Historical Dictionary of the Russian Civil Wars, 1916-1926

V

Vācietis, JUKUMS (Ioakim Ioakimovich) (11 November 1873–28 July 1938). Lieutenant colonel (1912), colonel (20 November 1915), komandarm (1935). The first Red commander of the Eastern Front and the first commander in chief of the Red Army, Jukums Vācietis (whose surname means “German” in Latvian) was born on the Neigof estate at Kuldīga (Goldingen), in Courland guberniia (now Jaunlutriņi in the Saldus region of Latvia). The son of an impoverished and landless farm laborer, he was radicalized by his teacher at the village school, Gustav Lasis, and was a graduate of the Vil′na Military Academy (1897) and the Academy of the General Staff (1909). He entered military service on 3 September 1891, as a volunteer in the Riga NCO Battalion, and having failed to secure a staff posting, by the onset of the First World War was commander of the 4th Battalion of the 102nd Viatka Regiment, attached to the 2nd Army. In that capacity, he participated in the Russian advance into East Prussia in August–September 1914 and soon afterward was badly wounded near Warsaw. After he recovered, in the autumn of 1915, he was made commander of the 5th Zemgale Latvian Rifle Battalion, which in October 1916 became a regiment of the Latvian Riflemen. He was then badly injured again, during the defense of Jelgava (Mitau) in the winter of 1916–1917, but recovered in time to participate in the battle for Riga in August 1917, and was then named commander of the 2nd Latvian Rifle Brigade.

Following the October Revolution, Vācietis sided with the Bolsheviks (although he would never join the party) and was named commander of the 12th Army by N. V. Krylenko. He assisted in the dispersal of the imperial general staff at Mogilev (November 1917), was named chief of the Operational Department of the Revolutionary Field Staff (12 December 1917), and in January 1918 led the fight against the Dowbor-Muśnicki uprising (from 14 January 1918). In effect, while Krylenko was in Petrograd (from 21 December 1917 to 14 January 1918), Vācietis was the last commander of the Russian Army. He then joined the Red Army at its inception, and from 13 April 1918, was commander of the Latvian Riflemen, in which capacity he supervised the suppression of the Left-SR Uprising in Moscow (6–7 July 1918). (Although politically sympathetic to the Party of Left Socialists-Revolutionaries, he opposed their determination to continue hostilities against Germany, on the grounds that Russian forces would certainly be defeated in such a conflict.) From there, he was sent to the Volga, to deal with the revolt of the Czechoslovak Legion and the Murav′ev uprising, as commander of the Eastern Front (18 July–28 September 1918).

Vācietis then became commander in chief of the Red Army (2 September 1918–8 July 1919), essentially overseeing its creation—indeed, he has as good a claim as L. D. Trotsky to the title of “Founder of the Red Army”—and was a leading member of the Revvoensovet of the Republic (6 September 1918–8 July 1919). He also served, simultaneously, as commander of the army of the putative Latvian Soviet Socialist Republic, the (Red) Army of Soviet Latvia (4 January–10 March 1919). Following a series of defeats against the Armed Forces of South Russia; a lengthy dispute over strategy with S. S. Kamenev, the commander of the Eastern Front (Kamenev wanted to pursue the defeated Russian Army of Admiral A. V. Kolchak across the Urals and finish it off, whereas Vācietis wanted to concentrate on the Southern Front, against Denikin); and his entanglement in the ongoing debates about the party’s relations with the army (Vācietis demanded the complete independence of the military), he was arrested on 25 June 1919 and charged with treason. He was soon released (October 1919), but did not return to high command. Instead he worked in the People’s Commissariat for Military Affairs (from November 1919) and taught at the Red Military Academy from 1921, becoming Professor of Higher Military Science Studies in June 1927, and wrote a series of books and articles on military history and strategy.

Vācietis was arrested on 29 November 1937, and on 26 July 1938 was found guilty, by the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the USSR, of espionage (for Germany since 1918 and for Latvia since 1921) and of membership in a “terrorist organization,” and was sentenced to death. He was shot two days later, at Kommunarka, Moscow oblast′, and was buried there in a mass grave. During his interrogation, under torture, he denounced 20 other Red commanders as co-members of a “Latvian fascist organization,” all of whom were subsequently arrested and most of whom were also shot. Vācietis was posthumously rehabilitated on 28 March 1957.

Vakhitov, Mullanur Mullacan ulı. See WaKHitov (Vakhitov), Mullanur Mullacan ulı.

Vakhrameev, IVAN IVANOVICH (3 October 1885–20 July 1965). The Soviet naval commander I. I. Vakhrameev, who was born at Iaroslavl′, served as a junior officer in the imperial Russian navy from 1908 and, during the First World War, was attached to the Baltic Fleet. Following the February Revolution, he was elected as a delegate to various fleet committees, and as a representative of the Russian Social-Democratic Party (Bolsheviks), which he joined in 1917, attended the Second All-Russian Congress of Soviets in October 1917. As an active participant in the October Revolution, Vakhrameev was named chairman of the Military-Naval Revolutionary Committee (26 October 1917). In that capacity, he organized detachments of Baltic sailors to combat the Kerensky–Krasnov uprising. From February to December 1918, he was a member of the collegium of the People’s Commissariat for Naval Affairs (as well as deputy People’s Commissar for Naval Affairs) and from September 1918 was also attached to the Revvoensovet of the Republic, as an advisor on naval matters. Following the civil war, Vakhrameev served in an administrative capacity in the port authorities of Petrograd before returning to service with the Red Fleet as a teacher in various naval schools from 1932. He survived the purges of the 1930s, retired on a pension in 1949, and subsequently died in Leningrad.

Validov (Validi), Ahmed Zeki (Togan) (10 December 1890–26/28 July 1970). The preeminent exponent of Bashkir nationalism (and expert on Turkic history) Ahmed Zeki Validov was born, the son of an imam, in the village of Kuzianovo (in Ufa guberniia) and studied at Kasimiye Madrassa at Kazan′ and at Kazan′ University, where he also was employed (from 1909) as a researcher and lecturer. An accomplished linguist, fluent in numerous Turkic and Persian dialects as well as Russian, from 1915 to 1917, he worked for the Muslim Bureau in Petrograd, supporting Muslim members of the Fourth State Duma (to which he had also been elected in 1915 by the Muslim curia of Ufa guberniia). Trained as an orientalist, he was diverted from his scholarly activities toward politics by his move to the Russian capital, and then by the February Revolution. In May 1917, he helped organize the First All-Russian Muslim Congress in Moscow, where he advocated a federal reorganization of the Russian state and became a critic of those Tatar delegates calling for extraterritorial autonomy within a unitary state.

Following the October Revolution, Validov emerged as the head of the Bashkir nationalist movement that, at a congress of November–December 1917, promulgated an independent Bashkir republic, based at Orenburg. When that city fell to Red forces, he was arrested by the Soviet authorities (on 3 February 1918), but he escaped two months later (3–4 April 1918) and set about organizing Bashkir forces around Ufa, Cheliabinsk, and Orenburg, as the civil wars developed, uniting with Alash Orda and General A. I. Dutov’s Orenburg Cossack Host to oppose the Reds. Following the Omsk coup and the rise of Admiral A. V. Kolchak to power in Siberia, however, Validov’s relations with Russian anti-Bolshevik forces rapidly deteriorated, and in February 1919, he negotiated a truce with the Red Army and defected, with his forces, to the Soviet side, in return for a promise from V. I. Lenin that Bashkiriia would be granted full autonomy within the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic.

Subsequently, Validov served as chairman of the Bashkir Revolutionary Committee (21 February 1919–17 May 1919 and 30 January–26 June 1920) and attended the first congress of the Komintern, having also helped found the Muslim Erk party. However, by June 1920 he had despaired of the Soviet government fulfilling its promises, and he left his post at the head of the Bashrevkom and fled, with his entourage, to Central Asia to work with the Basmachi, as head of the National Union of Turkestan until 1923. From 1 to 5 September 1920, he was also present in Baku, secretly monitoring the Congress of the Peoples of the East.

In 1923, Validov went into exile, settling initially in Turkey, where he taught history at the University of Istanbul (1925–1932) and adopted the name Togan. He subsequently undertook studies for his doctorate at the University of Vienna (1932–1935), where he became an acquaintance of Sigmund Freud, and taught at Bonn and Göttingen Universities (1935–1939), before returning to the University of Istanbul. With the Turkish government under pressure from Moscow, he was arrested there in 1944 and imprisoned for 17 months and 10 days, for “acts against the Soviets,” but returned to his post in 1948. He subsequently founded and became director of Istanbul’s very prestigious Institute for Islamic Studies in 1953.

Validov was the author of more than 400 scholarly works in Turkish and German on the history of the Turkic peoples. Despite his early exile, in Soviet Russia the term validovshchina (“Validovism”) was coined to denote the allegedly reactionary force of Bashkir nationalism in the Stalinist period, but since the collapse of the USSR, his name has been posthumously rehabilitated in his homeland, where he is now recognized as the father of the new Republic of Bashkortostan.

Vandam (Edrikhin), Aleksei Efimovich (17 March 1867–16 September 1933). Colonel (15 June 1915), major general (22 June 1917). One of the leading figures in the White movement in northwest Russia, A. E. Vandam was born into a military family in Moscow guberniia and was a graduate of the Vil′na Military School (1888) and the Academy of the General Staff (1899). In 1899, he traveled to South Africa, serving as a volunteer there, with the Boers, in their war with Britain. Then, from 1903 to 1906, he served as a military attaché in China, before returning to Russia to take up a number of postings as a staff officer. During this period he also wrote the first of his many works on geopolitics and military affairs. In the First World War, he commanded the 92nd Pechorsk Rifle Regiment (from 16 August 1915) and was chief of staff of the 23rd Infantry Division (from 14 November 1916) before transferring to the staff of the main commander in chief of the Russian Army, on 27 September 1917.

Vandam adopted a pro-German orientation in 1917–1918, remaining at Revel (Tallinn) when it was occupied by German forces, and agreed to take command of the Pskov Volunteer Corps when that anti-Bolshevik force was created (under German auspices) in October 1918. When Red forces occupied first Pskov and then Riga, in January–May 1919, he fled briefly to Germany, before returning to Narva in June 1919, where he was made chief of staff of the North-West Army. He remained in that post during the army’s October offensive against Petrograd, but was removed from it on 25 November 1919, on the orders of General N. N. Iudenich, as the latter attempted to transform the leadership of the army. Vandam then went into emigration, settling at Tallinn. He is buried there, in the cemetery of the Alexander Nevsky Cathedral.

VARVATSI, VLADIMIR NIKOLAEVICH (27 June 1896–1 March 1922). Midshipman (May 1917). The Soviet naval commander V. N. (Kamenno-)Varvatsi is reported in Soviet sources as having been born into the family of a petty official at Onon stanitsa, in the territory of the Transbaikal Cossack Host (although his descendants dispute this). He joined the Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks) in either 1918 or 1920 (again, sources differ). What is known is that Varvatsi was mobilized into the imperial navy in 1914 and was a graduate of the Moscow Naval Corps (1917). He subsequently served (May 1917–March 1918) with the Baltic Fleet, as a chief watchman on the battleship Gangut, before being placed at the head of a detachment of Baltic sailors opposing German forces at Narva (February–March 1918) during the Eleven-Days War. From June 1918, he assisted in the transfer of numerous vessels from the Baltic, through Lake Ladoga and the Mariinsk Canal System, to the Volga and the Eastern Front, and was then, successively, chief of staff (September–November 1918) and commander (11 November 1918–17 April 1919) of the Volga Military Flotilla. From 5 June 1919 to February 1920, he commanded the Northern Dvina River Flotilla; then, following the collapse of White forces in the north, commanded the White Sea Military Flotilla (from March 1920) and the Naval Forces of the Northern Ocean (from April 1920). Finally, from July 1921, Varvatsi commanded the Naval Forces of the Eastern Black Sea. He died in Moscow in March 1922; some sources have it that he was arrested and shot, others that he succumbed to tuberculosis.

VASILENKO, MATVEI IVANOVICH (1888–1 July 1937). Komkor (November 1935). The Red military commander M. I. Vasilenko was born into a Ukrainian peasant family, in the village of Podstavka, in Poltava guberniia, and was a graduate of the Tiflis Military School (1909) and an accelerated course with the Academy of the General Staff (1917).

After service in the First World War, Vasilenko initially joined the Whites during the “Russian” Civil Wars, but deserted to the Red Army in April 1919. In June 1919, he served as chief of staff of the Special Expeditionary Corps on the Southern Front, and from June to October 1919, was chief of staff of the 40th Rifle Division. He was then placed in command of the 11th Red Army (19 December 1919–26 March 1920), overseeing its successful battles against the remnants of the Armed Forces of South Russia around Tsaritsyn and across the North Caucasus. He was subsequently commander of the 9th Red Army (5 April–19 July 1920), then once more commanded the 11th Red Army (26 July–12 September 1920), then commanded the 14th Red Army (27 September–5 November 1920). In these latter commands, he played a leading role in the Reds’ invasion of the Democratic Republic of Armenia.

