Plato Alexejewitsch Letschizki

Plato Letschizki during the First World War

Plato Alexejewitsch Letschizki ( Russian Платон Алексеевич Лечицкий ; born March 18 ^{. Jul} / the thirtieth March  1856 ^greg. In Grodno ; † 18th February 1923 in Moscow ) was an Imperial Russian officer, most recently General of Infantry .

Life

Letschizki was born the son of a Russian Orthodox priest. He joined the army in 1877 and was trained at the Warsaw Infantry School, which he left as a Praporschtschik in 1880 . He first came to the 39th Reserve Battalion, later he served in the 5th and 6th East Siberian Rifle Battalion and in 1889 reached the rank of captain . In 1896 he was promoted to lieutenant colonel and battalion commander, and in 1898 took part in the occupation of Port Arthur . He fought under General Sakharov in the Boxer Rebellion ( Russo-Chinese War ). At the beginning of 1901 he became a colonel and subsequently led various rifle regiments in eastern Siberia and Manchuria , where he was temporarily in command of the city of Mukden . Letschizki distinguished himself in the Russo-Japanese War of 1904/05 and was appointed wing adjutant to the emperor in 1904 and promoted to major general in early 1905 . In August 1905 he took over the 1st Brigade of the 6th East Siberian Rifle Division and was accepted into the emperor's entourage. In March 1906 he received command of the 6th East Siberian Division and in July of the 1st Guards Rifle Division in Saint Petersburg .

Promoted to Lieutenant General in 1908 , he was given command of the 18th Army Corps in the St. Petersburg Military District. From December 1910 he commanded the troops of the Far Eastern (Cis-Amurian) military district and was promoted to General of the Infantry in 1913. At the beginning of the First World War in August 1914 he was given command of the 9th Army , which was formed in the Kiev military district and was originally intended for an attack from the direction of Warsaw on the province of Poznan , but was then handed over to the Southwest Front . For his successful leadership of the army in the Battle of the Vistula , Letschizki was awarded the George weapon with diamonds in October 1914.

In February 1915, Letschizki's army command was transferred to the extreme southern flank of the Eastern Front on the border with Romania ( Bukovina ), where it was confronted with the Austro-Hungarian 7th Army under Karl von Pflanzer-Baltin . In the plans for the Brusilov offensive of 1916, Letschizki's army was more of a supportive role. Nevertheless, he achieved greater successes, such as the capture of Chernivtsi on June 18. The offensive was continued by the 9th Army and led the army to the Carpathian passes until early July. As a result, the army received an order to continue to advance on Halitsch , and on August 10, Stanislau was captured . The army then received orders that led to a divergent approach in two directions, on Halitsch and Marmaroschsiget , after Letschizki protests about this, his right wing of the neighboring 7th Army was subordinated to General Shcherbachev . After Romania's entry into the war (August 27), Letschizki's army began a slow advance through the Forest Carpathians , before relieving the Romanian troops in the Eastern Carpathians and tying the Austro-Hungarian troops here to relieve them. In the eventful battles in the Carpathian Mountains up to 1917, neither side gained a decisive advantage.

After the February Revolution of 1917 and the decision of the provisional government to “democratize” the army, Letschizki was placed at the disposal of the Minister of War on May 1 and took his leave three weeks later. During the civil war , he was arrested in 1919 for speculating on food, but released after a short time. In 1920 he joined the Red Army and made it to the position of Inspector of Infantry and Cavalry of the Petrograd Military District. In 1921 he was arrested again for “counter-revolutionary activities”, sentenced to two years in prison and imprisoned in Moscow's Taganka prison . He died in the local prison hospital.

literature

• К. А. Залесский: Кто был кто в Первой мировой войне. АСТ, 2003, pp. 352-357.

Web links

• Career data on grwar.ru (russ.)
• Biographical information on 1914ww.ru (russ.)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Information according to К. А. Залесский: Кто был кто в Первой мировой войне. АСТ, 2003, p. 352.