The papers of Major-General Nikolai D. Zarin (commander of the 47th Division of the Imperial Russian Army in the First World War) consist of nine volumes of a handwritten diary of his experiences in the First World War, two drafts of the diary typed in English, twenty photographic prints (mainly of Zarin and his wife), four negatives, a military order dated 30 December 1916, an educational honors certificate (pokhvalnyi list) issued to Evgeniia Zubatova (Zarin) on 8 June 1902, and a military cap.
Zarin began the First World War as commander of the 10th Ostrovsky Regiment, based in Vitebsk. The diary begins with the first day of mobilization and describes preparations for entrainment for the front. Zarin describes the first battles in East Prussia, examining reasons for the defeats based on his own experience (Zarin’s regiment was part of Gen. P. K. Rennenkampf’s 1st Army). The first part of the diary concludes in January 1915, when the army corps was transferred to the southwestern front (Galicia and the Carpathians). The retreat of 1915 is described in great detail, as are the following triumphs of 1916. Zarin did not see the worst of the dissolution of the Russian Army in 1917 because the effects of an earlier contusion had forced him to seek medical treatment. In March of that year, after two months in command of the 47th Infantry Division, he left the army. Much of the rest of the diary describes the situation in Petrograd and at his estate in Klemshino (southwest of Petrograd) in 1917. The final entry, dated 25 January 1918, describes how the author and his family abandoned their estate, feeling evermore threatened by the excesses of the surrounding peasants.
During the Russian civil war, Zarin joined the White (anti-Bolshevik) movement in Siberia. He was caught by the Bolsheviks and murdered in June 1918. His widow, Eugenie, immigrated to the United States, settling in San Francisco, where she died in February 1979.