Following the civil wars, Vasilenko was commander of the 45th Rifle Division (1924–1929), and among later postings, was inspector of infantry of the Red Army (1931–1935) and then commander of forces of the Urals Military District (from 1935). He was arrested on 18 May 1937, and having been found guilty of membership in an anti-Soviet “terrorist organization” by the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the USSR on 1 July 1937, was immediately executed. Vasilenko was buried in a mass grave in the Donskoi cemetery in Moscow. He was posthumously rehabilitated on 28 November 1956.

VASILEVSKII(-CHAIKOVSKII), GRIGORII SEMENOVICH (1889–January 1921). Born into a peasant family at Guliai-Pole, Ekaterinoslav guberniia, the noted Makhnovist G. S. Vasilevskii received his only education at a local village school. From 1910, having dodged military service, he lived as an illegal, surviving through robbery and other criminal acts, and becoming a proponent of anarchism. From March 1917, he was a member of the Guliai-Pole group of anarchist-communists—Black Guards subordinate to V. F. Belash—and helped organize communes among local peasants.

In April 1918, Vasilevskii’s group was forced to move to Tsaritsyn, as forces of the Austro-German intervention took over Ekaterinoslav guberniia, but he returned to Guliai-Pole in June 1918 and joined the detachments being organized there by Nestor Makhno. By the spring of 1919, he was a senior member of the counterintelligence section of the staff of Makhno’s Revolutionary-Insurgent Army of Ukraine and was involved in seeking out Bolshevik spies among the Makhnovists. In that capacity, Vasilevskii gained a fearsome reputation for the cruelty with which he dealt with captured Soviet officials and Red Army soldiers. In November 1920, he was elected again to the final revolutionary staff of the insurgents. Soon afterward, he was killed in battle.

VATSETIS, IOAKIM Ioakimovich. See Vācietis, JUKUMS (IOAKIM Ioakimovich).

Vcheka. See CHEKA.

VDOVENKO, GERASIM ANDREEVICH (4 March 1867–1945?). Esaul (8 September 1905), major general (18 January 1919), lieutenant general (13 March 1919). A prominent figure among the Terek Cossacks during the civil-war period, G. A. Vdovenko was educated at the Vladikavkaz Realschule and was a graduate of Stavropol′ Cossack School (1888). He participated in the Russo–Japanese War, with the 1st Kizliaro-Grebensk Regiment of the Terek Cossack Host, and during the First World War, he commanded the Host’s 3rd Volga Regiment (from 31 March 1916) and the 2nd Brigade of the 4th Kuban Cossack Division (from 22 February 1917).

On 28 February 1918, Vdovenko was elected as Host ataman of the Terek Cossacks, following the death of the two previous incumbents during the fighting of the previous month. In that capacity, in the summer of 1918, he led the revolt in the Terek against Soviet power; from January 1919, headed the Terek contingents of the Armed Forces of South Russia; and from March 1920, headed those of the Russian Army of General P. N. Wrangel. Following the evacuation of the Crimea by White forces in November 1920, he lived in emigration, mostly in Yugoslavia, and as ataman of the Terek Host until his death, was a strong advocate of Cossack separatism. During the Second World War, as a collaborator with the Nazis, he advised the German forces during their invasion of the North Caucasus and helped organize Cossack formations under the Wehrmacht (as a member of its Main Directorate of Cossack Forces) and under General A. A. Vlasov. At the end of the war, according to some sources, he was assassinated in Belgrade by an agent of Josip Tito; according to others, he was kidnapped by Soviet security forces and disappeared into the Gulag.

VDOVICHENKO, TROFIM IAKOVLEVICH (1889–May 1921). Ensign (191?). T. Ia. Vdovichenko, one of the most talented commanders of Nestor Makhno’s Revolutionary-Insurgent Army of Ukraine, was born into a poor peasant family at Novospasovka, near Lugansk, and received only a primary education. In 1910, he became associated with a group of radicals at Novospasovka and developed into a forceful proponent of anarchism. He was drafted into the Russian Army in 1914, and in 1917 became chairman of his regimental committee.

Vdovichenko returned to Novospasovka in late 1917, following the October Revolution, and in early 1918 joined a partisan unit that opposed the forces of the Austro-German intervention. In the autumn of 1918, his group allied with the Makhnovite army, and on 4 January 1919, he was named commander of its 1st Rebel (later the Novospasovka) Regiment, a force of, at one point, 6,000 men. In 1919, Vdovichenko fought the Armed Forces of South Russia in alliance with the Red Army, but broke with the Bolsheviks that August, when the Soviet command attempted to move his force out of Ukraine. On 1 September 1919, he was elected to the Revolutionary-Military Council of the Makhnovists and was named commander of the 2nd Azov Corps, which numbered 10,000 fighters at its peak. In that capacity, as General A. I. Denikin’s White forces collapsed, Vdovichenko was responsible for the capture of numerous towns (including Aleksandrovsk on 5 October and 28 December 1919). In 1920, he led a guerrilla group against Soviet forces around Berdiansk and Mariupol′, but in late January 1921, he was badly wounded in battle. He sought treatment in Novospasovka from 17 February 1921, but in April 1921 his whereabouts were discovered by a Cheka detachment. In order to escape arrest, Vdovichenko shot himself in the head, but he survived and was nursed back to health by the Bolsheviks, only to then be thrown into prison at Aleksandrovsk and, reportedly, subjected to prolonged bouts of torture, in an attempt to persuade him to renounce Makhno. Several attempts by the Makhnovists to rescue Vdovichenko failed, and he was eventually executed by a Cheka firing squad in May 1921.

Vedeniapin (shtegeman), Mikhail Aleksandrovich (8 November 1879–7/12 November 1938). A pivotal figure in the Democratic Counter-Revolution on the Volga, M. A. Vedeniapin was probably born in Tashkent (although some sources indicate that he was born at Atkarsk, Saratov guberniia) and was a descendant of the Decembrist Aleksei Vasil′evich Vedeniapin (1804–1847). He trained as a statistician, but was an active member of the Party of Socialists-Revolutionaries (PSR) from 1903 and a dedicated member of its terrorist wing, the Fighting Organization. He became a member of the PSR Central Committee in November 1917, the same month that he was elected to the Constituent Assembly.

In May 1918, Vedeniapin journeyed to the Volga region, where the following month he became director of the Departments of Foreign Affairs and Post and Telegraph of Komuch and participated in its negotiations with the Provisional Siberian Government at Cheliabinsk (15 July and 23 August 1918) and at the Ufa State Conference. In November 1918, he was among the most vocal opponents of the Omsk coup, but managed to evade arrest by the White authorities at Ufa. Subsequently, however, in 1920, upon the Bolsheviks’ investment of Siberia, he was arrested and imprisoned by the Cheka. In July 1922, he was among those leaders of his party who were tried by the Supreme Tribunal of VTsIK in Moscow. He was sentenced to 10 years’ imprisonment, but released on amnesty after five. However, he was rearrested, imprisoned, and exiled a number of times over the succeeding years. Finally, in 1937 the Supreme Court of the USSR sentenced him to another 10 years’ imprisonment. He died in a labor camp near Khabarovsk (Vostlag) and was posthumously rehabilitated in 1989.

VELIKANOV, MIKHAIL DMITRIEVICH (27 December 1892–27 July 1938). Ensign (1915), sublieutenant (1916), komandarm (15 June 1937). A Red commander of great distinction during the civil wars, M. D. Velikanov was born into the family of a village sexton at Nikol′sk, Riazan′ guberniia, and trained and worked as a rural schoolteacher, but was mobilized during the First World War and graduated from the Pskov Ensign School (1915).

Velikanov joined the Red Army, initially as battalion commander, in February 1918, and from July 1918 distinguished himself as commander of the 2nd Simbirsk Regiment on the Eastern Front, participating in the recapture of Simbirsk from anti-Bolshevik forces (October 1918), and as commander of the 1st Brigade of the 24th Iron Division (from December 1918). He was subsequently commander of the 25th Rifle Division (February–March 1919) and the Ufa Group of Forces (March–April 1919) on the Eastern Front, which played a decisive part in repelling the advance of the Western Army of Admiral A. V. Kolchak. He then commanded the defense of Orenburg (April–June 1919), and in February 1920 was commander of the Strike Infantry Group of the 1st Cavalry Army in the Kuban, mopping up the remnants of the Armed Forces of South Russia. He then transferred to Transcaucasia, where he commanded Red forces in crushing the anti-Soviet Ganja uprising in Azerbaijan in May 1920 and played a leading role in the Red Army operations to invade the Democratic Republic of Armenia and the Democratic Republic of Georgia.

After the civil wars, Velikanov completed the Higher Academic Course of the Command Staff, joined the Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks) in 1924, served as inspector of infantry of the Red Army from 1926, graduated from the Red Military Academy in 1928, and (1930–1933) was assistant commander of forces of the North Caucasus Military District. From December 1933, he served as head of the Central Asian Military District and subsequently, from June 1937, was head of the Transbaikal Military District. On 28 November 1937, Velikanov was suddenly relieved of his various duties, and on 20 December 1937, he was arrested. He was condemned to death as a spy and a wrecker by the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the USSR on 29 July 1938 and executed that same day. He was posthumously rehabilitated on 1 September 1956.

Veniamin, Metropolitan (Kazanskii, Vasilii Pavlovich) (17 April 1873–12/13 August, 1922). Born into the family of a village priest, in Olonets guberniia, V. P. Kazanskii was a graduate of the Petrozavodsk Seminary and the St. Petersburg Theological Academy. In 1895, he was given the church name Veniamin (Benjamin), and from 1897 to 1910, he worked as a teacher at a variety of theological establishments, including (from 1902) the Samara Seminary, where he was rector, before becoming rector of the St. Petersburg Seminary in 1905. In the spring of 1917, a diocesan congress elected him to the St. Petersburg (Petrograd) Metropolitan See. In that role, he would play a central part in church–state relations during the civil-war era. In particular, in 1921 he argued in favor of bowing to the demands of the Soviet government that the church hand over its valuables to help save the victims of the famine on the Volga, but only on condition that the clergy be allowed to maintain strict control of the disbursements. Indeed, among the high clergy of the Russian Orthodox Church, Veniamin probably displayed the greatest willingness to work with the new regime. However, his unrelenting hostility to the Obnovlentsy (“Renovationists”), or the “Living Church Group,” who, with Soviet government connivance, were attempting to usurp the church administration, led him into conflict with the authorities.

Veniamin was arrested on 29 May 1922, accused of collusion with states hostile to Soviet Russia and with inciting worshipers against the state. Found guilty of these charges, three months later he was shot, alongside his “accomplices” Archimandrite Sergius and the laymen Iurii Novitskii and Ioann Kovsharov, at Porokhvye station, near Petrograd. Veniamin was canonized by the Russian Orthodox Church in April 1992.

VERETEL′NIKOV, BORIS VASIL′EVICH (?–22 May 1919). A peasant from Guliai-Pole and, like many others from that region (Nestor Makhno, Petr Gavrilenko, S. N. Karetnikov, Fedor Shchus′, G. S. Vasilevskii, etc.) a proponent of anarchism during the civil-war years, as a youth B. V. Veretel′nikov found work as an ironworker (both at Guliai-Pole and at the Putilov factory in St. Petersburg). He joined the Party of Socialists-Revolutionaries and was active as an agitator during the 1905 Revolution. During the First World War, he served as a sailor with the Black Sea Fleet.

From 1917 to 1918, Veretel′nikov was a member of the Sevastopol′ committee of the Party of Left Socialists-Revolutionaries, but upon returning to Guliai-Pole in February 1918, he joined the local federation of anarchists-communists. Following the arrival in the region of the forces of the Austro-German intervention, he fled to Taganrog and later to Moscow. He returned to Guliai-Pole in late 1918 and joined Makhno’s Revolutionary-Insurgent Army of Ukraine (RIAU) as a popular military and political leader. He was elected chairman of the anarchists’ 2nd Guliai-Pole Regional Conference (12–18 February 1919) and was also elected to the Insurgent Army’s Military-Revolutionary Council, although his work was initially concentrated on economic affairs. He was a supporter of Makhno’s brief alliance with the Red Army in 1919, and on 16 May 1919, was made assistant chief of staff of the 1st Ukrainian Insurrectionary Division (of RIAU). On 22 May 1919, Veretel′nikov was with the Guliai-Pole Independent Infantry Regiment, which he had recently organized, when it was surrounded and annihilated by White forces at Sviatodukhovka, near Mariupol′.

Verkhovskii, Aleksandr Ivanovich (27 November 1886–19 August 1938). Colonel (1917), major general (1 September 1917), kombrig (1936). One of the most unusual military specialists of the Red Army in the civil-war period, A. I. Verkhovskii had a singular career. He was born in St. Petersburg, into an ancient noble family, but was expelled from the elite Corps of Pages and sent to the army in Manchuria, for condemning the tsarist authorities’ handling of the events of “Bloody Sunday” in January 1905. He nevertheless redeemed himself and eventually graduated from the Academy of the General Staff (1911). In 1913, he was sent to Serbia, to write a report on the lessons of the Balkan Wars. During the First World War, he occupied numerous staff postings, before (in September 1916) joining the Russian Army’s mission in Romania. In 1917, he served as chief of staff of the Black Sea Division and was elected as deputy chairman of the Black Sea Soviet, at Sevastopol′, before taking command of the Moscow Military District (31 May 1917). There, he was noted for his forceful suppression of disturbances among soldiers, workers, and peasants, but he was nevertheless a supporter of the Russian Provisional Government during the Kornilov affair. On 30 August 1917, he was made minister of war, but resigned on 21 October 1917, when minister-president A. F. Kerensky refused to accept his demands for a partial demobilization of the army and the signing of a separate peace with the Central Powers.

