Anton Denikin (1872-1947) led the White Volunteer Army which nearly succeeded in defeating the "Red" Bolshevik forces in 1919, during the Russian civil war.

Anton Ivanovich Denikin was born on December 7, 1872, in Shpetal Dolnyi village near the city of Wloclawek, in Warsaw Province, a section of Poland that had been absorbed by the Russian Empire in the 18th century. His father, Ivan Denikin, had been born a serf in the Russian province of Saratov, yet had worked himself up to the rank of major in the Russian frontier guards. Two years after retiring, in 1869, Ivan married a poor Catholic seamstress, Elizaveta Vrjesinski, who was supporting her aged father.

The pension of a retired major was not sufficient to support a family in circumstances other than abject poverty. Yet Ivan Denikin always had a charitable hand for others in need. Anton, an only child, was technically a Russian-Polish "half-breed," but...