Grigorii Korganov

Born July 30, 1886, in Tbilisi; died Sept. 20, 1918. Figure in the revolutionary movement; active participant in the struggle for the establishment of Soviet power in the Caucasus. Son of a military official.

Korganov joined the revolutionary movement in 1905. In 1907 he began studying at Moscow University, where he headed an association of fellow Caucasian students; he was expelled from the university for his revolutionary work. Having fulfilled his military obligation, he graduated in 1914 from the department of history and philology of Moscow University and was mobilized for the Caucasian front. While serving as an officer, he conducted revolutionary propaganda in the army. After the February Revolution of 1917 he was one of the organizers of organs of army self-government. He led the Bolshevik faction of the first congress of the Caucasian Army in May 1917 (Tbilisi). He was chairman of the second congress of the Caucasian Army in December 1917. In December 1917 he became chairman of the military revolutionary committee of the Caucasian Army. In March 1918, Korganov became a member of the Committee of Revolutionary Defense of Baku and in April 1918, people’s commissar for naval affairs of the Baku council of people’s commissars. During the period of the German-Turkish offensive against Baku he headed the Soviet armed forces; in the spring and summer of 1918 he directed the combat operations of the revolutionary troops. As one of the 26 Baku commissars he was shot by the Socialist Revolutionaries and English interventionists between the Pereval and Akhcha-Kuima stations of the Transcaspian railroad.