Voskanov subsequently filled numerous posts with the Red Army: commander of the 2nd Reserve (later 47th Rifle) Division (1921–1922); commander of the 6th Rifle Division (1923–1924); assistant inspector of infantry of the Red Army (1924–1925); and assistant commander of the Turkestan Front (1925–June 1926). He then moved into diplomatic work, becoming military attaché in Finland (1926–1928) and then military attaché in Turkey and Italy simultaneously (1929–1930). He was also chief military secretary of the All-Union Committee on Standardization attached to the Council of Labor and Defense of the USSR (1931–1936) and deputy chairman of the central council of Osoaviakhim (the Society for Support of the Defense, Aviation and Chemical Industries) of the USSR (1936–1937). He was arrested on 28 May 1937, and having been found guilty of membership in a mythical “counterrevolutionary terrorist organization” by the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the USSR on 20 September 1937, was immediately executed. Voskanov was buried in a mass grave in the Donskoi cemetery in Moscow. He was posthumously rehabilitated on 29 December 1956.
VOSTRETSOV, STEPAN SERGEEVICH (17 December 1883–3 May 1932). Ensign (1916). One of the most highly decorated Red commanders of the civil-war era (he was awarded the Order of the Red Banner on no fewer than four occasions, as well as receiving a weapon of honor), S. S. Vostretov was born into a peasant family in the village of Kazantsevo, in Ufa guberniia. He worked as a blacksmith and joined the Russian Social-Democratic Party in 1905, gravitating toward the Mensheviks, but was called up into the army in 1906. In 1909, he was sentenced to three years’ imprisonment for revolutionary agitation among his fellow soldiers, but was recalled to the ranks to serve in the Russian Army during the First World War.
Following the October Revolution, Vostretsov left the Mensheviks, and in 1918, he joined the Red Army. From June 1919, he commanded one of the most effective Red units on the Eastern Front, the 27th Rifle Division, participating in the capture of Cheliabinsk and Omsk, and in 1920 went with that division to fight on the Western Front in the Soviet–Polish War, participating in the capture of Minsk. He joined the Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks) in 1920, and from 1921 was involved in counterinsurgency and border defense operations at the head of Cheka units in Siberia and the Far East. In the autumn of 1922, he commanded the 2nd Priamur Rifle Division of the People’s-Revolutionary Army of the Far Eastern Republic, during the storming of Spassk. The following year, he led counterinsurgency operations against the remnants of the White forces of General A. N. Pepeliaev in the Okhotsk-Aiansk region (the Iakutsk Revolt).
From 1924, Vostretsov once again commanded the 27th (Omsk) Rifle Division, and in 1927, he graduated from the Red Military Academy. During the Sino–Soviet conflict of the late 1920s (over ownership of the Chinese Eastern Railway), he commanded the 18th Rifle Corps and the Transbaikal Group of Forces. Vostretsov died (according to some accounts, he committed suicide) in Novocherkassk in 1932, and is buried at Rostov-on-Don. His home village was renamed Vostretsovo in his honor.
Vratsian (krouzinian), Simon (1882–May 1969). Simon Vratsian, the last prime minister of the Democratic Republic of Armenia, was born at Great Sala, near Nor Nakhchivan, and educated at the Georgian Academy at Etchmiadzin. A Leftist member of the Dashnaks from 1898 (and a member of the party bureau from 1914), he was a supporter of the movement’s adoption of socialism at its Vienna Conference in 1907. He worked for the party in St. Petersburg and Moscow, before moving abroad to Turkey in 1910 and then on to the United States in 1911, to escape tsarist persecution, but returned to Transcaucasia during the First World War and helped organize Armenian volunteer units for the Russian Amy.
Vratsian became a leading figure at the Armenian National Congress in September 1917, and was subsequently elected as a member of the National Council of Armenia. In 1918, he toured South Russia, establishing links with the Volunteer Army. In 1919, he accepted the posts of minister of labor, agriculture, and state properties in the cabinet of Alexander Khatisyan and held the same posts in the bureau government of Hamazasp Ohandjanian, as well as having responsibility for information and propaganda. After the resignation of the bureau government, Vratsian became prime minister of the Democratic Republic of Armenia on 24 November 1920. In that capacity, as the 11th Red Army entered Armenia on 2 December 1920, he accepted the transfer of power to the Bolsheviks and also agreed to the signing of the Treaty of Alexandropol before resigning from office.
He thereafter went into hiding. Then, as president of the Committee for the Salvation of the Fatherland, he led the failed rebellion against Soviet authority at Yerevan on 18 February 1921 (the February Uprising). Vratsian spent much of the rest of his life in itinerant exile, campaigning for the return to Armenia of provinces held by Turkey, before finally settling in Beirut in 1951, as principal of the Djemaran (the Nshan Palandjian College). Vratsian wrote extensively on the history of the Democratic Republic of Armenia, and his books are a vital source on the subject.
Vsebiurvoenkom. The acronym by which was known the All-Russian Bureau of Military Commissars (Vserossiiskoe biuro voennykh kommissarov). This body was created by order of the People’s Commissariat for Military Affairs on 8 April 1918, to oversee and coordinate the functioning of the network of military commissars in the nascent Red Army, and in general, to offer political guidance to Red forces and undertake agitprop among the troops. On 18 April 1919, following a decision of the 8th Congress of the Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks), and in reaction to criticisms made by the Military Opposition about the low regard in which commissars were held by the Red command, the institution was disbanded and replaced by the Political Department of the Revvoensovet of the Republic, which in turn became the Political Directorate of the Revvoensovet of the Republic (PUR) on 15 May 1919.
VSEROGLAVSHTAB. The All-Russian Main Staff (Vserossiiskii glavnyi shtab) was one of two main staffs of the Red Army during the civil wars. It was created on 8 May 1918, as the unified replacement for the All-Russian Collegium for the Formation of the Red Army, the Main Directorate of the General Staff, the Main Staff and the Main Commissariat for Military-Educational Institutions, and other bodies. At the head of Vseroglavshtab was a council, consisting of the institution’s chief and two (from 15 September 1919, three) military commissars. In addition to the council, by 1 September 1920 the organization consisted of 10 subdepartments: Organizational; Mobilization; Command Staff; Directorate of the Military-Topographical Corps; Main Directorate of Military-Educational Institutions; Main Directorate for General Military Education and the Formation of Red Reserve Units; Directorate of Central Military Stores; Military-Historical Commission; Uniforms and Weapons Committee; Main Military-Scientific Editorial Board; and Editorial Board of Voennoe delo (“Military Affairs”). Vseroglavshtab also supervised the Red Military Academy and the various manifestations of the Intelligence Directorate of the Red Army. It was initially responsible to the Collegium of the People’s Commissariat for Military Affairs, but from 6 September 1918 it answered to the Revvoensovet of the Republic. On 10 February 1921, Vseroglavshtab was united with the Field Staff of the Revvoensovet Republic to form a unified Staff of the Worker-Peasant Red Army.