Kaledin, Aleksei

Born Oct. 12 (24), 1861, in the stanitsa (large cossack village) of Ust’-Khoperskaia, in present-day Serafimovich Raion, Volgograd Oblast; died Jan. 29 (Feb. 11) 1918, in Novocherkassk. Headed the cossack counterrevolution in the Don region in 1917–18. General of cavalry (1917). From the dvorianstvo (nobility or gentry).

Kaledin graduated from the Mikhail Artillery College in 1882 and from the Academy of the General Staff in 1889. During World War I, he commanded the XII Army Corps and, from May 1916 to May 1917, the Eighth Army of the Southwestern Front. On June 17 (30), 1917, at the Great Host Council he was elected ataman of the Don Cossack Host and became the head of the counterrevolutionary Don Cossack Host government. In August 1917 at the State Assembly he presented a program for suppressing the revolutionary movement. After the October Revolution he led a counterrevolutionary revolt, the Kaledin Revolt. Defeat forced Kaledin to acknowledge at a session of the Don Cossack Host government on Jan. 29 (Feb. 11), 1918, that the situation was hopeless. He relinquished his powers and on the same day shot himself.