20th-Century Russian People - Anna Pavlova, Wolf Messing, Aleksandr Kolchak, Vladimir Kovalevsky, Alfred Schnittke, Alexander Lokshin (Paperback)

Please note that the content of this book primarily consists of articles available from Wikipedia or other free sources online. Pages: 36. Chapters: Anna Pavlova, Wolf Messing, Aleksandr Kolchak, Vladimir Kovalevsky, Alfred Schnittke, Alexander Lokshin, Sergei Bortkiewicz, Lou Andreas-Salome, Sergei Wojciechowski, Michael L. Geller, Vera Schmidt, Victor Ovcharenko, Sergei Nilus, Leonid Ramzin, Arkady Gornfeld, Gregory Zilboorg, Grigory Ivanovich Rossolimo, Pyotr Nilus, Boris Pilnyak, Lev Barenboim, David Ashkenazi, Vsevolod Vladimirov, Pyotr Vlasov. Excerpt: Aleksandr Vasiliyevich Kolchak (Russian: , 16 November 1874 - 7 February 1920) was a Russian naval commander, polar explorer and later head of all the counter-revolutionary anti-communist White forces during the Russian Civil War. He was also a prominent expert on naval mines and a member of the Russian Geographical Society. Among Kolchak's awards are the St. George Gold Sword for Bravery given for his actions in the battle of Port Arthur and the Great Gold Constantine Medal from the Russian Geographic Society. Soviet maps depicted Kolchak Island up until the mid-1930s. Kolchak on ZaryaKolchak was born in Saint Petersburg in 1874 into a military family descending from the 18th-century Romanian mercenary Ilia Colceag. His father was a retired major-general of the Marine Artillery, who was actively engaged in the siege of Sevastopol in 1854-55 and after his retirement worked as an engineer in ordnance works near St. Petersburg. Kolchak was educated for a naval career, graduating from the Naval Cadet Corps in 1894 and joining the 7th Naval Battalion of the city. He was soon transferred to the Far East, serving in Vladivostok from 1895 to 1899. He returned to western Russia and was based at Kronstadt, joining the Polar expedition of Eduard Toll on the ship Zarya in 1900 as a hydrologist. After considerable hardship, Kolchak returned in December 1902; Eduard Toll with three other members went further north and w...