Historical Dictionary of the Russian Civil Wars, 1916-1926

E

EASTERN FRONT (RED). This, one of the most active of the Red fronts, was created by a decree of Sovnarkom on 13 June 1918. Its staff was first located at Kazan′, then, successively, was operational at Sviazhsk, Alatyr′, Arzamas, Simbirsk, and Ufa. Its complement would come to include the 1st Red Army (19 June 1918–14 August 1919), the 2nd Red Army (20 June 1918–16 July 1919), the 3rd Red Army (20 July 1918–15 January 1920), the 4th Red Army (20 June 1918–14 August 1919), the 5th Red Army (16 August 1918–15 January 1920), and the Turkestan Red Army (5 March–15 June 1919), numbering some 120,000 men. The command of the Eastern Front also had operational control of the Volga Military Flotilla.

The forces of the Eastern Front were involved in defensive battles against the Czechoslovak Legion and the People’s Army in the summer of 1918 (complicated in early July by the revolt staged at Simbirsk by the front commander, M. A. Murav′ev), before going on the offensive in a key operation that entailed the capture of Kazan′ (10 September 1918), Simbirsk (12 September 1918), Syzran′ (3 October 1918), Samara (7 October 1918), Izhevsk (7 November, thereby crushing the Izhevsk-Votkinsk uprising), Ufa (31 December 1918), and Orenburg (22 January 1919). Having already lost Perm′ to the Whites’ Siberian Army (25 December 1918), the forces of the Eastern Front were then driven into retreat by the spring offensive of the Russian Army of Admiral A. V. Kolchak and by late April 1919 were back to within a few miles of the Volga. They then initiated another major counteroffensive, one of the key operations of the entire civil wars. The southern group of forces of the Eastern Front (the 1st, 4th, and 5th Red Armies and the Turkestan Red Army) inflicted a series of defeats on the Whites, recapturing Buguruslan, Belebei, and Ufa, while the northern group (the 2nd and 3rd Red Armies) drove through Perm′ and Ekaterinburg by August 1919. On 14 August 1919, the 1st and 4th Red Armies were transformed into the Turkestan Front, while the 3rd and 5th Red Armies surged eastward through Siberia, eventually capturing Omsk, the White capital, on 13–14 November 1919, before moving on to take Novonikolaevsk (14 December 1919), Tomsk (20 December 1919), and Krasnoiarsk (7 January 1920). The Eastern Front was disestablished on 15 January 1920.

Commanders of the Eastern Front were M. A. Murav′ev (13 June–10 July 1918); Jukums Vācietis (11 July–28 September 1918); S. S. Kamenev (28 September 1918–5 May 1919 and 29 May–7 July 1919); A. A. Samoilo (5–29 May 1919); P. P. Lebedev (acting, 8–19 July 1919); M. V. Frunze (19 July–15 August 1919); and V. A. Ol′derogge (15 August 1919–15 January 1920). Its chiefs of staff were N. V. Sollogub (26 June–10 July 1918); V. F. Tarasov (acting, 10–23 July 1918); P. M. Maigur (23 July–27 September 1918); A. K. Kolenkovskii (28 September 1918–3 April 1919); B. E. Gaff (acting, 3 April–2 May 1919 and 9 July 1919–15 January 1920); and P. P. Lebedev (2 May–8 July 1919).

EASTERN FRONT (WHITE). Following the collapse of the spring offensive of Admiral A. V. Kolchak’s Russian Army, a decision was taken to create on its base of operations a new, more flexible order of White forces in the east. Thus, on 21 July 1919, Kolchak decreed the creation of a new Eastern Front that (by 1 August 1919) included the following formations: the 1st Army (from the northern group of forces of the former Siberian Army), the 2nd Army (from the southern group of forces of the former Siberian Army), the 3rd Army (from the Volga, Urals, and Ufa groups of forces of the former Western Army), the Independent Southern Army (which, prior to 23 May 1919 and after September 1919, was called the Orenburg Army), the Independent Steppe Group (commanded by Major-General D. A. Lebedev, until 9 August 1919 known as the Southern Army Group, disbanded 16 November 1919), and the Independent (Siberian) Cossack Corps (commanded by Lieutenant General P. P. Ivanov-Rinov, effectively disbanded from October 1919).

Having lost control of the Urals to the counteroffensive of the Reds’ Eastern Front (Zlatoust fell to the Reds on 13 July, and Ekaterinburg was abandoned on 15 July 1919), these forces (numbering perhaps 55,000 men active at the front from a muster roll of at least 130,000) attempted to turn the tide around Cheliabinsk but were again overrun by the Reds (thanks largely to the bungling of Lebedev, who had overall operational control in that sector). A second attempt to hold the Red advance on River Tobol′ collapsed in September (thanks largely to the failure to advance of Ivanov-Rinov’s Cossacks). Thereafter, Kolchak’s Eastern Front disintegrated as the 1st and 2nd Armies and parts of the 3rd Army (now, from 10 October 1919, optimistically termed the Moscow Army Group) set out eastward on the Great Siberian (Ice) March that would take what remained of their men, by March 1920, to Chita, where they were incorporated into the Far Eastern (White) Army of Ataman G. M. Semenov, while other elements of the front retreated into Central Asia.

Commanders of the Eastern Front were General M. K. Diterikhs (20/21 July–4 November 1919); General K. V. Sakharov (5 November–9 December 1919); General V. O. Kappel′ (10 December 1919–25 January 1920); and General S. N. Voitsekhovskii (25 January–20 April 1920). Its chiefs of staff were Colonel D. N. Sal′nikov (21 July–1 September 1919); Major General P. F. Riabikov (2 September–8 November 1919); and Major General V. I. Oberiukhtin (10 November 1919–4 January 1920).

EASTERN TRANSBAIKAL FRONT. This Red partisan front, with its headquarters in the villages of Bogdat and Zilovo in Transbaikalia, was created during the summer of 1919 to oppose the White forces of Ataman G. M. Semenov and the Japanese Expeditionary Force (part of the Allied intervention). It grew from a strength of three regiments to a 3,000-strong force of six cavalry and two infantry regiments and a Chinese platoon by late 1919, but failed in its efforts to capture Sretensk and to breach Semenov’s lines of communication with Manchuria, despite repeated efforts in early 1920. On 22 April 1920, on the orders of G. Kh. Eikhe, the front was incorporated into the 2nd Rifle Division of the People’s-Revolutionary Army of the Far Eastern Republic, attached (from 22 May 1920) to the unified Amur Front.

Commanders of the Eastern Transbaikal Front were P. N. Zhuravlev (21 April 1919–23 February 1920) and Ia. N. Korataev (2 March–16 April 1920).

EAST KARELIAN GOVERNMENT. Caught up in the struggles between Reds and Whites in the “Russian” Civil Wars, as well as the interventions in that war of Allied forces in North Russia and the White Finns, the East Karelians were in a particularly unfavorable position to assert their autonomy or independence. Nevertheless, in July 1919 a conference of delegates from the White Sea Karelian districts met at Ukhta (a center of pro-Finnish Karelian autonomists since 1905) and appointed a provisional government of East Karelia, known as the East Karelian Committee. Having failed to find acceptance for their petition to King George V to take Karelia under the protection of Great Britain, when the Allies withdrew from North Russia, the East Karelian Committee organized elections from 12 districts to the East Karelian Diet, which met at Ukhta from 21 March to 1 April 1920. The Diet appointed a six-member government that, on 22 March 1920, declared its independence from Russia. The Diet met for a second time on 11–16 June 1920 and voted to establish an East Karelian Army. However, Red forces had captured the entire region by the end of the month, and the Karelian government was forced to flee across the border into Finland. There, its members united with representatives of putative Karelian governments from Aunus and elsewhere to form a Karelian central government in December 1920. Elements of this regime briefly reestablished themselves at Ukhta during the Soviet–Finnish Conflict of 1921–1922 and the East Karelian uprising (one of the so-called Kinship Wars), but were soon forced to retire into Finland, where the government was dissolved.

