Evgenii Miller
Encyclopedia
Evgeny Karlovich Miller (September 25, 1867, Daugavpils
, Latvia
–May 11, 1939, Moscow
) was a Russia
n general and one of the leaders of the anti-communist White Army during and after Russian Civil War
.
, Latvia
). After he graduated from the General Staff Academy
he served with the Russian Imperial Guard
. Between 1898 and 1907 he was a Russian military attaché
in several European capitals such as Rome
, The Hague
and Brussels
. During the First World War he headed the Moscow
military district and the 5th Russian army, and was promoted to the rank of lieutenant general
.
of 1917 General Miller opposed "democratization" of the Russian army and was arrested by his own soldiers after he ordered them to remove red arm bands.
After the October Bolshevik coup
Miller fled to Archangelsk and declared himself Governor-General
of Northern Russia. In May 1919 Admiral Kolchak appointed him to be in charge of the White army
in the region. In Archangelsk, Murmansk
and Olonets
his anti-Bolshevik army was supported by the Entente
, mostly British
forces. However, after an unsuccessful advance against the Red Army
along the Northern Dvina
in the summer of 1919, British forces withdrew from the region and Miller's men faced the enemy alone.
. Later he moved to France
and together with Grand Duke Nicholas and Pyotr Nikolayevich Wrangel
continued anti-communist activism. Between 1930 and 1937 Miller was a chairman of the Russian All-Military Union
.
On September 22, 1937, NKVD
informer and All-Military Union intelligence chief Nikolai Skoblin
led General Miller to a Paris safe house
, where he was to meet with two German Abwehr
agents. The agents were not who they appeared to me. They were in fact officers of the Soviet NKVD
disguised as Germans. They drugged Miller, placed him in a steamer trunk and smuggled him aboard a Soviet ship in Le Havre
. However, Miller left behind a note to be opened if he failed to return from the meeting. In it he detailed his suspicions about Skoblin.
French police launched a massive manhunt, but Skoblin fled to the Soviet embassy in Paris and eventually was smuggled to Barcelona
, where the Second Spanish Republic
refused to extradite him to France.
However, Skoblin's wife, Nadezhda Plevitskaya
, was arrested, convicted and sentenced by a French court to 20 years in prison.
The NKVD successfully smuggled General Miller back to Moscow
, where he was tortured and summarily shot nineteen months later on May 11, 1939. According to NKVD General Pavel Sudoplatov
, "His kidnapping was a cause celebre. Eliminating him disrupted his organization of Tsarist officers and effectively prevented them from collaborating with the Germans against us."
Copies of letters written by Miller while he was imprisoned in Moscow are in the Dimitri Volkogonov papers at the Library of Congress
.
(2004), directed by Éric Rohmer
.
In addition, the kidnapping of General Miller is also fictionalized in Nikita Mikhalkov
's award-winning film Burnt by the Sun
. In the film the character known as "Mitya" (Oleg Menshikov
) is a former White Army officer turned NKVD agent. Posing as a pianist in Paris, Mitya is described as having delivered eight White Generals to the NKVD. All are described as having been kidnapped, returned to Moscow, and shot without trial. One of the Generals is given the name "Weiner."
Daugavpils
Daugavpils is a city in southeastern Latvia, located on the banks of the Daugava River, from which the city gets its name. Daugavpils literally means "Daugava Castle". With a population of over 100,000, it is the second largest city in the country after the capital Riga, which is located some...
, Latvia
Latvia
Latvia , officially the Republic of Latvia , is a country in the Baltic region of Northern Europe. It is bordered to the north by Estonia , to the south by Lithuania , to the east by the Russian Federation , to the southeast by Belarus and shares maritime borders to the west with Sweden...
–May 11, 1939, Moscow
Moscow
Moscow is the capital, the most populous city, and the most populous federal subject of Russia. The city is a major political, economic, cultural, scientific, religious, financial, educational, and transportation centre of Russia and the continent...
) was a Russia
Russia
Russia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...
n general and one of the leaders of the anti-communist White Army during and after Russian Civil War
Russian Civil War
The Russian Civil War was a multi-party war that occurred within the former Russian Empire after the Russian provisional government collapsed to the Soviets, under the domination of the Bolshevik party. Soviet forces first assumed power in Petrograd The Russian Civil War (1917–1923) was a...
