Historical Dictionary of the Russian Civil Wars, 1916-1926

Turkul joined the Whites immediately after the October Revolution and participated in the 800-mile march from Jassy to Novocherkassk in the forces of General M. G. Drozdovskii (December 1917–May 1918). In the Volunteer Army, he participated in the 2nd Kuban (Ice) March, commanded a battalion (May 1918–September 1919), and was wounded on four more occasions. He was subsequently commander of the 1st Officers’ (Drozdovskii) Regiment (September 1919–June 1920) of the Armed Forces of South Russia and then the 3rd Drozdovskii Rifle Division in the Russian Army of General P. N. Wrangel (August–October 1920), before the evacuation of the Drozdovtsy from Crimea to the camps at Gallipoli.

In emigration, after leaving Turkey, Turkul lived at first in Bulgaria, as commander of the 2nd Officers (Drozdovskii) Rifle Regiment, and with General V. K. Vitkovskii participated in the crushing of the Communist rising in that country in September 1923. He then moved to France, where he was active in ROVS as a proponent of the continuation of the armed struggle against Soviet Russia and founded his own monarchist (and almost proto-fascist) organization, the Russian National Union of Participants in the War. He was expelled from France to Germany in 1938, and the following year, in the wake of the signing of the Nazi–Soviet Pact, went to live in Rome and then Sofia. During the Second World War, he collaborated with the Nazis and in 1945 took part in the formation of the Russian Liberation Army of General A. A. Vlasov in Austria, as commander of the Volunteer Brigade.

Turkul was arrested by the British authorities in Austria in May 1945 and was subsequently imprisoned and periodically interrogated until 1947. (The Allied intelligence services at first believed he was a Soviet agent, but concluded that he was innocently used by Moscow to feed misinformation to the Germans.) Thereafter, he lived in Munich, acting as chairman of the Committee of Russian Non-Returners and editor of the émigré newspaper Dobrovolets (“The Volunteer”). He is buried in the Russian cemetery of Sainte- Geneviève-des-Bois in Paris.

TUVAN PEOPLE’S REPUBLIC. This polity, with its capital at Khem-Beldyr (formerly, until 1918, Belotsarsk, and subsequently renamed Kyzyl, meaning “Red” in Tuvan), was founded on 14 August 1921, on the territory of the former Russian protectorate of Tuva (also known as Uriankhaiskii krai), following the collapse of White forces in eastern Siberia and Soviet incursions into neighboring Mongolia. Until 1926, it was known as Tannu Tuva (the name adopted for their region, from 1911, by nationalist rebels who sought independence from their Chinese overlords). Its first prime minister was the former Lamaist monk Donduk Kuular of the pro-Bolshevik Tuvan People’s-Revolutionary Party. The Tuvan People’s Republic was nominally independent (although it was only recognized by the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic and the Mongolian People’s Republic) but was, in fact, controlled by Moscow. It was formally incorporated into the USSR as the Tuvan Autonomous Oblast′ on 11 October 1944.

12TH RED ARMY. This name was applied to two military formations of the Red Army in the course of the civil wars.