Historical Dictionary of the Russian Civil Wars, 1916-1926

At the 4th Host Congress at Iman in January 1918, the Soviet government was declared illegal, but in April 1918, Red units formally dispersed the Ussurii Host. The Cossacks fought back, marshaled by their ruthless Host ataman, I. M. Kalmykov, capturing Grodekovo (3 July 1918) and declaring a general mobilization. Following the collapse of the Soviet authorities, in the summer of 1918 the Ussurii Cossack Brigade was formed, as part of the Whites’ East Siberian Independent Army. A Ussurii Cossack Division also formed part of the Far Eastern (White) Army of Ataman G. M. Semenov from March 1920, but most of the men followed Kalmykov in flight across the border to Manchuria in February 1920, after the loss of Khabarovsk to forces of the People’s Revolutionary Army of the Far Eastern Republic. In emigration, many members of the Host lived in China, though some later moved to Australia.

USSURII REPUBLIC. This tiny pro-Soviet enclave was formed near Khabarovsk on 1 December 1919, in opposition to local White forces (notably those of the Ussurii Cossack Host, commanded by I. M. Kalmykov). It merged with the Far Eastern Republic on 10 December 1920.

Ustrialov, Nikolai Vasil′evich (25 November 1879–14 September 1937). One of the leading propagandists of White rule in Siberia, but one who nevertheless expressed doubts about whether the Bolsheviks could be beaten, the influential jurist and philosopher N. V. Ustrialov was a graduate of the Law Faculty of St. Petersburg University (1913) and lectured there from 1916 to 1918. A prolific journalist and a leading member of the Kadets, chairing the party’s Kaluga branch in 1917 following the October Revolution, he moved to Perm′ University. When Perm′ fell to the Whites’ Siberian Army in late December 1918, Ustrialov moved to Omsk to become a legal consultant to the regime of Admiral A. V. Kolchak (the Omsk government) and director of its Russian Press Bureau, while at the same time serving as chairman of the Eastern Section of the Kadet Central Committee.

Following the collapse of the White movement in Siberia, in 1920 Ustrialov moved to Harbin. He worked there as a newspaper editor as well as a professor at the university from 1920 to 1934, but having become reconciled to Soviet rule, he was employed also by the Soviet administration on the Chinese Eastern Railway (from 1925 to 1928, as chief of the Education Section, and from 1928 to 1934, as director of the Central Library). In fact, as a contributor to the Smena Vekh (“Changing Landmarks”) collection published in Prague in 1921, he came to be considered the chief ideologue of Smenovekhovstvo: he was an admirer of the manner in which the Soviet government had, in effect, reconstructed the Russian Empire and held that the extremes of the regime would now be tempered by national concerns; therefore, Moscow should be supported. By the early 1930s, he was more circumspect about where the USSR might be heading, but as a Soviet citizen he was obliged to return there in 1935 after Japan had taken control of the CER zone in Manchuria. He then worked as a professor of economic geography at the Moscow Institute of Transport Engineers and, briefly, at Moscow State University, but on 6 June 1937 he was arrested by the NKVD. On 14 September 1937, the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the USSR found him guilty of “espionage, counterrevolutionary activity, and anti-Soviet agitation.” Ustrialov was sentenced to death and executed that same day. He was posthumously rehabilitated on 17 October 1989.

USTRUGOV, LEONID ALEKSANDROVICH (23 November 1877–15 February 1938). Born in Moscow, L. A. Ustrugov was an engineer and railway administrator who was active in the anti-Bolshevik governments in Siberia throughout the civil wars and later worked for the Soviet government. He was a graduate of the Institute of Transport Engineers (1902) and from 1902 to 1906, worked on the Moscow Regional Railway Administration. He then filled a variety of posts on the Northern Railway (1907–1911) and the Samara–Zlatoust Railway, then in 1913 was appointed as a state engineer with the Ministry of Ways and Communications and assigned to service with Omsk Railway, becoming its chief controller on 1 May 1916.