Historical Dictionary of the Russian Civil Wars, 1916-1926

Stavropol′ Soviet Republic. Formed on 1 January 1918, as a constituent territory of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic, this short-lived polity claimed governance over the former Stavropol′ guberniia of the Russian Empire and was centered on the city of Stavropol′. It was governed by a Central Executive Committee and a Sovnarkom (under A. A. Ponomarev) that instituted a program of Sovietization of the region, nationalizing large industries, confiscating large landholdings, and so forth, and created its own military formations (the 1st Red Army Battalion and the 1st Stavropol′ Regiment of the Peasants’ Revolutionary Army). However, it faced considerable opposition from other political forces at Stavropol′, notably the local organization of the Party of Socialists-Revolutionaries, which managed briefly to arrest Ponomarev and other leaders of the republic on 28 April 1918. An Extraordinary Stavropol′ guberniia Congress of Soviets (of 9–14 May 1918) then voted to replace the Sovnarkom with a presidium (led by the Bolshevik I. Deineko), but anti-Soviet risings could not be quelled. Following a major rising of peasants at Sviato-Krestovsk in June 1918, the republic’s leadership decided to pool its resources with other Soviet formations in the region, and at the First Congress of Soviets of the North Caucasus (Ekaterinodar, 5–7 July 1918), the Stavropol′ Soviet Republic merged with the Kuban–Black Sea Soviet Republic and the Terek Soviet Republic to form the North Caucasus Soviet Republic.

Štefánik, Milan Rastislav (21 July 1880–4 May 1919). General (French Army, 1916). The Slovak statesman and scientist Milan Štefánik played a significant part in the early stages of the “Russian” Civil Wars, as a leading member of the Czechoslovak National Council. He was born at Kosaras, in Hungary (now Košariská in western Slovakia), into the family of a Lutheran priest, and studied at the Charles University in Prague, graduating in 1904 with a PhD in astronomy. At university, he had become acquainted with Tomáš Masaryk and was convinced of the need for a joint Czech and Slovak struggle against their Austro-Hungarian oppressors. He subsequently found employment at the prestigious Observatoire de Paris-Meudon in France, and over the following years participated in and led astronomical expeditions across the world (to North Africa, Russia, Central Asia, the Americas, and Oceania). His scientific findings in astrophysics and solar physics won him world renown before the First World War, but he was also cultivating political friendships and campaigning for the cause of “Czecho-Slovak” independence. He became a French citizen in 1912, and in 1914 was made a Grand Officier of the Legion of Honor. He volunteered for the French Army in 1914, and in May 1915 was sent to Serbia as a pilot. He returned to Paris at the end of the year and, with Masaryk and Edvard Beneš, founded the Czechoslovak National Council, becoming its vice chairman in 1917. In that capacity, he traveled to Russia in 1917, to help organize the Czechoslovak Legion and to bring it under Czechoslovak control.

After further travels in France and Italy to organize Czechoslovak forces and to the United States to propagandize for the cause, Štefánik traveled to Siberia in May 1918, with the aim of having the legion form the basis of a new Eastern Front, following Soviet Russia’s withdrawal from the war through the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk (3 March 1918). He had some success in December 1918, persuading some units that had withdrawn from the Urals Front to fight on, but he had long since concluded that the legion would and could not fight much longer, and he returned to Europe in early 1919 to campaign among Allied leaders for its immediate repatriation. By this time (since 14 October 1918), he was minister of defense in the newly independent Czechoslovakia, struggling to maximize Slovak autonomy within the new state, but had clashed repeatedly with Beneš and other Czechs over that issue and over foreign policy.