janvier bogaewsky

Member of the nobility of the Don Cossacks, Afrikan Bogayevsky is the son of Commander Piotr Grigorievich Bogayevsky, veteran of the Crimean War. A graduate of the Don Cadet Corps (1890), Major of the Nicholas Cavalry School (1892), Bogayevsky joined the Atamansky Guards Regiment. From 1895 to 1900 he studied at the Nicolas Military Staff Academy and then served in the staff of the guard and the military region of Saint Petersburg. In December 1908 he was promoted to colonel and commanded the staff of the 2nd Guards Cavalry Division. At the end of 1914 Bogayevsky commanded the 4th Hussar Regiment of Mariupol and received, on November 10, a sword of Saint-Georges as a reward for his bravery in combat. From January to October 1915 he commanded the General Guards Cossack Regiment. On March 22, 1915, he became General-Major and, from May 21, was part of His Imperial Majesty's suite. From October 1915 to April 1917 General Bogayevsky commanded the 1st Cossack Division of Transbaikalia. For his role in the fighting near Tarnopol, in 1917 he received the Arm of Saint-Georges of IVth class. During the summer of 1917 he commanded the 1st Guards Division and then became Deputy Chief of Staff of the 4th Cavalry Corps. After the October Revolution Bogayevsky left the 1st Guards Division in Kiev to join the Don where he arrived in December 1917. He took part in the first Kuban campaign at the head of a partisan detachment. In March 1918 he commanded the 2nd Brigade of the Army of Volunteers. From May 1918 to January 1919 he was part of the government of the Great Don Army of Ataman Krasnov. In February 1919 he replaced the latter as ataman of the Don. From January to February 1920, Ataman Bogayevsky chaired the government of southern Russia and then joined General Wrangel in Crimea, which they left together in November 1920.

In exile, the former ataman Krasnov and the ataman Bogayevsky each tried to rally the Cossacks around their person and to restore a structure to the Cossack units. Wrangel sided with Bogaevsky, who proposed uniting the Don, Kuban, Terek and Astrakhan Cossacks. Krasnov's attempt to have himself elected ataman in place of Bogayevsky in February 1922 failed, Bogayevsky remained ataman until the end of his days, the "last elected ataman in the land of the Don".

After passing through Constantinople, Sofia and Belgrade Bogaevsky moved to Paris in 1923. Its secretary is Cossack Colonel Alexander Nikitovitch Shulgin.