VDOVICHENKO, TROFIM IAKOVLEVICH (1889–May 1921). Ensign (191?). T. Ia. Vdovichenko, one of the most talented commanders of Nestor Makhno’s Revolutionary-Insurgent Army of Ukraine, was born into a poor peasant family at Novospasovka, near Lugansk, and received only a primary education. In 1910, he became associated with a group of radicals at Novospasovka and developed into a forceful proponent of anarchism. He was drafted into the Russian Army in 1914, and in 1917 became chairman of his regimental committee.
Vdovichenko returned to Novospasovka in late 1917, following the October Revolution, and in early 1918 joined a partisan unit that opposed the forces of the Austro-German intervention. In the autumn of 1918, his group allied with the Makhnovite army, and on 4 January 1919, he was named commander of its 1st Rebel (later the Novospasovka) Regiment, a force of, at one point, 6,000 men. In 1919, Vdovichenko fought the Armed Forces of South Russia in alliance with the Red Army, but broke with the Bolsheviks that August, when the Soviet command attempted to move his force out of Ukraine. On 1 September 1919, he was elected to the Revolutionary-Military Council of the Makhnovists and was named commander of the 2nd Azov Corps, which numbered 10,000 fighters at its peak. In that capacity, as General A. I. Denikin’s White forces collapsed, Vdovichenko was responsible for the capture of numerous towns (including Aleksandrovsk on 5 October and 28 December 1919). In 1920, he led a guerrilla group against Soviet forces around Berdiansk and Mariupol′, but in late January 1921, he was badly wounded in battle. He sought treatment in Novospasovka from 17 February 1921, but in April 1921 his whereabouts were discovered by a Cheka detachment. In order to escape arrest, Vdovichenko shot himself in the head, but he survived and was nursed back to health by the Bolsheviks, only to then be thrown into prison at Aleksandrovsk and, reportedly, subjected to prolonged bouts of torture, in an attempt to persuade him to renounce Makhno. Several attempts by the Makhnovists to rescue Vdovichenko failed, and he was eventually executed by a Cheka firing squad in May 1921.
Vedeniapin (shtegeman), Mikhail Aleksandrovich (8 November 1879–7/12 November 1938). A pivotal figure in the Democratic Counter-Revolution on the Volga, M. A. Vedeniapin was probably born in Tashkent (although some sources indicate that he was born at Atkarsk, Saratov guberniia) and was a descendant of the Decembrist Aleksei Vasil′evich Vedeniapin (1804–1847). He trained as a statistician, but was an active member of the Party of Socialists-Revolutionaries (PSR) from 1903 and a dedicated member of its terrorist wing, the Fighting Organization. He became a member of the PSR Central Committee in November 1917, the same month that he was elected to the Constituent Assembly.
In May 1918, Vedeniapin journeyed to the Volga region, where the following month he became director of the Departments of Foreign Affairs and Post and Telegraph of Komuch and participated in its negotiations with the Provisional Siberian Government at Cheliabinsk (15 July and 23 August 1918) and at the Ufa State Conference. In November 1918, he was among the most vocal opponents of the Omsk coup, but managed to evade arrest by the White authorities at Ufa. Subsequently, however, in 1920, upon the Bolsheviks’ investment of Siberia, he was arrested and imprisoned by the Cheka. In July 1922, he was among those leaders of his party who were tried by the Supreme Tribunal of VTsIK in Moscow. He was sentenced to 10 years’ imprisonment, but released on amnesty after five. However, he was rearrested, imprisoned, and exiled a number of times over the succeeding years. Finally, in 1937 the Supreme Court of the USSR sentenced him to another 10 years’ imprisonment. He died in a labor camp near Khabarovsk (Vostlag) and was posthumously rehabilitated in 1989.
VELIKANOV, MIKHAIL DMITRIEVICH (27 December 1892–27 July 1938). Ensign (1915), sublieutenant (1916), komandarm (15 June 1937). A Red commander of great distinction during the civil wars, M. D. Velikanov was born into the family of a village sexton at Nikol′sk, Riazan′ guberniia, and trained and worked as a rural schoolteacher, but was mobilized during the First World War and graduated from the Pskov Ensign School (1915).
Velikanov joined the Red Army, initially as battalion commander, in February 1918, and from July 1918 distinguished himself as commander of the 2nd Simbirsk Regiment on the Eastern Front, participating in the recapture of Simbirsk from anti-Bolshevik forces (October 1918), and as commander of the 1st Brigade of the 24th Iron Division (from December 1918). He was subsequently commander of the 25th Rifle Division (February–March 1919) and the Ufa Group of Forces (March–April 1919) on the Eastern Front, which played a decisive part in repelling the advance of the Western Army of Admiral A. V. Kolchak. He then commanded the defense of Orenburg (April–June 1919), and in February 1920 was commander of the Strike Infantry Group of the 1st Cavalry Army in the Kuban, mopping up the remnants of the Armed Forces of South Russia. He then transferred to Transcaucasia, where he commanded Red forces in crushing the anti-Soviet Ganja uprising in Azerbaijan in May 1920 and played a leading role in the Red Army operations to invade the Democratic Republic of Armenia and the Democratic Republic of Georgia.
After the civil wars, Velikanov completed the Higher Academic Course of the Command Staff, joined the Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks) in 1924, served as inspector of infantry of the Red Army from 1926, graduated from the Red Military Academy in 1928, and (1930–1933) was assistant commander of forces of the North Caucasus Military District. From December 1933, he served as head of the Central Asian Military District and subsequently, from June 1937, was head of the Transbaikal Military District. On 28 November 1937, Velikanov was suddenly relieved of his various duties, and on 20 December 1937, he was arrested. He was condemned to death as a spy and a wrecker by the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the USSR on 29 July 1938 and executed that same day. He was posthumously rehabilitated on 1 September 1956.
Veniamin, Metropolitan (Kazanskii, Vasilii Pavlovich) (17 April 1873–12/13 August, 1922). Born into the family of a village priest, in Olonets guberniia, V. P. Kazanskii was a graduate of the Petrozavodsk Seminary and the St. Petersburg Theological Academy. In 1895, he was given the church name Veniamin (Benjamin), and from 1897 to 1910, he worked as a teacher at a variety of theological establishments, including (from 1902) the Samara Seminary, where he was rector, before becoming rector of the St. Petersburg Seminary in 1905. In the spring of 1917, a diocesan congress elected him to the St. Petersburg (Petrograd) Metropolitan See. In that role, he would play a central part in church–state relations during the civil-war era. In particular, in 1921 he argued in favor of bowing to the demands of the Soviet government that the church hand over its valuables to help save the victims of the famine on the Volga, but only on condition that the clergy be allowed to maintain strict control of the disbursements. Indeed, among the high clergy of the Russian Orthodox Church, Veniamin probably displayed the greatest willingness to work with the new regime. However, his unrelenting hostility to the Obnovlentsy (“Renovationists”), or the “Living Church Group,” who, with Soviet government connivance, were attempting to usurp the church administration, led him into conflict with the authorities.