Historical Dictionary of the Russian Civil Wars, 1916-1926

MOLKOCHANOV, MIKHAIL VASIL′EVICH (14 October 1877–1924). Lieutenant (1917). The Soviet military commander M. V. Molkochanov was born into a middle-class family at Kishinev (Chişinău) in Bessarabia and was a graduate of the Academy of the General Staff (1917). During the First World War, he occupied a number of staff posts, latterly as senior adjutant with the 29th Army Corps.

Molkochanov volunteered for service with the Red Army in early 1918 and was assigned to the staff of the commander of the Kaluga region. He then served as commander of the 9th Rifle Division (October 1918–May 1919) and from July 1919 was commander of the Sumsk group of forces in Ukraine. From July to October 1919, he was commander of the 41st Rifle Division, and from November 1919 to March 1920 was assistant commander of the 8th Red Army (having been acting chief of staff of that force, 1–18 November 1919). Molkochanov subsequently served as chief of staff of the 14th Red Army (1 May–7 July 1920), commander of the 14th Red Army (8 July–27 September 1920), and chief of staff of the 11th Red Army (13–16 October 1920). From 1 January 1921, he was commander of the Red Army of Armenia, leading its struggles against the Dashnaks in Nakhchivan. From August to November 1921, he was chief of staff and acting commander of forces in the Tambov region, overseeing operations to mop up the remnants of the Antonovshchina. He subsequently assumed various command posts in Siberia and died of natural causes in 1924.

MONGOLIAN PEOPLE’S REPUBLIC. From 1691 to 1911, Outer Mongolia had been ruled by the Manchu dynasty, but during the early 20th century, the Mongolian nobility turned to tsarist Russia in a bid to prevent Chinese colonization of their lands. Emboldened by a promise of support from Nicholas II, in December 1911 the Mongols took advantage of the revolution in China to depose Ikh Khuree, the Manchu plenipotentiary (amban) in their capital, and declared their independence under the eighth Jebtsundamba Khutugtu, now proclaimed the Bogd Khan of Mongolia. Subsequently, in the Kiakhta (Khiagt) agreement of 1915, China and imperial Russia agreed to recognize Mongolia’s autonomy under Chinese suzerainty. The Chinese, however, took advantage of the weakening of Russian power during the revolution to reassert their authority, forcing the Mongols to accept the abolition of their autonomy in 1919.

The Mongolian People’s Party, which was later to fall under Soviet influence, was founded in 1919 to oppose the Chinese, but had first to combat the incursion into Mongolia of the Russian Whites, in the form of a column of troops commanded by R. F. Ungern von Sternberg, who had occupied Khuree in March 1921 and established a puppet government under the Bogd Khan. Ungern was expelled by an alliance of Mongol and Red Army forces on 6 July 1921, and a new regime was established, with the Bogd Khan still as nominal head of state. Soviet influence grew over the following years, and when the Bogd Khan died, the Mongolian People’s Republic was proclaimed on 26 November 1924.

MONSTROV, KONSTANTIN IVANOVICH (?–February 1920). K. I. Monstrov, the commander of the anti-Bolshevik Peasant’s Army of Ferghana, had worked as a clerk prior to the First World War, then in 1914 took over a smallholding near Ferghana. Following the October Revolution and the breakdown of order in the region, he was chosen as commander of a force, made up of Russians (chiefly peasants), which sought to defend settlers’ interests against the encroachments of the Basmachi. As such, he was initially allied to Red forces in the region. (The precise date of Monstrov’s elevation to his command remains unclear; Soviet sources suggest November 1918, but more recent Russian works cite May 1919.) However, alarmed by the introduction of War Communism into the Ferghana region by the Turkestan Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic, on 22 August 1919 Monstrov revolted against Soviet rule and formed an alliance with the Basmachi leader Madamin-bek, which resulted in the creation of the Provisional Government of Ferghana. As Soviet forces in the region gained the upper hand, however, he realigned himself with the Red Army on 17 January 1920. This did not save him from being tried and shot by the Soviet authorities the following month.

