Stavropol Soviet Republic

the name given to Stavropol’ Province after Soviet power was proclaimed there by the Provincial Popular Assembly on Jan. 1 (14), 1918. G. I. Mesh-cheriakov, a Maximalist Socialist Revolutionary, became chairman of the provincial executive committee. In the early hours of January 8 (21), a council of people’s commissars was elected, with the Bolshevik A. A. Ponomarev as chairman. The republic proclaimed itself a part of the RSFSR. The provincial executive committee published the newspaper Vlast’ truda (The Power of Labor), and the council of people’s commissars implemented the first decrees of Soviet authority.

On April 28 the Socialist Revolutionaries established a military revolutionary committee in Stavropol’ and arrested Ponomarev and others. The rebellion was crushed, however, and those arrested were freed. An extraordinary provincial congress of soviets met from May 9 to May 14, 1918, and transferred the functions of the council of people’s commissars to the presidium of the newly elected provincial executive committee, composed chiefly of Bolsheviks. The First Congress of the Soviets of the Northern Caucasus, held on July 5–7,1918, adopted a resolution admitting the Stavropol’ Soviet Republic to the Northern Caucasus Soviet Republic.