.
Biography
Miller was a career officer born in a Russian-German family in Dvinsk (now DaugavpilsDaugavpils
Daugavpils is a city in southeastern Latvia, located on the banks of the Daugava River, from which the city gets its name. Daugavpils literally means "Daugava Castle". With a population of over 100,000, it is the second largest city in the country after the capital Riga, which is located some...
, Latvia
Latvia
Latvia , officially the Republic of Latvia , is a country in the Baltic region of Northern Europe. It is bordered to the north by Estonia , to the south by Lithuania , to the east by the Russian Federation , to the southeast by Belarus and shares maritime borders to the west with Sweden...
). After he graduated from the General Staff Academy
General Staff Academy (Imperial Russia)
The General Staff Academy was a Russian military academy, established in 1832 in St.Petersburg. It was first known as the Imperial Military Academy , then in 1855 it was renamed Nicholas General Staff Academy and in 1909 - Imperial Nicholas Military Academy The General Staff Academy was a...
he served with the Russian Imperial Guard
Russian Imperial Guard
The Russian Imperial Guard, officially known as the Leib Guard were military units serving as personal guards of the Emperor of Russia. Peter the Great founded the first such units following the Prussian practice in the 1690s, to replace the politically-motivated Streltsy.- Organization :The final...
. Between 1898 and 1907 he was a Russian military attaché
Military attaché
A military attaché is a military expert who is attached to a diplomatic mission . This post is normally filled by a high-ranking military officer who retains the commission while serving in an embassy...
in several European capitals such as Rome
Rome
Rome is the capital of Italy and the country's largest and most populated city and comune, with over 2.7 million residents in . The city is located in the central-western portion of the Italian Peninsula, on the Tiber River within the Lazio region of Italy.Rome's history spans two and a half...
, The Hague
The Hague
The Hague is the capital city of the province of South Holland in the Netherlands. With a population of 500,000 inhabitants , it is the third largest city of the Netherlands, after Amsterdam and Rotterdam...
and Brussels
Brussels
Brussels , officially the Brussels Region or Brussels-Capital Region , is the capital of Belgium and the de facto capital of the European Union...
. During the First World War he headed the Moscow
Moscow
Moscow is the capital, the most populous city, and the most populous federal subject of Russia. The city is a major political, economic, cultural, scientific, religious, financial, educational, and transportation centre of Russia and the continent...
military district and the 5th Russian army, and was promoted to the rank of lieutenant general
Lieutenant General
Lieutenant General is a military rank used in many countries. The rank traces its origins to the Middle Ages where the title of Lieutenant General was held by the second in command on the battlefield, who was normally subordinate to a Captain General....
.
Civil War
After the February RevolutionFebruary Revolution
The February Revolution of 1917 was the first of two revolutions in Russia in 1917. Centered around the then capital Petrograd in March . Its immediate result was the abdication of Tsar Nicholas II, the end of the Romanov dynasty, and the end of the Russian Empire...
of 1917 General Miller opposed "democratization" of the Russian army and was arrested by his own soldiers after he ordered them to remove red arm bands.
After the October Bolshevik coup
Russian Revolution of 1917
The Russian Revolution is the collective term for a series of revolutions in Russia in 1917, which destroyed the Tsarist autocracy and led to the creation of the Soviet Union. The Tsar was deposed and replaced by a provisional government in the first revolution of February 1917...
Miller fled to Archangelsk and declared himself Governor-General
Governor-General
A Governor-General, is a vice-regal person of a monarch in an independent realm or a major colonial circonscription. Depending on the political arrangement of the territory, a Governor General can be a governor of high rank, or a principal governor ranking above "ordinary" governors.- Current uses...
of Northern Russia. In May 1919 Admiral Kolchak appointed him to be in charge of the White army
White movement
The White movement and its military arm the White Army - known as the White Guard or the Whites - was a loose confederation of Anti-Communist forces.The movement comprised one of the politico-military Russian forces who fought...
in the region. In Archangelsk, Murmansk
Murmansk
Murmansk is a city and the administrative center of Murmansk Oblast, Russia. It serves as a seaport and is located in the extreme northwest part of Russia, on the Kola Bay, from the Barents Sea on the northern shore of the Kola Peninsula, not far from Russia's borders with Norway and Finland...
and Olonets
Olonets
Olonets is a town and the administrative center of Olonetsky District of the Republic of Karelia, Russia, situated on the Olonka River, to the east from Lake Ladoga. Population: -History:...
his anti-Bolshevik army was supported by the Entente
Triple Entente
The Triple Entente was the name given to the alliance among Britain, France and Russia after the signing of the Anglo-Russian Entente in 1907....
