Historical Dictionary of the Russian Civil Wars, 1916-1926

TER-MINASSIAN, RUBEN (1882–29 November 1950/1951). The Armenian revolutionary Ruben Ter-Minassian was born at Akhalkalaki and was educated at a local Georgian seminary at Ejmiatsin (the spiritual capital of Armenia) and at the Lazarian Institute in Moscow. He was a close friend of Hamo Ohandjanian and, with him, joined the Dashnaks around the turn of the century. After training around Batumi in 1902, he spent several years organizing fedayeen (guerrilla fighters) around Lake Van, in Turkey. After a period in retirement from the struggle after the proclamation of the Turkish constitution in 1908 (largely spent studying science in Geneva), he was also active in that region during the First World War, leading Armenian fighters around Taron during the “Van Resistance” of 1915 and 1916 and helping to found the Administration for Western Armenia. Having escaped encirclement by the Turks, Ter-Minassian returned to Transcaucasia and, in 1917, was elected to the Armenian National Council.

In March 1918, Ter-Minassian accompanied the Transcaucasian Sejm delegation to negotiate with the Turks at the Trabzon Peace Conference and, from June 1918, served in the parliament of the Democratic Republic of Armenia, where his was a cautious voice, warning against overambitious territorial claims. From May to October 1920, he was minister of defense of the Armenian republic. In that capacity, he oversaw the suppression of uprisings by local Bolsheviks, was notably severe in his treatment of the Azeri population, and was also involved in financing undercover operations to assassinate Turkish leaders implicated in the 1915 genocide of the Armenians.

Following the invasion of Armenia by the Red Army in December 1920, Ter-Minassian fled, via Zangezur (Syunik), to Persia and thence to France. After many years of touring Europe and the Middle East as a spokesman for the Armenian Revolutionary Federation, he settled in France in 1948. He died in Paris and is buried in the Père-Lachaise cemetery.

TERPILO, DANILO (DMITRII) (1886–November 1919). A prominent Ukrainian otaman of the civil-war era, Danilo Terpilo was born at Tripol′e, Kiev guberniia, and had begun training to become a village teacher when, in 1905, he entered revolutionary politics as an organizer for the Party of Socialists-Revolutionaries in his home district. He was arrested and exiled to the far north in 1908, but was amnestied in 1913. During the First World War, he served as a clerk with the 35th Army Corps, before returning home in late 1917 to become again involved in politics, this time working with the Ukrainian Social-Democratic Labor Party and supporting the Ukrainian Central Rada.

In the autumn of 1918, during the uprising against the Ukrainian State of General P. P. Skoropadskii, Terpilo offered his services to the Ukrainian National Republic Directory and, under the command of S. V. Petliura, raised the 3,000-strong Dnepr Division, at the head of which he entered Kiev on 14 December 1918. He soon broke with Petliura, however, believing that the directory was pursuing a too rightist line, and from January 1919 began raising forces to battle against the Ukrainian Army. On 8 February 1919, he offered to subordinate his units to the Red Army, but rebuffed all efforts to have his forces subjected to the regular Red command and broke with the latter in March 1919. On 25 March 1919, he was declared to be an outlaw by the Sovnarkom of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic. His forces subsequently retreated into left-bank Ukraine, pursued by the Reds, although Terpilo was killed in battle at Kanev with White forces in November 1919.

Theater.See FICTION.