Nikolay Nikolayevich Dukhonin (; 13 December 1876 – 3 December 1917) was a Russian general who was briefly the last supreme commander of the

Russian Army The Russian Ground Forces (), also known as the Russian Army in English, are the Army, land forces of the Russian Armed Forces. The primary responsibilities of the Russian Ground Forces are the protection of the state borders, combat on land, ...

after the

October Revolution The October Revolution, also known as the Great October Socialist Revolution (in Historiography in the Soviet Union, Soviet historiography), October coup, Bolshevik coup, or Bolshevik revolution, was the second of Russian Revolution, two r ...

before the Bolsheviks took control of it.

Biography

Dukhonin was born in the

Smolensk Governorate Smolensk Governorate () was an administrative-territorial unit ('' guberniya'') of the Tsardom of Russia, the Russian Empire, and the Russian SFSR. It existed, with interruptions, between 1708 and 1929. Smolensk Governorate, together with seven o ...

. He served in the

Kiev Military District The Kiev Military District (; , abbreviated ) was a military district of the Imperial Russian Army and subsequently of the Red Army and Soviet Armed Forces. It was first formed in 1862, and was headquartered in Kiev (Kyiv) for most of its exist ...

before the start of the

First World War World War I or the First World War (28 July 1914 – 11 November 1918), also known as the Great War, was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War I, Allies (or Entente) and the Central Powers. Fighting to ...

. There he gained some experience in

intelligence Intelligence has been defined in many ways: the capacity for abstraction, logic, understanding, self-awareness, learning, emotional knowledge, reasoning, planning, creativity, critical thinking, and problem-solving. It can be described as t ...

work. At the outset of the War, Dukhonin was given command of a Russian regiment. He was then assigned to the Third Army in

Dubno Dubno (, ) is a List of cities in Ukraine, city and List of hromadas of Ukraine, municipality located on the Ikva River in Rivne Oblast (oblast, province) of western Ukraine. It serves as the capital city, administrative center of Dubno Raion ...

under General Ruzsky as senior adjutant of the intelligence department. In the spring of 1917 he was the chief of staff of the Southwestern Front, In August 1917, Dukhonin was Quartermaster General of the Southwestern Front, and was plucked from this relative obscurity by Kerensky to replace Alexeyev as Chief of Staff at GHQ in Mogilev, as Alexeyev had resigned as a result of Kornilov's failed coup. It was Alexeyev who had suggested Dukhonin as his successor so that he could continue to influence affairs at

Stavka The ''Stavka'' ( Russian and Ukrainian: Ставка, ) is a name of the high command of the armed forces used formerly in the Russian Empire and Soviet Union and currently in Ukraine. In Imperial Russia ''Stavka'' referred to the administrat ...

in Mogilev. When Kerensky fled Petrograd and then Russia following the seizure of power by the

Bolsheviks The Bolsheviks, led by Vladimir Lenin, were a radical Faction (political), faction of the Marxist Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (RSDLP) which split with the Mensheviks at the 2nd Congress of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party, ...

in the

, Dukhonin became de facto Supreme Commander, albeit of an army that was rapidly disintegrating, and over which he exercised very little control. During the initial stages of the Bolshevik seizure of power the

Council of People's Commissars The Council of People's Commissars (CPC) (), commonly known as the ''Sovnarkom'' (), were the highest executive (government), executive authorities of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (RSFSR), the Soviet Union (USSR), and the Sovi ...

instructed Dukhonin to cease wartime hostilities and open negotiations with the Central Powers.

Lenin Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov ( 187021 January 1924), better known as Vladimir Lenin, was a Russian revolutionary, politician and political theorist. He was the first head of government of Soviet Russia from 1917 until Death and state funeral of ...

and Krylenko visited Dukhonin in

Petrograd Saint Petersburg, formerly known as Petrograd and later Leningrad, is the second-largest city in Russia after Moscow. It is situated on the River Neva, at the head of the Gulf of Finland on the Baltic Sea. The city had a population of 5,601, ...

to discuss an armistice proposal. Dukhonin's response was adamant: on 22 November he categorically declined the directive of the Council of People's Commissars. He had discussed such a development with diplomats from the Entente governments. Dukhonin told Lenin that such an order could only be issued by "a government sustained by the army and the country". Lenin immediately proceeded to a wireless station and broadcast news of Dukhonin's dismissal as Commander-in-Chief and Krylenko's replacement in his stead. The following day a joint note was issued by the military missions of

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and

Romania Romania is a country located at the crossroads of Central Europe, Central, Eastern Europe, Eastern and Southeast Europe. It borders Ukraine to the north and east, Hungary to the west, Serbia to the southwest, Bulgaria to the south, Moldova to ...

, citing the Treaty of 23 August 1914 by which the allies agreed not to conclude an armistice except by common consent. These missions were based at the General Headquarters in

Mogilev Mogilev (; , ), also transliterated as Mahilyow (, ), is a city in eastern Belarus. It is located on the Dnieper, Dnieper River, about from the Belarus–Russia border, border with Russia's Smolensk Oblast and from Bryansk Oblast. As of 2024, ...

. His last action was to order the release of the officers being held prisoner at Bikhov, most notably Kornilov and Denikin. Dukhonin subsequently surrendered to Krylenko in

, but he was murdered by a mob (possibly supported by Krylenko's Bolshevik military escort) near the railway station on 3 December 1917. There are multiple conflicting accounts of Dukhonin's death. According to the account of the former colonel Andrew Kalpashnikoff, a mob of soldiers and sailors bayoneted him to death on the spot on order of Red Army officer

Pavel Dybenko Pavel Efimovich Dybenko (; ; 16 February 1889 – 29 July 1938) was a Bolsheviks, Bolshevik revolutionary and a leading Soviet Union, Soviet officer and military commander. He was arrested, tortured and executed during the Great Purge and subseq ...

. Kalpashnikoff also states that the next morning the Bolshevik soldiers and sailors amused themselves by using his (now stripped naked) corpse for target practice, which they had placed on the platform with a cigarette in its mouth. However, the journalist John Reed states that Krylenko "implored the soldiers not to harm Dukhonin, as he was to be taken to Petrograd and judged by the Revolutionary Tribunal", but was unable to stop the lynching when Dukhonin himself appeared at the window of the railway car in which he was imprisoned. His family

emigrated Emigration is the act of leaving a resident country or place of residence with the intent to settle elsewhere (to permanently leave a country). Conversely, immigration describes the movement of people into one country from another (to permanentl ...

Yugoslavia , common_name = Yugoslavia , life_span = 1918–19921941–1945: World War II in Yugoslavia#Axis invasion and dismemberment of Yugoslavia, Axis occupation , p1 = Kingdom of SerbiaSerbia , flag_p ...

References

External links

Short biography
* {{DEFAULTSORT:Dukhonin 1876 births 1917 deaths People from Smolensky District, Smolensk Oblast People from Smolensky Uyezd Commanders-in-chief of the Russian Army Imperial Russian Army generals Russian Provisional Government generals Recipients of the Order of Saint Stanislaus (House of Romanov) Recipients of the Order of St. George of the Third Degree Executed people from Smolensk Oblast People murdered in Belarus Victims of the Red Terror in Soviet Russia Russian murder victims People executed by stabbing People murdered in 1917 Imperial Nikolayev Military Academy alumni