Historical Dictionary of the Russian Civil Wars, 1916-1926

Z

ZADOV, LEV NIKOLAEVICH. See ZINKOVSKII (ZADOV), LEV NIKOLAEVICH.

ZAITSEV, IVAN MATVEEVICH (9 September 1878–22 November 1934). Colonel (1916), major general (12 October 1919). The enigmatic anti-Bolshevik military commander I. M. Zaitsev was born into the family of a teacher at Karagaisk, in Troitsk guberniia, and was a graduate of the Orenburg Officer School (1898) and the Academy of the General Staff (1908). He worked as a teacher at the Fomin Cossack School and served in the First World War in several units of the Orenburg Cossack Host, rising to the post of first assistant commander of the 11th Orenburg Cossack Regiment. Following the February Revolution, he was chosen as a delegate from the Romanian Front to liaise with the newly established Russian Provisional Government (24 March 1917) and subsequently remained in Petrograd as a member of the war ministry’s special council on army reform (from 23 April 1917). He was then made the Provisional Government’s special commissar for Khiva (from July 1917).

Following the October Revolution, Zaitsev refused to recognize the Soviet government and led a column of troops that seized Çärjew and Samarkand in early 1918. In February 1918, he was arrested by Red Guards at Ashkhabad (Aşgabat) and imprisoned at Tashkent. On 1 July 1918, he was freed by members of the anti-Bolshevik Turkestan Military Organization and subsequently served as its chief of staff. When that organization came under attack by the Cheka, Zaitsev attempted to make his way to join the forces of Ataman A. I. Dutov in the Orenburg region, but he was arrested en route at Kustanai in November 1918. Having again escaped, he made his way to Orenburg in early 1919, where he was named by Dutov as commander of the Orenburg Military District and was subsequently chief of staff of the Orenburg Army (from October 1919). In early 1920, he was sent to China as Dutov’s plenipotentiary and remained there until 1924, when he returned to Soviet Russia. Remarkably, he found work with the Red Army in Moscow (as chief of staff of a rifle division), but on 25 October 1924, was arrested by the GPU and dispatched to the Solovetskii prison camp in the White Sea. On 3 August 1928, he escaped, while being transferred to a camp in the Komi region, and made his way to the Far East and thence to China, settling in Shanghai. His sudden reemergence from Soviet Russia was greeted with suspicion by Russian émigrés, however (notably General M. K. Diterikhs, who snubbed him), and he committed suicide in 1934. On 8 October 1993, Zaitsev was officially rehabilitated by the Russian courts.

ZAKHAROV, IVAN NIKOLAEVICH (10 October 1885–5 December 1930). Sublieutenant (1 January 1909), staff captain (191?), captain (1917). Prominent as a military specialist in the Red Army during the civil wars, I. N. Zakharov was a graduate of the Orlov Bakhtin Cadet Corps (1900) and the Tiflis Officer School (1907) and subsequently served with the 223rd Reserve Infantry (Korotoiakskii) Regiment. During the First World War, he initially served with the 3rd Finnish Rifle Brigade, then completed an accelerated course at the Academy of the General Staff, after which he became a senior adjutant, then acting chief of staff of the 3rd Finnish Rifle Division.

Following the October Revolution, Zakharov joined the Red Army (15 March 1918) and subsequently served as chief of the operations department of the staff of the 1st Red Army on the Eastern Front (19 June–10 July 1918), then chief of staff of the 1st Red Army (11 July–15 August 1918), advisor to that force’s commander (August 1918–February 1919), inspector of infantry of the 1st Red Army (March 1919–March 1920), assistant commander of the Caucasian Front (March–April 1920), assistant commander of the Western Front (29 April 1920–April 1921), and finally acting commander of the Western Front (4 March–20 September 1921). After the civil wars, he occupied numerous senior military posts, rising to be the head of the educational directorate of the Main Staff of the Red Army (from 25 August 1925) before being assigned to teaching work, as head of the Tactics Faculty of the Military-Medicine Academy (from 12 January 1930).

Zāmuels, Voldemārs (2 May 1872–16 January 1948). The Latvian nationalist politician and leader of the liberal Democratic Center Party Voldemārs Zāmuels was born at Dzērbene, in the Cēsis (Cēsu) region, east of Riga, and was a graduate of Dorpat (Iur′ev, now Tartu) University. He served as chairman of the Latvian Taryba (National Council) during 1917 and retained that post during the period of German occupation (30 November 1917–17 November 1918). During the Latvian War of Independence, he was attorney general (from 23 September 1919) of the Latvian republic, and in April 1920 was elected to the Latvian Constituent Assembly. He subsequently served as minister of agriculture (19 June 1921–20 July 1922) and was later briefly prime minister (25 January–16 December 1924), the first man to hold that office who was not a member of the Latvian Farmers’ Union. In 1927, he was an unsuccessful candidate for the presidency of Latvia.

Following the entry of Soviet troops into Latvia in June 1940, Zāmuels took part in abortive efforts to mount a democratic opposition before moving to Germany, where he subsequently died at Ravensburg.

Zankevich, Mikhail Ippolitovich (17 September 1877–14 May 1945). Colonel (6 December 1908), major general (7 September 1914), lieutenant general (1919). Of noble birth, M. I. Zankevich, a prominent White general, was a graduate of the Pavlovsk Cadet Corps (1891), the Pavlovsk Military School (1893), and the Academy of the General Staff (1899). He made his prewar career as a military attaché, being posted to Romania (from January 1905) and Austria-Hungary (October 1910–July 1913). During the First World War, he commanded the 146th (Tsaritsyn) Infantry Regiment (8 July 1913–May 1916), was chief of staff of the 2nd Guards Infantry Division (20 May–July 1916), and was quartermaster general of the General Staff (July 1916–February 1917). During the February Revolution, he commanded forces guarding Petrograd but did not take measures to quell the insurgency. Subsequently, he was widely suspected of having been party to plots instigated by members of the State Duma (notably the Octobrist leader A. I. Guchkov) to unseat Nicholas II. After serving as chief of military defense of the Petrograd district (February–April 1917), he was sent to France to succeed General N. A. Lokhvitskii as head of the Russian Expeditionary Force (July 1917–December 1918) and became notorious for his suppression of mutinies in that army.

As an opponent of the October Revolution, in July 1919, Zankevich moved to Siberia and was attached to the staff of the 1st Army and the 2nd Army of the Whites’ Eastern Front. He subsequently became quartermaster general and then (17 November 1919–4 January 1920), during the final days of the White regime, chief of the Staff of the Supreme Ruler under Admiral A. V. Kolchak. In emigration, he lived in France, where he served as chairman of the Union of the Pavlovsk Cadet Corps and (from 1934) chairman of the Union of the Pskov Cadet Corps. He is buried in the cemetery of Sainte-Genèvieve-des-Bois, Paris.

ZAPOROZHIAN CORPS. The Zaporozhian Corps, along with the Ukrainian Sich Riflemen, was one of the original, regular, and most long-standing elements of the Ukrainian Army during the Soviet–Ukrainian War. It derived its name from the fearsome Zaporozhian Cossacks, who, from their base on the Dnepr River south of Kiev, from the 16th to the late 18th centuries had challenged the attempts of Poland-Lithuania, the Ottoman Empire, the Crimean Tatar Khanate, and the Russian Empire to exert control over Ukraine. (Zaporozhia means “beyond the rapids,” a reference to the location of the Cossacks’ main fortress, or sich, on the Dnepr.) During the course of the civil wars, the force’s strength waxed and waned between about 3,000 and 15,000 men, and it was variously described and organized as a detachment, a brigade, a division, an army corps, and an army group.