Following the October Revolution, Verkhovskii allied himself with underground cells of the Party of Socialists-Revolutionaries that were attempting to muster an armed opposition to the Soviet government, but he was arrested by the Cheka on 26 June 1918 and spent the next six months in the Kresty prison, in St. Petersburg. In February 1919, he voluntarily joined the Red Army, and subsequently served in a number of rear detachments (although he was imprisoned again from May to October 1919). From 1921, he worked in the Red Military Academy (being made a full professor in 1927) and as an advisor to the Council of Labor and Defense, as well as accompanying several Soviet missions abroad as a military expert. On 2 December 1929, he was made chief of staff of the North Caucasus Military District, but on 2 February 1931 he was arrested as part of Operation “Spring.” Verkhovskii was initially sentenced to death (2 December 1931), but this was commuted to 10 years’ imprisonment, and he was released on 17 September 1934, having used his period of incarceration to write some important works of military theory and history. He was therefore able to rebuild his career and once again joined the Military Academy in 1932, while serving also with the Reconnaissance Directorate of the Red Army. But he was again arrested, on 11 March 1938, accused of membership in a counterrevolutionary organization. On 19 August 1938, Verkhovskii was again sentenced to death by the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the USSR and was executed that same day. He was posthumously rehabilitated on 28 November 1956.

VERNYI UPRISING. This anti-Soviet uprising occurred at Vernyi, in Semipalatinsk guberniia, on 12 June 1920, and was joined by some 5,000 men of the local Red Army garrison. It began when one battalion of the 27th Rifle Regiment refused orders of the command of the Turkestan Front to move to Ferghana to help combat the Basmachi. By 19 June 1920, the rising had been defused by forces of the 3rd Turkestan Rifle Division (commanded by the future Soviet novelist D. A. Furmanov), and the rebels were disarmed without a shot being fired.

Verzhbitskii, Grigorii Afanas′evich (25 January 1875–20 December 1941). Colonel (October 1916), major general (20 July 1918), lieutenant general (February or May 1919). One of the most senior White officers active in Siberia and the Far East during the civil-war years, G. A. Verzhbitskii was born into a lower middle-class family in Podol′sk guberniia. He enrolled in the army in 1893, was a graduate of the Odessa Infantry Officers School (1897), and saw action in the Russo–Japanese War and during Russian expeditions into Mongolia (1912–1913). During the First World War, he commanded the 44th and 41st Siberian Regiments and was twice wounded in action (1914–1916), then was placed in command of the newly formed 536th (Efremovskii) Infantry Regiment of the 134th Infantry Division (10 January–8 December 1917).

For refusing to submit to the Soviet authorities after the October Revolution, Verzhbitskii was sentenced to death, but he escaped with the assistance of his soldiers and made his way to Omsk in December 1917. In the White movement, he initially commanded a partisan unit around Ust′-Kamenogorsk, during the overthrow of Soviet power in Siberia in May–June 1918, and was then made commander of the 1st Steppe Siberian Rifle Division of the Siberian Army (July 1918), seeing action against Red forces around Tiumen′ (June–August 1918). He then commanded the 4th Siberian Rifle Division, which, having been incorporated into the 1st Siberian Corps of General V. N. Pepeliaev, participated in the capture of Perm′ (24 December 1918). From 1 January 1919, he was commander of the 3rd West Siberian Corps, with which he captured the factory towns of Votkinsk (7 April 1919) and Izhevsk (13 April 1919). When that unit was combined (as an operational group) with the 4th Siberian Corps on 25 April 1919, Verzhbitskii took command and oversaw the capture of Osa and Sarapul during the spring offensive of the Russian Army of Admiral A. V. Kolchak. From June 1919, he commanded the Southern Group of forces of the Siberian Army (from 20 July 1919 the Southern Group of the 2nd Army).

When White efforts in the east collapsed over the winter of 1919–1920, Verzhbitskii participated in the Great Siberian (Ice) March. On 23 January 1920, he took command of the remnants of the 2nd Army—renamed the 2nd Independent (Siberian) Rifle Corps—withdrawing it to Chita, where he arrived in March 1920. On 22 August 1920, on the orders of Ataman G. M. Semenov, he assumed command of the Far Eastern (White) Army. When Red forces drove that force out of Transbaikalia (October–November 1920), he accompanied the remnants of it along the Chinese Eastern Railway to the Maritime Province. With the subsequent establishment, at Vladivostok, of the Merkulov regime (31 May 1921), he was named commander of forces of the Provisional Government of the Maritime Region Zemstvo Board, which incorporated the forces of General V. M. Molchanov. On 12 October 1921, he was named minister of war of that government. When the Merkulov regime collapsed, and General M. K. Diterikhs assumed control in Vladivostok, Verzhbitskii was placed in command of his forces, then was named (on 8 August 1922) assistant commander (voevod) of the Zemstvo Host. In October 1922, as forces of the People’s Revolutionary Army of the Far Eastern Republic approached Vladivostok, he left Russian territory for Manchuria, in command of a small group of officers. He was briefly interned at Kirin (Jilin) by the Chinese authorities, but was released in May 1923 and settled into émigré life in Harbin, reportedly as the proprietor of a millinery shop. Until 1931, he also served as deputy head of ROVS in the Far East, under General Diterikhs, and (from 1928) was chairman of the Russian National Union. When the Japanese occupied Manchuria in 1931, Verzhbitskii was expelled from the region for refusing to assist in recruiting Russian forces to serve in the Japanese army, and he went to live in the British Concession at Tientsin. He is buried in the Russian section of the International Cemetery in that city.

VESENKHA. See VSNKh.

VESHENSK UPRISING. This is the name given to the anti-Soviet uprising of part of the Don Cossack Host, in the upper Don territory, centered on the stanitsy of Veshenskaia, Elanskaia, Migulinskaia, and others, that began on 11 March 1919. In response to what Soviet sources subsequently described as the “mistakenly harsh” policies pursued against the Cossacks by local Red Army and Soviet authorities (specifically the Revvoensovet of the Southern Front chaired by S. I. Syrtsov), notably the policy of de-Cossackization, a more or less spontaneous series of protests soon coalesced into a mass armed opposition to Soviet rule, with some 30,000 rebels having expelled Soviet agencies from the region by April 1919. The rebels’ staff, based at Veshenskaia (under Coronet P. Kundinov), oversaw the defense of the region, warding off Red Army attacks, capturing 6 field guns and numerous machine guns, and (the height of their success) winning over to their side the Reds’ 204th Serdobsk Rifle Regiment.

The uprising posed a serious challenge to the stability of the rear of the Reds’ Southern Front (specifically to the rear of the 9th Red Army), and in June 1919, it was crushed by an especially assembled counterinsurgency force before the rebels could establish sustained contact with the Whites of the Armed Forces of South Russia. Nevertheless, the uprising caused sufficient distraction to assist in the advance into the region of the Don Army. The events of the Veshensk uprising form a particularly dramatic section of the narrative of M. A. Sholokhov’s epic novel The Quiet Don (1926–1940).

Viaz′mitinov, Vasilii Efimovich (22 February 1874–29 January 1929). Colonel (25 March 1912), major general (2 April 1917), lieutenant general (10 September 1917). One of the most senior staff officers and military administrators in the White movement in South Russia, V. E. Viaz′mitinov was a graduate of the Odessa Infantry Officers School and the Academy of the General Staff (1904). He served briefly in the Russo–Japanese War, before becoming assistant senior adjutant on the staff of the Odessa Military District (June 1905–24 November 1910), senior adjutant on the staff of the border defense forces on the Amur (24 November 1910–14 October 1911), and then a teacher at the Chuguev Military School. During the First World War, he served in a number of frontline positions, then was named chief of staff of the 20th Siberian Rifle Division (3 January 1917), then chief of the Operations Department of the quartermaster general of the 12th Army (March 1917) and commander of the 16th Infantry Division (July 1917). In August 1917, he came to public attention (and received the Cross of St. George) for his heroic efforts in the defense of Riga and for extricating his men from potential encirclement. Soon afterward, he was placed in command of the 6th Siberian Army Corps.

In 1918, Viaz′mitinov joined the Volunteer Army, working in its General Staff, and by early 1919 was serving as assistant head of the Military Directorate of the Armed Forces of South Russia. In March 1920, he succeeded General A. K. Kel′chevskii as minister of war and marine in A. I. Denikin’s Government of South Russia and subsequently (from March 1920) served as head of the Military Directorate in the regime of General P. N. Wrangel. Following the evacuation of Crimea (in which he played a leading organizational role), Viaz′mitinov lived in emigration, acting from 1921 as Wrangel’s chief military plenipotentiary in Bulgaria before transferring to Belgrade, in 1923, to work in the administration of refugee relief and as an active member of ROVS. He died in Belgrade and is buried there, in the Novo Groblje (New Cemetery).

VIKTOROV, MIKHAIL VLADIMIROVICH (24 December 1894–1 August 1938). Midshipman (1913), lieutenant (1916), flag officer, first rank (20 November 1935). The Red naval commander M. V. Viktorov was born at Iaroslavl′, the son of an army officer. He graduated from the Iaroslavl′ Cadet Corps (1913, with a gold medal as best student), the Mining College (1915), the Navigational College (1917), and after the revolution, the Military-Naval Academy (1924). During the First World War, he served with the 1st Baltic Fleet Company and saw action against the Germans in the Battle of Moon Sound (16–17 October 1917), as a crewman on the battleship Grazhdanin (the former Tsesarevich).

Following the October Revolution, Viktorov sided with the Bolsheviks. In January 1918, he was made commander of the Grazhdanin, and in late 1918, participated in the Baltic Fleet’s attack on Narva. From November 1918 to June 1919, he served as senior navigator and then first assistant commander of the cruiser Oleg; from June 1919 to April 1920, he was commander of the destroyer Vsadnik; and from August 1920 to March 1921, he commanded the battleships Andrei Pervozvanyi and the Gangut. With the latter, he played a key role in the suppression of the Kronshtadt Revolt in March 1921, following which he was made commanding naval officer at the base, leading the brutal cleansing of it of rebel elements. From May 1921, he was commander of naval forces of the Baltic Fleet, and then, from June 1924, he was commander of naval forces of the Black and Azov Seas. He then served as head of the Hydrographic Directorate of the Soviet navy, before again being placed in charge of the Baltic Fleet in 1925.

Viktorov joined the All-Union Communist Party in 1932, and in March of that year was placed in command of the new Pacific Fleet (called the Naval Forces of the Far East until January 1935). In August 1937, at the height of the purges (in the prosecution of which Viktorov was gravely complicit), he was made head of naval forces of the Red Army and a member of the Revvoensovet of the USSR, following the arrest of his predecessor, V. M. Orlov. That same year, he was elected to the Supreme Soviet of the USSR. He was arrested on 22 April 1938, charged with membership in a counterrevolutionary organization, found guilty, and shot in Moscow. He was posthumously rehabilitated on 14 March 1956.

VIKZHEL′. The Russian acronym used to denote the All-Russian Executive Committee of the Union of Railway Workers and Employees. Formed at the First All-Russian Constituent Congress of Railwaymen at Moscow in the summer of 1917, Vikzhel′ initially consisted of 14 members of the Party of Socialists-Revolutionaries, 6 Mensheviks, 3 Bolsheviks, and 17 other members. Syndicalist in nature and committed to workers’ control, during the October Revolution it opposed the Bolsheviks, threatened a general transportation strike, blocked the movement of troops loyal to the new Soviet government, and demanded negotiations for the creation of a “united socialist [coalition] government.” So powerful was the union that the negotiations duly took place, beginning on 29 October 1917. They were taken seriously by some Bolshevik leaders, notably L. B. Kamenev, especially while the outcome of the Kerensky–Krasnov uprising remained uncertain, but once the immediate military threat to the Bolsheviks’ hold on Petrograd had subsided, the talks were deliberately wrecked by V. I. Lenin, an action described by his supporters as an attack on the forces of counterrevolution and by his detractors as a deliberate attempt to provoke civil war between the Bolsheviks and their socialist rivals and to obliterate any hopes of a compromise. The talks did, however, lead indirectly to the admission of some members of the Party of Left Socialists-Revolutionaries into the Soviet government.

Subsequently, in line with a resolution of 23 November 1917, Sovnarkom gathered a new (pro-Bolshevik) Extraordinary All-Russian Congress of Railway Workers and Foremen to Petrograd on 12 December. This group passed votes in favor of Soviet power and of no confidence in Vikzhel′ and initiated the organization (in January 1918) of an alternative All-Russian Executive Committee of Railwaymen (known by its acronym, Vikzhedor). Thereafter, like other trade unions, the railwaymen’s union became chiefly an instrument of the Soviet state.

