Ivan Alekseevich Poliakov, 1886-1969
Ivan Alekseevich Poliakov was born in a Don Cossack family in Novocherkassk on August 10, 1886. His father was an officer, and sent Ivan to Donskoi kadetskii korpus, after the completion of which he went on to the Nikolaevskoe inzhenernoe uchilishche, graduating in 1914. Poliakov served in the Ninth Army as captain, and joined General Petr N. Krasnov’s Don Cossack Army in 1917, being elevated to the rank of major general in 1918. Poliakov emigrated to Serbia in 1919. He returned to active military life during General Krasnov’s involvement in organizing Cossack divisions within the German Army from 1942 to 1945. Contrary to Krasnov, Poliakov joined Vlasov’s Russkaia osvoboditel’naia armiia.
Poliakov was elected Don Cossack ataman in 1947, and continued holding this position through 1965. He arrived in the United States in 1952, and published two memoirs, one dealing with the Don Cossack anti-bolshevistic struggle in 1917 to 1920, and another on General Krasnov’s and General Vlasov’s activities during World War Two. He died in New York in 1969.
Detailed processing and preservation microfilming for these materials were made possible by a generous grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities and by matching funds from the Hoover Institution and Holy Trinity Seminary. The grant also provides for depositing a microfilm copy in the Hoover Institution Archives.
The original materials are the property of Holy Trinity Seminary.