The unit was originally termed the Independent Zaporozhian Detachment. This was formed on 9 February 1918, from a number of smaller groupings, consisting of two infantry battalions, a cavalry battalion, an artillery company, and various support units, and was commanded by General K. A. Prisovskii. In March–April 1918, once the Red Army had been driven out of Kiev, it expanded into a brigade and a separate division, jointly commanded by General Oleksandr Natiiv. With the assistance of the forces of the Austro-German intervention, this force helped clear left-bank Ukraine, the Don basin, and Crimea of Red forces and then, from June to November 1918, acted as a defensive screen on the Ukrainian–Soviet border. In November–December 1918, when the forces of the Ukrainian National Republic revolted against the Ukrainian State of Hetman P. P. Skoropadskii, the Zaporozhians supported the former. The force was then reorganized into a corps of two divisions under General Petro Bolbochan. Following a period of intense fighting against the Red Army, the corps became isolated from the rest of the Ukrainian Army and undertook a forced march through Romanian territory to reach Galicia and Volhynia. At that time the corps was briefly commanded by Omelian Volokh and Captain Volodymyr Salsky and then by General Mykhailo Omel′ianovych-Pavlenko. Under the latter, it participated in the first of the Ukrainian Army’s Winter Campaigns (6 December 1919–6 May 1920), following which, much debilitated, it was redesignated as the 1st Zaporozhian Rifle Division, commanded by General Andrii Huly-Hulenko and then by General H. Bazylevski. The division then participated with other Ukrainian units on the Polish side during the Soviet–Polish War until, following the Soviet–Polish armistice of 18 October 1920, Red forces drove it across the Zbruch River onto Polish territory on 21 November 1920. There the men were disarmed and interned.

ZARUBAEV, SERGEI VALERIANOVICH (22 August 1877–21 October 1921). Midshipman (1896), lieutenant (1 January 1901), rear admiral (January 1917). The tsarist naval commander S. V. Zarubaev, who served with the Red Fleet during the civil wars, was born into a military family (his father was Lieutenant General V. P. Zarubaev) and was a graduate of the Naval Cadet Corps (1896). After serving in foreign missions around the Mediterranean on the cruiser Gertsog Edinburgskii (1898–1900), he joined the crew of the cruiser Variag as a senior artilleryman and saw action in the Russo–Japanese War, notably during the Battle of Chemulpo (Inchon). He was subsequently transferred to the Baltic Fleet, becoming a senior officer on the cruiser Bogatyr and (in 1914) commander of a minelayer. In 1915, he was made commander of the ship of the line Poltava.

Zarubaev remained in his post following the October Revolution and, in early 1918, assisted A. M. Shchastnyi in organizing the Ice March of the Baltic Fleet, to prevent invading German forces from capturing Russian vessels. When Shchastnyi was arrested and executed, Zarubaev succeeded him as commander of the Naval Forces of the Baltic Fleet (27 May 1918–18 January 1919) but, never having gained the trust of the Soviet authorities, was soon removed from his post and placed on the reserve list. The following year, he was executed, having been implicated by the Cheka in the trial of members of the Petrograd Military Organization of Professor V. N. Tagantsev. Zarubaev was posthumously rehabilitated on 30 September 1991.

Zatonskii, Volodymyr petrovich (27 July 1888–29 July 1938). Born in Podolia guberniia, the Soviet politician and military organizer V. P. Zatonskii was the son of a district clerk. After graduating from Kiev University (1912), he taught physics at the Kiev Polytechnical Institute. He joined the Russian Social-Democratic Labor Party in 1905 and was initially supportive of the Mensheviks, joining the Bolsheviks only in March 1917.

In 1917, Zatonskii was one of the key Bolshevik leaders in Kiev. From 12 December 1917, he was people’s secretary for education of the People’s Secretariat of the Ukrainian People’s Republic of Soviets; in 1918, he was chairman of the Central Executive Committee of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic at Khar′kov. From November 1918 to January 1919, he was a member of the Provisional Workers’ and Peasants’ Government of Ukraine. From June 1919 to October 1920, he served at various times on the Revvoensovets of the 12th Red Army, the 13th Red Army, and the 14th Red Army; helped organize the Red Ukrainian Galician Army; and in the summer of 1920, during the Soviet–Polish War, served as head of the Galician Revolutionary Committee (Galrevkom), administering the ephemeral Galician Soviet Socialist Republic.

In March 1921, Zatonskii was one of the delegates to the 10th Party Congress of the Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks) who volunteered to assist personally in crushing the Kronshtadt Revolt and was subsequently awarded the Order of the Red Banner for his efforts. After the civil wars, he held many senior party and governmental posts in the Ukrainian SSR and from 1929 was a member of its Academy of Sciences. A victim of the purges, Zatonskii was arrested on 3 November 1937 and shot on 29 July 1938. He was posthumously rehabilitated on 10 March 1956.

ZAVKOM. See transcaucasian commissariat.

ZEELER, VLADIMIR FEODILOVICH (1874–27 December 1954). One of the chief propagandists of the White regime in South Russia, V. F. Zeeler trained as a barrister and was also a widely published journalist and critic. A member of the Kadets, in 1917 he was elected mayor of Rostov-on-Don. Zeeler was one of the most active civilian organizers of the Volunteer Army in 1917–1918. In 1919, he served as chief of the Propaganda Department of the National Center and from January to March 1920 was head of the Department of Internal Affairs on the Special Council of General A. I. Denikin.

In emigration from 1920, Zeeler settled in Paris and was a prominent figure among the Russian community, as a member of the local Zemgor committee and (from 1921) as one of the founders and then general secretary of the Union of Russian Writers and Journalists. He was also secretary of the Union of Russian Lawyers in Paris, in 1935 was the cofounder of the charitable Repin Fund, and from 1947 was on the editorial board of the journal Russkaia mysl′ (“Russian Thought”). He is buried in the Sainte-Genèvieve-des-Bois cemetery, Paris.

ZEFIROV, NIKOLAI STEPANOVICH (1887–24 February 1953). N. S. Zefirov, the disgraced minister of the Omsk government, was born into the family of a seminary teacher at Alatyr, Simbirsk guberniia. In 1906, when he was a supporter of the Party of Socialists-Revolutionaries, he was arrested and exiled for political activities, but was able to graduate from St. Petersburg Polytechnical Institute in 1912. He subsequently worked in the statistical and immigration department of the government administration of Akmolinsk oblast′ and authored a number of works on regional agriculture. Having undertaken various governmental commissions connected to supply issues during the First World War, in 1917 he was sent to the Volga region and then to Siberia and the Far East by the Russian Provisional Government in a similar capacity. During 1917, he joined the Simbirsk group of the Party of Popular Socialists.

As a vocal opponent of the October Revolution, Zefirov was briefly imprisoned by the Soviet authorities in January 1918, and from the summer of that year, having become close to I. A. Mikhailov, he served from 30 June 1918 as director of the Ministry of Food of the Provisional Siberian Government. He kept that post in the early administration of Admiral A. V. Kolchak, combining it with control of the Ministry of Supply of the Omsk government from December 1918. In that capacity, the fate of much of the economy of White Siberia was in his hands: under him, government policy was firmly directed along the path of deregulation and private trade, much to the disgust of the region’s powerful cooperative movement. Zefirov was also a member of Kolchak’s State Economic Conference.

On 1 April 1919, Zefirov was removed from office with accusations of speculation and malfeasance hanging over him, although formal charges were never brought (and he always maintained that he was innocent). In November 1919, he moved to Irkutsk and worked there in the railway administration (somehow avoiding detection by the Soviet authorities) until October 1920, when he emigrated to Manchuria. He then worked at Harbin and Shanghai as a journalist, as a controller of the Chinese Eastern Railway, and as a director of various trading concerns. In the 1920s he propounded the Smenovekhovstvo (“Change of Landmarks”) ideology, adopted Soviet citizenship, and became involved in Chinese firms doing business with Soviet Russia. He also chaired the Club of Soviet Citizens in the French concession at Shanghai from 1939 to 1944, and was concerned with the dissemination of propaganda to encourage émigrés to return to the USSR and to support the Soviet Union in its struggle against Hitler’s Germany during the Second World War. In 1947, he returned to Russia himself, settling near Sverdlovsk (Ekaterinburg) and working as chief of the commercial goods department of a copper-smelting factory. He was arrested on 11 June 1949, and on 4 March 1950 received a sentence of 25 years’ imprisonment for “counterrevolutionary activities.” He died in the “Mineral” prison camp, in the Komi region. He was posthumously rehabilitated in January 1989.

