12TH RED ARMY. This name was applied to two military formations of the Red Army in the course of the civil wars.
The first 12th Red Army was created by an order of the Revvoensovet of the Southern Front on 3 October 1918, in accordance with a directive of the Revvoensovet of the Republic of 11 September 1918, from various formations operating around Astrakhan and the eastern reaches of the North Caucasus. It was attached to the Southern Front, then (from 3 November 1918) the Caspian–Caucasian sector of the Southern Front, and later (from 8 December 1918) the Caspian–Caucasian Front. The army suffered from its isolation from other Red centers and from the thinly populated region in which it operated, and it consisted initially of only the Astrakhan (later the 33rd) Rifle Division. Consequently, its attempts to capture the railways from Gudermes to Petrovsk and Kizliar to Chervlennaia were thwarted by the Whites. On 13 February 1919, its ranks were swelled by elements of the 11th Red Army that had retreated from the North Caucasus, but it was still unable to hold off the attacks of the Armed Forces of South Russia (AFSR) in a front stretching from the North Caucasus to the Donbass. The army was disestablished on 13 March 1919. Commanders of the first 12th Red Army were A. I. Antonomov (3 October–15 November 1918, although he never took up the post); V. L. Stepanov (3 October 1918–14 February 1919); and N. A. Zhdanov (14 February–13 March 1919). Its chief of staff was D. A. Severin (3 October 1918–13 March 1919).
The second 12th Red Army was created on 16 June 1919, by an order of the Revvoensovet of the Republic, from elements of the 1st Ukrainian Soviet Army and the 3rd Ukrainian Soviet Army. It was attached to the Western Front, then (from 10 January 1920) the South-West Front, the Western Front (from 14 August 1920), and once more the South-West Front (from 27 September 1920). Its complement included the 1st Ukrainian Soviet Rifle Division (June–August 1919); the 7th (March–December 1920), 24th (June 1920), 25th (May–December 1920), 44th (June 1919–April 1920 and June–December 1920), 45th (June-October 1919 and March–April 1920), 46th (June–July 1919), 47th (September 1919–April 1920), 57th (February–March 1920), 58th (September 1919–August 1920 and September–November 1920), and 60th (August 1919–February 1920) Rifle Divisions; the Independent VOKhR Rifle Division (November–December 1920); and the 17th Cavalry Division (February–May 1920, and, in its reconstituted form, in October 1920).
In June 1919, the 12th Red Army occupied a region encompassing most of southern Ukraine (Kherson, Nikolaev, Odessa, Tiraspol′, Kamenets-Podol′skii) and was engaged in battles with forces of the AFSR and the Ukrainian Army. Its position was weakened in July–August of that year, as the AFSR captured Khar′kov, Poltava, and eventually Kiev (14 August 1919). When the White offensive was turned, the 12th Red Army went back on the offensive, recapturing Kiev (December 1919). With the onset of the Soviet–Polish War, it was driven out of Kiev (April 1920), but then formed part of the offensive on the South-West Front that recaptured the Ukrainian capital in June 1920. The army was disestablished on 25 December 1920. Commanders of the second 12th Red Army were N. G. Semenov (16 June–8 September 1919); S. A. Mezheninov (10 September 1919–10 June 1920); G. K. Voskanov (10 June–20 August 1920); N. N. Kuz′min (acting, 20 August–26 October 1920); and N. V. Lisovskii (26 October–25 December 1920). Its chiefs of staff were G. Ia. Kutyrev (16 June–2 October 1919); V. K. Sedachev (2 October 1919–13 October 1920); M. V. Molkochanov (13–16 October 1920); V. D. Latynin (17 October–17 November 1920); and I. D. Modenov (17 November–23 December 1920).
Twenty-six (baku) Commissars. The Twenty-Six Commissars (sometimes called the Baku Commissars) were the group of Bolsheviks, Dashnaks, and members of the Party of Left Socialists-Revolutionaries executed by firing squad, in controversial circumstances, between the stations of Pereval and Akhcha-Kuyma, on the Transcaspian Railway, on 20 September 1918.
The men were former leaders of the Baku Commune. Following the collapse of that regime on 26 July 1918, they had been imprisoned on 14 August 1918 by the succeeding Central Caspian Dictatorship, which was dominated by Dashnaks, Rightist members of the Party of Socialists-Revolutionaries, and Mensheviks, and which enjoyed the support of the forces of the Allied intervention, in the shape of Dunsterforce. On 14 September 1918, as the Ottoman Army of Islam stormed Baku, Red Guards led by Anastas Mikoyan broke into the Bailovskii prison and freed the incarcerated Bolsheviks and their allies. The commissars then fled by sea, on board the ship Turkmen, hoping to reach Bolshevik-held Astrakhan, but for reasons that remain obscure the ship’s captain instead sailed for Krasnovodsk, on the eastern shore of the Caspian Sea. There, the commissars were detained by troops loyal to the anti-Bolshevik Transcaspian Provisional Government. When the commissars’ presence at Krasnovodsk became known to the commander of British forces in the region (Norperforce), Major General Wilfred Malleson, he asked the British intelligence officer at Ashkhabad, Captain Reginald Teague-Jones, to suggest to the local authorities that the prisoners be taken to India as hostages, in the hope of arranging an exchange for British citizens held in Russia (notably the men of a British military mission recently captured at Vladikavkaz). Teague-Jones attended the meeting of the Ashkhabad Committee at which the commissars’ fate was to be decided, but apparently did not communicate Malleson’s suggestion and left the meeting before a decision was taken. He discovered the next day (he later testified) that the Ashkhabad Committee had ordered that the men should be executed.
At around 6:00 a.m., on 20 September 1918, the sentence was carried out. (For reasons that are unclear, only 26 of the 35 men in captivity were executed. Among those who survived was the aforementioned Mikoyan (head of state of the USSR, 1964–1965, whom J. V. Stalin would later, mockingly—and threateningly—dub “the 27th Commissar”). After the civil wars, the Soviet government placed the blame for the execution of the Twenty-Six Commissars at the doors of the British, even alleging that it had been British agents on board the Turkman who had directed it to Krasnovodsk. They were supported in this view by the testimony of F. A. Funtikov, one of the leaders of the Ashkhabad regime, who (before he was tried and shot at Baku in 1926) charged that Teague-Jones had personally ordered the executions.
Funtikov’s version forms the basis for the official graphic memorial to the men, I. I. Brodskii’s 1925 painting The Execution of the 26 Baku Commissars, in which two British officers are visible in the left foreground as the shootings take place (The canvas’s composition, it should be noted, has a distinct resemblance to those commemorating the execution of the Communards in Paris in 1871.) The British government always denied that this had been the case (and there is certainly no evidence that any British officers were present at the executions). Nevertheless, this controversy soured interwar relations between Britain and the USSR and can be regarded as one of the roots of the Cold War.