UNIVERSAL MILITARY TRAINING. See VSEVOBUCH.
UNIVERSALS OF THE UKRAINIAN CENTRAL RADA. See UKRAINIAN CENTRAL RADA, UNIVERSALS OF THE.
Upper don rebellion. See veshensk uprising.
URALS ARMY. This White force was created as a consequence of the decision of a congress of the Urals Cossack Host, in December 1917, to refuse to recognize Soviet power on its territory, and the subsequent arrest (in January 1918) of the Bolshevik authorities at Ural′sk by a group of officers under M. F. Martynov. The rising spread rapidly, and by 1 April 1918, Soviet power had fallen across the entire Urals oblast′. In the process, a Host government formed, and the Urals Army was attached to it. Its major constituent parts were originally the 1st Urals Cossack Corps and the 2nd Iletsk Cossack Corps, but it was later (July 1919) reformed into three components: the Buzuluk, Saratov, and Astrakhan-Gur′ev Corps. The Urals Army fell, in turn, under the operational command of the Siberian Army (June–August 1918), the Volga Front (under General S. čeček, August–September 1918), the Russian Army of Admiral A. V. Kolchak (December 1918–July 1919), and the Armed Forces of South Russia (AFSR) (21 July 1919–March 1920), and at its height (in June 1919) it numbered 25,000 men (under 600 officers) and had 174 machine guns and 52 guns.
In the summer of 1918, this force was responsible for clearing most of the southern Urals region of Bolshevik forces, from the Caspian to Samara and from Orenburg to Ural′sk, although the latter and much of the northern parts of the territory were lost to the Reds in the autumn and winter of 1918. During Kolchak’s spring offensive of 1919, the Urals Army marched on Ural′sk and, from April 1919, laid siege to the town, but could not recapture it, and the siege was broken by forces of the 4th Red Army under V. I. Chapaev on 11 September 1919. Although, following the capture of Tsaritsyn by the Kuban Army in late June 1919, some AFSR units had crossed the Volga and established contact with the left flank of the Urals Army (at which point operational command of the Urals Army passed from Kolchak to General A. I. Denikin), the army could not survive simultaneous attacks from the Red forces to the north and the Turkestan Red Army in its rear, as well as a major epidemic of typhus, and in October 1919 it disintegrated.
Following the Reds’ capture of Gur′ev on 5 January 1920, the army command and its staff retreated south along the eastern shore of the Caspian toward Fort Aleksandrovsk. They were accompanied by some 15,000 Urals Cossacks and numerous camp followers, of whom at least 13,000 perished in the course of a horrific, three-week, 200-mile trek through frosts of minus 20–25 degrees. Some of the survivors of this “ice march” subsequently crossed the Caspian to join the AFSR in the North Caucasus, but soon retreated into Daghestan. Others surrendered to the Reds’ Caspian Military Flotilla, which arrived at Krasnovodsk on 5 April 1920. Meanwhile, 215 (by some accounts 162) Cossacks and refugees moved further south, and on 20 May 1920, they crossed the border into Persia. There, some of the Cossacks enrolled in His Majesty’s, the Shah of Persia’s Cossack Division, but most were interned at Basra. In 1922, the British authorities in the region moved the latter group to Vladivostok, where they arrived just as the city was about to fall to the People’s-Revolutionary Army of the Far Eastern Republic. After spending some time in China, in 1923 most of the survivors were then allowed to emigrate to Australia, where many of them worked in the sugarcane fields north of Brisbane.
Formal command of the Urals Army rested with General I. G. Akulinin, but the direct commanders of the army were Major General M. F. Martynov (April–September 1918); Major General V. I. Akutin (21 September–14 November 1918); Lieutenant General N. A. Savel′ev (15 November 1918–8 April 1919); and Lieutenant General V. S. Tolstov (8 April 1919–5 January 1920).