ZELENOI, ALEKSANDR PAVLOVICH (25 August 1872–4 September 1922). Vice admiral (1917). The Russian and Soviet naval commander A. P. Zelenoi was born into a noble family at Odessa and was a graduate of the Naval Corps (1892). He served in the Baltic Fleet and, during the First World War, specialized in mine defense, eventually becoming chief of staff of the fleet (March–July 1917).

Following the October Revolution, Zelenoi remained at his post in order to prevent German capture of the fleet, and was one of the organizers of the Ice March of the Baltic Fleet. He later served as commander of the naval forces in the Baltic (18 January 1919–8 July 1920), overseeing the maritime defense of Petrograd against the attacks of the forces of General N. N. Iudenich. He was subsequently stood down and became a consultant on naval affairs to the Revvoensovet of the Republic and naval attaché to the Soviet mission in Finland (1921–1922). He died in Petrograd in 1922 and was buried in the cemetery of the Alexander Nevsky monastery.

ZELENY (ZELENYI), DANYLO (Daniil) IL′ICH (1883/1886–November 1919). Zeleny (the pseudonym, meaning “Green,” of Danylo Terpylo), who was born at Tripol′e, in Kiev guberniia, was one of the best-known Ukrainian otamans active during the civil wars. He attended his village school and in 1905 graduated from a local seminary, with the intention of becoming a teacher. However, he joined the Party of Socialists-Revolutionaries in 1906, and in 1908 was arrested and exiled to Kholmogory, in Arkhangel′sk oblast′. He was amnestied in 1913 and returned to Ukraine, subsequently serving in the First World War as a clerk with the 35th Army Corps.

In late 1917, Zeleny returned to his home village and began to organize a partisan unit of Free Cossacks. By this time, he was an active social democrat, and he would later become a spokesman for the left wing of the Ukrainian Social-Democratic Labor Party (Independentists). When his faction broke with the Ukrainian National Republic Directory in January 1919, he led a revolt against it near Obukhiv. Soon the revolt spread from Kiev guberniia into neighboring Chernigov and Poltava gubernii; at its height, it united some 30,000 fighters under Zeleny. Initially, Zeleny seemed inclined to ally himself with the Bolsheviks, but when the latter attempted to incorporate his forces into their own, he broke with them, and on 20 March 1919, staged an uprising against Soviet rule at Tripol′e. On 25 March 1919, he was declared an outlaw by the Soviet authorities. Thereafter, his forces fought not only against the Ukrainian Army of the Directory but also against the Red Army and the Whites.

In September 1919, Zeleny again recognized the authority of the directory and subordinated his men to its Central Ukrainian Insurgent Committee at Kamenets-Podol′sk. Soon thereafter, according to Soviet sources, he was killed in battle against White forces at Kanev. However, some maintain that this is a fiction and that he was killed by the Reds, as his body was never found and there was no reported battle with the Whites near Kanev at that time.

Żeligowski, Lucjan (17 October 1865–9 July 1947). Lieutenant colonel (191?), colonel (1915), lieutenant general (Polish Army, July 1918), general (Polish Army, 1920). The Polish commander Lucjan Żeligowski was born at Oszmiana (Ashmiany, now in Belarus) and was a graduate of the Riga Officers School (1885) and a veteran of the Russo–Japanese War and the First World War, during which he occupied numerous staff and command posts.

Following the February Revolution, Żeligowski became one of the most active organizers of Polish national units in Russia. In the spring of 1918, however, having clashed with General Josef Dowbor-Muśnicki over the correct strategy for Polish forces during the Russian struggle, Żeligowski was removed from his post. He journeyed to Kiev and then to the north Caucasus, where he created and commanded a Polish force in the Kuban region that would become the nucleus of the 4th Polish Rifle Division. Although formally part of the Polish Army, Żeligowski’s unit (which included members of a Polish brigade formed earlier at Tiflis that had been disbanded by the German Caucasus Mission) fought alongside the Volunteer Army and the Armed Forces of South Russia during the “Russian” Civil Wars. In October 1918, Żeligowski was named commander in chief of all Polish forces in Russia (including the Polish Legion).

Following the collapse of General A. I. Denikin’s White forces in the spring of 1920 and the beginning of the Soviet–Polish War, Żeligowski’s unit retreated into Bessarabia and then, in April 1919, moved into Poland, where it was redesignated as the 10th Infantry Division of the Polish Army. As commander of that force, he participated in the defense of Warsaw and the pursuit eastward of the retreating Red Army (as commander of the Lithuanian–Belarussian Front). In October 1920, during the Polish–Lithuanian War, he was placed in command of the 1st Lithuanian–Belarussian Division of the Polish Army, composed of volunteers and partisan forces from those territories. On 8 October 1920, in a staged coup (his good friend Józef Piłsudski knew all about it) that has come to bear his name (the Żeligowski mutiny), he seized control of Vilnius (Wilno) and its surroundings, and on 12 October 1920 proclaimed the independence of the Republic of Central Lithuania, which was soon to be absorbed by Poland.

From 1923, Żeligowski served as inspector general of the Polish Army and commander of the Warsaw Military District, and from 1925 to 1927 was minister of military affairs. He then retired to write his memoirs and other works on recent Polish military history, before returning to politics in 1935, as a member of the Polish sejm until 1939. Following the Nazi invasion of Poland, he volunteered for the army but was turned down on account of his age. Having escaped to Paris, he joined the Polish government-in-exile, which transferred to London after the fall of France. Żeligowski died in London, but his body was returned to Poland for burial in the military section of the Powązki Cemetery in Warsaw.

Żeligowski Mutiny. This staged rebellion, led by the Polish general Lucjan Żeligowski in October 1920, during the Polish–Lithuanian War, led to the establishment of the short-lived Central Lithuanian Republic, thereby paving the way for Poland’s annexation of Vilnius/Wilno two years later.

As the Soviet–Polish War wound down in the autumn of 1920, Soviet Russia handed control of the area around Vilnius to Lithuanian forces, who had allowed the Red Army to occupy the area under the terms of the Soviet–Lithuanian Treaty of Moscow (12 July 1920), thereby denying it to the Poles. Lithuania’s possession of Vilnius seemed also to be confirmed by the Polish–Lithuanian Suwałki Agreement (7 October 1920). Poland’s leader, Józef Piłsudski, was determined that Vilnius should be controlled by Poland, but did not want to undermine the pro-Polish faction within Lithuania by a repeat of the Sejny uprising of 1919. He therefore instructed Żeligowski, who was a native of Lithuania, to lead his forces (the 14,000-strong 1st Lithuanian–Belarussian Infantry Division) in a “mutiny”: they were to “desert” from the Polish Army and “independently” seize Vilnius (which Lithuania claimed as its capital), enabling Warsaw to deny all involvement. Żeligowski moved against Vilnius on 8 October 1920, and the following day the outnumbered Lithuanian garrison abandoned the city. On 12 October 1920, the independence of the Central Lithuanian Republic was proclaimed.

ZEMGOR. Founded on 10 July 1915, to assist the tsarist government’s war efforts (chiefly in the fields of medicine, sanitation, food supply, and the care of refugees), Zemgor (the United Committee of the Union of Zemstvos and Municipal Councils) was officially disbanded by the Soviet government in January 1918, but was reactivated in February 1921 by local government leaders among the emigration, in response to the massive evacuation of military and civilian refugees from South Russia following the defeat of the forces of General P. N. Wrangel.

