Budberg
Baron Alexei Pavlovich von Budberg. Born in 1869 to a family of Baltic German nobles long in the service of the Tsar, he graduated from the Orlovsky Bakhtin Cadet Corps then the Mikhailovsky Artillery School and in 1889 recieved a posting in the elite Guards Grenadier Artillery Brigade. Service in the exotic Russian Far East with Siberian units– which included seeing combat in the Boxer Rebellion– led to his command of the mighty fortifications around Vladivostok by 1905, the most strategically key base for the country on the Pacific following the loss of Port Arthur. Quartermaster General of the Vladivostok-based 10th Army in 1914, he was soon sent to Europe for the first time in almost two decades and rose to Lt. General by 1916 and at the time of the March Revolution was head of the XIV Army Corps of the 5th Army, one of the few combat-ready units still on the Northern Front. Seeing the writing on the wall, he left his post by October for a position back “home” in the Far East and by early 1919 was Chief Supply Officer of the White’s Siberian Army then became the Minister of War of the Kolchak government while simoultaniously commanding the Vladivostok fortress again. Leaving for Manchuria once the Whites collapsed, he then emirgated to France and finally to the U.S. where he passed in 1945 in San Francisco. In exile, he wrote extensively and was a figure in the Society of Russian Veterans of the Great War and ROVS.