Mishka Yaponchik is a legend of the underworld. Part 2. Robin Hood from Moldavanka
One of the many legends that survived in Odessa was and remains the famous Mishka Yaponchik. Mikhail (Moisey, Moishe) Volfovich Vinnitsky is considered to this day in Moldavanka as an idol and people's protector. Even after the sunset of the star Mishka Yaponchik, the criminal underground continued to exist according to his, Mishkin's, concepts.
Part 1. Isaac Babel. Benya Krik and everything, everything, everything … We have an ordinary street in the Moldavanka area …
One of the many legends that survived in Odessa was and remains the famous Mishka Yaponchik. Mikhail (Moisey, Moishe) Volfovich Vinnitsky is still considered an idol and national patron in Moldavanka. He entered the pantheon of anti-heroes of the Civil War and left a noticeable mark in the history of imperial crime, entailing a chain of transformations in the thieves' world that stretched through decades to our days. Even after the sunset of the star Mishka Yaponchik, the criminal underground continued to exist according to his, Mishkin's, concepts.
Moyshe Vinnitsky was born as the fifth child. His father was an Odessa bindyuzhnik and fed his family with his earnings. The boy's childhood was spent in the courtyards of Moldavanka, where life was full of adventures and exciting games of raiders and bandits with rules incomprehensible to children. Very little time will pass, and all these skills will be needed by the children in adulthood, because there was always the same road from Moldavanka, Longeron or Peresyp - to criminals.
In the meantime, the bandits of Odessa were heroes for children, whom they tried to be like, because they managed to escape from the poverty of Moldavian woman and live a new luxurious life.
It is not known whether little Misha dreamed of growing up as soon as possible and joining a gang of raiders, but he wanted to become strong and courageous in order to be able to defend himself, first of all, from a drunken and scandalous father.
Vinnitsky Sr. died on Misha's birthday, when his son was only six years old. He was badly wounded by a horse's hoof, which could not stand the smell of alcohol. The son was the first to find the bloody dying father.
This so amazed the impressionable urethral-visual child that he could not stand the sight of blood all his life, and used weapons exclusively for self-defense and demanded the same from his grown gang. Therefore, the decision to go to the front, where they shoot and kill for real, was made by Yaponchik despite his own visual nature and solely for the sake of saving the lads.
The urethral child, even if he is still very young, feels responsible for others. The nature of the leader pushes him out of ordinary life and forces him to perform adult actions for the sake of preserving the pack, even if the pack is still limited by the family. Ten-year-old Misha, in order to help his mother, left a widow, goes to work at a mattress factory, finishes four classes of elementary school, at the age of 16 he moves to the Anatra factory and works there as an electrician.
In October 1905, the bloodiest Jewish pogrom in the history of the city took place in Odessa, the day after the publication of the tsarist manifesto that granted freedom of speech, assembly, press and conscience. There were about 400 killed, 50 thousand Jews were left homeless. During the pogrom, which did not stop for several days, the police did not intervene in what was happening on the outskirts. The inaction of the authorities caused the spontaneous emergence of armed units of Jewish self-defense and units of revolutionary parties.
Sixteen-year-old Mikhail Vinnitsky organizes such detachments from local youth to protect residents of the Jewish quarters of Moldavanka from crowds of Black Hundreds. Taking up arms for the first time, Vinnitsky never parted with him again. In 1906 he joined the youth organization of anarchist terrorists "Young Will". Being engaged in robbery and extortion, he participated in terrorist attacks. By the way, the Bolsheviks did not encourage terror, they even took power in Russia in a bloodless way. The Socialist-Revolutionaries sinned with terrorist acts, they were widely practiced by anarchists.
The era of mass terror came with the outbreak of the Civil War. The contempt for human life, which became a consequence of the First World War, was multiplied by complete impunity for what they did. The enemy had to be destroyed. And who is the enemy, everyone decided for himself.
After the organized murder of the police chief of the Mikhailovsky district, Lieutenant Colonel Kozhukhar, Mikhail Vinnitsky was sentenced to death. The execution of a minor political criminal was replaced by 12 years of exile. At the same time, being on death row, Misha gets to know another urethral man - "Bessarabian robber from the high road" GI Kotovsky. The fates of both raiders are very similar. Kotovsky, who could not fit into the class-social environment of his time, being thrown out of it, engaged in robbery. The same fate would later befall Moses Vinnitsky.
