Self-proclaimed general of the white counter-revolutionary movement and leader (ataman) of the Cossacks of Transbaikalia. Gregori Semenov (Gregori Mihailovitch Semenov) was born in 1891. His father is Russian, while his mother is Buriat and it is from her that he has inherited his Mongolian features. Officer of the Ner_insk regiment formed by Ussuri Cossacks, Semenov leaves the regiment to start his own war against the Bolsheviks in Siberia at the head of a group of few men.
During the First World War, he retreats to the allied camp set up in Manchuria, which at that time was under the control of Japan, and at the beginning of 1918 he occupies the border station of Manzhouli. The Japanese, who had landed in Eastern Siberia in April 1918, offer him money, military advisors, armour-plated trains and heavy artillery. Together with his guards, the coarse, brave and violent ataman takes advantage of the current chaos to plunder all around. He then sets up the provisional government of Transbaikalia in Chita (Siberia) together with the baron von Ungern-Sternberg who had fought the First World War with him. They also support the project of the Great Mongolia against the Chinese. In the end, the victorious advance of the Red Army and the Japanese retreat from Siberia force the ataman Semenov to surrender. In 1921 he retreats again to Manchuria with the protection of the Japanese.
At the end of the Second World War, Semenov is found by some revonchist Russians and executed.