East Karelian Uprising. See SOVIET–FINNISH CONFLICT.

Edrikhin, Aleksei Efimovich. See Vandam (Edrikhin), Aleksei Efimovich.

Efendiev, Sultan Majid. See Afandiev (Efendiev), Sultan Majid.

EFIMOV, MIKHAIL NIKIFOROVICH (1 November 1881–August 1919). The first Russian aviator of real note, M. N. Efimov was born at the village of Apol′e, Smolensk guberniia, and was a graduate of the Odessa Commercial School (1902). He worked in electronics and with the telegraph offices of the South-West Railway and the Transbaikal Railway and was all-Russian motorcycling champion for 1908–1909. In 1909–1910, he attended the Henri Farman flying school at Châlons-sur-Marne in France and on 8 March 1910, at Odessa, became the first Russian to pilot a fueled plane (having already become, in 1908, the first Russian to pilot a glider). From 1910, he worked as a flight instructor at the Kachinsk Aviation School at Sevastopol′.

During the First World War, Efimov served as a pilot on the Western and Romanian Fronts, completing bombing raids and reconnaissance flights, as well as being involved in aerial combat, before transferring to hydro-aviation work with the Black Sea Fleet in 1916. In 1917, he was elected to the sailor’s committee at Sevastopol′, and following the October Revolution he served as a pilot and hydro-aviation expert to the Soviet authorities in the Crimea. He was detained and executed by White forces of the Armed Forces of South Russia when they captured Odessa in August 1919. Efimov is commemorated by a street bearing his name in Odessa and a statue at Gatchina. In 1988, asteroid 2754 was also named after him.

EGOR′EV, VLADIMIR NIKOLAEVICH (3 March 1869–20 September 1948). Colonel (6 December 1908), major general (29 August 1915), lieutenant general (12 October 1917). One of the most senior generals of the Imperial Russian Army to join the Red Army as a military specialist, V. N. Egor′ev was born at St. Petersburg into the family of a collegiate counselor of the tsarist bureaucracy and was a graduate of the 3rd Alexander School (1889) and the Academy of the General Staff (1901). From 1903, he served in the Main Staff of the Russian Army and from 13 October 1910 was attached to the chief of the General Staff. In 1910, he was assigned to work with the army of Montenegro, where he served as head of Military-Educational Establishments and Inspector General of Education and commanded the Cadet Corps. Back in Russia, he served in the active army from the outset of the First World War, as commander of the 12th Astrakhan Grenadier Regiment of Emperor Alexander III (from 10 November 1914) and commander of the 5th Kiev Grenadier Regiment. From 19 November 1915, he was chief of staff of the 1st Grenadier Division, and from 8 February 1917 was commander of the 3rd Army Corps. Declaring himself “a supporter of democratic transformation” in Russia, in 1917 he was entrusted by the Provisional Government with the command of the 171st Infantry Division and, following the dismissal of numerous commanders in the wake of the Kornilov affair, was named commander of the 39th Army Corps (9 September 1917).

Egor′ev remained in the army following the October Revolution and was elected to the command of the Special Army on the South-West Front by its soldiers’ committee. Subsequently, he commanded the forces of the Southern Screen (March–September 1918) and was offered the post of commander of the Eastern Front in October 1918, but declined it on the grounds of ill health. Once he had recovered, he became one of the chief organizers of the Red Army as Inspector of Infantry of the Field Staff of the Revvoensovet of the Republic (April–July 1919) and, from 13 July to 11 October 1919, he was commander of the Southern Front. He was then assigned to special commissions with the Revvoensovet of the Republic, participating as a military advisor in the peace negotiations with Finland and Poland that led to the Treaty of Tartu (14 October 1920) and the Treaty of Riga (18 March 1921). After the civil wars, he was assigned to educational work in the army and was editor of the journal Voennaia mysl′ i revoliutsiia (“Military Thought and the Revolution”). Egor′ev retired in 1934, somehow survived the purges, and died peacefully in Moscow in 1948. He was buried in the Novodevich′e cemetery in Moscow.

EGOROV, ALEKSANDR IL′CH (13 October 1883–23 February 1939). Colonel (November 1917), Marshal of the Soviet Union (20 November 1935). The Soviet military commander and military theorist A. I. Egorov was born into a peasant family at Buzuluk, in Samara guberniia, and worked in his youth as a blacksmith and a stevedore. He volunteered for service in the Russian Army in 1901, graduated from the Kazan′ Infantry Officers School in 1905, and became a regimental commander during the First World War. He joined the Party of Socialists-Revolutionaries in 1904, welcomed the February Revolution with such enthusiasm that his fellow officers temporarily drummed him out of his regiment, and in 1917 aligned himself with the Party of Left Socialists-Revolutionaries. However, following the Left-SR Uprising he disassociated himself from that party and joined the Russian Social-Democratic Labor Party (Bolsheviks) in July 1917.

Egorov had a stellar career during the civil wars, serving successively as a commissar with the All-Russian Main Staff and chairman of its Attestation Commission for the recruitment of military specialists (from May 1918), commander of a group of forces on the Southern Front (9 August–3 October 1918), commander of the 9th Red Army on the Southern Front (3 October–26 November 1918), commander of the 10th Red Army on the Southern Front (26 December 1918–25 May 1919), member of the Revvoensovet of the Southern Front (9 July–11 October 1919), commander of the 14th Army on the Southern Front (16 July–11 October 1919), commander of the Southern Front (11 October 1919–10 January 1920), commander of the South-West Front (10 January–31 December 1920), commander of forces of the Kiev Military District (1 January–21 April 1921), commander of forces of the Petrograd Military District (17 April–3 September 1921), commander of the Western Front (20 September 1921–24 January 1922), and commander of the Independent Caucasus (later Caucasus Red) Army (January 1922–April 1924). In those posts, he distinguished himself during the defense of Tsaritsyn in 1918–1919 and in battles against the Armed Forces of South Russia in 1919–1920, not least for his development of the Reds’ cavalry units, but in 1920, during the Soviet–Polish War, he played a far more controversial role, being blamed by many (alongside his political commissar, J. V. Stalin) for the Red Army’s failure to capture Warsaw in August of that year. Rather than drive north to assist the Soviet forces struggling to invest the Polish capital, Egorov (urged on by Stalin) persisted in vain attempts to drive the Poles from Lwów.

Nevertheless, enjoying Stalin’s patronage, Egorov subsequently occupied numerous senior military posts, rising to chief of staff of the Red Army (July 1931–9 May 1937) and First Deputy Commissar of Defense of the USSR (from 9 May 1937), and on 10 February 1934 he was made a candidate member of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks). Then, in January 1938, he was suddenly moved to a lesser posting, as commander of forces of the Transcaucasus Military District. Having been involved in the denunciation and purging of other civi war era commanders (such as M. N. Tukhachevskii, I. P. Uborevich, and I. E. Iakir), Egorov was arrested on 27 March 1938 and was subsequently shot as a terrorist and a spy. He was among the first of Stalin’s victims to be officially rehabilitated, on 14 March 1956.

