Zhelezniakov, Anatolii Grigorevich

Born Apr. 20 (May 2), 1895, in the village of Fedoskino, in present-day Moscow Oblast; died July 26, 1919, in present-day Verkhovtsevo, Dnepropetrovsk Oblast. Hero of the Civil War of 1918–20.

Zhelezniakov, the son of a peasant, was a worker, then a stoker on merchant ships. He joined the Baltic fleet in 1915. In 1917 he belonged to a group of anarchists who supported the Bolsheviks. Zhelezniakov took part in the October Armed Uprising and the storming of the Winter Palace and was a delegate to the Second All-Russian Congress of Soviets. As chief of the guard at the Tauride Palace in January 1918, he ordered the counterrevolutionary deputies of the Constituent Assembly to disperse.

Zhelezniakov fought in the civil war in the Ukraine: in January 1918 he became commissar of the Danube flotilla fighting the troops of the Central Rada and the Rumanian interventionists; in March 1918 be became head of the Birzul’sk Fortified Area, fighting the Austro-German occupiers. He then commanded a regiment of the 16th Infantry Division and was engaged in underground work in Odessa. In May 1919 he commanded an armored train in the battles against Grigor’ev’s troops and later against Denikin’s troops as part of the Fourteenth Army. He was mortally wounded in battle at Verkhovtsevo station. Zhelezniakov was buried in Moscow in Vagan’kovo Cemetery.