URALS ARMY MARCH. The name given to the much-fêted trek in the rear of White forces undertaken by south Urals Red partisan forces over the period 18 July to 12 September 1918, with the aim of uniting with the regular forces of the Red Army on the Eastern Front. In early July 1918, Red forces around Ural′sk, Iuzhnyi, Verkhneural′sk, and Troitsk, which had been cut off from the center by the uprisings of the Orenburg Cossack Host and the Czechoslovak Legion, began to concentrate around Beloretsk as the Free Urals Detachment, under the command of N. D. Kashirin and (after Kashirin was injured) V. K. Bliukher. After a prolonged series of battles against the Cossack forces of Ataman A. I. Dutov around Beloretsk, the partisans headed west to Petrovoskoe and then north, through the working-class settlements of Bogoiavlenskii Zavod, Arkhangel′skoe, Iglino, Krasnyi Iar, Askin, and Tiuno-Ozerskaia, gathering volunteers along the way. They covered 1,000 miles in 58 days, engaging en route in some 20 serious battles with White and Czechoslovak forces, before rendezvousing with units of the 3rd Red Army on the Kungur River, near Bogorodskoe. The force, thereafter dubbed the Urals Army, reached Kungur on 21 September 1918, where its men were reorganized into three brigades of the 4th Urals (later 30th) Rifle Division.
URALS COSSACK HOST. Occupying lands almost exclusively on the right bank of the Ural River in the Urals oblast′, by 1917 the Urals Cossack Host (formerly the Iaik Cossack Host) lived in some 30 stanitsy and 450 farmsteads (khutora) and smaller settlements. Its territory was divided into three administrative units (Ural′sk, Lbishchensk, and Gur′ev), with its capital at Ural′sk. By 1917, the Host population was 174,000, of which some 13,000 were under arms. Following the Cossacks’ rising against the Soviet authorities of April 1918, a Host government was formed, under G. M. Fomichev, that ordered the mobilization of all Urals Cossacks of 19–55 years of age. The units formed thereby were then assigned to the Whites’ Urals Army and shared its tragic fate. On 23 March 1919, the Host government dissolved, and all power was passed to the Host ataman, General V. S. Tolstov.
urals, Provisional Oblast′ Government of the. This regional anti-Bolshevik polity was formally established at Ekaterinburg on 13 August 1918, although it had been in existence, de facto, since soon after the Czechoslovak Legion had captured the city on 25 July 1918. Leftist Kadets dominated the Urals Oblast′ Government, notably the influential local businessman P. V. Ivanov (as premier and head of the department of industry) and the well-connected Freemason L. A. Krol′ (as deputy premier and head of the department of finance), but its coalition cabinet included also a number of Mensheviks (P. B. Murashov) and members of the Party of Socialists-Revolutionaries (V. M. Anastas′ev and A.V. Pribylev) and the Party of Popular Socialists (N. V. Aseikin), as well as nonparty figures (N. N. Glasson and A. E. Gutt). The Urals government claimed sovereignty over Perm′ guberniia and parts of Viatka, Ufa, and Orenburg gubernii; sought to steer an independent path between Komuch and the Provisional Siberian Government; and set as its chief aim the restoration of the mining industries of the northern Urals. It claimed also (in its inaugural declaration of 19 August 1918) to be an administrative rather than a law-making body, proclaiming that legislation on political and social reform was the preserve of a future Urals Assembly, but it was broadly in favor of some state regulation of the economy (through a mandatory eight-hour working day and minimum wage) and professed the belief that land should belong to those who farmed it. However, the Urals government was unable to develop its progressive program, as it was subservient to the Provisional Siberian Government in most matters, not least because the Ekaterinburg garrison, consisting of units of the the 2nd (later 7th) Urals Mountain Rifle Division, commanded by General V. V. Golitsyn, remained subordinate to the Siberian Army. The regime sent representatives to the Ufa State Conference and (like other regional governments in the east) was formally disbanded in early November 1918 by order of the Ufa Directory.