Pēteris Slavens (; Cēsis, 5 April 1874 – Valmiera, 14 November 1919) was a

Latvia Latvia, officially the Republic of Latvia, is a country in the Baltic region of Northern Europe. It is one of the three Baltic states, along with Estonia to the north and Lithuania to the south. It borders Russia to the east and Belarus to t ...

Soviet The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR), commonly known as the Soviet Union, was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 until Dissolution of the Soviet ...

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commander, who fought in the

Russian Civil War The Russian Civil War () was a multi-party civil war in the former Russian Empire sparked by the 1917 overthrowing of the Russian Provisional Government in the October Revolution, as many factions vied to determine Russia's political future. I ...

Military career

Slavens attended from 1893 a Junker-school and entered in the Tsarist Army. In 1917, he retired as a regimental commander for health reasons and was in various hospitals for treatment.
After the October Revolution, he was forcibly re-activated by the Red Army in the summer of 1918, despite his poor health. He commanded first a division, then from August the 5th Army in the East, and until January 1919 the Southern Front in the Russian Civil War. Because of illness, Slavens went to Riga, where from March he again had to take up the command of the Soviet Latvian Army. He was blamed by the Party leadership for the devastating defeat in May 1919, and court martial investigations were started against him. Slavens received his demobilization for health reasons and then illegally crossed the border into independent Latvia. The local authorities detained Slavens in November 1919 and put him in a POW camp, where he died in hospital from pneumonia.

Sources

* Inta Pētersone (Hrsg.): Latvijas Brīvības cīņas 1918 - 1920. Enciklopēdja. Preses nams, Riga 1999, . Seite 399–400 1874 births 1919 deaths Latvian Riflemen Military personnel of the Russian Empire Russian military personnel of World War I People of the Russian Civil War Deaths from pneumonia in Latvia Russian people imprisoned abroad Russian people who died in prison custody Russian prisoners of war Prisoners who died in Latvian detention {{Latvia-bio-stub