Morozov, Nikolai Apollonovich (4 December 1879–?). Colonel (6 December 1914), major general (1916). A graduate of the Pskov Cadet Corps, the Pavlovsk Military School, and the Academy of the General Staff (1905), during the First World War, N. A. Morozov commanded the 1st Caucasus Rifle Regiment on the Caucasian Front. During the civil wars, he acted as the White leader General A. I. Denikin’s plenipotentiary on the staff of the Kuban Cossack Host (January 1919–February 1920), as well as assuming the post of assistant chief of staff of the Kuban Cossacks (February–April 1920). As the Armed Forces of South Russia collapsed in the North Caucasus in early 1920, he briefly came to command the remains of the Kuban Army around Sochi (13–18 April 1920) and negotiated his unit’s surrender to the Reds. He subsequently spent some years in prison, in Kostroma, but later served in the Red Army, working at the Military-Political Academy in Leningrad. Morozov was arrested for “counterrevolutionary activities” in 1930 and disappeared into the Gulag.

MOSCOW ARMY GROUP. This group of forces, part of the Eastern Front of the Russian Army of Admiral A. V. Kolchak, was formed on 10 October 1919, for the conducting of a planned (but soon aborted) offensive operation aimed at protecting the eastern White capital, Omsk. The Moscow Army Group included the 3rd Army, the Orenburg Army, and the Steppe Army Group. Its commanders were General K. V. Sakharov (10 October–4 November 1919) and General V. O. Kappel′ (from 4 November 1919).

Moscow Directive. This was the name given to the order (No. 08878) issued at Tsaritsyn by the commander in chief of the Whites’ Armed Forces of South Russia (AFSR), General A. I. Denikin, on 3 July 1919, the day after the capture of that city, following a prolonged siege by the Caucasian Army of General P. N. Wrangel. Denikin determined that, having seized the “Red Verdun” of Tsaritsyn and most of the Donbass, the AFSR should move on to a general advance aimed at “the occupation of the heart of Russia, Moscow.” The Volunteer Army was to advance on a line through Kursk, Orel, and Tula to Moscow; the Don Army was to move through Voronezh and Riazan′ to Moscow; and the Caucasian Army was to move in a loop from Tsaritsyn through Saratov, Nizhnii Novgorod, and Vladimir to Moscow. The Volunteers’ instructions were later amended to include the capture of Kiev and Chernigov in northern Ukraine, as well as Kherson, Nikolaev, and Odessa in the south, in part because forces commanded by General A. G. Shkuro independently crossed the Dnepr, encouraging the Whites’ 3rd Army Corps to break out of Crimea and advance into right-bank Ukraine.

Denikin’s order for an advance on such a broad front attracted criticism at the time (and ever since) by those (not least among them General Wrangel) who would have preferred either a concentrated central thrust toward Moscow or an attempt to forge a union with the Russian Army of Admiral A. V. Kolchak, which was at that point in retreat but was still tantalizingly close to the AFSR’s right flank. (Indeed, units from the Caucasian Army encountered units from Kolchak’s Urals Army on the left bank of the Volga in July 1919.) The Moscow Directive consisted of fewer than 300 words, but it may well have determined the outcome of the “Russian” Civil Wars.

MOSCOW, TREATY OF (7 May 1920). This treaty was signed in the aftermath of a failed Communist coup in Tiflis and Georgia’s rebuff of incursions onto its territories by surrounding Soviet forces in March–April 1920 (both of which were local initiatives, chiefly of Sergo Ordzhonikidze and the Bolsheviks’ Kavbiuro) and against the backdrop of the expansion of the Soviet–Polish War. Under its terms the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (RSFSR) offered de jure recognition to the Democratic Republic of Georgia (Article I) and renounced all interference in its internal affairs (Article II), while Georgia undertook (under Article V) not to grant asylum on its territory to any anti-Soviet forces (chiefly elements of the Whites’ Armed Forces of South Russia that were seeking to escape from the newly installed Soviet control of the North Caucasus). Fatally for Georgia, it also had to agree to the neutrality and demilitarization of the key mountain passes granting access to its territories from the north (Article III). In a secret supplement, Georgia also undertook to permit the Georgian Communist Party to operate freely on its territory.

The Treaty of Moscow (7 May 1920) was signed by L. M. Karakhan for the RSFSR and Grigol Uratadze for Georgia. Its terms were soon violated by both sides, as Soviet Russia continued to foment class war and interethnic strife within Georgia, while the Georgian interior minister, Noe Ramishvili, repeatedly arrested members of the local Communist leadership for alleged subversion.

