Nikolai Yanushkevich Nikolai Nikolaevich Yanushkevich ( ) ( 1 ( 13 ) March , 1868 — 1918 ) was a Russian General who served as Chief of Staff of the General Headquarters ( Stavka ) of the Imperial Russian Army from August 1914 to September 1915 . Biography . A graduate of the Nikolaevskii Cadet Corp ( 1888 ) and Mikhailovskii Artillery School ( 1888 ) , Yanushkevich was commissioned sub - lieutenant in the artillery of the Life Guards . He graduated from the Nikolaevskii General Staff Academy in 1896 . Yanushkevich briefly served as a staff officer in the provinces before returning to the Life Guards as a company commander . From 1898 he served in a series of important administrative roles within the ministry of war , inc . Head of the Legislative Section of the Chancellery of the Minister of War ( 1905 - 1911 ) and Assistant Manager of the Chancellery of the Minister of War ( 1911 - 1913 ) . Yanushkevich was appointed professor at the Nikolaevskii General Staff Academy ( 1910 - 1911 ) and became its head in 1913 - 14 . He was appointed Chief of the General Staff in March 1914 and became Chief of Staff to the Supreme Commander in Chief , Grand Duke Nikolai Nikolaevich , at the outset of the war . Yanushkevich was poorly qualified for the post of Chief of Staff . He had spent most of his career occupied by administrative duties in the Ministry of War . He had never held a field commission and his command experience was extremely limited , being confined to a short period as a company commander . Historian Norman Stone derisively describes Yanushkevich as a ‘ clerk ’ . The British military attaché to the Russian Army during the war claims that Yanushkevich owed his high position largely to his skills as a courtier and was rumoured to have found favour with the tsar when serving as a captain of the palace guard . Stone alternatively ascribes Yanushkevich ’ s position to War Minister V . A . Sukhomlinov ’ s practice of appointing officers unlikely to threaten his own position , and only for a short period of time , to the post of Chief of the General Staff – ‘ [ He was ] … chosen in the usual Sukhomlinov way to prevent anyone dangerous from taking over the job , and surviving in it from sheer force of characterlessness . ’ Historian David R . Jones is less harsh in his assessment , pointing out that whatever his shortcomings Yanushkevich was a supply expert whose ideas were incorporated in the 1914 field regulations . Yanushkevich apparently played only a minor role in the opening campaigns of the war . According to Stone both he and the Supreme Commander , Grand Duke Nikolai Nikolaevich , were mere figureheads - command of the Russian armies was effectively exercised by the ostensible third - in - command , Quartermaster - General Yu . N . Danilov , a close associate of Sukhomlinov . Danilov was supported by a staff of fifteen whereas Yanushkevich had a single adjutant and spent part of his time developing his taste for pornography . The deeply anti - semitic Yanushkevich did , however , play a leading role in the indiscriminate persecutions of Jews that accompanied the so - called “ Great Retreat ” of 1915 . Yanushkevich was dismissed from his post in September 1915 as Tsar Nicholas II took personally charge of the Russian armies with M . V . Alekseev as his Chief of Staff . At the insistence Grand Duke Nikolai Nikolaevich , Yanushkevich continued to serve as his chief - of - staff after the latter ’ s dismissal as Supreme Commander and appointment to the post of Viceroy of the Caucasus . Retired from active service after the February Revolution , at the start of 1918 Yanushkevich was arrested in Mogilev and sent to Petrograd but was killed by his guards en route .