Showing posts with label White Russian Army. Show all posts
Showing posts with label White Russian Army. Show all posts

Wednesday, November 9, 2022

November 9, 1922. Hedging bets

The French Chamber of Deputies approved Raymond Poincare's policy of France abstaining on paying its war debts unit it had received reparations due from Germany.


Former White Russian General Viktor Pokrovsky, age 33, died while resisting arreste by Belgian authorities. They were conducting a murder investigation.

Tuesday, October 25, 2022

Wednesday, October 25, 1922. Winners and Losers.


A "flying circus" was staged at Boling Field which even included a hot lunch being dropped in from the air.


The Dáil Éireann approved the Irish Free State Constitution Act of 1922.  It would become effective on December 6, 1922, when King George V proclaimed it, which created the Irish Free State as an independent and coequal member of the British Commonwealth.

On the same day, the Irish Republican Army declared the formation of a rival republican government with Eamon de Valera as "President of Ireland", a cabinet of ministers and a twelve member Council of State. By this point, however, the IRA did not holding any Irish territory of consequence.

Mussolini delivered an ultimatum to the Italian government, demanding that it surrender power to the Fascists.

Prince Andrew of Greece, a Greek army officer, was arrested on Corfu and charged with contributing the disastrous Greek defeat in the Greco-Turkish War.  The Prince, the father of the late Prince Consort Philip (Philippos) of the United Kingdom, would be allowed to leave the country.  Other Greek officers were executed or sentenced to long prison sentences.

The Red Army took Vladivostok.  As it did so, Imperial Russian General Mikhail Diterikhs was evacuated with such troops as could be evacuated by the Japanese.


Diterkhs was descended from German Lutherans from the Sudentenland and was a deeply religious Orthodox Christian.  He moved to China, as many Russian Whites from the far eastern part of Siberia did, where he died at age 63 in 1937.

Monday, August 8, 2022

Tuesday, August 8, 1922. An eventful Tuesday.


Here's more on the story involved in the photograph appearing above.

1922 - Into the Grand Canyon and Out Again by Airplane

Louis Armstrong made his first appearance with a major act, playing with King Oliver and his Creole Jazz Band in Chicago.

In Italy, Mussolini ordered Fascist Blackshirts to demobilize after recent strife.

Mussolini with the Blackshirts in October, 1922.


Irish Republicans raided the Western Union station at Valentia Island and severed the four remaining cables that linked the US and Ireland, although how that helped their cause or was intended to escapes me.

The HMS Raleigh ran aground on the Labrador coast and was lost, but without loss of life.


The vessel was almost new at the time.


A monarchist group in Vladivostok declared Grand Duke Nicholas Nikolaevich of Russia to be the heir to murdered Czar Nicholas.  The rebel organization that convened the process to do so was headed by Gen. Mikhail Diterikhs. The Grand Duke was already living in exile and the fortunes of the remaining Whites were desperately poor.

Shogakukan, a Japanese magazine and comic publisher that is still in business, was founded.

Sunday, February 13, 2022

Monday, February 13, 1922. The last stand of the Russian Whites, Viktorin Molchanov, Vasily Blyukher, Gloria Swanson and Harrison Ford.

The Battle of Volochayevka in the Russian far east came to an end with the withdrawal of Russian White Forces.  While it was a Red victory, the withdrawal was a White tactical success, but more or less a Pyrrhic one, save for the men that it saved from being taken by the Reds.  Following this, the Whites would come apart and remaining White forces and the Japanese occupation force in the area would be withdrawn.  It was, effectively, the last battle of the Russian Civil War.

The drama was played out in the odd context of the final days of the Whites in Russia.  In November 1921 the Whites, organized as the Far Eastern White Army, launched an offensive against the Soviet peudo state, the Far Eastern Republic. They were supported in this endeavor by the Japanese.    They had experienced initial success, but suffered setbacks in December and thereafter lost ground.  On October 25, 1922, their remnants and that of the Japanese forces were withdrawn.