MOSCOW, TREATY OF (12 July 1920). This peace treaty ended hostilities between Soviet Russia and Lithuania arising from the Lithuanian Wars of Independence. The people’s commissar for foreign affairs of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic, G. V. Chicherin, had first proposed such a peace on 11 September 1919, but the Lithuanian foreign minister, Augustinas Voldemaras, did not offer a positive response until 31 March 1920, and talks did not formally begin in Moscow until 7 May 1920. Negotiations were strained because the Lithuanian delegation demanded that Soviet Russia recognize its territorial claims to the former imperial Russian provinces of Kovno, Vil′na, Grodno, and Suvalki (Suwałki), much of which were currently occupied by Poland, but refused to meet the Soviet delegation’s demand that Lithuania sign a military alliance with Soviet Russia against Poland. Lithuania’s reasoning was that, as the Red Army was currently being defeated in the Soviet–Polish War—Kiev had fallen to the Poles on 7 May 1920—a better long-term strategy would be to encourage the Allies to force Poland to surrender the disputed territories. However, after Red forces recaptured Kiev (13 June 1920) and began a spectacularly successful counteroffensive in early July that netted Minsk (11 July 1920) and soon Vil′na (14 July 1920) and Grodno (19 July 1920), the Lithuanians decided to sign the treaty.

Under the major terms of the treaty, Soviet Russia unreservedly recognized Lithuania’s independence, acknowledged its sovereignty over most of the disputed territories (including the city of Vil′na/Vilnius, which Lithuania regarded as its capital), promised to return all looted cultural artifacts, and agreed to pay war reparations of 3 million rubles. In return, Lithuania signed a secret annex granting Soviet forces unrestricted movement within its newly recognized territory during the war with Poland and promising to curtail the activities of all anti-Soviet organizations operating on its territory (including the exiled government of the Belarussian People’s Republic). At the moment of the signing of the treaty, most of the disputed territories were occupied by the Red Army. The latter reinstalled Litbel to power in Vil′na and would probably not have returned the region to Lithuania had the outcome of the Soviet–Polish War been different. As it was, following defeat in the Battle of Warsaw, on 26 August the Soviet authorities transferred control of Vil′na to the Lithuanians, an act that led to the Polish–Lithuanian War, the Żeligowski mutiny, and Poland’s seizure of Vilnius. The reparations, moreover, were never paid, and the cultural artifacts were not returned. The latter issue is a source of conflict between Russia and Lithuania to this day, while some Belarussians still dispute the treaty’s cession of allegedly ethnically Belarussian territories (Hrodna, Shchuchyn, Lida, etc.) to Lithuania, on the grounds that this was an unlawful, unilateral act on the part of Moscow that took no cognizance of Belarussian claims.

MOSCOW, TREATY OF (16 March 1921). This treaty of “friendship and fraternity” (also known as the “Treaty of Brotherhood”), agreed between representatives of Soviet Russia and Mustafa Kemal’s Grand National Assembly of Turkey (the Turkish Republic having yet to be proclaimed), established diplomatic relations between the two regimes and sought to delineate Turkey’s northeastern borders with the Transcaucasian territories that were to become part of the USSR. Born out of a mutual hostility to the Allied powers and a desire to challenge the Versailles settlement (or, in Turkey’s case, more specifically, the Treaty of Sèvres, 10 August 1920), its territorial terms (which were very favorable to Turkey and remain disputed by Armenians) were fine-tuned and augmented by the subsequent Treaty of Kars (13 October 1921). Under Article II of the treaty, Turkey ceded Batum to Georgia, as well as the adjacent lands north of Sarp, while the former Kars oblast′ of the Russian Empire (occupied since 1877 and claimed by the Democratic Republic of Armenia during the civil-war years) was returned to Turkey. Article III provided for the establishment of an autonomous Nakhchivan region, under the protection of the Azerbaijan Soviet Socialist Republic (although, again, this was a region claimed by Armenia). The treaty also included mutual expressions of hostility to imperialism, support for the rights of the “peoples of the east” to independence and freedom, desire for a conference of Black Sea states to draw up an agreement on the rights of passage through the Straits (Article V), and an undertaking not to accept any treaties imposed on the other signatory against its will (thereby advertising Moscow’s support for the Kemalists’ efforts to overturn the Treaty of Sèvres).

