Viktor Semenovich Kovalev

Born 1883 in the stanitsa (large cossack village) of Kremenskaia, present-day Volgograd Oblast; died February 1919, in the stanitsa of Serebriakovo, present-day Volgograd Oblast. Active participant in the struggle for the establishment of Soviet power in the Donbas. Son of a poor cossack.

While serving in the tsarist army in St. Petersburg, Kovalev took part in the Revolution of 1905–07. In 1906 he was arrested and condemned to 12 years of penal servitude. He was freed by the February Revolution of 1917. He served as a delegate to the first cossack congress of the Don Oblast (April 1917). He conducted party work in Iuzovka (present-day Donetsk) and Makeevka. He was a candidate of the Bolsheviks for the Don electoral district to the Constituent Assembly. Kovalev participated in the October Revolution of 1917 in St. Petersburg. In April 1918 he was a delegate to the first congress of soviets of Don Oblast, at which he was elected chairman of the Central Executive Committee of the Don Autonomous Soviet Republic. After the capture of Rostov-on-Don by German interventionists and White cossacks, Kovalev worked in the Tsaritsyn soviet and later was commissar for the 23rd Rifle Division.