The victorious Vasily Blyukher, servant of Red butchery, who would go on to be beaten to death by Red butchers.

The White commander, Viktorin Molchanov, relocated first to China, and then to the United States, dying in San Francisco at age 88 in 1975.  The Red commander, who was technically in the army of the Far Eastern Republic, Vasily Blyukher went on to become an advisor to the Chinese in from 1924 to 1927.  He was beaten to death in Stalin's purges in 1938, the same reward that a vast number of effective Red Army commanders received from their leader in the same time period.

To make this a bit odder, this region today is in the Jewish Autonomous Oblast, a remnant of the Soviet Union.  Created to be an "independent" region for Russia's Jewish population by the USSR, at its peak 25% of its population was Jewish.  Today, only .2% of the population is.


The movie Smilin' Through was released.  It featured Norma Talmadge and Harrison Ford in a melodrama.

No, not that Harrison Ford, this Harrison Ford:


Ford was a silent movie actor, making his last picture, and his only "talkie" in 1932.  He toured with the USO during World War Two.  He was hit as a pedestrian by a car in 1951, and would spend the rest of his life an invalid, dying in 1957 at age 73.

Friday, July 9, 2021

Saturday, July 9, 1921. Revolution in Mongolia.

Mongolian communists declared themselves to be in control of Mongolia.

Revolutionaries in Mongolia, 1921.

Events in Mongolia make for a confused story, but basically Mongolia had been a Chinese province for many years, but one that had little direct interference from China. In the late Quing Dynasty period, prior to the 1911 Chinese revolution, this began to change due to Chinese fears of Russian encroachment.  This was highly unpopular in Mongolia, which was faced with an official Chinese policy of settlement and cultural replacement, and rebellion broke out. That lead to a Mongolian theocracy coming into power that negotiated a state of semi independence from China.

When the Russian Revolution and Civil War broke out, Mongolia reluctantly requested Chinese troops, who were sent, but who when asked to leave, did not.  This sparked an independence movement that sought Soviet help  In the meantime Russian White forces crossed into Mongolia.

Initially the Chinese were successful in expelling the Russian Whites, which caused the badly over stretched Soviets to forego intervening in Mongolia.  The Whites invaded a second time in February, however, and then the Soviets reversed course.

The presence of the Russian Whites combined with a local insurrection gave the Soviets the opening they needed, and the Red Army invaded Mongolia.  Seeing the inevitable the Chinese withdrew, but they did not recognize Mongolian sovereignty.   The country would remain subject to Chinese claims for many years thereafter although its association with the Soviet Union effectively made it a Soviet satellite.  The country would become fully independent, and non communist, in a third revolution following the collapse of the Soviet Union.

The People's Republic of China recognized Mongolia as a state in 1946. The Nationalist had done so the prior year, but withdrew their recognition shortly thereafter.  Nationalist recognition was preconditioned on the Soviets withdrawing support for the Chinese Communists.  It would take until the 21st Century for the government in Taiwan to recognize Mongolia as an independent state.

Jack Johnson, former world heavyweight boxing champion, was released from prison.  He was serving time for violation of the Mann Act.  He would receive a posthumous pardon from Donald Trump.

Sunday, February 7, 2021

February 7, 1921. Refugees in Turkey, National Boy Scout Week, Army shrinks, Navy grows.

 Russian refugees on beach at Proti Island near Constantinople

It was the beginning of National Boy Scout Week.  In Sheridan Wyoming the Boy Scouts decorated the downtown windows on this Monday in honor of the week.

An issue of Boys' Life, the Scouting journal, from 1921, depicting a  Boy Scout and a Sea Scout.

Congress, earlier in 1920, had voted to reduce the size of the U.S. Army to 175,000 men.  President Wilson vetoed the measure.  Congress overrode the veto, and it became effective on this day in 1921 so the Army would accordingly shrink.

The Navy, however, gained a new ship, the USS Selfridge, a Clemson class destroyer that would serve a mere nine years.

