Aleksei Yermolov's inclusion in the Bank of Russia's "Outstanding Military Commanders and Naval Officers" series reflects his contested rehabilitation in official memory. A brutal architect of the Caucasus campaigns in the 1810s–1820s, he was dismissed by Nicholas I in 1827 partly due to his associations with the Decembrist movement — yet by the Soviet period, and again in post-Soviet Russia, his aggressive pacification of the region had been reframed as nation-building. The 2012 release coincided with the bicentennial commemorations of the 1812 Patriotic War, in which Yermolov commanded the artillery at Borodino.
Aleksei Yermolov's inclusion in the Bank of Russia's "Outstanding Military Commanders and Naval Officers" series reflects his contested rehabilitation in official memory. A brutal architect of the Caucasus campaigns in the 1810s–1820s, he was dismissed by Nicholas I in 1827 partly due to his associations with the Decembrist movement — yet by the Soviet period, and again in post-Soviet Russia, his aggressive pacification of the region had been reframed as nation-building. The 2012 release coincided with the bicentennial commemorations of the 1812 Patriotic War, in which Yermolov commanded the artillery at Borodino.