Grigore Kotovski

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Grigore Kotovski (mostly known under his Russified name, Grigori Ivanovich Kotovsky, Russian: Григорий Иванович Котовский; born June 24 [O.S. June 12] 1881 in Hînceşti, now in the Republic of Moldova; died August 6, 1925 in Birzula, now Kotovsk in Ukraine) was a Soviet military leader and Communist activist.

A deserter from the Imperial Russian army, a convict in a katorga, and a fugitive sentenced to death in 1916, Kotovski had begun resisting tsarist rule since 1902, leading two Moldovan rebellions in 1905 and 1915. During the last part of World War I, Kotovski was sent to the Romanian front. In 1918, he sided with the Communists in Tiraspol, taking command of a revolutionary battalion and helping the Bolsheviks gain control of the Ukraine. He joined the Bolshevik party in 1920. In 1924, he took an active part in the foundation of the Moldavian Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic in Transnistria, as part of the Ukrainian SSR.

The settlement of Birzula, where he died and was buried in a mausoleum, was renamed Kotovsk in 1935; in the meantime it was included in the newly created Odessa oblast. The mausoleum was later destroyed during the Romanian occupation of Transnistria.

Two other towns in the Soviet Union were also named Kotovsk. One of them was his native Hînceşti, which regained its former name in 1990. The other one is situated in Tambov Oblast, Russia.

[edit] Trivia

• Appears as an important character in the novel "Chapayev and Void" by modern Russian writer Viktor Pelevin. Kotovski in this novel is shown as a man who prefers talking about philosophical questions and is addicted to cocaine.