Historical Dictionary of the Russian Civil Wars, 1916-1926

Stepanov, Nikolai Aleksandrovich (2 May 1869–19 January 1949). Major general (1915), lieutenant general (23 May 1919). The much-maligned minister of war of the Whites’ Omsk government, N. A. Stepanov was a graduate of the 1st Cadet Corps (1886), the Mikhail Artillery School (1889), the Academy of the General Staff (1900), and the Cavalry Officers School (1902). He then occupied numerous senior staff posts (including a term on the staff of the commander in chief of the Russian Army during the Russo–Japanese War), before becoming a professor at the academy in 1907. From 1912, he served as chief of staff to the 6th Cavalry Division, transferring to the staff of the main commander in chief of the Russian Army in 1915, where he served as an orderly, and on 27 December 1916, he was named chief of the Military-Marine Directorate of the staff of the commander of the Baltic Fleet.

Following the October Revolution (by which time he was chief of staff of the 4th Cavalry Corps), Stepanov moved to South Russia and joined the Volunteer Army, acting as chief of the Military-Marine Directorate on the staff of General A. S. Lukomskii, and from February 1918, as chief of staff of the Forces of the Rostov District. He then journeyed to Harbin, in Manchuria, to liaise with the Far Eastern Committee of General D. L. Khorvat, before transferring to Omsk to serve as assistant minister of war to the Ufa Directory and then (from 18 November 1918) the Omsk government of Admiral A. V. Kolchak. On 5 January 1919, he was named minister of war in the Omsk regime, in which capacity he oversaw the mobilization of Siberia’s population and resources in preparation for Kolchak’s spring offensive. However, he was in constant conflict (over balancing the needs of the front and the rear) with the ambitious chief of staff of Kolchak’s forces, General D. A. Lebedev, and also gained a reputation as a martinet, who was more interested in procedure than action. (According to the head of the British Military Mission in Siberia, General Alfred Knox, Stepanov suffered from “a congenital reluctance to decide anything.”) Kolchak, however, seems to have held him in high regard, and although Lebedev was able to engineer his removal from the war ministry on 23 May 1919, he was at the same time promoted by the supreme ruler to the rank of lieutenant general and placed in command of the Mid-Siberian Corps. Stepanov left that post in August 1919 and was sent on a mission to northwest Russia to liaise with General N. N. Iudenich. By the time Stepanov arrived in Europe, however, Iudenich’s efforts had been thwarted by the Red Army, and his North-West Army was about to be disarmed and interned in Estonia. Stepanov therefore went into emigration. He lived briefly in Serbia (from 1922), before settling in France during the Second World War, but seems to have played no significant part in émigré military life.

Stepanov, Vasilii Aleksandrovich (1871/1872/1873–1920). One of the prominent Kadets who supported the White regime in South Russia, V. A. Stepanov was born into an impoverished noble family and was a graduate of the 1st Tiflis Gymnasium, St. Petersburg University (1893), and the Mining Institute (1897). He subsequently worked as a mining engineer in the Donbass and the Urals, becoming director of the Bogoslovsk Mining District. He was also a member of the Kadet Party from its early days (situating himself on its left wing and serving on its Central Committee from 1916), and from 1907 to 1917 was a deputy in the Third and Fourth State Dumas, representing Perm′ guberniia. As secretary of the Kadet Duma caucus in the Fourth Duma, and as a Mason, he worked to unite elements of the opposition across party lines. In 1917, he served as deputy minister of trade and industry (and subsequently as director of that ministry) in the Russian Provisional Government and led the Military Commission of the Kadets.