Eichhorn, emil gottfried Hermann Von (13 February 1848–30 June 1918). Generalfeldmarschall (18 December 1917). The German general Herman von Eichhorn was born in Breslau, Silesia (now Wrocław in Poland). A veteran of the Austro-Prussian and Franco-Prussian Wars, he rose through the ranks of the Prussian (later German) Army, and the outbreak of the First World War found him in command of the 7th Army. During the First World War, he commanded the Germans’ 10th Army (from 21 January 1915) and was simultaneously (from 30 July 1916) commander of Army Group Eichhorn, operating in northern Poland. On 3 April 1918, following the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk (3 March 1918) and the beginnings of the Austro-German intervention in Russia, he was named commander of Army Group Kiev and military governor of Ukraine (although his authority extended into southern Belorussia, Crimea, parts of the Don territory, and Voronezh and Kursk gubernii), with responsibility for exploiting those regions’ resources. His methods were so tyrannical as to raise armed opposition across Ukraine (notably the peasant rebels associated with Nestor Makhno). Eichhorn was subsequently assassinated at Kiev by B. M. Donskoi, who was acting on behalf of the terrorist wing of the Party of Left Socialists-Revolutionaries. He was buried next to Alfred Graf von Schlieffen, the former chief of the Imperial German General Staff, in the Invalidenfriedhof in Berlin.

EIDEMAN (EIDEMANIS), ROBERT PETROVICH (27 April 1895–12 June 1937). Ensign (1916), komkor (1935). The Red commander R. P. Eideman was born into the family of a Latvian teacher at the village of Leiastsiems (Valksk uezd, Livland guberniia). He attended the St. Petersburg Forestry Institute from 1914, but did not graduate, as he was mobilized into the Russian Army, and in 1916 completed a course at the Kiev Military School. He was then placed in command of a battalion of the 16th Siberian Reserve Rifle Regiment at Kansk. He joined the Party of Left Socialists-Revolutionaries and then the Bolsheviks in 1917 and was elected chairman of the Kansk soviet. In October that same year, he became deputy chairman of Tsentrosibir′.

In December 1917, Eideman led units of Red Guards who suppressed resistance to the October Revolution by officer cadets at Irkutsk and then joined the Red Army. From June 1918, he commanded the 2nd and 3rd Urals and the Special Divisions of the 3rd Red Army on the Eastern Front. Then, from March 1919 to April 1920, he commanded the 16th, 41st, and 46th Rifle Divisions on the Southern Front. He then served as chef d’arrière of the South-West Front (April–May 1920) and was placed in command of the 13th Red Army (5 June–10 July 1920). From July to September 1920, he commanded the Right-Bank Group of forces on the South-West Front, during the heavy fighting around Kakhovka (as the Russian Army of General P. N. Wrangel attempted to break out of Crimea and then cross the Dnepr). From September 1920, he was chef d’arrière of the Southern Front and from October that year commanded security forces of the Southern Front and the South-West Front in counterinsurgency operations across Ukraine. In January 1921, he was named commander of security forces in Ukraine before becoming commander of forces of the Khar′kov Military District (March 1921) and then assistant commander of the forces of Ukraine and Crimea (June 1921).

Eideman subsequently served as commander of forces of the Siberian Military District (1924), head and commissar of the Red Military Academy (1925–1932), and chief editor of the journal Voina i revoliutsia (“War and Revolution,” 1927–1936). From 1932 to 1934, he was a member of the Revvoensovet of the USSR and was also (from 1932) chairman of the central council of Osoaviakhima (the Union of Societies of Assistance to Defense and Aviation-Chemical Construction of the USSR). He was arrested on 22 May 1937 and, under torture, confessed to membership in a “military-fascist conspiracy.” Eideman was sentenced to death on 11 June 1937 (as a defendant in the “Case of the Trotskyist Anti-Soviet Military Organization”) and was executed the following day at the Butovskii fields, together with M. N. Tukhachevskii, I. E. Iakir, I. P. Uborovich, and other civil-war veterans. He was posthumously rehabilitated on 31 January 1957.

8TH RED ARMY. The 8th Red Army was created, according to a decree of the Revvoensovet of the Republic of 26 September 1918, from Soviet forces operating around Briansk, Kursk, Voronezh, and other sectors of the Southern Front. At various times the following units were attached to it: the 1st Moscow Workers’ Division (January–July 1918); the 2nd Orlov Infantry Division (October 1918); the 5th Ukrainian Rifle Division (May–June 1919); the 9th (October–December 1918 and January–March 1920), 12th (October 1918–December 1919), 13th (October 1918–March 1920), 15th (January 1919–April 1920), 16th (June 1919–April 1920), 31st (June 1919–February 1920), 33rd (June 1919–February 1920), 40th (April–June and July–October 1919 and October 1919–April 1920), and 52nd (December 1919–February 1920) Rifle Divisions; the 2nd Orlov Cavalry Division (December 1918–May 1919); and the 16th Cavalry Division (November 1919–April 1920).

In late 1918, the 8th Red Army fought against the Whites’ Don Army in the Voronezh–Liskinsk region and in early 1919 was engaged in defensive battles across the Donbass and around Lugansk. By August 1919, it had reached a strength of almost 30,000 men, but it was unable to prevent the rupture of Red lines caused by the Mamontov Raid. It was subsequently forced to retreat by the advance on Moscow of the Armed Forces of South Russia and suffered further damage when part of its staff, led by acting army commander A. I. Rataiskii and the former chief of staff A. S. Nechvolodov, deserted to the enemy on 12 October 1919. Its fortunes changed the following month, with a counteroffensive that captured the railway hub of Kastornoe and Veshenskaia station. By January–February 1920, the 8th Red Army had spearheaded the Red advance that had pushed the Whites back into the North Caucasus and captured Rostov-on-Don; by March 1920, it had overrun the Kuban and captured Novorossiisk, forcing the calamitous evacuation from that port of the forces of General A. I. Denikin. Subsequently, the 8th Red Army was transformed into the Caucasus Labor Army.

Commanders of the 8th Red Army were V. V. Chernavin (26 September–1 December 1918), V. M. Gittis (1–23 December 1918); M. N. Tukhachevskii (24 January–15 March 1919); T. S. Khvesin (15 March–8 May 1919); V. V. Liubimov (8 May–2 July 1919) V. I. Selivachev (14 August–19 September 1919); A. I. Rataiskii (acting, 3 July–12 October 1919); and G. Ia. Sokol′nikov (12 October 1919–20 March 1920). Its chiefs of staff were V. V. Vdov′ev (acting, 30 September–10 November 1918); A. A. Veselago (acting, 10 November–3 December 1918); S. A. Mezheninov (3 December 1918–31 January 1919); P. A. Men (acting, 31 January–26 February 1919); I. A. Troshin (acting, 31 January–26 February 1919); V. A. Zheltyshev (12–21 March 1919); B. L. Negrodov (acting, 22–27 March 1919); B. P. Lapshin (acting, 27 March–3 April 1919); V. V. Liubimov (3 April–8 May 1919); S. N. Golubev (acting, 8–20 May 1919); A. S. Nechvolodov (22 July–10 August 1919); V. F. Tarasov (acting, 10 August–2 October 1919); G. S. Gorchakov (acting, 2 October–1 November 1919); M. V. Molkochanov (acting, 1–18 November 1919); B. A. Shekaev (acting, 18–27 November 1919); M. V. Fastykovskii (acting, 27 November 1919–14 January 1920); L. N. Rostov (14 January–5 March 1920); and M. M. Lyshchinskii (5 March–16 April 1920).

