Historical Dictionary of the Russian Civil Wars, 1916-1926

1421 Pages·2016·1.66 MB·english

by  Jon Smele

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HISTORICAL DICTIONARIESOF WAR, REVOLUTION, AND
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Chinese Cultural Revolution, Second Edition, by Guo Jian, Yongyi Song,
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Russian Civil Wars, 1916–1926, by Jonathan Smele. 2015.
The Arab–Israeli Conflict, Second Edition, by P. R. Kumaraswamy. 2015.
Historical Dictionary of the
Russian Civil Wars, 1916–1926
Jonathan D. Smele
ROWMAN & LITTLEFIELD
Lanham • Boulder • New York • London
Published by Rowman & Littlefield
A wholly owned subsidiary of The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc.
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www.rowman.com
Unit A, Whitacre Mews, 26-34 Stannary Street, London SE11 4AB
Copyright © 2015 by Jonathan D. Smele
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or
mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission
from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote passages in a review.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Smele, Jon.
Historical dictionary of the Russian civil wars, 1916–1926 / Jonathan D. Smele.
pages cm. — (Historical dictionaries of war, revolution, and civil unrest)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-4422-5280-6 (hardcover : alkaline paper) — ISBN 978-1-4422-5281-3 (ebook)
1. Soviet Union—History—Revolution, 1917–1921—Dictionaries. 2. Soviet Union—History—
1917–1936—Dictionaries. 3. Civil war—Soviet Union—History—Dictionaries. I. Title.
DK265.S526 2015
947.084'103—dc23
2015011566
™ The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National
Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO
Z39.48-1992.
Printed in the United States of America
For Grace
Contents
Contents
Editor’s Foreword
Acknowledgments
Reader’s Note
Acronyms and Abbreviations
Chronology
Introduction
A
B
C
D
E
F
G
H
I
J
K
L
M
N
O
P
Q
R
S
T
U
V
W
X
Y
Z
Appendix 1: Red Governing Institutions
Appendix 2: Anti-Bolshevik Governing Institutions
Appendix 3: Nationalist Governing Institutions
Glossary
Bibliography
About the Author
Editor’s Foreword
Wars—especially civil wars—are bloody and messy, and few were as
bloody and messy as those that raged in and around Russia before, during,
and after the Bolshevik Revolution of October 1917. Not easily defined or
confined, these conflicts extended well beyond the borders of today’s
Russia (or even the collapsing Russian Empire of that time), spilling over
into what are now several other independent countries and stretching across
territories of 7,000 miles from west to east (from Poland to the Pacific) and
half that distance from north to south (from the Arctic Ocean to—and
beyond—the borders of China and Persia). The contenders were not just the
Reds and the Whites of popular renown, as our author here makes clear, but
a host of other political and national formations, as well as the
interventionist forces of the Allies (chiefly Britain, France, Japan, and the
United States) and the Central Powers (chiefly Germany, Austria-Hungary,
and Turkey). But while the Whites, various non-Russian nationalist forces,
anarchists, and popular socialists were active in diverse regions, the Reds
had to stretch in every possible direction, and it is almost miraculous that
they emerged (for the most part) victorious—although many of the Soviet
leaders responsible for Red victories in the civil wars eventually ended up
in jail, exile, or unmarked graves. The number of casualties, not
surprisingly, was in the millions—most of them a result not of the actual
warfare but rather of the accompanying waves of famine and disease and
the general mayhem of the times. Whether this was all worth it probably
rarely crossed the minds of those involved, because they felt themselves to
be playing for huge stakes: nationhood and “freedom” for some, domination
of a precious ideology (endowed with all sorts of possible virtues) for
others. Yet having recently witnessed the collapse of the huge Soviet empire
that arose from the “Russian” civil wars, one may be permitted some
doubts.
This was a big war—or rather, it was a huge compendium of small and
medium-sized wars—and consequently, this is a big book. Like all other
volumes in the War series, though, it covers its subject very systematically.
It begins with a list of acronyms and abbreviations, so that readers can
follow the key institutional and organizational players, which were often
not generally known by their full names (and in some cases are known