Г. Х. Эйхе: опыт исследования детских и юношеских лет жизни красного командарма
H. Kh. Eiche: The Study on Childhood and Youth of the «Red» Army Commander

Summary/Abstract: The article describes specifics of the personality development of a prominent Bolshevist military leader Heinrich Khristoforovich Eiche during his childhood and juvenile period (1893-1914). A methodological basis of the research are the biographic approach and special methods, which are typical for the intellectual biography genre. The article accentuates the disclosure of a personal formation process and mental features of the prospective military leader and images, how this progress was affected by social and intellectual microenvironments and by specific personalities (individuals). The author pays special attention to a disproof of a number of “myths” and “clichés” about Eiche’s early years, which were established in the Soviet historiography. Particularly, the article argues against a conventional opinion about “deep interest” in military art of the Red Lett and his “dream” of serving in the Russian army ever since his childhood. The author substantiates thesis that due to the specifics of his family and friends ties Eiche acquires a sufficient understanding of the operational nature and ideological guidelines of Russian social democrats-revolutionaries rather early in his life. The crucial factor in this sense was the fact that future red military leader had close relatives (cousins) in the ranks of professional revolutionaries and members of Lenin’s RSDRP (the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party). Later, in the periods of revolutionary upsurge in 1917 and an establishment of Bolsheviks’ dictatorship this circumstance would become one of the key factors that determined Eiche’s joining to the corpus of red officers of the Workers’ and Peasants’ Red Army (RKKA).

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