Anatoly Timofeyev

Anatoly Timofeyev was the son of a lieutenant colonel from a noble family. After completing his training in the Voronezh Cadet Corps in 1906, he entered the Elisavetgrad Cavalry School. Two years later, he became an officer cadet in the 6th Hussar Regiment “Klyastitsky”.

At the 1912 Olympic Games in Stockholm, he competed in both sabre events. Individually, he qualified for the semi-finals but did not compete there for unknown reasons. In 1913/15, he was assigned to the Main Gymnastics and Fencing School in St. Petersburg.

With his regiment, Timofeyev saw action in World War I but was wounded in the leg in the first year of the war. In the following year, he became an observer in the 14th Air Corps in the rank of staff captain. He then attended the military pilot school and was promoted to captain and machine gunner observer in the 8th Air Division in 1917. Timofeyev was awarded various degrees of the Orders of St. Stanislav, St. Anna, St. Vladimir and St. George, the latter being the highest military decoration of the Russian Empire. In 1918, he joined the Voluntary Army of the White forces and took part in the 1st Kuban Campaign, known as the “Ice Campaign”. As a pilot and observer, he served in the South Russian Army’s air force. Performing similar duties in the staff of General Wrangel’s White Army, Timofeyev rose to the rank of a colonel. In 1920, in view of the collapse of the anti-Soviet forces, he was transferred to the reserve.

Timofeyev was evacuated from the Crimea Peninsula in 1920 via Constantinople (now Istanbul) and ended up in the Visegrad colony in Serbia. In 1923, he started working as a teacher at the Russian-Serbian Girls’ Gymnasium in Kikinda (previously Velika Kikinda) on the border to Romania. In 1946, he applied for Soviet Russian citizenship, but remained in Yugoslavia until the end of his life in the town of Béla Crkva, also close to the Romanian border, where the survivors of the Crimean Cadet Corps were centered.