Historical Dictionary of the Russian Civil Wars, 1916-1926

Verkhovskii, Aleksandr Ivanovich (27 November 1886–19 August 1938). Colonel (1917), major general (1 September 1917), kombrig (1936). One of the most unusual military specialists of the Red Army in the civil-war period, A. I. Verkhovskii had a singular career. He was born in St. Petersburg, into an ancient noble family, but was expelled from the elite Corps of Pages and sent to the army in Manchuria, for condemning the tsarist authorities’ handling of the events of “Bloody Sunday” in January 1905. He nevertheless redeemed himself and eventually graduated from the Academy of the General Staff (1911). In 1913, he was sent to Serbia, to write a report on the lessons of the Balkan Wars. During the First World War, he occupied numerous staff postings, before (in September 1916) joining the Russian Army’s mission in Romania. In 1917, he served as chief of staff of the Black Sea Division and was elected as deputy chairman of the Black Sea Soviet, at Sevastopol′, before taking command of the Moscow Military District (31 May 1917). There, he was noted for his forceful suppression of disturbances among soldiers, workers, and peasants, but he was nevertheless a supporter of the Russian Provisional Government during the Kornilov affair. On 30 August 1917, he was made minister of war, but resigned on 21 October 1917, when minister-president A. F. Kerensky refused to accept his demands for a partial demobilization of the army and the signing of a separate peace with the Central Powers.

Following the October Revolution, Verkhovskii allied himself with underground cells of the Party of Socialists-Revolutionaries that were attempting to muster an armed opposition to the Soviet government, but he was arrested by the Cheka on 26 June 1918 and spent the next six months in the Kresty prison, in St. Petersburg. In February 1919, he voluntarily joined the Red Army, and subsequently served in a number of rear detachments (although he was imprisoned again from May to October 1919). From 1921, he worked in the Red Military Academy (being made a full professor in 1927) and as an advisor to the Council of Labor and Defense, as well as accompanying several Soviet missions abroad as a military expert. On 2 December 1929, he was made chief of staff of the North Caucasus Military District, but on 2 February 1931 he was arrested as part of Operation “Spring.” Verkhovskii was initially sentenced to death (2 December 1931), but this was commuted to 10 years’ imprisonment, and he was released on 17 September 1934, having used his period of incarceration to write some important works of military theory and history. He was therefore able to rebuild his career and once again joined the Military Academy in 1932, while serving also with the Reconnaissance Directorate of the Red Army. But he was again arrested, on 11 March 1938, accused of membership in a counterrevolutionary organization. On 19 August 1938, Verkhovskii was again sentenced to death by the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the USSR and was executed that same day. He was posthumously rehabilitated on 28 November 1956.

VERNYI UPRISING. This anti-Soviet uprising occurred at Vernyi, in Semipalatinsk guberniia, on 12 June 1920, and was joined by some 5,000 men of the local Red Army garrison. It began when one battalion of the 27th Rifle Regiment refused orders of the command of the Turkestan Front to move to Ferghana to help combat the Basmachi. By 19 June 1920, the rising had been defused by forces of the 3rd Turkestan Rifle Division (commanded by the future Soviet novelist D. A. Furmanov), and the rebels were disarmed without a shot being fired.

Verzhbitskii, Grigorii Afanas′evich (25 January 1875–20 December 1941). Colonel (October 1916), major general (20 July 1918), lieutenant general (February or May 1919). One of the most senior White officers active in Siberia and the Far East during the civil-war years, G. A. Verzhbitskii was born into a lower middle-class family in Podol′sk guberniia. He enrolled in the army in 1893, was a graduate of the Odessa Infantry Officers School (1897), and saw action in the Russo–Japanese War and during Russian expeditions into Mongolia (1912–1913). During the First World War, he commanded the 44th and 41st Siberian Regiments and was twice wounded in action (1914–1916), then was placed in command of the newly formed 536th (Efremovskii) Infantry Regiment of the 134th Infantry Division (10 January–8 December 1917).