Historical Dictionary of the Russian Civil Wars, 1916-1926

Following the civil wars, Shatilov worked in several Soviet institutions, including the Tomsk guberniia Statistical Bureau, and from 1 October 1922, was director of the Tomsk Regional Museum (in which capacity, in the late 1920s, he undertook important ethnographic research among the Chulym people of Siberia, collecting materials for the museum). He was arrested and then released by the OGPU in both 1931 and April 1933, but in August 1933, having been found guilty of organizing a “counterrevolutionary group among the intelligentsia of Tomsk,” was sentenced to 10 years’ imprisonment. En route to the Solovetskii camps in the White Sea, Shatilov was executed in Leningrad, in December 1937. His burial site remains unknown, but he was posthumously rehabilitated by a Siberian military tribunal in June 1959.

Shatilov, Pavel Nikolaevich (13 November 1881–5 May 1962). Colonel (6 December 1915), major general (July 1917), lieutenant general (May 1919), general of cavalry (November 1920). The son of General N. P. Shatilov, a member of the imperial Russian State Council, P. N. Shatilov became the most trusted advisor of General P. N. Wrangel, both during the civil wars and in emigration. He was a graduate of the Moscow Cadet Corps (1891), the Corps of Pages (1900), and the Academy of the General Staff (1908), and a member of His Imperial Highness’s Life Guards Cossack Regiment. He served (and was wounded) in the Russo–Japanese War, and in the First World War, saw action on the Eastern Front, as chief of staff of the 7th and 8th Cavalry Divisions (July 1914–January 1916), before transferring to the staff of the Caucasian Army, where he became chief of staff of the 2nd Caucasian Cavalry Division (August 1916–January 1917), commander of the 1st Black Sea Regiment of the Kuban Cossack Host (January–July 1917), and quartermaster general of the staff of the Caucasus Front (July–September 1917). He was arrested by the Russian Provisional Government of 1917, as a participant in the Kornilov affair, and imprisoned at Tiflis (September–December 1917).

For reasons that remain obscure, Shatilov joined the White movement in South Russia only in December 1918, serving on the staff of General A. I. Denikin at Ekaterinodar before becoming commander of the 1st Mounted Division (3 January–April 1919). In that capacity, he played an outstanding part in commanding the forces that surrounded and smashed 30,000 fighters of the 11th Red Army in the Kuban. He subsequently commanded the 4th Mounted Corps (April–June 1919), playing a key role in the capture of Tsaritsyn by Wrangel’s Caucasian Army. From 20 June to 13 December 1919, he served as chief of staff of the Caucasian Army and then transferred, with Wrangel, to the Volunteer Army, to perform the same function (13 December 1919–January 1920). However, on 8 February 1920, he was dismissed from the Armed Forces of South Russia and exiled to Constantinople, alongside Wrangel, accused of plotting against Denikin.

When Wrangel returned to Crimea to succeed Denikin in March 1920, Shatilov came with him and was made assistant commander in chief (23 March–16 June 1920) and then chief of staff of the Russian Army (16 June 1920–1922). In the latter capacity, he was largely responsible for the remarkably successful evacuation of Wrangel’s army from Crimea in November 1920.

In emigration, Shatilov lived in Turkey and then France, where he was head of the 1st Department of ROVS from 1930 to 1937. Following the abduction of the head of ROVS, General E. K. Miller, in 1937, Shatilov left public life, although this did not save him from being arrested and imprisoned for 10 months by the German occupiers of France during the Second World War. He died at his home near Paris in 1962 and is buried in the Russian cemetery of Sainte-Geneviève-des-Bois. Speculation abounds that Shatilov was an agent of the NKVD and its predecessors (including the Cheka)—perhaps from as early as 1918—but the charge remains unproven.

SHATOV, VLADIMIR (“BILL”) SERGEEVICH (24 December 1887–7 August 1943). The anarchist turned Soviet activist V. S. (“Bill”) Shatov was born into a Jewish family at Kiev and educated at the Kiev Technological Institute. Having been arrested several times for revolutionary activity, he migrated to the United States in 1907. There, working as a printer, he became involved in the anarcho-syndicalist organization the Industrial Workers of the World (the “Wobblies”).