Pyotr Wrangel's letter to Ataman Krasnov, 01/16/22

a translation from the Russian

Honorable Pyotr Nikolayevich!¹ I have read both Your article in The Coming Russia, dedicated to the army, and Your letter to the Cossacks. Your assessment of the army is all the more dear to me because it comes from a man who has stood close to the troops all his life, who knows both their way of life and their psychology, and who has devoted himself to the service of the army as one of the constituent parts of the great whole: the Motherland.

With the greatest attention I have dwelt on that part of Your letter where You write that in your opinion it is time to raise the banner of “For Faith, the Tsar and the Fatherland”² with total candor. Allow me, with complete sincerity, dictated by my deep respect for You, to express my opinion on this matter.

You can have no doubt that I am a monarchist in my convictions, and that a majority of the Russian army is just as monarchist as I am, and are consciously so.

I pause on the word “consciously” because I wish to emphasize by this that the present Russian army, unlike the former Imperial army, has become conscious, but, of course, not in the bad, corrupted by the revolution sense of the word, but in its best meaning.