Pyotr Nikolayevich Krasnov was Lieutenant General of the Russian army when the revolution broke out in 1917 and one of the leaders of the counterrevolutionary White movement afterward. According to its introduction, this book "was born of the debris of Imperial Russia, conceived in the shadow of Leo Tolstoy's historical narrative, by a Russian general with exceptional opportunities."

Pyotr Nikolayevich Krasnov, sometimes referred to in English as Peter Krasnov, was a Don Cossack historian and officer, promoted to Lieutenant General of the Russian army when the revolution broke out in 1917, one of the leaders of the counter-revolutionary White movement afterwards and a Nazi collaborator who mobilized Cossack forces to fight against the Soviet Union during World War II. Krasnov was also a prominent figure in the White Terror. He presided over the executions and exiling of tens of thousands of "Red" Cossacks