Thereafter, Tõnisson went abroad to campaign for the recognition of Estonian independence, returning to Tallinn (Revel) in November 1918. He joined the Estonian government as minister without portfolio and then served two terms as prime minister (18 November 1919–28 July 1920 and 30 July–26 October 1920). He remained a member of the Estonian parliament (Riigikogu) from 1920 to 1937 (serving as its chairman, 1923–1925 and 1932–1933) and was twice state president (9 December 1927–4 December 1928 and 18 May–21 October 1933). In the late 1930s, he was one of the leaders of the democratic opposition to the authoritarian government of Konstantin Päts, but following the Soviet invasion of Estonia in June 1940, he was nevertheless arrested. His subsequent fate is uncertain, but one credible version has it that he was executed at Tallinn in July 1941. A statue of him was unveiled in Tartu in 1999.
TOPCHUBASHOV, ALIMARDAN ALAKBAR OGLU (4 May 1862–8 November 1934). The head of state of the Democratic Republic of Azerbaijan was born at Tiflis, into a branch of the ancient, noble Topchubashi family. He was educated at the Tiflis Gymnasium and graduated from the Law Faculty of St. Petersburg University (1888). Topchubashov was then offered a teaching post at the university, but would have been required to convert to Christianity to accept it, so he returned instead to the Caucasus, where he worked as a lawyer; edited the newspaper Kaspi (“The Caspian”); and became a prominent leader of the Turko-Tatar and Muslim peoples of the Russian Empire in their struggles against legal, political, and religious discrimination. In 1905, he helped found and lead the Ittifaq al-Muslim (Union of Muslims), and in 1906 he was elected to the First State Duma, as a Muslim representative. When that parliament was dissolved by Nicholas II, Topchubashov was among those deputies who signed the Vyborg Manifesto, calling for civil disobedience to protest the tsar’s act. Consequently, he was arrested and imprisoned for three months and was subsequently deprived of his political rights.
With the founding of the Azerbaijan Republic (28 May 1918), Topchubasov became the government’s ambassador to Armenia, Georgia, and the Ottoman Empire, based in Constantinople. He was still in that city when, on 7 December 1918, he was elected chairman (speaker) of the Azeri parliament in Baku, thereby becoming head of state (in absentia) of the republic. He traveled to France in January 1919, to press for Azerbaijan’s recognition at the Paris Peace Conference. This he eventually received in January 1920, but the Soviet invasion of his country in April 1920 meant he was unable to return home. He died in Paris on 8 November 1934.
TOPORKOV, SERGEI MIKHAILOVICH (25 September 1880–1931). Colonel (May 1917), major general (8 December 1918). The White general S. M. Toporkov was born into the family of a member of the Transbaikal Cossack Host at Akshinsk stanitsa. He served with the 1st Chita Cossack Regiment in the Russo–Japanese War and was much decorated for bravery. During the First World War, he commanded Chechen and Tatar regiments of the Caucasian Native Mounted Division (the ‘Wild Division”).
Following the October Revolution, Toporkov joined the Volunteer Army upon its foundation (December 1917) and served as commander, successively, of an independent Kuban Cossack detachment (March–June 1918), the 1st Zaporozhian Regiment of the 1st Kuban Mounted Division (June–October 1918), and the 2nd Mounted Brigade of the 1st Mounted Division (2 November 1918–January 1919). Following the creation of the Armed Forces of South Russia (AFSR), he commanded the 1st Mounted Division of the 1st Kuban Mounted Corps (January–April 1919). From 19 January 1919, Toporkov was also commander of the 1st Terek Cossack Division, which was in the process of formation. With the latter, during May and June 1919, he undertook a remarkable raid in the rear of the Red Army, penetrating into Soviet territory as far as Khar′kov (which was then some 400 miles from the front). He captured and briefly held that city (as would the later Mamontov raid). From 22 July to September 1919, he commanded the 4th Mounted Corps of the Caucasian Army, and was then placed in command of the 2nd Kuban Corps of the same army (October–November 1919). From December 1919 to March 1920, during the collapse of the AFSR, he commanded the Composite Kuban–Terek Mounted Corps, the main reserve force of the retreating Whites. Following the evacuation of White forces from Novorossiisk to Crimea, he participated in the military council of March 1920 at Sevastopol′ that selected General P. N. Wrangel as supreme commander and was then placed in command of the Composite Cossack Corps in Wrangel’s Russian Army (April–November 1920). He was evacuated to Turkey in November 1920, and in emigration settled in Serbia. Toporkov died in Belgrade and was buried in that city’s New Cemetery.
Trabzon Peace Conference. This conference, which brought together delegations from the Ottoman Empire and the Transcaucasian Sejm, led by Rear Admiral Rauf Bey and Akaki Chkhenkeli, respectively, opened on 14 March 1918. Its aim was to reconcile the different views that were taken by Turkey and the Transcaucasian Democratic Federative Republic with regard to the border that had been established between Turkey and the former Transcaucasian provinces of the Russian Empire by the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk (3 March 1918). Essentially, the Turks were willing to accept the Brest settlement (although they harbored ambitions for much greater territorial expansion into Transcaucasia), as were, with some reluctance, the Georgians, but the Armenians, who had the most to lose (as claimants to much of eastern Anatolia), were not. Hostilities were then resumed between Turkey and Armenia in April 1918, and on 4 June 1918, the Democratic Republic of Armenia was forced to accept the Treaty of Batumi.
TRADE UNIONS. Trade union membership skyrocketed in Russia during the revolutionary year of 1917. On the eve of the collapse of tsarism (12 years after union activity had been legalized in the Russian Empire), just three unions were operating legally, with 1,500 members; by July 1917, there were almost 1,000 unions, with membership approaching 2,000,000. When the Third All-Russian Congress of Trade Unions (the first since the February Revolution) met in Petrograd on 21–28 June 1917, a majority (55.5 percent) of delegates were Mensheviks; 36.4 percent were Bolsheviks. However, the Bolsheviks predominated in the newly legalized factory committees, which competed for influence with the trade unions. This facilitated the October Revolution and was useful in the implementation of workers’ control by the new Soviet government, but as that policy became discredited over the winter of 1917–1918, factory committees were ordered to subject themselves to the now Bolshevik-dominated unions at the All-Russian Congress of Trade Unions on 20–27 January 1918. (Between congresses, the unions were subordinated to the All-Russian Central Council of Trade Unions.)