Arrested by the Cheka in February 1919, and constantly hounded by the Soviet authorities, Steinberg went into emigration in Germany in 1923, where he was active in the so-called 2½ International. In 1933, when Hitler came to power, Steinberg moved to London, where he became a cofounder of the Freeland League, which sought to find a safe haven for European Jews fleeing the Nazis. A lifelong critic of the Zionist movement, he sought to establish a self-governing Jewish settlement outside the Middle East and directed most of his efforts to obtaining permission to settle Jews in the northern reaches of Western Australia, basing himself in Perth from 1939 to 1943. This project (the “Kimberley Plan”) came to nothing, although Steinberg labored at it until his death, in New York, in 1957. His son, Leo Steinberg (born 1920), became an influential art historian.
Stepanov, Nikolai Aleksandrovich (2 May 1869–19 January 1949). Major general (1915), lieutenant general (23 May 1919). The much-maligned minister of war of the Whites’ Omsk government, N. A. Stepanov was a graduate of the 1st Cadet Corps (1886), the Mikhail Artillery School (1889), the Academy of the General Staff (1900), and the Cavalry Officers School (1902). He then occupied numerous senior staff posts (including a term on the staff of the commander in chief of the Russian Army during the Russo–Japanese War), before becoming a professor at the academy in 1907. From 1912, he served as chief of staff to the 6th Cavalry Division, transferring to the staff of the main commander in chief of the Russian Army in 1915, where he served as an orderly, and on 27 December 1916, he was named chief of the Military-Marine Directorate of the staff of the commander of the Baltic Fleet.
Following the October Revolution (by which time he was chief of staff of the 4th Cavalry Corps), Stepanov moved to South Russia and joined the Volunteer Army, acting as chief of the Military-Marine Directorate on the staff of General A. S. Lukomskii, and from February 1918, as chief of staff of the Forces of the Rostov District. He then journeyed to Harbin, in Manchuria, to liaise with the Far Eastern Committee of General D. L. Khorvat, before transferring to Omsk to serve as assistant minister of war to the Ufa Directory and then (from 18 November 1918) the Omsk government of Admiral A. V. Kolchak. On 5 January 1919, he was named minister of war in the Omsk regime, in which capacity he oversaw the mobilization of Siberia’s population and resources in preparation for Kolchak’s spring offensive. However, he was in constant conflict (over balancing the needs of the front and the rear) with the ambitious chief of staff of Kolchak’s forces, General D. A. Lebedev, and also gained a reputation as a martinet, who was more interested in procedure than action. (According to the head of the British Military Mission in Siberia, General Alfred Knox, Stepanov suffered from “a congenital reluctance to decide anything.”) Kolchak, however, seems to have held him in high regard, and although Lebedev was able to engineer his removal from the war ministry on 23 May 1919, he was at the same time promoted by the supreme ruler to the rank of lieutenant general and placed in command of the Mid-Siberian Corps. Stepanov left that post in August 1919 and was sent on a mission to northwest Russia to liaise with General N. N. Iudenich. By the time Stepanov arrived in Europe, however, Iudenich’s efforts had been thwarted by the Red Army, and his North-West Army was about to be disarmed and interned in Estonia. Stepanov therefore went into emigration. He lived briefly in Serbia (from 1922), before settling in France during the Second World War, but seems to have played no significant part in émigré military life.
Stepanov, Vasilii Aleksandrovich (1871/1872/1873–1920). One of the prominent Kadets who supported the White regime in South Russia, V. A. Stepanov was born into an impoverished noble family and was a graduate of the 1st Tiflis Gymnasium, St. Petersburg University (1893), and the Mining Institute (1897). He subsequently worked as a mining engineer in the Donbass and the Urals, becoming director of the Bogoslovsk Mining District. He was also a member of the Kadet Party from its early days (situating himself on its left wing and serving on its Central Committee from 1916), and from 1907 to 1917 was a deputy in the Third and Fourth State Dumas, representing Perm′ guberniia. As secretary of the Kadet Duma caucus in the Fourth Duma, and as a Mason, he worked to unite elements of the opposition across party lines. In 1917, he served as deputy minister of trade and industry (and subsequently as director of that ministry) in the Russian Provisional Government and led the Military Commission of the Kadets.
Following the October Revolution, Stepanov took an active part in organizing and funding the dispatch of officers to the Don region to join the nascent Volunteer Army. On 28 November 1917, he was arrested by the Cheka, but was soon released. He then moved to Moscow and was active in all the major cross-party, anti-Bolshevik underground organizations that were founded during the spring of 1918: the Right Center, the Nationalist Center, and the Union for the Regeneration of Russia. In August 1918, he traveled to Ekaterinodar to join the Don Civil Council of General M. V. Alekseev. As state controller in the Special Council of General A. I. Denikin in 1918–1919, he spoke out in favor of military dictatorship and the restoration of a (constitutional) monarchy, was regarded as an expert on the nationalities question, and was one of the authors of the Denikin regime’s “constitution,” “The Provisional Statute on the Governance of the Regions Occupied by the Volunteer Army” (2 February 1919).
Stepanov was evacuated from Novorossiisk in February 1920 and subsequently traveled to Paris as an advocate of the White cause. In May 1920, he returned to Crimea to inform the government of General P. N. Wrangel of the mood in the Allied capitals; he was on his way back to France by sea when he died suddenly, of unknown causes.
STEPIN (STEPIN′SH), ALEKSANDR (ARTUR) KARLOVICH (1886–29 February 1920). Ensign (1912), lieutenant (1916). The Red commander A. K. Stepin was born into a Latvian peasant family at Ascheraden (now Aizkraukle), in central Livland guberniia, and participated in workers’ strikes and demonstrations during the 1905 Revolution. He was mobilized into the army in 1907 and served with distinction during the First World War (winning three St. George’s Crosses for valor). Following the February Revolution of 1917, he was elected as head of his regiment by its soldiers. He joined the Red Army in 1918 and the Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks) in 1919, and led Red units around Balash and Kamyshin on the Volga, then became commander of the 14th Rifle Division (January–June 1919). From 16 June 1919, he commanded the 9th Red Army, but contracted typhus and had to give up his post on 9 February 1920. Stepin died shortly afterward and was buried at Kamensk-Shatinsk, near Rostov-on-Don. The 14th Rifle Division was subsequently renamed in his honor.
Stevens, John Frank (25 April 1853–2 June 1943). One of the most successful and renowned American engineers of the 20th century, known as “Big Smoke” for his love of cigars, John F. Stevens played an interesting part in the “Russian” Civil Wars. He was born in Maine and had little formal education, but worked his way up the railway engineering profession, becoming chief engineer of the Great Northern Railway in 1895. In 1905, he was hired by President Theodore Roosevelt as chief engineer on the Panama Canal. Having completed the railway infrastructure of that project, however, he unexpectedly resigned in 1907. In May 1917, he was appointed by President Wilson to lead an advisory committee of railway experts that was dispatched to Russia to assist the Provisional Government and was subsequently placed at the head of the 300-strong Russian Railway Service Corps of American railwaymen that was to be sent into Russia via Siberia. However, the corps arrived at Vladivostok in November 1917, just as the Bolsheviks took power, and Stevens was obliged to evacuate to Nagasaki, returning to Russia only in the summer of 1918, as Allied intervention in Siberia started.