Eikhe, Genrikh Khristoforovich (Eihe, Indriķis) (29 September 1893–25 July 1968). Staff-Captain (191?). A Red Army commander and one of that institution’s foremost historians, G. Kh. Eikhe was born in Riga and was the son of a docker. He was a graduate of the Riga Commercial School (1914) and the St. Petersburg Ensign School (1915). During the First World War, he rose to the command of a regiment. In 1917, he was active in army politics, becoming chairman of the Military Revolutionary Committee of the 245th Infantry Regiment by the time of the October Revolution and in November 1917 being elected to the Soviet of Soldiers’ Deputies of the 10th Army.

In early 1918, Eikhe was involved in the creation of Red Guards detachments and participated in the suppression of the Dowbor-Muśnicki uprising. He subsequently was awarded a command post on the Western Screen and then from the command of the 1st Revolutionary Rifle Regiment on the Volga rose to the command of the 26th Rifle Division on the Eastern Front (16 April–10 August and 21 September–23 November 1919), playing a leading role in the counterattack against the advance of the forces of Admiral A. V. Kolchak, before assuming command of the 5th Red Army (25 November 1919–21 January 1920). From 17 March 1920 to 29 April 1921 he was commander in chief of the People’s-Revolutionary Army of the Far Eastern Republic. He subsequently served as commander of forces of the Minsk region (from October 1921), battling against the forces of S. Bułak-Bałachowicz, and then as commander of forces of the Ferghana region (April–September 1922), in battles against the Basmachi. From 1924 he was seconded to the People’s Commissariat for Foreign Trade and worked also with VSNKh. He later published numerous important and (for Soviet works) unusually candid articles and books on the history of the civil wars in Siberia, notably Oprokinytyi tyl′ (1966).

ELEVEN-DAYS WAR. This was the name given by V. I. Lenin to the confrontation between the German army and a motley collection of forces either loyal to the new Soviet regime (Red Guards and other volunteer units, which were the seeds of the new Red Army) or still exhibiting loyalty to the old Russian Army (which had formally been demobilized by a Sovnarkom decree of 29 January 1918), following L. D. Trotsky’s refusal to agree to the peace terms offered by the Central Powers at Brest-Litovsk. When, on 28 January 1918 (10 February 1918, according to the Gregorian calendar in use in the West), Trotsky declared that the war was over but refused to sign the proffered terms (a policy of “neither war nor peace”), the Germans initially hesitated: Generals Max von Hoffman, Oskar von Hindenberg, and Erich Ludendorff were disorientated by this unheard of initiative, while Foreign Minister Richard von Kühlmann wished to avoid further military engagement in the east. At a Crown Council in Berlin on 13 February 1918, however, the army prevailed and at noon on 18 February 1918 launched Operation Faustlag (“Thunderbolt”). Within a few hours German forces had captured the key rail junction of Dvinsk and within six days, pushing eastward along a front stretching from the Baltic coast to the Carpathians, had intruded a further 125 miles into Russian territory. On 23 February 1918, Berlin dispatched a new set of peace terms to Petrograd. Although these were considerably harsher than those that had previously been on offer (including now the cession of Dvinsk, Livonia, and Estland to Germany; the cession of northeast Anatolia to Turkey; the recognition of the independence of Ukraine; the immediate evacuation of Finland and Ukraine; and the complete demobilization of the Russian Army), as well as a deadline for acceptance of 48 hours, Lenin that day won a narrow vote in favor of acceptance of the terms in the Bolshevik Central Committee, and on 1 March 1918, the 11th day of the “Eleven-Days War,” a Soviet delegation led by G. V. Chicherin arrived back at the peace conference to sign what would become the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk (3 March 1918). However, German forces would continue to advance, capturing Narva on 4 March 1918, the 14th day of the war and the day after the peace treaty was signed.

11TH RED ARMY. This was the name applied to three formations within the Red Army in the course of the civil wars.

The first 11th Red Army was created by an order of the Revvoensovet of the Southern Front on 3 October 1918, in fulfillment of a directive of the Revvoensovet of the Republic of 11 September 1918. It included all the various groups of forces that had made up the Red Army of the North Caucasus and formed part of the Southern Front (from 3 October 1918), then the Caspian–Caucasian sector of the Southern Front (from 2 November 1918), then (8 December 1918–3 February 1919) the Caspian–Caucasian Front. Incorporated into the 11th Red Army in October–November 1918 were the Taman Army and various stray infantry detachments and cavalry units. By 20 November 1918, it had a strength of four infantry and one cavalry corps (with two divisions in each). However, its isolation from the center led to some disorganization and a great shortage of supplies, and the army’s battleworthiness declined over the winter of 1918 to 1919, notably following the treachery and desertion of its commander, I. L. Sorokin, in late October 1918. Situated on the left flank of the 10th Red Army, this 11th Red Army engaged with forces of the Armed Forces of South Russia (AFSR) in the North Caucasus, but the Whites pushed it out of Stavropol′ in October 1918. An attempted counteroffensive failed, and by January 1919 the Whites had split the 11th Red Army into two parts, which then retreated separately to the regions of Sviatyi Krest–Elista and Groznyi–Kizliar. Wracked by typhus, part of the 11th Red Army then retreated toward Astrakhan, while the remainder sought to move across the Manych River to unite with the 10th Red Army. The force was officially disbanded on 13 February 1919. Commanders of the first 11th Red Army were I. L. Sorokin (acting, 3–28 October 1918), I. F. Fed′ko (30 November 1918–3 January 1919), and M. K. Levandovskii (3 January–13 February 1919). Its chief of staff was B. I. Peresvet (8 December 1918–13 February 1919).

The second 11th Red Army was created from various forces attached to the Caspian–Caucasian Front, according to a directive of the Revvoensovet of the Republic of 13 March 1919. Its complement included the 33rd Rifle Division (March–May 1919), the 34th Rifle Division (March–June 1919), the 1st Special Cavalry Division (March–April 1919), the 7th Cavalry Division (April–June 1919), and the Astrakhan–Caspian Military Flotilla (March–May 1919). This 11th Red Army was deployed around Astrakhan and along the northern shore of the Caspian, thereby forming a link between the Southern Front and the Eastern Front, but due to the force’s meager numbers (totaling only 12,300 men by April 1919), it was unable to fulfill its operational directive to drive the Whites from the eastern reaches of the North Caucasus and from Daghestan. On 4 June 1919, the Revvoensovet of the Republic ordered the disbanding of the second 11th Red Army, with most of its units being subsequently incorporated into the 10th Red Army. Commanders of the second 11th Red Army were N. A. Zhdanov (20 March–3 June 1919) and A. S. Smirnov (acting, 3–10 June 1919). Its chiefs of staff were I. F. Sharskov (19 March–18 April 1919), E. N. Ritel′man (acting, 19–29 April 1919), and A. F. Kadoshnikov (30 April–12 June 1919).

