Red Army commander in chief. Of peasant origins, from Courland, Latvia, Vācietis joined the czarist army (1891) and graduated from Vilno Infantry Academy (1897) and the General Staff Academy (1909).

In World War I, Vācietis was an infantry battalion commander, was promoted to colonel, and commanded the 5th Zemgalsky Latvian Rifle Regiment, a rare national minority based formation. He backed the Bolsheviks in October while retaining the loyalty of his regiment. Appointed Twelfth Army Commander, he participated in the takeover of the czarist General Staff Headquarters at Mogilev (November 1917) and was head of operational field staff under Stavka (December 1917).Vācietis also suppressed the revolt of Polish general Josef Dowbór-Musnitsky in Belorussia (January– February 1918).

During the Russian Civil War, Vācietis continued to command the remnants of his Latvian regiment, renamed the Soviet Latvian Rifle Corp and then Division (March–April 1918). This unit became the Kremlin bodyguard of the Soviet regime, suppressing the Left Social Revolutionaries uprising in Moscow (July 1918) and earning Vladimir Ilich Lenin’s and Leon Trotsky’s trust. Vācietis was appointed eastern front commander in 1918 and oversaw the reorganization of Red Army forces into five regular armies, launching successful offensives against Komuch and the Czech Legion (September) and retaking Kazan, Simbirsk, and Samara in the Volga region.

As commander in chief of Red Army forces (September 1918–July 1919), Vācietis oversaw mixed Red fortunes: reverses on the southern front against Anton Denikin, setbacks, and then successes against Aleksandr Kolchak on the eastern front.

In July 1919,Vācietis was removed, arrested, and accused of treason and counterrevolutionary conspiracy after strategic disputes with eastern front commander Sergei Kamenev, which were connected with emerging political disputes between Trotsky and Stalin (the latter Kamenev’s sponsor).Released without charge in October, he served in the field until 1921.Vācietis than taught military history, was a senior lecturer on tactics, was professor of Red Army senior military training in the Red Army Military Academy (called the Frunze Academy from 1925), and wrote his memoirs and works on military history and doctrine.

In 1934,Vācietis was a member of the People’s Commissariat of Defense. But Stalin’s murderous purges caught up with him, and he was arrested in November 1937 and executed in 1938 in Moscow. His past links with Trotsky and disputes with Stalin condemned him, but also his degree of popularity and professional independence, all fatal “flaws” in Stalin’s eyes. Vācietis was rehabilitated in 1957. Soon after, Khrushchev’s de-Stalinization program began, and a memorial museum in Vācietis’s honor was opened in Latvia in 1973.

References and further reading:

Mawdsley, E. The Russian Civil War. London: Allen and Unwin, 1987; Edinburgh: Birlinn, 2000.

Revvoensovet respubliki, 6 sentiabria 1918g–28 avgusta 1923g (Military Revolutionary Council of the Republic, 6th September 1918–28th August 1923).Moscow: Izdat. Politicheskoi Literatury, 1991.

Vacietis, Jukums.“Iz vospominanii Glavkoma I. I.Vatsetis” (From the recollections of commander in chief I. I.Vatsetis). Voenno-Istoricheskii Zhurnal, no. 4 (1962).

———.“Vystuplenie levykh eserov v Moskve” (Uprising of the left S. R.’s in Moscow). In Etapy bol’shogo puty (Stages of the great path). Moscow:Voenizdat, 1962.

Zaionchkovskii, A. M., and Jukums Vacietis. Mirovaia voina, 1914–1918. (World war, 1914 -1918).Moscow: Gosvoenizdat, 1931.