Vil′kitskii, Boris Andreevich (22 March 1885–6 March 1961). Rear admiral (16 October 1919). A White naval commander of the civil-war years and a renowned hydrographer, surveyor, and explorer, B. A. Vil′kitskii was a graduate of the Naval Corps (1901) and the Naval Academy (1908), and in the Russo–Japanese War he served in the Pacific Squadron during the siege of Port Arthur. From 1913 to 1915, he was engaged in hydrographical expeditions in the Arctic Ocean, traveling from Arkhangel′sk to Vladivostok along the Northern Sea Route. For his achievements, he was awarded the Gold Medal of the Russian and French Geographical Societies, and the straits between the Taimyr peninsula and the Severnaia Zemlia archipelago were named after him, as was an island in the Laptev Sea. During the First World War, he saw action with the Baltic Fleet, as commander of the destroyer Letun (which had its stern blown off by a German mine on 7 November 1916).

Following the October Revolution, Vil′kitskii remained for some time at work in the Main Hydrographical Directorate of the Admiralty, in Petrograd, before joining the Whites in North Russia and placing himself at the service of the Supreme Administration of the Northern Region. He remained there under the regime of General E. K. Miller, and when the anti-Bolshevik movement collapsed in North Russia, he commanded the evacuation of White forces from Arkhangel′sk to Tromsø, in Norway, in February 1920. From there, he sailed the steamship Kos′ma Minin to Crimea to join the White Fleet of General P. N. Wrangel.

In emigration, Vil′kitskii first lived in Britain, where in 1923–1924, he was recruited by the Soviet foreign trade agency to lead a trading expedition through the Kara Sea. Subsequently, he lived in Belgium, serving that country for many years as a hydrographer in the Belgian Congo (and becoming known as “the Tropical Admiral”). He was originally buried in Brussels, but in 1997 his remains were reinterred in the Smolensk Cemetery, in St. Petersburg.

Vinaver, Max (Maksim) Moiseevich (1862/1863–10 October 1926). One of the founders of the Kadets and one of its leading political actors in South Russia during the civil wars, Max Vinaver was born in Warsaw and was a graduate of the Third Warsaw Gymnasium (1881) and the Law Faculty of Warsaw University (1886), although his legal career was held back by official restrictions on Jews in the profession, and he became a justice of the peace only in 1904. Based in St. Petersburg from 1887, he became a well-known and much-published expert on the position of Jews in the Russian Empire and the history of Russian law, and was a leading figure in a variety of public organizations (the Union for the Achievement of Equal Rights for Jews, the Historical-Ethnographical Commission, etc.). In 1905, he joined the first Central Committee of the Kadets, and in 1906, he was elected to the First State Duma, becoming a leader of the Kadet caucus. Following the Duma’s dissolution in 1906, he was a signatory of the Vyborg manifesto and consequently served a three-month prison sentence (in 1908) and was deprived of his political rights, although he remained active in party work, being recognized as one of the Kadets’ chief theorists and collaborating closely with P. N. Miliukov. Following the February Revolution of 1917, he took a leading role in the Russian Provisional Government’s commission to frame an electoral law for the Constituent Assembly, to which he was subsequently elected, and in October led the Kadet faction in the Pre-Parliament. At this stage, he had moved away from the party center and was more associated with V. D. Nabokov and the Kadets’ left wing.

Following the October Revolution, Vinaver was arrested and briefly imprisoned by the Soviet authorities, but was soon released. He then made his way to Moscow, where he went underground. He subsequently moved to Ekaterinodar, to offer his support to the Volunteer Army and to agitate for Allied intervention against the Bolsheviks, then joined Nabokov in the Crimean Regional Government, as its minister for foreign affairs. When that regime collapsed in April 1919, he made his way abroad, via Constantinople.

In emigration, Vinaver settled in Paris, where, together with A. I. Konovalov and N. D. Avksent′ev, he led calls for “the union of all democratic forces” among the émigrés and formed the coalition Republican Democratic Union. He subsequently chaired the Society for Russian Publishing Affairs in Paris and was one of the founders of the influential émigré newspaper Poslednie novosti (“The Latest News”), at the same time continuing with his scholarly work and teaching (at the “Russian University” at the Sorbonne, of which he was a founder). He died in 1926 and was buried in the Père-Lachaise cemetery, in Paris.

Vinogradov, Vladmir Aleksandrovich (1874–?). One of the five members of the anti-Bolshevik Ufa Directory, and a leading figure in the Democratic Counter-Revolution in Siberia, V. A. Vinogradov was born at Kazan′, attended the Kazan′ and Omsk Gymnasia, and was a graduate of the Law Faculty of Moscow University (1896). Following graduation, he first worked as a researcher on economic issues at the university, under the distinguished statistician A. I. Chuprov, before enrolling as a barrister at the Astrakhan District Court (1904–1907). He was then elected to the Third and Fourth State Dumas, where he joined the Kadets’ caucus and was eventually elected to the party Central Committee. During the February Revolution, he was a member of the Temporary Committee of the State Duma that formed the nucleus of the Russian Provisional Government of 1917, in which he served as deputy minister of communications, responsible for water transport and roads.

Vinogradov moved to Siberia in 1918, in the wake of the October Revolution, and at the Ufa State Conference, was chosen as deputy for N. I. Astrov on the Ufa Directory (even though he had not been elected to the Constituent Assembly). During the Omsk coup, he adopted a neutral position, merely resigning his post following the arrest of directors who were members of the Party of Socialists-Revolutionaries, but in the summer of 1919 he emerged as a member of a putative “loyal opposition” to the Omsk government, as a member of the State Economic Conference. When it became clear that Admiral A. V. Kolchak was not willing to cooperate with that body, however, Vinogradov resigned and made his way to Vladivostok, where he participated in planning the Gajda putsch. He remained active in politics around Vladivostok until at least 1920, but his subsequent fate is unknown.

Vishnevskii, Evgenii Kondrat′evich (1 November 1876–after 1945). Colonel (1916), major general (13 August 1918). One of the leading White military administrators in Siberia, E. K. Vishnevskii was born into a noble family at Brest-Litovsk, in Grodno guberniia, and was a graduate of Odessa Infantry Officers School (1898). He served in the Russo–Japanese War, and during the First World War, rose to the command of the 64th Siberian Rifle Regiment (from 21 March 1917) and then the 25th Siberian Rifle Depot Regiment (from 9 October 1917).

From January 1918, Vishnevskii was active in underground officer organizations at Tomsk, and along with Colonel A. N. Pepeliaev, was one of the organizers of the anti-Bolshevik rising in that city in May 1918, in the wake of the revolt of the Czechoslovak Legion. He subsequently commanded the 2nd Siberian Rifle Division (23 June 1918–9 January 1919), while also serving in various military-administrative posts. From 15 April to 5 August 1919, he was chief of the Military-Administrative Directorate of the Region of the Western Army of Admiral A. V. Kolchak, in which capacity he oversaw the evacuation of Ufa in early June.

During the collapse of Kolchak’s Russian Army in late 1919, Vishnevskii made his way to the Far East and enlisted in the army of the Provisional Government of the Maritime Province Zemstvo, commanding the Siberian Rifle Regiment (from 10 October 1921), the 3rd Independent Brigade (from 23 March 1922), and the 1st Rifle Brigade of the Grodekovo Group (from 15 May 1922). He participated in the Iakutsk Ice March of General A. N. Pepeliaev, but escaped capture by the Reds and was evacuated from the shores of the Sea of Okhotsk on a Japanese schooner in 1923.

In emigration, Vishnevskii lived in China, where he authored one of the very few firsthand accounts of the events in Iakutia, Argonavty beloi mechty (“The Argonauts of the White Dream,” 1933). He is known to have been working as a bookkeeper with the Gun Bao publishing company from 1930 to 1935, and from 1936 he was employed by the Bureau for the Affairs of Russian Emigrants in Manchuria, as well as assisting in the local operations of ROVS, but his subsequent fate is unknown.

Vitkovskii, Vladimir Konstantinovich (21 April 1885–19 January 1978). Colonel (6 December 1916), major general (December 1918), lieutenant general (April 1920). One of the most dynamic leaders of White forces in South Russia, V. K. Vitkovskii was a graduate of the 1st Cadet Corps (1903) and the Pavlovsk Military School (1905) and served with the Keksgolm Life Guards Regiment, commanding a battalion in the First World War. On 2 October 1917, he was made commander of the 199th Kronshtadt Infantry Regiment.

In the White movement, Vitkovskii participated in the great march from Jassy (Iaşi) to Novocherkassk undertaken by General M. G. Drozdovskii and his followers (March–July 1918). He then commanded the 3rd Infantry Brigade and (from October 1919) the 3rd Rifle (Drozdovtsy) Division of the Volunteer Army, advancing from the Donbass to Orel, before retreating to Novorossiisk and being evacuated from there to Crimea (February 1919–March 1920). He then entered the Russian Army of General P. N. Wrangel, seeing action during the amphibious landings on the north shore of the Sea of Azov in the summer of 1920, before briefly replacing General Ia. A. Slashchev as commander of the 2nd Army Corps (from 17 August 1920). He then replaced General D. P. Dratsenko as commander of Wrangel’s 2nd Army (August–November 1920), before being evacuated with his men from Crimea to Gallipoli, where he took command of the 1st Infantry Division.

Vitkovskii subsequently lived in Bulgaria (1921–1924), as commander of the 1st Army Corps (elements of which he led in the suppression of the Communist rising in the country in September 1923), and as chairman of the Society of Gallipoliitsi, before moving on to France and then, after the Second World War, to the United States. In emigration, Vitkovskii was a lifelong ROVS activist. From 1937, he was chairman of the organization’s 1st (French) Department, but was forced to resign from that position by the occupying German authorities in 1942 (despite encouraging ROVS members to cooperate with the Nazis). He subsequently emigrated to the United States and died at Palo Alto, near San Francisco.

Vitovski, Dmytro (8 November 1887–8 July 1919). Major (Austrian Army, 191?), colonel (Ukrainian Galician Army, 1 January 1919). The Ukrainian military commander Dmytro Vitovski was born into a middle-class family at Medukha (Voronytsia), in Austrian Galicia. As a student activist at Lemberg University, where he studied law, he organized Ukrainian educational and paramilitary organizations, and during the First World War, served in the Ukrainian Sich Riflemen as a company commander.

In October 1918, Vitkovski was elected chairman of the Ukrainian Military Committee, which staged the November Uprising at Lemberg (L′viv). He was briefly (1–5 November 1918) the first commander of the Ukrainian Galician Army and then became minister of defense of the Western Ukrainian People’s Republic (to 13 February 1919). After serving on the Ukrainian National Rada (February–April 1919), he was sent to France to attend the Paris Peace Conference as a member of the Ukrainian delegation. Vitovski was killed when his plane crashed near Ratibor (Racibórz ), in Silesia, during his flight home. He was buried in Berlin.

VKP(b). The initialism for All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks)—Vsesoiuznaia Kommunisticheskaia Partiia (bolsheviki)—by which, after changing its title from the Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks), the party was formally known from 1925 (until it changed its name to the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in 1952).

VLADIMIROV (SHEINFINKEL′ ALSO “LEVA”), MIRON KONSTANTINOVICH (15 November 1879–20 March 1925). The son of a tenant farmer from near Kherson, and a graduate of Kherson Agricultural School (1898), M. K. Vladimirov was a vital planner and administrator of the Reds’ supply system during the civil wars. He joined the Russian Social-Democratic Party in 1903 and was associated with the Bolsheviks from an early stage. During the 1905 Revolution, he was active in St. Petersburg, Odessa, Lugansk, and Ekaterinoslav, but was arrested and exiled to Siberia in 1907. He escaped in May 1908 and fled abroad. He then lived and undertook party work in Vienna and later Paris, gravitating away from the Bolsheviks and, from 1911, becoming associated with the Mensheviks, specifically the newspaper published by G. V. Plekhanov, Za partiiu (“For the Party”). During the First World War, however, he rejected Plekhanov’s defensism and worked with L. D. Trotsky on the Paris-based newspaper Nashe slovo (“Our Word”).

Vladimirov returned to Russia in 1917, by which time he was associated with Trotsky’s Inter-District Group. Like Trotsky, he joined the Bolsheviks in the summer of 1917, and during the October Revolution was a leading member of the Military-Revolutionary Committee of the Petrograd Soviet, acting as its commissar for supplies. During the civil wars, he worked from December 1917 on the collegium of the People’s Commissariat for Supply, from April 1918 as extraordinary commissar on the All-Russian Evacuation Committee, and from 1918 to 1919 as extraordinary commissar for railways. He was then prominent on the Revvoensovet of the 1st Ukrainian Army (1919), the Revvoensovet of the Southern Front (June–December 1919 and October–December 1920), and that of the South-West Front (January–June 1920). He served simultaneously as chairman of the Special Supply Commission of the Southern Front (June–December 1919), and in that capacity was instrumental in running the requisitioning policy of the Soviet government to feed the Red forces fighting the Armed Forces of South Russia.

As the civil wars wound down, Vladimirov became, successively, people’s commissar for supply (October 1920–November 1921) and people’s commissar for agriculture (1921–1922) of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic. From December 1922 to November 1924, he was people’s commissar of finance of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (from 1 January 1923, of the USSR) and then deputy people’s commissar of finance of the USSR (July 1923–November 1924). From November 1924, he was deputy chairman of VSNKh, and he was also made a candidate member of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) (from 31 May 1924). He died suddenly in 1925, and was the first Soviet hero to be buried beneath the Kremlin Wall. Family protests persuaded the Soviet authorities to refrain from renaming Kherson “Vladimirsk” in his honor.

