Peter Wrangel

From The Last Years of H. M. Hyndman by Rosalind Travers Hyndman, 1924

. . . during a few days in August [1920], it seemed possible that British forces might be used in support of Poland (and perhaps of General Wrangel) against Russia. A certain labour group called the �Council of Action� took credit to itself for having entirely blocked this proposal by the threat of a Transport Strike. I wonder ! I wonder very much. There is no doubt that the policy of the Council of Action was considered must timely and serviceable by certain members of the Cabinet and their friends.

( page 220 )

New York : Brentano�s, 1924.

I AM GLAD that General Wrangel�s memoirs are being made available to the American public. The Title, ALWAYS WITH HONOUR, envisages the man.

General Wrangel was educated as an engineer. He departed from that profession to serve his country in war. His first military service was in the Russo-Japanese War in 1904 as an officer in a Cossack regiment. In the First World War he rose rapidly in the Russian Army to the rank of Major General.

I did not know General Wrangel personally. But having charge of European relief and reconstruction measures on behalf of the Allies after the First World War, my duties extended to the Black Sea region. I was therefore familiar with the anti-Communist military operations in South Russia and particularly the army commanded by General Wrangel.

General Wrangel was one of the first of the Russian leaders to realize the dangers of the Communist revolution to the Russian people and the world. Immediately after the seizure of the Government by the Communists he joined the �White� armies under General Denikin in South Russia as one of his principal commanders. I was informed at that time by the Allied military authorities that General Denikin was wholly in adequate to his task and that General Wrangel, who was his subordinate, had the military and personal qualities which might bring victory over the Red armies.

After Denikin�s defeat General Wrangel took command of the small disorganized remnants. Starting with an army no better equipped than Washington�s at Valley Forge, he recovered the Crimea against ten to one odds. But in the end he was compelled to withdraw through Sevastopol to foreign countries in order to save the remnants of his army and a host of Russian refugees. American Admiral McCauley, who was in Sevastopol at this moment, says ;

Without any disorder Sevastopol was quickly evacuated at 3 P.M. . . . General Wrangel was the last to leave.

Until his death in 1928 General Wrangel devoted all his resources to the service of Russian refugees dispersed over Europe. His wife Olga took a devoted part.

In an address six months before his passing, he said :

. . . History, which knows no favouritism, will tell the importance of our struggle, the capacity of our sacrifices. It will know that the fight we carried on for the love of our country, for the resurrection of Russia as a nation, was indeed at the same time to safeguard the culture of Europe, the struggle for an age-long civilization, for the defence of Europe against the Red terror. . . .

General Wrangel�s memoirs are the story of that great devotion.

  Herbert Hoover

ALWAYS WITH HONOUR
by GENERAL BARON PETER N. WRANGEL
With a Foreword by HERBERT HOOVER
New York : Robert Speller & Sons, 1957.

Vrangelʹ,* Petr Nikolaevich, baron, 1878-1928. Title Always with honour; [memoirs of General Wrangel] With a foreword by Herbert Hoover. Publisher New York : R. Speller, 1957. Description 356 p. illus. 22 cm. Series Makers of history series Language English Note Translation of Zapiski; noi︠a︡brʹ 1916-noi︠a︡brʹ 1920 (romanized form)

* Commie / communazi disinformation watch :

The hard copy in my hand gives the name of the author as ' Peter N. Wrangel ' :
'P-e-t-e-r   N.   W-r-a-n-g-e-l' (WPT, Los Angeles Public Library, 5th Street, 16 July 05).

Note the body of the work is uniform with "The Memoirs of General Wrangel, The Last Commander-in-Chief of the Russian national Army" translated by Sophie Goulston, publisher Duffield & Company, MCMXXX (i.e. 1930) in New York ; printed in London by Unwin Brothers.

The publication data given by the 1957 edition are likely to mislead the reader. The volume bears the "First edition" imprint. The work had been published by Duffield (New York), printed in England in 1930 by Unwin Brothers ; from the page 3 to the page 351 the text does not differ in any respect. The data in the Index do not differ, except that the edition 1957 extends the page numbering to the Index, which the earlier edition does not.

