A SIberian Cossack, Pleshkov was descended from the nobility of the Mogilev Governorate. He was born in the village of Nikolayev on 13 November 1856. He graduated from the Voronezh Military Gymnasium in 1874, then attended the 1st Pavlovsk School and the Nikolaev Cavalry School. Upon graduating from the latter in 1876, he began his career in the Imperial Russian Army.
Pleshkov was still the commander of the 1st Siberian Army Corps when the Russian Empire entered World War I on 1 August 1914, and he went through almost the entire war with the corps, distinguishing himself as a good commander. At the beginning of the war, his corps thrown into battle without artillery, but saved Russian troops at Pyasechny. For battles near Riga in 1914 he was awarded the St. George Sword. Then he fought at Lodz and Przasnysz. As the Imperial Russian Army conducted a massive strategic withdrawal during the "Great Retreat" of July–September 1915, the 1st Siberian Rifle Corps saw action on the Narew in July 1915, in which Pleshkov's the 2nd and 11th Siberian Rifle Divisions withstood the onslaught of the numerically superior German 12th Army. In March 1916, Pleshkov led the northern group of the Russian 2nd Army during the unsuccessful Russian Lake Naroch Offensive. Pleshkov's corps later fought in the Pripyat Marshes region.
Revolution and Russian Civil War
In the February Revolution of March 1917, Tsar Nicholas II was overthrown and the Russian Provisional Government proclaimed a new Russian Republic. Pleshkov stayed on in the post-imperial Russian Army, but in mid-1917, soldiers removed him from command of the 1st Siberian Army Corps. On 3 July 1917, allegedly due to illness, he was transferred to the reserve of the headquarters of the Minsk Military District. When the Bolsheviks overthrew the Russian Provisional Government in the October Revolution on 7 November 1917, the Russian Civil War broke out. Pleshkov supported the anti-Bolshevik White movement and resumed active service in the White Army. In 1918 he became the head of White Army troops in the Russian Far East and on 23–24 August 1918 he led White Army forces in an attempted armed coup in Vladivostok. On 24 December 1918 he became the commander-in-chief in the exclusion zone of the Chinese Eastern Railway. He also took part in battles with Red Army forces on the eastern front of the Russian Civil War. In 1919, he became chairman of the Committee for Assistance to Russian Disabled Persons.
Later life
After the Bolshevik victory in the Russian Civil War, Pleshkov emigrated to the Republic of China. He settled in Harbin, where he worked in the management of the Chinese Eastern Railway and in 1922 became a member of the Society of Guard Officers in the Far East. In 1923, Pleshkov formed a detachment of White Army officers in to serve in the army of the Chinese warlordGeneralissimoZhang Zuolin. About 300 men initially responded to his call for volunteers. This formation served as the basis for the deployment in 1924 under the leadership of the warlordGeneralZhang Zongchang of the 1st Separate Russian Brigade. Pleshkov died in Harbin on 21 May 1927.