The organization was registered and based in Paris (although it had branches in Prague, Berlin, and other centers of the Russian diaspora) and was led, in succession, by G. E. L′vov, A. I. Konovalov, and N. D. Avksent′ev. In accordance with the wishes of the Russian Conference of Ambassadors in Paris, it became the central organization in the international efforts to assist Russian refugees across the world in the wake of the “Russian” Civil Wars. The organization received funds from various tsarist Russian bank accounts via the Conference of Ambassadors (which regarded Zemgor as the single organization authorized to disperse such monies). Although the dispensation of those funds caused many internal arguments (partly as a consequence of the variety of political affiliations—from socialists through liberals to monarchists—of those involved in Zemgor’s leadership) and although there were sharp conflicts over access to and control of funds with other émigré organizations (notably ROVS, which Zemgor, encouraged by French governments of the 1920s, refused to recognize as in any respect a repository of Russian state authority), the organization contributed significantly to the settlement, integration, and sometimes even survival of refugees during a difficult period. By October 1921, it was managing 370 refugee institutions across Europe, the majority of them in Turkey, Bulgaria, and Yugoslavia, and was feeding 2,500 people each day in Constantinople alone. Among its most outstanding achievements was the opening of dozens of schools and orphanages (as many as 90 by some accounts), in which work it was assisted by the Committee of Help to the Russian Child, which organized fund-raising drives (chiefly in the United States). The Paris Zemgor remains in existence to this day, running a rest home in the Cormeilles-en-Parisis district, northwest of the French capital.

ZEMLIACHKA (zalkind), ROSALIIA SAMOILOVNA (20 March 1876–21 January 1947). Probably the most famous (or infamous) of all female soldiers who served in the Red Army during the civil wars, Rosa Zemliachka, the daughter of a Jewish merchant, was born at Kiev and was educated at the Kiev Girls’ Gymnasium and the Faculty of Medicine of Lyons University. She joined a social-democratic organization in 1896 and engaged in underground work in France and Russia (where she was sentenced to a year’s internal exile in 1899) before becoming an agent of the Russian Social-Democratic Labor Party’s newspaper, Iskra (“The Spark”) at Odessa and Ekaterinoslav. Following the party schism in 1903, she gravitated toward the Bolsheviks, was active with the forerunners of the Military Organization of the RSDLP(b) during the 1905 Revolution, and was frequently arrested. Following further party work in Baku, she went into emigration in 1909, but returned to party work with the Bolsheviks’ Moscow Regional Bureau during the First World War. In early 1918, she sympathized with the Left Bolsheviks, opposing the signing of the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk (3 March 1918). That same year, she began work as a military commissar in the Red Army, initially at brigade level, but soon rising to become chief military commissar of the 8th Red Army (1918–1919) and the 13th Red Army (1919–1920) on the Southern Front. In 1919, she was an active member of the Military Opposition, calling for the enhancement of the powers of the commissars. In 1920, she was also, briefly, chief military commissar of the Northern Railways.

During the civil wars, “Bloody Rosa,” as she was nicknamed by her enemies, was notorious for the prominent part she played, as secretary of the Crimean regional committee of the Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks) (20 November 1920–6 January 1921), in helping Béla Kun with the implementation of a campaign of Red Terror against the remnants of the Russian Army of General P. N. Wrangel that had been stranded in Crimea following the Whites’ evacuation of the peninsula. She subsequently held numerous party and state posts and, having been an active supporter of the Stalinist terror of the 1930s, was eventually made a member of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) in March 1939. She died in January 1947 and was buried in the Kremlin Wall Necropolis.

ZEMSTVO HOST. This was the name adopted by the last significant White military formation in the Russian Far East. Following the collapse of the White Insurgent Army and the outbreak of disputes in the Maritime Province between the supporters of Ataman G. M. Semenov and the kappel′evtsy (supporters of the democratically inclined, late General V. O. Kappel′), an agreement was reached between various military and political forces in the region to summon a Zemskii sobor′ at Vladivostok on 7 July 1922. (The Zemskii sobor′, “Assembly of the Lands,” was the ancient Russian national assembly, consisting of representatives of all levels of Russian society—including especially the peasants—who were summoned to make “the will of the land” known to the tsar.) The outcome of its meeting was the formation of the Maritime Zemstvo Government, which assumed control of all the remnants of White forces in the region and, in its inaugural declaration (of 7 July 1922), christened this new force the Zemstvo Host (Zemskii rat′). Its major constituent units were the Iakutsk People’s Army; the Volunteer Druzhina of General V. N. Pepeliaev; the Volga Host of General V. M. Molchanov (which included, inter alia, units formed by workers from the Urals who had risen against the Bolsheviks during the Izhevsk-Votkinsk Uprising of late 1918); the Siberian Host of Major General I. S. Smolin; the Far Eastern Host of Lieutenant General F. L. Glebov (which incorporated most of the remaining semenovtsy); and the Siberian Cossack Group of Major General V. A. Borodin. The force’s commander in chief (Zemskii voevod) was General M. K. Diterikhs. In all, the Zemstvo Host could muster some 8,000 men; it had control of 24 heavy guns and 4 armored trains.

Elements of the Host, operating under the command of General Diterikhs, enjoyed some success in early September 1922, advancing along the Ussurii railway toward Khabarovsk, but were soon driven back by the Far Eastern Republic’s People’s-Revolutionary Army, which was operating in coordination with at least 5,000 Red partisans at large in the Maritime Province. Having abandoned Vladivostok to the enemy in late October 1922, by early November remnants of the Zemstvo Host were concentrated at Pos′et Bay, from where some 7,000 men were evacuated to the Korean port of Genzan (Wonsan) on vessels of the Siberian Flotilla. Another 3,000 men crossed the Chinese border near Grodekovo at about the same time, thereby bringing an end to the Zemstvo Host.

Zenzinov, Vladimir Mikhailovich (29 November 1880–20 October 1953). One of the most prominent figures in the Democratic Counter-Revolution of 1918 and in the Russian emigration, V. M. Zenzinov was born in Moscow into the family of a merchant. He graduated from the Moscow Classical Gymnasium (1899) and subsequently studied philosophy, economics, law, and history at the Universities of Berlin, Halle, and Heidelberg, graduating in 1904. He returned to Russia that same year and joined the Party of Socialists-Revolutionaries (PSR) and, in January 1905, was arrested in Moscow. After a six-month detention in the Taganka prison, he was exiled to northern Russia. He escaped to Switzerland, but in 1906 returned to Russia and briefly joined the PSRs’ terrorist wing, the so-called Fighting Organization. He was rearrested in 1907 and exiled to eastern Siberia. Zenzinov escaped again, hiking from Iakutsk to Okhotsk and traveling thence to Japan and back to Western Europe, where he became a member of the PSR Central Committee in 1908, leading its right wing in collaboration with N. D. Avksent′ev. He was arrested again in St. Petersburg in 1910 and, after six months in the Fortress of St. Peter and St. Paul, was exiled to a village in the far north of the remote Iakutsk region, from where escape was impossible. After devoting himself to ethnographic and ornithological studies of northeastern Siberia, he returned to Moscow in 1915, declaring himself to be a defensist (i.e., a supporter of Russia’s war effort). In 1917, in the wake of the February Revolution, he worked on the commission established by the Russian Provisional Government to investigate the crimes of tsarist ministers and was a member of the Central Executive Committee of the Petrograd Soviet.

Following the October Revolution, Zenzinov joined the anti-Bolshevik Committee to Save the Fatherland and the Revolution, was elected to the Constituent Assembly (as a representative of the PSR and the Soviet of Peasants’ Deputies), and having gone underground to escape persecution by the Soviet authorities, in May 1918 became a founding member of the Union for the Regeneration of Russia. In September 1918, at the Ufa State Conference, he was elected as a member of the Ufa Directory (as deputy for the absent N. V. Chaikovskii). When that regime was toppled, during the Omsk coup of 18 November 1918, he was exiled by the new regime of Admiral A. V. Kolchak and made his way, via China, back to Western Europe, settling first in Paris.