VOENSPETSY. See Military specialists.

VOIKOV, PETR LAZAREVICH (1 August 1888–7 June 1927). The Soviet politician and diplomat P. L. Voikov, whose fate was linked with that of the Romanov family, was born at Kerch, in Crimea, the son of either a mining engineer or a teacher (sources differ). He joined the Russian Social-Democratic Party in 1903 and sided initially with the Mensheviks when the party split. He was expelled from the Aleksandrovsk Gymnasium in Yalta following a botched assassination attempt on the town’s mayor in 1906 and was later also expelled from the St. Petersburg Mining Institute. In 1907, he went into exile in Switzerland, and eventually graduated from the Natural Science Faculty of the University of Geneva. He returned to Russia on 12 April 1917, and in August 1917 joined the Bolsheviks, after having been sent on a mission to Ekaterinburg by the Russian Provisional Government’s Ministry of Supply.

From October 1917, Voikov was secretary of the regional trade union bureau and chairman of the Ekaterinburg town council. In January 1918, he was named Sovnarkom’s commissar of supply for the Urals region, in which role he was responsible for applying the policy of food requisitioning (prodrazverstka). It was apparently Voikov who was responsible for selecting and requisitioning the house of the Ekaterinburg merchant N. N. Ipat′ev as the place of incarceration of Nicholas II and his family in April 1918. Following the execution of the Romanov family on 16–17 July 1918, it was also Voikov who was given responsibility for the disposal of the bodies of the members of the royal family. From December 1918, he worked for the cooperative organization Tsentrosoiuz (from March 1919, as its deputy chairman), and from October 1920, he worked in Moscow with the Commissariat for Foreign Trade, charged with selling abroad imperial treasures from the Kremlin Armory and Diamond Fund in order to raise capital for the Soviet regime. He was dismissed from that post for corruption, but on 16 October 1924 was made Soviet ambassador to Poland.

In June 1927, Voikov was assassinated in Warsaw by Boris Koverda, the son of a White émigré. He was buried in the Kremlin Wall Necropolis, and his name was given to numerous streets, squares, institutions, factories, and public buildings across the USSR, including (in 1964) the Voikovskaia metro station in northern Moscow. Members of the Russian Orthodox Church have recently petitioned the Russian government (to date, unsuccessfully) to have the name of this “regicide and infanticide” expunged from the map. Meanwhile, extreme right-wing groups in contemporary Russia have sought to establish that Voikov was really a Jew named Lazar or Lazarevich Pinkus.

Voitsekhovskii, Sergei Nikolaevich (16 October 1883–7 April 1951). Colonel (16 August 1916), colonel (Czechoslovak Legion, 11 June 1918), major general (Czechoslovak Legion, 17 October 1918), lieutenant general (March 1920), general (Czechoslovak Army, 1927). Born in Vitebsk guberniia, into a military family, S. N. Voitsekhovskii was one of the most outstanding commanders of both White Russian and Czechoslovak forces in the civil wars. He was a graduate of the Constantine Artillery School (1904) and, with great distinction, the Academy of the General Staff (1912), as well as completing a course at an aviation school (1912). During the First World War, he served on the staff of the 69th Infantry Division (August 1914–November 1915) and the 20th Army Corps (November 1915–January 1917), before becoming chief of staff of the 176th Infantry Division (29 January–26 June 1917) and then the 126th Infantry Division (June–August 1917).

In August 1917, Voitsekhovskii was transferred to the Czechoslovak Corps (subsequently the Czechoslovak Legion), becoming chief of staff of its 1st Division (August 1917–February 1918) and then commander of the 3rd (Jan Žižki) Regiment (from February 1918). Following the revolt of the Czechoslovak Legion in late May 1918, along with Radola Gajda and Stanislav čeček, Voitsekhovskii entered a military collegium that assumed command over all Czechoslovak forces in Russia. He also commanded the Cheliabinsk and then (from 17 October 1918) the Samara groups of the legion’s forces (May 1918–January 1919). He then left the legion, and after a brief furlough, joined Admiral A. V. Kolchak’s Russian Army, as commander of the 2nd Ufa Army Corps of the Western Army (17 March–25 July 1919), in that capacity playing a significant part in its advance toward the Volga during Kolchak’s spring offensive of 1919. Following the reformation of Kolchak’s forces, Voitsekhovskii served as commander of the Ufa Group of Forces of the 2nd Army (29 August–1 October 1919) of the Whites’ Eastern Front and commander of the 2nd Army (1 September 1919–25 January 1920). During the Great Siberian (Ice) March, he then commanded the Moscow Army Group of Kolchak’s forces (25 January–25 April 1920), becoming, in effect, commander of the remnants of all White forces in Siberia following the death of General V. O. Kappel′ (26 January 1920). However, when the Moscow Group reached Chita and was incorporated into the Far Eastern (White) Army of Ataman G. M. Semenov, the latter gave command of the new force to General N. A. Lokhvitskii (27 April 1920), who in the eyes of the ataman was less tainted by association with the democratically minded Czechs than was Voitsekhovskii. Consequently, Voitsekhovskii soon left Transbaikalia to rejoin the Czechoslovak forces in Vladivostok, arriving there in May 1920.

In September 1920, Voitsekhovskii went into emigration, settling first at Mukden, in Manchuria, where he led the local section of ROVS. In 1921, he accepted an invitation from the Czechoslovak government to resettle in Prague, where he entered the Czechoslovak Army as commander of the 24th Infantry Brigade (1921–1924) and then the 9th Infantry Division (1924–1927). In 1928, he was named commander of the Brno Military District and later, from 1932, of the Prague Military District. From 27 September to 14 October 1938, during the Munich Crisis, he was commander of the 1st Czechoslovak Army. Following the occupation of Czechoslovakia by German forces in March 1939, he was a member of the resistance organization Obrana národa (“Defense of the People”) and served as minister of war in the underground Czechoslovak government (1939–1945). He was arrested by Soviet intelligence forces in Prague on 25 May 1945 and was sent to Moscow. Following some months’ incarceration in the Butyrki prison, on 15 September 1945, he was sentenced to 10 years’ imprisonment by an NKVD tribunal for “counterrevolutionary” and “terrorist” activities. He died in 1951, midway through his sentence, in the Ozernyi camp near Taishet, Irkutsk guberniia.

On 28 October (the Czech national holiday) 1997, by order of President Václav Havel, Voitsekhovskii was posthumously awarded the Order of the White Lion, 3rd Class (the highest honor of the Czech Republic), and in 2003, a memorial plaque to him was unveiled at the Brno Electro-Technical Institute, which now occupies the premises of the staff of the Brno Military District in the interwar years.

VOKHR. The Forces of Internal Security of the Republic, or Voisko VOKhR (Voisko vnutrennei okhrany respubliki), was the formal name accorded to the internal security forces of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (i.e., those controlled by the Cheka and its successors). The institution was established according to an order of the Council of Workers’ and Peasants’ Defense of 28 May 1919, and was assigned the tasks of maintaining internal security, fighting counterrevolution, collecting grain supplies, etc. VOKhR was also considered to be a reserve force of the Red Army.

Voldemaras, Augustinas (16 April 1883–16 May 1942). The first prime minister of independent Lithuania, Augustinas Voldemaras was born into a middle-class family at Dysna, in what is today eastern Lithuania. He was awarded a master’s degree in history and philosophy by St. Petersburg University in 1910, and subsequently earned a PhD from the same institution. He taught in universities across Europe, as well as from 1915 in St. Petersburg, and was active in Lithuanian nationalist circles prior to the revolution of 1917. In September 1917, he represented Lithuania at the Congress of Non-Sovereign Nations, at Kiev.

Along with other faculty members of St. Petersburg University, Voldemaras was evacuated to Perm′ by the Soviet government in late 1917, but he returned to Lithuania in early 1918 and was invited to join the Taryba. He then journeyed to Lausanne with other Lithuanian groups in the summer of 1918, but returned again to Lithuania in the autumn and was chosen as prime minister by the Taryba when the defeat of Germany in the First World War provided the opportunity for a declaration of Lithuanian independence and the beginning of the Lithuanian Wars of Independence. He served as prime minister from 4 November to 26 December 1918; having left Lithuania to travel to the Paris Peace Conference at the very moment that Red forces were approaching Vilnius, he was accused of abandoning his post and was replaced by Mykolas Sleževicius. Despite this slur upon his character, he then served as minister of foreign affairs in successive Lithuanian governments, arguing for recognition before the Allies, Soviet Russia, and the League of Nations, and vehemently opposing Polish claims to sovereignty over Vilnius (Wilno).

Along with his cabinet colleagues, Voldemaras retired from government on 19 June 1920, as elections took place for the Lithuanian Constituent Assembly. He returned to political life, however, in 1926, when he was a party to the coup d’état that brought Antanas Smetona to power, becoming prime minister once more (17 December 1926–23 September 1929). However, he soon broke with Smetona and was deposed as prime minister, due to his involvement with the Lithuanian fascist organization Geležinis Vilkas (“Iron Wolf”). That organization was forced underground in 1930, and in 1934 (with Voldemaras still at its head), attempted a coup against Smetona. When the coup failed, Voldemaras was arrested and subsequently served four years in prison before being pardoned and released into exile at Zarasai, in northeastern Lithuania. In June 1940, a few days after the Soviet invasion of Lithuania, he was arrested by the Soviet authorities. He died two years later in a Moscow prison.

VOLGA–CASPIAN MILITARY FLOTILLA. Formed on 31 July 1919, through the combination of the previously existing Astrakhan–Caspian Military Flotilla and the Volga Military Flotilla, this force was commanded by F. F. Raskol′nikov. It had as its main tasks the defense of Astrakhan and participation in the battles against the Armed Forces of South Russia for the North Caucasus and Transcaucasia, in collaboration with first the Southern Front and later (from 30 September 1919) the South-Eastern Front of the Red Army, as well as the transportation of oil and other supplies north from the Caspian to Soviet Russia. The Volga–Caspian Military Flotilla consisted of some 200 vessels by August 1919, including 3 auxiliary cruisers, 6 destroyers, 3 torpedo boats, 4 submarine craft, 38 gunboats, 24 escort vessels, and 6 floating batteries. It included also, from August 1919, a sizable and effective aircraft brigade (commanded by S. S. Negerevich). The flotilla was divided into three sections: a northern section that operated around Tsaritsyn, a north Astrakhan section that was deployed close to the Chernyi Iar–Vladimirovka railway, and a section operating to the south of Astrakhan in the Volga delta and the northern reaches of the Caspian Sea.

By November 1919, the Volga–Caspian Military Flotilla had helped to ward off the threat of a White capture of Astrakhan, and having received a reinforcement of seven destroyers and numerous support craft from the Baltic Fleet, during the spring of 1920 it participated in the battles further south in the Caspian Sea. In particular, the flotilla undertook successful operations against White naval forces near Port Petrovsk, and on 5 April 1920, it captured Fort Aleksandrovsk in Transcaspia. It then transferred to Baku, and in early May 1920, captured Lenkoran′ before pursuing the Caspian remnants of the White Fleet south and then capturing those vessels from under the noses of their British protectors at Enzeli, in northen Persia (13–18 May 1920). In June 1920, A. K. Vekman took command of the flotilla, which soon thereafter (in July 1920) was reformed into the Caspian Fleet (composed of 3 auxiliary cruisers, 10 torpedo boats, 4 submarines, and other vessels). The Caspian Fleet subsequently merged with the Red fleet of Soviet Azerbaijan to form the Naval Forces of the Caspian Sea.

VOLGA GERMAN WORKERS’ COMMUNE. This Soviet polity was first established on 29 October 1917. On 19 October 1918, it was replaced by the Autonomous Oblast′ of Volga Germans. The latter was granted broad autonomy, as a constituent territory within the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic, and encompassed a region of some 20,000 square miles, centered on the Volga port of Pokrovsk (Engels), opposite Samara, which was home to some 500,000 Germans (chiefly the descendants of 18th-century settlers who had been invited into Russia by Catherine the Great). However, as the German farmers were, in the main, devoutly religious Lutherans, they objected to the Soviet government’s antireligious campaigns and clashed repeatedly with the central authorities. The famine of 1921 also hit the region hard, killing up to a third of the population by some estimates.

On 19 December 1923, the region was transformed once more into the Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic of Volga Germans. During the revolutionary period, its leaders were Ernst Reuter (chairman of the Volga Commissariat for German Affairs, 1918); Hugo Schaufler (chairman of the Provisional Revolutionary Committee of the Autonomous Oblast′, 1919–1920); and the chairmen of the Executive Committee of the Congress of Soviets of the Autonomous Oblast′: Alexander Dotz (1920), V. R. Pakun (1920–1921), Alexander Moor (1921–1922), and Wilhelm Kurtz (1922–1924). The Volga German ASSR was abolished on 28 August 1941, following the German invasion of the USSR, and most of its population was deported to Central Asia.