The third 11th Red Army was formed according to an order of 14 August 1919 of the Revvoensovet of the Eastern Front, from forces operating around Astrakhan. It was attached to the Turkestan Front, then (from 14 October 1919) the South-East Front, then (from 16 January 1920) the Caucasian Front. Its complement included the 1st Azerbaijan Independent Rifle Division (May–November 1920); the 9th (February–May 1921), 14th (January–March 1921), 18th (December 1920–May 1921), 20th Penza (April 1920–May 1921), 28th (April 1920–May 1921), 32nd (April–October 1920), 34th (August 1919–February 1920), 39th (April 1920), 49th (January–April 1920), and 50th (April 1919–February 1920) Rifle Divisions; the 2nd Cavalry Corps (April–August 1920); and the 1st (formerly Moscow) (August 1919–December 1920); 7th (August 1919–April 1920); 12th (November 1920–May 1921); 18th (August 1920–May 1921); and 21st (March 1921) Cavalry Divisions. From August to December 1919, this 11th Red Army was involved in defending Astrakhan from attacks by forces of the AFSR and various Cossack formations and in operations designed to recapture Tsaritsyn. In January–March 1920, it was involved in offensive operations in the eastern and central North Caucasus, capturing Stavropol′ and other towns. It was subsequently (March 1920–May 1921) at the heart of Soviet operations to overthrow the Democratic Republic of Azerbaijan, the Democratic Republic of Armenia, and the Democratic Republic of Georgia. In late May 1921, the third 11th Red Army was renamed the Independent Caucasus Army. Its commanders were V. P. Raspopov (14 August–26 September 1918); Iu. P. Butiagin (26 September–19 December 1919); M. I. Vasilenko (19 December 1919–29 March 1920 and 26 July–12 September 1920); M. K. Levandovskii (29 March–12 July 1920); A. K. Remezov (acting, 12–26 July and 12–19 September 1920); and A. I. Gekker (19 September 1920–29 May 1921). Its chiefs of staff were V. V. Shevedev (acting, 14 August–23 September 1919); N. I. Zvoriakin (acting; 23 September–13 October 1919); M. V. Molkochanov (13–16 October 1920); G. A. Shilko (acting, 18 October–10 December 1919); A. K. Remezov (10 December 1919–7 May 1921); and B. I. Kuznetsov (7–29 May 1921).

ELISEEV, ALEKSEI BORISOVICH (17 March 1887–22 December 1942). Senior NCO (October 1912), midshipman (December 1916), komdiv (1935). The Red naval artillery commander A. B. Eliseev was born into a poor peasant family in the village of Luzha, in St. Petersburg guberniia. He attended local schools and, as a young man, became a metalworker in several factories around the capital, participating in strike actions in 1905 and coming under police surveillance. In the autumn of 1908, he was conscripted into the Baltic Fleet and sent to Kronshtadt, where he trained as a naval gunner. He received several promotions and served as an instructor but was also involved in illegal political groups and spent four months in a naval prison in 1911. He left the navy in October 1913, but was remobilized on 1 July 1914 and during the First World War commanded a number of batteries around the Baltic coasts. Following the February Revolution, he was made chairman of the 33rd Battery sailors’ committee and a member of the regional sailors’ committee for Moon Sound (Muhumaa island) and in October 1917 joined the Central Committee of Tsentrobalt.

Eliseev was demobilized in late October 1917 and subsequently joined the Bolsheviks on 1 May 1918, by which time he had been elected a member of the Petrograd Soviet by local merchant sailors. In July 1918, he formed a volunteer unit of sailors and set off for the Eastern Front, where he joined the Volga Military Flotilla as a steamship captain, participating in the capture of Kazan′ on 10 September 1918. He subsequently served with the Volga Flotilla in a variety of practical and security capacities, rising to the post of commissar of the Volga–Kama and Astrakhan Military Flotillas (16 June 1920) before moving to the Southern Front, in July 1920, as commander of a brigade of armored trains. In August 1920, he was made commander of the Krasnaia Gorka Fort on the southern shore of the Gulf of Finland. He left military service in January 1921 but was recalled to command Krasnaia Gorka again during the suppression of the Kronshtadt Revolt two months later. From 16 June 1921, he served as commandant and commissar of the naval fortress at Kronshtadt, the following winter commanding Red naval forces against pro-Finnish rebels in Karelia during the Soviet–Finnish Conflict.

Eliseev subsequently served in many senior naval posts (including commander of coastal defenses on the Black Sea from October 1925, commander of coastal defenses of the Baltic from November 1927, and commander of coastal defenses of the Far East from May 1933). He was removed from all his posts in December 1937 and arrested in April 1938, but was released in October 1939 and made commander of the Northern Fortified Region of the Baltic Fleet during the Soviet–Finnish Winter War. In May 1941, he was named commander of naval fortifications of the Baltic and subsequently again held a series of senior posts in the Baltic Fleet, including commander of Kronshtadt Fortress (from 31 October 1941). He was removed from his duties in December 1941 and, apparently in despair over the opening stages of the war with Germany and in fear of arrest, committed suicide on 22 December 1942.

EMIGRATION. During the “Russian” Civil Wars, a wave of émigrés (the “first wave”) left the territories of the former Russian Empire. Estimates of the number of émigrés vary wildly, with figures ranging from 2,500,000 to 5,000,000 quoted for those who had departed by 1924. (The confusion arises, in part, because the Soviet government made it so complicated to obtain official permission to leave that unknown numbers left the country illegally, taking advantage of the porous borders of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic and its newly established neighbors during the civil-war years.) Other former Russian subjects who were already abroad (or in areas of the former empire not under Soviet control) could find themselves made effectively into émigrés, if the Soviet government revoked their right to citizenship in the new state; such, for example, was the fate of 26 Russian diplomats stationed in foreign capitals in November 1917 (although it is unlikely that any of these men would have wished to return to Bolshevik Russia). From 1922, in accordance with articles added to the criminal code of the USSR in May and August of that year, involuntary and administrative banishment abroad of real and alleged political enemies of the Soviet state also added to the number of émigrés, manifested in the departure of the so-called Philosophers’ Ships from Soviet shores during the autumn of that year.

These early exiles formed a distinct yet inchoate international community, sometimes termed “Russia abroad” (Zagranichnaia Rossiia), that initially encountered many problems. Not the least of these was that in 1921 the Soviet government issued decrees depriving of their citizenship all those who had left Russia since the October Revolution and who were not currently in possession of a Soviet visa. This created problems for the now stateless émigrés when they arrived in their new domiciles, in obtaining housing, employment, education, and permission to travel (e.g., to reunite families), the sort of everyday tragedies related in the many novels and stories of Vladimir Nabokov (son of the émigré Kadet, V. D. Nabokov), which perhaps best define the travails of the “first wave.” (Such concerns were only partially ameliorated by the League of Nations’ “Nansen passports” that were issued from 1921.)

Many of the émigrés were Whites (both politicians and soldiers), but among them were also many anti-Bolshevik socialists and cultural figures and many more ordinary Russians and non-Russians. As a group, they tended to be referred to in Soviet literature (and sometimes in the West), homogeneously, as “White émigrés” but in fact, in terms of politics, class, and nationality, they were a multifarious and fractious mass, who carried elements of the civil wars abroad with them and continued to fight them—more often with pens than with swords, although not always (the aforementioned V. D. Nabokov, for example, was killed by a monarchist assassin’s bullet aimed at the liberal politician P. N. Miliukov).

Émigrés fleeing from southern Russia (notably from Odessa and Novorossiisk when the Armed Forces of South Russia collapsed in early 1920 and from Crimea in the aftermath of the collapse of General P. N. Wrangel’s Russian Army in November 1920) usually went initially to Turkey (where many White soldiers lived in squalid conditions in camps around Gallipoli and on Lemnos for several years) and then moved on to Yugoslavia (where Wrangel established his headquarters at Sremski Karlovci) or to other Balkan countries, especially Bulgaria. In contrast, émigré members of the Party of Socialists-Revolutionaries were centered on Czechoslovakia (reviving the alliance between the Czechoslovak Legion and Komuch), while Mensheviks initially favored Berlin (headquarters of the powerful German socialist parties that, before the First World War, had been the Mensheviks’ partners in the Second International). Large numbers of émigrés also fled to the newly independent Baltic States, and some went to Finland.

