22 Facts About Vladimir Antonov-Ovseenko

Vladimir Antonov-Ovseenko was born in Chernigov, the son of an infantry officer and nobleman.

Vladimir Antonov-Ovseenko secretly joined the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party and set about organising a military section of the party among graduate officers in five cities.

Vladimir Antonov-Ovseenko was helped, according to his own recollections, by local Social Democrats; in particular, Yakov Ganetsky.

Vladimir Antonov-Ovseenko was arrested and placed in a Warsaw prison, from which he managed to escape.

Vladimir Antonov-Ovseenko is an impulsive optimist by nature, much more capable of improvisation than calculation.

Vladimir Antonov-Ovseenko returned to Russia in June 1917, joining the Bolsheviks upon his arrival.

Vladimir Antonov-Ovseenko was briefly head of the party organisation in Helsingfors and Chairman of the Northern Congress of Soviets.

Vladimir Antonov-Ovseenko returned to Petrograd in October 1917 following the October Revolution and was appointed secretary of the Military Revolutionary Committee of the Petrograd Soviet.

Vladimir Antonov-Ovseenko reported to the deputies on the imprisonment of the ministers of the Provisional Government in the Peter and Paul Fortress at the Second All-Russian Congress of Soviets, which was taking place at that time on 26 October 1917.

Vladimir Antonov-Ovseenko was appointed to the Military Committee of Sovnarkom under the Council of People's Commissars at that Congress.

Vladimir Antonov-Ovseenko was sent to lead the Bolshevik side in the first, relatively bloodless engagement of the civil war at Gatchina, against Kerensky and a detachment of Cossacks led by Pyotr Krasnov, but had to be replaced after he virtually collapsed from nervous exhaustion.

On 21 December 1917, Vladimir Antonov-Ovseenko was put in charge of the Revolutionary forces in Ukraine and southern Russia fighting the Cossacks of Ataman Alexey Kaledin and the Ukrainian units of the Russian Army that supported the Ukrainian Central Rada.

Vladimir Antonov-Ovseenko opposed Lenin's decision to end the war with Germany under the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk and was dismissed from the Red Army in May 1918 for fomenting guerrilla warfare against the advancing German army.

Vladimir Antonov-Ovseenko was reinstated as People's Commissar for War in Ukraine in September 1918.

Immediately after Vladimir Antonov-Ovseenko left, Hryhoriv's soldiers started looting and attacking the Jewish population and communist officials.

In 1922, Vladimir Antonov-Ovseenko was given the highly sensitive post of head of the Political Directorate of the Red Army, despite his public opposition to Lenin's New Economic Policy, which he denounced in a speech to the April 1922 Congress of the Russian Communist Party as a betrayal of the peasants.

Vladimir Antonov-Ovseenko was a signatory of The Declaration of 46 in October 1923, which called for greater party democracy within the Party.

Vladimir Antonov-Ovseenko was one of a large group of Trotsky's supporters expelled from the CPSU in December 1927, but was one of the first to recant and seek readmission to the party during 1928.

Vladimir Antonov-Ovseenko was then posted to Barcelona, as the Soviet Consul General, during the Spanish Civil War.

Vladimir Antonov-Ovseenko was tried "for belonging to a Trotskyist terrorist and espionage organization".

Vladimir Antonov-Ovseenko was sentenced to death on February 8,1938, shot on February 10,1938, and buried at the Kommunarka firing range.

Vladimir Antonov-Ovseenko was the first former Trotskyist to be posthumously rehabilitated, and in 1956 was named in a speech by Anastas Mikoyan to the 20th party congress of the CPSU.