Aron Baron was a significant figure in the Russian anarchist movement. This page is to iron out some of the issues in what has been written about him.
1, the defence of Poltava / Red Cossack
"In March 1918 he was involved in the defence of Poltava as a military commander" (Nick Heath's bio of Baron on Libcom) [now updated 4 July 2013]
"In March 1918, he is appointed commandant of Poltava, one of his tasks being to defend the city against interventionists." (wikipedia as of 25/6/13)
The idea of Aron Baron being commandant of Poltava comes from this order:
Order № 2 of the Supreme Commander-in-Chief of All the Armed Forces of the Ukrainian [Soviet] People's Republic
Poltava, March 7 1918
I appoint:
1. Comrade Kikvidze – Commander of the Poltava Sector of the Front.
2. Comrade Vitaliy Primakov – Commander of the Bakhmach Sector of the Front.
3. Comrade Kolyadenko – Commander of the Znamensk Sector of the Front.
4. Comrade Sergei Bakinsky – Chief of Military Communications for the whole Front.
5. Comrade Grigoriy Razzhivin – head of the department for mobilization of the Poltava region.
6. Comrade Baron – commandant of the city of Poltava.
[Signed] Antonov-Ovseyenko
This order is reprinted in Antonov-Ovseyenko’s memoirs (Volume 2) and also in E. Bosch’s memoirs. Neither author indicates Baron’s first name or party affiliation. The fly-by-night Ukrainian Soviet People’s Republic had its headquarters in Poltava during the week March 3 – March 10, 1918.
According to Yu. Kravetz, the Baron mentioned in this order is Mikhail Baron, a member of the Poltava Revolutionary Committee. Mikhail Baron, a former student at Bern University, was an anarchist who became a Bolshevik. In December 1920 – February 1921 he was chief-of-staff of the 8th Cavalry Division of the Red Cossacks. His memoirs are in the collection Pervaya Chervonnaya, published in 1931 in Moscow.
A. Dubovik wonders if this might be the same person as the anarchist known as Baron-Londonsky, apparently because he spent some time in London. Baron-Londonsky was a Russian anarchist who emigrated to the USA and returned to Russia in 1917 along with other members of the Union of Russian Workers. He worked in the anarchist movement for a while, but in early 1919 he joined the Bolshevik Party. He is mentioned in Anatolii Gorelik’s book Anarchists in the Russian Revolution in a list of prominent anarchist renegades who joined the Bolsheviks. Most of the people in Gorelik’s list are well-known, but two or three, including Baron-Londonsky, are hard to identify nowadays.
"On December 27th 1917, he gets assigned the task of forming the 1st Regiment of the Red Cossacks Army, under the command of Mikhail Artemyevich Muravyov." (wikipedia as of 25/6/13)
I assume this the Mikhail Baron mentioned above, rather than Aron Baron.
So there's one or possibly two ex-anarchist Barons confusing the picture. Thanks to Malcolm Archibald of Black Cat Press and the comrades at Makhno.ru
The Libcom bio mentioned above has now been updated "Assertions that he was involved in March 1918 in the defence of Poltava as a military commander appear to be mistaken as he is confused with Mikhail Baron, a commander at Poltava and an anarchist turned Bolshevik."