Zenzinov subsequently lived in emigration in Prague and Berlin, before returning once more to France. He published widely as a journalist and commentator in the émigré press and was an active proponent of continued military struggle against Soviet Russia. Upon the outbreak of the Second World War, he moved via London to New York, where he edited the émigré journal Za svobodu (“For Freedom”) and published widely on the revolutionary movement and the events of the revolution and civil wars in Russia, as well as contemporary affairs, in such journals as Novoe russkoe slovo (“The New Russian Word”), Novyi zhurnal (“The New Journal”), and Sotsialisticheskii vestnik (“The Socialist Herald”). He also penned various versions of his memoirs. Zenzinov died in New York in 1953. His cremains were interred at the Park West Memorial Chapel in the Woodlawn Cemetery, in the Bronx.

ZHARDETSKII, VALERIAN (Valentin) ALEKSANDROVICH (1884–7 October 1920). Born at Arkhangel′sk into the family of a tsarist bureaucrat with the rank of collegiate advisor, V. A. Zhardetskii, the leader of the Kadets based at the Siberian White capital, Omsk, during the civil wars, studied at the Gymnasia of Nizhnii Novgorod and Rzhev. Having been active in the student movement, he was expelled from the latter institution and took his examinations externally at the Tver′ Gymnasium. He joined the Kadets in 1906 and subsequently graduated from the Law Faculty of Moscow University (1909). During the First World War, he worked with the Union of Town Councils, moving to Omsk in 1915, where he edited the Kadets’ regional newspaper Sibirskaia rech′ (“Siberian Discourse”) and became chairman of the local Kadet “club” (from 21 March 1917). In 1917, he was at the forefront of local politics, working in a number of public organizations (including the Omsk City Duma, the Omsk Coalition Committee, and the West-Siberian Committee of Unions, which he chaired).

A firm and vocal opponent of the October Revolution, Zhardetskii helped organize immediate opposition to the Soviet regime, in the shape of an uprising by officer cadets at Omsk on 30 October–2 November 1917. When that uprising was crushed by Red Guards, he went into hiding, but was arrested by the Soviet authorities on 24 November 1917 and imprisoned at Tomsk, an experience that, according to some accounts, unbalanced him. Freed in either April or June 1918 (sources differ), during the Democratic Counter-Revolution in Siberia Zhardetskii became a leading advocate of a provisional military dictatorship to lead the struggle against Bolshevism and was party to the plots that led to the Omsk coup of 18 November 1918. However, he subsequently refused all invitations to join the Omsk government of Admiral A. V. Kolchak, preferring to exert influence from the outside, as a trusted, unofficial advisor to the supreme ruler (and as, from 18 November 1918, deputy chairman of the Eastern Section of the Kadet Central Committee). One of the ideologues of the Kolchak regime, Zhardetskii was a member of the State Economic Conference. He retreated to Irkutsk in late 1919, with the evacuated government of Kolchak. There, during the anti-Kolchak uprising of December 1919, he was arrested by the forces of the Political Center and so, ultimately, fell into the hands of the Soviet authorities. He was subsequently executed at Omsk by the local Cheka.

ZHDANOV, NIKOLAI ALEKSANDROVICH (21 December 1867–?). Colonel (6 December 1911), major general (6 December 1916). The Red military commander N. A. Zhdanov was a graduate of the Orlov Bakhtin Cadet Corps, the 3rd Alexander Military School (1889), and the Academy of the General Staff (1903). He entered military service on 29 August 1887; was a participant in the Russo–Japanese War as a staff officer with the 1st Cavalry Corps (18 January–19 May 1905) and the 19th Army Corps (19 May 1905–17 March 1906); and during the First World War was commander of the 23rd Infantry Regiment (from 8 March 1915), chief of staff of the 65th Infantry Division (from 1 July 1916), and chief of staff of the 121st Infantry Division (from July 1917).

After a period in the Hetmanite Army of the Ukrainian State (from May 1918), Zhdanov volunteered for service in the Red Army and subsequently served briefly as commander of the 12th Red Army (14 February–13 March 1919). His fate thereafter is unknown.

Zhelezniakov, Anatolii grigor′evich (20 April 1895–26 July 1919). An active participant in the October Revolution and a much-lauded Soviet hero of the civil wars, despite his adherence to anarchism, A. G. Zhelezniakov (or “Sailor Zhelezniak,” as he became popularly and affectionately known) was born into a lower middle-class family in the village of Fedoskino, in Moscow guberniia. He entered the Lefortovo Feldscher School, but soon left to work as a stoker in a merchant fleet and then as a locksmith. He was mobilized in October 1915 and became a sailor in the Baltic Fleet, but was soon arrested for revolutionary agitation. In June 1916, Zhelezniakov managed to escape arrest, deserted, and until 1917, worked on trading vessels on the Black Sea under an assumed name. Following the amnesty announced in the aftermath of the February Revolution, he returned to the Baltic Fleet and was based at Kronshtadt. There, he became a prominent proponent of anarchism and refused to recognize the authority of the Russian Provisional Government. In June 1917, he was arrested (and relieved of four bombs he was carrying) in a battle with government forces over the anarchists’ seizure of the Durnovo villa in Petrograd. He was sentenced to 14 years’ imprisonment, but soon managed to escape and was subsequently elected to Tsentrobalt.

Following the October Revolution (during which he participated in the storming of the Winter Palace and led a contingent of Baltic sailors to assist in the seizure of power in Moscow), Zhelezniakov was placed in charge of security at the Tauride Palace, where he became famous for ordering that the first and only session of the Constituent Assembly be closed because “the guard is getting tired.” Thereafter, in association with V. I. Kikvidze, he was active around Odessa with a detachment of sailors that organized the Dunaisk River Flotilla and ran two armored trains, The Tiger and The Lieutenant Schmidt (the latter named after a hero of the 1905 Revolution). At this time, he expressed his support for the Party of Left Socialists-Revolutionaries and the uprising they had staged in Moscow, criticized the employment of military specialists by L. D. Trotsky, and clashed also with N. I. Podvoiskii on a number of operational issues. Eventually, following the derailing of Podvoiskii’s train, which he was said to have arranged, Zhelezniakov was declared to be an outlaw and was sentenced to death, but he escaped arrest and went into hiding in Tambov guberniia. He was amnestied in October 1918 and rejoined the Red Army as commander of the 1st Soviet Cavalry Battery. The following month, he was either sent, or made his own way back, to Odessa (accounts differ), where he worked underground, behind White lines (and allegedly organized numerous bank robberies and acts of sabotage). Following the capture of Odessa by Red forces on 6–8 April 1919, he was elected as chairman of the union of merchant sailors in the city, but the next month he was placed in command of another brigade of armored trains, this time attached to the 14th Red Army.

On 26 July 1919, Zhelezniakov was killed in a battle against White forces at Verkhovtsevo. He was buried, with full military honors, on 3 August 1919, at the Vagan′kovskii cemetery, in Moscow. Numerous statues were raised in his honor (including one at Kronshtadt), ships were named after him, and many poems and songs were composed about him in the Soviet era. The fact that Zhelezniakov was an anarchist and had even been outlawed by the Soviet state was conveniently forgotten as his life was mythologized.

ZHENOTDEL. The acronym by which was known the Women’s Department (Zhenskii otdel) of the Central Committee of the Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks). It had its roots in the First All-Russian Congress of Women Workers and Peasants of November 1918, which was organized by A. M. Kollontai, Inessa Armand, and others. There was some opposition at the congress to the creation of a separate women’s organization within the party, but, won over by its proponents’ argument (that they sought not to isolate women but to forge men and women into a unified socialist movement), delegates voted in favor of a request to the party to establish a “special commission for propaganda and agitation amongst women.”

