Red commander whose "Steel Division" marched up from the North Caucasus and struck the Don Army's rear at Tsaritsyn in October 1918
Born in Kiev to a Ukrainian farmhand's family, he worked at a Nikolaev factory and in the Donbas mines. Arrested in 1916 for a strike, he was drafted; in 1917 he joined the Bolsheviks and led a Red Guard detachment in the October rising in Moscow. In 1918 he commanded the 1st "Steel" Rifle Division in the North Caucasus; in October, after quarrelling with commander-in-chief Sorokin, he marched it 800 km and on the 15th struck the Don Army's rear before Tsaritsyn. In July 1920 his 1st Cavalry Corps, raiding Wrangel's rear in Northern Taurida, was encircled and routed, and in 1921 he led the 18th Cavalry Division in the invasion of Georgia and entered Batumi. Arrested in 1937, he was shot in Krasnodar on 10 June 1938.
Also known as: Dmytro Zhloba
Activities and affiliations
-
1916–1917
Russian Empire state institutions
Military command -
1917–1922
Soviet Union state institutionsMain
Military command -
1917–
Soviet Communist Party and Bolsheviks
Military command
Career Timeline
- 1905–1907Armed workers' squad of the Naval works, Nikolaev
- 1916Arrested for a strike; drafted
- 1917Graduated from the Moscow school of aviation motor mechanics; junior NCO
- 1917Joined the RSDLP (Bolsheviks); member of the Moscow Soviet
- 1917Led a Red Guard detachment in the October rising in Moscow
- 1917–1918Military commissar in the Donbas; led a miners' Red Guard unit
- 1918Commander of the 1st "Steel" Rifle Division, North Caucasus
- 1918Marched 800 km to Tsaritsyn; struck the Don Army's rear on 15 October
- 1919Commanded a group near Astrakhan on the Caspian–Caucasus Front, then a cavalry brigade in Dumenko's cavalry corps
- 1920Commander of the 1st Cavalry Corps; removed after the defeat of his raid in Northern Taurida
- 1920–1921Deputy commander, then commander of the 18th Cavalry Division
- 1922Demobilised; economic work
- 1927Head of the North Caucasus regional kolkhoz union
- 1929Head of Plavstroi, the Kuban marsh reclamation trust
- 1937Arrested by the NKVD
- 1938Shot