Historical Dictionary of the Russian Civil Wars, 1916-1926

After the October Revolution, Sergeev volunteered for service with the Red Army in July 1918. During the civil wars, as one of the Reds’ military specialists, he served as chief of staff of the 2nd Petrograd Infantry Division (15 July–September 1918) and assistant head of the operational department of the staff of the Northern Screen (9–26 September 1918), then was attached to the staff of the 3rd Red Army on the Eastern Front (from October 1918). He was subsequently chief of staff of the Special Brigade of the 3rd Red Army (8 November–December 1918), assistant chief of the operational section of the 3rd Red Army (23 December 1918–26 January 1919), and chief of staff (February–April and June–August 1919), then acting commander (19 August–December 1919), of the 30th Rifle Division. In the latter capacity, he played a leading role in the capture of the Whites’ capital at Omsk and was awarded the Order of the Red Banner. He then served as chief of staff of the 3rd Red Army (19 December 1919–15 January 1920) and, from January to 8 March 1920, was commander of the 1st Labor Army. From April to May 1920, Sergeev was commander of reserve forces on the Western Front; from May to June 1920, he was commander of the northern group of forces on the Western Front, receiving a second Order of the Red Banner for his exploits there during the opening stages of the Soviet–Polish War.

Sergeev subsequently worked as a lecturer at a variety of military schools, then became chief of staff of the Leningrad Military District, assistant commander of the Leningrad Military District (1925–1926), chief of staff of the Belorussian Military District (1926–1928), and chief of staff of the North Caucasus Military District (1928–1936). In 1936, Sergeev was made a senior lecturer with the Operational Arts Department of the Red Military Academy. He was arrested in July 1937, and having been found guilty of membership in a phantom anti-Soviet terrorist organization by the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the USSR on 10 September 1937, was immediately executed. Sergeev was buried in a mass grave in the Donskoi cemetery in Moscow. He was posthumously rehabilitated on 21 March 1957.

SERGE, VICTOR (KIBAL′CHICH, VIKTOR L′VOVICH) (30 December 1890–17 November 1947). Victor Serge, the celebrated francophone anarchist and internationalist (and prodigious author, historian, and literary critic), who joined the Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks) during the civil wars, was born in Brussels. He was the son of poverty-stricken Russian political exiles (his father was distantly related to N. I. Kibal′chich, who was executed in 1881 as a member of the People’s Will group that assassinated Alexander II). He joined the Belgian Socialist Party in 1905, but soon gravitated toward individualist anarchism and illegalism. He was expelled from Belgium in 1909 and settled in Paris, where he became a journalist of some note and then editor of the journal L’Anarchie. On 3 February 1913, he was sentenced to five years’ imprisonment for his association with the violent Bonnot Gang (La Bande à Bonnot), which had staged numerous violent robberies in 1912–1913. Upon his release in 1917, Serge initially went to Spain, but then decided to travel to Russia to participate in the revolutionary events there. However, he was arrested en route, in France, having been ordered never to return to that country, and was again imprisoned (without trial), for more than a year.

In October 1918, Serge was released and sent to Soviet Russia as part of the group of revolutionaries exchanged for Robert Bruce Lockhart. He joined the RKP(b) in Petrograd in February 1919 and was apparently committed to the Soviet regime, but retained contacts with anarchist and nonparty groups and became increasingly critical of the state bureaucracy, particularly after going to work for the Komintern (as an editor, translator, and host to foreign visitors) in March 1919. He also spoke out against the Red Terror, the suppression of the Kronshtadt Revolt, and the introduction of the New Economic Policy.