The Lettish Semigallian Regiment

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Semigallia (in Lettish, Zemgale) is a part of Latvia, around Mitau (in Lettish, Jelgava).]

From the People’s Commissar for Military’and Naval Affairs to the Chairman of the All-Russia Central Executive Committee of the Soviets of Workers’, Peasants’, Soldiers’ and Cossacks’ Deputies

During the enemy attack on Kazan some units behaved unworthy, like cowardly mercenaries and not like revolutionary soldiers of the Workers’ and Peasants’ Red Army.

If we now find ourselves obliged to take Kazan, at the price of effort and sacrifice, it is because there were units which surrendered that city without a fight.

An investigation is being carried out, and all the guilty will be punished in proportion to their crime against the Soviet Republic.

However, besides the incapable units there were others which showed a high degree of warlike valor during the defense of Kazan. First place in this category is held by the Fifth Lettish Semigallian Soviet Regiment, for its conduct in the course of the two-day defense of Kazan.

According to reports I have received, all the most important attacks made by the enemy were beaten off by units of this regiment.

In the field and then in the city, during the street fighting, the riflemen and commanding personnel of the Fifth Lettish Semigallian Regiment fought with the same self-sacrifice and heroic courage, regardless of heavy losses in dead and wounded. Thanks to this it was possible to hold Kazan for two days, which was very important, for if Kazan had fallen to the enemy on August 5, he would on August 6 also have taken the bridge over the Volga, and Sviyazhsk station. Loss of the Volga bridge and of Sviyazhsk station would have entailed grave consequences for the subsequent course of operations.

Of the commanding personnel, the following behaved with valor: the commander of the Kazan division, Comrade Slavin The name-index says of Slavin that he ‘deserted to the Whites.’ However, Trotsky refers to him without hostility in My Life, and Larissa Reissner likewise in Sviyahsk. In The Trotsky Papers there is a message from Trotsky to Lenin, dated January 22, 1919, stating that Slaven (as the name, which is Lettish, should be written) has been, at his own request, released from his command of the Southern Front. A note in a Soviet publication of 1959 (Sotsialishcheskaya Sovetskaya Respublika Lazvii v.1919 g. i inosatrannaya interventstya, ed. J. Krastins) says that ‘in 1921 he returned to bourgeois Latvia, was arrested, and died in prison.’]; General Staff officer Pelrov; the commander-in-chiefs aide-de-camp, Dylan; the commandant of the front staff, Remer; and the military leader Avrov, who personally led the street fighting. Avrov died the death of a hero.

On the basis of reports by participants in the battle, and, in the first place, by commander-in-chief Vatsetis English books about the Civil War give the Lettish surnames Vacietis and Lacis as ‘Vatsetis’ and ‘Latsis’, a transliteration from Russian.], I consider it necessary to mention here also the courage and devotion shown by the following Communist revolutionaries: the former commissar of the Fourth Army, Comrade Levin, who fought in the street battle to the last moment, and the brothers Mezhlauk.

Without prejudice to the question of how the feats of arms of the individuals mentioned, and of others whose roles are yet to be established, are to be honored, I nevertheless consider it a matter of justice to request the Central Executive Committee forthwith to award the Fifth Semigallian Regiment a special banner of honor. [Provisions for awarding ‘banners of honor’ to particular regiments were instituted by order of the People’s Commissar for Military Affairs on August 3, 1918. The decoration called the Order of the Red Banner was created by the All-Russia CEC on September 16, 1918.] in the name of the highest institution of the Soviet Republic.

August 13, 1918