General Miller is a well-known Russian military leader, one of the direct leaders of the White movement in the north of the country in 1919-1920. He was the commander in chief of the naval, land and armed forces of Russia, this association was called the Northern Army. She fought against the Bolsheviks on the Northern Front during the Civil War.
Origin
General Miller Eugene-Ludwig Karlovich was born in 1867. He was born in the town of Dinaburg in the territory of Vitebsk province.
The hero of our article came from a noble family of Millers, whose ancestors had German roots. Already in his later memoirs, he noted that he was brought up in a parental home, where he received his initial home education. Father and mother made sure that he grew up as a believing Christian, respected the human person. Parents wanted him to do so regardless of what kind of social position a person occupies, instilled in him a sense of justice, an understanding of the difference between good and evil. Miller admitted that his parents tried in every possible way to instill in him the basics so that he could feel the difference between philanthropy and cruelty, deceit and sincerity, lies and truth.
At the beginning of military service
Evgeny Karlovich after home schooling without any problems entered the cadet corps in 1884, and two years later in the cavalry school in Nikolaev. He graduated with the rank of cornet, starting to serve in the Life Guards of the Hussar Regiment.
In 1892 he became a graduate of the Academy of the General Staff in Nikolaev. And a year later he was appointed head of the combat department at the headquarters of the Kara fortress. However, he did not stay at this post for long, since in March 1893 he was transferred to the reserve.
In July 1896, the hero of our article ends up at the General Staff Building, where he becomes the boss. At the beginning of 1898 he was sent as an agent to The Hague and Brussels, where he participated in the preparation of the first conference in The Hague on behalf of the Russian Empire.
In 1901 he was appointed a military agent in Italy, in the same year Miller was promoted to colonel.
At the end of 1907, Miller became commander of the Seventh Belorussian Hussar Regiment, and in 1909 he became chief quartermaster at the Main Directorate of the General Staff. Almost all Russian military attachés in most European countries find themselves in his subordination.
In 1909, the hero of our article was awarded the title of Major General, and soon he became the head of the Nikolaev Cavalry School. In 1912, Nikolaev was appointed head of the headquarters of the Moscow military district.
Participation in the First World War
When the First World War began, General Miller was promoted to chief of staff of the Fifth Army. Her management was created on the basis of the command of the Moscow Military District.
He took part in the Battle of Galicia, repelling the German advance on Warsaw as part of the Lodz Operation. During the war he proved himself a competent and courageous strategist, for which in 1915 he was awarded the rank of lieutenant general.
He took part in the formation of the headquarters of the 12th army of the Western Front. With this army, General Miller took part in the Prasnysh operation, being the chief of its staff. This is a major battle on the Eastern Front, where the main theater of operations moved after the German command realized that the enemy could not be quickly defeated.
The battle turned out to be very bloody. The Russian army lost 72 thousand people killed, wounded and captured, the losses of the German army amounted to about 60 thousand. According to its results, the Germans occupied Prasnysh (this is a city on the territory of modern Poland, which is located about a hundred kilometers from Warsaw).
But two days later the German army retreated from Prasnysh. The calculations of the German command turned out to be incorrect, and the Russian armies failed to defeat. Moreover, they had to withdraw their troops to fortified positions located near the state border.
Modern experts and historians note that the operation had a significant impact on the development of all military operations in the North-West direction.
In the spring of 1915, the command of the Russian army was transferred to the Riga-Shavel direction, and soon renamed the Fifth Army. In June, Miller was once again appointed chief of staff.
In September 1916, General Yevgeny Karlovich Miller assumed command of the 26th Army Corps, which was part of the Special Army, which carried out operations in Romania. Under his command, a large-scale offensive was carried out, which was crowned with obvious success, the Russian units managed to gain a foothold in the Carpathians, capturing a large number of enemy soldiers and officers, as well as capturing German machine guns and cannons.
February revolution
When the February Revolution took place in Russia, its echoes after some time reached the army. In April 1917, unrest occurred in the units commanded by Miller. The general himself was beaten and arrested by his own soldiers after he ordered all his subordinates to remove the red bows.
During the arrest, General Miller, whose biography is given in this article, was injured. Under guard, he was sent to Petrograd, embraced by revolutionary unrest. It is worth noting that the organized investigation was as objective as possible and did not reveal any crime in Miller's actions. Immediately after that he was released, having written off to the reserve.
In August 1917, the hero of our article was at the disposal of the Chief of the General Staff, becoming the official representative of the Headquarters of the Supreme Commander-in-Chief at the Italian apartment, where he immediately went.
Life abroad
Shortly after the October Revolution, a real Civil War unfolded in Russia. When the Bolsheviks came to power in the country, Miller decided to refuse to maintain relations with the Main Directorate of the General Staff and directly with the Headquarters. For this, he was put to trial by a revolutionary tribunal in absentia , although they could not directly get to him.
