Tactical Center

an underground political organization of counterrevolutionaries, formed in Moscow in April 1919 in order to coordinate counterrevolutionary activities in the struggle against Soviet power.

The Tactical Center comprised the Council of Public Figures, the National Center, the Union for the Rebirth of Russia, and other anti-Soviet groups. Its leaders were N. N. Shchepkin and Prince S. E. Trubetskoi from the National Center, D. M. Shchepkin and S. M. Leont’ev from the Council of Public Figures, and S. P. Mel’gunov from the Union for the Rebirth of Russia. The Tactical Center worked closely with A. I. Denikin, A. V. Kolchak, and N. N. Iudenich and with underground anti-Soviet military groups and foreign interventionists (the Entente). Within the Tactical Center, a special military commission drew up a plan by which a counterrevolutionary revolt was to break out in Moscow and the Kremlin was to be seized when Denikin’s forces approached the city.

When the National Center was broken up in August and September 1919, some members of the Tactical Center were prosecuted. In February 1920 the ruling nucleus of the Tactical Center was arrested by organs of the All-Russian Extraordinary Commission. Subsequently the entire organization was disbanded.