When White efforts in the east collapsed over the winter of 1919–1920, Verzhbitskii participated in the Great Siberian (Ice) March. On 23 January 1920, he took command of the remnants of the 2nd Army—renamed the 2nd Independent (Siberian) Rifle Corps—withdrawing it to Chita, where he arrived in March 1920. On 22 August 1920, on the orders of Ataman G. M. Semenov, he assumed command of the Far Eastern (White) Army. When Red forces drove that force out of Transbaikalia (October–November 1920), he accompanied the remnants of it along the Chinese Eastern Railway to the Maritime Province. With the subsequent establishment, at Vladivostok, of the Merkulov regime (31 May 1921), he was named commander of forces of the Provisional Government of the Maritime Region Zemstvo Board, which incorporated the forces of General V. M. Molchanov. On 12 October 1921, he was named minister of war of that government. When the Merkulov regime collapsed, and General M. K. Diterikhs assumed control in Vladivostok, Verzhbitskii was placed in command of his forces, then was named (on 8 August 1922) assistant commander (voevod) of the Zemstvo Host. In October 1922, as forces of the People’s Revolutionary Army of the Far Eastern Republic approached Vladivostok, he left Russian territory for Manchuria, in command of a small group of officers. He was briefly interned at Kirin (Jilin) by the Chinese authorities, but was released in May 1923 and settled into émigré life in Harbin, reportedly as the proprietor of a millinery shop. Until 1931, he also served as deputy head of ROVS in the Far East, under General Diterikhs, and (from 1928) was chairman of the Russian National Union. When the Japanese occupied Manchuria in 1931, Verzhbitskii was expelled from the region for refusing to assist in recruiting Russian forces to serve in the Japanese army, and he went to live in the British Concession at Tientsin. He is buried in the Russian section of the International Cemetery in that city.
VESENKHA. See VSNKh.
VESHENSK UPRISING. This is the name given to the anti-Soviet uprising of part of the Don Cossack Host, in the upper Don territory, centered on the stanitsy of Veshenskaia, Elanskaia, Migulinskaia, and others, that began on 11 March 1919. In response to what Soviet sources subsequently described as the “mistakenly harsh” policies pursued against the Cossacks by local Red Army and Soviet authorities (specifically the Revvoensovet of the Southern Front chaired by S. I. Syrtsov), notably the policy of de-Cossackization, a more or less spontaneous series of protests soon coalesced into a mass armed opposition to Soviet rule, with some 30,000 rebels having expelled Soviet agencies from the region by April 1919. The rebels’ staff, based at Veshenskaia (under Coronet P. Kundinov), oversaw the defense of the region, warding off Red Army attacks, capturing 6 field guns and numerous machine guns, and (the height of their success) winning over to their side the Reds’ 204th Serdobsk Rifle Regiment.
The uprising posed a serious challenge to the stability of the rear of the Reds’ Southern Front (specifically to the rear of the 9th Red Army), and in June 1919, it was crushed by an especially assembled counterinsurgency force before the rebels could establish sustained contact with the Whites of the Armed Forces of South Russia. Nevertheless, the uprising caused sufficient distraction to assist in the advance into the region of the Don Army. The events of the Veshensk uprising form a particularly dramatic section of the narrative of M. A. Sholokhov’s epic novel The Quiet Don (1926–1940).
Viaz′mitinov, Vasilii Efimovich (22 February 1874–29 January 1929). Colonel (25 March 1912), major general (2 April 1917), lieutenant general (10 September 1917). One of the most senior staff officers and military administrators in the White movement in South Russia, V. E. Viaz′mitinov was a graduate of the Odessa Infantry Officers School and the Academy of the General Staff (1904). He served briefly in the Russo–Japanese War, before becoming assistant senior adjutant on the staff of the Odessa Military District (June 1905–24 November 1910), senior adjutant on the staff of the border defense forces on the Amur (24 November 1910–14 October 1911), and then a teacher at the Chuguev Military School. During the First World War, he served in a number of frontline positions, then was named chief of staff of the 20th Siberian Rifle Division (3 January 1917), then chief of the Operations Department of the quartermaster general of the 12th Army (March 1917) and commander of the 16th Infantry Division (July 1917). In August 1917, he came to public attention (and received the Cross of St. George) for his heroic efforts in the defense of Riga and for extricating his men from potential encirclement. Soon afterward, he was placed in command of the 6th Siberian Army Corps.
In 1918, Viaz′mitinov joined the Volunteer Army, working in its General Staff, and by early 1919 was serving as assistant head of the Military Directorate of the Armed Forces of South Russia. In March 1920, he succeeded General A. K. Kel′chevskii as minister of war and marine in A. I. Denikin’s Government of South Russia and subsequently (from March 1920) served as head of the Military Directorate in the regime of General P. N. Wrangel. Following the evacuation of Crimea (in which he played a leading organizational role), Viaz′mitinov lived in emigration, acting from 1921 as Wrangel’s chief military plenipotentiary in Bulgaria before transferring to Belgrade, in 1923, to work in the administration of refugee relief and as an active member of ROVS. He died in Belgrade and is buried there, in the Novo Groblje (New Cemetery).
VIKTOROV, MIKHAIL VLADIMIROVICH (24 December 1894–1 August 1938). Midshipman (1913), lieutenant (1916), flag officer, first rank (20 November 1935). The Red naval commander M. V. Viktorov was born at Iaroslavl′, the son of an army officer. He graduated from the Iaroslavl′ Cadet Corps (1913, with a gold medal as best student), the Mining College (1915), the Navigational College (1917), and after the revolution, the Military-Naval Academy (1924). During the First World War, he served with the 1st Baltic Fleet Company and saw action against the Germans in the Battle of Moon Sound (16–17 October 1917), as a crewman on the battleship Grazhdanin (the former Tsesarevich).