People of the Revolution and the USSR

Activity
Any Military command 1
Affiliation(set)

Most people

Any Russian Empirestate 44 Russian White movement 17 Constitutional Democratic Party (Kadets) 8 Soviet Communist Party and Bolsheviks 3 Union of 17 October (Octobrists) 3 Socialist Revolutionary Party (PSR/SR) 2 Russian Orthodox Church 2 Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (RSDLP) 2 Nazi party and regime 1

All 11 affiliations

Germany

Nazi party and regime 1

Russia

Russian Empirestate 44 Russian White movement 17 Socialist Revolutionary Party (PSR/SR) 2 Union of 17 October (Octobrists) 3 Constitutional Democratic Party (Kadets) 8 Russian Provisional Governmentstate 1 Russian Orthodox Church 2 Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (RSDLP) 2

Soviet Union

Soviet Communist Party and Bolsheviks 3 Soviet Unionstate 1
Position(set)
Any Imperial establishment and White movement 1 Counter-revolutionary forces 13 Fascists and Nazis 19 Marxism and communism 1
Citizenship
Any Russia 1
Background
Any Russia 1
Era
Any

People of the Soviet Union

The old regime and its challengers1905–1917 1
Nazi party and regime Imperial establishment and White movement Clear all
GlossaryNazi party and regime

Pyotr Nikolayevich Krasnov

Пётр Николаевич Краснов
Russian Empire Imperial establishment and White movement Russian Empire Russia 1869–1947 ✕ Executed

The White ataman who built a Don Cossack anti-Bolshevik state, collaborated with the Nazis, and was a Nobel Prize-nominated novelist

November 1917: captured by Trotsky after his 700 Cossacks failed to take Petrograd, he was paroled on a promise never to fight the Soviet regime — and fled the next day to the Don to join the anti-Bolshevik struggle.

A lieutenant general of the Imperial Russian Army from a Don Cossack military dynasty, he was one of the architects of the Lutsk breakthrough during the Brusilov Offensive in 1916. Elected Ataman of the Don Cossack Host in May 1918, he built the Don Republic as an independent anti-Bolshevik state with German backing, insisting on Don autonomy even as he clashed with Denikin over unified White command. In exile he became a prolific novelist and memoirist, author of over twenty books, including the epic From Double Eagle to the Red Flag, and a Nobel Prize in Literature nominee in 1926. During World War II he headed the Cossack Central Office under the Nazi regime, organizing Cossack units to fight the Soviet Union; handed over by British forces in 1945, he was tried and executed in Moscow in 1947.

Career timeline
  • 1888–1914Graduated Pavlovsk Military School, served in Ataman Life Guards, war correspondent Russo-Japanese War, CO 10th Don Cossack Regt
  • 1914–1917CO 2nd Combined Cossack Div, then 3rd Cavalry Corps; led Lutsk breakthrough, promoted Major General
  • 1917.10–11Kerensky-Krasnov uprising: marched 700 Cossacks on Petrograd; defeated, captured, then released by Trotsky on parole
  • 1918.05–1919.02Elected Don Cossack Ataman; built Don Army with German aid, proclaimed the Don Republic
  • 1919–1936Edited NW Army newspaper; exiled in Germany then France; émigré anti-Soviet political activity
  • 1921–1939Published 20+ novels and memoirs incl. From Double Eagle to the Red Flag trilogy; Nobel Prize in Literature nominee 1926
  • 1943–1945Head of Cossack Central Office, Reich Ministry for the Occupied Eastern Territories; organized Cossack units vs USSR
  • 1945–1947Captured by British, repatriated to USSR; tried in Moscow, hanged 16 January 1947