The cavalry general who bolted the Caucasus gate, witness to three wars
In the summer of 1942, German mountain troops planted the Nazi flag on Mount Elbrus. Tyulenev did not retreat. The Terek–Grozny line he had insisted on building held firm, and the Wehrmacht never reached the oil.
Born a peasant's son in Simbirsk, he became a Full Cavalier of the St. George Cross, all four classes, in the First World War. During the Civil War he served in Budyonny's 1st Cavalry Army as intelligence chief and brigade commander. In 1940, alongside Zhukov and Meretskov, he was one of the first three men promoted to General of the Army. His Southern Front command in 1941 ended in disaster and a severe wound; but appointed commander of the Transcaucasian Front in February 1942, he built the Terek–Grozny defence line that held. His most consequential achievement was stopping the German drive to the Baku oilfields in the 1942–43 Battle of the Caucasus. Postwar he commanded military districts and served as cavalry inspector, wrote the memoir Through Three Wars, and received the Hero of the Soviet Union title just months before his death in 1978.
Activities and affiliations
- 1919–1920 Military command · Soviet Union · Military and defence
Career Timeline
- 1914–1917WWI: Full Cavalier of the St. George Cross, all four classes
- 1917Graduates Chistopol officers' school; joins Red Guard after October
- 1919–19201st Cavalry Army: intelligence chief, then cavalry brigade commander
- 1938–1940Commands Transcaucasian MD; promoted General of the Army, 1940
- 1941.06–08Commands Southern Front; retreat from Moldova; severely wounded
- 1942–1945Commands Transcaucasian Front; leads the defence of the Caucasus
- 1947–1958Cavalry inspector, district commander, combat training directorate
- 1958–1978Group of Inspectors General; Hero of the Soviet Union, 1978
Related historical events
- 1918–1922The Civil War and Foreign InterventionCivil War participant
- 1939.08–1940.08The Nazi-Soviet Pact and the Partition of Eastern EuropeCommander of the Soviet march into PolandIn September 1939, he directed the Soviet march into Poland.
- 1941–1945The Great Patriotic Warcommander of the Southern Front
From interwar cavalry commander to military district chief, 1922-1941
After finishing the military academy in October 1922, Tyulenev was assigned to command a separate cavalry brigade in the Moscow Military District. In July 1924 he took over the 14th Maikop Cavalry Division; from November 1925 he was inspector of cavalry and remounts of the North Caucasus Military District, and from August 1926 head of the Budyonny Ukrainian Cavalry School. In November 1927 he took the 2nd Separate Cavalry Brigade in the Red Banner Caucasus Army, and in 1929 completed the refresher course for senior command personnel and in 1930 the party-political course for single-command officers at the Tolmachev Military-Political Academy. In November 1930 he became commander and military commissar of the 1st Separate Special Cavalry Brigade named for Stalin; from November 1931 he was assistant inspector of cavalry, from July 1934 head of the cavalry organization directorate, from December 1934 head of the remounting department of the People's Commissariat of Defence, and from February 1936 deputy inspector of cavalry. In February 1938 he became commander of the Transcaucasian Military District and a member of its military council, and on 7 October 1938 he was also confirmed as a member of the military council attached to the People's Commissar of Defence.
In early September 1939 he was summoned urgently to Kiev and appointed commander of the cavalry army group of the Kiev Special Military District; on the 16th he took the Kamenets-Podolsk army group of the Ukrainian Front, on the 20th the Southern army group, and on the 24th the 12th Army, directing the Soviet march into Poland. After the fighting ended and troops were stationed in the occupied territories, in October 1939 he returned to his post as commander of the Transcaucasian Military District. When general ranks were introduced in June 1940 he became one of the first three Soviet Generals of the Army, alongside Zhukov and Meretskov, and from August 1940 he commanded the Moscow Military District. In March 1941 he presided over the formal return to the Hungarian envoy Jozsef Krishtoffi of 56 Hungarian army colours captured by Russian troops when the 1849 Hungarian revolution was suppressed. This interwar record shows both the practical grounding he built as a cavalry specialist and a career comparatively thin in experience of running district- and front-level formations. The lack of systematic military education and of front command experience that sources cite in explaining his failed 1941 Southern Front command fits the character of this record.
His radicalization also connects to conditions in his home village. Born in Shatrashany, Simbirsk Governorate, to a soldier who had fought in the Russo-Turkish War, he finished three grades of a three-year rural school in 1906; that December his father took him to Simbirsk to work as a labourer in a starch-and-syrup factory, but low wages soon brought him back to the village. During the 1905 revolution peasant unrest broke out in the village and the estate of Prince Golitsyn was burned; repression by gendarmes and troops followed, and his father had to leave and hide. In the summer of 1907 the younger Tyulenev went to Astrakhan to work the Caspian fisheries, staying until autumn 1913, then returned to Shatrashany and was drafted into the Imperial Russian Army that October. The conscription board assigned him to the Baltic Fleet, but after a reliability check he was posted to the 5th Kargopol Dragoon Regiment at Kazan.