Historical Dictionary of the Russian Civil Wars, 1916-1926

ZADOV, LEV NIKOLAEVICH.See ZINKOVSKII (ZADOV), LEV NIKOLAEVICH.

ZAITSEV, IVAN MATVEEVICH (9 September 1878–22 November 1934). Colonel (1916), major general (12 October 1919). The enigmatic anti-Bolshevik military commander I. M. Zaitsev was born into the family of a teacher at Karagaisk, in Troitsk guberniia, and was a graduate of the Orenburg Officer School (1898) and the Academy of the General Staff (1908). He worked as a teacher at the Fomin Cossack School and served in the First World War in several units of the Orenburg Cossack Host, rising to the post of first assistant commander of the 11th Orenburg Cossack Regiment. Following the February Revolution, he was chosen as a delegate from the Romanian Front to liaise with the newly established Russian Provisional Government (24 March 1917) and subsequently remained in Petrograd as a member of the war ministry’s special council on army reform (from 23 April 1917). He was then made the Provisional Government’s special commissar for Khiva (from July 1917).

Following the October Revolution, Zaitsev refused to recognize the Soviet government and led a column of troops that seized Çärjew and Samarkand in early 1918. In February 1918, he was arrested by Red Guards at Ashkhabad (Aşgabat) and imprisoned at Tashkent. On 1 July 1918, he was freed by members of the anti-Bolshevik Turkestan Military Organization and subsequently served as its chief of staff. When that organization came under attack by the Cheka, Zaitsev attempted to make his way to join the forces of Ataman A. I. Dutov in the Orenburg region, but he was arrested en route at Kustanai in November 1918. Having again escaped, he made his way to Orenburg in early 1919, where he was named by Dutov as commander of the Orenburg Military District and was subsequently chief of staff of the Orenburg Army (from October 1919). In early 1920, he was sent to China as Dutov’s plenipotentiary and remained there until 1924, when he returned to Soviet Russia. Remarkably, he found work with the Red Army in Moscow (as chief of staff of a rifle division), but on 25 October 1924, was arrested by the GPU and dispatched to the Solovetskii prison camp in the White Sea. On 3 August 1928, he escaped, while being transferred to a camp in the Komi region, and made his way to the Far East and thence to China, settling in Shanghai. His sudden reemergence from Soviet Russia was greeted with suspicion by Russian émigrés, however (notably General M. K. Diterikhs, who snubbed him), and he committed suicide in 1934. On 8 October 1993, Zaitsev was officially rehabilitated by the Russian courts.

ZAKHAROV, IVAN NIKOLAEVICH (10 October 1885–5 December 1930). Sublieutenant (1 January 1909), staff captain (191?), captain (1917). Prominent as a military specialist in the Red Army during the civil wars, I. N. Zakharov was a graduate of the Orlov Bakhtin Cadet Corps (1900) and the Tiflis Officer School (1907) and subsequently served with the 223rd Reserve Infantry (Korotoiakskii) Regiment. During the First World War, he initially served with the 3rd Finnish Rifle Brigade, then completed an accelerated course at the Academy of the General Staff, after which he became a senior adjutant, then acting chief of staff of the 3rd Finnish Rifle Division.

Following the October Revolution, Zakharov joined the Red Army (15 March 1918) and subsequently served as chief of the operations department of the staff of the 1st Red Army on the Eastern Front (19 June–10 July 1918), then chief of staff of the 1st Red Army (11 July–15 August 1918), advisor to that force’s commander (August 1918–February 1919), inspector of infantry of the 1st Red Army (March 1919–March 1920), assistant commander of the Caucasian Front (March–April 1920), assistant commander of the Western Front (29 April 1920–April 1921), and finally acting commander of the Western Front (4 March–20 September 1921). After the civil wars, he occupied numerous senior military posts, rising to be the head of the educational directorate of the Main Staff of the Red Army (from 25 August 1925) before being assigned to teaching work, as head of the Tactics Faculty of the Military-Medicine Academy (from 12 January 1930).