Historical Dictionary of the Russian Civil Wars, 1916-1926

Shatov returned to Russia, via Vladivostok, in March 1917, and in October of that year was a member of the Military-Revolutionary Committee of the Petrograd Soviet (as a representative of the Union of Anarcho-Syndicalist Propagandists). Without initially renouncing his adherence to anarchism, he supported the Soviet government, and in early 1918 he was made extraordinary commissar for defense of the railways of the Petrograd Military District, serving subsequently as head of the Central Commandant’s Office of Petrograd (August 1918–May 1919) and then director of affairs of the commandant of the Petrograd Defensive Region (from June 1919). In these capacities, Shatov was one of the main instigators of Red Terror in Petrograd. He also commanded a division in battles against the White forces of General N. N. Iudenich, and in August 1919, was one of the organizers of the suppression of the Krasnaia Gorka uprising. From late 1920, he served as director of railways and waterways in the Far East, and from 1921 to October 1922, he was minister of war and then minister of communications of the Far Eastern Republic.

Following the civil wars, Shatov occupied numerous senior posts, chiefly in the transport administration of the USSR—including, from 1927, heading the construction of the Turksib railway network—and from 1932 to 1936, he was People’s Commissar of Communications of the USSR. In that capacity, he oversaw the construction of the Moscow–Donetsk railway, as well as the transportation of hundreds of thousands of victims of the Terror to prison camps. Shatov was himself arrested in 1937 and confined to the Gulag, where he died in 1943. (According to some sources, though, he was executed on 4 October 1937, at Novosibirsk.) He was posthumously rehabilitated in 1955.

Shchastnyi, Aleksei Mikhailovich (4 October 1881–21 June 1918). Captain, first rank (28 July 1917). The first victim of a judicial killing in Soviet Russia (and probably the victim of panic on the part of the authorities, as mutinies gripped the Baltic Fleet and rumors of a German move to capture it abounded), A. M. Shchastnyi was born at Zhitomir, Vol′ynsk guberniia. He was the son of a general and was a graduate of the Naval Cadet Corps (1901) and the Officer Mining Class (1905). He saw action in the Russo–Japanese War and lectured in naval institutions on radio-telegraphy and mine-laying. During the First World War, he became a senior officer on the battleship Poltava (1914–1916) and commander of the destroyer Pogranichnik (1916–1917), before transferring to the staff of the Baltic Fleet.

Shchastnyi remained in his post after the October Revolution, in the hope of continuing the war against Germany, and on 17 December 1917 was named chief of staff of the Baltic Fleet by the new Soviet authorities. On 17 April 1918, he was named by the People’s Commissariat for Military Affairs as chief of the naval forces in the Baltic, but he had to all intents and purposes been in command of the fleet since the beginning of the year. In February–April he had led the Ice March of the Baltic Fleet, conducting some 160 vessels from Revel and Helsingfors to Kronshtadt, thereby saving the Baltic Fleet for the Soviet government. The following month, however, clashes occurred between Shchastnyi and People’s Commissar for War L. D. Trotsky over a number of issues: moving a flotilla of minelayers to Lake Ladoga, preparing the fleet for demolition, destroying a fort at Ino (near Petrograd), and the handling of orders regarding these actions. Shchastnyi attempted to resign from his post, but permission was refused, and on 27 May 1918, on Trotsky’s orders, he was arrested for “dereliction of duty and counterrevolutionary activity.” On 20 June 1918, he was placed before a revolutionary tribunal in the Moscow Kremlin. Found guilty, on the flimsiest of evidence, of numerous crimes against the state, he was sentenced to be shot. The sentence was confirmed at 2:00 a.m. the following morning by Ia. M. Sverdlov of VTsIK, and two hours later, Shchastnyi was executed in the courtyard of the Alexander Military School. He was buried where he fell. In 1992, a street was named in his honor in his hometown of Zhitomir. He was posthumously rehabilitated in 1995.