He left Italy only after the Bolsheviks concluded the Brest-Litovsk peace treaty, as his further stay at the front turned out to be pointless. At the same time, he did not immediately return to Russia, but came to Paris. In the French capital, he dealt with the issues of the transfer to his homeland and the disbandment of parts of Russian brigades, which had previously been based in Macedonia and France.
In November, the Russian ambassador to Paris, Vasily Maklakov, received telegrams from the French ambassador Joseph Nulans and his Italian counterpart Pietro Tomazi della Torretta, who were sent from Arkhangelsk. They asked Miller to come to the north of Russia. A year later, the hero of our article received a telegram with approximately the same content from the anti-Bolshevik government that controlled the Northern Region. He was invited to become its governor general.
Miller traveled to Arkhangelsk through London, where he met with the head of the British General Staff named Henry Wilson, who assured him that the Allied landing in northern Russia was related to the confrontation in the war with the Germans and the Bolsheviks concluded a truce with Germany. At the same time, he emphasized that the British government did not plan any operations directly against the Bolshevik army.
Civil War
Miller arrived in Murmansk on a steamer called Umtali, and then on the icebreaker Canada in the early days of 1919 he reached Arkhangelsk. There he was immediately appointed head of foreign affairs of the White Guard government. Since January 15, Miller officially became the Governor-General of the Northern Region. In May, he assumed command of the Northern Army, and a few months later, the entire Northern Front.
Since September 1919, Miller has been considered the Chief of the Northern Territory, and his 20,000th army is directly subordinate to him. During the fighting, the hero of our article enjoyed the support of a limited English military contingent, which was extremely small, but helped Miller.
The General of the White Army with the help of the British managed to achieve certain successes, fighting against the Bolsheviks. However, in the fall of 1919, the government of British Prime Minister David Lloyd George officially refused to support the forces that are fighting against the Red Army. Immediately after that, supplies of weapons and ammunition from the kingdom, which ensured the combat readiness of General Miller’s Northern Army, abruptly ceased. She found herself in a critical situation, since there were no military factories on the territory controlled by her, so the army had no other source for obtaining weapons. General Miller’s army was virtually left to its own devices.
In October 1919, changes took place in the leadership of the region. Admiral Kolchak, who was in the status of the Supreme Ruler of Russia, abolished the interim government that existed in the Northern Region. White Army General Miller was appointed chief of the region. However, he was endowed with dictatorial powers.
Despite the loss of British support, White Army General Miller continued the confrontation with the Bolsheviks. However, he could not fight for a long time. Soon, the Northern Army of General Miller was forced to capitulate, and the hero of our article himself was hastily sent to emigration.
Together with him, about eight hundred military personnel, as well as civilian refugees, who were accommodated on the Yaroslavna yacht and an icebreaking steamer called Kozma Minin, went abroad. There were many obstacles on their way, including ice fields, the Bolshevik icebreaker "Canada" tried to stop them, sent in pursuit of fugitives, but the sailors, led by Lieutenant General Miller, still managed to get to the Norwegian port of Tromso, where they arrived on February 26 1920 year.
Forced emigration
First, the hero of our article, along with everyone who was with him on a yacht and an icebreaker, ended up in a refugee camp, which was based near the Norwegian city of Trondheim. It was called Stiordalen. They had to stay there until June 1920. After that, Lieutenant General E.K. Miller left for France. Then he remained in exile.
Arriving in Paris, he began to collaborate with General Peter Nikolaevich Wrangel. Miller became his commissioner for naval and military affairs. In the spring of 1922, he headed the headquarters of General Wrangel, and from the following year he was at the disposal of Prince Nikolai Nikolayevich, the grandson of Emperor Nicholas I. In particular, General E.K. Miller was in charge of his financial affairs.
In 1924, the Russian All-Military Union was created, which was called the abbreviation ROVS. In 1925, the hero of our article became the senior assistant to its chairman, Nikolai Nikolaevich. ROVS positions itself as a Russian military organization, which was created in 1924 by Baron Wrangel. Initially, it included various unions and military organizations that were in different countries in exile. The union exists today. Now it unites the descendants of the direct participants in the White movement, as well as their like-minded people. Since 1996, the organization has been operating in Russia and the former republics of the Soviet Union.
In 1929, General Alexander Pavlovich Kutepov was appointed to this post, but the next year he was abducted by Soviet intelligence. After that, General Miller becomes chairman of the EMRO. At the same time, he holds the post of head of the Association of Officers of the Seventh Hussar Regiment, as well as the mutual assistance society of former pupils of the Nikolaev Cavalry School.
