Spiridon Dionisyevich Merkulov

Russian White movement Imperial establishment and White movement 1870–1957 ○ Died in exile in San Francisco

Head of the Provisional Priamur Government set up by the White coup in Vladivostok in May 1921

Born into an Amur peasant family, he graduated in law from St Petersburg University and worked in the Ministry of Agriculture and State Property. Settling in Vladivostok, he was legal adviser to the city government and chief inspector of an insurance company, and practised as a lawyer. After a coup by units of the Far Eastern Army on 26 May 1921 he became head of the Provisional Priamur Government, which ruled present-day Primorye and part of Khabarovsk Krai. In the summer of 1922 the Priamur Zemsky Sobor replaced his government with Diterikhs's dictatorship, and in September he left for Japan and Canada with a delegation to the emigration. When the Red Army took Vladivostok in October he could not return, and he lived in San Francisco until his death in 1957.