VOLGA–CASPIAN MILITARY FLOTILLA. Formed on 31 July 1919, through the combination of the previously existing Astrakhan–Caspian Military Flotilla and the Volga Military Flotilla, this force was commanded by F. F. Raskol′nikov. It had as its main tasks the defense of Astrakhan and participation in the battles against the Armed Forces of South Russia for the North Caucasus and Transcaucasia, in collaboration with first the Southern Front and later (from 30 September 1919) the South-Eastern Front of the Red Army, as well as the transportation of oil and other supplies north from the Caspian to Soviet Russia. The Volga–Caspian Military Flotilla consisted of some 200 vessels by August 1919, including 3 auxiliary cruisers, 6 destroyers, 3 torpedo boats, 4 submarine craft, 38 gunboats, 24 escort vessels, and 6 floating batteries. It included also, from August 1919, a sizable and effective aircraft brigade (commanded by S. S. Negerevich). The flotilla was divided into three sections: a northern section that operated around Tsaritsyn, a north Astrakhan section that was deployed close to the Chernyi Iar–Vladimirovka railway, and a section operating to the south of Astrakhan in the Volga delta and the northern reaches of the Caspian Sea.
By November 1919, the Volga–Caspian Military Flotilla had helped to ward off the threat of a White capture of Astrakhan, and having received a reinforcement of seven destroyers and numerous support craft from the Baltic Fleet, during the spring of 1920 it participated in the battles further south in the Caspian Sea. In particular, the flotilla undertook successful operations against White naval forces near Port Petrovsk, and on 5 April 1920, it captured Fort Aleksandrovsk in Transcaspia. It then transferred to Baku, and in early May 1920, captured Lenkoran′ before pursuing the Caspian remnants of the White Fleet south and then capturing those vessels from under the noses of their British protectors at Enzeli, in northen Persia (13–18 May 1920). In June 1920, A. K. Vekman took command of the flotilla, which soon thereafter (in July 1920) was reformed into the Caspian Fleet (composed of 3 auxiliary cruisers, 10 torpedo boats, 4 submarines, and other vessels). The Caspian Fleet subsequently merged with the Red fleet of Soviet Azerbaijan to form the Naval Forces of the Caspian Sea.
VOLGA GERMAN WORKERS’ COMMUNE. This Soviet polity was first established on 29 October 1917. On 19 October 1918, it was replaced by the Autonomous Oblast′ of Volga Germans. The latter was granted broad autonomy, as a constituent territory within the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic, and encompassed a region of some 20,000 square miles, centered on the Volga port of Pokrovsk (Engels), opposite Samara, which was home to some 500,000 Germans (chiefly the descendants of 18th-century settlers who had been invited into Russia by Catherine the Great). However, as the German farmers were, in the main, devoutly religious Lutherans, they objected to the Soviet government’s antireligious campaigns and clashed repeatedly with the central authorities. The famine of 1921 also hit the region hard, killing up to a third of the population by some estimates.
On 19 December 1923, the region was transformed once more into the Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic of Volga Germans. During the revolutionary period, its leaders were Ernst Reuter (chairman of the Volga Commissariat for German Affairs, 1918); Hugo Schaufler (chairman of the Provisional Revolutionary Committee of the Autonomous Oblast′, 1919–1920); and the chairmen of the Executive Committee of the Congress of Soviets of the Autonomous Oblast′: Alexander Dotz (1920), V. R. Pakun (1920–1921), Alexander Moor (1921–1922), and Wilhelm Kurtz (1922–1924). The Volga German ASSR was abolished on 28 August 1941, following the German invasion of the USSR, and most of its population was deported to Central Asia.
VOLGA MILITARY FLOTILLA. This formation of the Red Fleet was created in June 1918, to combat anti-Bolshevik forces along the Volga and its tributaries (notably the Kama and Belaia Rivers). The earliest of the Reds’ military flotillas to be established, it took shape at Nizhnii Novgorod: three torpedo boats were transferred there from the Baltic Fleet (via the river and canal system of northern Russia) and (together with five steamers and motor ships, four floating batteries, and four seaplanes) were fitted out with weaponry at the Sormovo factory under the command of N. G. Markin.
The Volga Military Flotilla first saw action against forces of the People’s Army and the Czechoslovak Legion at Sviazhsk (28–29 August 1918) and in landings at Kazan′ (10 September 1918), and subsequently assisted in the capture of Vol′sk, Syzran′, and Samara. In September 1918, it was divided into Volga and Kama groups and subsequently played a notable part in supporting the 2nd, 3rd, and 5th Red Armies on the Eastern Front, as they fought off the spring advance of the Russian Army of Admiral A. V. Kolchak (notably, its Kama Flotilla) and launched a counteroffensive during the early summer of 1919. The flotilla played an important part in the capture of Chistopol′ (5 May 1919), Sarapul (3 June 1919), and Ufa (9 June) during those operations. As the White forces were pushed back across the watershed of the Urals, the Volga Military Flotilla was merged with the Astrakhan–Caspian Flotilla to form the Volga–Caspian Flotilla on 31 July 1919. On Markin Square, in Nizhnii Novgorod, there stands a memorial to the soldiers and sailors of the flotilla.
Commanders of the Volga Military Flotilla were R. M. Berngardt (3–22 August 1918); F. F. Raskol′nikov (23 August–11 November 1918 and 25–31 July 1919); V. N. Varvatsi (11 November 1918–17 April 1919); and P. I. Smirnov (17 April–25 July 1919).
VolinE (Eikhenbaum, Vsevolod Mikhailovich) (11 August 1882–18 September 1945). A leading Russian proponent of anarchism (whose assumed name sometimes appears as “Volin”), Voline was born into a well-to-do Jewish family near Voronezh, to parents who were both village doctors. He spent some time as a student in the Law Faculty of St. Petersburg University, but abandoned his studies in 1904 and joined the revolutionary movement as a member of the Party of Socialists-Revolutionaries. On 9 January 1905 (“Bloody Sunday”), he was part of the demonstration fired on by soldiers in St. Petersburg and later that year was active in the St. Petersburg Soviet. He was subsequently arrested, in 1907, but the following year, while en route to exile in Siberia, escaped and fled abroad to France, where he was converted to anarchism (joining the group of A. A. Karelin in 1911). As a vocal opponent of the First World War, Voline fell foul of the French authorities and was almost interned in 1915, but managed to smuggle himself aboard a ship bound from Bordeaux to the United States. In New York, he joined the Confederation of Russian Workers and helped edit its mouthpiece, Golos truda (“The Voice of Labor”).
Voline returned to Russia in 1917, and after the October Revolution, initially worked with the Soviet government in the People’s Commissariat for Education. However, he opposed the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk (3 March 1918) and in the summer of 1918 left Petrograd for Ukraine, to help organize resistance to the Austro-German intervention. By the autumn of 1918, he was one of the leaders of the anarchist group Nabat, and in 1919, he became one of the chief political advisors to and ideologues of Nestor Makhno’s Revolutionary-Insurgent Army of Ukraine. He was arrested by the Soviet authorities on 14 January 1920, but was released in October of that year, together with other anarchists (following an agreement between Moscow and Makhno) and returned to Ukraine, only to be rearrested at Khar′kov, on 25 November 1920, and sent back to prison in Moscow. He was then released, following pressure from delegates to the founding congress of Profintern in the summer of 1921, and on 5 January 1922 he was expelled from Soviet Russia.