Nikolai Nikolayevich Shilling (; 16 December 1870 – 1946) was a Russian military officer and general in the White

Armed Forces of South Russia The Armed Forces of South Russia (AFSR or SRAF) () were the unified military forces of the White movement in southern Russia between 1919 and 1920. On 8 January 1919, the Armed Forces of South Russia were formed, incorporating the Volunteer Ar ...

during the

Russian Civil War The Russian Civil War () was a multi-party civil war in the former Russian Empire sparked by the 1917 overthrowing of the Russian Provisional Government in the October Revolution, as many factions vied to determine Russia's political future. I ...

Life

Shilling joined the Nikolai Cadet Corps in 1888 and the 1st Pavel Military School in 1890. He served in the elite guard, the Izmailovsky Regiment, between 1888 and 1913, and reached the rank of colonel in 1909. During the First World War he commanded the 5th Finnish Rifles Regiment, until he was promoted in 1915 to major general and put in command of a brigade of the 2nd Finnish Rifle Division. In 1916 he went to command the

Izmaylovsky Regiment The Izmaylovsky Regiment (), also Izmailovsky, was one of the oldest regiments of the Imperial Russian Army, a subdivision of the 1st Guards Infantry Division of the Imperial Russian Guard. It was formed in Moscow on 22 September 1730 as Empres ...

and between July 1917 and February 1918, the 17th Army Corps. After the signing of the

Brest-Litovsk Treaty The Treaty of Brest-Litovsk was a separate peace treaty signed on 3 March 1918 between Soviet Russia and the Central Powers (Germany, Austria-Hungary, the Ottoman Empire, and Bulgaria), by which Russia withdrew from World War I. The treaty, whi ...

, Shilling entered in the service of the German-controlled

Ukrainian State The Ukrainian State (), sometimes also called the Second Cossack Hetmanate, Hetmanate (), was an Anti-communism, anti-Bolshevik government that existed on most of the modern territory of Ukraine (except for Western Ukraine) from 29 April to 14 ...

Pavlo Skoropadskyi Pavlo Petrovych Skoropadskyi (; – 26 April 1945) was a Ukrainian aristocrat, military and state leader, who served as the Hetman of all Ukraine, hetman of the Ukrainian State throughout 1918 following a 1918 Ukrainian coup d'état, coup d'éta ...

until its collapse in December 1918, when he joined the White Russian

Volunteer Army The Volunteer Army (; ), abbreviated to (), also known as the Southern White Army was a White Army active in South Russia during the Russian Civil War from 1917 to 1920. The Volunteer Army fought against Bolsheviks and the Makhnovists on the ...

. He commanded the 5th Infantry Division between February and June 1919, and then until August the 3rd Army Corps. He distinguished himself in that period by taking

Kherson Kherson (Ukrainian language, Ukrainian and , , ) is a port city in southern Ukraine that serves as the administrative centre of Kherson Oblast. Located by the Black Sea and on the Dnieper, Dnieper River, Kherson is the home to a major ship-bui ...

, Nikolaev and

Odessa ODESSA is an American codename (from the German language, German: ''Organisation der ehemaligen SS-Angehörigen'', meaning: Organization of Former SS Members) coined in 1946 to cover Ratlines (World War II aftermath), Nazi underground escape-pl ...

. Between September 1919 and February 1920, he was military commander and governor of Ukraine and the Crimea, until he was forced out of Odessa by the Red Army's Odessa Operation (1920). He was widely criticised for the disastrous evacuation of the city on 6 and 7 February 1920, when thousands of White soldiers and civilians were left behind to fall into the hands of the Red Army and the

Cheka The All-Russian Extraordinary Commission ( rus, Всероссийская чрезвычайная комиссия, r=Vserossiyskaya chrezvychaynaya komissiya, p=fsʲɪrɐˈsʲijskəjə tɕrʲɪzvɨˈtɕæjnəjə kɐˈmʲisʲɪjə, links=yes), ...

. When

Anton Denikin Anton Ivanovich Denikin (, ; – 7 August 1947) was a Russian military leader who served as the Supreme Ruler of Russia, acting supreme ruler of the Russian State and the commander-in-chief of the White movement–aligned armed forces of Sout ...

was replaced by

Pyotr Wrangel Baron Pyotr Nikolayevich Wrangel (, ; ; 25 April 1928), also known by his nickname the Black Baron, was a Russian military officer of Baltic German origin in the Imperial Russian Army. During the final phase of the Russian Civil War, he was c ...

at the head of the AFSR, Shilling was retired and emigrated to

Czechoslovakia Czechoslovakia ( ; Czech language, Czech and , ''Česko-Slovensko'') was a landlocked country in Central Europe, created in 1918, when it declared its independence from Austria-Hungary. In 1938, after the Munich Agreement, the Sudetenland beca ...

, where he temporarily led the Foreign Union of Russian War Veterans. When the Red Army entered that country in 1945, the

SMERSH SMERSH () was an umbrella organization for three independent counter-intelligence agencies in the Red Army formed in late 1942 or even earlier, but officially announced only on 14 April 1943. The name SMERSH was coined by Joseph Stalin. The form ...

arrested him, although shortly after, he was released. He died the following year in Prague.

Sources

* Smele, Jonathan D. (2015). ''Historical Dictionary of the Russian Civil Wars, 1916-1926''. Rowman & Littlefield, pp. 1026-1027. . {{DEFAULTSORT:Shilling 1870 births 1946 deaths Imperial Russian Army generals White movement lieutenant generals Russian military personnel of World War I People of the Russian Civil War White Russian emigrants to Czechoslovakia