Historical Dictionary of the Russian Civil Wars, 1916-1926

For refusing to submit to the Soviet authorities after the October Revolution, Verzhbitskii was sentenced to death, but he escaped with the assistance of his soldiers and made his way to Omsk in December 1917. In the White movement, he initially commanded a partisan unit around Ust′-Kamenogorsk, during the overthrow of Soviet power in Siberia in May–June 1918, and was then made commander of the 1st Steppe Siberian Rifle Division of the Siberian Army (July 1918), seeing action against Red forces around Tiumen′ (June–August 1918). He then commanded the 4th Siberian Rifle Division, which, having been incorporated into the 1st Siberian Corps of General V. N. Pepeliaev, participated in the capture of Perm′ (24 December 1918). From 1 January 1919, he was commander of the 3rd West Siberian Corps, with which he captured the factory towns of Votkinsk (7 April 1919) and Izhevsk (13 April 1919). When that unit was combined (as an operational group) with the 4th Siberian Corps on 25 April 1919, Verzhbitskii took command and oversaw the capture of Osa and Sarapul during the spring offensive of the Russian Army of Admiral A. V. Kolchak. From June 1919, he commanded the Southern Group of forces of the Siberian Army (from 20 July 1919 the Southern Group of the 2nd Army).

When White efforts in the east collapsed over the winter of 1919–1920, Verzhbitskii participated in the Great Siberian (Ice) March. On 23 January 1920, he took command of the remnants of the 2nd Army—renamed the 2nd Independent (Siberian) Rifle Corps—withdrawing it to Chita, where he arrived in March 1920. On 22 August 1920, on the orders of Ataman G. M. Semenov, he assumed command of the Far Eastern (White) Army. When Red forces drove that force out of Transbaikalia (October–November 1920), he accompanied the remnants of it along the Chinese Eastern Railway to the Maritime Province. With the subsequent establishment, at Vladivostok, of the Merkulov regime (31 May 1921), he was named commander of forces of the Provisional Government of the Maritime Region Zemstvo Board, which incorporated the forces of General V. M. Molchanov. On 12 October 1921, he was named minister of war of that government. When the Merkulov regime collapsed, and General M. K. Diterikhs assumed control in Vladivostok, Verzhbitskii was placed in command of his forces, then was named (on 8 August 1922) assistant commander (voevod) of the Zemstvo Host. In October 1922, as forces of the People’s Revolutionary Army of the Far Eastern Republic approached Vladivostok, he left Russian territory for Manchuria, in command of a small group of officers. He was briefly interned at Kirin (Jilin) by the Chinese authorities, but was released in May 1923 and settled into émigré life in Harbin, reportedly as the proprietor of a millinery shop. Until 1931, he also served as deputy head of ROVS in the Far East, under General Diterikhs, and (from 1928) was chairman of the Russian National Union. When the Japanese occupied Manchuria in 1931, Verzhbitskii was expelled from the region for refusing to assist in recruiting Russian forces to serve in the Japanese army, and he went to live in the British Concession at Tientsin. He is buried in the Russian section of the International Cemetery in that city.

VESENKHA.See VSNKh.

VESHENSK UPRISING. This is the name given to the anti-Soviet uprising of part of the Don Cossack Host, in the upper Don territory, centered on the stanitsy of Veshenskaia, Elanskaia, Migulinskaia, and others, that began on 11 March 1919. In response to what Soviet sources subsequently described as the “mistakenly harsh” policies pursued against the Cossacks by local Red Army and Soviet authorities (specifically the Revvoensovet of the Southern Front chaired by S. I. Syrtsov), notably the policy of de-Cossackization, a more or less spontaneous series of protests soon coalesced into a mass armed opposition to Soviet rule, with some 30,000 rebels having expelled Soviet agencies from the region by April 1919. The rebels’ staff, based at Veshenskaia (under Coronet P. Kundinov), oversaw the defense of the region, warding off Red Army attacks, capturing 6 field guns and numerous machine guns, and (the height of their success) winning over to their side the Reds’ 204th Serdobsk Rifle Regiment.