Pepeliaev, Anatolii Nikolaevich

Pepeliaev, Anatolii Nikolaevich 

Born Aug. 3 (15), 1891, in Tomsk; died Jan. 14, 1938. Counterrevolutionary figure in Siberia, lieutenant general (1919). Son of an officer.

Pepeliaev graduated from the Pavel Military School in 1910. He commanded a battalion with the rank of lieutenant colonel in World War I (1914–18). In May 1918 he headed a counterrevolutionary revolt in Tomsk, which was supported by the White Czechs. He took command of a corps in August 1918 and the First Siberian Army in 1919. After the defeat of the Kolchak regime, Pepeliaev continued the struggle against Soviet power in the Far East and was close to the Socialist Revolutionaries. He emigrated to Harbin in 1921.

In early 1923, Pepeliaev invaded Yakutia at the head of what was called the Siberian Volunteer Detachment (700 men), with the aim of capturing Yakutsk and creating in Siberia a base for overthrowing Soviet power. The advance of the White Guards was stopped by I. Ia. Strod’s detachment near Amga. From March 1 to 3, the Red Army units that arrived in the area routed Pepeliaev’s detachment, whose remnants retreated to Okhotsk. On July 17, 1923, Pepeliaev surrendered with the remnants of his detachment in the port of Aian to S. S. Vostretsov, commander of a Soviet expeditionary corps. A court sentenced Pepeliaev to be shot, but the All-Russian Central Executive Committee commuted the sentence to ten years of imprisonment.