Alexander Mikhailovich Ionov
Alexander Mikhailovich Ionov– son of the famed “Great Game” explorer who interacted with Francis Younghusband, triggering the so-called Wakhan Corridor that still exists today– was a colonel under the Tsar, commanding the 2nd Semirechensky Cossack Regiment during the Great War. Bringing his boys home, he was elected the last Ataman of the Semirechenskies and was made a general in the White Guard and commander of a separate Semirechensky Cossack army. After Kolchak collapsed in Sibera, he evacuated from Vladivostok through China and New Zealand, then to Canada and finally to the U.S. where he headed the North American branch of ROVS during WWII. There, on July 18, 1950, he died in New York, aged 70.