Historical Dictionary of the Russian Civil Wars, 1916-1926

TAURIDE, SOVIET SOCIALIST REPUBLIC OF. This short-lived Soviet polity existed in Crimea from 19 March to 30 April 1918, as a constituent part of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic. It was declared by a revolutionary committee elected at the First Constituent Congress of Soviets that gathered at Simferopol′ on 7–10 March 1918, and was governed by a Sovnarkom that included eight Bolsheviks and four members of the Party of Socialists-Revolutionaries and was led by Anton Sutskii. This regime set about Sovietizing Crimea, instituting land redistribution, nationalizing industry, and sending supplies north to Moscow, but from 18 April 1918 it came under attack by forces loyal to the Ukrainian Central Rada, and in the aftermath of the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk (3 March 1918), the area was soon also occupied by forces of the Austro-German intervention, with whom were allied rebel Tatar forces under the political guidance of Milliy Firqa. In late April 1918, Sutskii; the head of the Crimean regional committee of the Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks), Ia. Iu. Tarvatskii; and most other senior members of the administration were arrested by the Germans. All were subsequently executed, and the Tauride SSR collapsed.

TAUTAS PADOME. The Tautas Padome, or Latvian People’s Council, was formed on 17 November 1918 and served as a provisional parliament in Latvia between the country’s declaration of independence (18 November 1918) and the summoning of the Satermes Sapulce, the Latvian Constituent Assembly (1 May 1920). It originally consisted of 40 members, drawn from the Provisional Latvian National Council (Latvijas Pagaidu Nacionala Padome) and the Democratic Bloc, but was later expanded to 245 members. The chairman of the Tautas Padome, Jānis Čakste, acted as head of state (president), while Kārlis Ulmanis served as prime minister of the government throughout the body’s existence.

Teague-Jones, Reginald (1890–16 November 1988). Major (191?). A British intelligence officer active in Transcaucasia and Transcaspia during the “Russian” Civil Wars, Reginald Teague-Jones was educated at a German school in St. Petersburg (where his father was a language teacher) and at King’s College, University of London, although he never took his degree. He moved from England to India in 1910 and joined the police force. Having gained experience in intelligence work on the North-West Frontier, he was transferred to the Foreign and Political Department of the Indian government. He was sent into Transcaspia as an intelligence officer in 1918, and in September of that year was working with the anti-Bolshevik Transcaspian Provisional Government, at Ashkhabad, at the time of the execution of the Twenty-Six Commissars, Bolsheviks from Baku who had fallen into the Transcaspian government’s hands.

Thereafter, the Soviet authorities came to blame the British for the shootings and to claim that Teague-Jones had personally ordered them (charges later confirmed by the testimony of the head of the Transcaspian Provisional Government, F. A. Funtikov). Consequently, Teague-Jones changed his name (to Ronald Sinclair), although he continued in intelligence work until after the Second World War, when he retired to Florida and later to Spain. In the 1980s, failing health impelled “Sinclair” and his second wife to return to Britain. He died in a retirement home at Plymouth, in Devon, shortly before the publication of his memoir of the events in Transcaspia, The Spy Who Disappeared (1990).

Tel′berg, Georgii Gustavovich (27 September 1881–20 February 1954). One of the most influential ministers in the Siberian anti-Bolshevik regimes of the civil-war period, G. G. Tel′berg was born into a family of Swedish extraction at Tsaritsyn, Saratov guberniia, and was a graduate of the Law Faculty of Kazan′ University (1903, receiving his PhD in 1912). He worked as a lawyer, mostly at Ufa and Orenburg, before becoming a lecturer in law, first at Kazan′ University (from 1908), then Moscow University (from 1910), and finally Tomsk University (from 1914). A member of the Kadets from the party’s foundation in 1905, in 1918 he joined the Eastern Section of the Kadet Central Committee, which was based at Omsk.