Historical Dictionary of the Russian Civil Wars, 1916-1926

Having established links with socialist and regionalist circles in Siberia, in January 1918 Ustrugov was named (in absentia) minister of communications in the Provisional Government of Autonomous Siberia (the “Derber government”). However, he subsequently entered, as minister of communications, the Far Eastern Committee of General D. L. Khorvat, which contested power in the Far East with P. Ia. Derber’s group over the summer of 1918. On 4 November 1918, Ustrugov was named minister of communications in the cabinet of the Ufa Directory, and on 18 November 1918, following the Omsk coup, entered the Omsk government of Admiral A. V. Kolchak in the same capacity (as well as serving as deputy chairman of the Council of Ministers). He was subsequently responsible for negotiating with Allied representatives the Inter-Allied Railway Agreement (9 January 1919). This placed Ustrugov at the head of the Inter-Allied Railway Commission, but effectively handed control of the Trans-Siberian Railway (and thus the supply of the White war effort in Siberia) to the American engineer John F. Stevens (and his Technical Board at Harbin), with whom Ustrugov repeatedly clashed.

When the White movement in the east collapsed, Ustrugov went into emigration, settling at Harbin, where from 1924 to 1925 he worked as director of the Polytechnical Institute of the Chinese Eastern Railway (CER). In 1935, in the wake of the Japanese assumption of control over the CER, he, like other employees of the line who were Russian passport-holders (e.g., N. V. Ustrialov), was obliged to return to the USSR. He worked for some time in the People’s Commissariat for Ways and Communications, but was arrested on 15 October 1937. On 15 February 1938, Ustrugov was sentenced to death and immediately shot, having been found guilty of espionage and counterrevolutionary activities by the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the USSR. He was posthumously rehabilitated on 16 May 1989.

UZH-ZHUZ. This Kazak socialist party, led by M. Aitienov, was founded at Omsk in November 1917. With a program close to that of the Party of Left Socialists-Revolutionaries, it set itself up in opposition to Alash Orda and attracted support from among elements of the Kazak intelligentsia: teachers, doctors, etc. It was recognized as a legal party by Sovnarkom in early 1918, but by July of that year had ceased activity.

V

Vācietis, JUKUMS (IoakimIoakimovich) (11 November 1873–28 July 1938). Lieutenant colonel (1912), colonel (20 November 1915), komandarm (1935). The first Red commander of the Eastern Front and the first commander in chief of the Red Army, Jukums Vācietis (whose surname means “German” in Latvian) was born on the Neigof estate at Kuldīga (Goldingen), in Courland guberniia (now Jaunlutriņi in the Saldus region of Latvia). The son of an impoverished and landless farm laborer, he was radicalized by his teacher at the village school, Gustav Lasis, and was a graduate of the Vil′na Military Academy (1897) and the Academy of the General Staff (1909). He entered military service on 3 September 1891, as a volunteer in the Riga NCO Battalion, and having failed to secure a staff posting, by the onset of the First World War was commander of the 4th Battalion of the 102nd Viatka Regiment, attached to the 2nd Army. In that capacity, he participated in the Russian advance into East Prussia in August–September 1914 and soon afterward was badly wounded near Warsaw. After he recovered, in the autumn of 1915, he was made commander of the 5th Zemgale Latvian Rifle Battalion, which in October 1916 became a regiment of the Latvian Riflemen. He was then badly injured again, during the defense of Jelgava (Mitau) in the winter of 1916–1917, but recovered in time to participate in the battle for Riga in August 1917, and was then named commander of the 2nd Latvian Rifle Brigade.