Grigory Korganov

Who was Grigory Korganov?

Grigory Nikolayevich Korganov was a Georgian-Armenian Communist activist, one of the 26 Baku Commissars and Bolshevik Party leaders in Azerbaijan during the Russian Revolution. Korganov was born in Tiflis in the Armenian family of a military officer. From 1907 he attended the Moscow University and headed the Caucasian student association, but he was expelled due to his revolutionary work. After finishing the studies in 1914, he served in the Army as an officer during World War I and was sent to Caucasian Front where he conducted revolutionary propaganda. After the October Revolution he became Chairman of the Revolutionary Army in Caucasus and, from March 1918, member of the Committee of the Revolutionary Defense of Baku. From April 1918 he became Commissar of the Naval Matters of the Baku Commune and from the spring of 1918 he headed the Soviet Armed Forces. When the Commune was toppled by the Centro Caspian Dictatorship, a British-backed coalition of Dashnaks, SRs and Mensheviks, Korganov and his comrades were captured by British troops and executed by a firing squad between the stations of Pereval and Akhcha-Kuyma of Transcaucasian Railroad.