Historical Dictionary of the Russian Civil Wars, 1916-1926

SHVARTZ (SCHWARZ), ALEKSEI VLADIMIROVICHVON (15 March 1874–23 September 1953). Colonel (6 December 1910), major general (27 October 1914), lieutenant general (24 August 1917). Like General N. F. Ern, the White officer A. V. von Shvartz was not particularly prominent during the civil wars, but he had a career that was emblematic of the scattered and unlikely fates of a generation of Russian officers in emigration. He was born into a noble family in Ekaterinoslav guberniia, attended the local Realschule, and after joining the Russian Army on 1 September 1892, graduated from the Nicholas Engineering School (1895) and the Academy of the General Staff (1902). He served in the Russo–Japanese War, as an engineer at Port Arthur, and subsequently (from 15 October 1910) worked on a historical commission of the Russian general staff, investigating the lessons of that conflict, before taking up a teaching post at the Nicholas Engineering School (from 26 March 1909). After the outbreak of the First World War, he was made commander of the Ivangorod Fortress (from 13 August 1914) and served as commander of the Karssk Fortress (from 13 November 1915) and, after its capture from the Turks, commander of Trabzon (from 23 July 1916). On 22 March 1917, von Shvartz became head of the Main Military-Technical Directorate of the General Staff.

Following the October Revolution, von Shvartz was pressed into service with the Red Army as commander of the Northern Screen, but he fled to Kiev in March 1918, moving on to Odessa in December of that year, as forces of the Austro-German intervention withdrew from the region and the Ukrainian State collapsed. Perhaps as a consequence of his service with the Reds, he was not enlisted into the ranks of the Volunteer Army, yet in mid-March 1919 he was named by the local French commander of forces of the Allied intervention (in the face of fierce protests from General A. I. Denikin) as governor-general of Odessa and commander of Russian forces in the Odessa region.

When the Allies evacuated Odessa in April 1919, von Shvartz went with them, spending time in Constantinople and then Italy before settling near Genoa and later in Paris. In April 1923, he moved to Buenos Aires to take up a post (as a civilian) as professor of fortifications with the staff academies of the Argentine Army (the Escuela Superior le Guerra and the Curso Superior del Collego Militar), remaining there for the rest of his working life. One of his students was Juan Domingo Peron. He is buried in the Recoleta cemetery in Buenos Aires. Von Shvartz was the author of numerous technical works and memoirs on the subject of military engineering.

SIBBIURO. The Siberian Bureau (Sibirskoe biuro) of the Central Committee of the Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks) was created, on 17 December 1918, to coordinate the restoration of Soviet power in Siberia, following its collapse during the Democratic Counter-Revolution and the rise to power in the east of the Whites. Its members included S. E. Chutskaev, J. K. Daniševskis, F. I. Goloshchekin, V. N. Iakovleva, E. M. Iaroslavskii, V. M. Kosarev, A. A. Maslennikov, A. Ia. Neibut, B. Z. Shumiatskii, V. N. Sokolov, A. P. Sunde, F. I. Sukhoverkhov, and other Bolsheviks who were active with Red forces on the Eastern Front, or who had experience of underground and partisan work in the White rear. The Sibbiuro sought to establish links with partisan forces in Siberia (notably those of the Taseevo Partisan Republic), channeling weapons and money to them. In January 1919, Northern (Viatka) and Southern (Ufa) departments of the Sibbiuro came into being, while in March 1919, its work was temporarily transferred to an underground Bolshevik regional committee at Omsk.

The Sibbiuro was reactivated in August 1919, as the Red Army drove A. V. Kolchak’s Russian Army back across Siberia. On 3 March 1920, a Far Eastern Bureau (Dal′biuro) was established within it, to coordinate party activities in the Far Eastern Republic, while on 8 April 1920, the Sibbiuro (which by then was based at Novonikolaevsk) was named the highest party organ in Siberia, responsible for guiding all political and economic work across eight gubernii: Altai, Eniseisk, Irkutsk, Novonikolaevsk, Omsk, Semipalatinsk, Tomsk, and Iakutsk. In May 1924, at the First Siberian regional conference of the RKP(b), the Sibbiuro was replaced by the Siberian Regional Committee of the RKP(b).