MOTORNYI, VLADIMIR IVANOVICH (22 February 1883–10 May 1931). Lieutenant colonel (15 August 1915), colonel (1918), major general (March 1920). The White commander V. I. Motornyi, who was the son of a general in the Russian Army, was born at Kazan′ and was a graduate of the Moscow Cadet Corps, the Mikhail Artillery School (1904), and the Academy of the General Staff (1911). He entered military service on 31 August 1901, was a participant in the Russo–Japanese War, and by 2 June 1917 had risen to the post of chief of staff of the Urals Cossack Special Division. In October 1917, he was named chief of staff to the ataman of the Urals Cossack Host. In that capacity, he participated in the struggles against the Bolsheviks of the Urals Army during the summer of 1918 and was subsequently named its chief of staff (18 March 1919–April 1920).

When the Whites in Siberia collapsed, Motornyi made his way, with the remnants of the Urals Army, to Fort Aleksandrovsk, but subsequently (on 1 May 1920) became separated from the main group of Ataman V. S. Tolstov and was captured by the Reds. He was held in the Butyrki prison in Moscow until late 1920, when he was released and set to educational work in a variety of Red Army colleges and institutions. He was arrested on 17 January 1931, as part of Operation “Spring,” charged with and found guilty of organizing a counterrevolutionary plot in Moscow, and subsequently shot.

Moudros, Armistice of. See Mudros (Moudros), Armistice of.

Mountain Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic. This short-lived polity was proclaimed on 17 November 1920 and was formally constituted as a constituent element of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (RSFSR) by a decree of VTsIK on 20 January 1921. It occupied the southern parts of the former Kuban and Terek oblasti in the North Caucasus. It was established by Red forces (directed by J. V. Stalin, S. M. Kirov, and G. K. Ordzhonikidze) as a successor to the anti-Bolshevik Mountain Republic and North Caucasian Emirate of the indigenous peoples that had previously existed in the region. The Mountain Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic covered an area of 28,200 square miles, included the cities of Groznyi and Vladikavkaz (its capital), had a population of some 786,000, and was divided into six regions: Chechnia, Ingushetia, Ossetia, Kabardinskaia, Balkarskaia, and Karachaevskaia.

Never a stable entity, the Mountain ASSR began to be partitioned almost as soon as it was created, beginning with the Kabardian region becoming the Kabardian Autonomous Oblast′ of the RSFSR on 1 September 1921 and culminating with the creation of the North Ossetian Autonomous Oblast′ and the Ingush Autonomous Oblast′ on 7 July 1924.

MOUNTAINOUS ARMENIA, REPUBLIC OF. Also known as the Republic of Karabakh-Zangezur and as the Syunik Republic, this short-lived polity was established (on territories corresponding approximately to the present-day southeastern Armenian province of Syunik and the disputed region of Nagorno-Karabakh) by General Andranik Ozanian, who refused to accept the terms of the Treaty of Batumi (4 June 1918), which had assigned large tracts of Armenian-populated lands to the Ottoman Empire. Andranik entered Zangezur (which is home to many sites of cultural and historical importance to Armenia, notably the 9th-century Tatev Monastery) with his Armenian irregulars in July 1918; declared the republic; sought unity with the Democratic Republic of Armenia; and in November–December 1918, then marched into Nakhchivan. His efforts to incorporate that region into a larger Armenian state, however, were blocked by the arrival of British forces, which insisted that the status quo as of the Armistice of Mudros should be observed, with the settlement of all outstanding disputes to be left to the Paris Peace Conference, thereby bringing to an uneasy end this stage of the Armenian–Azerbaijan War.

Following the collapse of the Democratic Republic of Armenia in November 1920 and the failure of the Armenians’ anti-Soviet uprising in Yerevan of February–April 1921 (the February Uprising), this isolated region became a center for resistance to Soviet rule by fugitive Dashnaks, who resurrected the name Republic of Mountainous Armenia. Soviet forces conquered the region in June–July 1921, and the republic collapsed, although it had served as a useful exit route for thousands of Armenians wishing to flee from the new Soviet order. Subsequently, largely with the aim of placating Turkey, the region was divided, with Zangezur being assigned to the Armenian Soviet Socialist Republic and Nagorno-Karabakh being assigned to the Azerbaijan Soviet Socialist Republic (as the Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Oblast′ from 7 July 1923).

