Gaya Gai, the cavalry corps commander who rode past Warsaw to the Vistula
Born in Tabriz to an Armenian family of teachers, he commanded Armenian volunteers on the Caucasus front in the First World War. Joining the Bolsheviks after October, he fought in the Civil War as Gaya Gai, retaking Simbirsk and commanding the 1st Army. In the Polish-Soviet War of 1920 he led the 3rd Cavalry Corps on the far right of the Western Front, took Vilnius and Grodno, reached the Vistula and cut the Warsaw-Gdańsk railway; with his retreat cut off by the Polish counteroffensive he was interned in East Prussia on 26 August. Later Armenian commissar for military affairs and a professor of military history, he was arrested in 1935, shot in 1937 and rehabilitated in 1956.
Also known as: Guy Gai · Hayk Bzhishkian · Gaya Dmitrievich Gai
Activities and affiliations
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1917–1935
Soviet Communist Party and Bolsheviks
Military command -
1918–1935
Soviet Union state institutionsMilitary and defenceMain
Military command
Career Timeline
- 1914–1917Company commander of Armenian volunteers on the Caucasus front; staff captain
- 1918.07–11Commander, 1st Simbirsk Infantry Division — recapture of Simbirsk
- 1918.12–1919.06Commander, 1st Army, Eastern Front
- 1919.09–1920.03Commander, 1st Caucasus Cavalry Division
- 1920–1920.08Commander, 3rd Cavalry Corps, Western Front — reached the Vistula, interned in East Prussia
- 1922People's Commissar for Military Affairs, Armenian SSR
- 1923.05–1924Commander, 7th Samara Cavalry Division
- 1927–1929Commander, 3rd Cavalry Corps
- 1933–1935Professor and head of the Department of the History of War and Military Art, Zhukovsky Air Force Academy
- 1935.07.03Arrested — shot on 11 December 1937