Historical Dictionary of the Russian Civil Wars, 1916-1926

In December 1917, Sytin was elected as commander of the 18th Army Corps by its soldiers’ committee and subsequently volunteered for service in the Red Army. Thereafter, in April 1918, he was placed in command of the forces of the Western Screen, around Briansk. In May 1918, he headed the Soviet delegation that met with the German authorities at Khar′kov, and from September 1918, he commanded the forces of the Southern Screen. He was subsequently appointed by L. D. Trotsky to be the first commander of the Southern Front (11 September–9 November 1918), an appointment that led to a major clash between Trotsky and J. V. Stalin over the prominence in the Red forces of such military specialists (the “Tsaritsyn affair”). When the planned Soviet offensive toward Balashovsk in that sector proved unsuccessful, Sytin was removed from the command and placed instead at the head of the Directorate of Business of the Revvoensovet of the Republic.

He subsequently served as Soviet military attaché in the Democratic Republic of Georgia (1920–1921), and from 1922 lectured at the Red Military Academy, from 1924 to 1927 working also on the Military-Historical Directorate on research into the lessons of the world war and the civil wars. From 1927, he was assigned to the Revvoensovet of the USSR. He retired in 1934, becoming a research fellow of the Central State Archive of the Red Army. Sytin was arrested on 27 February 1938, and on 22 August 1938 was sentenced to death by the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the USSR for participation in a “counterrevolutionary organization.” He was executed that same day. He was posthumously rehabilitated on 16 February 1957.

T

TACHANKA. A sprung carriage, with a lightweight body, designed to be pulled by two horses (and sometimes four) and usually manned by three men, this vehicle became widely adopted during the civil wars by cavalry forces, as a high-speed, mobile platform for a Maxim gun or other weaponry. A variety of hypotheses exist with regard to the etymology of the word “tachanka”: that it derives from the Ukrainian netychanka, a carriage named after the town of Neutitschein (now Nový Jičín, in eastern Moravia, the Czech Republic); that it is an endearing diminutive of the Russian word tachka (“wheelbarrow”); and that it is a diminutive of tavrichanka, a carriage used in Taurida (“Tavrida” in Russian). Although they had been employed by Russian forces during the First World War, tachankas were used with formidable effectiveness by Nestor Makhno’s Revolutionary-Insurgent Army of Ukraine and other formations operating on the open steppe of southern Russia during the “Russian” Civil Wars, enabling columns to travel up to 75 miles a day.

A popular Russian song celebrates the vehicle (“The Tachanka,” 1936; lyrics by M. Ruderman, music by K. Listov), which is also featured in the classic Soviet films Chapaev (dir. G. N. and S. D. Vasil′ev, 1934) and Ognennye versty (“The Burning Miles,” dir. S. I. Samsonov, 1956); an imposing monument to it (The Legendary Tachanka, by E. M. Poltoratskii, 1967) stands near Kakhovka, in southern Ukraine (which, ironically, was the site of a largely static, entrenched battle between the Red Army and the Russian Army of General P. N. Wrangel in October 1920); and a preserved Makhnovist tachanka has pride of place in the Historical Museum at Guliai-Pole, the birthplace of Nestor Makhno. Perhaps most impressive of all, however, is Isaak Babel’s “Discourse on the Tachanka,” one of his famous Konarmiia (Red Cavalry) tales, which ponders on how “what had been the common or garden brichka, in which priests and officials drive about, came into prominence and grew to be a mobile and formidable instrument of warfare. It created a new strategy and new tactics, altered the usual aspect of war, [and] gave birth to the heroes and geniuses of the tachanka.”