The largest Russian émigré community in Europe, however, was in France. Whites and civilians fleeing from Siberia and the Far East, as Soviet power spread there from late 1919 to October 1922, found themselves in coastal cities of China and also at the railway centers of Harbin, Tientsin, and elsewhere, although others (notably many members of the Orenburg Cossack Host and the Semirech′e Cossack Host) found themselves farther west, in Chinese Turkestan (Xinjiang/Sinkiang), while elements of the Urals Cossack Host made their way out of Russia via Persia (some then moving on to Australia). Of course, none of these places—either in Asia or Europe—was particularly stable (and not all were very welcoming to this sudden influx of Russian refugees), so many émigrés found themselves moving on (particularly after the rise of Nazism in Germany and the outbreak of the Second World War in the Far East and then in Europe) to the United States, Canada, South America (where incentives—often misleadingly advertised—were offered by the Brazilian government to encourage immigration), and Australia. Comparatively few Russian émigrés went to Great Britain, which attempted to close its doors to refugees at this time.

As Soviet power was consolidated in the 1920s, as it seemed to reconstruct the Russian Empire as the USSR, and (with the rise of J. V. Stalin) as its internationalist and revolutionary edge was blunted, many (especially younger) émigrés came to espouse pro-Soviet sympathies—for example, the Mladorossii (“Young Russians,” a proto-fascist organization, led by A. L. Kazem-Bek), the Evrazitsii (“Eurasianists”), and the supporters of Smenovekhovstvo (“Change of Landmarks Movement”)—and some even returned to the USSR. But most émigrés remained staunchly anti-Bolshevik, notably the former Whites of the Russian All-Military Union (ROVS), which in turn made them targets of Soviet foreign intelligence operations (such as Operation “Trust”), designed to lure them into traps. Some (including émigré Tatars, Azeris, Ukrainians, Cossacks, and other non-Russians) were anti-Bolshevik to such an extent that they were willing, during the Second World War, to collaborate with the Nazis, imagining that Hitler was going to liberate Russia. Yet others joined the French Resistance, or at least (in the case of elderly liberal politicians like V. A. Maklakov) offered their verbal support and gratitude to the Soviet Army, once it was safe to do so. Even General A. I. Denikin offered his moral support to Stalin. Émigré relatives of Generals Denikin and Wrangel and Admiral A. V. Kolchak participated in the atmospheric film Russkie bez Rosii (“Russians without Russia,” 2003), by the veteran Soviet Russian director Nikita Mikhailov.

Finally, it should be recorded that not only Russian Whites and non-Bolshevik socialists were émigrés, as the outcome of the civil wars produced many other losers. Many supporters of the Ukrainian National Republic (UNR) for example, moved initially to Poland in 1920, following defeat in the Soviet–Ukrainian War. Their former partners of the Western Ukrainian People’s Republic were not welcomed by Warsaw, though, because of the conflict over Eastern Galicia/Western Ukraine that had fueled the Ukrainian–Polish War. Adherents of the UNR were also forced to move on, however, in the wake of the uneasy Soviet–Polish rapprochement signaled by the Treaty of Riga (18 March 1921). Most Ukrainian exiles thereafter settled in Czechoslovakia, Germany, and France. Meanwhile, the Red Army’s decade-long struggle against the Basmachi drove at least a million Kazakhs and other Central Asian Muslims across the border into Persia, and especially Afghanistan, in the 1920s. The Sovietization of Transcaucasia also generated a stream of forced migrants: former adherents of the Democratic Republic of Azerbaijan tended to find refuge in Persia or Turkey; those of the Democratic Republic of Armenia joined their brethren in Armenian enclaves around the Levant and the Mediterranean; and many Georgians followed the Government-in-Exile of the Democratic Republic of Georgia to France.

ENISEISK COSSACK HOST. occupying territories in southern Eniseisk guberniia, this small Cossack host was responsible prior to 1914 for the raising of only a single (Krasnoiarsk) sotnia. During the First World War, it mobilized a division (later downgraded to a regiment and incorporated into the Ussurii Cavalry Division) and during the civil wars supplied two mounted regiments and a brigade to White forces in Siberia, having rebelled against Soviet power in February–March 1918. The Independent Eniseisk Brigade fought in eastern Siberia in the summer of 1918 before transferring to the Perm′ region in the winter with the Siberian Army. As White efforts in Siberia collapsed in late 1919, some 350 Eniseisk Cossacks fled south to Uriankhai (Tuva), while more than 700 fled east to Transbaikalia and thence to the Maritime Province. By 1 September 1922, there existed only a single Eniseisk Cossack druzhina of about 110 men in the Far East. In emigration, many of the Eniseisk druzhina found their way to Harbin. Host ataman during the revolutionary period was A. A. Sotnikov (from September 1917).

ENVER PASHA (İSMAIL ENVER) (22 November 1881–4 August 1922). Major (Turkish Army, September 1906), lieutenant colonel (Turkish Army, 1912), lieutenant general (Turkish Army, 1914). As a leading member of the Young Turks and the most senior military figure in the Ottoman Empire during the First World War, Enver Pasha, who was a graduate of the general staff Harp Akademisi (1902), played an important and controversial role in the “Russian” Civil Wars. Born in Constantinople, he was of humble origins, but saw his family’s circumstances change when his father was promoted into the retinue of Sultan Abdulhamid II. From 1902, he served in Macedonia, battling Greek, Bulgarian, and Serbian nationalist bands, to great acclaim. Following the Young Turk uprising, in which he was a key conspirator, and the establishment of the Second Constitutional Era of the Ottoman Empire (1908), he served as military attaché in Berlin and in 1911 led Arab resistance forces in the Italo–Turkish War. When the Young Turks consolidated their power over the state in January 1913, Enver was made minister of war and, following the successes of Turkish forces in the Second Balkan War, was the dominant member of the governing triumvirate. In that capacity, he was instrumental in sealing the Ottoman–German Alliance of 2 August 1914 and in leading his country into the First World War on 31 October 1914, under the banner of Pan-Turkism. In 1914, he also married into the immediate family of the Caliph, Sultan Mehmed V.

Enver subsequently commanded the Turkish Third Army against Russia on the Caucasus Front, but returned to Constantinople following their crushing defeat in the Battle of Sarıkamış (December 1914–January 1915). In the capital, he promoted a campaign to blame the Armenians for undermining Turkish military efforts and was instrumental in triggering the process that led to the deportation and alleged genocide of the Armenians of eastern Anatolia in 1915. He returned to eastern Anatolia in the summer of 1918, to assist his brother, Nuri Pasha, at the head of the Army of Islam as it advanced into Transcaucasia, but was dismissed from his posts on 14 October 1918, as Turkey contemplated defeat in the world war. To avoid arrest, he fled abroad on 1 November 1918, but was later condemned to death, in absentia, by a Turkish court martial, having been found guilty of illegitimately leading his country into the world war. Enver sought refuge initially in Berlin, where he established contact with Karl Radek, and then fled to Moscow, where he met V. I. Lenin and other leading Bolsheviks and sought to establish an alliance between the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic and the exiled Turkish Committee of Union and Progress (of which he was the head) against Great Britain and Kemalist Turkey. In September 1920, he attended the Baku Congress of the Peoples of the East, as the self-proclaimed plenipotentiary of the “Union of the Revolutionary Organizations of Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Tripoli, Egypt, Arabia and India.”

