Historical Dictionary of the Russian Civil Wars, 1916-1926

During the counteroffensive of the Red Army, many units of Sukin’s 6th Urals Corps were smashed. Consequently, the corps was disbanded, and on 1 June 1919, Sukin was attached to the Staff of the Supreme Ruler. On 30 August 1919, he was placed on the reserve list, but became an active commander again during the Great Siberian (Ice) March, leading the northern column of the 2nd Army during the retreat into Transbaikalia. During the summer of 1920, he served briefly under Ataman G. M. Semenov as chief of staff of the Main Commander of Forces in the Russian Eastern Region, then emigrated. He lived in China until 1933, when, together with his brother, Major General A. T. Sukin, he returned to the USSR and found work in military schools, latterly at Alma-Ata (formerly Vernyi, now Almaty). He was arrested on 23 April 1937, on 26 November that year was found guilty of espionage, and was subsequently executed. He was posthumously rehabilitated on 30 December 1989, by order of the Military Procurator of the Turkestan Military District.

SUL′KEVICH, mohammed SULEIMANOVICH (Sulkiewicz, Süleyman; Sul′kevich, matvei/masei aleksandrovich) (20 December 1864/20 July 1865–15 July 1920). Major general (1910), lieutenant general (26 April 1915). The head of a pro-German regime in Crimea in 1918, M. S. Sul′kevich was of Polish-Lithuanian Tatar stock. He was born at Kemeshi, near Minsk, and was a graduate of the Voronezh Cadet Corps, the Mikhail Artillery School, and the Academy of the General Staff (1894). He participated in the Russian Expeditionary Force in China in 1900–1901 and saw action in the Russo–Japanese War. During the First World War, he served as quartermaster general of the Irkutsk Military District (1914–1915), then took up a variety of command posts. In 1917, he was put in charge of the formation of a Muslim Mounted Corps that was the initiative of General L. G. Kornilov. In the wake of the Kornilov affair, on 20 September 1917 he was placed on the reserve list, but returned to his work with the Muslim Corps on 7 October 1917.

Following the October Revolution, Sul′kevich left his command and is thought to have then worked for the German authorities on the Romanian Front. In late May 1918, possibly on the invitation of General Hermann von Eichhorn, he made his way to Crimea, where, following the overthrow by Crimean Tatar nationalists of the Bolsheviks’ Tauride Soviet Socialist Republic, with the assistance of the invading German forces he established the Crimean Regional Government. In that regime, he served jointly as chairman of the Council of Ministers, minister of internal affairs, and minister of war (from 25 June 1918). In those roles, he displayed distinct Germanophile tendencies (e.g., seeking to have the kaiser declare a protectorate over an independent Crimea), which angered many Russians within and around his regime, while his determination to meet the grain requisitions demanded by the occupying Germans alienated Tatar peasants. As a separatist and a collaborator with the Germans, he had also earned the enmity of the leader of the Volunteer Army, General M. V. Alekseev.

Thus, Sul′kevich was forced out of office following the armistice of 11 November 1918; as Allied vessels arrived in the Crimean ports, he handed over authority to the regime of S. S. Krym on 18 November 1918. Sul′kevich then moved to the Armenian Democratic Republic, where he joined Musavat, and in March 1919, became chief of staff of the country’s army. In May 1920, as the 11th Red Army invaded Armenia, he was arrested. Sul′kevich was executed at Baku some two months later.

Sultan-Galiev, Mirsaid.See Soltanğäliev, Mirsäyet Xäydärğäli ulı (Sultan-Galiev, Mirsaid).

Sultan-Kilich (KELECH-Shakhanovich)-Girei (1880–17 January 1947). Colonel (12 May 1916), major general (1918). One of the leaders of the national movement of the mountain peoples of the North Caucasus, both during the revolutionary era and in emigration, Prince Sultan-Kilich-Gerei was educated at the Cavalry Officers School at Ekaterinoslav before entering the 12th Belgorod Uhlan Regiment. During the First World War, he served as an officer in the Cherkess Mounted Regiment of the “Native Division” of the Russian Army, and in 1917 was briefly arrested as a suspected participant in the Kornilov affair. After his release, he made his way to the Kuban.