Historical Dictionary of the Russian Civil Wars, 1916-1926

Following the October Revolution (during which he participated in the storming of the Winter Palace and led a contingent of Baltic sailors to assist in the seizure of power in Moscow), Zhelezniakov was placed in charge of security at the Tauride Palace, where he became famous for ordering that the first and only session of the Constituent Assembly be closed because “the guard is getting tired.” Thereafter, in association with V. I. Kikvidze, he was active around Odessa with a detachment of sailors that organized the Dunaisk River Flotilla and ran two armored trains, The Tiger and The Lieutenant Schmidt (the latter named after a hero of the 1905 Revolution). At this time, he expressed his support for the Party of Left Socialists-Revolutionaries and the uprising they had staged in Moscow, criticized the employment of military specialists by L. D. Trotsky, and clashed also with N. I. Podvoiskii on a number of operational issues. Eventually, following the derailing of Podvoiskii’s train, which he was said to have arranged, Zhelezniakov was declared to be an outlaw and was sentenced to death, but he escaped arrest and went into hiding in Tambov guberniia. He was amnestied in October 1918 and rejoined the Red Army as commander of the 1st Soviet Cavalry Battery. The following month, he was either sent, or made his own way back, to Odessa (accounts differ), where he worked underground, behind White lines (and allegedly organized numerous bank robberies and acts of sabotage). Following the capture of Odessa by Red forces on 6–8 April 1919, he was elected as chairman of the union of merchant sailors in the city, but the next month he was placed in command of another brigade of armored trains, this time attached to the 14th Red Army.

On 26 July 1919, Zhelezniakov was killed in a battle against White forces at Verkhovtsevo. He was buried, with full military honors, on 3 August 1919, at the Vagan′kovskii cemetery, in Moscow. Numerous statues were raised in his honor (including one at Kronshtadt), ships were named after him, and many poems and songs were composed about him in the Soviet era. The fact that Zhelezniakov was an anarchist and had even been outlawed by the Soviet state was conveniently forgotten as his life was mythologized.

ZHENOTDEL. The acronym by which was known the Women’s Department (Zhenskii otdel) of the Central Committee of the Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks). It had its roots in the First All-Russian Congress of Women Workers and Peasants of November 1918, which was organized by A. M. Kollontai, Inessa Armand, and others. There was some opposition at the congress to the creation of a separate women’s organization within the party, but, won over by its proponents’ argument (that they sought not to isolate women but to forge men and women into a unified socialist movement), delegates voted in favor of a request to the party to establish a “special commission for propaganda and agitation amongst women.”