Imperial Russia Who knows anything about General Wannowsky?

[Great Dane]

Hello all,

I haven't had much luck with my questions in this forum, but that doesn't keep me from asking yet another one

I have an award document for a "Wannowsky, Imperial Russian General and Minister of War" dated 1891. I would like to find out more about him, but searching the internet has so far come up with nothing

His first initial looks like a 'J', but I'm not 100% sure of that...

I realize that the spelling is a 'translation' from the cyrilic alphabet and the name may be spelled otherwise in other countries. This doesn't exactly make my searches easier...

So now I'm asking the historians in here: Has anybody of you heard of this guy?

Any info or links will be highly appreciated.

Regards,

/Mike

[GeorgeCL]

Hi Mike,

I found the name P.S. Wannowsky.

a russian General.

Still looking.

George

[Djedj]

Hi Mike,

Have you tried asking there :

http://hydrogen.pallasweb.com/cgi-bin/yabb...board=militaria

Some people are very knowledgeable about Imperial Russia's militiary history.

(mmmh not sure it's very appropriate to redirect to another community, and sorry if that's a breach of etiquette- but it might help)

[Guest Rick Research]

Not at all! Specialists are always welcome-- that is the whole point of the internet, to put people with highly specific knowledge in touch with each other and the people who need that information.

It would, however, always help enormously to post SCANS of a name so that we can all see how it was actually spelled at the time and be able to do our own hunting based on how we learned to transliterate characters. I have noticed a very sharp difference between how Europeans and Americans transcribe Russian, which like Chinese, may simply come down to what generation the language was learned at in school. It's even worse with OLD Russian, with all those extra and no longer existent letters and stress marks. What struck me from this post was that there is, of course, no letter "W" in Russian... and that is the sort of thing that will affect finding a "match."

The same thing applies with the old German handwriting script. So many times I have been told something says X when it actually says Y that I never go looking for a name unless I have a scan to see for myself that it does indeed say what is being asked for. We all make mistakes... even me.

[Great Dane]

Djedj,

Thanks for the hint. I didn't know about that forum, so I'll check it out.

Rick,

Sorry, I didn't post a picture for 2 reasons: I didn't have a scan at the time of posting and I didn't think it would provide any additional information.

But here I'm rushing with a scan of the name (the award document is for a Grand Cross of the Danish Order of Dannebrog). The "Hr." means 'Mr.' or 'Sir', then the name in question follows.

I tried to approach the issue from the 'Order of Dannebrog side', but awards to foreigners are not very well documented.

/Mike

Edited February 3, 2006 by Great Dane

[Guest Rick Research]

AHA!!! So his name is written in DANISH, not Russian!

[kimj]

It looks like a P to me. If the writing is anything like older Swedish. So perhaps George has namned your man...

I also found an other spelling of what could be the same guy in a quote:

The infamous speech delivered by General Vannovsky in Moscow [...]

http://marxists.nigilist.ru/archive/lenin/...1901/dec/20.htm

Taken from the collected works of Lenin... on-line of course. But you might want to check your paper copy ....

/Kim

[Great Dane]

Thanks to both George and Kim for the suggestions. I'll try to follow them.

Kim,

You're right that the first initial could be a 'P'. There is also something about the letter(s) between 'Wanno' and 'sky' that seems odd...

Keep'em coming

/Mike

[Djedj]

Mike,

I browsed Mark Conrad's officer database ; he has a very rich page about the Russian Armies, he's been translating and indexing heaps of Russian newspapers (like 'Russkii Invalid') ; the database does not contain the articles themselves, but references :

http://home.comcast.net/~markconrad/

(for some reason using the first name did not giveout any result so...)

I tried various combinations of "W" and "V"

All results I could find were with the spelling "Vannovskii"

These articles concern a :

-"Petr Yefremovich" (articles in the 1852-1856 timeframe)

-"Petr Semenovich" (articles in the 1877-1904 timeframe)

-"Gleb Maksimilianovich" (one article in 1914)

A quick browsing about General Vannovskii delivered references to "the new war minister, General PS. Vannovskii". So Petr Semenovich it seems to be !

Some quotes about him:

The ministry of interior that argued against Jewish equality and triggered, especially during the term of war minister Petr Vannovskii (1881?1897), the introduction of discriminatory regulations regarding Jewish military service.

