Historical Dictionary of the Russian Civil Wars, 1916-1926

Skipetrov, Leonid Nikolaevich (23 March 1883–22 August 1956). Major general (6 September 1918). A close collaborator of Ataman G. M. Semenov, the White commander L. N. Skipetrov was of noble background (he was the son of a court counselor) and was a graduate of the Vil′na Military School (1904). He served in the Russo–Japanese War and during the First World War rose to the command of the Irkutsk Military District. In December 1917, he led the rising against Soviet power at Irkutsk that was staged by officer cadets, and subsequently (from 1 September 1918) served as chief of staff of Semenov’s Special Manchurian Detachment. From December 1918, he was jointly inspector of infantry in the Independent East Siberian Army (as Semenov’s force was redubbed following its formal incorporation into the Russian Army of Admiral A. V. Kolchak) and commander of the 1st Military District of Transbaikal oblast′; on 16 June 1919, he was named as Semenov’s deputy as ataman of the Transbaikal Cossack Host.

Skipetrov is most remembered for leading an expeditionary force of Semenov’s troops against the revolutionary forces of the Political Center at Irkutsk in December 1919. In the aftermath of the failure of that expedition, his force was attacked by units of the Czechoslovak Legion at Baikal Station (9 January 1920), and Skipetrov was taken prisoner (the Czechoslovaks feared that Semenov’s forces were about to destroy the 40 tunnels carrying the Trans-Siberian Railway around the southern shore of Lake Baikal, thereby blocking their escape route from Siberia). He subsequently traveled to Europe with the legion and, in emigration, lived in Poland and later the United States, where he convened the Southern California Union of Russian War Veterans. He died and is buried in Los Angeles.

SKLIANSKII, EFRAIM MARKOVICH (31 July 1892–27 August 1925). A central figure in the Red Army command structure during the civil-war period, the most trusted deputy and supporter of L. D. Trotsky (who lauded him as “the Carnot of the Russian Revolution”), E. M. Sklianskii was born into a middle-class family at Fastov, Kiev guberniia; was raised at Zhitomir; and was a graduate of the Medical Faculty of Kiev University (1916). He joined the Russian Social-Democratic Labor Party (Bolsheviks) in 1913 and worked as a propagandist for the organization’s Kiev city committee. Immediately after graduation in 1916, he was called up by the army. He served initially as a soldier in a reserve regiment and subsequently as a doctor in the 149th Black Sea Infantry Regiment. Following the February Revolution, he was elected to the soldiers’ committee of the 19th Army Corps (March 1917) and then became chairman of the soldiers’ committee of the 5th Army (May 1917). As a member of the Dvinsk Committee of the RSDLP(b), he was a delegate to the Second All-Russian Congress of Soviets (October 1917), serving on its presidium. He also participated actively in the October Revolution, as a member of the Military-Revolutionary Committee of the Petrograd Soviet.

Sklianskii subsequently served as a commissar at the stavka of the supreme commander at Mogilev and (from 23 November 1917) was a member of the collegium of the People’s Commissariat for Military Affairs. At the same time (from 22 December 1917), he was deputy people’s commissar for military affairs. In this period, he had special responsibility for overseeing the orderly demobilization of the old army. From 19 March 1918, he was a member (and then deputy chairman) of the Supreme Military Council of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic, and from 22 October 1918 to 11 March 1924, was deputy chairman of the Revvoensovet of the Republic. He was also a member of the Council of Workers’ and Peasants’ Defense, and from 1920 to 1921, was a member of the Council of Labor and Defense.