Pyotr Krasnov

Pyotr Nikolayevich Krasnov, sometimes called Peter Krasnov, was a Russian military officer and author. He rose to lieutenant general in the Imperial Russian Army during World War I and later commanded anti-Bolshevik forces in the Russian Civil War, serving as ataman of the Don Republic until the Red Army took the region after their victory at Tsaritsyn.

World War II collaboration

Following the civil war, he went into exile. In World War II, he led Cossack efforts to cooperate with Nazi Germany, heading the Main Administration of Cossack Forces under the Reich Ministry for the Occupied Eastern Territories. After surrendering to British forces in 1945, he was sent back to the Soviet Union against his will, tried in Moscow for high treason, and executed in 1947.

Early life and service

Krasnov was born in Saint Petersburg on 22 September 1869 (10 September old style). His father, Nikolay Krasnov, and grandfather, Ivan Krasnov, were both generals. He graduated from Pavlovsk Military School in 1888 and joined the Ataman regiment of the Life Guards. Semyon Krasnov was his first cousin once removed.

In early 1902, the army newspaper Russkii Invalid ran a series of articles by Krasnov based on his trip to Mongolia, China, and Japan as its East Asia correspondent. In "Fourteen Days in Japan," he portrayed the Imperial Japanese Army unfavorably. A Main Staff officer called the piece "poorly founded, extraordinarily hasty and far from the truth." Krasnov wrote that the Japanese "looks coldly on life and death and does not fear death." He judged Japanese soldiers as disciplined to European standards but overly rigid in operations and prone to health problems.

He mocked that during the Boxer Rebellion’s march on Beijing in 1900, exhausted Japanese troops had to be carried in Russian wagons. He noted that at Tianjin, one Japanese company lost 90% of its men in a frontal assault on a fort, while a Russian company took another fort by outflanking it with only six killed. Krasnov believed the Japanese were brave but poorly led, stating "the military deed does not suit the Japanese" because it "was thought up for them by a chauvinist government of complete militarist conviction." He described the Japanese infantryman as "a weak and an indifferent marksman, although amenable to training." He declared "the language of numbers is not my language," arguing that even if Japan mobilized 400,000 troops, they would be no match for "European powers holding excellent positions on the Asian mainland." He dismissed Japanese cavalry, saying "neither the horses nor riders to create cavalry" existed, and that "to destroy all 13 regiments of the Japanese cavalry would be a very easy task." Once that cavalry was beaten, "a deaf and blind Japanese army would become a plaything for an enterprising partisan commander." He quoted a Frenchman who had lived in Japan for a decade: "They are a people gone astray, the military deed is not in their nature." Krasnov added, "I think that this minute they are contemplating the same thing in St. Petersburg." Although Main Staff officers criticized his sweeping generalizations, Tsar Nicholas II reportedly enjoyed the article, and the War Ministry funded a book version of Krasnov’s travel writings.

World War I and Revolution

In World War I, Krasnov commanded the 2nd Combined Cossack Division from 1915 to 1917, and then the 3rd Cavalry Corps from September to October 1917. During the Brusilov offensive in summer 1916, his division was the first to break through Austro-Hungarian lines at the Battle of Lutsk, where he was shot in the leg. He took over the 3rd Cavalry Corps after some of its units had joined the Kornilov affair against the Provisional Government. He restored discipline and morale but initially tried to avoid politics.

During the October Revolution, deposed Prime Minister Alexander Kerensky put Krasnov in charge of 700 Cossacks from the 1st Don Cossack Division who marched on Petrograd from Pskov in November 1917 to put down the Bolshevik uprising. On 15 November, Bolshevik forces surrounded Gatchina Palace and captured Krasnov. Leon Trotsky soon released him, and he fled to the Don.

Russian Civil War

In the Russian Civil War, Krasnov reached the Don region. In May 1918, in Novocherkassk, he was elected Ataman of the Don Cossack Host. Historian Richard Pipes called Krasnov an "opportunist and an adventurer" mainly interested in advancing his own goals. Although the White movement officially aimed to overthrow the Bolsheviks and then resume war with Germany, Krasnov negotiated with the Germans.