Pyotr Wrangel

Pyotr Wrangel (1878-1928), Russian military leader, born into a noble family in St Petersburg. He served as a cavalryman for a period in his youth, worked in mining engineering in Siberia, and served as an officer of a Cossack regiment in the Russo-Japanese War and in World War I. Late in 1917, after the Bolsheviks seized power, Wrangel joined the anti-Bolshevik forces, known as the White Army, in southern Russia, and became their commander in chief early in 1920. For a time he carried on successful operations against the Red Army. The Soviet-Polish armistice of October 1920, however, enabled the Red Army to concentrate its power against Wrangel. He then fled to Constantinople with 150,000 followers in November. Wrangel spent his last years as a mining engineer in Brussels.