Тhe biography of the infantry General Mikhail Vasilyevich Alekseyev is an example of how the army in the last period of the existence of imperial Russia played the role of the social lift. The chief of staff of the Headquarters of the Supreme High Command in the First World War and one of the leaders of the White Movement, Alekseyev was the grandson of a serf peasant and the son of a cantonist, who received the rank of an officer during the Crimean War defending Sebastopol. He started his way to adjutant general of the last emperor from very modest positions, whose restoration makes it possible to present a real picture of life in Russia in the 1860s and 1870s.