Historical Dictionary of the Russian Civil Wars, 1916-1926

During the Democratic Counter-Revolution, Tel′berg served as a senior legal consultant to the Provisional Siberian Government (from 10 September 1918) and then as cabinet secretary to the Ufa Directory (from 4 November 1918). Following the Omsk coup, he was one of the authors of the “constitution” of the regime of Admiral A. V. Kolchak, “The Statute on the Provisional Structure of State Power in Russia” (18 November 1918). Thereafter, he served as cabinet secretary (from 18 November 1918) and (until June 1919) deputy chairman of the Council of Ministers in the Omsk government. He was also head of the Government Senate at Omsk and one of the editors of the official Pravitel′stvennyi vestnik (“Government Herald”). A close associate of the powerful minister of finance, I. A. Mikhailov, on 2 May 1919 Tel′berg received a full governmental portfolio as minister of justice. Thereafter, he formed with Mikhailov and the minister of war (and chief of staff of Kolchak’s Russian Army), D. A. Lebedev, a sort of inner cabinet, “The Committee on Law and Order,” which came to wield virtually unlimited power over governmental affairs in July 1919, when Tel′berg became acting chairman of the Council of Ministers (during the absence, due to illness, of Prime Minister P. V. Vologodskii). Unlike Mikhailov and Lebedev, Tel′berg survived the crises within the Omsk government over the summer of 1919, although he was removed from his post of acting chairman of the Council of Ministers (15 August 1919). Nevertheless, probably more than any other of Kolchak’s ministers, he came to be personally associated in the public mind with the lawlessness that characterized White Siberia, and he was dismissed as minister of justice on 20 November 1919, in a government reshuffle at Irkutsk.

On 14 December 1919, Tel′berg emigrated. He settled in Manchuria, where he ran a bookshop at Harbin and lectured on the history of Russian law at the Harbin Law School. He also held teaching posts at the Japanese Commercial College and the American Academy at Tsindao. In 1940, he emigrated to the United States, settling in 1942 in New York, where he founded and ran a successful publishing business, the Telberg Book Corporation, which still survives. He is buried in the cemetery of the Novo-Diveyevo Monastery at Nanuet, in Rockland County, New York.

10TH RED ARMY. This Soviet military formation was created by an order of the Revvoensovet of the Southern Front of 3 October 1918, following a directive of the Revvoensovet of the Republic of 11 September 1918. It united numerous Red forces that had been active around Tsaritsyn and Kamyshin over the summer of 1918. It was attached to the Southern Front (from 3 October 1918), the South-East Front (from 1 October 1919), and the Caucasian Front (from 16 January 1919). Included in the 10th Red Army at various times were the 1st Communist Rifle Division (October 1918–January 1919); the 1st Kotel′nikov Rifle Division (October–November 1918); the 1st Northern Kuban Rifle Division (October–November 1918); the 1st Kamyshinsk Rifle Division (October 1918–March 1919); the 1st Steel Rifle Division (October 1918–January 1919); the 14th (June–July 1920), 16th (April–May 1920), 20th (December 1919–February 1920 and March–April 1920), 28th (August 1919–April 1920), 32nd (March 1919–April 1920), 33rd (April–May 1920), 34th (June–July 1919, February 1920, and March–April 1920), 37th (October 1918–February 1920), 38th (October 1918–February 1920), 39th (November 1918–March 1920), 40th (April–June 1920), and 50th (February 1920) Rifle Divisions; the Kotlubano-Buzinov Rifle Division (October–December 1928); the Budennyi Cavalry Corps (September–November 1919); the Independent Cavalry Corps (September–November 1919); the 1st Cavalry Corps (April–June 1920); the 1st (December 1919–February 1920) and 2nd (May–June 1920) Caucasian Cavalry Divisions; the 4th (November 1918–July 1919), 6th (March–June 1919), 7th (June 1919), 9th (February and April 1920), and 12th (January–February and April–July 1920) Cavalry Divisions; and the Independent (later 18th) Cavalry Division.