Vladimir Kappel

Who was Vladimir Kappel?

Vladimir Oskarovich Kappel was a White Russian military leader.

During the First World War he was a Chief of the 347th Infantry Regiment's Staff and an officer in the 1st Army's Staff. Following the Bolshevik Revolution, Kappel commanded the Komuch White Army group and from December 1919 the Eastern Front of Aleksandr Kolchak.

Kappel was born into a Swedish-Russian family. He graduated from the Saint Petersburg Page Corps and then from the Nikolayevskoye Cavalry School and Nikolayevskaya Academy of the General Staff. Although he was a self-declared monarchist, Kappel said he would fight under any banner against Bolsheviks. Kappel's adherents and allies were known in Russian as kappelevtsy. After the execution of Admiral Aleksandr Kolchak in Irkutsk, the kappelevtsy were forced to undertake a winter march toward Chita, known as the "Great Siberian Ice march". General Kappel died of deep frostbite.

Kappel's tomb in Harbin was pulled down after Mao Zedong assumed power in China. On December 19, 2006 the remains of Kappel were transported for reinterment from China to Irkutsk. On January 13, 2007, Vladimir Kappel's remains were interred at Donskoy Monastery in Moscow.