Pyotr Nikolayevich Krasnov (; – 17 January 1947), also known as Peter Krasnov, was a Russian military leader and writer, who later spearheaded the Cossack collaboration with Nazi Germany.
Krasnov served as a lieutenant general in the Imperial Russian Army during World War I and later led anti-Bolshevik forces during the Russian Civil War, where he served as the ataman of the Don Republic until the Red Army conquered the region following their victory at Tsaritsyn.
After the civil war, he lived in exile. During World War II, Krasnov collaborated with the Germans and served as head of the Main Administration of Cossack Forces within the Reich Ministry for the Occupied Eastern Territories. After surrendering to the British forces in 1945, he was forcibly repatriated to the Soviet Union and subsequently tried in Moscow for high treason and executed in 1947.
Early life and service Pyotr Krasnov was born on 22 September 1869 (old style: 10 September) in Saint Petersburg, son of lieutenant-general Nikolay Krasnov and grandson to general Ivan Krasnov. In 1888 Krasnov graduated from Pavlovsk Military School and joined the Ataman regiment of the Life Guards of the Imperial Russian Army. Semyon Krasnov was his first cousin once removed.
In April–May 1902, a series of articles were published in Russkii Invalid, the newspaper of the Imperial Russian Army, containing Krasnov's impressions of his trip to Mongolia, China and Japan as the East Asia correspondent of Russkii Invalid. In his article "Fourteen Days in Japan", Krasnov painted the Imperial Japanese Army in a negative light. One staff officer of the Main Staff called Krasnov's article "poorly founded, extraordinarily hasty and far from the truth". Krasnov reported that based on what he had seen in Japan that "the Japanese looks coldly on life and death and does not fear death". He reported that the Japanese soldiers were up to European standards of discipline, but were highly rigid in their conduct of operations and suffered from health problems. Krasnov mockingly noted that during the march on Beijing during the Boxer Rebellion of 1900, exhausted Japanese soldiers had to be carried in the wagons of the Russian Army. Krasnov noted during the assault on the forts at Tianjin that one Japanese company had lost 90% of its men during a frontal assault on a Chinese fort while at the same time a Russian company had taken a Chinese fort by outflanking it, losing only six men killed.
Krasnov felt that the Japanese were brave, but poorly led, declaring "the military deed does not suit the Japanese" as it "was thought up for them by a chauvinist government of complete militarist conviction". About the Japanese infantry, Krasnov wrote the "Japanese soldier is a weak and an indifferent marksman, although amenable to training and able to discharge exactly and well what he has learned, regardless of the cost". Krasnov declared "the language of numbers is not my language", stating though the Japanese could mobilize 400,000 troops in 335 battalions and 104 squadrons with 1,903 artillery guns, they would be little match against "European powers holding excellent positions on the Asian mainland". Krasnov had an equally low opinion of the Japanese cavalry, writing that the Japanese had "neither the horses nor riders to create cavalry". Krasnov declared "to destroy all 13 regiments of the Japanese cavalry would be a very easy task". He concluded that once the Japanese cavalry had been defeated "a deaf and blind Japanese army would become a plaything for an enterprising partisan commander" and "a detachment of 2,000 cavalry easily might tire a Japanese division". Krasnov quoted a Frenchman who lived a decade in Japan as saying: "They are a people gone astray, the military deed is not in their nature", to which Krasnov added "I think that this minute they are contemplating the same thing in St. Petersburg". Though the Main Staff officers deplored Krasnov's article with his sweeping generalizations based upon superficial impressions, the Emperor Nicholas II was said to have read and enjoyed his article while Krasnov's articles about his trip through Asia were turned into a book with a grant from the War Ministry.
World War I and Revolution During World War I he commanded the 2nd Combined Cossack Division from 1915 to 1917, and in September–October 1917, the 3rd Cavalry Corps. During the Brusilov offensive in the summer of 1916, the 2nd Combined Cossack Division was the first unit to achieve a breakthrough against Austro-Hungarian positions at the Battle of Lutsk, and Krasnov was injured by a bullet to the leg. He was put in command of the 3rd Cavalry Corps in September 1917 after elements of it took part in the Kornilov affair against the Russian Provisional Government. He restored discipline and morale among the 3rd Corps following the Kornilov affair, but initially tried to stay out of politics.
During the October Revolution of 1917, the deposed head of the Russian Provisional Government, Alexander Kerensky appointed Krasnov commander of the 700 Cossacks who marched on Petrograd from Pskov () to suppress the Bolshevik revolt (see Kerensky-Krasnov uprising). These Cossacks were from two regiments of the 1st Don Cossack Division. On 15 November, Bolshevik troops surrounded Gatchina Palace, and took Krasnov prisoner, but he was soon released by Leon Trotsky, whereupon he made his way to the Don.