USS Selfridge.

Sunday, January 17, 2021

What were their lives like? Admiral McCully's adopted Russian orphans, Eugenia Z. Selifanova and Olga Krundvcher.

Recently here I posted this:

January 11, 1921. Fractured and Rescued Russian Lives, 1921 Wyoming Legislature, Work.







Sometimes I'm haunted by the stories I post here, and they're usually things like this.  Not the big battles and the mass carnage, but rather the small stories of individuals caught up in the big events.

White Russian troops disembarking in Constantinople as refugees.

And its hard not to feel that way regarding the story of Newton McCully and his seven adopted children who had been taken out of Sevastopol as the Reds closed in on it, and then to Constantinople, and then on to the United States. 

Let's start with Admiral McCully, whom in some ways is both the central, and an ancillary, figure in our story.

Newton McCully was a South Carolinian born in 1867 whose father had served in the Civil War for, not surprisingly, the Confederacy.  McCully sought and obtained an appointment to Annapolis and, as noted above, he was embedded in the Imperial Russian Army during the Russo Japanese War.  In 1914 he returned to Russia as a naval attaché and he was elevated to commend of the U.S. Navy in northern Russia in 1918.  Following this he was sent to appreciate the military situation of the Whites in 1919.

He was a bachelor all of this time, which was not surprising for a naval officer given the life they lead.  He'd been in the Navy since 1887.

Something about Russia and Russians, or perhaps just a deep sympathy with a distressed people, heavily struck him in 1919.  During that time he had occasion to be with distressed Russians and to go into Russian orphanages and the like.  At some point he determined to attempt to bring back nine children into the United States with him.  He ended up bringing seven, as two couldn't go for various reasons (one was ill, and one was not actually an orphan, although his father consented to him going with McCully).

McCully adopted the seven children in Russia and sought diplomatic permission to bring them into the United States and to reside at his boyhood home in Anderson, South Carolina, for a time until his home in Washington D. C. could be refurbished to be suitable for children.  He had to post $5,000 a piece for each immigrant, a gigantic sum in 1921.  His mother was living and the initial plan was for the seven to live with her, there, during that time period.  Their stories, and some of their names, are noted in this period news article here:


There was, we'd note, an element of confusion on the number of children in early reports and indeed in some later ones, created in part by Euginia Selfinova's young age.  Some reports seemed to assume that she was one of the orphans, which in a way she was, and to include her in the count.  That wasn't her states however.  There were in fact seven, and she was the eighth young Russian, if looked at that way, to come into the United States with McCully.

Their names (subject to some confusion and difficulties in translation) and ages in 1921 were as follows:  Nikolai Smnov (12), Ludmila Manetzkaya (11), Anastasia Sherbotoc (Sherback)  (Sherbackova) (10), Nina Furinan (8), Feodore Pozdo (4), Ninotahkl Limendo (3) and Antonina Klimenko (2)..  Added to that was Euginia Selifanova, who was 19.  She apparently was already attached to some of the children prior to Admiral McCully asking her to come along and, according to his early interviews, asked her to come along as governess, something that tends to show up in quote marks as if there was confusion or doubt over her status.

McCully's concerns left him with quite a brood on his hands, to say the least, which no doubt explains in part why he chose to ask Selfanova to come along.  Selfanova would have been an adult at this time both in fact, experience and culture and McCully was a bachelor with a busy Naval career.

McCully, children, and Selifanova at a baseball game on November 22, 1922.  The woman in the center is "Miss Gleaves"

We'll pick up here, because of her role in the story, with Selifanova, who turns out to be one of the most difficult to trace.  We'll do that in part, as its necessary to explore Selfianova in order to discuss the story overall and later developments.

Selifanova obviously lived with the family for several years, but then another mystery develops.  Almost nothing is known about her, not surprisingly, before she accompained McCully and the children to the United States.  Her last name simply means the daughter of Selifan, which isn't very helpful and Selifanova is a fairly common Slavid last name.  It might not be Russian, for that matter, but some other Slavic language.* In the few photographs that exist of her, she uniformly has a stern appearance.