"Golden Child of Odessa"
Mikhail Vinnitsky, "the golden child of Odessa", following his principle of "plunder the loot", never encroached on the property of the poor. Leonid Utesov in the book "Thank you, heart!" wrote: “Yaponchik has not bad organizational skills. This made him the king of the criminal world on an Odessa scale. Brave, enterprising, he managed to get his hands on all Odessa thugs … He does not like the White Guards and even managed to arrange a quiet pogrom on them. " Then Utyosov adds: "Yaponchik was very reluctant to go to" wet cases "(murders), and the sight of blood confused him."
The first time he was convicted under a political article, he was exiled to Siberia in 1907 and released in 1917 under Kerensky's amnesty. According to some reports, the abortive Catholic priest Felix Edmundovich Dzerzhinsky was a neighbor of the future hijacker in exile. The future Knight of the Revolution, whose "name was not worse", soon fled, and Vinnitsky was sent to hard labor for his help in organizing the escape. After five years, the Odessa convict returned to his homeland under the name of Mishka Yaponchik and engaged in robberies. However, for the gangster's sensitive visual vector, routine robberies were crude and trivial. His subtle artistic nature demanded sophistication, and Mishka, in order to avoid unnecessary armed conflicts and bloodsheds, decided to resort to a new way for Odessa bandits to get money - voluntary contributions. Protecting the wealthy people of the city - bankers, factory owners, factory owners, he took under the protection of doctors, teachers, artists, equating them with the working people.
Receiving a monthly bribe from the Odessa rich, Yaponchik formed a "thieves' common fund", from which money was provided to help thieves and their families. Part of the loot was distributed among the poor, the unemployed, orphans and victims of pogroms. When there was no power in Odessa, Yaponchik alone could solve the pressing problems of people. During a famine in the city, taking money from the rich, he could set tables in the courtyards of Moldavanka, feed and water the poor. “Some of the sums Yaponchik gave to 'charity' - he allocated 10 thousand rubles to help unemployed port loaders in Odessa. Yaponchik helped the homeless, newlyweds, orphans, families of those killed during the bandit raids”(Viktor Savchenko,“Civil War Adventurers”).
There are many powers - one life
The twentieth century brought manifestations characteristic of the skin phase of development, including negative ones. All over the world, power is merging with crime. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the country slid down the same slope into the "skin abyss", creating tandems of militia and criminals atypical for it. Our days are called the days of the mafia crisis, but historically its origin took place not in distant America and not in Italy, but in Russia.
After the Civil War, with the death of the same Yaponchik, Lenka Panteleev and other leaders of the Russian underworld, the remnants of the gangs defeated by the Bolsheviks ended up in the West. The idea of uniting scattered gangster groups under a single management and the experience of merging power and the criminal world migrated overseas, where the shoots of Italian mafia structures sprouted, accurately and picturesquely displayed in the books of Mario Puzo and the films of Francis Ford Coppola about the Corleone clan.
At the beginning of the last century, the tsarist government unsuccessfully fought against organized crime. The Bolsheviks, represented by Nathan Frenkel, took control of it, making criminals socially close allies.
One should not be surprised that the biographers, who were bit by bit collecting information about Moishe Vinnitsky - Mishka Yaponchik, did not find even a mention of his name in the archives of the pre-revolutionary investigation. The point here is not that, before the revolution, Mikhail Vinnitsky was "a completely law-abiding citizen of the Russian Empire." This is a big misconception.
Mishka Yaponchik, so as not to shine, learned to dashingly cover up his tracks. His bandit squad, as a part of the Odessa part of the Soviet army, allegedly on a legal basis, that is, with the full connivance of the Soviet authorities, attacks the premises of the Odessa judicial police, sets fire to and destroys the "Registration Bureau" with 16 thousand cards for all thieves and bandits of the city, photographs, fingerprint samples. All photos and documents concerning Mishka Yaponchik disappear in the fire.
On the eve of the revolution, it was extremely difficult to find the difference between criminals and fighters against autocracy. The revolutionaries were supplied with money and provided with weapons by the same Yaponchik, Kotovsky, Kamo and many other sympathizers, interested and fellow travelers. It is well known that the Bolsheviks relied on the criminal element, and this is natural. Among the ringleaders of bandits and robbers, urethralists predominated.
For a person with a urethral vector, the main property is recoil. It is from this that he gets his pleasure, covering his flock with pheromones of protection. The main natural property - the desire to preserve the integrity of the group - is expressed by action: distribution according to shortages. This applies to all aspects of life, starting from "bread for the hungry" and ending with sexual attraction, polygamy and the distribution of ejaculate to old, lame, not taken, but capable of giving birth to women.
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