MOUNTAIN REPUBLIC. The name given to a short-lived government in the North Caucasus that was created in November 1917 and to its successor, which formed in Tiflis in May 1919. (The entities are also sometimes referred to as the Mountainous Republic of the North Caucasus or the Republic of the Mountaineers.) The original authority was proclaimed by a coalition of Mountain peoples (the Union of United Mountain Peoples of the Caucasus) and claimed authority over areas populated by Chechens, Ingush, and Ossetians. It was led by the Chechen oil baron Tapa Abdul Migit Bey Ortsa Tsarmoiev (A. O. Chermoev) and was originally based at Vladikavkaz, before moving to Nazran and then to Buinaksk. The government was closely associated (and shared members) with the equally insubstantial anti-Bolshevik Provisional Government of Terek-Daghestan Government.

With the formation of the Terek Soviet Republic in March 1918, the government of the Mountain Republic dissolved, and most of its members fled south into Georgia, where they united with members of the Terek-Daghestan Government to proclaim a new Mountain Republic to be based in Daghestan (11 May 1918). The prime minister was again Chermoev, with Prince N. Tarkovskii as minister of war. The government immediately declared its independence from Russia and signed peace treaties with the occupying German and Turkish forces, while on 25 September 1918, at Port Petrovsk, Tarkovskii signed an agreement with Colonel L. F. Bicherakhov for joint struggle against Soviet Russia. On 30 September 1918, the government declared all Soviet laws to be null and void and announced that nationalized resources of land, timber, and water would be returned to their previous owners.

With the withdrawal from the region of the Central Powers in November 1918 and the arrival of Allied forces, the government was reorganized, and an agreement was signed with General I. G. Erdeli of the Volunteer Army. Relations with the Whites, however, were greatly strained, and when Armed Forces of South Russia units occupied Daghestan in May 1919, the government of the Mountain Republic again fled to the Democratic Republic of Georgia. After the 11th Red Army’s reconquering of the North Caucasus in 1920, an autonomous, but short-lived, Soviet Mountain Republic (the Mountain Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic) came into being as a constituent part of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (20 January 1921–7 July 1924).

Mudros (Moudros), Armistice of (30 October 1918). This agreement, signed on board HMS Agamemnon (harbored off the town of Mudros, on the Greek island of Lemnos) by the Ottoman minister of marine, Rauf Bey, and Admiral Somerset Arthur Gough-Calthrope of the Royal Navy, brought an end to the fighting in the First World War in the Near East. It had an immediate impact on events of the “Russian” Civil Wars, as it required Turkish forces, notably the Army of Islam, to withdraw from occupied areas of Transcaucasia (back to the border of 1914), allowing for the more secure establishment of the previously proclaimed Democratic Republic of Armenia and the Democratic Republic of Georgia, while at the same time depriving the Democratic Republic of Azerbaijan of an ally in its territorial rivalry with its neighbors. The armistice also facilitated Allied intervention in the region, by passing control of Constantinople and its environs and all major Turkish ports and railways to the Allied powers. (Essentially, the region came under British control through the recently established Army of the Black Sea.)

The Mudros armistice led eventually to the Treaty of Sèvres (10 August 1920), which anticipated the creation of greater (“Wilsonian”) Armenia, but its terms were not implemented due to the outbreak of the Turkish War of Independence, and frontiers in the region were subsequently settled by the Treaty of Moscow (16 March 1921), the Treaty of Kars (13 October 1921), and the Treaty of Lausanne (24 July 1923), all of them far less generous—or, from the point of view of Yerevan or the millions-strong Armenian diaspora—just to Armenia.

Muetdin-bek (Aliev, Osman) (?–22 September 1922). One of the most prominent and successful leaders of the Kirghiz Basmachi, Muetdin-bek had taken up arms against the tsarist authorities during the uprising across Central Asia against efforts to mobilize Muslims in the summer of 1916, and has a good claim to the title of founder of the Basmachi movement. In late 1918, his group joined forces with that of Madamin-bek, and for the next five years, he fought off all attempts by the Red Army to subdue the Muslim rebellion. On two occasions he did enter into tactical alliances with Red forces, in order to combat local White forces (the Semirech′e Army and the Orenburg Army), but when Madamin-bek went over to the Soviet side (February 1920), Muetdin-bek refused to follow; with some 20,000 fighters behind him, he continued to challenge the Reds’ hold on Ferghana and Kirghizia, achieving a number of notable victories in battle.

