[3] Krasnov mockingly noted that during the march on Beijing during the Boxer Rebellion of 1900, exhausted Japanese soldiers had to be carried in the wagons of the Russian Army.
During the Brusilov offensive in the summer of 1916, the 2nd Combined Cossack Division was the first unit to achieve a breakthrough against Austro-Hungarian positions at the Battle of Lutsk, and Krasnov was injured by a bullet to the leg.
[9] During the October Revolution of 1917, the deposed head of the Russian Provisional Government Alexander Kerensky appointed Krasnov commander of the 700 Cossacks who marched on Petrograd from Pskov (November [O.S.
[13] Though the White movement was officially committed to overthrowing the Bolsheviks in order to resume the war with Germany, Krasnov entered negotiations with the Germans who were occupying Ukraine with the aim of securing their support, portraying himself as willing to serve as a pro-German warlord in the Don region, which made him the object of much distrust in the Allied governments.
[15] Moscow become the Soviet capital in March 1918 as Lenin had decided that Petrograd (modern St Petersburg) was too exposed to the German Army, which had occupied what is now the Baltic states.
[17] Following his defeat at Tsaritsyn, Krasnov returned to the territory of the Don Cossack Host and refused all offers to co-ordinate with Denikin unless he was made Supreme Commander-in-Chief of the Whites first.
His famous trilogy Ot Dvuglavogo Orla k krasnomu znameni (From Double Eagle To the Red Flag), in addition to the main plot, with its hero, General Sablin, has several sub-plots which encompass many places, events, and personages from the time of the Revolution of 1905 to the Russian Civil War.
All major themes, such as authority vs. anarchy, respect for human dignity vs. violence, creative work vs. destruction, as well as cruelty and terror, are treated in this polyphonic manner.
[23] The German historian Daniel Siemens described From Double Eagle to the Red Flag as a deeply antisemitic book that accepted The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion as genuine and accused "international Jewry" of inventing Communism.
[25] Siemens noted that the German translation of Ot Dvuglavogo Orla k krasnomu znameni was the favorite book of the Nazi martyr Horst Wessel.
[26] Another of Krasnov's novels was his 1927 work Za chertopolokhom (Behind the Thistle), a future history set in the 1990s that imagined a post-Communist Russia ruled over by a restored monarchy that had built an enormous wall around the entire empire to prevent any and all contact with the West.
[28] However, the Soviet Air Force accidentally unleashed the deadly chemical gases on the Red Army, killing millions while setting off forest fires.
[30] By the 1990s as a result of decades of socialism, in all the European states food is being severely rationed, technological advances have ceased, housing is in short supply and the triumph of avant-garde has led to a cultural collapse.
[33] In contrast to the declining economies of the socialist West, the Russia that Krasnov imagines under the restored monarchy is economically and culturally flourishing while achieving marvelous technological feats such as building a sort of flying railroad system over the entire country and constructing vast canals that turn deserts into farmland.
They bow down to some invisible force, whose aim is destruction, but our society is founded on the bedrock of family and at its head is the Tsar, blessed by God, a man whose thoughts are only about the prosperity of Russia".
[26] The social order is enforced by the public floggings, torture and execution of any Russians who dare to think differently and those speak out "return home with black stumps in place of their tongues".
[36] The narrator of the novel agrees that despite the use of extreme violence and cruelty by the restored Tsarist regime that the system that exists in Russia is superior to the "rotting democratic West".
[38] Markov in turn was a member of the Welt-Dienst, an international antisemitic society based in Erfurt, Germany and headed by a former German Army officer, Ulrich Fleischhauer whose efforts to promote The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion in Switzerland had caused the lawsuit in Berne.
[38] In his correspondence with Markov, Krasnov affirmed his belief in the authenticity of The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion, but stated he was unwilling to be grilled by the lawyers for the plaintiffs.
[38] In 1937, after several Russian White emigre leaders in Paris had been assassinated by the Soviet NKVD, Krasnov moved to Berlin where he believed he would be safer, and declared his support for the Third Reich.
However, when the Bremen floated noiselessly by and she saw a black swastika in a white circle on a scarlet banner, a sign of eternal motion and continuum, she was feeling a warm tide covering her heart...That’s Motherland!
[41] Upon hearing of the launching of Operation Barbarossa on 22 June 1941, Krasnov immediately issued a statement of support for the "crusade against Judeo-Bolshevism" and declared: "I wish to state to all Cossacks that this is not a war against Russia, but against Communists, Jews and their minions who trade in Russian blood.
"[42] By all accounts, Krasnov was extremely elated when he heard of Operation Barbarossa and believing it to be the beginning of the end of the Soviet Union and the "liberation of Russia from Judeo-Bolshevism".
[42] Krasnov contacted Joseph Goebbels, the German Minister of Propaganda, and asked for permission to speak on Radio Berlin's Russian language broadcasts to deliver pro-Nazi speeches, which was granted.
Krasnov, who considered himself a Russian first and a Cossack second, was not in sympathy with Rosenberg's notion of establishing a Nazi puppet state to be called "Cossackia" in southeastern Russia.
[45] On 31 March 1944, Rosenberg created a "government-in-exile" in Berlin for Cossackia headed by Krasnov, who, in turn, appointed ataman Naumenko of the Kuban Host as his "minister of war".
[55] On July 30, 2008, the Prosecutor's office of the Sholokhovsky district, at the request of State Duma deputy N. V. Kolomeitsev, initiated an administrative case on the installation of this monument.
[56] In 2017, on the eve of the 74th anniversary of the liberation of Rostov-on-Don from the German occupation, activists of the organization "Essence of Time" petitioned the executive and legislative authorities of the Russian Federation, demanding to dismantle the monument to Krasnov as an accomplice of the Third Reich and to stop schoolchildren from familiarizing themselves with the memorial dedicated to the Cossack collaborators.
[57] In the issue of "News of the Week" dated April 26, 2020, TV presenter Dmitry Kiselev called for a monument to be erected in honor of Pyotr Krasnov.
<...> Attaching exceptional importance to the above, the Council of Atamans decided: to refuse the petition to the non-profit foundation "Cossack Abroad" in resolving the issue of political rehabilitation of P. N. Krasnov".