Pyotr Nikolaevich Krasnov

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General Krasnov
Pyotr Krasnov Signature.jpg

Pyotr Krasnov ( Russian Пётр Николаевич Краснов , scientific. Transliteration Pëtr Nikolaevič Krasnov ; born September 10 . Jul / 22. September  1869 greg. In Saint Petersburg , † (shot) 16 January 1947 in Moscow ) was a general in the tsarist army , a leading figure in the counter-revolutionary movement in the Russian Civil War , as well as a writer.

Life

Krasnow graduated from the cadet school in Pavlovsk in 1888 and after graduating served in the "Ataman Regiment" of the Tsar's bodyguard.

At the beginning of the First World War he commanded a Cossack cavalry brigade as major general in Galicia . From July 1915 he took command of the 3rd Don Cossack Division, from September 1915 he led the 2nd Kuban Cossack Division. At the end of May 1916 he was seriously wounded in the leg near Wolka Galuzinskoy. From June 1917 he led the 1st Kuban Cossack Division, from August to October 1917 he was corps commander of the 3rd Cavalry Corps. At the end of 1917, Krasnov was arrested in the city of Pskov in the course of General Lawr Kornilov's attempted coup against the provisional government under Alexander Kerensky , but was soon released.

During the October Revolution of the Bolsheviks , the then Prime Minister Kerensky commissioned him to suppress the revolt in the capital, Petrograd . He failed, however, with an improvised Cossack unit of armed workers and former front soldiers who had been won over to the cause of the communists. He was captured by the Soviets, but released on a word of honor not to fight the revolution any further.

Krasnov then fled to the Cossack region on the Don and was elected leader of the Cossacks there in May 1918 under the title Ataman . With German help he tried to form an army of Cossacks in order to continue to take action against the Bolshevik regime. Krasnow carried out the siege of Tsaritsyn in 1918 , but this was unsuccessful. In a campaign of attrition, his Cossack army of 30,000 men was wiped out by the Red Army by the spring of 1919. In view of the military defeat, he had to resign as an ataman in February 1919 and left the supreme command to the white General Denikin , who had previously victoriously led his volunteer army in the North Caucasus.

The Endless Hatred (first edition 1938)

In view of his political differences with Denikin and because his rapprochement with the Germans made him ballast in foreign policy, he emigrated to Germany that same month. There he continued his anti-communist activity and was one of the founders of the "Brotherhood of Russian Truth". This organization planned to set up an underground network in Soviet Russia , but was unsuccessful. Several, mostly pro-tsarist and anti-communist novels about the civil war come from his pen. The two best known were The Endless Hatred and From the Tsar's Eagle to the Red Flag .

During the Second World War , Krasnow sided with National Socialist Germany . He worked in the editorial team of the Russian-language and anti-Soviet newspaper “Fürs Vaterland” and made himself available to help build up Cossack units made up of locals, prisoners of war and Russian emigrants. His military contribution was small due to his old age, however, he served more as an integrating figure of this movement. Political initiative was also not allowed by the Germans. In 1944, however, he refused to join the Russian Liberation Army, hastily set up under General Vlasov , which, like his units, was under the political knot of the Nazis. At the end of the war, Krasnow surrendered to the British Army with the remains of his Cossack troops in Austria . The Allies gave them assurances that they would not be extradited to the Soviet Union as emigrants .

In May 1945 the Cossacks, a total of around 50,000 men with 11,000 women and children near Lienz, were handed over to the Red Army and forcibly repatriated. Krasnow was sentenced to death by hanging in Moscow by the military council of the Supreme Court of the USSR , together with other Cossack generals (including Andrei Grigorjewitsch Schkuro , Helmuth von Pannwitz ), who had also collaborated with the Germans . The judgment against the 77-year-old Krasnov was carried out on January 16, 1947. However, he died from a firing squad .

Literary work

  • 1918: the eightieth.
  • 1920: Falling leaves [continued: To understand means to forgive].
  • 1920: The white coat.
  • 1922: From the tsar's eagle to the red flag.
  • 1923: Beyond the thistles.
  • 1923: Understanding means forgiving [continuation of Fallende Blätter].
  • 1924: The Amazon of the Wild. At the step to the throne of God.
  • 1925: united - indivisible.
  • 1926: In the Manchurian wasteland.
  • 1928: Eroica. Novel from the time of the Napoleonic Wars.
  • 1928: Kostya the Cossack.
  • 1930: Largo.
  • 1933: The Tsesarevna.
  • 1935: The Empire in Shackles.
  • 1937: Catherine the Great.
  • 1938: The endless hatred.
  • 1938: The Tsar murderers.
  • 1939: home. A Don Cossack novel.
  • 1939: Russian soldier spirit.

Literary processing

Claudio Magris, Conjectures about a saber, Hanser Verlag Munich, 1986. ISBN 3-446-14518-4

Footnotes

  1. ↑ Р. Г. Гагкуев, В. Ж. Цветков, С. С. Балмасов: Келлер в годы Великой войны и русской смуты // Граф Келлер . М .: НП «Посев», 2007, ISBN 5-85824-170-0 , p. 1101 .
  2. ↑ z. B. January 25, 1921 in Berlin: Meeting of Russian (Tsarist) General Staff officers on the initiative of "General" Krasnov
  3. ↑ Газета «Наша страна»: 60 ЛЕТ ИСТОРИИ “НАШЕЙ СТРАНЫ”. 2008, Retrieved December 14, 2017 (Russian).
  4. ^ Karl-Peter Schwarz: A shameful operation. Stalin wanted revenge - and Churchill didn't want to jeopardize his understanding: How the British army handed over tens of thousands of Cossacks, Caucasians, Slovenes and Croats from Austria to the Soviet Union and to Tito's communist partisans in the weeks after the end of World War II . In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, June 1, 2015, p. 6.

Web links

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personal data
SURNAME Krasnov, Pyotr Nikolayevich
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Краснов, Пётр Николаевич (Russian); Krasnov, Pëtr Nikolaevič (scientific transliteration)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Russian officer, Cossack ataman and lieutenant general in the tsarist army at the time of the October Revolution in 1917
DATE OF BIRTH September 22, 1869
PLACE OF BIRTH St. Petersburg
DATE OF DEATH January 16, 1947
Place of death Moscow