His name appeared, alongside komkor Vladimir Gittis, on the death list of 20 August 1938, which was signed by Joseph Stalin and Vyacheslav Molotov.

Garf was born in Grodno (now the Republic of Belarus), the eldest son of Yevgeny Georgievich von Garf, an officer of the General Staff, later lieutenant general, head of the Main Directorate of Cossack troops, and Klara Fedorovna (1857— 1934), the daughter of Fedor Bogdanovich von Schulz, the vice admiral of the Russian fleet.

Garf was enrolled as a student of the Imperial Nikolaev Military Academy, from which he graduated from the first category with the appointment to the General Staff in 1910.

At the same time, many future leaders of the White movement turned out to be graduates of the academy in 1910: Pyotr Wrangel, M. M. Zinkevich, N. V. Nagaev, V. I. Sidorin, A. L. Nosovich, and A. N. Vagin.

[3] With the outbreak of the First World War and the formation in July 1914 of the units of the Vilnius District of the 1st Army (Russian Empire), Captain Garf took over the position of senior adjutant of the Quartermaster General of Staff.

As part of the Northwestern Front, the 1st Army (Russian Empire), under the command of General Paul von Rennenkampf, entered East Prussia on August 4, 1914.

On December 6, 1914, he was awarded the rank of lieutenant colonel, and in February of the following year he was appointed senior adjutant to the commander of the 26th Infantry Division, Major General P. A. Tikhonovich.

Nevertheless, the division quickly earned a reputation as a reliable unit, having been on the South-Western Front since 1914, where it participated in battles for Lviv and in the siege of the Austrian fortress Przemysl.

Garf assumed the post of chief of staff of the division in those days when, in the beginning of autumn 1915, as part of 21 corps, it was transferred to the Western Front in the region of Krevo-Smorgon.

The division remained here for more than two years, until the dissolution of the imperial army in March 1918 after the Bolsheviks signed the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk Peace.

Gavrilov, wrote very favorably of Garf: He dealt with combat operations of the division in the field and staff activities skillfully and quickly, and ignored the dangers in pursuing success in battle.

After the October Revolution, Colonel Garf, in his previous post of Chief of Staff of the 69th Division, remained on the front lines.

On January 30, 1918, Commander-in-Chief N.V. Krylenko summoned Garf to Petrograd, where he appointed him assistant clerk of the Main Directorate of the General Staff.

[8][9] Having believed the calls of the former General Mikhail Dmitriyevich Bonch-Bruyevich, Garf voluntarily joined the Red Army and, on October 8, 1918, was appointed to the headquarters of the Eastern Front.

After Samoylo, the front was sequentially commanded by Sergei Kamenev (repeatedly), Pavel Pavlovich Lebedev, Mikhail Frunze, and Vladimir Olderogge.

Under the conditions of a constant change of commanders of the Eastern Front, Garf managed to ensure continuity and discipline of the troops.

For successfully preparing and conducting operations on the Eastern Front of the Civil War, Garf was awarded the Order of the Red Banner in 1921.

[10] Being a non-partisan representative of a social class alien to the Bolsheviks, and also an ethnic German, for many years Garf held various leadership positions in the headquarters of the Red Army solely because of his professionalism.

[11][12][13] In February 1931, Garf switched to teaching, first as a military instructor at the Moscow Electrotechnical Institute of Communications (MEIS), and since August 1932, as deputy head of the Telecommunications Engineering Academy named after V.N.

He kept silent that his cousin L. L. Kerber, who had been arrested ten days earlier, was in one of the neighboring cells of the internal prison on Lubyanka, thereby saving his life.

Garf and his family lived in the model house 9/11 in Potapovsky Lane, where many famous Soviet leaders, including senior commanders, settled.