Historical Dictionary of the Russian Civil Wars, 1916-1926

Commemoration of the Twenty-Six, however, was always problematic in Azerbaijan, where many Muslims regarded the commissars as bearing responsibility for the massacres of the March Days of 1918. Consequently, the eternal flame at the Sahil memorial was extinguished soon after the breakup of the USSR in the early 1990s, and in January 2009 the Azeri authorities took the controversial decision to demolish the monument and replace it with a fountain. On 26 January 2009, the commissars’ remains (or, rather, the remains of 23 of them, all that were recovered) were reburied at Baku’s Hovsan Cemetery. Across independent Azerbaijan, Georgia, and Armenia, subway stations, streets, parks, and so forth, that once bore the names of the Twenty-Six Commissars, either individually or collectively, have also been renamed since the collapse of the Soviet Union.

The Twenty-Six Commissars were S. G. Shahumian (chairman of the Sovnarkom of the Baku Commune and the Sovnarkom of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic’s extraordinary commissar for the Caucasus); Meshadi Azizbekov (deputy people’s commissar of internal affairs in the Baku Commune and guberniia commissar for Baku); Prokopius Dzhaparidze (chairman of the Central Executive Committee of the Baku Soviet); I. T. Fioletov (chairman of the Council of the National Economy of the Baku Soviet); Vezirov, Mir-Hasan Kiazim oglu (people’s commissar for agriculture of the Baku Soviet); G. N. Korganov (people’s commissar for military and naval affairs of the Baku Soviet); Ia .D. Zevin (people’s commissar for labor of the Baku Soviet); G. K. Petrov (the Sovnarkom of the RSFSR’s military commissar for the Baku region); I. V. Malygin (deputy chairman of the Military-Revolutionary Committee of the Red Army of the Caucasus); Arsen Amiryan (editor-in-chief of the Bakinskii rabotnkik newspaper); Meyer Basin (member of the Military-Revolutionary Committee of the Red Army of the Caucasus); Suren Osepyan (editor-in-chief of the Izvestiia of the Baku Soviet); Eigen Berg (sailor and chief of communications of Soviet forces in Baku); V. F. Polukhin (member of the collegium of the Commissariat for Military Affairs of the RSFSR); F. F. Solntsev (commissar of the Baku Military School); Armenak Boriyan (journalist); I. Ia. Gabyshev (brigade commissar); M. R. Koganov (member of the Military-Revolutionary Committee of the Baku Soviet); Bagdasar Avakyan (commandant of Baku); Iraklii Metaksa (Shahumian’s bodyguard); Ivan Nikolayshvili (Dzhaparidze’s bodyguard); Aram Kostandyan (Deputy People’s Commissar for Food of the Baku Commune); Solomon Bogdanov (member of the Military-Revolutionary Committee of the Baku Soviet); A. A. Bogdanov (clerk); Isay Mishne (secretary of the Military-Revolutionary Committee of the Baku Soviet); and Tatevos Amirov (commander of a cavalry unit and a member of the Dashnaks).

U

UBOREVICH(-GUBOREVICH), IERONIM PETROVICH (Uborevičius-Guborevičius, Jeronimas) (2 January 1896–12 June 1937). Sublieutenant (1916), komandarm (1935). Born at Antandriia, Kovno guberniia, into a Lithuanian peasant family, I. P. Uborevich, one of the most prominent and successful Red commanders of the civil-war era, was educated at the Dvinsk Realschule, from where he graduated with a gold medal. He then began a course of higher education in the Mechanics Faculty of the St. Petersburg Polytechnical Institute, but in 1915 transferred to the Constantine Artillery School, from which he graduated in 1916, becoming commander of first a battery and then a company.