Tsarist officer turned Red commander who took Kyiv, battled in Bessarabia, and rebelled against Brest-Litovsk
After taking Kyiv he reported to Lenin: 'I ordered artillery to strike at high-rise and rich palaces, at churches and priests.'
A peasant-born officer of the Imperial Russian Army who distinguished himself in the Russo-Japanese War and World War I, he joined the Left SRs in 1917 and commanded the defense of Petrograd during the October Revolution. In early 1918 he seized Kyiv, establishing Soviet power in Ukraine, then led operations on the Romanian front to defend Bessarabia. Appointed commander of the Eastern Front in June 1918, he rebelled against the Brest-Litovsk Treaty in July, declared a 'war against Germany,' and was killed in Simbirsk.
Career timeline
1898–1917Served in Imperial Russian Army; fought in Russo-Japanese War and WWI, rose to Lieutenant Colonel
1917.10–11Commander of Petrograd Military District; led defense against Kerensky-Krasnov forces
1917.12–1918.02Chief of Staff, Southern Revolutionary Front; commanded operation to take Kyiv
1918.02–03Commander of Romanian Front; led Bessarabia defense and Odessa Soviet Republic
1918.06–07Commander of Eastern Front; rebelled against Brest-Litovsk Treaty, killed in Simbirsk
The Left SR figurehead chairman of the MRC, lending a non-Bolshevik face to the Bolshevik insurrection while Trotsky directed operations
On the night of 21 October 1917 Lazimir, as MRC chairman, went with Sadovsky and Mekhonoshin to military district headquarters to claim supreme authority over the garrison; Colonel Polkovnikov refused, saying he did not recognise their commissars and would arrest them if they broke the law.
A feldsher at the Petrograd military hospital who turned to SR agitation among soldiers, Pavel Lazimir rose after the February Revolution to chair the soldiers' section of the Petrograd Soviet. In October 1917 the Bolsheviks installed him, a Left SR, as chairman of the newly created Military Revolutionary Committee to give the body a non-Bolshevik front; the real direction came from Trotsky, while Lazimir himself drafted the MRC's founding statute. He joined the Bolsheviks in 1918 and served on the Revolutionary Military Council of the Southern Front, organizing supply and sanitation, before dying of typhus in 1920 at twenty-nine.
Career timeline
c. 1911–1917Feldsher at Petrograd military hospital; SR agitation among soldiers
1917.03–10Executive Committee member, Petrograd Soviet; chair of soldiers' section; deputy chair of military department
1917.10First chairman of Petrograd MRC; drafted the MRC statute
1917.11–1918Collegium member, NKVD and Narkomvoen
1918–1920Member, RVS Southern Front; directed supply and sanitation
Latvian-born Civil War hero turned defendant in the Tukhachevsky trial
On the night of 7 August 1920, Eideman's Right-Bank Group crossed the Dnieper to seize the Kakhovka bridgehead, a position sixty kilometres from Perekop that turned the flank and rear of Wrangel's army.
A Latvian-born Soviet commander and writer whose defence of the Kakhovka bridgehead as 13th Army commander helped break Wrangel's offensive from Crimea. He later trained Red Army cadres at the Frunze Military Academy and built the Osoaviakhim civilian defence apparatus, but in 1937 he was shot as a defendant in the Tukhachevsky trial and rehabilitated in 1957.
Career timeline
1916Graduated Kiev Military School, ensign in 16th Siberian Reserve Regiment
1917–1918Deputy chairman of Centrosibir, joined the Bolshevik Party