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Even so, by the end of the century educational standards were higher in the army than they were in the population at large, which admittedly is not saying much. Once the short (generally six-year) service term was introduced in 1874 literate soldiers who returned to their villages helped to awaken a thirst for knowledge among peasants. It was foolish of Miliutin's successor, Vannovskii, to shift the program to a voluntary basis in the mid-1880s. It was not restored until 1902 and then only for the infantry. When one subaltern in the 65th Infantry Regiment taught the men in his company the ABCs on his own initiative, his CO was furious and ordered him to stop at once: "Get those booklets out of here!" he thundered, "you'll get me into trouble with the War Minister!"

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The outbreak of large-scale student unrest in 1899 forced the government to confront the question of revising the 1884 Statute. The investigatory commission headed by General P. S. Vannovskii concluded that a major reason for the chronic student unrest was the unsatisfactory state of the universities and the failure of the 1884 Statute to achieve its objectives.

Acting on Vannovskii's report, Minister of Education N. P. Bogolepov convened a conference that recommended key changes in some of the basic assumptions of university policy. A fundamental feature of the 1884 Statute had been the clause that contact between students and professors be limited to the classroom and laboratory. Another assumption was that students were "individual visitors" of the university, with no corporate identity (see Chapter 2, below). The conference now admitted the unfeasibility of these assumptions and accepted the alleged connection between student unrest and the deficiencies of government university policy. The conference recommended that the government take steps to improve the conditions of student life, to encourage more interaction between students and professors, and to ensure that the students spend more time on their academic work. It proposed that the government start building dormitories, that the Ministry of Education encourage previously banned, extracurricular "scientific circles" under faculty direction, and that professors modify the lecture system by teaching more seminars and giving students more frequent work assignments.

P. S. Vannovskii, who became minister of education in 1901, gave the professoriate an opportunity it had long been denied under the 1884 Statute: to arrive at and express a professional consensus about the entire university structure. On 29 April 1901, Vannovskii sent to the faculty councils a list of eighteen questions on possible directions for university reform. Analysis of the replies of the faculty councils to these questions permits the conclusion that despite individual differences of opinion among the professors, the academic profession as a whole seized the opportunity presented by Vannovskii and began to speak with one voice.

[Djedj]

And here is Petr Semenovitch Vannovskii :

As referenced in George Kenner estate

http://international.loc.gov/intldl/mtfhtm...kepTitles2.html

Edited February 4, 2006 by Djedj

[Djedj]

He's referenced as an author as well (interesting for the dates) :

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Vannovskii, Petr Semenovich, 1822-1904.

Doklad Vannovskago po povodu studencheskikh bezporiadkov 1899 g.

[n.p.] Tip. Rabochago znameni. 1900

Books & Pamphlets; 52 p.; 19 cm; Printed gray wrappers; Cover-title. At head of title: Izdanie Rabochago znameni. Anderson 214; Kamenev p. 24.

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Well I guess that's it for me !

[Great Dane]

Djedj,

This is excellent, excellent, EXCELLENT news!

And even pictures!

My lacking skills in reading Russian texts kept me ending up in dead ends, so this is terrific!

Thanks a lot!

/Mike

[Djedj]

My pleasure Mike !

With respect to Russian websites, you probably can make out some result using some online translator ; here's one :

http://www.worldlingo.com/en/products_serv...translator.html

From my experience with those tools :

- It works better to copy/paste text than to try the "translate website" options

- If some word seems not to be matching in the general context, there are online dictionnaries that propose different meanings.

I worked on some Bulgarian pages that way ; it DOES take a little time but you end up with very interesting results.

The words generally the translators have problems with are often :

- conjugated verbs

- specific XIXth Century military terms ; you'll probably know the meaning of those, printing out a cyrillic character sheet will be useful.

So if one of those Russian pages looks ripe with info, it could be worth giving it a go...

[Steen Ammentorp]

Not really my area but I do have a little info on this fellow beside was has already been mentioned. He commanded the XII Corps during the Russo-Turkish War 1877-1878 during two periods Nov. 1876 to Jul. 1877 and again Feb. 1878 to Sep. 1878. Source: G. Zivkovic: Heer- und Flottenf?hrer der Welt

Now a Google search on him did bring up some information on him though of course I had the luxury that his first name and patronymic has already been identified. Nevertheless combinations of different transcriptions for ham gave plenty: petr OR piotr OR pyotr AND vannovkii OR vannovskiy OR vannovsky

Perhaps this best hit was this short bio of him from Wikipedia (Though I am no fan of this): http://lexikon.freenet.de/Pyotr_Vannovsky

Kind Regards

Steen Ammentorp

The Generals of World War II

[Great Dane]

Steen,

Thanks, I'll keep the different spellings in mind and check it out.

Lots of stuff to add to his 'dossier'

/Mike