Vladimir Strekopytov. The Rebel Commander

Abstract

The article explores of the life and work of one participant in the White movement, Vladimir Strekopytov. Born in Tula and a staff captain in World War I, in March 1919 Strekopytov led the anti-Bolshevik uprising of the Red Army in Gomel. For a long time, the events of the Gomel anti-Bolshevik uprising, known as the “Strekopytovsky rebellion”, remained a little-known and unexplored event of the Civil War. Despite the fact that, in the first years of Soviet power, a number of publications based on recollections of participants in those dramatic events had come out, many facts related to the uprising remained outside the scope of study. The scantiest information has been preserved about the leader of the insurgents: the name by which the uprising entered historiography, and the mention that he was a former officer. The real name of the leader of the Gomel uprising became known thanks to researchers from Estonia, who opened an investigation into participants of the Gomel uprising at the end of the last century. In the history of Russian Civil War, the Tula detachment that he led made an unprecedented defection from the Red Army to the White Army. He made his way from Gomel, through Ukraine, Poland, and the Baltic states and joined the North-Western Army under General Yudenitch. After the disbandment of the North-Western Army in February 1920, he headed the Tula workers’ artel in Estonia, in which he gathered former members of his detachment. Vladimir Strekopytov lived in exile in Estonia and was engaged in social activities. After the unification of Estonia with the USSR, he was arrested by the NKVD in 1940 and executed in April 1941.