He is best known as the commander of the West Russian Volunteer Army which was active in present-day Latvia and Lithuania in the aftermath of World War I.

During the First World War, Avalov worked as a personal adjutant for Pavel Mishchenko, serving in Eastern Prussia and Galicia.

After defending Kiev from Symon Petliura, Avalov was captured and later exiled into Germany, where he formed a unit to fight the Bolsheviks in the Baltic States, along with general Rüdiger von der Goltz's Baltische Landeswehr.

While fighting in Latvia and Lithuania to establish a pro-German and anti-Bolshevik territorial union, Avalov's West Russian Volunteer Army, also called the Bermontians, raided and pillaged the countryside and its occupied areas.

In Germany, Avalov participated in right-wing White émigré movements, strongly supporting Adolf Hitler's Nazi Party.

Avalov escaped to Italy through Switzerland, later relocating to Belgrade before finally emigrating to the United States and living there until his death.

Another version claims that Avalov was born in 1877 in Vladivostok to jeweler Rafail Bermant, by origin a Jew who converted to Orthodoxy.

[6] During this time he was part of a secret officer organization that was preparing a coup against the Russian Provisional Government, despite them awarding Avalov the rank of colonel in 1918.

[5] After the end of the First World War the Entente powers ordered German soldiers to remain in Lithuania and Latvia and fight the incoming Bolshevik army.

While in exile in Germany, Avalov organized a small group of soldiers (around 300 men) from the Salzwedel prisoner of war camp.

The German troops of the former Freikrops wished to remain in Latvia and wait for the yet unfulfilled promise, and as such chose to join Avalov's army.

In Riga, Avalov supposedly was carried in a cart and exclaimed to the locals that he had come to heroically save St. Petersburg, meanwhile his troops pillaged the occupied areas.

They published their own newspaper Volk und Wehr, in which they supposedly prophesized a return to the East to build "new German colonies".

[17] He also worked in a trading company in Hamburg, unsuccessfully trying to build a political career in the early years of Russian emigres.

Avalov regularly came under the attention of German police for publicly expressing plans such as the formation of an army under the leadership of Grand Duke Kiril, a campaign to Moscow, etc.

Reportedly, Avalov turned out to be a cocaine and morphine addict who embezzled 8,000 German marks and spoke arrogantly about the Fuhrer Adolf Hitler.

[5][6] Avalov was soon imprisoned in Berlin, and then transferred to a concentration camp outside the capital, on suspicion of embezzling the aforementioned 8,000 German mark subsidy given by the NSDAP to the Russian National Socialist Movement.

Avalov married the princess of Mecklenburg-Schwerin, who was the cousin of Grand Duke Kiril Vladimirovich, who owned an estate in Yugoslavia.

Stephen Tallent, a British delegate, also characterizes Avalov as "...Caucasian by birth, but of mixed blood, perhaps half Jewish.

Latvian writer Andrievs Niedra describes Avalov as of "average height, thin, but proportionately built, with dark hair and eyes, a pale face of a southerner, a small mustache sticking up.

Bermondt spoke in a baritone voice... in a cheerful mood, he also willingly danced Caucasian mountain dances.” Avalov has also been reported to have shot one of his officers in the leg after drinking too much alcohol.

[9] In Lithuania and Latvia, the word Bermontiada gained prominence as a term to describe their independence wars, as well as becoming a synonym for "adventure".