People of the Revolution and the USSR

Pavel Milyukov

Павел Милюков

Leader of the Kadets: 'Stupidity or Treason?'

At the Duma tribune in November 1916, he listed the government's failures one by one and after each asked the same refrain — and the chamber roared back: "Treason!"

Historian and leader of the Constitutional Democratic Party (Kadets). His 1916 'Stupidity or Treason?' speech shook the Tsarist regime, and as Foreign Minister he triggered the April Crisis of 1917. In exile he edited a newspaper in Paris; during the Nazi-Soviet war he backed the USSR.

Career timeline
  • 1905Founded the Constitutional Democratic Party (Kadets)
  • 1906Drafted the Vyborg Manifesto — called for passive resistance to Duma dissolution
  • 1907–1917Deputy in the Third and Fourth Duma, leader of the Kadet faction
  • 1915Led formation of the Progressive Bloc
  • 1916.11'Stupidity or treason?' speech — devastating attack on the Stürmer government
  • 1917.03–05Foreign Minister of Provisional Government — April Crisis forced resignation over Milyukov Note
  • 1917.08Kornilov affair — further chaos amid Kerensky-Kornilov conflict
  • 1920–1940Edited émigré newspaper Poslednie novosti in Paris
  • 1941–1943Supported USSR against Nazi Germany — rejoiced at the victory at Stalingrad

Alexander Nikolaevich Kozlovsky

Александр Николаевич Козловский

Tsarist artillery general at Kronstadt whom the Bolsheviks falsely named as ringleader of the 1921 rebellion

"The Communists used my name to present the Kronstadt uprising as a White Guard conspiracy, simply because I was the only general in the fortress."

A career artillery officer who served the Imperial Russian Army for three decades, commanding a Siberian artillery brigade in the First World War. After the February Revolution he went into reserve, then in 1918 joined the Red Army as a military specialist; in December 1920 he was appointed chief of artillery of Kronstadt Fortress. When the Kronstadt rebellion broke out in March 1921, he organized the rebels' defence, but the Bolsheviks' March 2 decree branded the rising "the mutiny of ex-General Kozlovsky," declared him an outlaw, and seized his wife, four sons, and 22 others as hostages. After the revolt was crushed he fled to Finland with some eight thousand Kronstadt sailors and lived out his years in exile as a teacher and mechanic, dying in Helsinki in 1940.

Career timeline
  • 1882Entered service at Vladimir Kiev Cadet Corps
  • 1884Graduated Mikhailovsky Artillery School
  • 1890Graduated Mikhailovsky Artillery Academy, 1st class
  • 1905–1912Commander, 2nd Battalion, 33rd Artillery Brigade
  • 1912Promoted Major-General; Cmdr., 11th Siberian Artillery Brigade
  • 1914–1917WWI service; Inspector of Artillery, 34th Army Corps
  • 1918–1920Served in Red Army as military specialist (voenspets)
  • 1920.12–1921.03Chief of Artillery, Kronstadt Fortress; led defence during rebellion
  • 1921–1940Exile in Finland: teacher, road worker, mechanic

Pyotr Berngardovich Struve

Пётр Бернгардович Струве

From Marxism through liberalism to conservative anti-Bolshevism: the thinker who traced the arc of a Russian intelligentsia

Vasily Shulgin recalled asking him: “So you too should have been crushed?” Struve, trembling his white beard, rose and shouted: “Yes! Me first! The moment a revolutionary raises his head — whack! — a rifle butt to the skull!”

A thinker who moved from legal Marxism through liberal activism, co-founding the Union of Liberation and contributing to Vekhi (1909), to becoming a White ideologue. He wrote the first RSDLP Manifesto (1898) and sustained anti-Bolshevik scholarship in emigration.

Career timeline
  • 1894Critical Notes on Russia's Economic Development, leading legal Marxist
  • 1898Drafted the Manifesto of the 1st RSDLP Congress
  • 1902–1905Edited Osvobozhdenie; co-founded the Union of Liberation
  • 1905–1915Kadet CC member; contributor to Vekhi (1909)
  • 1907Deputy to the Second State Duma (Petersburg)
  • 1917Full Academician; Director of Economic Dept, MFA
  • 1918–1920White ideologue; foreign relations for Denikin and Wrangel
  • 1921–1944Émigré editor and scholar, Vozrozhdenie and other journals

Pyotr Ioakimovich Palchinsky

Пётр Иоакимович Пальчинский

The Provisional Government's last technocrat who directed the defense of the Winter Palace

As the palace fell, Palchinsky burst in before the advancing Red Guards shouting that an agreement had been reached and a deputation from the City Council and Soviet was on its way.

