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came within 200 miles of the capital before being
turned back. Denikin's fortunes declined quickly
afterward. The weakness of other White com-
manders did not permit a coordinated White
offensive that would have challenged the
BOL
-
SHEVIKS
simultaneously on various fronts. His
own lack of political imagination, his insistence
on a “Russia united and indivisible,” and his
insensitivity to the aspirations of national minori-
ties in a highly multiethnic area prevented the
development of a strong political base in the
areas the Whites controlled. By November 1919,
Denikin was on the defensive. The remnants of
his forces fled to the Crimea and Denikin
resigned in favor of Baron Petr
WRANGEL
and fled
to Istanbul. He was offered refuge in England but
chose to go to Belgium, later France, and finally
the United States, where he died.
June; by August only three remained to round
the easternmost tip of Asia. The expedition, with
Dezhnev as commander after Popov was
wounded, shipwrecked off the coast of north-
eastern Siberia. After 10 weeks of overland
march they reached the mouth of the Anadyr
River. Only 26 of the more than 100 men who
had left Kolyma survived the journey. After a
difficult winter at the mouth of the Anadyr,
Dezhnev and 13 survivors sailed upstream and
founded Anadyrsk, the center for future Russian
advances in the region. Dezhnev spent the next
ten years exploring the area around the Gulf of
Anadyr, rich in walrus rookeries. In 1662 he was
relieved of his command and, after two years in
Yakutsk, traveled back to Moscow to present the
czar with furs and silver and other treasures and
to account for his travels. Czar
ALEKSEI MIKHAILO
-
VICH
rewarded Dezhnev with the title of ataman,
a Cossack leader, and wealth. He returned to
Yakutsk in 1665 with his nephew and com-
manded the Olenek River area, before returning
to Moscow in 1671 with a large fur shipment.
There he died in either 1672 or 1673.
Geographers of his era had long debated
whether Asia and America were joined or
whether there was a water passage between the
two. In his 1648 journey, Dezhnev and his crew
had unknowingly provided the answer, but his
report attracted little attention at the time and
was filed in a Siberian archive, to be rediscov-
ered only in 1736, in time for Vitus Bering's
famous expedition. The easternmost part of the
Asian mainland, separated from
ALASKA
by the
Bering Strait, now bears the name of Cape Dezh-
nev, in his memory.
Dezhnev, Semyon Ivanovich
(1605-ca. 1673)
explorer
Dezhnev was a
COSSACK
explorer who, in 1648,
became the first Westerner to sail through what is
now the Bering Strait, separating Asia from North
America. Nevertheless, because no records were
kept of his journey, it was not until 1728, when
Vitus
BERING
made the trip, that the existence of
this body of water became widely known.
Dezhnev was born in Velikii Ustiug in north-
ern European Russia, home to many Siberian
explorers. He worked briefly as a sailor before
moving to Siberia in the 1630s and working as a
tribute collector for the czar's government. In
1638 he moved to Yakutsk on the Lena River,
then the main Russian post in eastern Siberia.
For the next decade he participated in several
fur-trading and exploratory expeditions to the
east and north to the Arctic Ocean. In 1648, after
an initial setback, he took part in an expedition
led by Feodor Popov, a Cossack, whose goal was
to travel from the mouth of the Kolyma River on
the Arctic Ocean around the eastern tip of Siberia
and reach the Anadyr River, which empties into
the Pacific Ocean. Seven ships left Kolyma in
Diaghilev, Sergei Pavlovich
(1872-1929)
artistic impresario
The man most responsible for introducing the
richness of early-20th-century Russian art to
Western European audiences, Diaghilev was
born in
NOVGOROD
, the son of a landowner. He
grew up in the town of Perm and graduated with
a law degree from St. Petersburg University in
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