Historical Dictionary of the Russian Civil Wars, 1916-1926

Personal names are one thing; place-names are another minefield. Here, due to their familiarity, exceptions have been made for Moscow and St. Petersburg and (for purely aesthetic reasons) Yalta, but the line has been drawn at Archangel/Arkhangel′sk in rendering English versions of Russian names. More consequential is that place-names can be piquant political and ethnic markers. During civil wars such as those endured by imperial Russia and its borderlands in the period after 1917 (not to mention the overlapping collapse of its German, Austrian, and Turkish neighbors, as well as the contemporaneous upheavals afflicting Persia, Mongolia, and China), they become doubly significant. (Indeed, insofar as a name employed might be read, by an interlocutor—with a big gun—as betraying some hostile political or national sympathy, it could be a matter of life or death.) Thus, many of the places mentioned in these volumes were called by two or more different names (usually as a consequence of national differences and military conquests) even before the Soviet government began renaming towns and cities (and even mountains and other natural features) in honor of “heroes of the revolution.” For example, in the accepted transliteration, Lwów (Polish), L′vov (Russian), L′viv (Urkainian), Lemberg (German), and Liov (Roumanian) were all current during the revolutionary period. For the sake of consistency, I have here, in general and not without regret, become all too often a Russianizer, giving the Russian version of a place-name in the first instance, sometimes followed, for clarification, by the chief native form—for example, Kiev (Kyiv), for what is now the capital of Ukraine—or presenting the historical name followed by its current name. However, there were about 100 or 200 “nationalities” (depending on definitions of ethnicity) in what up until the revolutionary period was called “Russia,” and at least half as many linguistic groups, and I am certain that I have not done justice to all of them, or even to most of them. Hopefully, though, the meaning will be clear.

Finally, in this regard (and emblematically for something that might seem to be so straightforward), the city that is now, once again, St. Petersburg (and from 1924 to 1991 was called Leningrad) is often herein referred to as “Petrograd.” This was the name adopted for the city by the tsarist government upon the outbreak of war in August 1914, so that the name of the Russian capital should not sound too “German.” This was in naked defiance of the fact that in 1703 the city had actually been christened with the Dutch name Sankt-Peterburg by its founder, Peter the Great, according to his infatuation with all things Netherlandish (whose lands, in August–September 1914, were of course actually being threatened, though never invaded, by the Germans), and even though, in repudiation of these niceties, through war, revolution, and civil wars, its inhabitants persisted in referring to it, familiarly, as “Piter”—which is not German, Dutch, or even Russian. What, indeed, is in a name?

Readers should also note that, to facilitate rapid and efficient location of relevant information and to make this work as useful a reference tool as possible, within individual entries terms that have their own, separate entries are in boldface type the first time they appear.

Acronyms and Abbreviations

AFSR

Armed Forces of South Russia (Vooruzhennie sily Iuga Rossii or VSIuR)

Agitprop

Agitation and propaganda: specifically, the department of that name attached to the central committee of the RKP(b)

ARA

American Relief Administration

ASSR

Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic

Cheka

Chezvychainaia komissiia: “Extraordinary Commission [for Combating Counter-Revolution and Sabotage]” (formally, the “All-Russian Commission”: Vserossiiskaia chrezvychaynaia komissiia po bor′be s kontr-revoliutsiei i sabotazhem)

FER

Far Eastern Republic

Gulag

Glavnoe upravlenie ispravitel′no-trudovikh lagerei i kolonii: Chief Administration of [Labor] Camps and Settlements

Istpart

Kommissiia po istorii Okt′iabrskoi revoliutsii i RKP(b): Commission for the History of the October Revolution and the RKP(b)

kombedy

Komitety [derevenskoi]bednoty: Committees of the Village Poor

Komintern

The Communist International

Komuch

Komitet chlenov Uchreditel′nogo sobraniia: Committee of Members of the Constituent Assembly

NEP

New Economic Policy

Profintern

Red International of Labor Unions (formally, the Red International of Labor Unions: Krasnyi internatsional profsoiuzov)

PSR