Mikhail Vasilyevich Hanzhin
Михаил Васильевич Ханжин
1871–1961
○ 10 years in camps; posthumously rehabilitated
The artillery general who led Kolchak's drive to the Volga and was broken by Frunze's counterstroke
On 7 July 1915, when his 12th Infantry Division broke under superior enemy pressure, Hanzhin personally led a reserve battalion into the gap and stopped the retreating troops.
An artillery officer of Orenburg Cossack stock who distinguished himself as a gunnery commander in the Russo-Japanese War and the Brusilov Offensive of the First World War. During the Civil War he raised the Ural Corps for the Siberian Whites and, as commander of Kolchak's Western Army, achieved the strategic breakthrough of March 1919 that drove within 30 km of the Volga, only for his overextended front to be struck by Frunze's Southern Group counteroffensive at Buguruslan and Bugulma. After his dismissal he served as Kolchak's last Minister of War, then lived in exile in China until SMERSH arrested him in 1945; he served ten years in the camps and was posthumously rehabilitated.
Career Timeline
- 1890–1893Orenburg Cadet Corps → Mikhailovskoye Artillery School, commissioned khorunzhiy
- 1899Mikhailovskaya Artillery Academy, graduated first class
- 1904–1905Russo-Japanese War: 4th Battery, 3rd East Siberian Artillery Brigade; Order of St. George 4th class
- 1914–1916WWI: 19th Artillery Brigade → 12th Infantry Division → 8th Army artillery inspector, planned Brusilov Offensive bombardment
- 1918–1919Ural Corps commander → Kolchak's Western Army, drive to Volga → dismissed after Buguruslan. Promoted General of the Artillery
- 1919–1920Minister of War in Kolchak's government; member of the 'Troika' managing the regime's final collapse
- 1920–1945Exile in China (Dalian, Shanghai, Changchun); headed Far Eastern section of ROVS
- 1945–1961Arrested by SMERSH, 10-year sentence → released 1955, died in Dzhambul. Posthumously rehabilitated 1992