Historical Dictionary of the Russian Civil Wars, 1916-1926

Vratsian (krouzinian), Simon (1882–May 1969). Simon Vratsian, the last prime minister of the Democratic Republic of Armenia, was born at Great Sala, near Nor Nakhchivan, and educated at the Georgian Academy at Etchmiadzin. A Leftist member of the Dashnaks from 1898 (and a member of the party bureau from 1914), he was a supporter of the movement’s adoption of socialism at its Vienna Conference in 1907. He worked for the party in St. Petersburg and Moscow, before moving abroad to Turkey in 1910 and then on to the United States in 1911, to escape tsarist persecution, but returned to Transcaucasia during the First World War and helped organize Armenian volunteer units for the Russian Amy.

Vratsian became a leading figure at the Armenian National Congress in September 1917, and was subsequently elected as a member of the National Council of Armenia. In 1918, he toured South Russia, establishing links with the Volunteer Army. In 1919, he accepted the posts of minister of labor, agriculture, and state properties in the cabinet of Alexander Khatisyan and held the same posts in the bureau government of Hamazasp Ohandjanian, as well as having responsibility for information and propaganda. After the resignation of the bureau government, Vratsian became prime minister of the Democratic Republic of Armenia on 24 November 1920. In that capacity, as the 11th Red Army entered Armenia on 2 December 1920, he accepted the transfer of power to the Bolsheviks and also agreed to the signing of the Treaty of Alexandropol before resigning from office.

He thereafter went into hiding. Then, as president of the Committee for the Salvation of the Fatherland, he led the failed rebellion against Soviet authority at Yerevan on 18 February 1921 (the February Uprising). Vratsian spent much of the rest of his life in itinerant exile, campaigning for the return to Armenia of provinces held by Turkey, before finally settling in Beirut in 1951, as principal of the Djemaran (the Nshan Palandjian College). Vratsian wrote extensively on the history of the Democratic Republic of Armenia, and his books are a vital source on the subject.

Vsebiurvoenkom. The acronym by which was known the All-Russian Bureau of Military Commissars (Vserossiiskoe biuro voennykh kommissarov). This body was created by order of the People’sCommissariat for Military Affairs on 8 April 1918, to oversee and coordinate the functioning of the network of military commissars in the nascent Red Army, and in general, to offer political guidance to Red forces and undertake agitprop among the troops. On 18 April 1919, following a decision of the 8th Congress of the Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks), and in reaction to criticisms made by the Military Opposition about the low regard in which commissars were held by the Red command, the institution was disbanded and replaced by the Political Department of the Revvoensovet of the Republic, which in turn became the Political Directorate of the Revvoensovet of the Republic (PUR) on 15 May 1919.