Great October Series: The suicide of Admiral Chagin and the mystery of the 1912 Russian Sailor's Rebellion

The year 1912...officials of the Tsar's realm or regime or whatever nomenclature is in vogue to describe the controlling authority of a nation...refuse to acknowledge the tsunami of social change fast approaching Russian shores.
They see it...they are not blind...but god forbid they move to correct past wrongs...to make amends...to allow the Russian people an ounce of dignity...they play tennis with their white outfits...they enjoy food whenever their precious bellies detect an ounce of hunger...they lavish themselves with everything that is refined...yet the majority of the good citizens throughout the Russian Empire struggle...the bonds of tolerance is stressed and the sailors' of the Tsar's fleet stand in the vanguard...forcing the fortunate to reevaluate their stances...the following is one tale of consequence which brings the Romanov dynasty closer to its demise.
 

Tsar Nicholas II on board Shtandart

Tsarina and the Tsarsevitch

Tsarsevitch on board the Shtandart

Admiral Chagin on Shtandart

Shtandart

Background before we speak about Admiral Chagin....

After the events of the Kniaz Potemkin in 1905...the sailors' of the Tsars' fleet release a statement;

                                              "A Revolutionary Manifesto"...

"Comrades, do not be disheartened!  Not all is yet lost.  The rotten Tsar's Government is far from having crushed everything in our fleet.  There are still men there who with honor hold up the glorious banner of social justice.  Do not be disheartened, fellow sailors!  Do not lose courage, but be daring.  Keep up your bravery and with all the strength and force you are capable of continuing your great fight for our noble cause, the emancipation of the people from the yoke of Tsardom!  Let us be as tempered steel...In this fight let our hearts feel neither mercy nor pity to our worst enemies...With our knee on the chest and with our hands on the throat, let this become our motto!

Fellow sailors this time we could not prevent the Russian government from arresting our comrades, but we must avenge them.  The Russian Tsar will once more bathe himself with the blood of the people, but the cause of freedom will not die.  No! life itself is for us.  It pushes us on to fight the autocracy.  

No Tsar will be able to check or control the stormy ocean of the people's wrath.  The time is not far away when in a liberated Russia...free from Tsardom...the sailors will engage in its final battle...the battle against the Tsar's order of society, and will march toward a healthy Co-operative Commonwealth!...

And as 1905 continues so does the fight of the sailor's!

In the same year, Professor Ruessner of Berlin University, a native of Russia, stated that the mutinies by the sailors of the Tsar's fleet were not due to bad food but to revolutionary agitation carried on for years in the navy.  The sailors, according to the professor, cannot be classed as rebels and murderers, but as heroes who are willing to sacrifice their lives for their country.

The revolt on the Kniaz Potemkin proves to be a pre-mature occurrence as one learns from the words of Sailor Pogownetz who interrupted the revolts leader Mastutchenko by declaring:

"Rabid creature that thou art, hast thou forgotten that on July 5th the crews of the entire fleet were to mutiny?  The word has not yet been given to all. Thou beganst too soon!  We shall not be followed"!

Throughout the rest of 1905 and continuing through the year 1906...

In Reval, fearing an uprising...the sailors are disarmed, in Kronshtadt, the heavens glowed with fires that erupted as a result of rebellion, in Sebastopal, the sailors revolt led by Lt. Shmidt, Odessa and Vladivostok are lit with the flames of rebellion...

The Tsar puts to death those who raise their fist at his sovereign rule as even officers begin to acknowledge

that the question of rebellion because of bad food was a mere pretext, the real cause being deeper, in the complete lack of sympathy between the men and their officers, most of whom are disgustingly incompetent.  Owing their positions to influence at St. Petersburg, they care nothing for good service or the well being and contentment of the men.

“Fear,” says Captain Slovo, “is the sole basis of discipline in the navy and it will prove as poor an instrument for keeping the rank and file loyal to the throne as it has in the suppression of discontent among the people.  The government should learn the lesson that the sailors are beginning to awaken as the people have already awakened. 

In the year 1907, Vladivostok sailors bombarded the city with torpedo cruisers...the Tsar is outraged!...orders a complete investigation of all bases...

That same year, an incident occurs in Finnish waters while the Imperial family was cruising the Baltic Sea!  The royal yacht the Shtandart ran aground on a rock...the accident caused dismay in court circles, and Tsar Nicholas summoned Captain (later Admiral) Chagin, who was in command, and in presence of the Tsarina asked the Captain...

"On your honor, Captain, can you affirm that the revolutionaries had no hand in this accident?

"Your Majesty' was the reply, "the day that such a thing happens I shall blow out my brains.  I can vouch for every member of my crew, which has been chosen with the greatest caution.  A revolutionary could never find a place among them"  

In 1908 Lt. Colonel Bek foretold of the approaching social change and the pending revolution as he wrote and witnessed that in "dealing with the life of the Russian bluejackets, I stated positively that these sailors would accomplish the most important part in the approaching struggle for liberty and that they would be uncompromising revolutionist because they had endured real slavery and knew better than anybody else in Russia what the rule of the bourgeois class meant"

And now the story of the sailors' mutiny in the year 1912!