VOLGA MILITARY FLOTILLA. This formation of the Red Fleet was created in June 1918, to combat anti-Bolshevik forces along the Volga and its tributaries (notably the Kama and Belaia Rivers). The earliest of the Reds’ military flotillas to be established, it took shape at Nizhnii Novgorod: three torpedo boats were transferred there from the Baltic Fleet (via the river and canal system of northern Russia) and (together with five steamers and motor ships, four floating batteries, and four seaplanes) were fitted out with weaponry at the Sormovo factory under the command of N. G. Markin.

The Volga Military Flotilla first saw action against forces of the People’s Army and the Czechoslovak Legion at Sviazhsk (28–29 August 1918) and in landings at Kazan′ (10 September 1918), and subsequently assisted in the capture of Vol′sk, Syzran′, and Samara. In September 1918, it was divided into Volga and Kama groups and subsequently played a notable part in supporting the 2nd, 3rd, and 5th Red Armies on the Eastern Front, as they fought off the spring advance of the Russian Army of Admiral A. V. Kolchak (notably, its Kama Flotilla) and launched a counteroffensive during the early summer of 1919. The flotilla played an important part in the capture of Chistopol′ (5 May 1919), Sarapul (3 June 1919), and Ufa (9 June) during those operations. As the White forces were pushed back across the watershed of the Urals, the Volga Military Flotilla was merged with the Astrakhan–Caspian Flotilla to form the Volga–Caspian Flotilla on 31 July 1919. On Markin Square, in Nizhnii Novgorod, there stands a memorial to the soldiers and sailors of the flotilla.

Commanders of the Volga Military Flotilla were R. M. Berngardt (3–22 August 1918); F. F. Raskol′nikov (23 August–11 November 1918 and 25–31 July 1919); V. N. Varvatsi (11 November 1918–17 April 1919); and P. I. Smirnov (17 April–25 July 1919).

VolinE (Eikhenbaum, Vsevolod Mikhailovich) (11 August 1882–18 September 1945). A leading Russian proponent of anarchism (whose assumed name sometimes appears as “Volin”), Voline was born into a well-to-do Jewish family near Voronezh, to parents who were both village doctors. He spent some time as a student in the Law Faculty of St. Petersburg University, but abandoned his studies in 1904 and joined the revolutionary movement as a member of the Party of Socialists-Revolutionaries. On 9 January 1905 (“Bloody Sunday”), he was part of the demonstration fired on by soldiers in St. Petersburg and later that year was active in the St. Petersburg Soviet. He was subsequently arrested, in 1907, but the following year, while en route to exile in Siberia, escaped and fled abroad to France, where he was converted to anarchism (joining the group of A. A. Karelin in 1911). As a vocal opponent of the First World War, Voline fell foul of the French authorities and was almost interned in 1915, but managed to smuggle himself aboard a ship bound from Bordeaux to the United States. In New York, he joined the Confederation of Russian Workers and helped edit its mouthpiece, Golos truda (“The Voice of Labor”).

Voline returned to Russia in 1917, and after the October Revolution, initially worked with the Soviet government in the People’s Commissariat for Education. However, he opposed the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk (3 March 1918) and in the summer of 1918 left Petrograd for Ukraine, to help organize resistance to the Austro-German intervention. By the autumn of 1918, he was one of the leaders of the anarchist group Nabat, and in 1919, he became one of the chief political advisors to and ideologues of Nestor Makhno’s Revolutionary-Insurgent Army of Ukraine. He was arrested by the Soviet authorities on 14 January 1920, but was released in October of that year, together with other anarchists (following an agreement between Moscow and Makhno) and returned to Ukraine, only to be rearrested at Khar′kov, on 25 November 1920, and sent back to prison in Moscow. He was then released, following pressure from delegates to the founding congress of Profintern in the summer of 1921, and on 5 January 1922 he was expelled from Soviet Russia.

Voline lived in emigration first in Berlin, where he was an active journalist, translator, and writer in the anarchist press, and subsequently (from 1923) in Paris, where he collaborated with Sébastien Faure on the Encyclopédie Anarchiste and worked as the editor of Makhno’s memoirs. He died of tuberculosis in a Paris hospital shortly after the end of the Second World War, leaving his major work (subsequently much republished and translated) to be issued posthumously, as La Révolution inconnue, 1917–1921 (Paris, 1947). Voline was buried in the Père-Lachaise cemetery in Paris.

Volkov, Viacheslav Ivanovich (15 September 1877–10 February 1920). Colonel (1918), major general (19 November 1918). The Cossack officer V. I. Volkov, who probably had more influence than any other individual on the demise of the Democratic Counter-Revolution in Siberia, was born at Ust′-Kamenogorsk, Semipalatinsk oblast′, and was the son of a general in the Siberian Cossack Host. He saw action in the First World War, chiefly on the Caucasus Front, rising to the command of the 7th Siberian Cossack Regiment.

As a convinced opponent of the October Revolution, from early 1918 Volkov was active around Petropavlovsk in “Death for the Motherland,” one of the first underground anti-Bolshevik organizations. Following the overthrow of Soviet power in Siberia, in which he was a leading participant, he became commander of forces in the Petropavlovsk (Akmolinsk) Region and commander of the 1st Siberian Cossack Regiment (from 31 May 1918). On 8 September 1918, he was named head of the Omsk Garrison by the Provisional Siberian Government and subsequently played a leading role in both the Novoselov affair and the Omsk coup of 18 November 1918. Having confessed to his part in the arrest of the members of the Ufa Directory, together with I. N. Krasil′nikov and A. V. Katanaev Volkov was brought before a military court at Omsk on 21 November 1918, charged with “an attack on the supreme state authority,” but the judge, A. F. Matkovskii, found their actions to have been justified. (The new supreme ruler, Admiral A. V. Kolchak, had already promoted Volkov and his codefendants on 19 November.)

Volkov was soon afterward sent east to bring the rebellious Ataman G. M. Semenov to heel, as commander of the Eastern Siberian Independent Army (1 December 1918–24 January 1919) and of the Irkutsk Military District (24 December–17 February 1919), before being dispatched to Vladivostok to organize the raising of Cossack units in the Maritime Province (from 18 March 1919). He subsequently served as a frontline commander of the Urals Army Group (12–27 June 1919) and the Southern Cavalry Group of the Western Army (from 28 June 1919). On 20 November 1919, he was named commander of the Siberian Cossack Group of the 3rd Army, with which he undertook the Great Siberian (Ice) March as White forces in the east disintegrated. Ill with typhus, he found refuge on a train of the Czechoslovak Legion, but was ejected from it near Tel′ma station. Near Irkutsk, on 11 February 1920, his unit was overwhelmed by Red partisans, and Volkov appears to have committed suicide to evade capture. His daughter, Mariia Viacheslavovna Eikhel′berger (1903–1983), became a celebrated émigrée poet.

Vologodskii, Petr Vasil′evich (30 January 1863–19 November 1925). The prime minister of the Omsk government, who added a touch of Siberian regionalism (oblastnichestvo) to a putative all-Russian government, P. V. Vologodskii was born in Eniseisk guberniia, the son of a village priest. He graduated as an external student from the law faculty of Khar′kov University (1892), but was expelled from St. Petersburg University in 1887 and exiled to Tomsk. He subsequently worked in a number of regional and district legal offices in Siberia, rising to senior chairman of the Omsk Chambers, and in 1905 acted as council for the defense in a number of political trials at Tomsk. Initially attracted to Populism, he helped found the Party of Socialists-Revolutionaries’ group at Tomsk, in the early years of the 20th century, but became increasingly involved in the regionalist movement, as editor of Sibirskii vestnik (“The Siberian Herald”) from 1904 to 1905, and in March 1907 was elected to the Second State Duma as a Progressive representative of Tomsk. However, he did not arrive in St. Petersburg in time to participate in the Duma before its dissolution by Nicholas II, and he was never entirely committed to any one political party. From 1916 to 1917, he was coeditor of the newspaper Sibirskaia zhizn′ (“Siberian life”).

After the February Revolution, Vologodskii acted as one of a three-man Regional Commissariat that was appointed by the Russian Provisional Government to administer Tomsk guberniia following the removal of its governor-general. In the wake of the October Revolution, he was associated with opponents of the new Soviet regime, and on 25–26 January 1918, at a secret convention of the Siberian Regional Duma at Tomsk, he was elected (in absentia) as a member of the Provisional Government of Autonomous Siberia, as minister of foreign affairs. After the collapse of Soviet power in Siberia, from 30 June 1918 Vologodskii was chairman of the Council of Ministers of the Provisional Siberian Government, on behalf of which he undertook an extended tour of the Far East to garner the support of Allied and Russian forces in Omsk’s struggle for supremacy over Komuch. Although, on 23 September 1918, he was chosen as a member of the Ufa Directory, he was by this time a convinced supporter of provisional military dictatorship as a cure for Russia’s ills. Thus, following the Omsk coup, he served as chairman of the Council of Ministers (i.e., prime minister) of the Provisional All-Russian Government of Admiral A. V. Kolchak. In that role, Vologodskii was frequently critical of the lawlessness in White Siberia, blaming it firmly on the injustices and crimes committed by the military authorities, but did little to prevent them and was accused at the time (and since) of passivity. Following the reorganization of Kolchak’s government on 22 November 1919, he was retired as premier and instead headed the stillborn Commission on Elections to the Constituent Assembly at Irkutsk. With the seizure of power in that city by the Political Center in January 1920, Vologodskii narrowly managed to evade arrest, and with the help of the Japanese military mission, made his way to Harbin. In March 1920, he moved on to Dairen. For the rest of his life he worked (in the Chinese Eastern Railway Zone) as a legal consultant for a Shanghai bank.

Vol′skii, Vladimir Kazimirovich (23 June 1877–4 October 1937). One of the leaders of the Democratic Counter-Revolution of 1918 on the Volga, V. K. Vol′skii, who was born in Tambov guberniia, was of hereditary noble background. He graduated from the Tambov Gymnasium (1894), but was sent down from the Mathematics Faculty of Moscow University as a consequence of his association with radical political groups. He joined the Party of Socialists-Revolutionaries (PSR) in 1903, and was subsequently arrested on six occasions by the tsarist authorities. In 1917, he was elected deputy chairman of the Soviet of Peasants’ Deputies of Tver′ guberniia. He also chaired the Tver′ Zemstvo Board and was elected a member of the Constituent Assembly, as a representative from Tver′ guberniia.

In May 1918, together with other opponents of the Soviet regime, Vol′skii made his way to the Volga and became a leading member of the anti-Bolshevik underground, helping to organize the rising against Soviet power in Samara in early June and the establishment of Komuch (subsequently serving as the chair of its presidium). As leader of the PSR delegation to the Ufa State Conference, he advocated making the new all-Russian government answerable to the Constituent Assembly of 1917. On 19 November 1918, following the Omsk coup, Vol′skii (as chairman of the Congress of Members of the Constituent Assembly), together with V. M Chernov, I. N. Rakitnikov, and others, was briefly arrested by officers at Ekaterinburg and would probably have been executed but for the intervention of troops of the Czechoslovak Legion, who released the prisoners. On 2 December 1918, he escaped arrest again at Ufa, when some of the future PSR victims of the Omsk massacre were rounded up by the army. By then, in contravention of the line of the PSR Central Committee, Vol′skii had become an outspoken advocate of alliance with the Bolsheviks to oppose the Whites; consequently, in January 1920 (together with P. D. Klimushkin and N. Sviatitskii), he crossed the front and led what was to become known as the Narod group of the PSR to Moscow, where he offered his support to the Soviet government. For this action he was subsequently expelled from the PSR.

On 25 February 1922, Vol′skii was arrested by the Cheka and convicted (without trial) of leading a counterrevolutionary “White-SR” organization and planning “a rising on an all-Russian scale against Soviet power.” He spent three years in the Pertominsk concentration camp near Arkhangel′sk, then was sentenced to another three-year term of exile in 1925. In February 1937, Vol′skii was again arrested. On 22 September 1937, his name appeared on a list of names, signed personally by J. V. Stalin, of people to be sentenced by the Military Collegium of Supreme Court of the USSR, with the direction that he be assigned to “Category One,” meaning a death sentence. Vol′skii was subsequently found guilty of membership in a mythical “anti-Soviet terrorist organization” and was executed on 4 October 1937. He was posthumously rehabilitated on 18 October 1991.

VOLUNTEER ARMY. This anti-Bolshevik military force was active chiefly in the North Caucasus and in South Russia during the civil wars; following the Moscow Directive of General A. I. Denikin, it played a key role in the summer–autumn offensive of 1919 of the Armed Forces of South Russia (AFSR). It was initially manned entirely by volunteers—most of them officers (or trainee officers) of the Russian Army, or students—but from late 1918 began to organize mobilizations among local populations in the areas that it controlled. This was probably a necessary, and indeed inevitable, step, given the Reds’ huge advantage over the Whites in manpower and resources, but it did serve to dilute the discipline of the Volunteer Army and to weaken it members’ commitment to the “White idea.” Consequently, the improbable victories that the Volunteers achieved in 1918 could not be repeated in 1919.

