Historical Dictionary of the Russian Civil Wars, 1916-1926

SLAVO-BRITISH LEGION. This anti-Bolshevik formation (sometimes refered to as the Slavo-Brittanic Legion), which at its peak mustered 4,000 men, was recruited (from the summer of 1918 onward) from mainly Russian volunteers around Arkhangel′sk in North Russia, but operated under the command of British officers and mainly British NCOs and boasted British-style uniforms and ranks and insignia. Initially attracting officers and men who were distrustful of the socialist-dominated Supreme Administration of the Northern Region (or who were distrusted by it), the legion was regarded as a disciplined and trustworthy unit, and the Allied commander in the region, General W. E. Ironside, came to view it as the potential backbone of a fully functioning new Russian army to lead the struggle against the Soviet regime. However, in the early hours of 7 July 1919, soon after the legion had been deployed at Kucherika, close to the front line on the Dvina River, it mutinied, and five British and four Russian officers were killed. The mutineers came from the 1st and 4th North Russian Regiments of the legion. Their action was suppressed by nearby units of the Royal Fusiliers, but at least 150 of the men fled the scene and deserted to the Reds. Eleven mutineers were captured, tried, and publicly executed. The legion was subsequently disarmed and redeployed as a labor force. A smaller force of a similar nature (the Anglo-Russian Brigade) was recruited by the British Military Mission in Siberia in early 1919.

Sleževičius, Mykolas(21 February 1882–11 November 1939). Born at Dremliai, near Raseiniai, and of Lithuanian noble extraction, Mykolas Sleževičius was a noted lawyer and journalist who twice served as his emergent country’s prime minister during the Lithuanian Wars of Independence. A graduate of the Law Faculty of Novorossiisk (Odessa) University (1907), he was an activist with the Lithuanian Democratic Party and editor of its newspapers Lietuvos ūkininkas (“Lithuanian Farmer,” 1907–1912) and Lietuvos Žinios (“Lithuanian News,” 1910–1912), which advocated Lithuanian autonomy. With Lithuania under German occupation from 1915, Sleževičius spent the First World War in Russia. Following the collapse of tsarism in 1917, he agitated strongly for immediate Lithuanian independence from Russia, which earned him expulsion from the Lithuanian Democratic Party, but remained as vice chairman and later chairman of the Supreme Council of Lithuania in Russia.

In 1918, Sleževičius was briefly imprisoned at Voronezh by the Bolsheviks. Upon his release, he returned to Lithuania, where he served as prime minister from 26 December 1918 to 12 March 1919, and again from 12 April to 7 October 1919. In this capacity (and in opposition to those, such as Augustinas Voldemaras, who favored irregular national militias), he helped organize the Lithuanian Army for resistance against both Polish and Soviet incursions, as well as drafting the country’s first land reform. In 1920, as the Polish–Lithuanian War erupted, he was appointed head of the Lithuanian Defense Committee.

As a representative of the Lithuanian Peasant Popular Union, Sleževičius was again elected prime minister on 15 July 1926, but was deposed in the coup d’état that brought to power Antanas Smetona and Augustinas Voldemaras. Thereafter, Sleževičius’s political activities were constrained, but he remained active as chairman of the Lithuanian Society of Lawyers. He died and is buried in Kaunas.

SLUTSK DEFENSE. This term, sometimes rendered as the “Slutsk defensive action,” denotes the failed attempt, in November 1920, to establish an independent and democratic Belorussian state around the town of Slutsk, 65 miles south of Minsk. Demarcation lines agreed to in the armistice signed by Soviet and Polish delegations at Riga on 12 October 1920, which brought an end to the fighting in the Soviet–Polish War, left Slutsk temporarily in a neutral zone, but it was tacitly understood by all parties that the region was destined to be assigned as Soviet territory. In response, local supporters of the Belarussian National Republic (BNR), led by Pavel Zhauryd, summoned a regional congress at Slutsk, on 14 November 1920. Its 107 delegates passed votes in favor of the BNR and determined to resist, by force of arms, any attempt by the Red Army to occupy Sluchyna (the Slutsk district). The latter task was placed in the hands of a 17-member Rada of Sluchyna, chaired by Uladzimyr Prakulevich, who selected Zhauryd as head of the militia.