Initially termed a women’s “commission,” the organization was upgraded to a full department of the RKP(b) Central Committee in September 1919, partly in reaction to the perception among the party leadership that if the Bolsheviks failed to sponsor an alternative, supposedly “backward” women might be drawn toward moderate socialist, “bourgeois-feminist,” or even religious alternatives. Another motive was the desire to mobilize women’s support for (and participation) in the Red Army at a critical juncture of the civil wars, when female soldiers were being mobilized in some strength. Over the following years, despite the fact that its most active members tended to be redirected to other work (and that its chief inspirer, Kollontai, was sent into diplomatic exile for her part in the Workers’ Opposition), the Zhenotdel achieved some success in creating interdepartmental commissions to coordinate the work of the People’s Commissariats for Health, Education, Social Welfare and Internal Affairs (where their operations touched upon issues such as maternity, abortion, prostitution, female education, and so forth). The department also organized innumerable conferences, congresses, and educational courses across Soviet Russia; oversaw “women’s pages” in major party- and state-run newspapers; and issued its own very popular journals, Rabotnitsa (“Female Worker”) and Krestianka (“Female Peasant”). However, with the introduction of the New Economic Policy in 1921, women workers faced disproportionate unemployment, and the Zhenotdel-sponsored social services (child care, communal kitchens, etc.) were cut by a newly budget-conscious state. When the Zhenotdel complained, it was criticized as a “feminist deviation” and the socially conservative Sofia Smidovich was appointed to replace the disgraced Kollontai as its head in 1922. Thereafter, its influence declined, and in January 1930, the party Central Committee announced that the Zhenotdel was being closed down, as part of a general reorganization of the party. However, it was also officially implied (by J. V. Stalin’s henchman, L. M. Kaganovich) that in the Soviet Union, the Zhenotdel was now surplus to requirements, as the “women’s question” had been solved.

During the civil-war period, the Zhenotdel was headed by Inessa Armand (September 1919–24 September 1920), A. M. Kollontai (9 September 1920–1922), and S. N. Smidovicha (1922–January 1930).

ZHILUNOVICH, DMITRII FEDOROVICH (23 October 1887–11 April 1937). The Belorussian poet, dramatist, editor, and politician D. F. Zhilunovich (who had the pen name “Tishka Gartnyi”) was born into a peasant family at Kopyl′, near Minsk, and attended two years of school there. He worked in a tanning factory, was active in the 1905 Revolution, and joined the Russian Social-Democratic Labor Party in 1911. He moved to St. Petersburg in May 1913, to work at the Vulkan factory, and subsequently a number of his poems were published in Pravda. In the capital during the First World War, he undertook agitational and propaganda work among refugee Belorussians.

Following the October Revolution, Zhilunovich became secretary of the Belorussian National Commissariat (Belnatskom) within the People’s Commissariat for Nationalities of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (RSFSR) and edited its newspaper, Dziannitsa (“The Dawn”). He also served as chairman of the ephemeral Provisional Worker-Peasant Government of the Soviet Socialist Republic of Belorussia (1 January–4 February 1919). He subsequently served as editor of numerous newspapers and journals published in the Belorussian language in the RSFSR and the Belorussian Soviet Socialist Republic, became director of the state publishing house of the Belorussian SSR, and was head of its national archives. He served also as the Belorussian SSR’s deputy people’s commissar for education and was a member of its Central Executive Committee (1920–1931).

Zhilunovich was arrested and jailed as a counterrevolutionary nationalist on 15 November 1936. Soon afterward, he was declared insane and was transferred to the Mogilev psychiatric clinic, where he subsequently died. Rumors persist that he committed suicide. He received full political rehabilitation in 1988. A street in Minsk is now named after him. Zhilunovich was the author of many published works, among them the novel Soki tseliny (“Juices of the Virgin Soil,” 1914–1929), which depicts the formation of revolutionary consciousness in Belorussia, and the collections Treski na khvaliakh (“Sticks on the Waves,” 1924) and Prysady (“Alleys,” 1927), describing the heroism of the Reds during the civil wars.

ZHIVODER, C. (ca. 1883–23 September 1920). Zhivoder (“Cut-throat”), whose real name has been lost, was a revolutionary sailor who gravitated toward anarchism during the civil wars. He was born into a peasant family in Poltava guberniia and joined the Russian Social-Democratic Labor Party during the 1905 Revolution, siding with the Bolsheviks. By 1910, he was a part of that faction’s underground organization in St. Petersburg. He was mobilized in 1914 and joined the Baltic Fleet.

Following the October Revolution, Zhivoder joined the Red Army, serving in 1918 as a member of staff and chief of the supply department on the Tsaritsyn front. By late 1919, however, while serving in Ukraine, he had become disillusioned with Soviet politics and military policy, especially the widespread employment of military specialists, and deserted to organize an independent partisan force around Kobeliaki, in Poltava guberniia. By July 1920, there were some 600 men under his command. Zhivoder now proclaimed himself to be an “anarchist-communist” and was co-opted onto the staff of Nestor Makhno’s Revolutionary-Insurgent Army of Ukraine and made commander of its 1,800-strong 3rd Regiment. Soon thereafter, he was captured by Red forces at the Kuteinikovo station and executed.

Zhloba, Dmitrii Petrovich (3 June 1887–10 June 1938). A much decorated but nevertheless controversial Red Army commander of the civil war era, D. P. Zhloba was born in Kiev guberniia, into the family of a farm laborer. He was active in the 1905 Revolution, as a member of an armed workers’ detachment at Nikolaev, and subsequently worked as a miner in the Donbass. In May 1916, was arrested there for participating in a strike and was sent into the army, training at the Moscow Aviation School.

Zhloba joined the Russian Social-Democratic Labor Party (Bolsheviks) in 1917, and in October–November of that year, as a member of the Moscow Soviet, he led Red Guards detachments in the battles to dislodge Junker groups from the Kremlin. He was then dispatched to the Donbass, where he organized and led an armed detachment of miners that would see action at Rostov-on-Don and at Kiev in the spring of 1918. In May 1918, he was sent to the North Caucasus as commander of the “Steel Brigade.” With the latter, he undertook a much-celebrated, 500-mile forced march from Nevinnomyssk (on the Kuban River) to Tsaritsyn, arriving there on 15 October 1918 and striking a crushing blow against the rear of the White forces of General P. N. Krasnov that were threatening the city. In 1919–1920, Zhloba commanded a partisan cavalry brigade in the battles against the Armed Forces of South Russia around Astrakhan, in Transcaspia, and near Novocherkassk (January 1920), before being placed at the head of the 1st Cavalry Corps in February 1920, having been one of the organizers of the campaign of lies that implicated its former commander, B. M. Dumenko, as a traitor. In the battles against General P. N. Wrangel’s Russian Army, Zhloba failed to distinguish himself; an investigatory commission of the South-West Front found that the failure of his 13th Red Army to break into Crimea in late June 1920 (and the concomitant loss to the Whites of 3,000 horses) was largely attributable to Zhloba’s unfitness for command. Despite this setback, in March 1921 he was placed in command of the 18th Cavalry Division that was assigned to reinforce the 11th Red Army during the Soviet–Georgian War. In that capacity, he captured Batumi for the Soviet government in a brilliantly realized operation. During the civil wars, he twice received the Order of the Red Banner and was also presented with a gold sword for bravery.

From 1922, Zhloba worked in a variety of governmental and economic posts in the North Caucasus. He was arrested in 1937 and executed at Krasnodar the following year as an “enemy of the people.” He was posthumously rehabilitated on 30 May 1956.

