The quiet architect of the Red Army who confronted Stalin at Tsaritsyn as Trotsky's man
In January 1918, during the Brest-Litovsk peace negotiations, Mekhonoshin told a party meeting chaired by Lenin: 'We have no real fighting force. The front is bare. We cannot fight.'
Konstantin Mekhonoshin was a core military organizer in the founding era of the Red Army, who prepared the October armed uprising as a member of the Petrograd Military Revolutionary Committee and then, as Deputy People's Commissar for Military Affairs, built the skeleton of the new Red Army alongside Podvoisky and Sklyansky. As a member of the Republic's Revolutionary Military Council he served on multiple fronts, and in 1918 at Tsaritsyn he backed Trotsky's appointed Southern Front commander against Stalin and Voroshilov's independent line, playing a decisive role in their removal. After the Civil War he headed Vsevobuch, laying the foundations of the Soviet physical culture and sports system, before moving through Gosplan, Osoaviakhim, and the Institute of Oceanography; arrested in 1937 and shot the following year, he was rehabilitated in 1956.
Career Timeline
- 1906–1913Joined student revolutionary circles in Perm; joined RSDLP as Bolshevik; underground work — transported explosives, printed leaflets
- 1913–1915St. Petersburg University; arrested and exiled twice; joined Russian Academy of Sciences Caspian Sea expedition
- 1915–1917.2Private in Pavlovsk Life Guard Regiment reserve battalion; built Bolshevik cell among soldiers
- 1917.4–10Leadership of Bolshevik Military Organization (Voyenka); Petrograd Soviet executive; imprisoned in Kresty after July Days
- 1917.10–11Member and chief of staff of Petrograd MRC; directed suppression of Kerensky-Krasnov counter-attack
- 1917.11–1918.9Deputy People's Commissar for Military Affairs; Supreme Military Council member; All-Russian Collegium for Red Army formation
- 1918.9–1919.7Member of RVSR; RVS member on Eastern, Southern, Caspian-Caucasus fronts — clashed with Stalin at Tsaritsyn
- 1920–1926RVS member of 3rd and 11th Armies (Soviet-Polish War, Baku operation); head of Vsevobuch; Chairman of Supreme Council of Physical Culture; Red Sportintern
- 1926–1937Military attaché in Poland; head of Gosplan defence sector; Osoaviakhim; Director of Oceanography Institute; deputy chief of Naval Intelligence