Colonel Vladimir Vladimirovich Andreev
Colonel Vladimir Vladimirovich Andreev was born in St. Petersburg in October 1878 to a noble family and, after the Mikhailovsky Voronezh Cadet Corps and Pavlovsk Military School, he earned his commission in the Life Guards Volynsky Regiment by November 1898. A saber fencer of renown, he won numerous regimental and Army competitions in an decade-long career stating in 1903 and represented Russia in the 1907 International Fencing Tournament at the Hauge in 1907, coming back with a silver cup. Representing Russia at the 1912 Stockholm Olympics (brushing shoulders with Patton in fencing) he came back empty handed but was given a special award from the Olympic Committee for his “brilliant sabre fighting.” Serving as a major with the Warsaw Guards detachment, he was severely wounded at the Vistula in 1914, earning an Order of St. Stanislav. Surviving the Great War, he served as a colonel with Kornilov, then Denikin, then Wrangel in the South during the Civil War including surviving the iconic Winter Death March. Exiled to Bulgaria, he became the full-time fencing instructor and sabermaster at the country’s military academy in Sofia, wrote their fencing manuals, and founded the Bulgarian fencing team and Bulgarian Fencing Club, which survive today. He passed in 1940, aged 61.