Historical Dictionary of the Russian Civil Wars, 1916-1926

On 28 February 1918, Vdovenko was elected as Host ataman of the Terek Cossacks, following the death of the two previous incumbents during the fighting of the previous month. In that capacity, in the summer of 1918, he led the revolt in the Terek against Soviet power; from January 1919, headed the Terek contingents of the Armed Forces of South Russia; and from March 1920, headed those of the Russian Army of General P. N. Wrangel. Following the evacuation of the Crimea by White forces in November 1920, he lived in emigration, mostly in Yugoslavia, and as ataman of the Terek Host until his death, was a strong advocate of Cossack separatism. During the Second World War, as a collaborator with the Nazis, he advised the German forces during their invasion of the North Caucasus and helped organize Cossack formations under the Wehrmacht (as a member of its Main Directorate of Cossack Forces) and under General A. A. Vlasov. At the end of the war, according to some sources, he was assassinated in Belgrade by an agent of Josip Tito; according to others, he was kidnapped by Soviet security forces and disappeared into the Gulag.

VDOVICHENKO, TROFIM IAKOVLEVICH (1889–May 1921). Ensign (191?). T. Ia. Vdovichenko, one of the most talented commanders of Nestor Makhno’s Revolutionary-Insurgent Army of Ukraine, was born into a poor peasant family at Novospasovka, near Lugansk, and received only a primary education. In 1910, he became associated with a group of radicals at Novospasovka and developed into a forceful proponent of anarchism. He was drafted into the Russian Army in 1914, and in 1917 became chairman of his regimental committee.

Vdovichenko returned to Novospasovka in late 1917, following the October Revolution, and in early 1918 joined a partisan unit that opposed the forces of the Austro-German intervention. In the autumn of 1918, his group allied with the Makhnovite army, and on 4 January 1919, he was named commander of its 1st Rebel (later the Novospasovka) Regiment, a force of, at one point, 6,000 men. In 1919, Vdovichenko fought the Armed Forces of South Russia in alliance with the Red Army, but broke with the Bolsheviks that August, when the Soviet command attempted to move his force out of Ukraine. On 1 September 1919, he was elected to the Revolutionary-Military Council of the Makhnovists and was named commander of the 2nd Azov Corps, which numbered 10,000 fighters at its peak. In that capacity, as General A. I. Denikin’s White forces collapsed, Vdovichenko was responsible for the capture of numerous towns (including Aleksandrovsk on 5 October and 28 December 1919). In 1920, he led a guerrilla group against Soviet forces around Berdiansk and Mariupol′, but in late January 1921, he was badly wounded in battle. He sought treatment in Novospasovka from 17 February 1921, but in April 1921 his whereabouts were discovered by a Cheka detachment. In order to escape arrest, Vdovichenko shot himself in the head, but he survived and was nursed back to health by the Bolsheviks, only to then be thrown into prison at Aleksandrovsk and, reportedly, subjected to prolonged bouts of torture, in an attempt to persuade him to renounce Makhno. Several attempts by the Makhnovists to rescue Vdovichenko failed, and he was eventually executed by a Cheka firing squad in May 1921.

Vedeniapin (shtegeman), Mikhail Aleksandrovich (8 November 1879–7/12 November 1938). A pivotal figure in the Democratic Counter-Revolution on the Volga, M. A. Vedeniapin was probably born in Tashkent (although some sources indicate that he was born at Atkarsk, Saratov guberniia) and was a descendant of the Decembrist Aleksei Vasil′evich Vedeniapin (1804–1847). He trained as a statistician, but was an active member of the Party of Socialists-Revolutionaries (PSR) from 1903 and a dedicated member of its terrorist wing, the Fighting Organization. He became a member of the PSR Central Committee in November 1917, the same month that he was elected to the Constituent Assembly.