Sukhov, Petr

Born 1884; died Aug. 10, 1918, in the village of Tiungur, now in Ust’-Koksa Raion, Gorno-Altai Autonomous Oblast. Participant in the October Revolution of 1917 and in the Civil War of 1918–20 in Siberia. Member of the Communist Party from 1914.

The son of an office employee, Sukhov was expelled from the Gymnasium for political unreliability and began working as a factory clerk. Drafted into the army in 1914, he was discharged in 1915 after being wounded. He worked as an office employee, first at the coal mines near Cheliabinsk, then in the Kuznetsk Coal Basin (in Kol’chugin, now Leninsk-Kuznetskii, in Kemerovo Oblast).

After the October Revolution, Sukhov was a member and executive secretary of the Kol’chugin Soviet of Workers’ Deputies. In June 1918 he became commander of a Red Guard detachment of miners, which, in its campaign against the White Guards, made a heroic march in June-August 1918 from Kol’chugin through Barnaul, Alei, and Slavgorod into the Altai region. During the march, Sukhov was elected commander of the armed forces of Altai Province. While on the march, through Karakol, Ust’-Kan, Abai, Uimon, and Katanda into Mongolia, Sukhov’s detachment was ambushed near the village of Tiungur; Sukhov was taken prisoner by the White Guards and shot.