Grigore Kotovski

Grigore Kotovski

Grigore Kotovski (mostly known under his Russified name, Grigori Ivanovich Kotovsky, Russian: Григорий Иванович Котовский; born June 24, 1881 [O.S. June 12] in Hînceşti, now in the Republic of Moldova; died August 6, 1925 in Birzula, now 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.

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

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