31 Facts About Pyotr Wrangel

Pyotr Wrangel served with distinction during World War I as a cavalry commander, reaching the rank of major general.

Severely outnumbered by the Red Army and facing certain defeat, Pyotr Wrangel organised a mass evacuation from the Crimea in 1920.

Pyotr Wrangel relocated to Brussels in 1927 and died a year later.

Pyotr Wrangel was born in Novalexandrovsk, Kovno Governorate in the Russian Empire as the son of Baron Nikolai Egorovich Pyotr Wrangel and Maria Dimitrievna Demetieva-Maikova.

The Baltic German noble Pyotr Wrangel family was part of the Uradel, the family was of German origin, appearing in the old "Livland" with the German Order.

Pyotr Nikolayevich Wrangel was only distantly related to the famed Arctic explorer Ferdinand von Wrangel and the Prussian Generalfeldmarschall Friedrich von Wrangel.

Pyotr Wrangel was commissioned a reserve officer in 1902 after graduating from the Nicholas Cavalry College.

Pyotr Wrangel soon resigned his commission and traveled to Irkutsk, where he was assigned to special missions by the Governor-General.

Pyotr Wrangel graduated from the Nicholas Imperial General Staff Academy in 1910 and the Cavalry Officers' School in 1911.

In October 1915, Pyotr Wrangel was transferred to the Southwestern Front and was appointed commander of the 1st Regiment of the Transbaikal Cossacks.

The unit was very active in Galicia against the Austrians, and Pyotr Wrangel distinguished himself especially during the Brusilov Offensive.

Pyotr Wrangel was promoted to the rank of major general in January 1917 and took command of the 2nd Brigade of the Ussuri Cavalry Division, which was merged with other cavalry units to become the Consolidated Cavalry Corps in July that year.

Pyotr Wrangel was further decorated with the George Cross for his defense of the Zbruch River in the summer of 1917.

In December 1918, Pyotr Wrangel became Anton Denikin's Chief of Staff in the Armed Forces of South Russia, and in January 1919, commander of the Caucasian Volunteer Army within those forces.

Pyotr Wrangel was willing to accept not only the loss of the Donets basin, but of the entire Don Voisko because he believed strongly that no goal could be more important than meeting Kolchak's advance somewhere along the Volga river.

Pyotr Wrangel gained a reputation as a skilled and just administrator, who, unlike some other White Army generals, did not tolerate lawlessness or looting by his troops.

Pyotr Wrangel assumed that post on 4 April 1920, at the head of the Russian Army, and he put forth a coalition government that attempted to institute sweeping reforms.

Pyotr Wrangel recognized and established relations with the new anti-Bolshevik independent states, the Ukrainian People's Republic and the Democratic Republic of Georgia, among others, although they were ultimately conquered by the Russian Red Army.

From June to October 1920, General Pyotr Wrangel kept a building in Melitopol as his headquarters.

Pyotr Wrangel gave every officer, soldier, and civilian the choice to evacuate and go with him into the unknown, or to remain in Russia.

Pyotr Wrangel evacuated the White forces from the Crimea in 1920; the remnants of the Russian Imperial Navy became known as Pyotr Wrangel's fleet.

Pyotr Wrangel arguably was considered the most prominent of all White emigres.

Pyotr Wrangel tried to preserve a Russian military organisation for another fight against Bolshevism.

Pyotr Wrangel published his memoirs in the magazine White Cause in Berlin in 1928.

Pyotr Wrangel died suddenly on 25 April 1928, possibly after contracting typhus.

Pyotr Wrangel's family believed that he had been poisoned by his butler's brother, who briefly lived in the household in Brussels and was allegedly a Soviet agent.

Pyotr Wrangel was married to Russian noblewoman Olga Mikhailovna Ivanienko.

For example, Major General Mikhail Mikhailovich Zinkevich said in mid-August 1941, "If General Pyotr Wrangel were alive today, he would go unhesitatingly with the Germans".

In 2015, the government of the Russian Federation began to repatriate the remains of White Emigres that were buried abroad, but the descendants of Pyotr Wrangel refused to have his remains returned to Russia as the current Russian government had not "condemned the evil [of Bolshevism]," referring to Vladimir Putin's unwillingness to denounce the Soviet crimes and implement a proper decommunization.

Pyotr Wrangel was portrayed by Russian actor Aleksandr Galibin in the first season of the Serbian television series Balkan Shadows, which features Wrangel's Cossack emigres as major characters.

In September 2021, following the withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan, in an opinion piece in The Wall Street Journal, Wrangel's grandson Peter A Basilevsky compared the "bureaucratic incompetence" of the US government in Afghanistan to the successful November 1920 evacuation of 150,000 anti-Bolshevik soldiers and civilians under Wrangel which became possible with far inferior resources of the White Army and in the face of the advancing Red Army.