Historical Dictionary of the Russian Civil Wars, 1916-1926

Having been elected commander of his regiment in the aftermath of the October Revolution, Voskanov joined the Red Army in July 1918 and became a member of the Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks) in 1919. During the civil wars, he initially served as commander of the Samara (later 25th) Rifle Division (25 November 1918–February 1919) in battles on the Eastern Front. He was badly wounded, but returned to service as commander of the 49th Rifle Division (June–September 1919) and then again, following the death of V. I. Chapaev, as commander of the 25th Rifle Division (26 September–8 October 1919). He was then named commander of the 4th Red Army (8 October 1919–23 April 1920), succeeding M. V. Frunze, and was subsequently commander of the 2nd Labor Army (April–June 1920), then commander of the 12th Red Army (10 June–20 August 1920). For his part in defeating Cossack forces and the Southern Army of Admiral A. V. Kolchak, he was twice awarded the Order of the Red Banner.

Voskanov subsequently filled numerous posts with the Red Army: commander of the 2nd Reserve (later 47th Rifle) Division (1921–1922); commander of the 6th Rifle Division (1923–1924); assistant inspector of infantry of the Red Army (1924–1925); and assistant commander of the Turkestan Front (1925–June 1926). He then moved into diplomatic work, becoming military attaché in Finland (1926–1928) and then military attaché in Turkey and Italy simultaneously (1929–1930). He was also chief military secretary of the All-Union Committee on Standardization attached to the Council of Labor and Defense of the USSR (1931–1936) and deputy chairman of the central council of Osoaviakhim (the Society for Support of the Defense, Aviation and Chemical Industries) of the USSR (1936–1937). He was arrested on 28 May 1937, and having been found guilty of membership in a mythical “counterrevolutionary terrorist organization” by the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the USSR on 20 September 1937, was immediately executed. Voskanov was buried in a mass grave in the Donskoi cemetery in Moscow. He was posthumously rehabilitated on 29 December 1956.

VOSTRETSOV, STEPAN SERGEEVICH (17 December 1883–3 May 1932). Ensign (1916). One of the most highly decorated Red commanders of the civil-war era (he was awarded the Order of the Red Banner on no fewer than four occasions, as well as receiving a weapon of honor), S. S. Vostretov was born into a peasant family in the village of Kazantsevo, in Ufa guberniia. He worked as a blacksmith and joined the Russian Social-Democratic Party in 1905, gravitating toward the Mensheviks, but was called up into the army in 1906. In 1909, he was sentenced to three years’ imprisonment for revolutionary agitation among his fellow soldiers, but was recalled to the ranks to serve in the Russian Army during the First World War.

Following the October Revolution, Vostretsov left the Mensheviks, and in 1918, he joined the Red Army. From June 1919, he commanded one of the most effective Red units on the Eastern Front, the 27th Rifle Division, participating in the capture of Cheliabinsk and Omsk, and in 1920 went with that division to fight on the Western Front in the Soviet–Polish War, participating in the capture of Minsk. He joined the Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks) in 1920, and from 1921 was involved in counterinsurgency and border defense operations at the head of Cheka units in Siberia and the Far East. In the autumn of 1922, he commanded the 2nd Priamur Rifle Division of the People’s-Revolutionary Army of the Far Eastern Republic, during the storming of Spassk. The following year, he led counterinsurgency operations against the remnants of the White forces of General A. N. Pepeliaev in the Okhotsk-Aiansk region (the Iakutsk Revolt).

From 1924, Vostretsov once again commanded the 27th (Omsk) Rifle Division, and in 1927, he graduated from the Red Military Academy. During the Sino–Soviet conflict of the late 1920s (over ownership of the Chinese Eastern Railway), he commanded the 18th Rifle Corps and the Transbaikal Group of Forces. Vostretsov died (according to some accounts, he committed suicide) in Novocherkassk in 1932, and is buried at Rostov-on-Don. His home village was renamed Vostretsovo in his honor.