Alexei Ivanovich Avtonomov (16 January 1890-2 February 1919) was a Russian Red Army commander who served as chief of the armed forces of the Kuban Soviet Republic during the Russian Civil War.
Biography[]
Alexei Ivanovich Avtonomov was born in 1890 to a well-known family of Don Cossacks, and he served in a Cossack regiment of the Imperial Russian Army during World War I before becoming one of the first Cossack officers to join the Bolsheviks during the 1917 Russian Revolution. In January 1918, he was given command of the South-Eastern Revolutionary Army, occupying the Kuban capital of Ekaterinodar without a fight. He also defended the city from Lavr Kornilov's White Russian assault on 9-13 April 1918, but he was later removed from command for his refusal to recognize Leon Trotsky's supreme command over the Red Army. He died of typhus in 1919 while on campaign in the Caucasus.