Zhordania (“kostrov”), Noe (2 January 1868–11 January 1953). The foremost leader of independent Georgia during the civil-war period, Noe Zhordania was the son of a small landowner from Guria (Kutaisi guberniia), in western Georgia. He was educated at the Tiflis Seminary and at the Veterinary Institute in Warsaw, where he first became involved in Marxist circles. Back home in Georgia, in the early 1890s he was one of the leaders of the underground revolutionary organization Mesame Dasi (the “Third Group”)—another member of which was J. V. Stalin (with whom Zhordania frequently clashed)—and was widely recognized as a leading theorist of Georgian social democracy. To avoid arrest, he went into European exile from 1893 to 1897, but returned to become editor of the newspaper Kvali (“The Furrow”). From 1903, he sided firmly with the Mensheviks within the Russian Social-Democratic Labor Party (RSDLP) and from 1905 became an advocate of legalizing party work (in Leninist terms, he was a “liquidator”); he was an arch critic of the Bolsheviks through the Tiflis newspaper he edited, Sotsial-demokratia. In 1906, he was elected to the First State Duma, as a representative of Tiflis guberniia, and was the acknowledged leader of the social-democratic faction within it, but he then lost his political rights (and was imprisoned for three months) as a signatory of the Vyborg Manifesto. From 1907 to 1912, he was a member of the Central Committee of the RSDLP and was again engaged in a fierce struggle against the Bolshevik faction. In 1914, he became associated with L. D. Trotsky through his work on the journal Bor′ba (“The Struggle”), but during the First World War adopted a staunchly defensist position. Following the February Revolution, on 6 March 1917 he was elected chairman of the Tiflis Soviet.

Zhordania refused to recognize the October Revolution and, on 26 November 1917, was elected chairman of the Georgian National Council. It was he who chaired the session of the council that, on 26 May 1918, declared the independence of Georgia, and on 24 July 1918, he succeeded Noe Ramishvili as prime minister of the new Democratic Republic of Georgia, a post he retained throughout the existence of the Republic and beyond, as the head of the Government-in-Exile of the Democratic Republic of Georgia until his death in Paris in 1953. He is buried in the Georgian cemetery at Leuville-sur-Orge, south of Paris.

ZHURAVLEV, PAVEL NIKOLAEVICH (22 July 1887–23 February 1920). Ensign (1917). One of the most prominent leaders of the Red partisans in Transbaikalia, who battled with the White forces of Ataman G. M. Semenov during the civil wars, P. N. Zhuravlev was born into an impoverished Cossack family at Aleksandrovskii Zavod and was sent to work in the gold fields at the age of 12 years, when his father died. In January 1915, he was drafted into the Russian Army and (after graduating from the Irkutsk Ensign School) served briefly as a battalion commander on the Romanian Front, where he was twice wounded, before being placed in a reserve detachment on the Don in 1917.

When, following the October Revolution, officers began gathering in the Don region to organize the Volunteer Army, Zhuravlev left the army and returned to Transbaikailia. By April 1918, he was at the head of a Red Guards detachment that engaged Semenov’s Special Manchurian Detachment as it moved out of Manchuria toward Chita. Zhuravlev subsequently lived under an assumed name (“Kudrin”) in the Amur oblast′ to escape persecution by the Whites. On 21 April 1919, he was elected commander of the Eastern Transbaikal Front. He was badly wounded in battle at Molodovskii on 19 February 1920 and died soon thereafter. Zhuravlev was buried in a mass grave in his hometown of Aleksandrovskii Zavod. During the Soviet period, numerous streets were named after him in settlements across (and beyond) Transbaikailia.

Zigel′, Dmitrii Mikhailovich VON (14 March 1869–11 July 1922). Colonel (6 December 1907), major general (1919), lieutenant general (1 January 1920). A senior figure in the White forces in South Russia, D. M. von Zigel′ was a graduate of Count Arakcheev Cadet Corps (1887), the Second Constantine School (1889), and the Academy of the General Staff (1898). He participated in the Russian expedition to China in 1900–1901 and in the Russo–Japanese War, and in the First World War rose to the post of commander of the 127th Infantry Division (from 20 June 1916) and the 6th Caucasian Army Corps (from 10 October 1917).

In 1918, von Zigel′ acted as Hetman P. P. Skoropadskii’s plenipotentiary to the forces of the Austro-German intervention. In the White movement, he was initially (February–August 1919) placed in the reserve of the Armed Forces of South Russia (AFSR), perhaps because of his prior association with the Hetman and the Germans, before serving as quartermaster general (August–December 1919) and then chief of staff (13 December 1919–29 January 1920) of the Caucasian Army. Evacuated from Odessa to Crimea during the collapse of the AFSR, he then joined the Russian Army of General P. N. Wrangel. He was named head of the garrison and commandant of Kerch (May–November 1920), in which capacities he played an important part in the organization of the Kuban landing operation (August–September, 1920) of General S. G. Ulagai and in the evacuation of Crimea (November 1920). In emigration, he lived first in Turkey and then in Serbia, where he died in hospital at Pančevo, near Belgrade.

Zinevich, Bronislav mikhailovich (aleksandr konstantinovich) (20 August 1868–1920?). Colonel (2 September 1915), major general (13 August 1918). Born in Orenburg guberniia and of petit bourgeois background, the White commander B. M. Zinevich was a graduate of the Kazan′ Infantry Officers School (1895). He served in the Russo–Japanese War, and during the First World War commanded the 534th Infantry Regiment (November 1916–November 1917).

Following the October Revolution, Zinevich organized an underground officers’ organization at Krasnoiarsk, and following the collapse of Soviet power in the region in May–June 1918, commanded the 2nd Rifle Division of the Mid-Siberian Corps in the forces of the Provisional Siberian Government. In the Russian Army of Admiral A. V. Kolchak, he became chief of staff of the 1st Mid-Siberian Army Corps (April 1919) and later (from 14 July 1919) its commander. At the same time, he was deputy commander of the 1st Army of Kolchak’s reorganized Eastern Front. On 20 December 1919, Zinevich also became head of the garrison at Krasnoiarsk; in that capacity, he played a prominent part in the revolt of the Krasnoiarsk garrison against Kolchak in December 1919, authored an ultimatum to the supreme ruler demanding that he transfer all powers to a Zemskii sobor′, interrupted communications to and from Kolchak’s train (as the admiral attempted to move from Omsk to Irkutsk), and in general supported the actions of the Political Center and its associate organizations. On 7 January 1920, he negotiated the peaceful surrender of Krasnoiarsk to the approaching 5th Red Army, but according to most accounts he was nevertheless arrested and was subsequently executed at Omsk.

ZIN′KOVSKII (ZADOV), LEV NIKOLAEVICH (11 April 1893–25 September 1938). Born at the Jewish settlement of Veselaia, in Ekaterinoslav guberniia, into the family of an unskilled laborer, but raised from the age of seven at Iuzovka, L. N. Zin′kovskii was to become one of the senior commanders of the Revolutionary-Insurgent Army of Ukraine of Nestor Makhno and later a servant of the Soviet secret police. He had only two years of schooling, before going to work at a metallurgical factory in the Donbass. There, he was attracted to anarchism and, in 1913, was sentenced to eight years of exile for an attack on a post office. He returned to the factory after having been liberated from prison in 1917, but by April 1918 was leading a partisan detachment against forces of the Austro-German intervention and the Don Cossack Host.

In 1918, the Soviet authorities assigned Zin′kovskii to underground work in Ukraine, but in August of that year he joined the Makhnovists as, in succession, assistant commander of a regiment, assistant chief of the counterintelligence section of the army, chief of the intelligence staff of the 1st Donetsk Corps, and (during the operations against the Russian Army of P. N. Wrangel in 1920) commandant of the Crimean Group. On 28 August 1921, he escaped with Makhno into Romania, where he worked in a timber factory.

In June 1924, Zin′kovskii illegally crossed back into Soviet territory (possibly as a member of a Romanian-sponsored espionage mission) and voluntary surrendered himself to the OGPU. From December 1924, he then worked for the OGPU (and later the NKVD) of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic in a variety of capacities, but chiefly in covert operations designed to monitor and entrap former Makhnovist émigrés and members of ROVS. He was frequently promoted and decorated for his successes in this field. Nevertheless, Zin′kovskii was arrested by the NKVD on 26 August 1937 and found guilty of espionage and terrorism. He was executed on 25 September 1938, and was posthumously rehabilitated in 1990.

