Krasnov, Petr Nikolaevich (1869 - 1946) Ot Dvuglavago Orla k krasnomu znameni.1894 -1921. Roman v vos´mi chastiakh. Tom IV. Pod krasnymi znamenami. Vos´maia chast´. Berlin, [Izdatel´stvo O.L.D´iakovoi i Ko./Olga Diakow & Co. Verlag,] 1921. 191 p. €275
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Small 8vo.,library binding. original covers preserved and bound in. Very rare even in a such state.

First edition. Differs from later Russian editions printed in Europe and the USA. Some strong anti - Semitic passages were excluded by the publisher and the author from all later editions when a scandal took place in émigré circles and even in Russian émigré press.

Krasnov (1869-1946) was born into a Cossack family, and brought up to a military career, graduating from the military college in Pavlovsk in 1888. By 1910 he was commander of the First Siberian Cossack regiment, rising to major-general in the First Don division by 1914; during the October Revolution, Kerensky appointed him commander of the army, but after his defeat by the Bolsheviks, he fled to the Don region, where he was elected ataman of the Don Cossacks. He led a brief uprising against the Soviets but was again defeated en route to Moscow, and in 1919 retired to Germany and thence France, where he settled at St Denis, just north of Paris, and devoted himself to a literary career (he had been publishing short stories and travelogues in since the 1890s).

He scored his first hit with From Double Eagle to Red Flag (1921), a fictionalized epic history of the Russian Civil War from the view of a single White Russian officer, which was translated into many languages. His oeuvre of over 20 books included autobiographical works, historical fiction for a younger audience, novels of the émigré experience, and more.

In 1938 Krasnov moved back to Berlin; he was invited out of his literary retirement in 1942 to help organize Cossack regiments in the Wehrmacht. At the end of the war, despite his voluntary surrender to the British, he was handed over to the Soviets and executed in Moscow.