Historical Dictionary of the Russian Civil Wars, 1916-1926

Shkuro was seriously injured by an exploding shell in October 1919, but recovered to (briefly) take command of the shattered Kuban Army (8–29 February 1920). As the AFSR collapsed, however, he was removed from his post, being one of those commanders blamed by Denikin for the failure of his great offensive. After a period in the reserve of the AFSR and the Russian Army, in April 1920 he received the permission of General P. N. Wrangel to retire from the service and move abroad. In emigration, he lived chiefly in France, working in the circus as a trick horseman. According to some witnesses, in the interwar period he came increasingly to regard himself as a Ukrainian and embraced the cause of Ukrainian nationalism. During the Second World War, he collaborated with the Nazis, working with Ataman P. N. Krasnov in organizing Cossack units in Yugoslavia to fight against the USSR and the local Communist partisans of Josip Tito. On 1 June 1946, together with Krasnov and other collaborators, he was handed over to the Soviet authorities by the British army at Linz, Austria. He was subsequently sentenced to death by the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the USSR and was hanged, in Moscow, on 17 January 1947.

SHLIAPNIKOV, ALEKSANDR GAVRILOVICH (30 August 1885–2 September 1937). The Soviet politician and trade unionist A. G. Shliapnikov was born into a poor family of Old Believers at Murom, in Vladimir guberniia. He lost his father at the age of three and spent only three years in a local primary school, then began working in a factory at the age of 13, becoming a skilled metalworker. He joined the Russian Social-Democratic Labor Party in 1901 and was active among workers’ groups at Murom in the 1905 Revolution. He was arrested in July 1905, then amnestied (October 1905), then arrested again in December 1907 and imprisoned in the Peter and Paul Fortress in St. Petersburg. He moved to Western Europe in 1908, working in factories in France, Germany, and England, but returned to Russia in 1914. There, he was co-opted onto the Central Committee of the Russian Social-Democratic Labor Party (Bolsheviks) (September 1915–24 April 1917) and its Russian Bureau (September 1915–April 1917).

During the February Revolution, Shliapnikov was the most senior Bolshevik leader active in the Russian capital. He subsequently became a member of the executive committee of the Petrograd Soviet (from 27 February 1917) and chairman of the Union of Metalworkers (from April 1917). Following the October Revolution, he entered Sovnarkom as people’s commissar for labor (26 October–8 December 1917) and acting people’s commissar for trade and industry (4 November 1917–26 March 1918), in which capacities he oversaw the failed Soviet experiment with workers’ control prior to the introduction of War Communism. He also became a candidate member of the party Central Committee (8 March 1918–18 March 1919).

During the civil wars, Shliapnikov was given a variety of important military posts: member of the Revvoensovet of the Southern Front (20 October–8 December 1918); chairman of the Caucasus–Caspian Sector of the Southern Front (2 November–8 December 1918); member of the Revvoensovet of the Caspian–Caucasian Front (8 December 1918–14 February 1919); and member of the Revvoensovet of the 16th Red Army on the Western Front (10 November 1919–1 February 1920). As the war wound down, and in poor health—he was experiencing the early stages of Menière’s syndrom (a disorder of the inner ear that causes dizziness)—he returned to his post as chair of the metalworkers’ union and also joined the presidium of the All-Russian Central Council of Trade Unions (1920–1922). In those capacities, he became one of the chief spokesmen of the Workers’ Opposition, protesting against the increasingly authoritarian nature of the Soviet state (the mass executions of workers following the Astrakhan rebellion of March–April 1919 particularly depressed him) and the influence in industry and management of “bourgeois specialists.” He advocated, instead, the devolution of political authority and economic management to the trade unions. Nevertheless, he was again elected to the Bolshevik Central Committee, on 16 March 1921.