Early Life and Russian Civil War
Skoblin was a cavalry officer in the Kornilov Division of the White Russian Army during the Russian Civil War, 1918–1920. He was known for both his bravery and cruelty. Red soldiers captured by Skoblin's men were hanged or shot on the spot. It is said he met his wife, Plevitskaya during the war. The romantic version is that Skoblin captured his wife during a raid against the Red Army. She was Nadezhda Plevitskaya, a committed Bolshevik considered to be a great beauty, who had been traveling the front singing and entertaining Red Army troops. Plevitkskaya used her considerable charms to seduce Skoblin and escape the gallows. Through her influence, Skoblin became a Bolshevik intelligence agent for the Cheka and later for the Soviet Union's NKVD.
Read more about this topic: Nikolai Skoblin
Famous quotes containing the words civil war, early, life, russian, civil and/or war:
“We have heard all of our lives how, after the Civil War was over, the South went back to straighten itself out and make a living again. It was for many years a voiceless part of the government. The balance of power moved away from it—to the north and the east. The problems of the north and the east became the big problem of the country and nobody paid much attention to the economic unbalance the South had left as its only choice.”
—Lyndon Baines Johnson (1908–1973)
“the cluttered eyes
of early mysterious night.”
—Imamu Amiri Baraka (b. 1934)
“Our life is March weather, savage and serene in one hour.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“From being a patriotic myth, the Russian people have become an awful reality.”
—Leon Trotsky (1879–1940)
“... as a result of generations of betrayal, it’s nearly impossible for Southern Negroes to trust a Southern white. No matter what he does or what he suffers, a white liberal is never established beyond suspicion in the hearts of the minority.”
—Sarah Patton Boyle, U.S. civil rights activist and author. The Desegregated Heart, part 2, ch. 10 (1962)
“The inconveniences and horrors of the pox are perfectly well known to every one; but still the disease flourishes and spreads. Several million people were killed in a recent war and half the world ruined; but we all busily go on in courses that make another event of the same sort inevitable. Experientia docet? Experientia doesn’t.”
—Aldous Huxley (1894–1963)