Historical Dictionary of the Russian Civil Wars, 1916-1926

ROWMAN & LITTLEFIELD

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Copyright © 2015 by Jonathan D. Smele

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote passages in a review.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Smele, Jon.

Historical dictionary of the Russian civil wars, 1916–1926 / Jonathan D. Smele.

pages cm. — (Historical dictionaries of war, revolution, and civil unrest)

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-1-4422-5280-6 (hardcover : alkaline paper) — ISBN 978-1-4422-5281-3 (ebook)

1. Soviet Union—History—Revolution, 1917–1921—Dictionaries. 2. Soviet Union—History—1917–1936—Dictionaries. 3. Civil war—Soviet Union—History—Dictionaries. I. Title.

DK265.S526 2015

947.084'103—dc23

2015011566

™ The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.

Printed in the United States of America

For Grace

Contents

Contents

Editor’s Foreword

Acknowledgments

Reader’s Note

Acronyms and Abbreviations

Chronology

Introduction

A

B

C

D

E

F

G

H

I

J

K

L

M

N

O

P

Q

R

S

T

U

V

W

X

Y

Z

Appendix 1: Red Governing Institutions

Appendix 2: Anti-Bolshevik Governing Institutions

Appendix 3: Nationalist Governing Institutions

Glossary

Bibliography

About the Author

Editor’s Foreword

Wars—especially civil wars—are bloody and messy, and few were as bloody and messy as those that raged in and around Russia before, during, and after the Bolshevik Revolution of October 1917. Not easily defined or confined, these conflicts extended well beyond the borders of today’s Russia (or even the collapsing Russian Empire of that time), spilling over into what are now several other independent countries and stretching across territories of 7,000 miles from west to east (from Poland to the Pacific) and half that distance from north to south (from the Arctic Ocean to—and beyond—the borders of China and Persia). The contenders were not just the Reds and the Whites of popular renown, as our author here makes clear, but a host of other political and national formations, as well as the interventionist forces of the Allies (chiefly Britain, France, Japan, and the United States) and the Central Powers (chiefly Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Turkey). But while the Whites, various non-Russian nationalist forces, anarchists, and popular socialists were active in diverse regions, the Reds had to stretch in every possible direction, and it is almost miraculous that they emerged (for the most part) victorious—although many of the Soviet leaders responsible for Red victories in the civil wars eventually ended up in jail, exile, or unmarked graves. The number of casualties, not surprisingly, was in the millions—most of them a result not of the actual warfare but rather of the accompanying waves of famine and disease and the general mayhem of the times. Whether this was all worth it probably rarely crossed the minds of those involved, because they felt themselves to be playing for huge stakes: nationhood and “freedom” for some, domination of a precious ideology (endowed with all sorts of possible virtues) for others. Yet having recently witnessed the collapse of the huge Soviet empire that arose from the “Russian” civil wars, one may be permitted some doubts.