Transbaikal Cossack Major General Sergei Mikhailovich Toporkov
Transbaikal Cossack Major General Sergei Mikhailovich Toporkov was born in the village of Akshinskaya, of the Transbaikal Cossack Host in September 1885. A fearless young Cossack, he fought in the Far East during the Boxer Rebellion as a teenager and then in Russo-Japanese War. He was promoted to an ensign after earning status as a full Knight of the Cross of St. George. He subsequently fought in the Great War, rose to the rank of colonel by May 1917, and commanded the Chechen and Tatar cavalry regiments of the infamous Wild Division (the Caucasian Native Cavalry Division). By the end of 1917, he was riding with the Whites in the Ukraine and commanded, in turn, the 1st Zaporizhzhya Regiment of the 1st Kuban Cossack Division, the division’s 2nd Cavalry Brigade, and then the division itself. As commander of the 1st Terek Cossack Division, which he formed; he conducted a raid from May-June 1919, through the rear of the Red Army, covering about 600 miles in the Kharkov region. By 1920, he was commander of the Combined Cossack Corps of General Wrangel. Post collapse, he emigrated to Serbia, where he passed in Belgrade in 1931, aged just 49.