She seems to have left the McCully household prior to 1929 when an new woman enters the picture as the wife of Admiral McCully.

We'll take up McCully's wife in a moment, but the marriage in 1927 seems to have come to everyone as a surprise, in no small part as it took place in Tallinn, Estonia.  The Admiral didn't even inform his mother of the marriage until after it occurred.  Early press reports indicated that the marriage was undertaken as McCully had determined he needed a mother for the children, but much of that really doesn't wash in context.  By that time Nikolai, Ludmila, Anastasia, and Nina Furinan were all teenagers and approaching adulthood.  That still left the children at home, of course, but their minding would not have have been the burden that it early would have been, except perhaps if Selifanova had left the household.  The evidence seems to be that she had.

Indeed, her full name is associated with Andrew Trago at about this time.  "Trago" is generally a Latinate name, but Andrew was listed as Russian born on the one census form we've found noting him.  That might not be too surprising, however, as immigration agents weren't good at recording actual last names all that accurately at the time and European peasants proved to be quite willing to accept new last names.  His actual original last name may have been anything sounding close to that.  Anyhow, Adrew Trago was also Russian born but about twenty years Selfinova's senior, leading to some doubt if this is the right person.  Nonetheless, a Euginia Selifanova was was of the same age as the governess married Trago and the couple lived out their lives in Dearborn Michigan, having a son and a daughter.

Having said that, records for the couple are incredibly spotty. The showed up in a census just once, in 1940, and that document reported their son Boris as being 22 at the time.  If that's the case, he would have been born when Euginia was 16, which is clearly incorrect for these photographs.  Having said that, almost everything about the Trago family was vague.  This might simply be explained by slightly moving the dates of his birth and making him slightly younger.  Indeed, in 1940 the family may have had a reason for listing him as older than he was for one reason or another.  At any rate, at that point, Euginia disappears from history.

Euginia wasn't the only one who disappeared at that. The new bride shortly did also, but not quite as definitively.

The bride was Olga Krundycher.  In 1927 Admiral McCully married her in Tallinn, Estonia.   She was then 29 years old and, moreover, ethnically Estonian.  Indeed, she had a family last name of Sermann, and this was her second marriage, as she was a widow. The marriage seems to have come to everyone as a surprise.  The Admiral didn't even inform his mother of the marriage until after it occurred.  Early press reports indicated that the marriage was undertaken as McCully had determined he needed a mother for the children, but much of that really doesn't wash in context.  By that time Nikolai, Ludmila, Anastasia, and Nina Furinan were all teenagers and approaching adulthood.  That still left the children at home, of course, but their minding would not have have been the burden that it early would have been, except perhaps if Selifanova had left the household.

Olga, while an Estonian, appears to have been married to a Russian and perhaps a Russian army officer.  Her father's occupation is what records exist is listed as "soldier" and it may be the case that he was an Imperial Russian Army officer. The clues exist in that at the time of her wedding it was noted in Estonian papers, which covered it, that she "still" spoke some of her "native language".  If she'd grown up in Estonia we'd expect her to speak it perfectly. So its clear that she had at least some prolonged absence.

And while its certainly possible that McCully may have been willing to marry a Russian peasant, we can doubt that.  In the 1920s class distinctions were higher than they are now and McCully was of Southern aristocratic birth.  Indeed, while it might have been quasi scandalous if he'd done so, we'd note that Selifanova wasn't enormously younger than Krundycher at the time that she seems to have left the family.  Of course, we don't know anything else about Selifanova or her character, or even her opinion of McCully and vice versa.  She's truly a figure in the background, not smiling in photographs.  Krundycher is somewhat different.

Anyhow Olga was then 29 years old, ethnically Estonian and a widow. The marriage made the newspapers in Tallinn.

