Historical Dictionary of the Russian Civil Wars, 1916-1926

Struve played only a secondary role in politics during 1917, as director of the Economic Department of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Provisional Government, but following the October Revolution, he became a vocal opponent of the Soviet regime and an advocate of armed struggle against it and moved immediately to South Russia to join the political administration of the Volunteer Army. When Red forces drove the Volunteers out of the Don territory and onto the First Kuban (Ice) March, however, he returned to Moscow to live underground. In 1918, he contributed to the sequel to Vekhi, Iz glubiny (“From the Depths”) and joined one of the most influential anti-Bolshevik underground organizations, the Right Center, before (having tried and failed to find a safe route to Arkhangel′sk) fleeing to Finland in December 1918, both to escape arrest and to offer political advice to General N. N. Iudenich. There, from January 1919, he was a member of the Kadet-monarchist Political Conference, based at Helsinki. In 1919, he moved to Paris and was connected to the Russian Political Conference, before returning to South Russia to edit the mouthpiece of the White regime of General A. I. Denikin, the newspaper Velikaia Rossiia (“Great Russia”), and to work with the White intelligence service, Osvag. Together with A. V. Krivovshein, Struve was one of the closest political advisors of General P. N. Wrangel, and from April to November 1920, was director of foreign affairs of the South Russian Government. He was evacuated, with the rest of the Wrangel regime, to Turkey in November 1920, and moved from there to Bulgaria (1921), Czechoslovakia (1922–1923), and Berlin (1923–1926), before finally settling in Paris, as an influential and busy teacher, publicist, and writer. In emigration, Struve edited the newspapers Ruuskaia mysl′ (“Russian Thought”) and Vozrozhdenie (“Regeneration”) and remained a staunch opponent of the Soviet government, but during the Second World War, he excoriated collaborators with the Nazis. Struve was the author of some 660 published works.

Stučka, Pēteris (Stuchka, Petr Ivanovich) (26 July 1865–25 January 1932). The prolific writer and prominent Soviet jurist Pēteris Stučka was also head of the Bolshevik regime in Latvia during the Latvian War of Independence. Of Latvian peasant stock, he was born at Kokenhausen (Koknese), in Livland guberniia. After graduating from the Law Faculty of St. Petersburg University (1888), he worked as an assistant advocate in Riga and was editor of the progressive newspaper Dienas Lapa (“The Daily News”). He was exiled for five years in the 1890s for his political activities, before returning to Riga to found what was to become the Latvian branch of the Russian Social-Democratic Labor Party in 1904, aligning himself with the Bolsheviks. In 1917, he became a member of the Petersburg Committee of the Russian Social-Democratic Labor Party (Bolsheviks) and worked on the editorial board of the party newspaper, Pravda (“The Truth”).

Following the October Revolution, Stučka worked in the People’s Commissariat for Justice (and served as commissar for justice from 18 March to 22 August 1918), drafting numerous Soviet laws, including that of 10 November 1917 abolishing the civil ranks of the imperial era, and in July 1918 prepared the draft instruction on revolutionary tribunals. He returned to Latvia at the end of that year, as chairman of the Sovnarkom of the newly proclaimed Latvian Socialist Soviet Republic (4 December 1918–22 May 1919) and chairman of its central executive committee (6 March 1919–13 January 1920), operating latterly from Latgale in opposition to the nationalist government in Riga and the Baltic Landeswehr. With the establishment of the independent, nationalist Latvian Republic, he moved to Moscow to become deputy people’s commissar for justice. He also worked in various other Soviet institutions, including the Communist Academy, and from 1923 until his death was chairman of the Supreme Court of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic. Stučka was buried in the Kremlin Wall Necropolis. After his death, numerous places and institutions (including, from 1958 to 1990, the Latvian State University) were renamed in his honor.