Nikolai Nikolajewitsch Yudenich

General Yudenich (seated) as commander on the Caucasus Front during the World War

Nikolai Nikolaevich Jew Nitsch ( Russian Николай Николаевич Юденич ; born 18 ^jul. / 30th July  1862 ^greg. In Moscow , † 5. October 1933 in Cannes ) was a general of the Russian army and the White Guard 1919th

Life until the October Revolution

Coming from a noble family, Judenitsch graduated from the officers' school in 1881 and the Academy of the Russian General Staff in 1887. He was first regimental commander , later he led a brigade . In the Russo-Japanese War 1904-1905 he was wounded twice. In the First World War Jew Nitsch served as Lieutenant General Chief of Staff of the Russian Caucasus army. He commanded the Russian troops in the Battle of Sarıkamış . On January 24, 1915, he was promoted to General of the Infantry and Commander in Chief of the Army. In this position he led the successful operations at Erzurum and Trapezunt , which established his reputation as a war hero and earned him the Order of St. George . In March 1917 he became commander in chief of the entire Caucasus front . Because of "resistance to the instructions of the Provisional Government" Yudenitsch was put into retirement in May 1917 by Alexander Fyodorowitsch Kerensky .

Russian civil war

He then lived in St. Petersburg , after the October Revolution, underground for over a year. At the end of 1918 he was able to flee with his wife to Helsinki , where he, as the highest-ranking general, tried to win support for an advance on Petrograd from Finland and the victorious powers . Judenitsch and the Finnish imperial administrator Carl Gustav Mannerheim had known each other since the General Staff Academy. The idea of ​​an attack north of the Gulf of Finland, favored by Judenitsch, was not dashed until after Mannerheim's electoral defeat in July 1919. As head of a political conference founded on May 24, Judenitsch negotiated with the Allied military mission under General Hubert Gough , the Paris Russian political conference and admiral Kolchak . On June 5, 1919 he was recognized by Kolchak as commander-in-chief of all white troops in north-western Russia. Although his authority was formally recognized by the Northwest Army and the West Russian Liberation Army of the adventurer Pavel Mikhailovich Bermondts , his influence on events at the front was initially minor. Bermondt later refused Yudenich's order to transfer his troops from the German sphere of influence to the Estonian front. Here, east of Narva , Yudenich wanted to concentrate all forces to take St. Petersburg. Under Allied pressure, a Russian Northwest Government was formed in Tallinn , which Yudenich joined as Minister of War. He also had to recognize the existence of the Republic of Estonia in order to receive the urgently needed Allied aid supplies. In the late autumn of 1919, he replaced the commander of the Northwest Army, Alexander Pavlovich Rodsjanko, on October 2, to personally head the operations on St. Petersburg. After great initial success, the offensive got stuck shortly before the city. Yudenich's refusal to take back the front attack groups led to the evasion by the now reinforced Red Army . Yudenich moved away from his defeated army, which was partially disarmed by the Estonians, who had previously been allies. On January 22nd, 1920 he ordered the dissolution of the Northwest Army. The brief abduction of Yudenich on January 28, 1920 remained an episode: One day before he wanted to go to Helsinki by ship, his subordinate Stanislaw Bulak-Balachowitsch and six officers broke into Yudenich's hotel room. Yudenich was deported by train to Tartu to force the surrender of the war chest. The kidnappers were able to be disarmed at a train station. Yudenich went to Great Britain . He later bought a house on the outskirts of Nice . He played no role in the movement of Russian emigrants .

Web links

Commons : Nikolai Nikolajewitsch Judenitsch  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

• Biography on hrono.ru (Russian)

literature

• Karsten Brüggemann: The founding of the Republic of Estonia and the end of the "one and indivisible Russia". Harrassowitz, Wiesbaden 2002, ISBN 3-447-04481-0 .

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Karsten Brüggemann: The foundation of the Republic of Estonia and ... 2002, p. 172.
2. ↑ Karsten Brüggemann: The founding of the Republic of Estonia and the end of the "one and indivisible Russia" page 453