Verkhovskii, Aleksandr Ivanovich

Born Nov. 27 (Dec. 9), 1886; died Aug. 19, 1938. Russian military leader. Major general (1917). Brigade commander (1936).

Verkhovskii was born in St. Petersburg into a military family of the dvorianstvo (nobility or gentry). He graduated from the General Staff Academy (1911) and took part in both the Russo-Japanese War and World War I. During the period of the February Revolution, Verkhovskii was elected vice-chairman of the Sevastopol’ Soviet. From July through September 1917, while commanding troops of the Moscow Military District, he cooperated with the Socialist Revolutionaries (SR’s) and the Mensheviks and suppressed revolutionary outbreaks among the soldiers; he also opposed the Kornilov movement. From Aug. 30 (Sept. 12) through Oct. 22 (Nov. 4), 1917, Verkhovskii was minister of war, but he resigned because of the Preparliament’s rejection of measures that he had proposed (Russia’s dropping out of the war, the demobilization of the army, and others). In November 1917 he attempted, together with SR and Menshevik leaders, to create at General Headquarters an anti-Bolshevik, “democratic, general socialist government.” In 1918 he was arrested for taking part in an SR organization. Having changed his views, Verkhovskii joined the Red Army in February 1919, and beginning in 1920 he was a member of the Special Conference for the Defense of the Republic. During the years 1921-30 he was an instructor in the history of the art of war and tactics at the Frunze Military Academy, attaining the rank of professor in 1927. From 1930 to 1932, Verkhovskii was chief of staff of the Northern Caucasus Military District; subsequently he served in Vystrel, the higher infantry school of the Soviet armed forces, in the General Staff, and in the General Staff Academy.