Historical Dictionary of the Russian Civil Wars, 1916-1926

During the civil wars, “Bloody Rosa,” as she was nicknamed by her enemies, was notorious for the prominent part she played, as secretary of the Crimean regional committee of the Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks) (20 November 1920–6 January 1921), in helping Béla Kun with the implementation of a campaign of Red Terror against the remnants of the Russian Army of General P. N. Wrangel that had been stranded in Crimea following the Whites’ evacuation of the peninsula. She subsequently held numerous party and state posts and, having been an active supporter of the Stalinist terror of the 1930s, was eventually made a member of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) in March 1939. She died in January 1947 and was buried in the Kremlin Wall Necropolis.

ZEMSTVO HOST. This was the name adopted by the last significant White military formation in the Russian Far East. Following the collapse of the White Insurgent Army and the outbreak of disputes in the Maritime Province between the supporters of Ataman G. M. Semenov and the kappel′evtsy (supporters of the democratically inclined, late General V. O. Kappel′), an agreement was reached between various military and political forces in the region to summon a Zemskii sobor′ at Vladivostok on 7 July 1922. (The Zemskii sobor′, “Assembly of the Lands,” was the ancient Russian national assembly, consisting of representatives of all levels of Russian society—including especially the peasants—who were summoned to make “the will of the land” known to the tsar.) The outcome of its meeting was the formation of the Maritime Zemstvo Government, which assumed control of all the remnants of White forces in the region and, in its inaugural declaration (of 7 July 1922), christened this new force the Zemstvo Host (Zemskii rat′). Its major constituent units were the Iakutsk People’s Army; the Volunteer Druzhina of General V. N. Pepeliaev; the Volga Host of General V. M. Molchanov (which included, inter alia, units formed by workers from the Urals who had risen against the Bolsheviks during the Izhevsk-Votkinsk Uprising of late 1918); the Siberian Host of Major General I. S. Smolin; the Far Eastern Host of Lieutenant General F. L. Glebov (which incorporated most of the remaining semenovtsy); and the Siberian Cossack Group of Major General V. A. Borodin. The force’s commander in chief (Zemskii voevod) was General M. K. Diterikhs. In all, the Zemstvo Host could muster some 8,000 men; it had control of 24 heavy guns and 4 armored trains.

Elements of the Host, operating under the command of General Diterikhs, enjoyed some success in early September 1922, advancing along the Ussurii railway toward Khabarovsk, but were soon driven back by the Far Eastern Republic’s People’s-Revolutionary Army, which was operating in coordination with at least 5,000 Red partisans at large in the Maritime Province. Having abandoned Vladivostok to the enemy in late October 1922, by early November remnants of the Zemstvo Host were concentrated at Pos′et Bay, from where some 7,000 men were evacuated to the Korean port of Genzan (Wonsan) on vessels of the Siberian Flotilla. Another 3,000 men crossed the Chinese border near Grodekovo at about the same time, thereby bringing an end to the Zemstvo Host.