The mutinous sailors had their own political vision in which they fought for and while Lenin plays chess...

While Lenin played the Sailors were risking their lives for Russian liberty!

Aboard the Russian battleship the Ioann Slatoust in the Black Sea...officers and sailors alike are finalizing the plans to ignite another fleet wide revolt aimed at securing a representative government.  The revolt will be the most significant rebellion to date...hardly mentioned in historical writings and for good cause as the Tsar cannot allow for the public to be aware of its magnitude and exploiters of the revolutionary cause i.e. Lenin and his "professional revolutionists" cannot allow for a vision of political consciousness to be formulated by anyone or anything but theirs...

The men aboard are plotting to seize the Royal family on board the Shtandart while enroute from Yalta to Sebastopal...compelling the Tsar to abdicate meant to establish a Constitutional Monarchy...signaling the crews of the Black Sea and Baltic Sea fleet to murder or imprison their officers and begin their assault on all naval outposts including Kronshtadt and St. Petersburg...

Helen Sokoloff a "student" (revolutionist) and mistress of Admiral Chagin was able to manipulate the Admiral into appointing several mutinous sailors on board the Shtandart...ah the egotistical follies of an old man...

The sailors aboard the Shtandart moved to take the royal family...chaos ensued, the Tsarsevitch ran and was shot...one sailor was apprehended and killed on the spot while during the turmoil another escaped.
Meanwhile, aboard the Ioann Slatoust, a rat, a sookin sin, among the plotters revealed his sycophant tendencies! Sailor B. Fowlerov exposes the plan.  Fowlerov will meet his demise some years later...

The Tsar orders hundreds of Secret police to immediately begin work throughout the Russian empire. Their mandate to investigate the scope of this daring plot aimed at the Tsar and his government.  The Tsar entrusts M. Chichegiovtoff the Minister of Justice and Premier Kokosoff to personally direct the investigation.  Investigations and arrests in St. Petersburg, Yalta, and Sebastopal give the ministers an idea of the revolt's widespread involvement.  

Facts showed commanders of nearly every important garrison in the empire were approached including the detailed plans to overtake the Shtandart and outlined the mutinous activities planned by the Baltic Fleet.

The Tsar ordered information relating to the Tsarsevitch injuries to be down played...first press reports related he was shot...other rumors spread that he was injured falling off his pony, falling down in a small boat, falling down while climbing the Shtandarts' riggings, and finally through official dispatch a story was told that the Tsarevitch fell in the bath tub injuring his groin on the tap...the Tsarina was said to be so full of anguish she attempted to throw herself out a second story window!

There were widespread ramifications...many army and navy officers are involved...Odessa, Sebastopal and Kronshtadt were all placed under siege...one petty officer and sixteen sailors on the Iaonn Slatoust have already been arrested, condemned and put to death for their role in the conspiracy...three hundred other sailors and officers have been sent ashore to be court-martialed...revolutionary propaganda was said to have been discovered!

The Tsar recognized the conspiracy had a more sophisticated objective than any rebellion in recent history. And had the plot had time to mature it would have meant the end of Romanov rule! 

As for the press...Russian Minister of Marine reported that the Russian fleet was passing though a historical period, and that the Tsar was pained to learn that the seed of disorder had sprouted up in the navy.
A special order was issued to officers of all grades of both the Baltic and Black Sea fleets...
Forbidding them under pain of degradation and dismissal to discuss the political unrest among themselves of with civilians, or even with their own wives.  The whole commissioned personnel were compelled to sign a pledge to this effect.

Finally we come to Admiral Chagin...a wily old veteran of the Russian Navy.
Commander Chagin managed to lead the Russian ship Almaz to safe harbor at Vladivostok during the disastrous Battle of Tsushima...Chagin was also among the leadership of Russian naval forces during the Boxer Rebellion in China.  Awarded with the stewardship of the royal family yacht Shtandart he enjoyed a comfortable commission.

Regarding the cause of the Admiral's suicide...there is the coverup version attempting to sway the public from the realities of the revolt...it was said that the Admiral had taken his life due to a love affair and that the injuries to the Tsarsevitch were accidental having nothing to do with the Admiral fateful choice.

Then there was the reality...knowing full well he would lose his commission...he sat in his a chair and pondered his existence...he recalled his pledge to the Tsar and Tsarina in the year 1907 when the Shtandart ran aground...he also knew that it was by his hand that revolutionaries had secured enrollment to the ships crew, albeit through falsification of papers...there was little doubt he was responsible for the breach.

The Admiral then filled his revolver's barrel with water and placed the barrel in his mouth...he squeezed the trigger blowing his brains out the back of his head as he had promised. 

A tragic ending for Admiral Chagin...

As for the sailors of the Tsar's fleet...their aforementioned activities go on to corroborate the fleets independent political vision via a 1915 Ohkrana report concluding the political circle of the fleet arose independently and outside the influence of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party politicos in Petrograd.

The sailors' actions throughout the early years of the twentieth century will give rise to an organization called Tsentrobalt, the Central Committee of the Baltic Fleet, and the ascension of its leader in the person of one Pavel Efimovitch Dybenko.