The Admiral may have thought Krundycher a good mother for his family, as American press reports at the time had it, and perhaps she was.  But here too we are presented with a mystery.  Other than the marriage being announced, she disappears from the record to a degree.  She's not buried with Admiral Newton, and indeed, she died in Estonia in 1968, not in the US.  

In fact, we can find her first back in Estonia by 1931, where he arrival was announced in the society page.  The marriage was presumably going well at the time and she seemed to be hailed as a bit of a celebrity.  Nonetheless, she died in Estonia nearly forty years later.  What happened?

Well, that's pretty hard to tell.  What we do know is that as late as 1943 the McCully's, Newton and Olga, were living in Florida, Admiral McCully now well retired. She is listed as his wife on materials pertaining to his death.  They seem to have still been married at the time of his death, and frankly returning to Estonia in the 40s would have been nuts.

Still, the records support she want back to Estonia at some point.  Perhaps after her husband's death, and all of her adopted children having assumed their own adult lives, she felt the call of her native country again.  Or perhaps she was just visiting it at the time of her death.

So, as to the two adult women who were part of this story, we know something at this point.  Selifanova appears to have married a few years later, and to have then lived out her life in Dearborn Michigan, dying at a fairly young age overall. 

Krundychter entered the picture as a somewhat celebrated, but much younger, bride of the Admiral but ended up back in Estonia where she lived until the end of her life many  years later.  She was born in Imperial Russia, seems to have lived in Russia for some time, suffered some sort of tragedy with her first husband, and then returned to Estonia before marrying the Admiral.  At some point, she went back to Estonia, by then an middle aged, or even elderly in context, woman and live there, apparently, until her death in the 1960s.

And what of the children?  Well, we can tell something about their lives from a few period articles and some coming quite later, which gives us a few clues about what their lives were perhaps like.  We'll sum up what we know about each first.  Let's list them out by age as of their time of their adoption and entry into the United States.

1. Nikolai Snourov (12).

Snourov was a boy soldier in the White Army when he came into the eye of Admiral McCully, and therefore hew as rescued from a really grim fate. Had he remained in Russia, and survived the war, he was young enough he could have expected service with the Reds and probably in the Second World War in the Red Army.  He may very well not have lived that long, however, as he could have been killed in combat, or by the Reds at any point leading up to World War Two, one way or another.

He not surprisingly ended up in World War Two as it was, but in the United States Navy.

Snourov was from Kharkov, Ukraine and had been born on April 1, 1909.  In 1933 he married Clair Wilhelmina Von Moser in Baltimore.  The couple had at least one son.  Nikolai did not outlive his adopted father by long, and died in 1954 at age 45.

2. Ludmila Manetzkaya (11)

Ludmila was born in Sevastapol in Crimea.  She married Raymond Francis Colee in 1934 in Florida, where she lived the rest of her life.  She died in 1985 at the age of 75.  She and her husband also had at least one child, whom was named Newton, no doubt after her adoptive father.  Newton passed away in Florida in 2004.

A charming photograph of Ludmila wearing an elaborate kokoshnik, a traditional headdress for Russian, but not Ukranian, women.  Taken in 1924, she would have been fourteen or fifteen at the time it was taken.

Ludmila McCully, 1924.


3 Anastasia Sherback  (Sherbackova) (10), 

Anastasia's real last name was Sherbackova, making her the daughter of Sherback.  On April 23, 1929, her name hit the New York Times society columns when she married William Mortiz of New York.  She was eighteen years old at the time.

4, Nina Furinan (8)

This Nina is the child who is the hardest to find anything out about.  Her age upon entry would indicate that she'd been born in 1912 or 1913.  None of the later information available supports any of the children, however, being born that year.

There are listings for an Antonina Vasilivna Forman for this family, but she was born, according to the records in 1909, which would have made her eleven when she came into the country.  This doesn't match, however, an 8 year old age at the time of entry either, but then at least one other age is also off. 

We know that in this group of children one was latter marred under the last name "Lash" and lived in Detroit.  A 1943 article on another one of the children noted that she was an artist. This is almost certainly here.

