Biography
Semyonov was born in the Transbaikal region of eastern Siberia. His father, Mikahil Petrovich Semyonov was of partial Buryat descent. Semyonov was a fluent Mongolian and Buryat language speaker. He joined the Imperial Russian Army in 1908, and graduated from Orenburg Military School in 1911. He took part in World War I and became a yesaul .
According to Pyotr Wrangel:
Semenov was a Transbaikalian Cossack - dark and thickset, and of the rather alert Mongolian type. His intelligence was of a specifically Cossack calibre, and he was an exemplary soldier, especially courageous when under the eye of his superior. He knew how to make himself popular with Cossacks and officers alike, but he had his weaknesses in a love of intrigue and indifference to the means by which he achieved his ends. Though capable and ingenious, he had received no education, and his outlook was narrow. I have never been able to understand how he came to play a leading role.
He was somewhat of an outsider among the his fellow officers because of his ethnicity. While serving in the Caucasus in World War I he met another officer shunned by his peers, Baron Ungern-Sternberg whose arrogance and violent, unstable temper repelled others. He and Sternberg tried to organize a regiment of Assyrian Christians to aid in the fight against the Turks. In July 1917, Semyonov left the Caucasus and was appointed Commissar of the Provisional Government in the Baikal region, responsible for recruiting counterrevolutionary volunteer military units.
Read more about this topic: Grigory Semyonov
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