Burtsov, Ivan

Burtsov, Ivan Grigor’evich 

Born 1794; died July 23 (Aug. 4), 1829. Decembrist.

Burtsov participated in the Patriotic War of 1812 and the foreign campaigns of 1813-14. He was a member of the Union of Salvation and the Union of Welfare (1817-21) and one of the representatives of the moderate wing. From 1817 to 1819, as a military historian and theorist, he held a leading position in Voennyi zhurnal (Military Magazine) under the General Staff. After P. I. Pestel’ organized the Southern Society of Decembrists (1821), Burtsov drifted away from participation in the revolutionary movement. He served six months’ imprisonment for being involved in the Decembrists, after which he was returned to service as commander of an infantry regiment. In 1827 he was transferred to the Caucasus; he participated in the Russo-Iranian (1826-28) and Russo-Turkish (1828-29) wars. He was the author of strategic plans for both wars. In 1829, when he was a major general, he was mortally wounded in combat.

REFERENCES

Chernov, S. N. U istokov russkogo osvoboditel’nogo dvizheniia: Izbr. stat’i po istorii dekabrizma. Saratov, 1960.
Prokof ev, E. A. Bor’ba dekabristov za peredovoe russkoe voennoe iskusstvo. Moscow, 1953.

B. E. SYROECHKOVSKII