Alexander Pavlovich Kutepov

Александр Павлович Кутепов

White general who led the Volunteer Army’s 1st Army Corps to Orel in 1919, then headed ROVS in exile until the OGPU abducted him

Born in Cherepovets, he was wounded in the Russo-Japanese War and in the First World War became the last commander of the Preobrazhensky Life Guards Regiment. Joining the Volunteer Army in December 1917, he led an officers' company on the Ice March and then the Kornilov Regiment, and as military governor of Novorossiysk in 1918 carried out mass shootings without trial. From January 1919 he commanded the 1st Army Corps in the drive on Moscow as far as Orel, and in the retreat kept the elite Volunteer divisions fit to fight. In 1920 he commanded the 1st Army of Wrangel's Russian Army and ran the Gallipoli camp with harsh discipline. Chairman of the Russian All-Military Union (ROVS) from 1928, he stepped up sabotage inside the USSR until OGPU agents abducted him in Paris on 26 January 1930; he died in their hands.

Also known as: Aleksandr Kutepov

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