, mostly British
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
forces. However, after an unsuccessful advance against the Red Army
Red Army
The Workers' and Peasants' Red Army started out as the Soviet Union's revolutionary communist combat groups during the Russian Civil War of 1918-1922. It grew into the national army of the Soviet Union. By the 1930s the Red Army was among the largest armies in history.The "Red Army" name refers to...
along the Northern Dvina
Northern Dvina
The Northern Dvina is a river in Northern Russia flowing through the Vologda Oblast and Arkhangelsk Oblast into the Dvina Bay of the White Sea. Along with the Pechora River to the east, it drains most of Northwest Russia into the Arctic Ocean...
in the summer of 1919, British forces withdrew from the region and Miller's men faced the enemy alone.
Exile and kidnapping
In February 1920, General Miller was evacuated from Archangelsk for NorwayNorway
Norway , officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a Nordic unitary constitutional monarchy whose territory comprises the western portion of the Scandinavian Peninsula, Jan Mayen, and the Arctic archipelago of Svalbard and Bouvet Island. Norway has a total area of and a population of about 4.9 million...
. Later he moved to France
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
and together with Grand Duke Nicholas and Pyotr Nikolayevich Wrangel
Pyotr Nikolayevich Wrangel
Baron Pyotr Nikolayevich Wrangel or Vrangel was an officer in the Imperial Russian army and later commanding general of the anti-Bolshevik White Army in Southern Russia in the later stages of the Russian Civil War.-Life:Wrangel was born in Mukuliai, Kovno Governorate in the Russian Empire...
continued anti-communist activism. Between 1930 and 1937 Miller was a chairman of the Russian All-Military Union
Russian All-Military Union
The Russian All-Military Union was founded by White Army General Pyotr Wrangel in the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes on September 1, 1924...
.
On September 22, 1937, NKVD
NKVD
The People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs was the public and secret police organization of the Soviet Union that directly executed the rule of power of the Soviets, including political repression, during the era of Joseph Stalin....
informer and All-Military Union intelligence chief Nikolai Skoblin
Nikolai Skoblin
Nikolai Skoblin was a general in the counterrevolutionary White Russian army, a member of the expatriate Russian All-Military Union , a Soviet double agent, and husband to the gypsy folk-singer Nadezhda Plevitskaya ....
led General Miller to a Paris safe house
Safe house
In the jargon of law enforcement and intelligence agencies, a safe house is a secure location, suitable for hiding witnesses, agents or other persons perceived as being in danger...
, where he was to meet with two German Abwehr
Abwehr
The Abwehr was a German military intelligence organisation from 1921 to 1944. The term Abwehr was used as a concession to Allied demands that Germany's post-World War I intelligence activities be for "defensive" purposes only...
agents. The agents were not who they appeared to me. They were in fact officers of the Soviet NKVD
NKVD
The People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs was the public and secret police organization of the Soviet Union that directly executed the rule of power of the Soviets, including political repression, during the era of Joseph Stalin....
disguised as Germans. They drugged Miller, placed him in a steamer trunk and smuggled him aboard a Soviet ship in Le Havre
Le Havre
Le Havre is a city in the Seine-Maritime department of the Haute-Normandie region in France. It is situated in north-western France, on the right bank of the mouth of the river Seine on the English Channel. Le Havre is the most populous commune in the Haute-Normandie region, although the total...
. However, Miller left behind a note to be opened if he failed to return from the meeting. In it he detailed his suspicions about Skoblin.
French police launched a massive manhunt, but Skoblin fled to the Soviet embassy in Paris and eventually was smuggled to Barcelona
Barcelona
Barcelona is the second largest city in Spain after Madrid, and the capital of Catalonia, with a population of 1,621,537 within its administrative limits on a land area of...
, where the Second Spanish Republic
Second Spanish Republic
The Second Spanish Republic was the government of Spain between April 14 1931, and its destruction by a military rebellion, led by General Francisco Franco....
refused to extradite him to France.
