In August 1919, as the AFSR advanced northward, the Special Council transferred its headquarters from Ekaterinodar to Rostov-on-Don; later, as the AFSR retreated in November–December 1919, it too retreated, to Novorossiisk, where it was disbanded by Denikin on 17 December 1919 and replaced by a Government of the Main Commander of the Armed Forces of South Russia. That, in turn, was superseded by General P. N. Wrangel’s Crimean Government of South Russia at Sevastopol′ in April 1920, following the resignation of General Denikin.
SPECIAL MANCHURIAN DETACHMENT. Created in December 1917, around Verkhneudinsk (now Ulan-Ude), by the then Esaul (future Ataman) G. M. Semenov, this was the first organized military force to oppose Soviet rule in eastern Siberia. Its initial complement was some 90 officers, 35 Cossacks, and 40 Buriats, but it grew rapidly as demobilized officers and men of the Transbaikal Cossack Host returned to the region and joined up. By April 1918, Semenov’s force had transferred to the Chinese Eastern Railway zone in Manchuria, establishing its headquarters at Manzhouli (Manchuria) Station, on the Russian border, and consisted of the Mongol-Buriat Cavalry Regiment, two Mongol-Karachen Regiments, the 1st Semenov and the 2nd Manchurian Infantry Regiments, two officer companies, two Serbian companies, and a battalion of Japanese volunteers (in all, some 700 men). It also commanded 2 armored trains and 14 artillery pieces.
In the autumn of 1918, after several less successful incursions into Soviet territory, Japanese forces assisted the division in capturing Verkhneudinsk (20 August 1918) and Chita (26 August 1918). The latter town then became its headquarters. Following Semenov’s (reluctant) subordination to Admiral A. V. Kolchak as supreme ruler, in June 1919, the detachment (by then renamed the Special Manchurian Division) became part of the 6th East Siberian Army Corps of the Russian Army and was stationed along the railway line between Lake Baikal and the Manchurian border. Following the collapse of the Russian Army, on 21 March 1920, it was renamed the Manchurian Riflemen of Ataman Semenov Brigade and became part of the Far Eastern (White) Army. In September 1920, pursued by the People’s-Revolutionary Army of the Far Eastern Republic, which had captured Chita earlier that month, most of its complement followed Semenov across the border into China.
Ataman Semenov commanded the Special Manchurian Detachment throughout its existence, assisted chiefly by the heads of divisions Colonel A. I. Tirbakh, Lieutenant General V. A. Kislitsyn, Major General K. P. Nechaev, and Colonel N. G. Natsvalov, as well as Major General L. N. Skipetrov (who was also chief of staff of the division from 1 September 1918).
SPECIAL TRANSCAUCASIAN COMMITTEE. Also known by its Russian acronym Ozakom (from Osobyi zakavkazskii komitet), the Special Transcaucasian Committee was established by the Russian Provisional Government on 9 March 1917, to replace the authority of the deposed imperial viceroy of the Caucasus, Grand Duke Nikolai Nikolaevich. Chaired (from 11 March 1917) by the Russian V. A. Kharlamov, and including representatives of the Armenian (Michael Papadjanian), Azeri (Mammad Yusif Jafarov Hajibaba oglu), and Georgian (Kita Abashidze, later Akaki Chkhenkeli) communities, it was described as the highest civil authority in Transcaucasia and claimed juristiction over those parts of the Ottoman Empire occupied by Russian forces (notably, the Administration for Western Armenia). Following the October Revolution, on 15 November 1917, it was succeeded by the Transcaucasian Commissariat and thus can in some senses be regarded as the progenitor of the various independent governments of Transcaucasia during the civil-war years.
SPIRIDONOVA, MARIIA ALEKSANDROVNA (16 October 1884–11 September 1941). One of the most vocal and most persecuted socialist critics of the Soviet government during the civil-war era, M. A. Spiridonova was born at Tambov into the family of a minor (nonhereditary) noble (a collegiate secretary) and graduated from Tambov Gymnasium for Girls in 1902. She began to train as a nurse, but joined the Party of Socialists-Revolutionaries (PSR) in 1904 and volunteered for terrorist work with its Fighting Organization. In January 1906, she gained national attention when she mortally wounded G. N. Luzhnovskii, a police inspector whom the SRs had condemned to death for the violent suppression of peasant unrest in Tambov guberniia in 1905. Despite the brutality of her act (she shot Luzhnovskii five times, point blank, in the face), she became a national hero and an international cause célèbre, as a consequence of her gender and youth, as well as the stories of her having been beaten, tortured, and even raped, which were spread by her party comrades (perhaps in the knowledge that they were not all true). After a trial in Moscow, she was exiled for life to eastern Siberia, public pressure having persuaded the authorities to commute her original death sentence.
Released from a women’s prison at Nerchinsk following the February Revolution, Spiridonova served briefly as mayor of Chita, where she symbolically dynamited the city prison. She arrived back in Petrograd in May 1917 and quickly became the leader of the left wing of the PSR (although she failed to gain a seat on the party’s Central Committee) and was subsequently the leader of the breakaway Party of Left Socialists-Revolutionaries. Following the October Revolution, she initially campaigned for an all-socialist coalition during the Vikzhel′ negotiations, but soon became a strong supporter of the Bolshevik–Left-SR coalition government. She was elected to the chair of the Second Congress of Peasants’ Soviets, was chair of the Peasant Section of VTsIK (at the Second, Third, and Fourth Congresses of Soviets) and was also the Bolshevik–Left-SR candidate for the chair of the Constituent Assembly, although she was defeated in that contest by the mainstream PSR candidate, V. M. Chernov. However, during the spring of 1918 she became a tenacious critic of the Soviet government, attacking the Food Army, the first stirrings of the Red Terror, and the signing of the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk (although she had initially supported V. I. Lenin on that issue). At the Sixth Congress of Soviets in July 1918 she (and her party) broke with the Bolsheviks.