Pyotr Nikolayevich Krasnov (; 22 September (old style: 10 September) 1869 – 17 January 1947), sometimes referred to in English as Peter Krasnov, was a Don Cossack historian and officer, promoted to Lieutenant General of the Imperial Russian Army when the revolution broke out in 1917, one of the leaders of the anti-Bolshevik White movement afterwards and a German collaborator who mobilized Cossack forces to fight against the Soviet Union during World War II. The major motivation was the brutal repression of Cossacks by the Soviet government, e.g., the portioning of the lands of the Terek, Ural and Semirechye hosts, forced cultural assimilation and repression of the Russian Orthodox Church, deportation and, ultimately, the Soviet famine of 1932–33. Russian Army Pyotr Krasnov was born on 22 September 1869 (old style: 10 September) in Saint Petersburg, son to lieutenant-general Nikolay Krasnov and grandson to general Ivan Krasnov. In 1888 Krasnov graduated from Pavlovsk Military School; he later served in the Ataman regiment of the Life Guards of the Imperial Russian Army. In April–May 1902 a series of articles were published in Russkii Invalid, the newspaper of the Imperial Russian Army, containing Krasnov's impressions of his trip to Mongolia, China and Japan as the East Asia correspondent of Russkii Invalid. In his article "Fourteen Days in Japan", Krasnov painted the Imperial Japanese Army in a negative light. One staff officer of the Main Staff called Krasnov's article "poorly founded, extraordinarily hasty and far from the truth". Krasnov reported that based on what he had seen in Japan that "the Japanese looks coldly on life and death and does not fear death". He reported that the Japanese soldiers were up to European standards of discipline, but were highly rigid in their conduct of operations and suffered from health problems. Krasnov mockingly noted that during the march on Beijing during the Boxer Rebellion of 1900, exhausted Japanese soldiers had to be carried in the wagons of the Russian Army. Krasnov noted during the assault on the forts at Tianjin that one Japanese company had lost 90% of its men during a frontal assault on a Chinese fort while at the same time a Russian company had taken a Chinese fort by outflanking it, losing only six men killed. Krasnov felt that the Japanese were brave, but poorly led, declaring "the military deed does not suit the Japanese" as it "was thought up for them