When, however, the Basmachi group under Kurshiromat (to which Muetdin-bek’s group was allied) was defeated and retreated into Afghanistan (September 1921), Muetdin-bek’s position became untenable, and some months later (on 6 July 1922) he surrendered to Red forces in the mountains of eastern Ferghana. On 22 September 1922, after a hastily convened trial in the town of Osha, Muetdin-bek was shot by his captors upon the approach of a Basmachi band that was apparently intent upon liberating him.

MUGHAN, PROVISIONAL MILITARY DICTATORSHIP OF. This short-lived polity existed in the Lankaran region of southern Azerbaijan from 1 August 1918, under the governance of the White Colonel V. T. Sukhorukov, and initially under the protection of Dunsterforce. In December 1918, it was reorganized as the Mughan Regional Administration. On 25 April 1919, the regime was overthrown by pro-Soviet forces, which established the Mughan Soviet Republic.

Mughan Soviet Republic. This short-lived polity had its origins in Soviets gathered in the Lankaran uezd of Baku guberniia (southern Azerbaijan) in March 1918, in opposition to the Musavat government in Baku and the White-sponsored Provisional Military Dictatorship of Mughan, and in support of the Baku Commune. According to the decisions of the latter, M. Israfilbekov (Kadirili) was named extraordinary commissar for Mughan and M. Matveev extraordinary commissar for Lankaran. Following the formation of the Azerbaijan Democratic Republic in May 1918, the region proclaimed a provisional military dictatorship under Colonel T. P. Sukhorukov (who seems to have been a sympathizer of the Party of Socialists-Revolutionaries) and demanded union with the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic. It held out against counterinsurgency forces sent from Baku and elsewhere and was reconfigured in December 1918 as the Mugan Territorial Administration. This, in turn, was overthrown (on 25 April 1919) by pro-Bolshevik workers, who at an Extraordinary Congress of Soviets of Lankaran District, on 15 May 1919, proclaimed the Mughan Soviet Republic. This survived until 25 June 1919, when it was overthrown by the Azerbaijani authorities.

MURANOV, MATVEI KONSTANTINOVICH (11 December 1873–9 December 1959). The Soviet politician M. K. Muranov was born into a peasant family in the Ukrainian village of Rybtsy in Poltava guberniia and, after studying at the local school, found employment as a railway worker at Khar′kov. He joined the Russian Social-Democratic Labor Party in 1904, and in 1912 was elected to the Fourth State Duma. Along with other Bolshevik Duma deputies, he was arrested for opposing the war and subsequently made a name for himself by his uncompromising stance during the deputies’ trial for treason in February 1915. He was released from exile for life in Turukhansk, in northern Siberia, by the general amnesty proclaimed by the Russian Provisional Government following the February Revolution of 1917, and returned to Petrograd, where he was elected to the Bolshevik Central Committee on 3 August 1917. (He lost that position on 6 March 1918, but was reelected for the period 23 March 1919–29 March 1920 and was again a candidate member from 5 April 1920 to 8 March 1921.)

Muranov was briefly deputy People’s Commissar for Internal Affairs (30 November–December 1912) and was subsequently an instructor with the Bolshevik Central Committee (1918–1923). As the civil wars wound down, he became a member of the party’s Central Control Commission (25 April 1923–26 January 1934) and was a member of the Supreme Court of the USSR (1923–1934), subsequently serving on VTsIK (1934–1939). Muranov, who had been a close ally of J. V. Stalin in 1917 and during the power struggles of the 1920s, was one of the few Old Bolsheviks to survive the purges. He was allowed to retire on a pension in 1939 and died peacefully in Moscow 20 years later.

