Truth and fiction about Mishka Yaponchik: what Odessa Robin Hood really was

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

Not so long ago, a multi-part feature film “Life and Adventures Bear Yaponchik ”, Which contributed to the outbreak of interest in the historical prototype of the protagonist. There are so many legends around his name that now it is very difficult to understand who he really is - a thug, an anarchist revolutionary, or a noble Robin Hood?

The myth of the noble robber arose, probably, after the publication of Isaac Babel's "Odessa Tales", where the raider Benya Krik appears. His prototype was a real historical character - Mishka Yaponchik, although in life he was very far from a romanticized literary hero. Moisey Vinnitsky was born in Odessa in the center of Moldavanka, at birth he was named Moishe-Yakov. Later, because of his slanting eyes, wide cheekbones and dark complexion, he was nicknamed Yaponchik.

He has been engaged in raids since childhood. Even in his youth, he joined the anarchist squad, under the guise of which ordinary raiders often hid. And although there were many "feats" on his account, his name is not mentioned in the archives of the pre-revolutionary investigation. The fame about him thundered in 1918. It was then that the appeal of the "group of thieves" appeared in the newspaper "Odessa Post", which proclaimed a kind of code of honor: the bandits announced that they were acting in concert with the sailors and workers, swore to rob only the bourgeois, demanded respect for themselves and promised help to the poor.

When the Bolsheviks were preparing an armed uprising in Odessa, they turned to Yaponchik for help, using raiders in terrorist attacks and buying weapons from them. So the bandit became almost a hero of the Civil War. The robbery of a Romanian gambling club became sensational. The raiders changed into sailors' uniforms, burst into the hall in the midst of the game and "in the name of the revolution" took the 100 thousand rubles at stake.

At the same time, the goals of Yaponchik coincided with the Bolsheviks: to help the working people. The robbers were left with money "for the cab", the poor were not touched, a certain part of the stolen money, according to legend, went to charity: Yaponchik helped unemployed port loaders, orphans and homeless people. On his behalf, the residents of Moldavanka were handed out food and clothing. Therefore, in Odessa, he enjoyed respect and authority.

Mishka Yaponchik is often mistakenly called a thief in law. Professor Y. Gilinsky, who studies the criminal world, says: “Mishka Yaponchik really didn’t like violence, especially“wet cases,”but he was not a thief in law, if only because the thieves' law itself appeared only in the late 1920s. Mishka Yaponchik can be called the forerunner of thieves in law."

When the fight against banditry began in Odessa, Yaponchik expressed a desire to create his own regiment and go to war with the White Guards. In June 1919, the 54th Soviet Infantry Regiment was indeed formed. VI Lenin, whose commander was Yaponchik. The bandits were in no hurry to go to the front, and as a result, out of 2,000 fighters, only 800 arrived - the rest fled. After the first battle, the others tried to defect too. According to one version, Yaponchik was shot while trying to escape. However, the exact circumstances of his death are not known, as well as the reliable facts of life. It is extremely difficult to separate the truth from speculation.

It is known that Mishka Yaponchik was a big fan of the work of another legendary Odessa citizen: 9 curious facts from the life of Leonid Utesov