Terek Soviet Republic

a Soviet republic that in 1918 united the peoples of Terek Oblast. The republic was proclaimed part of the RSFSR on March 3 (16) in Piatigorsk by the Second Congress of the Peoples of Terek (the Terek Oblast People’s Congress). On March 4 (17) the congress recognized the power of the central Soviet government—the Council of People’s Commissars—and on March 5 (18) elected the supreme ruling body, the Terek People’s Soviet. The soviet was headed by E. S. Bogdanov and consisted of representatives of the Kabarda, Balkar, Chechen, and Ingush peoples, Terek cossacks, and inogorodnie (noncossack peasants). The congress concluded its work in Vladikavkaz (now Ordzhonikidze), from where the counterrevolutionary Terek-Dagestan government fled.

The people’s soviet formed the government of the Terek Soviet Republic, the Council of People’s Commissars, which included Bolsheviks, Menshevik internationalists, and left-wing Socialist Revolutionaries. The first chairman of the Council of People’s Commissars of the republic was the Bolshevik S. G. Buachidze, who was succeeded after his death on July 21 by the left-wing Socialist Revolutionary Iu. G. Pashkovskii. The people’s soviet also published the newspaper Narodnaia vlast’ in Vladikavkaz. By a decree of the Council of People’s Commissars of March 13 (26), private ownership of land, forests, and mineral resources was abolished and unused privately owned lands were distributed among the impoverished peasants. Industrial enterprises, mainly the oil enterprises in Groznyi, went under the supervision of factory and plant committees and bodies of Soviet power.

The Terek Soviet Republic continued to exist after the decision of the First Congress of Soviets of the Northern Caucasus on July 7 in Ekaterinodar to unify all Soviet republics of the Northern Caucasus into a single Northern Caucasus Soviet Republic as a result of the Civil War of 1918–20. The Fourth Congress of the Peoples of Terek, held in July and August under the leadership of G. K. Ordzhonikidze, drafted measures on the struggle against counterrevolutionaries and confirmed the new structure of the republic’s Soviet of People’s Commissars, the chairman of which was the Bolshevik F. K. Bulle.

In February 1919 the Terek Soviet Republic was captured by the White Guard Volunteer Army. Soviet power was restored in March 1920, and the Gortsy ASSR was created soon thereafter.