Mikhail Baron

Mikhail Baron (Russian: Михаи́л Дави́дович Ба́рон; b. 1894) was an anarchist and socialist revolutionary, brother of Aron Baron. A red cossack of Ukrainian Jewish origin, he was also one of the founders of the Red Cossacks Army of the Ukrainian Republic.

On 27 December 1917, he was assigned the task of forming the first Regiment of the Red Cossacks Army, under the command of Mikhail Artemyevich Muravyov.

In March 1918 he was appointed commandant of Poltava, one of his tasks being to defend the city against interventionists. The same month, acting as an intermediary between the Ekaterinoslav Federation of Anarchists and the Soviet authorities, he put an end to the armed conflict between anarchists and bolsheviks in Ekaterinoslav. In May 1918, after the German army entered the city, Baron and his anarchist troops retreated to Rostov-on-Don. The next month, in the Tsaritsyn area, they were disarmed by the Soviet authorities, like all other Ukrainian anarchist groups. In September, in the neutral zone, Baron and Vitaly Primakov set up the first Ukrainian Insurgent Division, a Red Army unit which later became the Tarashcha Regiment. Baron was, for several months the Regiment's commanding Ataman. Later, he joined the Bolshevik Party.