Murav′ev, Mikhail Artem′evich (13 September 1880–11 July 1918). Lieutenant (1904), lieutenant colonel (1917). A key but enigmatic figure in the early stages of the civil wars, M. A. Murav′ev was born into a poor peasant family in the village of Burdukovo (Vetluzhsk uezd, Kostroma guberniia). Having joined the Russian Army in 1898, he graduated from the Kazan′ Infantry School (1901). He saw action in the Russo–Japanese War, as commander of the 122nd Tambov Regiment, and in February 1905 was badly wounded. He was wounded again during the early stages of the First World War; once recovered, he was placed in charge of the 2nd Odessa Ensign School. In 1917, he distinguished himself as an organizer of volunteer detachments on the South-West Front and, later, nationally, in collaboration with the British historian Bernard Pares, of the All-Russian Volunteer Revolutionary Army. He also at this point joined the Party of Socialists-Revolutionaries, rapidly gravitating toward the nascent Party of Left Socialists-Revolutionaries. He supported the October Revolution, in the belief that it would lead to a general, negotiated end to the war, but he was strongly opposed to a separate peace.

From 27 October 1917, Murav′ev was a member of the staff of the Military-Revolutionary Committee of the Petrograd Soviet; from 29 October, he was commander of forces of the Petrograd Military District; and from 30 October, he commanded the Red Guards and other forces fighting against the Kerensky–Krasnov uprising. In mid-November 1917, he accompanied N. V. Krylenko to Mogilev, to disarm the commander in chief of the Russian Army, N. N. Dukhonin; indeed, it was Murav′ev who threw Dukhonin’s epaulettes into the crowd that would moments later beat him to death. For reasons that are unclear, he subsequently resigned his positions in Petrograd, but on 8 December 1917 he was assigned as chief of staff to V. A. Antonov-Ovseenko’s military expedition to establish Soviet power in Ukraine and South Russia, during the opening stages of the Soviet–Ukrainian War. Having engineered the Reds’ capture of Kiev on 26 January 1918, he resigned his posts again in March, apparently in protest against the lack of resistance to the Austro-German intervention in Ukraine. He then returned to Moscow, where he made contact with anarchist groups (having already become associated with and impressed by Mariia Nikiforova’s forces in Ukraine). He also refused L. D. Trotsky’s orders to assist in the disarming of the Czechoslovak Legion (which, like the anarchists, remained implacably anti-German). Soon afterward, he was arrested under suspicion of exceeding his authority during the Ukrainian campaign (although his contacts with anarchists and the Czechoslovak National Council were probably not immaterial), but on 9 June 1918 the case against him was closed, and on 13 June 1918, he was named commander of the Eastern Front.

On 10 July 1918, shortly after the Left-SR Uprising, Murav′ev led a contingent of his forces (from the Latvian Riflemen) in a revolt against Soviet power (the Murav′ev uprising), seizing control of Simbirsk, arresting local Bolsheviks and Red commanders (including M. N. Tukhachevskii), and proclaiming a Volga Republic Government. He then issued a declaration of war against Germany. However, his supporters turned against him, and he was killed in a mêlée, as pro-Soviet forces attempted to arrest him.

MURAV′EV UPRISING. This is the term applied to the anti-Bolshevik uprising on the Volga that was led by the Reds’ main commander of the Eastern Front, Colonel M. A. Murav′ev, a member of the Party of Left Socialists-Revolutionaries. The uprising occurred in the immediate aftermath of the failed Left-SR Uprising in Moscow.

Murav′ev arrived by boat at Simbirsk from Kazan′ on 10 July 1918. The 1,000 men he brought with him were immediately deployed at strategic points around the city, and the leaders of the local Soviet and Red Army institutions were placed under arrest (among them, the commander of the 1st Red Army, M. N. Tukhachevskii). Murav′ev then proclaimed himself “Main Commander” of the “Army against Germany” and sent telegrams to Sovnarkom, to the command of the Czechoslovak Legion, and to the German embassy in Moscow giving notice that he had declared war on the Central Powers and calling upon the legion and all units of the army to move toward the Volga in advance of pressing west to confront the Germans. The following day, Sovnarkom declared Murav′ev to be a counterrevolutionary and pronounced him an outlaw.

It appears that few troops rallied to Murav′ev’s call, and on that same day, 11 July 1918, he was killed in somewhat confusing circumstances, as Red forces led by the local Bolshevik chief, I. M. Vareikis, attempted to arrest him. Nevertheless, in Soviet works the Murav′ev uprising is credited with causing sufficient confusion in the ranks of the Red Army to facilitate the Czechoslovak Legion’s capture of Simbirsk on 22 July and Ekaterinburg on 25 July 1918.

