Armenian fedayi commander who rejected the Republic of Armenia and held Zangezur with his own division
Born in Shabin-Karahisar in the Ottoman Empire in 1865, he led fedayi units of the Dashnaktsutyun and in the First World War commanded the first Armenian volunteer battalion of the Russian army. Refusing to recognize the Republic of Armenia or the Treaty of Batum, he took control of Zangezur with his Special Striking Division in 1918. The historian Donald Bloxham writes that he sought to make it homogeneously Armenian by destroying Muslim villages, while Antranig Chalabian argues that he saved Zangezur’s Armenians from annihilation. In December 1918 he halted his advance into Karabakh at British request, and in 1919 he disbanded his unit. He died in Fresno, California, in 1927.
Career timeline
1892Joined the Armenian Revolutionary Federation
1914–1916Commander of the first Armenian volunteer battalion, Imperial Russian Army
1918Major-general; commander of the Western Armenian division
1918–1919Commander of the Special Striking Division in Zangezur
Tatar lawyer and Duma deputy who headed the national administration of Idel-Ural
Born in 1878 in the village of Tashsu near Kazan, he studied law at the University of Paris in 1901–1906 on Ismail Gasprinsky’s advice. In 1906 he joined the Central Committee of Ittifaq al-Muslimin, and he sat for Kazan province in the Second and Third State Dumas. In 1917 he was on the executive committee of the All-Russian Muslim Council, and on 5 January 1918 he was elected chairman of the Milli Idare, the body of national-cultural autonomy of the Muslims of Inner Russia and Siberia, becoming head of the Idel-Ural State. When the Bolsheviks took Kazan and Ufa provinces he fled to Finland; at the Paris Peace Conference in 1919 he pleaded for the peoples of Idel-Ural, without result. He moved to Turkey in 1925, became a professor of legal history and a member of parliament, and died in Istanbul in 1957.
Career timeline
1901–1906Law studies at the University of Paris
1906Member of the Central Committee of Ittifaq al-Muslimin
1907–1912Member of the Second and Third State Dumas for Kazan province
1917Member of the executive committee of the All-Russian Muslim Council
1918Chairman of the Milli Idare (head of the Idel-Ural State)
1925–1957Professor of legal history in Ankara and Istanbul
1931–1954Member of the Turkish parliament (three terms)
Anti-Soviet partisan commander who moved from Estonia to Belarus, changing camps as he went
Pilsudski judged him 'a bandit, but not only a bandit: today a Russian, tomorrow a Pole, the day after a Belarusian.'
He went from the Red Army to the Whites, took Pskov in 1919, broke with Yudenich to side with Estonia and in 1920 moved to Poland for a Belarusian expedition. His troops' anti-Jewish violence is on record; he was killed in occupied Warsaw in 1940.
Career timeline
1914Mobilized into the tsarist army; awarded the George Cross and St George medal
1918Joined the Red Army; formed the Luga cavalry regiment with Trotsky's sanction
1918.11Defected to the Whites with about 400 men
1919Colonel then major-general; took Pskov in the Yudenich offensive
1920.01Arrested Yudenich and sided with Estonia
1920In Polish service took Pinsk and formed the Russian People's Volunteer Army
1920.11Invaded Soviet Belarus and proclaimed himself head of a Belarusian state; after defeat fled to Poland
Labour journalist and former Russian army officer who became the first commander-in-chief of the Finnish Red Guards
Born in 1884 to a poor land worker’s family in Jämsä, he joined the Russian Army in 1903, served as a lieutenant in the Russo-Japanese War, joined the socialists in the 1905 revolution, and was jailed in Moscow and expelled from the military. Back in Finland he worked for the labour press in Turku, Vyborg and Kotka and as a Social Democratic party official. In October 1917 he organised the Workers’ Order Guards in Helsinki and after the November general strike became their commander-in-chief. In January 1918, despite heavy drinking in Petrograd, he bought a large cargo of guns and ammunition from the Bolsheviks, but on 28 January he was replaced by Eero Haapalainen. He broke out of besieged Tampere on the battle’s last night, was captured near Lahti and was shot at the Hennala camp in May 1918.
Career timeline
1904–1905Lieutenant in the Russian Army in the Russo-Japanese War
1917Organiser of the Workers’ Order Guards in Helsinki
1917–1918First commander-in-chief of the Order Guards and Red Guards
1918Red Guard general staff; staff of the Häme Front
