Pyotr Wrangel

Biography

Pyotr Nikolaevich Wrangel was born on August 27, 1878, in Novo-Aleksandrovsk, Lithuania, into a Baltic German noble family with a long military tradition. He was the last commander of the White forces in European Russia — the man who took over a demoralized, retreating army in April 1920, rebuilt it into a fighting force, and conducted the most disciplined and organized military evacuation in Russian history when the cause was finally lost. Wrangel was educated at the Institute of Mines in St. Petersburg and worked briefly as a mining engineer before choosing a military career. He served with distinction in the Russo-Japanese War and the First World War, earning the St. George's Cross and rising to command a cavalry division. Under Denikin in the Civil War he was one of the most effective White commanders, winning notable victories in the Caucasus and on the Don. His blunt criticisms of Denikin's strategic decisions — he argued correctly that Denikin was overextending his forces — led to a bitter personal conflict and his dismissal in January 1920. Wrangel was recalled when Denikin's catastrophic retreat made his removal inevitable. Arriving in Crimea in April 1920 to take command of the remaining White forces, he found a demoralized army that had been retreating for months. With remarkable energy and intelligence, he reorganized the forces, issued land reform decrees designed to win peasant support (which Denikin had always refused to do), and launched offensive operations that briefly gave the Whites their last successes. He even implemented a degree of local self-government in Crimea that was the most democratic governance any part of Russia saw during the civil war. But the numbers were impossible. When the armistice with Poland freed Red Army forces for the southern front, Frunze's armies smashed through the Perekop defenses. Wrangel organized the evacuation with extraordinary efficiency: 145,693 people were loaded onto 126 ships in four days from multiple ports simultaneously. Not a single person who wanted to leave was left behind for lack of transport. He was the last to leave, boarding his vessel only after confirming that all ships had departed. He spent the rest of his life in exile in Brussels, writing his memoirs and commanding the Russian All-Military Union (ROVS) — the organization of White émigré veterans. He died of tuberculosis on April 25, 1928, in Brussels, at the age of forty-nine.

Key Battles