Nikolai Vasil'evich Orlov

Colonel N. V. Orlov served most of his military career in the Zaamurskii okrug Otdel'nogo korpusa pogranichnoi strazhi (Transamur district of the Russian border guard), and commanded its Fourteenth Regiment during the First World War.

His handwritten history of the Zaamurtsy covers the history of this district and its troops from its formation in 1898 until its dissolution (along with the entire Russian army) in 1917. Following this dissolution, Orlov returned to Harbin, where in 1918 he participated in forming a new unit to guard the Chinese Eastern Railway. This Okhrannaia strazha disarmed the pro-Bolshevik railroad regiments then in place, and formed the basis for the military force of the Chinese Eastern Railway. When Chinese troops took over its barracks in March 1920, the Okhrannaia strazha was disbanded and Orlov retired. Wounded in battle and crippled in the use of both his hands, Orlov's five-volume history is a monument to his own perseverance as much as it is to the soldiers he writes about.

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 Museum of Russian Culture. The grant also provides for depositing a microfilm copy in the Hoover Institution Archives. The original materials and copyright to them (with some exceptions) are the property of the Museum of Russian Culture, San Francisco.

Nikolai Orlov Register