Dmitry Arkadyevich Shmidt

Soviet Union state institutions Left critics 1896–1937 ✕ Executed

Red Army divisional commander arrested in 1936, early in the Great Purge, and executed the next year

Born David Aronovich Gutman in Pryluky in 1896 to a Jewish family, he was drafted into the Imperial Russian Army in 1915, joined the Bolsheviks that year and won the Cross of St. George in all four classes. In the Civil War he formed a partisan group around Pryluky in 1918 and was twice awarded the Order of the Red Banner (1920, 1921), the second for Tsaritsyn. He took command of the 8th Mechanized Brigade in 1934. Among the first Red Army officers arrested in the Great Purge, in 1936, he was executed in June 1937 and rehabilitated in 1957.

Also known as: Dmitri Schmidt