Having been refused reentry into Turkey by Mustafa Kemal in July 1921, and being disappointed by the Soviet–Turkish rapprochement signaled by the Treaty of Kars (13 October 1921), Enver focused his attentions on Central Asia, where he hoped to encourage anti-British and anti-Bolshevik uprisings. He was sent to Bukhara by the Soviet government in November 1921 to prevent him from meddling in Anatolian affairs, but also to recruit supporters to fight Muslim rebels. However, he soon made contact with the Basmachi (notably Ibrahim-bek) in Russian Turkestan, and although he was initially distrusted by the rebels (and held as a virtual prisoner by them for several months), he was eventually recognized as regional commander in chief of their forces in eastern Bukhara at the behest of Mohammed Alim Khan, the emir of Bukhara. Although various conflicting accounts of his demise have been propagated (Soviet forces did not realize they had killed him and his death was not announced in Moscow until October 1922), it seems most likely that he died near Baljuan (in present-day Tajikistan) of wounds sustained when his unit was ambushed at the village of Ab-i Derya, near Dushanbe, on 4 August 1922. In 1996, his remains were returned to Turkey and reburied in Istanbul at the Şişli Abide-i Hürriyet (Obelisk of Freedom) cemetery.

Erdeli, Ivan Georgievich (15 October 1870–7 July 1939). Colonel (December 1905), major general (May 1910), lieutenant general (15 May 1916), general of cavalry (July 1917). A Guards officer who occupied a number of key positions in the White movement in South Russia, I. G. Erdeli was born into the nobility of Kherson guberniia (his family being descended from a Hungarian noble who had moved to Russia in the 18th century) and was a graduate of the Nicholas Cadet Corps (1887), the Nicholas Cavalry School (1890), and the Academy of the General Staff (1897). Prior to 1914, he worked on the staff of the Caucasus Military District (1900–1905) and commanded the 8th Dragoons Astrakhan Regiment (1907–1910), before joining the suite of Nicholas II in 1911 and occupying a number of senior military posts (including quartermaster general on the staff of the St. Petersburg Military District, 1912–1914). During the First World War, Erdeli commanded the 14th Cavalry Division (September 1914–May 1915), the 2nd Guards Cavalry Division (13 May 1915–November 1916), the 64th Infantry Division (November 1916–March 1917), the 18th Army Corps (March–June 1917), the 11th Army (June–July 1917), and the Special Army on the South-West Front (July–September 1917).

As a suspected participant in the Kornilov affair, Erdeli was arrested by the Provisional Government and incarcerated at Bykhov, from where, alongside the other “Bykhov generals,” he escaped in November 1917 and made his way to Novocherkassk to help found the Volunteer Army. In the White movement, he commanded a mounted regiment (December 1917–March 1918) during the First Kuban (Ice) March and served as the representative of the Volunteer Army attached to the government of the Kuban Cossack Host. From March to July 1918, he commanded an Independent Mounted Brigade and was then commander of the 1st Cavalry Division (July–August 1918) during the Second Kuban March. He was placed on the Volunteers’ reserve list from August 1918, but was then put in command of the forces of the Terek–Daghestan Region (from 16 April 1919) and the forces of the North Caucasus Region (from August 1919), in that capacity advancing upon the Red stronghold of Astrakhan, but failing to capture it. Following the collapse of the Armed Forces of South Russia in early 1920, he retreated with his men into Georgia and made his way from there to Crimea, but failed to secure a posting in the Russian Army of General P. N. Wrangel.

Erdeli then emigrated (from April 1920), settling eventually in Paris, where he worked as a chauffer and a pianist. He was also involved in various émigré officer organizations, including becoming head of the 1st Section of ROVS on 29 June 1934. In 1938, he led the commission of investigation into the part played by N. V. Skoblin in the abduction and disappearance of General E. K. Miller. Erdeli died suddenly on 7 July 1939 and is buried in Paris in the Russian cemetery of Sainte-Geneviève-des-Bois.

ERK. This pro-Bolshevik, Muslim socialist organization (“The Socialist Party of Turkestan”) was formed by groups based in Tashkent, Bukhara, and elsewhere in November 1919 and was active in those areas until 1926. From January 1921, it was known as the Turkestan Sosialistlar Tüdesi (“The Circle of Turkestan Socialists”), usually abbreviated to Tüde. Its organizational committee, which included Zeki Velidi Togan (Validov), sent representatives to the Baku Congress of Peoples of the East in September 1920. The party program included plans for the collectivization of agriculture, the nationalization of natural resources, self-governance for a territorially undefined “Turkestan,” and the separation of church and state.

ERN, NIKOLAI FRANTSEVICH (6 December 1879–19 July 1972). Colonel (15 June 1915) major general (1917), lieutenant general (Paraguayan Army, 193?). Although only ranking as a secondary figure among the Whites in South Russia, N. F. Ern (like General A. V. Shvartz) stands out as an example of the sometimes exotic career trajectories that anti-Bolsheviks took in emigration. He was a graduate of the Tiflis Gymnasium, the Elizavetgrad Cavalry Officers School (1900), and the Academy of the General Staff (1906). Having previously served as a staff officer with the Caucasus Military District (26 November 1909–2 November 1912) and taught at the Tver′ Cavalry School (2 November 1912–24 November 1914), during the First World War Ern served in the Russian Army as a duty officer with the 4th Caucasus Army Corps (24 November 1914–20 February 1915), chief of staff of the 1st Caucasian Cossack Division during its Persian expedition (to 11 June 1916), and commander of the 18th Northern Dragoons (from 20 December 1916).

He joined the Volunteer Army at its inception and served as a duty officer on its general staff, remaining in the same post when the Volunteers joined the Armed Forces of South Russia and when the remnants of the latter formed the Russian Army of General P. N. Wrangel. Having been evacuated from Crimea in November 1920, Ern then joined Wrangel’s staff at Sremski Karlovci in Serbia and taught there at the Crimean Cadet Corps (6 November 1923–1 August 1924). He subsequently emigrated to Paraguay and worked as a professor in that country’s army’s staff college, later serving with the Paraguayan Army in the Chaco War of 1932–1935 against Bolivia, before being named inspector general of the Paraguayan Army. He was also the head of ROVS in Paraguay and (from the early 1930s) South America. Ern died in Asunción at the age of 92 and is buried there.

ERZINCAN, ARMISTICE OF. This agreement was signed on 5 December 1917 at Erzincan, in eastern Anatolia, between representatives of the Soviet government and the command of the 3rd Army of the Ottoman Empire. It brought to an end Russia’s campaigns against Turkey on the Caucasian Front and in Persia and was eventually followed by the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk (3 March 1918), which brought a formal end to the war.

Estonia, Autonomous Governorate of. This regional polity was established on 30 March 1917, by the amalgamation of the Estland and Livland gubernii of the former Russian Empire. Elections were then held for an Estonian diet (or “Land Council”), the Maapäev. When, on 23 October 1917, Estonian Bolsheviks under Jaan Anvelt attempted a coup at Revel (Tallinn), the Maapäev refused to recognize its legitimacy and proclaimed itself to be the sole legitimate authority in the Autonomous Governate of Estonia. The Maapäev was driven underground and was not recognized by either the new Soviet government in Petrograd or the German forces that occupied Estonia in February 1918, but nevertheless issued a declaration of independence on 23 February 1918, thereby disestablishing the Autonomous Governate of Estonia. These events can be seen as the opening exchanges of the Estonian War of Independence.

ESTONIAN LAND COUNCIL. See Maapäev.

