Anatoly Pepelyayev Anatoly Nikolayevich Pepelyayev ( ; 15 August 1891 , Tomsk - 14 January 1938 ) was a White Russian general who led the Siberian armies of Admiral Kolchak during the Russian Civil War . His elder brother Viktor Pepelyayev served as Prime Minister in Kolchak ' s government . Trans - Siberian march . A graduate of the Paul Military School ( 1910 ) , Pepelyayev took part in World War I in the rank of Lieutenant Colonel and distinguished himself at Przasnysz and Soldau . After the Russian Revolution , he took the helm of the White movement in his native Siberian city of Tomsk , joining forces with the White Czechs . In summer 1918 Pepelyayev ' s corps was involved in a remarkable expedition to the east along the Trans - Siberian Railway . It was as a consequence of this expedition that the Whites managed to bring Siberia under their direct control . On 18 June Pepelyayev entered Krasnoyarsk ; on 26 August he advanced as far east as Chita . Having crossed Transbaikalia , Pepelyayev ' s forces linked up with the Amur Cossacks of Grigory Semyonov in early September . Service under Kolchak . In December , Pepelyayev ' s forces resumed their high tempo advance , this time to the west . His greatest victory was the capture of Perm , where about 20 , 000 Red Army soldiers were taken prisoner on 24 December 1918 . Further advance on Vyatka was impeded by heavy frost . As the spring rasputitsa arrived Pepelyayev ' s position deteriorated . His armies had outrun their supply lines and were exhausted from many months of incessant warfare , while the Red Army was pouring newly raised troops into the area . Pepelyayev ' s taking of Glazov on 2 June 1919 was his last signal success . During the following months , his First Siberian Army suffered a series of setbacks and fell back on Tobolsk , where they were forced to make a last stand against the Bolsheviks . By the end of the year , the White Army had collapsed in panic and abandoned Omsk , followed by Tomsk . Pepelyayev ' s smouldering conflict with Kolchak came to a head in mid - December when he issued threats to arrest the White admiral . They were reconciled by Viktor Pepelyayev before Anatoly was disabled by typhus and transferred for convalescence to Harbin . The remains of his army joined that of Vladimir Kappel and crossed the frozen Lake Baikal during the Great Siberian Ice March . " Pepelyayevshchina " . During his stint in Harbin , the former general was employed in menial jobs , including those of carpenter and taxi driver . Still , he harboured the intention of wresting Siberia from the Bolsheviks . On 31 August 1922 Pepelyayev and 553 - strong volunteer " druzhina " embarked on the last major operation of the Civil War . They sailed into the Sea of Okhotsk and disembarked at the port of Okhotsk , aiming to penetrate westward into the rugged mountainous country . In September Pepelyayev sailed up the Okhota River into Siberia , with his eyes set on Yakutsk . His troops swarmed over Yakutia , but were contained by Ivan Strod ' s Bolsheviks . Numerically weaker , they were defeated by sheer weight of numbers . After abandoning the key settlement of Amga , Pepelyayev pressed on towards the Pacific in the hope of making a crossing to Sakhalin . This final campaign saw him defeated near Okhotsk on 1 – 2 May . Pepelyayev surrendered to the Bolsheviks after the siege of the seaside village of Ayan on 17 June 1923 . This was the last siege of the Russian Civil War . Imprisonment and death . Lieutenant General Pepelyayev was tried by the Vladivostok military tribunal and sentenced to execution by firing squad . After he asked Mikhail Kalinin for pardon , the sentence was commuted to ten years in prison . He served this term in the Yaroslavl prison , then in Butyrki . Pepelyayev was finally set at liberty on 6 June 1936 and was employed as a carpenter in Voronezh . In August 1937 , during The Great Purges , he was again arrested , taken to Novosibirsk , tried on charges of having created a counter - revolutionary organization , sentenced to death and executed on 14 January 1938 alongside Ivan Strod as ' enemies of the people ' . Pepelyayev was posthumously cleared of these charges and rehabilitated in 1989 .