In the aftermath of the October Revolution, numerous officers, officer cadets, and other opponents of the Bolsheviks began to gather at Novocherkassk, capital of the Don Cossack Host, in the belief that this would be a good base to begin building an army that would oppose Soviet rule and continue the First World War against the Central Powers. Among the first to arrive were many senior officers of the old army who had been incarcerated at Bykhov following the Kornilov affair, including General L. G. Kornilov and Generals S. L. Markov, A. I. Denikin, and A. S. Lukomskii. Others were members of the anti-Bolshevik Alekseev Organization from Petrograd. Having established his headquarters at 39 Barochnaia Street on 2 November 1917, General M. V. Alekseev, the former chief of staff of the Russian Army, began signing up volunteers (initially for four months’ service) and sent them into action against the Reds at Rostov-on-Don, which was secured by the Volunteers on 2 December 1918, weeks before the formation of the Volunteer Army was formally announced on 27 December 1917. When the army was formed, its overall command was entrusted to Alekseev, who actually concentrated on political and financial affairs; Kornilov was named commander in chief and Lukomskii chief of staff.

In January–February 1918, the force was engaged in battles with Red Guards and other Soviet elements around Taganrog and Rostov-on-Don during the so-called Railway War, but when forces of the Don Cossack Host proved both unwilling and unable to defend their territory from Red invasion, Kornilov decided to withdraw southward. Subsequently, the approximately 4,000 Volunteers (half of them officers, a third of them officer cadets, and the rest mostly students), along with as many civilians, set off on the First Kuban (Ice) March on 9 February 1918. Over the following months, facing continuous battles against Red forces in the North Caucasus, despite many losses (some units suffering 100 percent casualties), the size of the army increased to about 6,000 men (partly due to its union in Kuban with the Cossack partisans of General V. M. Pokrovskii on 26 March 1918). However, the Volunteers failed in their primary objective—to capture Ekaterinodar, capital of the Kuban Cossack Host—despite repeated attacks on the city from 9 to 13 April. The siege was abandoned when General Kornilov was killed, and General Denikin then succeeded him as commander in chief. New recruits nevertheless continued to locate and merge with the Volunteers (notably the 3,000-strong force under Colonel M. G. Drozdovskii, which had traveled 1,000 miles from Jassy, on the Romanian Front, arriving in late May 1918), and by September1918, as it engaged in another (and this time more successful) campaign across the North Caucasus, the Second Kuban March, the force had reached a strength of around 30,000 fighters. Many of the new recruits were Cossacks of the Kuban Host and the Terek Cossack Host, both of which had revolted against Soviet rule. In recognition of this, the army was eventually (albeit temporarily) renamed the Caucasus Volunteer Army (10 January–22 May 1919).

As increasing amounts of Western aid began to arrive, the world war ended, and the Allied intervention developed, Denikin (who succeeded to the supreme command following Alekseev’s death from cancer in September 1918) was able to capture virtually all the North Caucasus by the end of 1918 and to drive the 11th Red Army from the region. At that point, the Volunteers (now 48,000 strong) united with the Don Army, the Crimean–Azov Volunteer Army, and other formations to forge what proved to be a sometimes uneasy alliance between the Cossacks and the Whites in the AFSR (from 8 January 1919). On 22 May 1919, the Volunteers were again separated from the Cossacks to form the Volunteer Army (operating between Kursk and Orel) and the Caucasian Army (operating around Tsaritsyn) within the AFSR. In that formation they participated in the Moscow offensive of the AFSR, capturing numerous towns and cities, including Khar′kov (27 June 1919). When, in 1919–1920, the AFSR was defeated by the Red Army before Moscow and driven back, its forces fled toward the Black Sea, and remnants of the Volunteer Army (about 5,000 men), now redubbed the Independent Volunteer Corps (under General A. P. Kutepov), were evacuated from Novorossiisk to Crimea, where they formed part of the Russian Army of General P. N. Wrangel.

The Volunteer Army’s supreme leader was General Alekseev (27 December 1917–25 September 1918). Its commanders were General Kornilov (27 December 1917–9 April 1918); General Denikin (9 April 1918–27 December 1918); General Wrangel (27 December 1918–8 May 1919 and December 1919–January 1920); and General V. Z. Mai-Maevskii (10 May–27 November 1919). Its chiefs of staff were General I. P. Romanovskii (27 February 1917–1 January 1919); General Ia. D. Iuzefovich (acting, 1 January 1919–8 May 1919); and General P. N. Shatilov (13 December 1919–January 1920).

VOROSHILOV, KLIMENT (“KLIM”) EFEREMOVICH (4 February 1881–2 December 1969). Marshal of the Soviet Union (20 November 1935). The Soviet politician and military commander Klim Voroshilov, who was to become a close associate of J. V. Stalin both during and after the civil-war period, was born at Verkhne, Ekaterinoslav guberniia, into the family of a railway worker, and attended the local village school. Records indicate that he joined the Russian Social-Democratic Party in 1903 and was exiled to northern Russia for three years in 1907, while Soviet sources describe him as being active in party work in Baku, St. Petersburg, and Tsaritsyn before the revolution. However, few documented traces exist of any significant political activity on Voroshilov’s part until he emerged as chairman of the Lugansk Soviet, in March 1917.

In November 1917, Voroshilov joined the Military-Revolutionary Committee of the Petrograd Soviet, with responsibility for local government affairs, and in January 1918 was named chairman of the Cheka’s defense commission in Petrograd. Thereafter, during the civil wars, he was chiefly active in Ukraine and southern Russia in a host of appointments, including: commander of the 1st Lugansk Socialist Detachment of Red Guards (from March 1918); commander of the 5th Red Army (15 March–July 1918); commander of the Tsaritsyn Front (July–August 1918); member of the Revvoensovet of the Northern Caucasus Military District (August–23 September 1918); member of the Revvoensovet and assistant commander of the Southern Front (17 September–3 October 1918); commander of the 10th Red Army (3 October–18 December 1918); people’s commissar of internal affairs of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic (29 January–September 1919); member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party (Bolshevik) of Ukraine (6 March 1919–5 April 1920); commander of forces of the Khar′kov Military District (10 May–14 June 1919); commander of the 14th Red Army (4 June–18 July 1919); commander of forces for internal security (VOKhR) of the Ukrainian SSR (August 1919); member of the Revvoensovet of the 12th Red Army (August 1919); and member of the Politbiuro of the Central Committee of the CP(B) of Ukraine (2 August 1919–17 March 1920). In this period, he worked in very close collaboration with Stalin and was the latter’s chief aide during the defense of Tsaritsyn and the so-called Tsaritsyn affair. As a member of the Revvoensovet of the 1st Cavalry Army (17 November 1919–29 April 1921), he was also close to Stalin during the controversies surrounding developments on the South-West Front during the Soviet–Polish War. Finally, he served as commissar of the Southern Group of forces during the suppression of the Kronshtadt Revolt (March 1921) and was subsequently commander of forces of the North Caucasus Military District (4 May 1921–17 May 1924).

Following the civil wars, being instrumental in Stalin’s rise to power, Voroshilov enjoyed one of the longest and most influential political careers of any Bolshevik. He was elected to the Central Committee of the Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks) on 16 March 1921 and remained on it until 17 October 1961. At the same time, he occupied numerous governmental and military posts, including: people’s commissar of military and naval affairs of the USSR (6 November 1925–20 June 1934); chairman of the Revvoensovet of the USSR (6 November 1925–20 June 1934); member of the Politbiuro of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party (1 January 1926–5 October 1952); and people’s commissar for defense of the USSR (20 June 1934–7 May 1940). During the Second World War, he was a member of the Committee of State Defense (30 June 1941–21 November 1944). Throughout his career, he remained notoriously subservient to Stalin (it was Voroshilov’s article in Pravda of 21 December 1929, “Stalin and the Red Army,” that began the construction of the myth of Stalin’s preeminent role in founding and organizing the Red Army) and was fully involved in the murderous regime that the dictator inflicted on the USSR in the 1930s and 1940s, reaping the rewards for his obeisance even when making catastrophic errors (such as his disastrous handling of the 1939–1940 Winter War against Finland). In the postwar years, among other roles, he was made head of state as chairman of the presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR (15 March 1953–7 May 1960), subsequently serving (largely symbolically) as its deputy chairman until his death in Moscow in 1969. He was buried in the Kremlin Wall Necropolis.

The list of military and civil honors accorded to Voroshilov in his lifetime would fill a small book (he was twice made a Hero of the Soviet Union, in 1956 and 1968). The KV series of Soviet tanks was named after him, and Lugansk was called Voroshilovgrad from 5 November 1935 to 5 March 1958, while Ussuriisk in the Far East was called Voroshilov for the same period. Stavropol′ was also Voroshilovsk from 1935 to 1943. For all that, during his lifetime and afterward he was one of the most reviled figures in Soviet history.

VOSKANOV (VOSKANYAN), GASPAR KARAPETOVICH (29 December 1886–20 September 1937). Lieutenant (191?), komkor (16 April 1936). The Soviet military commander G. K. Voskanov was born into an Armenian family in Kherson guberniia, graduated from the Tiflis Military School (1913), and was a participant in the First World War.

Having been elected commander of his regiment in the aftermath of the October Revolution, Voskanov joined the Red Army in July 1918 and became a member of the Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks) in 1919. During the civil wars, he initially served as commander of the Samara (later 25th) Rifle Division (25 November 1918–February 1919) in battles on the Eastern Front. He was badly wounded, but returned to service as commander of the 49th Rifle Division (June–September 1919) and then again, following the death of V. I. Chapaev, as commander of the 25th Rifle Division (26 September–8 October 1919). He was then named commander of the 4th Red Army (8 October 1919–23 April 1920), succeeding M. V. Frunze, and was subsequently commander of the 2nd Labor Army (April–June 1920), then commander of the 12th Red Army (10 June–20 August 1920). For his part in defeating Cossack forces and the Southern Army of Admiral A. V. Kolchak, he was twice awarded the Order of the Red Banner.

Voskanov subsequently filled numerous posts with the Red Army: commander of the 2nd Reserve (later 47th Rifle) Division (1921–1922); commander of the 6th Rifle Division (1923–1924); assistant inspector of infantry of the Red Army (1924–1925); and assistant commander of the Turkestan Front (1925–June 1926). He then moved into diplomatic work, becoming military attaché in Finland (1926–1928) and then military attaché in Turkey and Italy simultaneously (1929–1930). He was also chief military secretary of the All-Union Committee on Standardization attached to the Council of Labor and Defense of the USSR (1931–1936) and deputy chairman of the central council of Osoaviakhim (the Society for Support of the Defense, Aviation and Chemical Industries) of the USSR (1936–1937). He was arrested on 28 May 1937, and having been found guilty of membership in a mythical “counterrevolutionary terrorist organization” by the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the USSR on 20 September 1937, was immediately executed. Voskanov was buried in a mass grave in the Donskoi cemetery in Moscow. He was posthumously rehabilitated on 29 December 1956.

VOSTRETSOV, STEPAN SERGEEVICH (17 December 1883–3 May 1932). Ensign (1916). One of the most highly decorated Red commanders of the civil-war era (he was awarded the Order of the Red Banner on no fewer than four occasions, as well as receiving a weapon of honor), S. S. Vostretov was born into a peasant family in the village of Kazantsevo, in Ufa guberniia. He worked as a blacksmith and joined the Russian Social-Democratic Party in 1905, gravitating toward the Mensheviks, but was called up into the army in 1906. In 1909, he was sentenced to three years’ imprisonment for revolutionary agitation among his fellow soldiers, but was recalled to the ranks to serve in the Russian Army during the First World War.

Following the October Revolution, Vostretsov left the Mensheviks, and in 1918, he joined the Red Army. From June 1919, he commanded one of the most effective Red units on the Eastern Front, the 27th Rifle Division, participating in the capture of Cheliabinsk and Omsk, and in 1920 went with that division to fight on the Western Front in the Soviet–Polish War, participating in the capture of Minsk. He joined the Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks) in 1920, and from 1921 was involved in counterinsurgency and border defense operations at the head of Cheka units in Siberia and the Far East. In the autumn of 1922, he commanded the 2nd Priamur Rifle Division of the People’s-Revolutionary Army of the Far Eastern Republic, during the storming of Spassk. The following year, he led counterinsurgency operations against the remnants of the White forces of General A. N. Pepeliaev in the Okhotsk-Aiansk region (the Iakutsk Revolt).

From 1924, Vostretsov once again commanded the 27th (Omsk) Rifle Division, and in 1927, he graduated from the Red Military Academy. During the Sino–Soviet conflict of the late 1920s (over ownership of the Chinese Eastern Railway), he commanded the 18th Rifle Corps and the Transbaikal Group of Forces. Vostretsov died (according to some accounts, he committed suicide) in Novocherkassk in 1932, and is buried at Rostov-on-Don. His home village was renamed Vostretsovo in his honor.

Vratsian (krouzinian), Simon (1882–May 1969). Simon Vratsian, the last prime minister of the Democratic Republic of Armenia, was born at Great Sala, near Nor Nakhchivan, and educated at the Georgian Academy at Etchmiadzin. A Leftist member of the Dashnaks from 1898 (and a member of the party bureau from 1914), he was a supporter of the movement’s adoption of socialism at its Vienna Conference in 1907. He worked for the party in St. Petersburg and Moscow, before moving abroad to Turkey in 1910 and then on to the United States in 1911, to escape tsarist persecution, but returned to Transcaucasia during the First World War and helped organize Armenian volunteer units for the Russian Amy.