Murmansk Volunteer Army. This anti-Bolshevik formation, commanded first by Major General N. I. Zvergintsev (1 June–3 October 1918) and then by Colonel L. V. Kostandi (November 1918–June 1919), was in operational subordination to the Northern Army and also therefore under the control of the successive heads of the British expeditionary force at Arkhangel′sk, General W. E. Ironside and General F. C. Poole. With a complement of some 5,000 officers and men, in June 1919 it was reformed into the Forces of the Murmansk Region and soon thereafter was united with the Olonets Volunteer Army, under the general command of Lieutenant General V. S. Skobel′tsyn.

MUSAVAT. This moderate Muslim political party, which was committed to the establishment of a modern, secular, and democratic Azerbaijani state, had its origins in the Moslem Democratic Party (Musavat), founded in 1911 by members of Hummet who had become disillusioned with that group’s radicalism and its lack of popular support. Its name (sometimes rendered as Musavat) translates as “Equality.” Its most influential leaders were the cousins Mammed Amin Rasulzade and Mammed Ali Rasulzade, Abbasgulu Kazimzade, and Taghi Nagioglu. Nariman Narimanov, the future Bolshevik leader of the Azerbaijan Soviet Socialist Republic, was also a member. The party drew its leadership from the secularized intelligentsia of Azerbaijan, who were inspired by a common vision of Turkic identity and Azeri nationalism and, after existing clandestinely under tsarism, won broad support among the Muslim population of Azerbaijan after the February Revolution. During the war it allied itself with the Turkic Party of Federalists, and in August 1917, having merged with that party, adopted the name Turkic Democratic Party (Musavat). It supported the Russian Provisional Government of 1917 and, despite its pan-Turkic leanings, favored the continuation of the war against the Ottoman Empire.

Following the October Revolution, Musavat’s first full congress (26 October 1917) called for autonomy for Azerbaijan (and other Turkic territories) within a Russian federation. Some of its members subsequently joined the Transcaucasian Commissariat at Tiflis in November 1917, and in early 1918 worked in opposition to the pro-Soviet forces at Baku. From May 1918, the party joined the Dashnaks in establishing and governing the Azerbaijan Democratic Republic, with its members occupying numerous key ministries. When that state collapsed in April 1920, under pressure from the invading Red Army and local Bolsheviks, Musavat also began to disintegrate. Some of its more left-wing members (including, temporarily, Mammed Amin Rasulzade) were co-opted by the Soviet regime, but many were imprisoned or executed, while others fled abroad. Nevertheless, the party operated illegally within the Azerbaijan Soviet Socialist Republic until at least 1923, by which time some 2,000 of its members had been arrested, and organized a number of rebellions against Soviet power (notably the Ganja uprising, but also revolts in Karabakh, Zagatala, Lankaran, etc.). After 1923, the party operated in exile, from its base in Istanbul (and later Ankara). It was resurrected as the New Musavat Party (Yeni Musavat Partiyasi) in 1992, following the collapse of the Soviet Union.

MYKYTKA, OSIP (21 February 1878–August 1920). Major (Ukrainian Galician Army, January 1919), lieutenant colonel (Ukrainian Galician Army, May 1919), colonel (Ukrainian Galician Army, June 1919), brigadier general (Ukrainian Galician Army, 7 November 1919). The Ukrainian nationalist commander Osip Mykytka was born into a Ukrainian family at Zeleniv, in Austrian Galicia, and was mobilized into the Austro-Hungarian Army in 1902. He served on the Eastern Front in the First World War, and in January 1918 was briefly commander of the Ukrainian Sich Riflemen. As the Austro-Hungarian Empire collapsed at the end of the war, Mykytka joined the Ukrainian Galician Army, as commander of its Stare Selo Group (from December 1918), then (from January 1919) as commander of its 1st Corps (formerly the Northern Group). From 7 November 1919, Mykytka replaced Myron Tarnovsky as commander in chief of the Ukrainian Galician Army, within the Ukrainian Army. He was arrested by pro-Soviet forces (the Revolutionary Committee of the Ukrainian Galician Army) on 6 February 1920, then imprisoned near Moscow. He was eventually executed by the Cheka, having reportedly refused to serve in the Red Ukrainian Galician Army.