Historical Dictionary of the Russian Civil Wars, 1916-1926

After a long illness, in 1980 Tito died of gangrene, following the amputation of his right leg. His funeral—during which he was buried in a mausoleum complex (Kuća Cveća, “the House of Flowers”) attached to the Museum of Yugoslav History—remains the largest state funeral in history, in terms of the number of foreign dignitaries in attendance (among them no fewer than 4 kings, 31 presidents, and 22 prime ministers).

TIUTIUNNYK, IURII (IURKO) IOSYPOVICH (20 April 1891–20 October 1930). NCO (1914). The Ukrainian military commander Iurko Tiutiunnyk was born into a peasant family at Budyshcha, in the Pendivskii district of Kiev guberniia. He was the grandson of the sister of Ukraine’s national poet, Taras Shevchenko. After being educated at local schools, he was drafted into the Russian Army in 1913, then made an NCO the following year. He distinguished himself by his bravery in battle during the First World War (notably at the Battle of Łódź, 11 November–6 December 1914) and was sent to the military college in Tiflis in 1915. In 1917, he was offered the command of the Odessa Military District by A. F. Kerensky, but having no faith in the Russian Provisional Government’s professions of goodwill toward Ukrainian autonomy, he declined and instead set about organizing a Ukrainian nationalist detachment, the 1st Simferopol′ (Hetman Doroshchenko) Regiment. He was subsequently elected as a member of the Ukrainian Central Rada.

During the autumn of 1917, Tiutiunnyk organized and led a unit of Free Cossacks around Zvenigorodka, in central Ukraine. In 1918, his group engaged in battles against the Red Army, forces of the Austro-German intervention, and the Hetmanite Army. In February 1919, he merged his force with that of Nykyfor Hryhoriiv and later with the Ukrainian Army, alongside which he fought both the Red Army and the Whites. He also played a leading role (as commander of the Kiev Rifle Division) in the Ukrainian Army’s desperate Winter Campaigns of 1919–1921.

After briefly fleeing abroad in 1921, Tiutiunnyk returned to Soviet Russia in 1923 and agreed to cooperate with the Soviet authorities. As “Ukrainization” policies blossomed in the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic during the 1920s, he was allowed to lecture on strategy at a military college in Khar′kov, contributed (under the name “Iurtik”) to the script of the feature film Zvenigora (dir. A. P. Dovzhenko, 1928), and appeared as himself in a propaganda film attacking the role played by S. V. Petliura in the civil wars. With the rise to power of J. V. Stalin and the reversal of “Ukrainization” policies in the USSR, however, Tiutiunnyk fell from favor. On 12 February 1929, he was arrested at Khar′kov, and on 3 December 1929, following a brief trial in Moscow, he was found guilty of anti-Soviet agitation and sentenced to death. He was executed by firing squad the following year at the Lubianka, in Moscow.

TIUTNNYK, VASIL′ (VASILII NIKIFOROVICH) (17 July 1890–19 December 1919). Captain (1917), coronet general (Ukrainian Army, 1919). The Ukrainian commander Vasil′ Tiutnnyk was born into a peasant family at the Kuturzh khutor, in Poltava guberniia, and was a graduate of the Tiflis Military School (1912), where he was recognized as an expert marksman. He subsequently served with the 25th Siberian Rifle Regiment in Irkutsk, and in the First World War, saw action with them as commander of a reconnaissance unit in Poland and Belorussia. In the autumn of 1917, he entered the service of the Ukrainian Central Rada and was made commander of its 2nd Army.