ZINOV′EV, GEORGII VASIL′EVICH (20 November 1887–26 April 1934). Born in St. Petersburg, the Soviet military commander G. V. Zinov′ev was a graduate of the Sevastopol′ Military Aviation School (1917) and the Red Military Academy (1923). He served as a pilot with the Russian Army during the First World War, joined the Russian Social-Democratic Labor Party (Bolsheviks) in 1917, and after the October Revolution, was elected as chairman of the soldiers’ committee of the 3rd Siberian Rifle Corps on the Western Front. There, in early 1918 he helped suppress the Dowbor-Muśnicki uprising and, from February to April 1918, was head of the Smolensk garrison.

Zinov′ev was then transferred to the southern Urals, where from May 1918 to January 1919, he commanded Red Army forces raised in the Orenburg, Aktiubinsk, and Orsk regions in battles against the Cossack forces of Ataman A. I. Dutov and the Czechoslovak Legion, before being named commander of the Orenburg Rifle Division (February–March 1919). He then commanded the Turkestan Red Army (11 March–22 May 1919) and the 1st Red Army (25 May 1919–12 November 1920) in battles against the Russian Army of Admiral A. V. Kolchak, playing a key role in the defeat of the White Turkestan Army in the Southern Urals and Transcaspia and assisting in the capture of Orenburg, Orsk, Aktiubinsk, and Bukhara for the Reds. From November 1920 to March 1921, he was a member of the Revvoensovet of the Turkestan Front.

From 1923, Zinov′ev served in various posts in the administration and command of Soviet air forces, from 1928 was head of the Military Construction Section of the Red Army, and from May 1932 was head of the Military-Engineering Academy. He won the Order of the Red Banner twice and was the recipient of the ceremonial Gold Sword of the Turkestan Republic.

ZINOV′EV, GRIGORII EVSEEVICH (23 September 1883–25 August 1936). The Soviet political leader G. E. Zinov′ev—a close associate of V. I. Lenin before the revolution, but one of his chief critics in 1917—was born at Elizavetgrad (renamed Zinov′esk from 1924 to 27 December 1934; now Kirovohrad), in Kherson oblast′, as Ovsei-Gershon Aronovich Radomysl′skii. (During his revolutionary career he was also known as Hirsch Apfelbaum.) He was of lower middle-class, Jewish origin (his parents ran a dairy farm), and apart from a few months spent at the Chemistry Faculty of Berlin University in 1906, had no formal education, having been educated at home. He joined the Russian Social-Democratic Labor Party in 1901, and when the party split in 1903, he immediately sided with the Bolsheviks. During the 1905 Revolution, he was active as a political agitator in St. Petersburg, and in 1907 he was elected as a candidate member of the party Central Committee. He was briefly imprisoned by the tsarist authorities in 1908, but was released due to ill health and went abroad to join Lenin in exile. On 17 January 1912, he became a member of the first Central Committee of the Russian Social-Democratic Labor Party (Bolsheviks). After spending the First World War in exile in Switzerland, he returned to Russia, with Lenin, aboard the “sealed train” supplied by imperial Germany, arriving in Petrograd on 4 April 1917. He then edited the party newspaper, Pravda (“The Truth”), until that publication was banned by the Russian Provisional Government following the July Days. In this period, he often opposed Lenin’s policies and, during the October Revolution he (in collaboration with L. B. Kamenev) opposed the seizure of power, going so far as to publish a letter condemning the move in advance in Maxim Gorky’s newspaper. When presented with the fait accompli of the Bolsheviks’ toppling of the Provisional Government, he insisted on the inclusion in Sovnarkom of representatives of other socialist parties. When Lenin refused this (and then wrecked the Vikzhel′ talks), Zinov′ev (with four others) resigned from the Bolshevik Central Committee on 4 November 1917. He was reinstated a few days later, following the publication of an apologetic “Letter to Comrades” in Pravda, but never fully regained the trust of Lenin, who now tended to rely on his new right-hand man, L. D. Trotsky (much to Zinov′ev’s chagrin).

Nevertheless, in January 1919 Zinov′ev became head of the Soviet regime in Petrograd and head of party organizations in that region; in March 1919, he was elected to the chair of the Executive Committee of the Komintern. (In that last capacity, in September 1920, he also presided over the Congress of the Peoples of the East at Baku.) During the civil wars, he was responsible for the defense of Petrograd against the forces of General N. N. Iudenich, a task he performed badly, leading to clashes with Trotsky. During the debate on trade unions in 1920, he supported Lenin’s line and was rewarded with a place in the Politbiuro on 16 March 1921, despite the fact that his ruthless governance of Petrograd had led at this time to a great strike wave and, in part, to the Kronshtadt Revolt. He was also, as head of the Komintern, widely condemned by Leftists for the failure of the communist uprising in Germany in October 1923, but managed to deflect the criticism onto Karl Radek, the Komintern’s representative in Germany, and remained one of the most powerful figures in the party.

During the closing stages of Lenin’s illness and (initially) following his death, Zinov′ev, together with Kamenev and J. V. Stalin, formed a triumvirate party leadership to oppose the alleged ambitions of Trotsky to become party leader. Once Trotsky was defeated in 1925, though, Stalin turned against his erstwhile partners, and Zinov′ev and Kamenev formed a brief alliance with Trotsky (the United Opposition). However, in 1926 Stalin prized from Zinov′ev his control of Leningrad (as Petrograd had been renamed in 1924, on Zinov′ev’s suggestion), his Politbiuro seat, and the chairmanship of the Komintern; on 14 November 1927, he was expelled from the party and exiled to Voronezh. Zinov′ev, like Kamenev, immediately recanted; in 1928, he was given back his party card and was thereafter granted various middling jobs in the Soviet bureaucracy: as rector of Kazan′ University (1928–1931), member of the collegium of the People’s Commissariat for Education (December 1931–1932), and (following a second arrest and a brief period of exile in Kustanai) (from 1933) a member of the board of the Tsentrosoiuz cooperative and of the editorial board of the journal Bol′shevik.

On 16 December 1934, Zinov′ev, with Kamenev and others, was arrested for “moral complicity” in the recent assassination of his successor as Leningrad party boss, S. M. Kirov. He was tried in secret and sentenced to 10 years’ imprisonment on 16 January 1935. Finally, on 19–24 August 1936, Zinov′ev was among those arraigned at the first great show trial (the “Trial of the 16,” or the “Trial of the Trotskyite–Zinov′evite Terrorist Center”). He pleaded guilty to all the (patently false) charges of treason, espionage, and terrorism laid against him and was immediately executed. (This was the first such execution of Old Bolsheviks under Stalin, paving the way for the mass terror that was to follow.) He was posthumously rehabilitated by a plenum of the Supreme Court of the USSR on 13 June 1988.

Źmicier, Žyłunovič. See Hartny, Ciška (Źmicier, Žyłunovič).

ZVERGINTSOV, NIKOLAI IVANOVICH (14 April 1877–27 November 1932). Colonel (26 August 1912), major general (1917). A prominent White commander in North Russia (sometimes referred to as “Zvegintsev” by British forces in that region), N. I. Zvergintsov was a graduate of the Corps of Pages (1898) and the Officer Cavalry School. In the opening months of the First World War, he served in His Majesty’s Hussars Life Guards Regiment and then commanded a Cossack regiment and then a cavalry division. From 1915 to 1918, he was head of all armed forces in the Murmansk region.

After joining the White movement, from 1 June to 3 October 1918 Zvergintsov served as the successful commander of the Murmansk Volunteer Army, later named the Forces of the Murmansk (Northern) Region, clearing Soviet forces from Soroka, Kem, and other population centers. At this time, he was also responsible for a number of appeals to the Allies to intervene in North Russia (although he came to be distrusted by the British when they arrived). From August to December 1918, he was also attached to the war ministry of the Provisional Government of the Northern Region, and from December 1918 to January 1920, he was in the reserve of the Northern Army. Together with other Whites, he was evacuated from North Russia in February 1920 and taken, initially, to Tromsø, in Norway. In emigration he settled in Paris, which is where he died.