Anton Denikin

Anton Denikin was a lieutenant general in the Imperial Russian Army, decorated for leading the "Iron Brigade" in World War I. After the October Revolution he co-founded the anti-Bolshevik Volunteer Army and took command of all White forces in South Russia by January 1919. His Moscow offensive that summer captured vast territory and represented the high point of the White movement, but overstretched supply lines, political rigidity - his refusal to promise land reform or autonomy to minorities - and waves of anti-Semitic pogroms his government failed to stop led to a Red Army counter-attack and disastrous retreat. He resigned command to Wrangel in April 1920 and went into exile, first to France, then the United States. He spent his remaining years writing multi-volume memoirs and, during World War II, urged Russian émigrés to support the Red Army against Nazi Germany. He died in 1947, remembered for battlefield skill and personal courage, but blamed for the inflexibility that lost the Civil War.