Historical Dictionary of the Russian Civil Wars, 1916-1926

Initially, however, the front consisted of various irregular units of Red Guards that broke under the advance of the Whites and surrendered Sergiopol′ (21 July 1918) and Lepsinsk (29 August 1918). The latter town was soon recaptured, on 7 September 1918, and the front then stabilized along a southeast to northwest axis from the foothills of the Dzhungarskii Alatau to the Pribaltiiskii Steppe, while in the White rear, the Cherkassk Defense was conducted. Attempts to break through to relieve the defenders of Cherkassk in July–August 1919 were foiled by the Whites, who captured Cherkassk on 14 October 1919 and pushed the forces of the Semirech′e Front back to the Ak-Ichk canal. On 22 November 1919, by order of the Revvoensovet of the Turkestan ASSR, all forces on the Semirech′e Front were united into a single Semirech′e Independent Division (later the 3rd Turkestan Rifle Division).

Commanders of the Semirech′e Front were Petrenko (28 June–21 September 1918); N. N. Zatyl′nikov (21 September 1918–11 February 1919); G. Kochergin (acting; 11 February–5 March 1919); Ponomarev (5 March–6 June 1919); K. Koliada (6–24 June 1919); Zhuntov (24 June–8 July 1919); Zhurbenko (8 July–30 August 1919); F. E. Beker (30 August–10 November 1919); and A. F. Sdvizhenskii (10–22 November 1919). Its chiefs of staff were Ignatovich (28 June–28 September 1918); V. O. Zyrianov (28 September–5 November 1918); K. Bubnov (5 November 1918–May 1919); Paklin (May–16 June 1919); M. Liapin (June–6 September 1919); S. N. Dublitskii (acting; 26 September–12 October 1919); Brazhentsev (12 October–17 November 1919); and Zakrzhevskii (17–22 November 1919).

SEPTEMBER DAYS. This term (sometimes rendered as the “September Events”) denotes the events in Baku, during September 1918, when a significant proportion of the city’s Armenian population was massacred by forces of the Turkish Army of Islam and local Azeri militias. This was a replay of the interethnic conflicts that had plagued the region during the disturbances of 1905–1907. The attacks may also be explained as an act of revenge for the events that occurred in Baku in March 1918 (the March Days), when Armenian Dashnaks and Russians (among them some supporters of the Bolsheviks) massacred thousands of the Azeri inhabitants of the city.

The September violence was unleashed when the Turks finally defeated the forces of the Central Caspian Dictatorship and their British allies (Dunsterforce) on the outskirts of Baku, on 14 September 1918. Turkish troops and Azeri irregulars descended on the town; over the next three days, they killed at least 5,000 Armenian residents of the city and around 4,000 Armenian refugees who had sought shelter there. Unknown numbers were wounded, raped, or driven from their homes and businesses. Damage to property was also extensive. In the longer term, as many as 30,000 Armenian residents of the Baku region may have been slaughtered during the ensuing Armenian–Azerbaijan War.

serada, jan (ivan nikitovich) (1 May 1879–after 19 November 1943). Biographical details about Jan Serada, who was the first president of the Belarussian People’s Republic, are scarce, but it is known that he was born in the village of Zadźwiej, qualified as a vet from a school in Warsaw in 1903, and obtained the rank of colonel in the Russian Army, in which he served during the Russo–Japanese War and the First World War. In December 1917, he was elected head of the First All-Belarusian Congress at Minsk and subsequently chaired the executive committee that the congress elected. In that capacity, he oversaw the declaration of Belarussian independence on 25 March 1918, and subsequently became president of the new republic.

A self-proclaimed social democrat (although it is unknown whether he was ever a member of the Russian Social-Democratic Labor Party), he chose not to accompany the government into exile in December 1918, as Red Army forces overran the region, but remained in the subsequently established Belorussian Soviet Socialist Republic. During the 1920s, he taught at the Hory-Horki Agricultural Academy and a variety of other such institutions and published several works on animal husbandry, but on 4 July 1930 he was arrested on charges of propagating “bourgeois nationalism” (during NKVD investigations into the fictional Union for the Liberation of Belarus) and was imprisoned for five years at Iaroslavl′. In 1941, he was again arrested and sentenced to 10 years in prison.

Serada was apparently freed from the Kraslag camp, near Krasnoiarsk, on 19 November 1943, but his subsequent fate is unknown. He was posthumously rehabilitated, in a series of court decisions from 10 July 1988 to 16 January 1989.