General Anatoly V. Fok: a Russian death on Spanish soil

General Anatoliy V. Fok (1879 - 1937) was an outstanding personality and a hero of his time. A well-educated career officer of the Russian Imperial army, a sportsman who took part in the 1912 Olympiad in Stokholm, he was born for the war, not for a peaceful life. It was the war that revealed his talents and 138 the scale of his personality. On the battlefields of World War I Fok displayed himself as an officer of exceptional bravery and a leader during the battle. Besides, in the hardest conditions of war time he tried to get his subordinates to take to fencing and football holding competitions during peaceful breaks on the front. He finished the war in the rank of a colonel. Fok could neither accept Bolsheviks' taking power nor Russia's shameful withdrawal from World War I initiated by Bolsheviks to save their power. Therefore, he joined the volonteer army to fight bolshevism. In the armed forces of the south of Russia headed by General Denikin and then General Wrangel he commanded artillery units and occupied different positions in headquarters. While being in emigration after the defeat of the white movement he did not break his ties with the Russian army. Remaining an irreconcilable enemy of the Bolsheviks he worked in different organizations of Russian military immigration. He stood for continuous fight against the Bolsheviks in any form. His hatred for Bolsheviks and realizing the threat of the Communist International (Commintern) in 1937 brought him to Spain split by the Civil war where he joined General Franco's army. Using a wide range of archival and published sources the author discloses General Fok's personality, his formation as a career officer, a sportsman and anti-Bolshevik. The author also highlights the factors that motivated his decisions at the turning points of his life that coincided with turning points in the history of Russia and Spain. General Fok's death on the Spanish soil was a logical completion of his struggle for the liberation of Russia from bolshevism.