The incident was largely forgotten in Britain, but in the Soviet Union the Twenty-Six Commissars were canonized and commemorated in innumerable books, films—notably 26 Komissarov (dir. N.M. Shengelaia, 1933, but micromanaged by the leaders of the Azerbaijan Soviet Socialist Republic)—coins, stamps, songs and poems (e.g., Sergei Esinin’s “Song of the 26”), place-names, and statues. Indeed, following the return of the commissars’ remains to Baku in September 1920 (not coincidently, during the Congress of the Peoples of the East), the hagiography associated with “The Twenty-Six” was probably bested only by the Lenin cult in Soviet political culture. The most prominent piece of public commemorative art was the Twenty-Six Commissars’ Memorial in Baku, designed by Alesker Huseynov, which was raised in 1958 above the spot on Sahil Square where the men’s remains had been ceremonially reburied in 1920.
Commemoration of the Twenty-Six, however, was always problematic in Azerbaijan, where many Muslims regarded the commissars as bearing responsibility for the massacres of the March Days of 1918. Consequently, the eternal flame at the Sahil memorial was extinguished soon after the breakup of the USSR in the early 1990s, and in January 2009 the Azeri authorities took the controversial decision to demolish the monument and replace it with a fountain. On 26 January 2009, the commissars’ remains (or, rather, the remains of 23 of them, all that were recovered) were reburied at Baku’s Hovsan Cemetery. Across independent Azerbaijan, Georgia, and Armenia, subway stations, streets, parks, and so forth, that once bore the names of the Twenty-Six Commissars, either individually or collectively, have also been renamed since the collapse of the Soviet Union.
The Twenty-Six Commissars were S. G. Shahumian (chairman of the Sovnarkom of the Baku Commune and the Sovnarkom of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic’s extraordinary commissar for the Caucasus); Meshadi Azizbekov (deputy people’s commissar of internal affairs in the Baku Commune and guberniia commissar for Baku); Prokopius Dzhaparidze (chairman of the Central Executive Committee of the Baku Soviet); I. T. Fioletov (chairman of the Council of the National Economy of the Baku Soviet); Vezirov, Mir-Hasan Kiazim oglu (people’s commissar for agriculture of the Baku Soviet); G. N. Korganov (people’s commissar for military and naval affairs of the Baku Soviet); Ia .D. Zevin (people’s commissar for labor of the Baku Soviet); G. K. Petrov (the Sovnarkom of the RSFSR’s military commissar for the Baku region); I. V. Malygin (deputy chairman of the Military-Revolutionary Committee of the Red Army of the Caucasus); Arsen Amiryan (editor-in-chief of the Bakinskii rabotnkik newspaper); Meyer Basin (member of the Military-Revolutionary Committee of the Red Army of the Caucasus); Suren Osepyan (editor-in-chief of the Izvestiia of the Baku Soviet); Eigen Berg (sailor and chief of communications of Soviet forces in Baku); V. F. Polukhin (member of the collegium of the Commissariat for Military Affairs of the RSFSR); F. F. Solntsev (commissar of the Baku Military School); Armenak Boriyan (journalist); I. Ia. Gabyshev (brigade commissar); M. R. Koganov (member of the Military-Revolutionary Committee of the Baku Soviet); Bagdasar Avakyan (commandant of Baku); Iraklii Metaksa (Shahumian’s bodyguard); Ivan Nikolayshvili (Dzhaparidze’s bodyguard); Aram Kostandyan (Deputy People’s Commissar for Food of the Baku Commune); Solomon Bogdanov (member of the Military-Revolutionary Committee of the Baku Soviet); A. A. Bogdanov (clerk); Isay Mishne (secretary of the Military-Revolutionary Committee of the Baku Soviet); and Tatevos Amirov (commander of a cavalry unit and a member of the Dashnaks).
U
UBOREVICH(-GUBOREVICH), IERONIM PETROVICH (Uborevičius-Guborevičius, Jeronimas) (2 January 1896–12 June 1937). Sublieutenant (1916), komandarm (1935). Born at Antandriia, Kovno guberniia, into a Lithuanian peasant family, I. P. Uborevich, one of the most prominent and successful Red commanders of the civil-war era, was educated at the Dvinsk Realschule, from where he graduated with a gold medal. He then began a course of higher education in the Mechanics Faculty of the St. Petersburg Polytechnical Institute, but in 1915 transferred to the Constantine Artillery School, from which he graduated in 1916, becoming commander of first a battery and then a company.
Uborevich joined the Russian Social-Democratic Labor Party in March 1917, and following the October Revolution, became an organizer of Red Guards detachments in Bessarabia, where he was wounded, captured, and imprisoned by forces of the Austro-German intervention in March 1918. He escaped in August of that year, joined the Red Army, and became an artillery instructor and commander of the Dvinsk Brigade on the Northern Front. From December 1918, he was commander of the 18th Rifle Division of the 6th Red Army. Catching the eye of his superiors, he then rose to numerous command positions: commander of the 14th Red Army of the Southern Front and the South-West Front (6 October 1919–24 February 1920, 17 April–7 July 1920, and 15 November–15 December 1920); commander of the 9th Kuban Army of the Southern Front (1 March–5 April 1920); commander of the 13th Red Army of the Southern Front (10 July–11 November 1920); and commander of the 5th Red Army of the Eastern Front (27 August 1921–14 August 1922). Apart from action against the Whites and the Poles, he also participated in the suppression of the forces of Nestor Makhno and S. Bułak-Bałachowicz and was assistant to M. N. Tukhachevskii in the crushing of the Tambov Rebellion in 1921–1922, before being named minister of war of the Far Eastern Republic and commander in chief of its People’s-Revolutionary Army (17 August–22 November 1922). In the latter capacity, he was responsible for overseeing the storming of Spassk (9 October 1922) and the capture of Vladivostok (25 october 1922), and ultimately, the expulsion from the Maritime Province of the last significant White force on Russian territory, the Zemstvo Host of General M. K. Diterikhs. He was also a member of the Dal′biuro of the Russian Communist Party (August–November 1922).
After the civil wars, Uborevich was a member of VTsIK from 1922 and was then, successively, commander of a series of military districts: Urals (June 1924–January 1925); North Caucasus (January 1925–1927); Moscow (1928–18 November 1929); Belorussia (April 1931–20 May 1937); and Central Asia (20–29 May 1937). He was also was sent twice to study in the Supreme Military Academy of the German General Staff (1927–1928 and June 1933), and from 2 June 1930 to 11 June 1931 was a member of the Revvoensovet of the USSR. He also served as chief of armaments of the Red Army (November 1929–April 1931). From 1931 to 1937, he was a candidate member of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks), and from 1934 he was a member of the Military Council of the People’s Commissariat for Defense of the USSR.
As a vocal critic of the invidious role in the Soviet military played by J. V. Stalin’s crony K. E. Voroshilov, Uborevich was arrested on 29 May 1937, and along with Tukhachevskii, A. I. Kork, and others, was arraigned in the “Case of Trotskyist Anti-Soviet Military Organization” on 11 June 1937. Found guilty of espionage and sabotage by the (secret) military tribunal, he was condemned to death and shot the same day. He was posthumously rehabilitated by the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the USSR on 31 January 1957.