5 Feodor Pazdo Mikkaelovich(4)

Feador was born in Sevastopol in 1916.  He married Mary Ann Caruso in November, 1942, in Miami, by which time he was going by the name of Feodor McCully.  

Feodore also served in the United States Navy during World War Two.

Like a lot of the McCully children, he spent the rest of his life in Florida and South Carolina.  He did in 1970 in Florida at the age of 53.  

6 Ninotahkl Limendo (3)

Obituaries support that a Nina Mikhailovna Razahavalina McCully was part of the group and that she was born on June 30, 1915, in Yalta.  She was the daughter of Michael S. Rashavalin and Elena V. Melele.  She was clearly one of the McCully Russian orphans, so this is likely her.  She married John B. McDonald on August 22, 1941 in Santa Monica, California.  She and her husband lived in South Carolina, Florida and California, before she died on June 25, 1999 at the age of 83.

7. Antonina Klimenko (2)

Klimenko was also born in Sevastopol and her original last name is Ukrainian, not Russian.  She's the McCully child about which we know the most, perhaps because she was the youngest and likely, in some ways, the most American. . . maybe.

Antonina served in the U.S. Navy during World War Two, the family being still sufficiently noteworthy that her joining the Navy made the newspaper.  In 1945, following the war, she married George Von Bretzel and they also made their home in Florida.  George, interestingly, in spite of his last name, was also a Russian refugee, having been born in Japan to Russian parents before immigrating to the United States and serving in World War Two.  Indeed, because of his last name he likely came from a quasi aristocratic family that had German roots as well as Russian, something not uncommon for Russian nobility.

He worked for the CIA.  She lived until 1979, dying at the age of 61 in Florida.  The couple had two children.  At the time of her death in 1979 Ludmila was living in St. Augustine Florida, her sister Nina Lash in Detroit, and her sister Nina McDonald in Palos Verdes Estates, California.

Okay, so that's what became of them, but what of their lives?

Based on what we can find, they had adventurous childhoods.  Their adoptive father seems to have taken them all over the world when he could, and they accordingly lived in such places as Brazil.  Upon his retirement, he apparently bought a yacht and they lived for a time on it, before it was sunk when struck by a ship. They all survived the sinking.  In later years, they remained close to their father.

And while we can't tell for sure, there seem to have been a strong element of Russianness that was incorporated into the rest of their lives.  To the extent that we can tell, they all became American citizens only in adulthood, there father preserving the option for them, as he'd promised, for them to return to Russia, which none of them did.  They had a Russian governess early on, and then a Russian speaking Estonian step mother.  The youngest of them married another Russian refugee.  Even the youngest of them surely spoke Russian and had some knowledge of the culture of their homeland.

They also lived remarkably American lives. They spread out across the country while young, although they seemed to gravitate back towards Florida in their later years.  The boys all lived remarkably short lives for Americans, but lives that are interestingly about in context of life spans for Russians, which is usually attributed to environmental conditions in Russian culture in Russia.  As there were only two boys, this could be merely coincidental with them.

Were they raised Russian Orthodox?  Did their governess and adoptive mother instill in them a sense of a Russian identity?  Did the older ones retain it due to having been born in Russia?  Or were they just glad to have been rescued from an undoubtedly hard fate.

Of that last item, it seems we can be sure.  They called him "Dyadya" (Дядя), the Russian word for "uncle", right from the onset, but it's pretty clear he became more than that.  And its an extraordinary tale of generosity.  He entered into the role well into his middle age when some of them were very young, and with nobody really at home to help him.

*Technically "ova" merely identifies the bearer of the name as a woman.  It actually shares the same root as ovum, i.e., "egg".

Thursday, January 14, 2021

January 14, 1921. Warm places, happy faces, sad disembarkations, happy teas

Spring Bayou, Florida.  January 14, 1921.

I don't know anything about Spring Bayou, but it looked nice on this day in 1921.