Russian Civil War Krasnov fled to the Don region. In May 1918, in Novocherkassk, he won election as the Ataman of the Don Cossack Host. The American historian Richard Pipes described Krasnov as an "opportunist and an adventurer", primarily interested in using the Civil War to advance his own interests. Though the White movement was officially committed to overthrowing the Bolsheviks in order to resume the war with Germany, Krasnov entered negotiations with the Germans who were occupying Ukraine with the aim of securing their support, portraying himself as willing to serve as a pro-German warlord in the Don region, which made him the object of much distrust in the Allied governments. The Germans had set up the Ukrainian Zaporizhian Cossack Hetman Pavlo Skoropadskyi as the puppet leader of Ukraine in April 1918, and Krasnov indicated his willingness to serve as a leader of a set-up similar to the Skoropadskyi regime. Through not willing to formally embrace Cossack separatism, Krasnov as the first elected Ataman of the Don Host for centuries favored more autonomy for the Don Host than the Host had enjoyed in the Imperial period. With support from Germany, Krasnov equipped his army, which ousted the Soviets from the Don region in May–June 1918. By the middle of June, a Don Army was in the field with 40,000 men, 56 guns and 179 machine-guns. On 11 July 1918 Krasnov wrote a letter to Wilhelm II declaring that the Cossacks had always been friends of the Reich and went on to say: "The glorious Don Cossacks have been engaging in fighting for their freedom for two months and the fight resulted in their complete victory. The Cossacks have fought with a courage only equaled by that displayed against the English by a people of Germanic stock, the Boers".Krasnov's relations with the Volunteer Army became strained on account of his pro-German views; furthermore, he was only willing to have the Don Cossacks serve with the Volunteer Army if he was made Supreme Commander-in-Chief of all the White forces, a demand that was rejected by Denikin and the other White generals. As the Don Cossack Host outnumbered the Volunteer Army until the summer of 1919, the Volunteer Army's commander, General Anton Denikin (in office 1918–1920), was at a disadvantage in his negotiations with Krasnov. Members of the White movement generally saw Krasnov as a petty and self-interested warlord, only willing to act if there was something of benefit to him on offer. Throughout the Russian Civil War, the Don Cossack Host kept its own identity, with the Don Cossacks serving under their elected colonels in their own regiments, apart from the rest of the White armies. Krasnov wanted Denikin to advance on and take the city of Tsaritsyn (modern Volgograd) on the Volga to end the possibility of the Soviet Red Army entering the Don region, a demand that Denikin opposed. Krasnov so desperately wanted to secure Tsaritsyn that he even offered to have Don Cossacks temporarily serve under Denikin's command if he was willing to advance on Tsaritsyn, but Denikin had other plans.
Viewing Krasnov as unreliable and untrustworthy, Denikin instead decided to launch the Second Kuban Campaign of June–November 1918, taking his army south to the territory of the Kuban Cossack Host to raise more men and to take on the Red North Caucasian Army before turning north towards Moscow. Moscow became the Soviet capital in March 1918, as Lenin had decided that Petrograd (modern Saint Petersburg) was too exposed to the German Army, which had occupied what is now the Baltic states. Denikin viewed the Kuban Cossacks as more willing to help than Krasnov and his Don Cossacks, who tended to put their own interests first. General Vyacheslav Naumenko, the field ataman of the Kuban Host, was known to be more willing to work with the White generals. Denikin also believed that he needed to liquidate the 70,000-strong Red North Caucasian Army first before advancing on Moscow, arguing that an advance on Moscow would be impossible with a threat to his rear. Denikin's decision to turn the Volunteer Army south to the Kuban rather than north to Moscow became one of the most controversial of the Russian Civil War – by not advancing north in 1918 Denikin missed his best chance of linking up with the White forces in Siberia under Admiral Alexander Kolchak, who were advancing west along the Trans-Siberian Railway in the direction of Moscow.
In the second half of 1918, Krasnov advanced towards Povorino-Kamyshin-Tsaritsyn, intending to march on Moscow on his own, but was defeated. In the siege of Tsaritsyn in November–December 1918, Krasnov sent his Cossacks repeatedly to storm Tsaritsyn, only to see them cut down by Red machine-gun and artillery fire. Following his defeat at Tsaritsyn, Krasnov returned to the territory of the Don Cossack Host and refused all offers to co-ordinate with Denikin unless he was made Supreme Commander-in-Chief of the Whites first. After Germany's defeat (November 1918) in World War I, Krasnov set his sights on the Entente powers in his search for allies. Under the terms of the armistice of 11 November 1918 ending World War One, Germany was required to pull out its forces out of all the territory gained by the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk.
The defeat of the Ottoman Empire in October 1918 allowed British, French, and American naval forces to enter the Black Sea and for the first time allowed direct contact between the Allies and the Whites. Krasnov appealed to the French, offering to allow them to establish a protectorate over the Don Host in an effort to sow discord between the Allies as the territory of the Don Host had been assigned beforehand during discussions among Allied leaders to the British sphere of operations. However, Krasnov was informed by Allied diplomats that the Allies would not supply him with arms, arms would be supplied only to the Volunteer Army, which would then pass on arms to the Don Cossack Host if necessary. In January 1919 Krasnov was forced by the Allied arms embargo against the Don Host to acknowledge General Denikin's authority over the White movement, despite his animosity towards Denikin.
Krasnov was an organizer of the White Terror in the Don Province; his troops executed between 25,000 and 40,000 people.
Exile in France and Germany