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huumer t1_jbuzklk wrote

Reply to comment by Nothereaction in Weekly History Questions Thread. by AutoModerator

Im not sure what you mean by strange but the bloody baron is pretty eyecatching. The Lions led by donkeys podcast also has a good series on him.

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Nothereaction t1_jbwj8lg wrote

Thanks i knew about this guy already and I meant like insane peoples during the civil war. Like the Ruler of all Russia who was an admiral and an ukrainian anarchist who made a short lived anarchist state in Ukraine.

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jezreelite t1_jbxeram wrote

The Ukrainian anarchist was Nestor Makhno and I think the Admiral was Aleksandr Kolchak.

Neither of them were all that weird compared to Roman von Ungern-Sternberg, but that's only because Ungern-Sternberg was such a massive weirdo, he was in a class all by his own. The only figures who get close to him are Grigori Semyonov, Boris Annenkov, Ivan Kalmykov, and Aleksandr Dutov. An American general, William Sidney Graves, wrote of them:

>Semenoff and Kalmikoff soldiers, under the protection of Japanese troops, were roaming the country like wild animals, killing and robbing the people, and these murders could have been stopped any day Japan wished. If questions were asked about these brutal murders, the reply was that the people murdered were Bolsheviks and this explanation, apparently, satisfied the world. Conditions were represented as being horrible in Eastern Siberia, and that life was the cheapest thing there. There were horrible murders committed, but they were not committed by the Bolsheviks as the world believes. I am well on the side of safety when I say that the anti-Bolsheviks killed one hundred people in Eastern Siberia, to every one killed by the Bolsheviks.

Other rather odd people involved in the Russian Civil War could include:

  • Georgi Atarbekov: Armenian Bolshevik and Chekist. Bragged about having personally stabbed Nikolai Ruzsky.
  • Aleksandr Eiduk: Latvian Chekist and poet who wrote verses about the joys of killing.
  • Naftaly Frenkel: Former smuggler turned builder of the Gulag
  • Mikhail Kedrov: Chekist and pianist. Notorious for his cruelty.
  • Lavr Kornilov: Cossack and White general who loved mass murder and the Totenkampf
  • Béla Kun: Hungarian journalist turned Bolshevik. Tried to start a Soviet regime in Hungary, but failed and was forced to flee back to Russia.
  • Vladimir Purishkevich: One of the killers of Rasputin; extreme anti-Semite, proto-fascist, and supporter of Kornilov
  • Sidney Reilly: British spy, probably Ukrainian by birth. Involved with an abortive plot with Savinkov to overthrow the Bolsheviks.
  • Boris Savinkov: Terrorist, drug addict, novelist, and womanizer
  • Maria Spiridonova: Terrorist and assassin who looked like a schoolmarm. Initially an ally of the Bolsheviks, she later turned on them and orchestrated the assassination of the German ambassador, Count Mirbach.
  • Semyon Ter-Petrosian: Better known as Kamo. An early friend and ally of Stalin who was responsible for the 1907 Tiflis bank robbery
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