Historical Dictionary of the Russian Civil Wars, 1916-1926

On 1 April 1919, Zefirov was removed from office with accusations of speculation and malfeasance hanging over him, although formal charges were never brought (and he always maintained that he was innocent). In November 1919, he moved to Irkutsk and worked there in the railway administration (somehow avoiding detection by the Soviet authorities) until October 1920, when he emigrated to Manchuria. He then worked at Harbin and Shanghai as a journalist, as a controller of the Chinese Eastern Railway, and as a director of various trading concerns. In the 1920s he propounded the Smenovekhovstvo (“Change of Landmarks”) ideology, adopted Soviet citizenship, and became involved in Chinese firms doing business with Soviet Russia. He also chaired the Club of Soviet Citizens in the French concession at Shanghai from 1939 to 1944, and was concerned with the dissemination of propaganda to encourage émigrés to return to the USSR and to support the Soviet Union in its struggle against Hitler’s Germany during the Second World War. In 1947, he returned to Russia himself, settling near Sverdlovsk (Ekaterinburg) and working as chief of the commercial goods department of a copper-smelting factory. He was arrested on 11 June 1949, and on 4 March 1950 received a sentence of 25 years’ imprisonment for “counterrevolutionary activities.” He died in the “Mineral” prison camp, in the Komi region. He was posthumously rehabilitated in January 1989.

ZELENOI, ALEKSANDR PAVLOVICH (25 August 1872–4 September 1922). Vice admiral (1917). The Russian and Soviet naval commander A. P. Zelenoi was born into a noble family at Odessa and was a graduate of the Naval Corps (1892). He served in the Baltic Fleet and, during the First World War, specialized in mine defense, eventually becoming chief of staff of the fleet (March–July 1917).

Following the October Revolution, Zelenoi remained at his post in order to prevent German capture of the fleet, and was one of the organizers of the Ice March of the Baltic Fleet. He later served as commander of the naval forces in the Baltic (18 January 1919–8 July 1920), overseeing the maritime defense of Petrograd against the attacks of the forces of General N. N. Iudenich. He was subsequently stood down and became a consultant on naval affairs to the Revvoensovet of the Republic and naval attaché to the Soviet mission in Finland (1921–1922). He died in Petrograd in 1922 and was buried in the cemetery of the Alexander Nevsky monastery.

ZELENY (ZELENYI), DANYLO (Daniil) IL′ICH (1883/1886–November 1919). Zeleny (the pseudonym, meaning “Green,” of Danylo Terpylo), who was born at Tripol′e, in Kiev guberniia, was one of the best-known Ukrainian otamans active during the civil wars. He attended his village school and in 1905 graduated from a local seminary, with the intention of becoming a teacher. However, he joined the Party of Socialists-Revolutionaries in 1906, and in 1908 was arrested and exiled to Kholmogory, in Arkhangel′sk oblast′. He was amnestied in 1913 and returned to Ukraine, subsequently serving in the First World War as a clerk with the 35th Army Corps.

In late 1917, Zeleny returned to his home village and began to organize a partisan unit of Free Cossacks. By this time, he was an active social democrat, and he would later become a spokesman for the left wing of the Ukrainian Social-Democratic Labor Party (Independentists). When his faction broke with the Ukrainian National Republic Directory in January 1919, he led a revolt against it near Obukhiv. Soon the revolt spread from Kiev guberniia into neighboring Chernigov and Poltava gubernii; at its height, it united some 30,000 fighters under Zeleny. Initially, Zeleny seemed inclined to ally himself with the Bolsheviks, but when the latter attempted to incorporate his forces into their own, he broke with them, and on 20 March 1919, staged an uprising against Soviet rule at Tripol′e. On 25 March 1919, he was declared an outlaw by the Soviet authorities. Thereafter, his forces fought not only against the Ukrainian Army of the Directory but also against the Red Army and the Whites.

In September 1919, Zeleny again recognized the authority of the directory and subordinated his men to its Central Ukrainian Insurgent Committee at Kamenets-Podol′sk. Soon thereafter, according to Soviet sources, he was killed in battle against White forces at Kanev. However, some maintain that this is a fiction and that he was killed by the Reds, as his body was never found and there was no reported battle with the Whites near Kanev at that time.