Avenir Gennadievich Efimov, 1888 - 1972

Avenir Gennadievich Efimov was a colonel in the Russian army, the last commander of the remnants of the Izhevsk and Votkinsk divisions of the White army in Siberia. These units were composed of workers of the factories of Izhevsk and Votkinsk in the Ural mountains, who rose against the Soviets in 1918 and joined the White army.

Born on 19 October 1888, Efimov was educated in the Simbirsk Cadet School and graduated from the Nikolaevskoe inzhenernoe uchilishche in 1910, receiving his commission as an officer in the 16th Sapper Battalion quartered in Kazan'.

During the First World War, he completed a course of studies at the General Staff Academy, following which he served at the front in various staff posts until his demobilization on 25 February 1918. Back in Kazan' at the time of the anti-Soviet uprising in the summer of 1918, he joined the People's Army (Narodnaia armiia), in which he served through its unification with the Siberian Army. In February 1919 he was appointed chief of staff of the Izhevsk Rifle Brigade, and when the latter was upgraded to a division, he received command of its cavalry regiment. He was appointed commander of the Izhevsk division in 1920, and presided over its fusion with the fellow votkintsy to form the Izhevsk-Votkinsk brigade, which he commanded until its demobilization.

First in China, and then in San Francisco, California, where he settled, Efimov spent many years collecting documents for a history of the izhevtsy and votkintsy, finally published posthumously as Izhevtsy i votkintsy (Concord, CA, 1975) and now a bibliographic rarity. Efimov died on 25 April 1972 in San Francisco.

Detailed processing and preservation microfilming for these materials were made possible by a generous grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities and by matching funds from the Hoover Institution and Museum of Russian Culture. The grant also provides for depositing a microfilm copy in the Hoover Institution Archives. The original materials and copyright to them (with some exceptions) are the property of the Museum of Russian Culture, San Francisco.