part in battles with the Japanese invaders and fought on the territory of modern Mongolia.
He was considered a skilled master of taiga battles and suppressed the uprisings of the White Guards.
In 1923, being seriously wounded, he endured an 18-day siege by the “whites”, which took place in the severe Yakut frosts under the leadership of General Anatoly Pepelyaeva near the settlement Amga. This defense went down in history as the "Siege of the Ice" and became the last major battle of the Civil War.
Neither the wound nor the meager food had dampened his spirits or led him to despair. His thoughts were clear and cheerful. He was still the brains of our defense, alive and active.
(defense participant Mikhail Kropachev)
In order to restore the destroyed shelters, he ordered the use of the frozen bodies of the dead.
By morning, the new trenches were ready. The Whites opened heavy machine-gun fire in vain—the dead bodies were as hard as stone. Bullets clanged against the frozen bodies, tearing off fingers, chunks of flesh, and hitting heads. The corpses shuddered, some falling to the ground. They were laid back down. It seemed the dead would not withstand the blows raining down on them and would cry out, "Oh, it hurts us, it hurts us!"
(from Strode's memoirs)
One of the few in the RSFSR to become a three-time Knight of the Order of the Red Banner (the highest award of Soviet Russia).
He became renowned as a proponent of diplomacy: he tried to avoid bloodshed and persuaded the rebels to surrender their arms. He ensured the peaceful surrender of the Confederates by violating a secret OGPU order to stage a battle (which was intended to serve as evidence of a rebellion against Soviet rule).
He respected his enemies: during Pepeliaev's trial, he was not afraid to speak out in his defense, and later he was the only one who got his artist brother a job.
After the end of the Civil War, he studied for several years at the Frunze Military Academy. In 1927, at 33, he was discharged due to health reasons (he had eight combat wounds, five of them serious).
He wrote memoirs - his first recollections of the Civil War were received with delight in the press.
To collect material for his books, he again went to Siberia—he was the commander of the Tomsk branch of Osoaviakhim and the garrison House of the Red Army.
After the publication of the book “In the Yakut Taiga,” he was considered one of the most prominent battle writers in the Soviet Union.
In 1933, he was arrested after neighbors denounced him: allegedly, in a drunken stupor, he declared he would kill Stalin. But he was released three months later due to lack of evidence.
He was arrested again in February 1937 and accused of participating in an "anti-Soviet terrorist organization of Red partisans in Transbaikalia." The charge was based on his signature on a letter from a group of Siberian veterans to Moscow proposing the creation of a separate division of former partisans to assist the Red Army in the fight against the "White Chinese" (according to investigators, to overthrow Soviet power in the Far East).
In August he was sentenced to death. His wife and son were saved by leaving for Vyshny Volochok.
The elder brother, a mail car conductor, was shot as a Latvian spy.
Rehabilitated in 1957.
In 2018, the descendants of Strode and Pepeliaev met in Yakutsk at the prayer of reconciliation.