ESTONIAN RED ARMY. This Red military formation was created, according to orders of the Revvoensovet of the Republic and the Sovnarkom of the Estonian Workers’ Commune of 18 February 1919, from elements of the 7th Red Army (which was then attached to the Western Front). Included in its complement were the 1st Estonian Rifle Division (March–30 May 1919), the Marienburg Group (7 April–25 May 1919), the Pskov Group (8 April–30 May 1919), and the Lake Chud Military Flotilla (March–May 1919). The army was created with the aim of capturing the former province of Estland from nationalist forces during the Estonian War of Independence, but made no headway and was forced onto the defensive as the White forces of General N. N. Iudenich advanced toward Petrograd in May 1919. The Estonian Red Army was disestablished on 30 May 1919, and its units were thereafter incorporated into the 7th Red Army and the 15th Red Army.

The commander of the Estonian Red Army was M. N. Vasil′ev (27 February–30 May 1919). Its chief of staff was A. I. Kork (18 February–30 May 1918).

ESTONIAN WAR OF INDEPENDENCE. This conflict, which involved the Estonian Army, the Red Army, the Baltische Landeswehr, the North-West Army, and other White formations, as well as elements of the Allied intervention, is known in Estonian as the Vabadussõda (“Freedom War”). It had its origins in the Soviet government’s attempted forcible dissolution, in late November 1917, of the Maapäev, which had in April 1917 proclaimed itself to be the highest authority in the former Russian province of Estland, and the Autonomous Governate of Estonia. Estonian forces gathered in early 1918 to oppose local Bolsheviks and, as German forces approached Revel (Tallinn), a Salvation Committee of the Maapäev declared Estonian independence on 24 February 1918. The next day German forces entered Revel and dispersed the government formed by the Salvation Committee, proceeding to foster the creation of the United Baltic Duchy.

Following Germany’s defeat in the First World War, the Estonian government reemerged at Tallinn and, on 16 November 1918, its minister of war, Konstantin Päts, ordered the formation, on the basis of the preexisting Kaitseliit (“defense alliance”), of a regular Estonian Army, with Major General Aleksander Tõnisson as commander in chief and Major General Andres Larka as chief of staff. On 22 November 1918, Red forces attacked Narva, marking the formal commencement of hostilities in the war. By the end of the month, the 7th Red Army (later redesignated the Estonian Red Army) had captured Narva, opened a second front south of Lake Peipus, around Pechory, and proclaimed a Soviet republic (the Estonian Workers’ Commune). On 18 December 1918, Tartu fell to the Reds, and by the end of the year the front was within 20 miles of Tallinn. Last-ditch efforts were made to save the republic, as the new commander in chief, Colonel Johan Laidoner, began reorganizing Estonian forces and recruiting men in numbers. (By May 1919, the Estonian Army was some 75,000 strong.) The Estonians were also assisted by almost 4,000 Finnish volunteers and around 300 volunteers from Sweden and Denmark and received arms from the British government (the first batch of 6,500 rifles, 200 machine guns, and 2 field guns being delivered by the Royal Navy at Tallinn on 31 December 1918). British vessels also shelled Bolshevik positions, transported Estonian marines to bridgeheads behind the Red lines, and captured two Russian destroyers (Avtroil and Spartak) in the Gulf of Finland that they then gave to Estonia. Consequently, an Estonian counteroffensive in January 1919 drove the Red Army back, regaining Tartu (14 January 1919) and Narva (18 January 1919), and by the end of that month the front had moved east to a line approximate to that of the former guberniia boundary.

A second, three-pronged offensive launched by Laidoner on 13 May 1919, in collaboration with the 3,000-strong White Pskov Volunteer Corps, was initially successful in taking the fighting onto Russian territory (despite the distraction of the Landeswehr War breaking out on Estonia’s southern flank), and Pskov was captured (25 May 1919), but a Red counteroffensive in July 1919 regained most of the territory lost. In September 1919, the launching of a large-scale offensive against Petrograd by the White forces, which now united (again with British support) as the North-West Army under General N. N. Iudenich, brought a new aspect to the struggle in the region. When the Whites were driven back into Estonia from December 1919, the Estonian government, which had always been fearful that the Whites were striving to resurrect the Russian Empire, decided to intern them (rather than host a disintegrating, dangerous, and provocative armed force on its territory). At that point the Red Army determined to end its assaults on Estonian positions (which had continued intermittently throughout the second half of 1919); a cease-fire was declared on 5 December 1919, and negotiations began at Tartu that soon led (on 3 January 1920) to the signing of a Soviet–Estonian armistice. The war was formally ended, and Estonian independence was recognized by the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic in the Treaty of Tartu (2 February 1920).

In the course of the war, Estonian forces suffered 5,600 killed, 15,000 wounded, and 667 captured. Soviet casualties are unknown, although almost 10,000 Red Army soldiers were captured by the Estonians. The war is commemorated in monuments and museums across Estonia, notably the War of Independence Victory Column, on Freedom Square in Tallinn (unveiled on 23 June 2009). The 23.5-meter column is modeled on the Cross of Liberty, a decoration for valor instituted by Konstantin Päts on Estonian Independence Day (24 February) 1919. The siting and erection of such memorials, given Estonia’s sizable Russian minority, has become one front in an ongoing “War of Monuments” in the country, although most controversy surrounds memorials relating to the Second World War.

ESTONIAN WORKERS’ COMMUNE. Led throughout its existence by the Estonian Bolshevik Jaan Anvelt, this short-lived, provisional Soviet government of Estonia was established at Narva on 29 November 1918 (the day following the Red Army’s capture of that city) in opposition to the nationalist “Land Council” (the Maapäev) that had been organized at Revel (Tallinn) during the opening stages of the Estonian War of Independence. Moving rapidly to nationalize industry, the railways, and the banks, on 7 December 1918 it was formally recognized by the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic. However, its efforts to organize risings in Revel came to naught, and the following month it was driven out of Estonia by the Estonian Army, which recaptured Narva on 19 January 1919.

The Estonian Workers’ Commune subsequently operated from Vyra, then Pskov, then Luga, and finally Staraia Russa. On 5 June 1919, the commune’s council, supported by the Central Committee of the Estonian section of the Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks), declared it to be dissolved. Other than Anvelt, who occupied the post of chairman and head of the Military Directorate, its other notable members were V. E. Kingisepp (internal affairs) and Kh. G. Pegel′man (economic affairs).

EVSEKTSIIA. This was the acronym by which was known the Evraiskaia sektsiia, or “Jewish Section” of the Central Committee of the Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks). Although Jewish sections of local party branches had been in operation since June 1918, it was only established on a national scale in Moscow on 20 October 1918, as a subordinate organ of the party Central Committee. For most of its existence, the Evsektsiia was led by Semen Dimanstein. Its purpose was to popularize Bolshevism among the Jewish population of Soviet Russia and especially Ukraine and the western borderlands (the “Pale of Settlement” for Jews in the Russian Empire), to encourage the Jews’ loyalty to the Soviet state and to accelerate Jewish assimilation. Thus, the Evsektsiia propagandized against the Bund and opposed Zionism, labeling both as forms of “bourgeois nationalism,” which brought it into conflict with existing Jewish organizations and parties. It was also opposed by the Jewish religious establishment. At the same time, the Evsektsiiat sought to counter pogroms and to promote Yiddish as the language of instruction in Jewish schools. The organization’s central organ was the newspaper Der Emes (“The Truth”), edited by Moishe Litvakov. The Evsektsiia was disbanded in 1929. Many of its members were killed during the purges of the 1930s.

Extraordinary Commission for Combatting Counter-Revolution and Sabotage. See CHEKA.