Family, friends, and others greeting US Navy aviators Lt. Louis A. Kloor , Jr., Lt. Walter T. Hinton, and Stephen A. Farrell at Pennsylvania Station, New York on January 14, 1921. Alexandra Flowerton, with muff in center, Anna Louise Kronholm and Eugene George Farrell also picture.

The friends and family of Naval aviators again gathered to greet their return.


Who Alexandra Flowerton was in this scenario is not explained, but the photographer clearly favored here in the scene.

Defeated White troops disembarked in Turkey.

Russian refugees going ashore at Constantinople, as it was then called, wearing rags, carrying duffle bags.

They were on to new lives in new communities, first in Turkey, and then later to other European locations for the most part.  Most would never see Russia again, and those who did, did so in the context of an other great war in which their fate was generally unhappy.

Recently elected Congressman Alice M. Robertson and suffragist photographer Anita Pollitzer gatered for tea and appeared rather happy.
 
Alice M. Robertson and Anita Pollitzer.  Pollitzer was a photographer and suffragist. Robertson was an incoming Congressman from Oklahoma.

And somebody saw fit to photograph a tire testing machine at the Bureau of Standards.

Bureau of Standards tire testing machine.

Saturday, November 14, 2020

November 14, 1920. Russian and Irish Tragedies

Remnants of the Imperial Russian Black Sea Fleet steam away from Sebastopol forever carrying the remnants of Pyotr Wrangels White Russian Army and refugees.  The fleet managed to continue to exist as an entity until 1921, going first to Turkey and then to France.  In 1924 the ships were turned over to Soviet control but found to be unserviceable, and were sold as scrap.

On  this day, the fight of the Russian Whites in the eastern half of what had been the Russian Empire came to an end and the Russian White forces under Pyotr Wrangel abandoned Sebastopol and fled on the remaining loyal elements of the former Imperial Russian Black Sea Fleet, together with refugees.  Allied ships also departed the port taking with them their own nationals.  While fighting would go on in the east, it was the effective end of the Russian Civil War in the west, and the effective end of the war in general in terms of who would ultimately prevail.

Poster of Wrangel in Cossack regalia.

Wrangel would attempt to lead Russian refugees after his exile and formed, for a time, an organization that attempted to centralize that effort and to plan for a future war against the Communists in Russia, a quixotic effort under the circumstances.  In 1927 he moved to Belgium and became a mining engineer.  He was poisoned in 1928 by the brother of his butler, who is believed to have been a Soviet agent.  His descendants have refused to have him reinterred in Russia as the current Russian government has not denounced the evils of Communism.

Wrangel, who was part of the Russian military community descended from German origin, a surprisingly common demographic in Imperial Russian military leadership, had such close German roots that his grandfather had in fact been Lutheran.  Pyotr Wrangel was Orthodox however and had in fact been trained as an engineer prior to joining the Imperial Russian Army.  Like many senior military figures, he had actually dropped out of the service at the time of the Russian Revolution and only joined the Whites after having been arrested by, and escaping from, the Communists.  Such experiences were surprisingly common and to a degree demonstrate how Red paranoia actually fueled the war against them.  He was a very able commander and highly successful in the Russian Civil War before his reversal of fortunes.  A failure to find an overall command for the White effort partially explains this failure.


Wrangel, of wealthy and aristocratic background, obviously managed to find some success after his exile.  Most Russian refugees, however, were of much more modest means.  In the west they spread out among a collection of countries, with France being a common one, and rebuilt new lives in new countries while also retaining their Russian identity.  Their fortunes varied considerably from their compatriots who fled into China a few years later where economic conditions were dire.

Fr. Michael Griffin.

On this same day, Father Michael Griffin, a Catholic Priest in Ireland who sympathized with Republicans, and who had been missing since November 14, was found in an unmarked grave.  He is believed to have been murdered by the Black & Tans.  He is remembered in the name of a road in Galway, where he was from, and in the name of an Irish football club which is called The Father Griffins.

