Historical Dictionary of the Russian Civil Wars, 1916-1926

The SEC was reconvened on 19 June 1919, with a slightly broader and more democratic membership and with a more clearly defined constitution and remit, including the right to review and comment upon (but not veto) all government legislation. From late August, however, when the SEC demanded still wider powers from the supreme ruler and was rebuffed, it again ceased to function. It was reconvened at Irkutsk, on 8 December 1919, following the Kolchak regime’s relocation to that city, but government ministers walked out when some delegates demanded that the regime make peace with the Bolsheviks, and thereafter the conference ceased to operate.

State Guard (of the ARMED FORCES OF SOUTH RUSSIA). This force was created on the orders of the White leader General A. I. Denikin, on 25 March 1919, to fulfill military-police functions on the territory occupied by the Armed Forces of South Russia (AFSR). It included provincial, city, and district subsections, as well as special railway, port, and river detachments, and was jointly controlled by the guard command and the local civilian authorities. The former were also answerable to the chief of the Directorate of Internal Affairs of the Special Council of the commander in chief of the AFSR. Among its most powerful units were the Black Sea (1,920 men), Stavropol′ (3,342 men), and Ekaterinoslav provincial brigades.

In command of the State Guard of the AFSR (from 19 September 1919) was General N. N. Martos. Its chief of staff was General D. N. Parkhomov (from 6 November 1919).

STATE UNITY COUNCIL OF RUSSIA. This anti-Bolshevik organization was ostensibly a multiparty coalition (like the Union for the Regeneration of Russia, the National Center, and others), but it was dominated by right-wing Kadets and other Rightist elements and never succeeded in attracting support from the Left. Nevertheless, the Council’s 45 members claimed to represent the State Duma and the State Council of the imperial regime, as well as city dumas, the zemstvos, trade and industry organizations, the Russian Orthodox Church, academic organizations, and so forth. Chairman of the organization, and head of its nine-man Central Bureau, was the landowner Baron V. V. Meller-Zakomel′skii, but among its leading members were such prominent liberal figures as P. N. Miliukov, A. V. Krivovshein, and N. S. Tret′iakov.

The State Unity Council was created at Kiev in late October 1918, chiefly by those (like Miliukov and Krivoshein) who (paradoxically, given the council’s title) held that, for the sake of Russia’s “unity,” even collaboration with Germany and Ukrainian nationalists could be condoned, if that would hasten the collapse of the Bolsheviks. However, the following month the group sent a delegation (led by Meller-Zakomel′skii, Miliukov, and Krivoshein) to the Jassy Conference, and from December 1918 (as the socialist Directory of the Ukrainian National Republic captured Kiev), it was centered at Odessa. There (in light of the collapse of the Central Powers), it sought, unsuccessfully, to influence the direction and purposes of Allied intervention. The organization collapsed in the wake of the withdrawal of French and Greek forces from Odessa in April 1919.