UNION OF LANDOWNERS, ALL-RUSSIAN. The Union of Landowners was founded at a Moscow conference on 17–20 November 1905, during the revolution of that year, to defend the interests of landowners, who were under attack not only by socialists and liberals bent on land redistribution, but also, it was feared, by reformist elements among the tsarist bureaucracy (led by future prime minister P. A. Stolypin). Once the revolution had been crushed in 1907, the union became dormant, and many of its member migrated to the United Nobility. However, it was resurrected on 10 November 1916, by S. N. Balashov, on the initiative of the United Nobility, ostensibly to assist in the supply of food to the Russian Army but also to counter what was perceived as creeping state transgressions of the rights of private landholders during the course of the war (including a state monopoly on grain purchases and price fixing). Initially, membership was reserved for owners of 50 desiatiny of land or more, making it an elite organization. In May 1917, a new constitution was drawn up and a new board elected at a conference in Moscow for what was now called the All-Russian Union of Landowners. This, despite the presence in it of figures such as V. I. Gurko, was a more politically moderate organization (as indicated by the election to its chair of the moderate conservative N. N. L′vov), with a broader membership and an acceptance that expropriation of some private property (albeit with appropriate levels of compensation) might be necessary to solve the land question in Russia. This led to a significant increase in the union’s activities; on the eve of the February Revolution it had had only some 150 members and half a dozen branches, but by the autumn of 1917, it had 45 provincial branches across Russia and thousands of members.
After the October Revolution and the closure of the Constituent Assembly (to which it had succeeded in having just two delegates elected on its platform), the organization went underground and began to muster opposition to Soviet rule under the leadership of Gurko and the former tsarist minister of agriculture, A. V. Krivoshein. In March 1918, the union submerged itself within the anti-Bolshevik Right Center, and many of its members went on to play leading roles in the White movement, particularly in South Russia. Branches of the union also operated in emigration in the 1920s, in Paris, Sofia, Belgrade, Berlin, and London.
UNITED BALTIC DUCHY. This short-lived state (the Vereinigtes Baltisches Herzogtum) came into being in 1918, as a consequence of the German occupation of the former imperial Russian provinces of Courland, Livland, and Estland. In the wake of the collapse of Russia, and in light of the reconstruction of the region’s territories heralded by the Soviet–German negotiations toward the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk (3 March 1918), the local assemblies of Baltic German nobles (the Kurländische Landesrat and the Vereinigter Landesrat of Livland, Estland, Riga, and Ösel) declared themselves independent and united (on 8 March and 12 April, respectively) and then proclaimed their union with the Kingdom of Prussia.
The new state was recognized by Emperor Wilhelm II on 22 September 1918 (this was the only recognition it received), and on 5 November 1918 a Regency Council (Regentschaftsrat) was formed to govern it, under the former land marshal of Livland, Adolf Pilar von Pilchau (1851–1925). From its capital, Riga, the council declared Adolf Friedrich, Duke of Mecklenburg-Schwerin (1873–1969), its first head of state, and denouncing the pretensions to independence of the new nationalist governments of Estonia and Latvia (as well as claims to the territory by Soviet Russia), it proclaimed its own sovereignty over Courland, Latgale, Northern and Southern Livland, Ösel, and Estland. The collapse of imperial Germany in October–November 1918 meant that Adolf Friedrich could never take up his position, and the council ceased to function on 28 November 1918. However, the armed force that had been gathered to defend the United Baltic Duchy, the Baltic Landeswehr, continued to be influential in the region for the next year, during the Latvian War of Independence, the Estonian War of Independence, and especially, the Landeswehr War.
United Committee of the Union of Zemstvos and Municipal Councils. See Zemgor.
UNITED GOVERNMENT OF THE SOUTH-EASTERN UNION OF COSSACK HOSTS, MOUNTAIN PEOPLES OF THE CAUCASUS, AND FREE PEOPLES OF THE STEPPE. The South-Eastern Union of Cossacks and other peoples was created on 20 October 1917, and in theory remained operational until its disestablishment by a decree of its Supreme Council (Krug) on 11 January 1920. It grew out of meetings among the ataman of the Don Cossacks, A. M. Kaledin; his Kuban counterpart, A. P. Filimonov; and others at Novocherkassk in June 1917, and an All-Cossack Conference at Ekaterinodar in September of that year, and was intended to be the progenitor of a unified Cossack state that would eventually join a federal Russian republic. Its constitution granted broad autonomy in local affairs to each constituent member of the union and established a government in which each constituent was granted two seats. In the first instance, the government consisted of B. A. Kharlamov and A. P. Epifanov (the Don Cossack Host); I. A. Makarenko and B. K. Bardizh (the Kuban Cossack Host); G. A. Vertepov and N. A. Karaulov (the Terek Cossack Host); Pshemakho Kotsev and Aitek Namitok (the Mountain Peoples); Gaidar Bammat and Topa Chermoev (Daghestan); A. M. Skvortsov and Prince Tundutov (Astrakhan Cossack Host and the Kalmyks); and I. I. Ivanov and A. A. Mikheev (Urals Cossack Host). (The Orenburg Cossack Host had also agreed to join, but selected no representatives.) The chairman of the union government was Kharlamov, deputized by Makarenko.
The October Revolution and subsequent establishment of Soviet power across the Cossack regions led to the temporary immobilization of the government, but the project was taken up again by Ataman P. N. Krasnov, following the uprising of the Don Cossacks in the spring of 1918. However, with the resurgence of the Reds in the summer of 1918 and the concomitant rise of the Whites (who, fighting under the slogan “Russia, One and Indivisible,” were suspicious of all notions of regionalism and regional autonomy), the union remained largely dormant. Nevertheless, aspirations toward some rather vague mix of union and autonomy remained, and in February 1919, the Kuban Rada committed itself to summoning a regional council of representatives from the Cossack lands, Daghestan, Crimea, Georgia, Armenia, and Azerbaijan (although it never met). On 1 June 1919, the Don Krug voted for a formal completion of the South-Eastern Union. Subsequently, on 13 June 1919, a Cossack conference convened at Rostov-on-Don, with representatives from the Don, Kuban, and Terek Cossack Hosts. At the first session, N. S. Riabovol made a speech that was sharply critical of General A. I. Denikin and the policies of his Special Council; that night, Riabovol was shot dead by person or persons unknown. The conference subsequently dispersed, having failed to draw up a constitution for a new union. On 11 January 1920, as the Armed Forces of South Russia collapsed, representatives of the Don, Kuban, and Terek Cossacks did ratify a provisional union constitution, but it remained in the realm of the abstract, as the Red Army overran the Cossack territories.