General Miller, whose photo you will find in this article, has always actively opposed the Bolshevik government. As chairman of the Russian All-Military Union, he formulated his views in the article "Why are we irreconcilable." In particular, he wrote that the Soviet government declared an implacable war on the three foundations on which the life of the Russian people and the state itself was built. According to Miller, these were the Motherland, Orthodoxy and the family. Therefore, Miller himself noted that he feels hatred for the Bolsheviks, which knows no boundaries. And he hopes only that he will soon have to personally participate in the overthrow of their power and the future revival of Russia.
Abduction
Miller's activities in France were detrimental to the Soviet government. The leaders of the Communist Party were seriously afraid of retaliatory actions, which activists of the Russian military alliance could decide on.
As a result, it was decided to organize the abduction of General Miller. The operation was carried out on September 22, 1937. Immediately after this, the officers were taken to Moscow by NKVD agents. It is noteworthy that the main purpose of the operation was to promote White General Nikolai Skoblin, who was recruited by Soviet intelligence, as chairman of the EMRO.
Skoblin himself took a direct part in the operation, luring Miller to a meeting with the NKVD officers who came to France under the guise of German diplomats. As it became known now, NKVD agent Sergey Tretyakov also took an active part in the abduction of General Miller.
Miller himself, leaving for the fateful meeting, felt that it could be a trap. Therefore, he even left a note in which he noted that he was going to meet with Skoblin and the German officers Werner and Shtrotman, who surprisingly speak good Russian. As a result, although the abduction itself succeeded, the NKVD’s plan to promote Skoblin to the leadership of the ROVS failed, as the white emigration found out that he was a traitor. He was forced to flee and soon died under mysterious circumstances. It is assumed that agents of the NKVD themselves liquidated it, delivering it to Moscow by plane, which flew to Spain from Paris.
For the white movement, the abduction of Miller was a serious blow. They spoke of him as a man with impeccable honesty, which he managed to maintain in himself until the very last day of his life. His friends and associates noted that the traitor Skoblin asked Miller to keep their meeting a secret, knowing that he would definitely keep his word. The general did so, but managed to provide a service to the common cause of the white emigration, leaving a note just in case. She revealed the traitor, who hoped after the disappearance of Miller to head the Russian military alliance.
Miller was brought to the USSR on a ship called "Maria Ulyanova." He was sent to prison in Lubyanka, where he was held under the name of Pyotr Vasilyevich Ivanov. During interrogations, he did not provide any information about his supporters, so as not to harm the Russian military alliance.
March 30, 1938 he turned to the People's Commissar of the Interior Nikolai Yezhov with a request to allow him to incognito and unofficially visit the Orthodox Church in the end. But no response to this request from the Soviet authorities and specifically Yezhov did not follow. Then Miller wrote another letter in which he asked to pass the gospel into his prison cell and to allow him to use paper and a pen, but the Soviet system again remained silent.
The military collegium of the Supreme Court of the RSFSR sentenced Miller to capital punishment. He was shot in May 1939 in the internal prison of the NKVD.
Personal life
Often can be seen in the photo of General Miller with his wife and children. His wife was Natalya Shipova from an old noble family, with whom he married at the end of 1896. She was three years younger than him, died in 1945. His father-in-law was cavalry general Nikolai Shipov, and his mother-in-law was called Sofia Lanskaya.
Miller’s wife was the granddaughter of the poet’s wife Alexander Pushkin, who became Lanskoy in her second marriage. The very next year, they had a daughter, Maria, who became a well-known church and public figure, married Protopresbyter Alexander Chekan. She died in 1982.
In 1898, the couple gave birth to a daughter, Sofia, and two years later, their son Nikolai. Almost nothing is known about their fate; they died in 1946.
Miller's image in art
The image of Eugene Miller is repeatedly found in films and books. So, he is mentioned in the novels of Valery Povolyaev "The Northern Cross" and Peter Krasnov "Lies", during the command of the Northern Army, his figure is described by the Soviet writer Valentin Pikul in the novel "From the Dead End". Miller also appears in the work of the masters of the Soviet detective Weiner brothers "Karsky Raid."
The story of the abduction of the general is described in detail in the 2004 psychological drama of Eric Romer "The Triple Agent". At the heart of this picture is the criminal case of the abduction in Paris of Miller, organized by the Soviet agent Skoblin. Since many of the circumstances of this story are still reliably unknown, the authors boldly supplemented the plot with all kinds of assumptions, which the audience is warned about in the opening credits. Miller is withdrawn in the film under the name of General Dobrinsky. His role is played by Dmitry Rafalsky.
In the historical drama by Mikhail Kozakov “The Charm of Evil”, filmed in 2006, the hero of our article is already played by Victor Tulchinsky. This is a 6-episode film about the life of Russian emigrants in Paris in the 30s.