Historical Dictionary of the Russian Civil Wars, 1916-1926

In emigration, Vil′kitskii first lived in Britain, where in 1923–1924, he was recruited by the Soviet foreign trade agency to lead a trading expedition through the Kara Sea. Subsequently, he lived in Belgium, serving that country for many years as a hydrographer in the Belgian Congo (and becoming known as “the Tropical Admiral”). He was originally buried in Brussels, but in 1997 his remains were reinterred in the Smolensk Cemetery, in St. Petersburg.

Vinaver, Max (Maksim) Moiseevich (1862/1863–10 October 1926). One of the founders of the Kadets and one of its leading political actors in South Russia during the civil wars, Max Vinaver was born in Warsaw and was a graduate of the Third Warsaw Gymnasium (1881) and the Law Faculty of Warsaw University (1886), although his legal career was held back by official restrictions on Jews in the profession, and he became a justice of the peace only in 1904. Based in St. Petersburg from 1887, he became a well-known and much-published expert on the position of Jews in the Russian Empire and the history of Russian law, and was a leading figure in a variety of public organizations (the Union for the Achievement of Equal Rights for Jews, the Historical-Ethnographical Commission, etc.). In 1905, he joined the first Central Committee of the Kadets, and in 1906, he was elected to the First State Duma, becoming a leader of the Kadet caucus. Following the Duma’s dissolution in 1906, he was a signatory of the Vyborg manifesto and consequently served a three-month prison sentence (in 1908) and was deprived of his political rights, although he remained active in party work, being recognized as one of the Kadets’ chief theorists and collaborating closely with P. N. Miliukov. Following the February Revolution of 1917, he took a leading role in the Russian Provisional Government’s commission to frame an electoral law for the Constituent Assembly, to which he was subsequently elected, and in October led the Kadet faction in the Pre-Parliament. At this stage, he had moved away from the party center and was more associated with V. D. Nabokov and the Kadets’ left wing.

Following the October Revolution, Vinaver was arrested and briefly imprisoned by the Soviet authorities, but was soon released. He then made his way to Moscow, where he went underground. He subsequently moved to Ekaterinodar, to offer his support to the Volunteer Army and to agitate for Allied intervention against the Bolsheviks, then joined Nabokov in the Crimean Regional Government, as its minister for foreign affairs. When that regime collapsed in April 1919, he made his way abroad, via Constantinople.

In emigration, Vinaver settled in Paris, where, together with A. I. Konovalov and N. D. Avksent′ev, he led calls for “the union of all democratic forces” among the émigrés and formed the coalition Republican Democratic Union. He subsequently chaired the Society for Russian Publishing Affairs in Paris and was one of the founders of the influential émigré newspaper Poslednie novosti (“The Latest News”), at the same time continuing with his scholarly work and teaching (at the “Russian University” at the Sorbonne, of which he was a founder). He died in 1926 and was buried in the Père-Lachaise cemetery, in Paris.

Vinogradov, Vladmir Aleksandrovich (1874–?). One of the five members of the anti-Bolshevik Ufa Directory, and a leading figure in the Democratic Counter-Revolution in Siberia, V. A. Vinogradov was born at Kazan′, attended the Kazan′ and Omsk Gymnasia, and was a graduate of the Law Faculty of Moscow University (1896). Following graduation, he first worked as a researcher on economic issues at the university, under the distinguished statistician A. I. Chuprov, before enrolling as a barrister at the Astrakhan District Court (1904–1907). He was then elected to the Third and Fourth State Dumas, where he joined the Kadets’ caucus and was eventually elected to the party Central Committee. During the February Revolution, he was a member of the Temporary Committee of the State Duma that formed the nucleus of the Russian Provisional Government of 1917, in which he served as deputy minister of communications, responsible for water transport and roads.