Historical Dictionary of the Russian Civil Wars, 1916-1926

Thereafter, Tõnisson went abroad to campaign for the recognition of Estonian independence, returning to Tallinn (Revel) in November 1918. He joined the Estonian government as minister without portfolio and then served two terms as prime minister (18 November 1919–28 July 1920 and 30 July–26 October 1920). He remained a member of the Estonian parliament (Riigikogu) from 1920 to 1937 (serving as its chairman, 1923–1925 and 1932–1933) and was twice state president (9 December 1927–4 December 1928 and 18 May–21 October 1933). In the late 1930s, he was one of the leaders of the democratic opposition to the authoritarian government of Konstantin Päts, but following the Soviet invasion of Estonia in June 1940, he was nevertheless arrested. His subsequent fate is uncertain, but one credible version has it that he was executed at Tallinn in July 1941. A statue of him was unveiled in Tartu in 1999.

TOPCHUBASHOV, ALIMARDAN ALAKBAR OGLU (4 May 1862–8 November 1934). The head of state of the Democratic Republic of Azerbaijan was born at Tiflis, into a branch of the ancient, noble Topchubashi family. He was educated at the Tiflis Gymnasium and graduated from the Law Faculty of St. Petersburg University (1888). Topchubashov was then offered a teaching post at the university, but would have been required to convert to Christianity to accept it, so he returned instead to the Caucasus, where he worked as a lawyer; edited the newspaper Kaspi (“The Caspian”); and became a prominent leader of the Turko-Tatar and Muslim peoples of the Russian Empire in their struggles against legal, political, and religious discrimination. In 1905, he helped found and lead the Ittifaq al-Muslim (Union of Muslims), and in 1906 he was elected to the First State Duma, as a Muslim representative. When that parliament was dissolved by Nicholas II, Topchubashov was among those deputies who signed the Vyborg Manifesto, calling for civil disobedience to protest the tsar’s act. Consequently, he was arrested and imprisoned for three months and was subsequently deprived of his political rights.

With the founding of the Azerbaijan Republic (28 May 1918), Topchubasov became the government’s ambassador to Armenia, Georgia, and the Ottoman Empire, based in Constantinople. He was still in that city when, on 7 December 1918, he was elected chairman (speaker) of the Azeri parliament in Baku, thereby becoming head of state (in absentia) of the republic. He traveled to France in January 1919, to press for Azerbaijan’s recognition at the Paris Peace Conference. This he eventually received in January 1920, but the Soviet invasion of his country in April 1920 meant he was unable to return home. He died in Paris on 8 November 1934.

TOPORKOV, SERGEI MIKHAILOVICH (25 September 1880–1931). Colonel (May 1917), major general (8 December 1918). The White general S. M. Toporkov was born into the family of a member of the Transbaikal Cossack Host at Akshinsk stanitsa. He served with the 1st Chita Cossack Regiment in the Russo–Japanese War and was much decorated for bravery. During the First World War, he commanded Chechen and Tatar regiments of the Caucasian Native Mounted Division (the ‘Wild Division”).