A mining engineer from Kazan who sympathized with anarchist ideas in his youth, Palchinsky took part in the 1905 Revolution and was forced into emigration. In 1917 he served as Deputy Minister of Trade and Industry and briefly as Governor-General of Petrograd; on 25 October, as Kishkin's assistant, he directed the defense of the Winter Palace and, moments before the building fell, burst in to announce the ministers' decision to surrender to the Bolshevik forces. Released and reintegrated under the Soviet system, he chaired the Russian Technical Society and consulted on GOELRO and the Dnieper hydroelectric project, but was caught in the repressive aftermath of the Shakhty Trial, arrested in 1928, and shot the following year for 'counter-revolutionary wrecking.'

Career timeline
  • 1900Mining engineer, Donbas coalfield survey
  • 1902–1905Manager, Golovinsky coal mines, Irkutsk
  • 1906–1913Emigration (London, Turin, Rome); mining dept., Turin World Exhibition
  • 1915–1917Central War Industry Committee
  • 1917.03–10Deputy Minister of Trade & Industry; Governor-General of Petrograd (Aug–Sep)
  • 1917.10.25Head of Winter Palace defense, arrested
  • 1918–1928Chairman, Russian Technical Society; GOELRO & Dnieprostroi consultant
  • 1928–1929Arrested, sentenced to death, executed

Boris Aleksandrovich Engelhardt

Борис Александрович Энгельгардт

Headed the Duma Military Commission whose order sending the garrison back to barracks triggered Order No. 1

In Paris in 1916 he told an old comrade: "Perhaps we'll have to do it by revolutionary means... We're only afraid that we might be swamped from the left."

A Baltic German nobleman and General Staff officer who graduated from the Page Corps and the Nicholas Academy, he served in the Russo-Japanese War, retired for health reasons, and was elected to the Fourth State Duma in 1912. During the February Revolution, as chairman of the Duma Military Commission, he drafted the order of 28 February, signed by Rodzianko, demanding all soldiers return to barracks and obey their officers; the order panicked the garrison and became the direct impetus for the Petrograd Soviet's hasty adoption of Order No. 1. He served as Petrograd's first revolutionary commandant, joined the White movement's propaganda arm after October, lived in exile in France and Latvia, and was arrested by Soviet authorities, exiled to Central Asia, and spent his last years as a translator in Riga.

Career timeline
  • 1896–1903Graduated Page Corps and General Staff Academy; served in Life Guards Uhlan Regiment
  • 1904–1905Served in Russo-Japanese War, 1st Manchurian Army HQ
  • 1908Retired for health; zemstvo activity, Mogilev Governorate
  • 1912–1917Deputy, Fourth State Duma; Octobrist, Progressive Bloc
  • 1917.02Chairman, Duma Military Commission; revolutionary commandant of Petrograd
  • 1918–1919Head, political section, Volunteer Army (Kiev, Odessa); OSVAG, AFSR
  • 1920–1940Exile in France and Latvia: taxi driver, racehorse trainer
  • 1940–1962Arrested, exiled to Khorezm (until 1946); translator, Riga

Anatoly Nikolayevich Pepelyayev

Анатолий Николаевич Пепеляев

The 27-year-old White general whose Yakut expedition closed the Civil War

'I do not know my political convictions. I am not a party man. I want good and happiness for the people, I want the Russian people to be a kind, peaceful, but strong and mighty people': diary entry during the Yakut expedition

One of the youngest White generals of the Russian Civil War, he became a major-general at 27 and was nicknamed 'the Siberian Suvorov.' In December 1918 his troops captured Perm, taking 20,000 Red Army prisoners whom he released to their homes, and he went on to command the 1st Siberian Army under Admiral Kolchak. After the White collapse, he lived in exile in Harbin working as a carpenter and cab driver, then in September 1922 led a volunteer druzhina into Yakutia: the last military operation of the Civil War, ending with his surrender at Ayan in June 1923. His death sentence was commuted to ten years, but he was rearrested in the Great Purge and shot in Novosibirsk in 1938.

