Dmitry Alekseyevich Milyutin ( , tr . ; 28 June 1816 , Moscow &ndash; 25 January 1912 , Simeiz near Yalta ) was Minister of War ( 1861 – 81 ) and the last Field Marshal of Imperial Russia ( 1898 ) . He was responsible for sweeping military reforms that changed the face of the Russian army in the 1860s and 1870s . Further , he was instrumental in creating the framework for the Circassian genocide that murdered approximately 600,000 Circassians from 1861 to 1865
Circassian genocide
Circassian genocide
Dmitry Milyutin