Historical Dictionary of the Russian Civil Wars, 1916-1926

TEREK COSSACK HOST. Created as an independent Host in 1577 (and part of the Caucasus Line Host from 1792 to 1860), by 1917 the Terek Cossack Host had a population of 250,000. Its territory, centered on the city of Vladikavkaz, was divided into four regions (Piatigorsk, Mozdovsk, Sunzhensk, and Kizliarsk), incorporating 70 stanitsy. During the First World War, it mobilized 18,000 men into the Russian Army.

Soviet power was established in the region in early 1918—the Terek Soviet Republic being proclaimed at Piatigorsk on 3–5 March of that year—and the Host was officially disbanded during the period of de-Cossackization, but in June 1918 the Terek Cossacks rose against the new authorities, and civil war ensued. By November 1918, through the application of Red Terror, the Bolsheviks had precariously reestablished their control of the Terek, but over the winter of 1918–1919, forces of the White Volunteer Army entered the region and assisted the Cossacks in clearing the Red authorities from the Host territory. Thereafter, the Terek Cossacks allied with the Volunteers and subordinated themselves to the Armed Forces of South Russia, contributing the 1st–4th Terek Cossack Divisions, the 1st–4th Terek Plastunskii (“dismounted Cossack”) Independent Brigades, and various other formations to its forces in 1919. In 1920, in the Russian Army of General P. N. Wrangel, Terek Cossacks formed part of the Terek-Astrakhan Brigade. As punishment for their support for the Whites, in the aftermath of the civil wars many Terek Cossack families were deported to Ukraine and other regions, and their empty villages were handed over to the indigenous peoples of the North Caucasus, while the territory itself was divided among the new autonomous soviet socialist republics of Daghestan, Northern Ossetia, and Checheno-Ingushetia.

The Terek Cossack Host’s atamans of the civil-war period were M. A. Karaulov (killed on 13 December 1917); L. E. Medianik (killed later in December 1917); and Lieutenant General G. A. Vdovenko (28 February 1918–1945).

TEREK–DAGHESTAN, PROVISIONAL GOVERNMENT of. This anti-Bolshevik authority was formed on 1 December 1917, at Vladikavkaz, at a joint congress of the Union of United Mountain Peoples of the Caucasus, the government of the Terek Cossack Host, and the Union of Towns of the Terek–Daghestan Region. It consisted of 12 ministers and was initially led by the Terek ataman M. A. Karaulov. However, he was shot dead by revolutionary soldiers on 13 December 1917, and subsequently Prince P. Kh. Kaplanov chaired the Terek–Daghestan cabinet.

The regime issued a declaration that the solution of all social and economic problems should be postponed until the summoning of a regional constituent assembly and that, in the meantime, all efforts should be directed toward the military struggle against Soviet rule, but it was in reality powerless. In March 1918, with the proclamation of the Terek Soviet Republic, the members of the regime fled to Georgia, where some of them joined the exiled government of the equally nebulous Mountain Republic.

Terek Soviet Republic. This polity was created on 3–5 March 1918, at the 2nd Congress of the Peoples of the Terek, as a constituent part of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic. Claiming control of the Terek oblast′, in opposition to the aspirations for autonomy of the Terek Cossack Host and the mountain peoples of the North Caucasus (through the Mountain Republic), and attempting to introduce a Soviet system into the region, it had its capital first at Piatigorsk and later at Vladikavkaz. Its territory was entirely occupied by forces of the Volunteer Army by February 1919, and from July 1919 it formed part of the North Caucasian Soviet Republic.

The chairmen of the Sovnarkom of the Terek Soviet Republic (which contained representatives of a variety of political parties) were, successively, the Bolshevik S. G. Buachidze (died 20 June 1918); the Left-SR Iu. G. Pashkovskii (died August 1918); and the Bolshevik F. Kh. Bulle.

TER-HARUTIUNIAN, GAREGIN.See NJDEH (TER-HARUTIUNIAN), GAREGIN.