Russian General Alexei
Maximovitch Kaledin, a commander of Russian forces during World War I and a staunch
opponent of the Bolsheviks, commits suicide on this day in 1918.
Kaledin, born in 1861, was the
son of a Don Cossack officer who early on began a military career of his own.
The Cossacks, a group of soldier-peasants of mostly Russian and Ukrainian stock
who lived mainly on the steppes that began north of the Black Sea and Caucasus
Mountains and extended eastward to the Altai Mountains in Siberia, established
the virtually independent Don Cossack republic along the Don River in 1635. By
the mid-19th century it had been taken over by the czarist government, which
granted the Cossacks special privileges in return for military service. In
later years, the empire used Cossack troops as a border patrol and as a special
force to quell internal unrest, including the suppression of the Revolution of
1905.
In 1915, Kaledin served with
the celebrated general Alexei Brusilov on the front in Galicia (in western
Ukraine, then part of the Austro-Hungarian empire) and went on to earn great
acclaim as commander of the Eighth Army at the Battle of Lutsk in June 1916.
This battle launched the spectacularly successful Brusilov Offensive, in which
the Russians retook more than 15,000 square miles of territory on the Eastern
Front, costing the Central Powers 315,000 casualties and 450,000 POWs, and
nearly knocking Austria-Hungary out of the war.
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Shortly after the February
Revolution in 1917—during which the Cossacks refused to be used again by the
czar's government to suppress rebellion—Kaledin came out against military
reforms proposed by the new provisional government, leading to his dismissal from
the army in May 1917. He subsequently returned to the Don Cossack region, where
he became a leader of the local government, which shared his preference for a
return to autonomous rule in the region.
In the aftermath of the
Bolshevik ascent to power in November 1917, the Don Cossack region asserted its
virtual independence from the Soviet state, becoming a haven for political and
military figures who had been effectively exiled because of their opposition to
the Bolsheviks. Kaledin supported these refugees and oversaw the formation of
an anti-Bolshevik army. Almost immediately, the Bolsheviks sent their own
military force to take back the region, viewing the Cossacks as a threat to
their successful consolidation of power. Facing an army that severely outnumbered
their own, the newly formed Don Cossack government voted to submit to the
Soviets, despite Kaledin's protests. Upon the vote, Kaledin resigned his
position, walked into the next room, and ended his life with a single gunshot
to the chest.
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