Historical Dictionary of the Russian Civil Wars, 1916-1926

SVECHNIKOV, MIKHAIL STEPANOVICH (18 September 1881/2–26 August 1938). Colonel (1917), kombrig (5 December 1935). One of the few senior tsarist officers to join the Bolsheviks prior to October 1917, M. S. Svechnikov was born at the stanitsa of Ust′-Medveditskaia (now Serafimovich), in the Don territory, the son of an officer of the Don Cossack Host. He was a graduate of the Mikhail Artillery School (1901) and the Academy of the General Staff (1911), saw action in the Russian Expedition to China in 1900–1901 and in the Russo–Japanese War, and in the First World War rose to chief of staff of the 106th Rifle Division (from 3 January 1917).

Having joined the Russian Social-Democratic Labor Party (Bolsheviks) in May 1917, Svechnikov remained in the army following the October Revolution, and on 7 December 1917, was elected to the command of the 106th Infantry Division (which was then stationed in Finland) by its soldiers’ committee. In January 1918, he was assigned by the Bolshevik leadership to the post of assistant commander of the Red Guards in Finland and played a prominent role in the Finnish Civil War, as commander of Red forces in the west of the country. From May 1918, he was involved with the formation of Red Army units in Petrograd and from August that year was commander of the 1st Petrograd Rifle Division. From 8 December 1918 to 19 March 1919, he was commander of the Caspian–Caucasian Front, before serving as chief of staff of the Kazan′ Fortified Region (from March 1919) and commandant of the Kursk Fortified Region (from July 1919). In October–November 1919, he played an important part in turning the advance of the Armed Forces of South Russia, as commander of the Independent Rifle Division of the 13th Red Army during the Orel–Kursk Operation. He was then made assistant commandant of the Tula Fortified Region (December 1919) and was subsequently chief of staff of the Petrograd Fortified Region. As the civil wars wound down, he was attached for special assignments to the Field Staff of the Revvoensovet of the Republic and then to the chief of staff of Vseroglavshtab, the All-Russian Main Staff. From March 1920, he served as military chief (voenkom) of the Don (and from 6 July 1920, the Kuban–Black Sea) Regional Commissariat. From September 1920, he was chief of staff of the People’s Commissariat for Military Affairs of the Azerbaijan Soviet Socialist Republic and then served as a military attaché to Persia before, on 1 March 1923, being placed on the reserve list and being assigned to military-educational work.

Svechnikov was the author of numerous historical works on the First World War and the “Russian” Civil Wars, and from 1934, he was head of the Department of the History of the Art of War at the Red Military Academy. He was arrested on 31 December 1937, and on 26 August 1938 was found guilty of espionage and sentenced to death by the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the USSR. The sentence was carried out that same day. Svechnikov was posthumously rehabilitated on 8 December 1956.

SVERDLOV, IAKOV MIKHAILOVICH (22 May 1885–16 March 1919). The Soviet politician Ia. M. Sverdlov (real name Jeshua-Solomon Movshevich) was born at Nizhnii Novgorod, the son of a Jewish engraver. After five years at the local Gymnasium, he began studying to be a chemist, but he joined the Russian Social-Democratic Labor Party in 1901 and transformed himself into the archetypal “professional revolutionary.” Following the party schism of 1903, he immediately sided with the Bolsheviks and became an effective traveling activist. However, he was arrested on six occasions between December 1901 and November 1910, and spent almost his entire adult life prior to the revolution of 1917 in prison, in exile, or on the run. That did not prevent him from being co-opted onto the first Central Committee of the Russian Social-Democratic Labor Party (Bolsheviks) on 17 January 1912 (and he remained a member of that body until his death). From January 1912 to February 1913, he was also a member of the party’s Russian Committee and was an editor of the party newspaper, Pravda (“The Truth”). From 1914 to 1916, he was in Siberian exile at Turukhansk with J. V. Stalin, for whom he developed a strong dislike.