Historical Dictionary of the Russian Civil Wars, 1916-1926

On 27 November 1917, Svinhufvud was elected as chairman of the Finnish senate, and in that capacity, steered his country to independence the following month, having gained the recognition of V. I. Lenin on a mission to Petrograd. At the outbreak of the Finnish Civil War, he went into hiding in Helsinki, before escaping (via Berlin and Stockholm) to the political base of the Finnish Whites at Vaasa. There, he resumed his role as head of the government, encouraging German intervention in Finland and being named regent on 27 May 1918. On 12 December 1918, he was succeeded by Carl Gustav Mannerheim and retired from political life. However, in the late 1920s he became a totem of the anti-Communist Lapua movement; on its insistence, he was named prime minister by President L. K. Relander on 4 July 1930 (serving in that role until 18 February 1931). He subsequently became the third president of Finland (1 March 1931–1 March 1937). During his time in office, Svinhufvud attempted to smash Communism in Finland, while generally resisting right-wing and fascist calls for the establishment of a more authoritarian regime.

Svinhufvud died at Luumäki in 1944. He was commemorated in many ways across Finland, from the grand monument outside the parliament building in Helsinki to the name “Ukko-Pekka” for a 4–6–2-type locomotive and the M39 rifle of the Finnish army.

SYbLIANSKII, Nikita IUKHIMOVICH.See Shapoval (SYbLIANSKII), Nikita IUKHIMOVICH.

Syrový, Jan (24 January 1888–17 October 1970). Major general (Czechoslovak Legion, August 1918), general (Czechoslovak Army, 1927). Born in Třebíč (Trebitsch), Moravia, the son of a small craftsman, Jan Syrový played a significant role in civil-war Siberia and in the interwar history of Czechoslovakia. After finishing at a technical school at Brno (1908) and one year’s voluntary military service in the Austro-Hungarian Army, he worked as a commercial traveler. The outbreak of war in 1914 found him employed in an engineering firm in Warsaw, in Russian Poland, where he volunteered for service in the Czechoslovak druzhina of the Russian Army (the embryo of the Czechoslovak Legion). He subsequently saw combat on the South-West Front (including action at the Battle of Zbrov in July 1917, during which he lost his right eye).

Syrový rose to command the 2nd Regiment of the Czechoslovak Corps (March–May 1918) and was a participant in the conference of Legionnaires and members of the Czechoslovak National Council at Cheliabinsk, on 25 May 1918, that decided to ignore Soviet orders to disarm. During the revolt of the Czechoslovak Legion, he commanded forces around Kurgan, Cheliabinsk, Omsk, and Ekaterinburg (May–August, 1918), and subsequently also commanded forces of the Ufa Directory on the Urals Front (12 August–24 December 1918). From August 1918, he served also as the commander in chief of the Czechoslovak Legion.

Following his force’s evacuation from Vladivostok in the autumn of 1920, Syrový returned to Czechoslovakia and occupied numerous posts in the national army (including chief of staff from 1927 to 1933 and inspector general of the army from 1933 to 1938), as well as serving, briefly but significantly, as acting president of the republic (5 October–30 November 1938) and as prime minister (23 September–1 December 1938), during the Munich crisis. Subsequently, as minister of war, he gave the order to the Czechoslovak Army not to resist the German invasion of March 1939, a moment he described at the time as “worse than death.” In 1947, he was found guilty in a Czechoslovak court of collaboration with the Nazi occupiers; was stripped of his military rank, his many medals, and his pension; and was sentenced to 20 years’ imprisonment, but he was amnestied in 1960. In 1995, he was fully rehabilitated by the Czech government.

SYTIN, PAVEL PAVLOVICH (18 July 1870–22 August 1938). Colonel (6 December 1911), major general (January 1917). The Red military specialist who was at the center of the Tsaritsyn affair, P. P. Sytin was born into a military family at Skobin, Riazan′ guberniia, and was a graduate of the Kiev Officer School (1892) and the Academy of the General Staff (1899). He saw action in the Russo–Japanese War and was subsequently chief of staff of the Brest-Litovsk Fortress and a lecturer in its military school. During the First World War, he rose to the command of the 37th Infantry Division on the Romanian Front (1917).