Soviet power was established in the region in early 1918—the Terek Soviet Republic being proclaimed at Piatigorsk on 3–5 March of that year—and the Host was officially disbanded during the period of de-Cossackization, but in June 1918 the Terek Cossacks rose against the new authorities, and civil war ensued. By November 1918, through the application of Red Terror, the Bolsheviks had precariously reestablished their control of the Terek, but over the winter of 1918–1919, forces of the White Volunteer Army entered the region and assisted the Cossacks in clearing the Red authorities from the Host territory. Thereafter, the Terek Cossacks allied with the Volunteers and subordinated themselves to the Armed Forces of South Russia, contributing the 1st–4th Terek Cossack Divisions, the 1st–4th Terek Plastunskii (“dismounted Cossack”) Independent Brigades, and various other formations to its forces in 1919. In 1920, in the Russian Army of General P. N. Wrangel, Terek Cossacks formed part of the Terek-Astrakhan Brigade. As punishment for their support for the Whites, in the aftermath of the civil wars many Terek Cossack families were deported to Ukraine and other regions, and their empty villages were handed over to the indigenous peoples of the North Caucasus, while the territory itself was divided among the new autonomous soviet socialist republics of Daghestan, Northern Ossetia, and Checheno-Ingushetia.
The Terek Cossack Host’s atamans of the civil-war period were M. A. Karaulov (killed on 13 December 1917); L. E. Medianik (killed later in December 1917); and Lieutenant General G. A. Vdovenko (28 February 1918–1945).
TEREK–DAGHESTAN, PROVISIONAL GOVERNMENT of. This anti-Bolshevik authority was formed on 1 December 1917, at Vladikavkaz, at a joint congress of the Union of United Mountain Peoples of the Caucasus, the government of the Terek Cossack Host, and the Union of Towns of the Terek–Daghestan Region. It consisted of 12 ministers and was initially led by the Terek ataman M. A. Karaulov. However, he was shot dead by revolutionary soldiers on 13 December 1917, and subsequently Prince P. Kh. Kaplanov chaired the Terek–Daghestan cabinet.
The regime issued a declaration that the solution of all social and economic problems should be postponed until the summoning of a regional constituent assembly and that, in the meantime, all efforts should be directed toward the military struggle against Soviet rule, but it was in reality powerless. In March 1918, with the proclamation of the Terek Soviet Republic, the members of the regime fled to Georgia, where some of them joined the exiled government of the equally nebulous Mountain Republic.
Terek Soviet Republic. This polity was created on 3–5 March 1918, at the 2nd Congress of the Peoples of the Terek, as a constituent part of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic. Claiming control of the Terek oblast′, in opposition to the aspirations for autonomy of the Terek Cossack Host and the mountain peoples of the North Caucasus (through the Mountain Republic), and attempting to introduce a Soviet system into the region, it had its capital first at Piatigorsk and later at Vladikavkaz. Its territory was entirely occupied by forces of the Volunteer Army by February 1919, and from July 1919 it formed part of the North Caucasian Soviet Republic.
The chairmen of the Sovnarkom of the Terek Soviet Republic (which contained representatives of a variety of political parties) were, successively, the Bolshevik S. G. Buachidze (died 20 June 1918); the Left-SR Iu. G. Pashkovskii (died August 1918); and the Bolshevik F. Kh. Bulle.
TER-HARUTIUNIAN, GAREGIN. See NJDEH (TER-HARUTIUNIAN), GAREGIN.
TER-MINASSIAN, RUBEN (1882–29 November 1950/1951). The Armenian revolutionary Ruben Ter-Minassian was born at Akhalkalaki and was educated at a local Georgian seminary at Ejmiatsin (the spiritual capital of Armenia) and at the Lazarian Institute in Moscow. He was a close friend of Hamo Ohandjanian and, with him, joined the Dashnaks around the turn of the century. After training around Batumi in 1902, he spent several years organizing fedayeen (guerrilla fighters) around Lake Van, in Turkey. After a period in retirement from the struggle after the proclamation of the Turkish constitution in 1908 (largely spent studying science in Geneva), he was also active in that region during the First World War, leading Armenian fighters around Taron during the “Van Resistance” of 1915 and 1916 and helping to found the Administration for Western Armenia. Having escaped encirclement by the Turks, Ter-Minassian returned to Transcaucasia and, in 1917, was elected to the Armenian National Council.
In March 1918, Ter-Minassian accompanied the Transcaucasian Sejm delegation to negotiate with the Turks at the Trabzon Peace Conference and, from June 1918, served in the parliament of the Democratic Republic of Armenia, where his was a cautious voice, warning against overambitious territorial claims. From May to October 1920, he was minister of defense of the Armenian republic. In that capacity, he oversaw the suppression of uprisings by local Bolsheviks, was notably severe in his treatment of the Azeri population, and was also involved in financing undercover operations to assassinate Turkish leaders implicated in the 1915 genocide of the Armenians.
Following the invasion of Armenia by the Red Army in December 1920, Ter-Minassian fled, via Zangezur (Syunik), to Persia and thence to France. After many years of touring Europe and the Middle East as a spokesman for the Armenian Revolutionary Federation, he settled in France in 1948. He died in Paris and is buried in the Père-Lachaise cemetery.
TERPILO, DANILO (DMITRII) (1886–November 1919). A prominent Ukrainian otaman of the civil-war era, Danilo Terpilo was born at Tripol′e, Kiev guberniia, and had begun training to become a village teacher when, in 1905, he entered revolutionary politics as an organizer for the Party of Socialists-Revolutionaries in his home district. He was arrested and exiled to the far north in 1908, but was amnestied in 1913. During the First World War, he served as a clerk with the 35th Army Corps, before returning home in late 1917 to become again involved in politics, this time working with the Ukrainian Social-Democratic Labor Party and supporting the Ukrainian Central Rada.
In the autumn of 1918, during the uprising against the Ukrainian State of General P. P. Skoropadskii, Terpilo offered his services to the Ukrainian National Republic Directory and, under the command of S. V. Petliura, raised the 3,000-strong Dnepr Division, at the head of which he entered Kiev on 14 December 1918. He soon broke with Petliura, however, believing that the directory was pursuing a too rightist line, and from January 1919 began raising forces to battle against the Ukrainian Army. On 8 February 1919, he offered to subordinate his units to the Red Army, but rebuffed all efforts to have his forces subjected to the regular Red command and broke with the latter in March 1919. On 25 March 1919, he was declared to be an outlaw by the Sovnarkom of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic. His forces subsequently retreated into left-bank Ukraine, pursued by the Reds, although Terpilo was killed in battle at Kanev with White forces in November 1919.