Nikolai Yudenich was born on July 18, 1862 in the family of the director of the Moscow Land Surveying School. In 1879, after receiving secondary education, he passed the exams at the 3rd Alexander Military School. On August 8, 1881, Yudenich graduated from college, received the rank of second lieutenant and was assigned to the Life Guards Lithuanian Regiment in Warsaw. In 1884 he passed the exams for the General Staff Academy. After graduating from an educational institution in 1887, Yudenich received the rank of staff captain of the guard. In January 1892, he was appointed senior adjutant of the headquarters of the Turkestan military district and promoted to colonel. He took part in 1894 in an expedition to the Pamirs. Two years later, Yudenich received the rank of colonel. Participated in the Russo-Japanese War, distinguished himself in the battle of Sandepa on January 13-17, 1905.¹

He fought in a Japanese company along with Lieutenant Colonel Lavr Kornilov. After the end of the war, Yudenich was awarded military orders and received the rank of major general. In 1912 he became a lieutenant general, and a year later - chief of staff of the Caucasian Military District. During the First World War, he proved himself on the Caucasian front. Captain Pavel Shatilov served with him. In 1915, Lieutenant General Yudenich was promoted to general of infantry and appointed commander of the Caucasian Separate Army. He successfully stormed the Erzurum fortress in February 1916.²

March 5, 1917 Yudenich was appointed Commander-in-Chief of the Caucasian Front. On May 15, the general was dismissed from this post and left for Petrograd. During the October Revolution, Nikolai Nikolayevich was in Moscow. After an attempt to create an officer organization in Petrograd on the basis of the Semyonovsky Life Guards Regiment, Yudenich left for Finland to negotiate with General Mannerheim. In December 1918, he negotiated with the British ambassador and military attache in Sweden to intensify the actions of the interventionists in the north and to transfer the Russian Northern Army to Finland from Arkhangelsk and the Pskov Corps in Estonia. The general also met with Peter Struve. In January 1919, Yudenich met with Mannerheim to discuss the participation of the Finnish army in the capture of Petrograd. But the Finnish commander-in-chief refused. Nevertheless, General Yudenich began to form forces for the march on Petrograd. By the end of the spring of 1919, Yudenich's Northwestern Army was near Gatchina. But in the summer, disagreements began in the army between the commanders of a number of units. In October, the general's troops were on the outskirts of Petrograd, but there were not enough forces for the offensive and the rear of the army remained uncovered. At the end of the month, battles took place near Pulkovo, which did not produce results. On November 3, 1919, General Yudenich ordered a retreat . On November 19, the Estonian government began peace negotiations with the Soviet government: Yudenich's army was on the verge of collapse. In December 1919, while crossing the Narova River , the Northwestern Army was disarmed by the Estonians. The troops remained in the Estonian forests without provisions and was demobilized on January 22, 1920 by General Yudenich.³

Until February 24, 1920, Yudenich was in Estonia. The authorities did not want to release the general for a month, but on February 25 he ended up in Riga, arriving there on the train of the British military mission. In early March, the general went to Stockholm, and later to Copenhagen via London. In the British capital, Yudenich met with Winston Churchill. In exile, Yudenich helped his colleagues - for example, Prince Lieven , with the publication of his works. He lived with his family in the Nice suburb of Saint-Laurent- du - Var. At the initiative of the Russian All-Military Union, under the leadership of General Miller, the Paris Jubilee Committee was created in 1931, chaired by General Shatilov, which included associates of General Yudenich. On October 5, 1933, after a long illness, Nikolai Nikolaevich Yudenich died at his home near Nice.⁴

Nikolai Nikolaevich Yudenich (1862–1933)
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