During the civil-war period, the Zhenotdel was headed by Inessa Armand (September 1919–24 September 1920), A. M. Kollontai (9 September 1920–1922), and S. N. Smidovicha (1922–January 1930).
ZHILUNOVICH, DMITRII FEDOROVICH (23 October 1887–11 April 1937). The Belorussian poet, dramatist, editor, and politician D. F. Zhilunovich (who had the pen name “Tishka Gartnyi”) was born into a peasant family at Kopyl′, near Minsk, and attended two years of school there. He worked in a tanning factory, was active in the 1905 Revolution, and joined the Russian Social-Democratic Labor Party in 1911. He moved to St. Petersburg in May 1913, to work at the Vulkan factory, and subsequently a number of his poems were published in Pravda. In the capital during the First World War, he undertook agitational and propaganda work among refugee Belorussians.
Following the October Revolution, Zhilunovich became secretary of the Belorussian National Commissariat (Belnatskom) within the People’s Commissariat for Nationalities of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (RSFSR) and edited its newspaper, Dziannitsa (“The Dawn”). He also served as chairman of the ephemeral Provisional Worker-Peasant Government of the Soviet Socialist Republic of Belorussia (1 January–4 February 1919). He subsequently served as editor of numerous newspapers and journals published in the Belorussian language in the RSFSR and the Belorussian Soviet Socialist Republic, became director of the state publishing house of the Belorussian SSR, and was head of its national archives. He served also as the Belorussian SSR’s deputy people’s commissar for education and was a member of its Central Executive Committee (1920–1931).
Zhilunovich was arrested and jailed as a counterrevolutionary nationalist on 15 November 1936. Soon afterward, he was declared insane and was transferred to the Mogilev psychiatric clinic, where he subsequently died. Rumors persist that he committed suicide. He received full political rehabilitation in 1988. A street in Minsk is now named after him. Zhilunovich was the author of many published works, among them the novel Soki tseliny (“Juices of the Virgin Soil,” 1914–1929), which depicts the formation of revolutionary consciousness in Belorussia, and the collections Treski na khvaliakh (“Sticks on the Waves,” 1924) and Prysady (“Alleys,” 1927), describing the heroism of the Reds during the civil wars.
ZHIVODER, C. (ca. 1883–23 September 1920). Zhivoder (“Cut-throat”), whose real name has been lost, was a revolutionary sailor who gravitated toward anarchism during the civil wars. He was born into a peasant family in Poltava guberniia and joined the Russian Social-Democratic Labor Party during the 1905 Revolution, siding with the Bolsheviks. By 1910, he was a part of that faction’s underground organization in St. Petersburg. He was mobilized in 1914 and joined the Baltic Fleet.
Following the October Revolution, Zhivoder joined the Red Army, serving in 1918 as a member of staff and chief of the supply department on the Tsaritsyn front. By late 1919, however, while serving in Ukraine, he had become disillusioned with Soviet politics and military policy, especially the widespread employment of military specialists, and deserted to organize an independent partisan force around Kobeliaki, in Poltava guberniia. By July 1920, there were some 600 men under his command. Zhivoder now proclaimed himself to be an “anarchist-communist” and was co-opted onto the staff of Nestor Makhno’s Revolutionary-Insurgent Army of Ukraine and made commander of its 1,800-strong 3rd Regiment. Soon thereafter, he was captured by Red forces at the Kuteinikovo station and executed.
Zhloba, Dmitrii Petrovich (3 June 1887–10 June 1938). A much decorated but nevertheless controversial Red Army commander of the civil war era, D. P. Zhloba was born in Kiev guberniia, into the family of a farm laborer. He was active in the 1905 Revolution, as a member of an armed workers’ detachment at Nikolaev, and subsequently worked as a miner in the Donbass. In May 1916, was arrested there for participating in a strike and was sent into the army, training at the Moscow Aviation School.
Zhloba joined the Russian Social-Democratic Labor Party (Bolsheviks) in 1917, and in October–November of that year, as a member of the Moscow Soviet, he led Red Guards detachments in the battles to dislodge Junker groups from the Kremlin. He was then dispatched to the Donbass, where he organized and led an armed detachment of miners that would see action at Rostov-on-Don and at Kiev in the spring of 1918. In May 1918, he was sent to the North Caucasus as commander of the “Steel Brigade.” With the latter, he undertook a much-celebrated, 500-mile forced march from Nevinnomyssk (on the Kuban River) to Tsaritsyn, arriving there on 15 October 1918 and striking a crushing blow against the rear of the White forces of General P. N. Krasnov that were threatening the city. In 1919–1920, Zhloba commanded a partisan cavalry brigade in the battles against the Armed Forces of South Russia around Astrakhan, in Transcaspia, and near Novocherkassk (January 1920), before being placed at the head of the 1st Cavalry Corps in February 1920, having been one of the organizers of the campaign of lies that implicated its former commander, B. M. Dumenko, as a traitor. In the battles against General P. N. Wrangel’s Russian Army, Zhloba failed to distinguish himself; an investigatory commission of the South-West Front found that the failure of his 13th Red Army to break into Crimea in late June 1920 (and the concomitant loss to the Whites of 3,000 horses) was largely attributable to Zhloba’s unfitness for command. Despite this setback, in March 1921 he was placed in command of the 18th Cavalry Division that was assigned to reinforce the 11th Red Army during the Soviet–Georgian War. In that capacity, he captured Batumi for the Soviet government in a brilliantly realized operation. During the civil wars, he twice received the Order of the Red Banner and was also presented with a gold sword for bravery.