Eileen Quinn

This event shows the way the Anglo Irish War was starting to go, with guerilla extrajudicial killings becoming common.  Just a few days prior the pregnant Eileen Quinn, age 24, was shot by a police auxiliary, a police unit of the Royal Irish Constabulary often confused with the Black & Tans, when she was out in front of her tenant farmhouse nursing a baby.  She was wounded in the stomach and died later that day.  She and her husband Malachi were tenants of Lady Gregory Augusta, an Anglo Irish playwright of nationalist sympathies.  The death of Mrs. Quinn left her husband a widower and her three children without a mother.  Her husband had been away at the time of the killing attempting to negotiate a purchase of land.  A subsequent military investigation came to the conclusion that the killing was accidental and from a random shot designed to attempt to clear the area.

Both killings resulted in a way from the IRA ambush and murder of Sheriff Frank Shawe-Taylor the previous March, which had brought the Black & Tans and Auxiliaries in.

Black & Tan in Dublin, 1921.  He is armed with a Lewis Gun and an incredibly low slung .455 Webley revolver.

The British government had, as noted here the other day, just extended home rule to Ireland, but events like this showed that the measure had come too late.  Additionally, their heavy handedness resulted in contempt in both Ireland and the United Kingdom over them and support in Ireland for the IRA.

Friday, February 14, 2020

February 14, 1920. A Sober Valentine's Day.

Zintkala Nuni

Zintkala Nuni, who was found as an orphaned infant on the bloody grounds of Wounded Knee died of the flu contracted from her husband on this day in 1920.

Her story is uniformly tragic.

She was found by an Army burial detail still tied to the back of her dead mother.  She was raised at first by members of her tribe, who named her "Lost Bird", but was soon taken into the home of Gen. Leonard Wright Colby who referred to her, at first, as a "curio" of the massacre.  Colby and his wife Clara Bewick Cody adopted her in 1891, with Clara, a suffragette and publisher of Women's Tribune principally raising her.

When she was five, her adoptive father abandoned Clara and Zintkala and married Zintkala's nanny, thereafter moving to Beatrice, Nebraska.  Her childhood was rough as an Indian child raised among the white privileged.  Like many Indian she was educated in Indian boarding schools for part of the time, in part because Clara was so busy.  At age 17 the rebellious Zintkala was sent to live with Gen. Colby and became pregnant soon thereafter.  The father of her child is unknown but some historians suspect Colby of sexual abuse of her.  After she became pregnant Colby committed her to a reformatory for unwed mothers, where the child was born stillborn.

She then returned to Clara's home and married, leaving her husband after a few weeks of marriage and after having contracted syphilis from her husband.  The Spanish Flu ultimately brought about her death.

On the same day Konstantin Konstantinovich Mamontov, former Imperial Russian General and then serving as a White Russian General, a Don Cossack, died of typhus at age 50.

Konstantin Mamontov

And in Chicago, the League of Women's Voters was founded.

Saturday, December 14, 2019

Poster Saturday: Why Aren't You In The Army?


A Russian White poster from the Russian Civil War, raging a century ago and to have enormous global impacts in its results.

Wednesday, March 27, 2019

Mid Week At Work: Aiding the wounded.


There's a little thing going on in this photograph, but a lot, including a lot of unknowns, behind it.

This photo shows an American soldier giving minor first aid of some sort (but apparently significant enough that it's actually being done, to a White Russian Cossack, probably in the far north of Russia.

The Cossack is traditional attire.  It was probably taken in the Spring of 1919.  He's well equipped.

In 1919 the White position in the far North was getting imperiled, but the Whites were advancing rapidly in the East.  The Reds were prevailing in the West and were now threatening Poland and even Germany.  Soon that would reverse, however, and the Poles would advance, before retreating once again.

What happened to the people in this photograph?  I really wonder, and indeed, I often wonder about things like that.  The American probably came home and went about his life.  Almost certainly. What about the Cossack?  Did he survive the war?  If he did, did he survive the peace?