Historical Dictionary of the Russian Civil Wars, 1916-1926

A longtime associate of V. I. Lenin (he had been active as part of the latter’s network around the newspaper Iskra from as early as 1901), during the October Revolution Skrypnyk was a member of the Military-Revolutionary Committee of the Petrograd Soviet, and in 1918, he was appointed chairman of the Sovnarkom of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic (3 March–17 November 1918), as well as its people’s commissar for foreign affairs (8 March–18 April 1918), having served earlier as secretary for labor and industry in the People’s Secretariat of the Ukrainian People’s Republic of Soviets (March–April 1918). However, following his association at a party conference at Taganrog in April 1918 with the “Kiev group” of Ukrainian Bolsheviks (who favored a separate Ukrainian Communist Party), rather than the “Ekaterinoslav group” (who wanted to merge fully with the Russian party), his prominence waned somewhat, and in 1919–1920, in the Ukrainian governments of Cristian Rakovski, he headed commissariats of only secondary importance, although he was also serving in the All-Russian Cheka, as a member of its collegium and head of its Secret Political Department (1918–1919).

In the 1920s, Skrypnyk’s star rose again, as he became people’s commissar for internal affairs (19 July 1921–February 1922) and procurator general (1922–April 1927) of the Ukrainian SSR. In the debates surrounding the Treaty on the Formation of the USSR, as a defender of the autonomy of the Soviet republics, he clashed with J. V. Stalin and subsequently became the foremost advocate of the policy of the Ukrainization of the political and cultural life of his own republic. As Ukrainian people’s commissar for education and both a member of the presidium of the All-Union VTsIK and chairman of its Council of Nationalities (1927–1933), he had huge influence and even worked to spread Ukrainization beyond the republic’s borders to areas of compact Ukrainian settlement in the Kuban, Kazakhstan, Siberia, and the Far East. His ubiquity in the cultural life of Ukraine was sealed when, in 1928, he ratified a new orthography of the Ukrainian language that subsequently became known as the skrypnykivka.

Skrypnyk was removed from power in 1933, when the policy of Ukrainization was abruptly reversed by Stalin, but refused to recant his “nationalist wrecking” in sufficiently abject terms and was accused of “counterrevolutionary activity.” Rather than face trial, he committed suicide in his office at Khar′kov on 7 July 1933. He was posthumously rehabilitated in January 1962.

Skujenieks, Marģers (10 June 1886–1941). The Latvian nationalist politician Marg¸ers Skujenieks was born in Riga. He was the son of the author Eduard Skujenieks (more commonly known under the pseudonym Edward Vensku). He studied at a local Realschule and at Jelgava (Mitau), and in 1911 graduated from Moscow University, becoming a statistician. He was active in left-wing politics from 1905 and in the nationalist movement from 1911, and he was consequently expelled from Latvia by the authorities. In January 1918, he was a member of the Democratic Bloc that drew up Latvia’s first declaration of independence, and he participated also in the meeting of Tautas Padome that restated the declaration of independence on 18 November 1918. In 1919, he was one of the leaders of the Latvian delegation to the Paris Peace Conference.

Skujenieks subsequently served as a member of the Latvian parliament and was twice prime minister of Latvia (19 December 1926–23 January 1928 and 6 December 1931–23 March 1933). He was arrested in June 1940, following the Soviet invasion of Latvia, and deported to the USSR, where he was subsequently shot.

SlashchOv (SlashchEv) (-KRYMSKII), Iakov Aleksandrovich (29 December 1885–11 January 1929). Colonel (November 1916), major general (14 May 1919), lieutenant general (25 March 1920). The eccentric and controversial White commander, known as the “Savior of the Crimea,” Ia. A. Slashchov, was born in St. Petersburg into a military family and was a graduate of the Pavlovsk Military School (1905) and the Academy of the General Staff (1911). He taught military tactics at the Corps of Pages (from March 1912), and during the First World War (during which he was wounded on five occasions), he commanded a company and later a battalion of the Finnish Life Guards Regiment (January 1915–July 1917), then became commander of the Moscow Life Guards Regiment (14 July–1 December 1917).