However, Skoblin's wife, Nadezhda Plevitskaya
Nadezhda Plevitskaya
Nadezhda Vasilievna Plevitskaya was the most popular female Russian singer of the White emigration.-Early life and career:Plevitskaya was born Nadezhda Vasilievna Vinnikova to a peasant family in the village of Vinnikovo near Kursk...
, was arrested, convicted and sentenced by a French court to 20 years in prison.
The NKVD successfully smuggled General Miller back to Moscow
Moscow
Moscow is the capital, the most populous city, and the most populous federal subject of Russia. The city is a major political, economic, cultural, scientific, religious, financial, educational, and transportation centre of Russia and the continent...
, where he was tortured and summarily shot nineteen months later on May 11, 1939. According to NKVD General Pavel Sudoplatov
Pavel Sudoplatov
Lieutenant General Pavel Anatolyevich Sudoplatov was a member of the intelligence services of the Soviet Union who rose to the rank of lieutenant general...
, "His kidnapping was a cause celebre. Eliminating him disrupted his organization of Tsarist officers and effectively prevented them from collaborating with the Germans against us."
Copies of letters written by Miller while he was imprisoned in Moscow are in the Dimitri Volkogonov papers at the Library of Congress
Library of Congress
The Library of Congress is the research library of the United States Congress, de facto national library of the United States, and the oldest federal cultural institution in the United States. Located in three buildings in Washington, D.C., it is the largest library in the world by shelf space and...
.
In popular culture
The kidnapping was the subject of a book, The Fear. It was also the basis of the French film Triple AgentTriple agent (film)
-Plot:The Popular Front wins the French general elections of 1936. In Spain the Civil War begins. Meanwhile, in a Paris apartment, Fiodor Voronin, a retired general of the Tsarist army lives an apparently quiet life with his Greek wife Arsinoé...
(2004), directed by Éric Rohmer
Éric Rohmer
Éric Rohmer was a French film director, film critic, journalist, novelist, screenwriter and teacher. A figure in the post-war New Wave cinema, he was a former editor of Cahiers du cinéma....
.
In addition, the kidnapping of General Miller is also fictionalized in Nikita Mikhalkov
Nikita Mikhalkov
Nikita Sergeyevich Mikhalkov is a Soviet and Russian filmmaker, actor, and head of the Russian Cinematographers' Union.Mikhalkov was born in Moscow into the distinguished, artistic Mikhalkov family. His great grandfather was the imperial governor of Yaroslavl, whose mother was a Galitzine princess...
's award-winning film Burnt by the Sun
Burnt by the Sun
Burnt by the Sun is a 1994 film by Russian director and actor Nikita Mikhalkov. The film depicts the story of a senior Red Army officer and his family during the Great Purge of the late 1930s in the Stalinist Soviet Union...
. In the film the character known as "Mitya" (Oleg Menshikov
Oleg Menshikov
Oleg Evgenyevich Menshikov ; is a Russian entertainer. He is a film and theatre actor, singer and director. He started his film career in the early 1980s playing in the comedy Pokrovskie vorota and in Nikita Mikhalkov's Rodnya....
) is a former White Army officer turned NKVD agent. Posing as a pianist in Paris, Mitya is described as having delivered eight White Generals to the NKVD. All are described as having been kidnapped, returned to Moscow, and shot without trial. One of the Generals is given the name "Weiner."
See also
- White movementWhite movementThe White movement and its military arm the White Army - known as the White Guard or the Whites - was a loose confederation of Anti-Communist forces.The movement comprised one of the politico-military Russian forces who fought...
- North Russia CampaignNorth Russia CampaignThe North Russia Intervention, also known as the Northern Russian Expedition, was part of the Allied Intervention in Russia after the October Revolution. The intervention brought about the involvement of foreign troops in the Russian Civil War on the side of the White movement...
- Russian All-Military UnionRussian All-Military UnionThe Russian All-Military Union was founded by White Army General Pyotr Wrangel in the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes on September 1, 1924...
- Mikhail Kvetsinsky, his Chief of StaffChief of StaffThe title, chief of staff, identifies the leader of a complex organization, institution, or body of persons and it also may identify a Principal Staff Officer , who is the coordinator of the supporting staff or a primary aide to an important individual, such as a president.In general, a chief of...