Konstantin Vasil'evich Semchevskii, 1894 - 1978

Colonel K. V. Semchevskii was born on 6 May 1894 (O. S.) in Tiflis (Tbilisi). After graduating with honors from the Corps de Pages in 1913, he was commissioned as a sub-lieutenant in the Life Guard Horse Artillery, with which he served until 1917. In October of that year, he entered the General Staff Academy, where he studied through July 1918, when, with a group of fellow officers, he escaped from Ekaterinburg to join Siberian White military units operating in the area. In August 1918 he was appointed head of the operations section of the army staff in Omsk, and promoted to the rank of guards captain the following month. In December 1918, he was appointed an instructor at an army school in Vladivostok. In November 1919, he assumed the duties of chief of staff of the 1st Cavalry Division, taking command of its remnants to lead them out of encirclement in January 1920. The following month, Semchevskii was promoted to the rank of colonel and appointed quartermaster general of the 3rd Army (from March 1920 - III Corps).

Along with his wife, Elena Vasil'evna Semchevskaia (a writer and poet), Semchevskii lived in China until emigrating to the United States in 1950. He wrote his memoirs, primarily of life in the Corps de Pages, and maintained correspondence with many of his fellow pages through the 1970s. He also taught at the Army Language School in Monterey, California, where he died in February 1978.

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

Konstantin Semchevskii Register