Historical Dictionary of the Russian Civil Wars, 1916-1926

SISSON DOCUMENTS. This term denotes the collection of 68 documents obtained in Petrograd in early 1918 by Edgar Sisson, a representative of the U.S. Committee on Public Information (the Creel Committee). The documents purported to show that V. I. Lenin and other leading Bolsheviks were in the pay of the German General Staff, which hoped that its revolutionary agents would cause the collapse of Russia and thereby force that country’s withdrawal from the First World War. The content of the documents was released to the press on 16 September 1918, and a collection of them was published (in an edition of 137,000, with testimonies as to their veracity by American historians and experts on Russia ) by the Creel Committee as The German–Bolshevik Conspiracy (Washington, DC, 1918). It has since been convincingly demonstrated (notably by George F. Kennan, in the Journal of Modern History in 1956) that the documents were forgeries, but at the time they served as a justification for the Allied intervention in Russia.

SIVERS, RUDOL′F FERDINANDOVICH (11 November 1892–8 December 1918). The Soviet military commander R. F. Sivers, one of the most active and effective leaders of the nascent Red Army during the early stages of the civil wars, was born at St. Petersburg, into the family of an office worker of German heritage. He served in the First World War as an ensign and joined the Bolsheviks in 1917, working with the Military Organization of the RSDLP(b) and helping to edit the soldiers’ newspaper Okopnaia pravda (“Trench Truth”). He was arrested by the Provisional Government following the July Days, but released in October 1917, and during the October Revolution he commanded a unit of Red Guards in the suppression of the Kerensky–Krasnov uprising.

In November 1917, Sivers was sent, with his men, to Ukraine, where he helped establish Soviet power in the Donbass. On 23 February 1918, the “Socialist Army” commanded by Sivers, in one of the early railway wars, captured Rostov-on-Don and then went on to seize Taganrog from anti-Soviet forces of the Don Cossack Host and the Volunteer Army. In all these operations, it is alleged, Sivers condoned widescale atrocities against the enemy and against civilians (especially priests). From March to 10 April 1918, he commanded the 5th Red Army in battles against forces of the Austro-German intervention in Ukraine; and in the summer of 1918, he led the Special Brigade (from September 1918, the 1st Special Ukrainian Brigade) of the 9th Red Army on the Southern Front in battles against the Don Cossack forces of General P. N. Krasnov.

Sivers was fatally injured during a battle near the village of Zhelnovka (near Kazan′) and later died at Moscow. He was buried in Petrograd on the Field of Mars. A street in Taganrog (now P. E. Osipenko Street) was renamed in his honor, and in Rostov-on-Don another major boulevard still retains his name.

16TH RED ARMY. This Red military formation was created according to an order of the Revvoensovet of the Republic of 15 November 1918, from forces that had been part of the Western Screens (and were sometimes thereafter referred to as the Western Army). From 19 March 1919, it was attached to the Western Front, and from 13 March to 9 June 1919, it was renamed the Lithuanian–Belorussian Army. In October 1920, all forces of the former 4th Red Army were included in the 16th Red Army; in December 1920, all former forces of the 3rd Red Army were incorporated into it. Its complement included the 2nd Rifle Division (June–August and October 1920 and December 1920–May 1921); the 2nd Border Division (June–July 1919); the 4th (October 1920–May 1921); 5th (December 1920–May 1921), 6th (December 1920–March 1921), 8th (January 1919–May 1921), 10th (March–September 1920 and October 1920–January 1921), 16th (October 1920 and November 1920–May 1921), 17th (June–September 1919, October 1919–October 1920, and October 1920–May 1921), 21st (May–June 1920), 27th (July–August 1920, October 1920, and December 1920–March 1921), 29th (March–May 1920), 48th (August–December 1920), 52nd (November 1918–November 1919), 56th (September 1920), and 57th (March–May and October–November 1920) Rifle Divisions; the Latvian Riflemen (September 1920); the Lithuanian Rifle Division (November 1918–April 1919); the Independent VOKhR Rifle Division (April–October 1920); and the 10th Kuban Cavalry Division (November–December 1920).