Nikolay Dukhonin

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Nikolay Nikolayevich Dukhonin
Supreme Commander of the Russian Army
In office
16 November – 22 November 1917
Preceded byAlexander Kerensky
Succeeded byNikolai Krylenko
Personal details
Born13 December 1876
General
Unit3rd Army
CommandsImperial Russian Army
Battles/warsWorld War I

Nikolay Nikolayevich Dukhonin (Russian: Никола́й Никола́евич Духо́нин; 13 December 1876 – 3 December 1917[1]) was a Russian general who was briefly the last supreme commander of the Russian Army after the October Revolution before the Bolsheviks took control of it.

Biography

Dukhonin was born in the

First World War. There he gained some experience in intelligence
work.

At the outset of the War, Dukhonin was given command of a Russian regiment. He was then assigned to the

Kerensky to replace Alexeyev as Chief of Staff at GHQ in Mogilev, as Alexeyev had resigned as a result of Kornilov's failed coup. It was Alexeyev who had suggested Dukhonin as his successor so that he could continue to influence affairs at Stavka
in Mogilev.

When Kerensky fled Petrograd and then Russia following the seizure of power by the

Petrograd to discuss an armistice proposal. Dukhonin's response was adamant: on 22 November he categorically declined the directive of the Council of People's Commissars. He had discussed such a development with diplomats from the Entente
governments. Dukhonin told Lenin that such an order could only be issued by "a government sustained by the army and the country".

Lenin immediately proceeded to a wireless station and broadcast news of Dukhonin's dismissal as Commander-in-Chief and Krylenko's replacement in his stead. The following day a joint note was issued by the military missions of Britain, France, Italy, Japan and Romania, citing the Treaty of 23 August 1914 by which the allies agreed not to conclude an armistice except by common consent. These missions were based at the General Headquarters in Mogilev.[2] His last action was to order the release of the officers being held prisoner at Bikhov, most notably Kornilov and Denikin.

Dukhonin subsequently surrendered to Krylenko in Mogilev, but was murdered by Krylenko's Bolshevik military escort near the railway station on 3 December 1917.[3] A mob of soldiers and sailors bayoneted him to death on the spot on order of Red Army officer Pavel Dybenko.[4] The next morning the Bolshevik soldiers and sailors amused themselves by using his (now stripped naked) corpse for target practice, which they had placed on the platform with a cigarette in its mouth.[4]

His family

emigrated to Yugoslavia
.

References

  1. ^ Dates given in the Gregorian calendar
  2. ^ Soviet Foreign Policy Vol. 1 1917 - 1945, ed Andrei Gromyko and Boris Ponomarev, Progress Publishers, 1980
  3. ISBN 978-80-87173-47-3
    , pages 36 - 39, 41 - 42, 111-112, 124–125, 128, 129, 132, 140–148, 184–199.
  4. ^ a b Andrew Kalpaschnikoff, A prisoner of Trotsky's, 1920

External links

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