Vakhitov, Mullanur

Born Aug. 10 (22), 1885, in the village of Kazaevo, Kungur District, Perm’ Province; died Aug. 19, 1918, in Kazan. Tatar revolutionary. Hero of the Civil War. Publicist.

After graduating from realschule in Kazan in 1907, Vakhitov studied at the St. Petersburg Polytechnic Institute and later at the Neurological Institute. In April 1917 he took an active part in the establishment of the Muslim Socialist Committee in Kazan, which operated under the ideological influence of the Kazan Committee of the RSDLP (Bolshevik). He was editor of the newspaper Kïztt bayrak (Red Banner). In October 1917 he was a member of the Kazan Military Revolutionary Committee. V. I. Lenin highly esteemed Vakhitov’s internationalist revolutionary activity.

In January 1918, Vakhitov was appointed commissar of the Central Muslim Commissariat of the People’s Commissariat of National Affairs and chairman of the Central Muslim Military Collegium of the People’s Naval Commissariat. He directed the formation of Muslim units of the Red Army. The appeal “To All the Toiling Muslims” was published over the signatures of Lenin and Vakhitov. In summer 1918 he was extraordinary commissar for provisions in the Volga area. In August 1918 he fought heroically at the head of the 2nd Tatar-Bashkir battalion, which was defending Kazan against the Whites. Vakhitov was captured by the White Guards and shot.