Career timeline
  • 1910Graduated Pavlovsk Military School, commissioned sub-lieutenant
  • 1914–1917WWI service, rose to lieutenant colonel, awarded Order of St. George 4th class
  • 1918.05–08Led anti-Bolshevik uprising in Tomsk, commanded 1st Middle Siberian Corps
  • 1918.09–12Promoted major-general at 27, captured Perm, nicknamed 'Siberian Suvorov'
  • 1919Promoted lieutenant-general, commander of 1st Siberian Army
  • 1920–1922Harbin exile, worked as carpenter and cab driver
  • 1922.09–1923.06Led Siberian Volunteer Druzhina in Yakut expedition, surrendered at Ayan
  • 1924–1938Death sentence commuted to 10 years, freed 1936, shot 1938 in Great Purge

Viktor Ivanovich Maltsev

Виктор Иванович Мальцев

Soviet Air Force colonel turned ROA Air Force commander, builder of the Vlasov movement's air arm

In November 1941, wearing his Red Air Force colonel's uniform, he appeared at the German command post in occupied Yalta and declared his desire to fight the Bolsheviks.

A Soviet Air Force colonel who defected to the German side in Yalta in November 1941 and became a leading figure in the collaborationist movement. As commander of the KONR Air Force under General Andrei Vlasov, he built and led an aviation force of some 5,000 men and 40–45 aircraft, though it saw no combat before the war ended. His 1938 arrest by the NKVD, torture, and eventual release without confession proved a decisive turning point; he later published Conveyor of the GPU, an account of his imprisonment widely used in German propaganda. Handed over to the Soviet authorities by the Americans after the war, he was convicted of treason and hanged in 1946.

Career timeline
  • 1918Red Army volunteer; graduated Yegoryevsk flight school (1919)
  • 1925–1927Chief, Central Aerodrome near Moscow
  • 1927–1931Assistant chief, then chief, Siberian Military District Air Force
  • 1936Promoted to colonel
  • 1937Chief, Turkmenistan Civil Air Fleet Directorate
  • 1938–1939Arrested by NKVD, tortured; released without conviction
  • 1939–1941Chief, Aeroflot sanatorium, Yalta
  • 1941Defected to Germans in Yalta; burgomaster of Yalta (1942)
  • 1943–1944Recruited Soviet POW pilots for Eastern aviation groups
  • 1945.02Major general & commander, KONR Air Force (~5,000 men, 40–45 aircraft)
  • 1945.04–08Surrendered to US forces; handed over to USSR
  • 1946.08.01Convicted of treason, hanged at Butyrka Prison

Andrey Andreyevich Vlasov

Андрей Андреевич Власов

Hero of the Battle of Moscow who defected to lead the Nazi-backed Russian Liberation Army

June 1942: with his 2nd Shock Army encircled, Vlasov was offered escape by plane. He refused, hid in German-occupied territory with his men, and was betrayed by a local farmer ten days later.

Andrey Vlasov was a Red Army lieutenant general hailed as a "defender of Moscow" for leading the 20th Army in the capital's defense, who after his capture in the 1942 Lyuban operation defected to Nazi Germany. As leader of the Russian Liberation Army (ROA) and the Committee for the Liberation of the Peoples of Russia (KONR), he advanced an anti-Stalinist program for a democratic Russia, codified in the 1944 Prague Manifesto with its pledges of national self-determination and basic freedoms. The Nazis used him chiefly as a propaganda weapon, but in the war's final days the ROA's 1st Division joined the Prague uprising against the Germans. Captured by Soviet forces after the war, he was hanged for treason following a secret trial; his legacy remains fiercely contested in Russian historiography and memory politics.

Career timeline
  • 1919Joined Red Army; fought White armies and Makhno's forces on the Southern Front
  • 1930Joined the CPSU(B); instructor at the Frunze Military Academy
  • 1938–1939Posted to China as military adviser to Chiang Kai-shek
  • 1940–1941Commander, 99th Rifle Division (named best in the Red Army); then 4th Mechanized Corps
  • 1941Commander, 37th Army (Kiev); then 20th Army, retook Solnechnogorsk in the Battle of Moscow
  • 1942Commander, 2nd Shock Army; encircled and captured in the Lyuban operation; defected to Germany
  • 1944Chairman of KONR; issued the Prague Manifesto
  • 1945Commander-in-Chief of the ROA; captured by Soviet forces after the war