Vratsian became a leading figure at the Armenian National Congress in September 1917, and was subsequently elected as a member of the National Council of Armenia. In 1918, he toured South Russia, establishing links with the Volunteer Army. In 1919, he accepted the posts of minister of labor, agriculture, and state properties in the cabinet of Alexander Khatisyan and held the same posts in the bureau government of Hamazasp Ohandjanian, as well as having responsibility for information and propaganda. After the resignation of the bureau government, Vratsian became prime minister of the Democratic Republic of Armenia on 24 November 1920. In that capacity, as the 11th Red Army entered Armenia on 2 December 1920, he accepted the transfer of power to the Bolsheviks and also agreed to the signing of the Treaty of Alexandropol before resigning from office.

He thereafter went into hiding. Then, as president of the Committee for the Salvation of the Fatherland, he led the failed rebellion against Soviet authority at Yerevan on 18 February 1921 (the February Uprising). Vratsian spent much of the rest of his life in itinerant exile, campaigning for the return to Armenia of provinces held by Turkey, before finally settling in Beirut in 1951, as principal of the Djemaran (the Nshan Palandjian College). Vratsian wrote extensively on the history of the Democratic Republic of Armenia, and his books are a vital source on the subject.

Vsebiurvoenkom. The acronym by which was known the All-Russian Bureau of Military Commissars (Vserossiiskoe biuro voennykh kommissarov). This body was created by order of the People’s Commissariat for Military Affairs on 8 April 1918, to oversee and coordinate the functioning of the network of military commissars in the nascent Red Army, and in general, to offer political guidance to Red forces and undertake agitprop among the troops. On 18 April 1919, following a decision of the 8th Congress of the Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks), and in reaction to criticisms made by the Military Opposition about the low regard in which commissars were held by the Red command, the institution was disbanded and replaced by the Political Department of the Revvoensovet of the Republic, which in turn became the Political Directorate of the Revvoensovet of the Republic (PUR) on 15 May 1919.

VSEROGLAVSHTAB. The All-Russian Main Staff (Vserossiiskii glavnyi shtab) was one of two main staffs of the Red Army during the civil wars. It was created on 8 May 1918, as the unified replacement for the All-Russian Collegium for the Formation of the Red Army, the Main Directorate of the General Staff, the Main Staff and the Main Commissariat for Military-Educational Institutions, and other bodies. At the head of Vseroglavshtab was a council, consisting of the institution’s chief and two (from 15 September 1919, three) military commissars. In addition to the council, by 1 September 1920 the organization consisted of 10 subdepartments: Organizational; Mobilization; Command Staff; Directorate of the Military-Topographical Corps; Main Directorate of Military-Educational Institutions; Main Directorate for General Military Education and the Formation of Red Reserve Units; Directorate of Central Military Stores; Military-Historical Commission; Uniforms and Weapons Committee; Main Military-Scientific Editorial Board; and Editorial Board of Voennoe delo (“Military Affairs”). Vseroglavshtab also supervised the Red Military Academy and the various manifestations of the Intelligence Directorate of the Red Army. It was initially responsible to the Collegium of the People’s Commissariat for Military Affairs, but from 6 September 1918 it answered to the Revvoensovet of the Republic. On 10 February 1921, Vseroglavshtab was united with the Field Staff of the Revvoensovet Republic to form a unified Staff of the Worker-Peasant Red Army.

Heads of Vseroglavshtab were N. N. Stogov (18 May–2 August 1918); A. A. Svechin (2 August 1918–22 October 1918); and N. I. Rattel′ (22 October 1918–10 February 1921).

VSEVOBUCH. This acronym (derived from the Russian Vseobshchee voennoe obuchenie) denotes the practice of universal military training for civilians in Soviet Russia. It was introduced by an order of VTsIK, on 22 April 1918, and applied to all adult workers and peasant males aged 16 to 40 years, although women could also volunteer for military training. The system was jointly overseen by the People’s Commissariat for Military Affairs and the People’s Commissariat for Education and involved an eight-week program. This was delivered by some 50,000 instructors by the end of 1918. Soviet sources claim that by the end of 1920, 5,000,000 people had received military training. Vsevobuch was abolished in 1923 (although it was reintroduced in the USSR during the Second World War).

Vsevolodov, Nikolai Dmitrievich (4 May 1879–?). Lieutenant (13 August 1901), lieutenant colonel (12 June 1913), colonel (15 August 1916). One of the most notorious and damaging of those military specialists of the Red Army who deserted to the Whites, N. D. Vsevolodov was a graduate of the Siberian Cadet Corps (1896), the Nicholas Cavalry School (1898), and the Academy of the General Staff (1905). Prior to the First World War, his postings included commanding a squadron of the 5th Dragoons (15 April 1908–15 April 1910) and serving as an adjutant on the staff of the 17th Infantry Division (26 November 1910–30 October 1913). Following the February Revolution, he occupied a series of senior staff posts (including chief of staff of the Moscow Military District, from 19 August 1917). In 1918, he entered the service of the Red Army, becoming chief of staff (29 October 1918–20 April 1919) and then commander (6–16 June 1919) of the 9th Red Army. According to Soviet commentators, in those posts he ferried information to the enemy, compromising the position of the entire Southern Front and facilitating the subsequent Moscow offensive of the White forces of General A. I. Denikin, before deserting to Armed Forces of South Russia. Vsevolodov was evacuated with White forces from Novorossiisk in March 1920 and spent a period in refugee camps on Lemnos before joining the emigration. His subsequent fate is unknown.

VSNKh. The acronym (sometimes rendered as Vesenkha), derived from its name in Russian (Vserossiiskii sovet narodnogo khoziastva), by which the Supreme Council of the National Economy of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic is usually known. This body (which had its counterparts in other Soviet republics), which sought to exercise supreme control over the Soviet economy, was founded on 5 December 1917 by decrees of VTsIK and was made subordinate to Sovnarkom. As one of the key organs of War Communism, it sought to direct the production and organization of nationalized industries and to manage the supply and distribution of key goods, and it exercised rights of confiscation and expropriation.

Initially, VSNKh was dominated by Left Bolsheviks (notably N. I. Bukharin, G. I. Lomov, and V. N. Smirnov), but over the spring of 1918, increasing numbers of Bolsheviks more loyal to V. I. Lenin and the party apparatus were placed in key posts within the organization, culminating with the naming of A. I. Rykov as chairman of VSNKh in May 1918. Subordinate to it were so-called glavki (from the Russian for “main committees”) that sought to direct individual industries or branches of the economy, for example, Glavneft (for the oil industry), Glavsakhar (sugar), Glavzoloto (gold), etc. By 1920, the organization was responsible for 37,000 nationalized enterprises, although the Soviet state’s broad economic strategy during the civil-war years tended to be decided elsewhere (notably in the Council of Labor and Defense). In 1923, following the creation of the USSR, it was transformed into an all-union people’s commissariat. In 1932, VSNKh was abolished and replaced by a series of people’s commissariats for heavy industry, light industry, etc.

Chairmen of VSNKh during the civil-war period were N. Osinskii (5 December 1917–28 March 1918); A. I. Rykov (28 March 1918–28 May 1921); and P. A. Bogdanov (28 May 1921–6 July 1923).

VTsIK. The All-Russian Central Executive Committee (Vserossiiskii tsentral′nyi ispolnitel′nyi komitet) of the Soviets of Workers’ Peasants’, Soldiers’ and Cossacks’ Deputies, which was elected by the All-Russian Congress of Soviets, in theory served as the highest legislative body of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (RSFSR) while the Congress was not in session and was thus (again, in theory) the government of all territories controlled by the Bolsheviks during the civil wars. It had initially been elected at the First All-Russian Congress of Soviets (3–24 June 1917), but did not at that stage claim governmental authority. The 102-member VTsIK, elected at the Second All-Russian Congress of Soviets (25–26 October 1917) in the midst of the October Revolution, which was dominated by the 62 Bolshevik members and their allies, notably 29 members of the Party of Left Socialists-Revolutionaries (plus 34 nonvoting, candidate members, 29 of whom were Bolsheviks and 5 Left-SRs), became in name the government of the RSFSR, although in practice state policy was decided by the smaller Sovnarkom and by the Central Committee of the Bolshevik Party, while (from November 1917) VTsIK’s presidium handled day-to-day affairs and rapidly eclipsed the authority of the plenum.

The roles of VTsIK, Sovnarkom, and the Congress of Soviets often overlapped and were not clearly defined by the Constitution of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic of July 1918, although some clarity was brought to the matter by the issuing of the decree “On Soviet Construction” at the Eighth All-Russian Congress of Soviets (22–29 December 1920). However, this mattered little, as by the summer of 1918 the Bolsheviks’ grip on VTsIK was nearly complete, with the Left-SRs banned in the wake of the Left-SR Uprising and Mensheviks and other parties prevented from putting forward candidates for elections: of the 178 candidates elected to VTsIK by the Fifth All-Russian Congress of Soviets (4–10 July 1918), 157 were Bolsheviks. Thereafter, any pretense that VTsIK might genuinely debate the decrees passed by Sovnarkom—much less reject them—was dropped, and the appearances before VTsIK of Sovnarkom representatives became a formality.

With the formation of the USSR (30 December 1922), VTsIK was downgraded to a republican body, with equivalents elected in the other Soviet republics, and a new Central Executive Committee of the USSR was created, also chaired by Kalinin. (Prior to that date, Ukrainian and other congresses of Soviets had elected representatives to VTsIK.) Following the adoption of the 1936 (“Stalin”) Constitution, this in turn was replaced by the Supreme Soviet of the RSFSR.

The chairmen of VTsIK (and thereby titular heads of state of Soviet Russia) were L. B. Kamenev (26 October–8 November 1917); Ia. M. Sverdlov (8 November 1917–16 March 1919); M. F. Vladimirskii (acting, 16–30 March 1919); and M. I. Kalinin (30 March 1919–15 July 1938).

VYNNYCHENKO, VOLODYMYR (14 July 1880–6 March 1951). A pivotal figure in the Ukrainian revolution, the Ukrainian author and politician Volodymyr Vynnychenko was born into a peasant family at Veselyi Kut, Kherson guberniia, and schooled at the Elizavetgrad Gymnasium. He enrolled in the Law Faculty of Kiev University in 1900, but was expelled two years later for his political activity among workers of the city and was banned from entering any other educational establishment. In 1905, he became a founding member of the Ukrainian Social-Democratic Labor Party and editor of its journal, Borot′ba (“The Struggle”), but spent the years 1906–1914 abroad (mostly in Paris and Lemberg), so as to escape the attention of the tsarist authorities.

For most of the First World War, Vynnychenko dwelled illegally near Moscow, but in March 1917 he returned to Kiev and was elected vice president of the Ukrainian Central Rada. On 15 June 1917, he was elected head of its executive, the General Secretariat, while at the same time serving as general secretary (i.e., minister) of internal affairs. When the Rada declared Ukraine’s independence from Russia, on 9 January 1918, Vynnychenko became chairman of the Council of People’s Ministers of the Ukrainian National Republic, again retaining control of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, but resigned on 17 January 1918. From 18 September to 14 November 1918, he headed the Ukrainian National Union and was one of the leaders of the revolt against the regime of Hetman P. P. Skoropadskii. On 14 November 1918, he was elected chairman of the Ukrainian National Republic Directory, but resigned again on 10 February 1919, as he was bitterly opposed to what he perceived as the increasingly Rightist, militarist, and pro-Allied policies of the directory in general and of Symon Petliura in particular. He moved thereafter into emigration, basing himself in Vienna, as leader (from February 1920) of the Foreign Group of the Ukrainian Communist Party (UCP) and editor of the newspaper Nova Doba (“The New Era”).

In May 1920, Vynnychenko journeyed to Moscow (later traveling to Khar′kov for talks with Cristian Rakovski) and attempted a reconciliation with the Bolsheviks (who hoped to rally Ukrainian socialists to their cause, as the Soviet–Polish War flared on Ukrainian territory). But after four months of negotiations regarding the future governance and borders of Ukraine proved to be fruitless (as had earlier talks between Vynnychenko and the Soviet government brokered by Béla Kun at Budapest in April 1919), he emigrated permanently in September 1920, initially settling in Vienna, from where he excoriated the Soviet regime for its centralism, bureaucratism, insensitivity to Ukrainian interests, and abandonment of Communist principles. For this he was severely criticized by the UCP leadership and was forced to wind up the Foreign Group and cease publication of its newspaper. Vynnychenko then moved to France, and for the next 30 years largely devoted himself to literary work. During the Second World War, he refused Nazi invitations to collaborate against the USSR, for which he was confined to a concentration camp. This experience had a deleterious impact on his health, and he subsequently died at Mougins (near Cannes).

Vynnychenko was a widely published (and much translated) author of modernist novels, plays, and short stories, as well as historical works, including a three-volume history of the Ukrainian revolution, Vidrodzhdenia natsii (“The Rebirth of the Nation”), published in Vienna in 1920. His works were banned in the USSR, but have attracted much attention since the independence of Ukraine. His distinctly Leftist credo has, however, made him a somewhat awkward hero for the contemporary Ukrainian nationalists (and he has been far less celebrated in his homeland than Mykhailo Hrushevsky, for example), although in 2005 his image was used on a 2-grivna coin and on a 45-kopiyka stamp in Ukraine.