The 1957 edition makes no mention of the obvious fact, its being a mere reprint ; it does not include the "Translator's Preface" by Sophie Goulston, nor even the translator's name. That could be called sloppy indeed.

All in all one cannot but conceive that there might be the commie/communazi infiltration present somewhere within the Publisher R. Speller in 1957,¹ the targets being, obviously, Messrs. P. N. Wrangel, H. Hoover, and the rest of the humanity the commie/communazi criminals themselves excepted, following the usual pattern observed in many other instances.

Howbeit, the body of the text does not in any respect differ between these two publications -- so far as I see, and it seems not to have been altered. Supposing it be accurate, either edition can be used without discrimination insofar as Gen. Wrangel's narrative is concerned. (WPT)

      ¹ Please compare the dates : the last reprint of The Nature of Mathematics by Max Black, 1958 ; the falsified {"new and improved") second translation of the "Tractatus" by Ludwig Wittgenstein, 1958 ; some few others like.

Vrangelʹ, Petr Nikolaevich, baron, 1878-1928. Uniform Title [ Zapiski, noi︠a︡brʹ 1916-noi︠a︡brʹ 1920. French. 1930] Title M�moires du G�n�ral Wrangel. Publisher Paris : �ditions J. Tallandier, [c1930]. Description 332 p., 15 leaves of plates : ill., maps, ports. ; 23 cm. Language French Note Translation of: Zapiski; noi︠a︡br' 1916-noi︠a︡br' 1920. Master negative held by: CUY

Vrangelʹ, Petr Nikolaevich, baron, 1878-1928. Uniform Title [ Zapiski. English] Title The memoirs of General Wrangel, the last commander-in-chief of the Russian national army, translated by Sophie Goulston... Publisher [New York] Duffield & company, 1930. Description x p., 2 l., 3-356p. front., illus. (maps) plates, ports. 25 cm. Language English Note The English version is translated from the French, in which detailed accounts of events of purely Russian interest were omitted, in accordance with instructions of the author.

Note

Part I, The Birth of the Counter-Revolution (pp. 3 - 133).

BELGRADE, July 31, 1922.

Part II : On The Last Strip of Native Soil (pp. 137 � 327 )

SREMSKY-KARLOVTZY, December 30, 1923.

Part III : The White Armies : In Russia and Later (pp. 331 � 348)

A speech delivered by General Wrangel at a political conference in Brussels and published in the �English Review� of October 1927, this article is, by the courtesy of the Editor of that journal, here reprinted as the final part of the Memoirs.

Vrangelʹ, Petr Nikolaevich, baron, 1878-1928 Title The memoirs of Baron N. Wrangel, 1847-1920 : from serfdom to bolshevism / translated by Brian and Beatrix Lunn Publisher London : Ernest Benn Ltd., 1927 Description 324 p. ; 23 cm Language English

Bi︠e︡loe di︠e︡lo. Publisher [Berlin] : Mi︠e︡dnyĭ vsadnik 1926-<1933> Description v. : ill., ports., maps, facsims. ; 26 cm. Language Russian Note "Materialy, sobrannye i razrabotannye baronom P.N. Vrangelem, gert︠s︡ogom G.N. Leĭkhtenbergskim i kni︠a︡zem A.P. Livenom."

    At Riga a Polish-Soviet peace, of sorts, was agreed upon (the Polish representative there, Debski, having been later accused of having been deceived by his Soviet counterpart.

The statements by a Polish envoy in another country, to which Gen. Wrangel took an exception, were probably entirely disrelated to the developments at Riga. The statement by the envoy, published in some newsoaper, were probably written at least a day or two before the new developments ; this envoy had no influence on what was going on in Riga and was probably not in communication with the parties there other than indirectly via Warsaw.

Therefore his article, published somewhere in the press, could not be considered as representative of anything other than his own idea of the situation, to the extent that he was himseelf informed ; in that regard he was a few days "behind", in all likelihood, the events at Riga.

This refers to the only part of Wrangel's texts which to me, for one, seems unfair. (WPT).