Russia
Lavr Kornilov
1870–1918 Supreme Commander of the Russian Army, 1917; military leader of the Volunteer Army, 1917–1918
Born in Ust-Kamenogorsk, the son of a Siberian Cossack officer, Kornilov trained at the Mikhailovsky Artillery School and the General Staff Academy, served in Turkestan and was military attaché in China from 1907 to 1911. In the First World War he commanded the 48th Infantry Division in Galicia and the Carpathians, was captured by the Austrians in 1915 and escaped in 1916. After the abdication of Nicholas II he took command of the Petrograd Military District. Appointed Supreme Commander in July 1917, he fell out with Kerensky, and the Kornilov Affair of September, whose causes historians still debate, ended with his arrest. After the Bolshevik seizure of power he left detention, helped form the anti-Bolshevik Volunteer Army, and was killed by a shell at Yekaterinodar on 13 April 1918.