Historical Dictionary of the Russian Civil Wars, 1916-1926

At this time, as the Soviet state sought to attract national movements to its cause, Soltanğäliev’s brand of national Communism was tolerated, even when he began to argue that the key to the development of the world revolution was not the proletarians of the West but the colonial peoples of the East. By 1922, he was going even further, however, arguing that in order to avoid a return to Russian imperialism within the Soviet state, the oppressed peoples of the East should be given power over the Russians, and that Muslim nations should have Muslim leaders. This was too much for the increasingly Stalin-dominated regime in Moscow, and in April 1923, Soltanğäliev was arrested. He was accused of treason, pan-Turkism, and conspiracy with the Basmachi and was expelled from the party and imprisoned, but later released. In 1928, he was arrested again, and along with 76 others, was charged with membership in a “Soltanğälievist counterrevolutionary organization” and of being a proponent of pan-Turkism. He was found guilty and sentenced to death, but the sentence was commuted in 1931, and he was imprisoned on the Solovetskii Islands in the White Sea. Although he was released in 1934 and permitted to move to Saratov, he was rearrested in early 1937. On 8 December 1939, he was sentenced to death again and was subsequently shot at Lefortovo prison in Moscow. Soltanğäliev was posthumously rehabilitated on 30 April 1990.

SOOTS, JAAN (29 February 1880–6 February 1942). Major general (Estonian Army, 1919). Famous as one of his country’s foremost military commanders during the Estonian War of Independence, Jaan Soots was born at Helme, in Estland guberniia (now Valga county in southern Estonia). Following a failed attempt to train as a teacher at Riga, he committed himself to a military career and graduated from the Vil′na Military Academy (1904) and the Academy of the General Staff (1913). He saw action with the Russian Army during the Russo–Japanese War and the First World War and was one of the organizers of the Estonian Division of the Russian Army in 1917. After Estonia’s declaration of independence, he became chief of the Operational Staff of the Estonian Army (from 23 February 1918), and from February 1919 was chief of staff. After appending his signature to the Soviet–Estonian Treaty of Tartu (2 February 1920), he retired from the army, but he subsequently served two terms as minister of war of the Estonian Republic (25 January 1921–2 August 1923 and 16 December 1924–4 March 1927) and was also mayor of Tallinn (1934–1939). Soots was arrested following the Soviet invasion of Estonia in June 1940, and was subsequently executed in a prison camp at Usol′e, near Perm′.

Sorokin, Ivan Lukich (4 December 1884–1 November 1918).Esaul (1917). A Red commander who is alleged to have deliberately betrayed the Soviet regime, I. L. Sorokin was born into a family of the Kuban Cossack Host at the village of Petropavlovsk, in the Labinsk district of the Kuban oblast′, and was a graduate of the Tiflis Military Medical School (1916). He participated in the First World War in the 1st Labinsk Regiment (1914–1915) and the 3rd Line Regiment (1916–1917) on the Caucasus Front, working as a Feldscher.

Having been active in the left wing of the Party of Socialists-Revolutionaries from April 1917, in early 1918 Sorokin helped organize a partisan detachment of Red Cossacks in the Kuban and participated in battles with the Volunteer Army in his home district. In February 1918, he was named assistant commander of the South-East Revolutionary Army. During the First Kuban (Ice) March (22 February–30 April 1918) he was, in effect, in command of all Red forces opposing the Whites in the Kuban, and it was his forces that drove those of General V. L. Pokrovskii out of Ekaterinodar and thereafter defended the city against repeated White assaults (9–13 April 1918). Later in April 1918, he was made assistant to the main commander of the Red Army of the North Caucasus. He subsequently became temporary commander of that force (from 3 August 1918), and on 3 October 1918, was made acting commander of the 11th Red Army. In that last capacity, he unleashed a regime of terror in the area under his control, according to Soviet historians, as a deliberate ploy to disorganize the Soviet regime in the North Caucasus, to aid the Whites.