Latvian-born Civil War hero turned defendant in the Tukhachevsky trial
On the night of 7 August 1920, Eideman's Right-Bank Group crossed the Dnieper to seize the Kakhovka bridgehead, a position sixty kilometres from Perekop that turned the flank and rear of Wrangel's army.
A Latvian-born Soviet commander and writer whose defence of the Kakhovka bridgehead as 13th Army commander helped break Wrangel's offensive from Crimea. He later trained Red Army cadres at the Frunze Military Academy and built the Osoaviakhim civilian defence apparatus, but in 1937 he was shot as a defendant in the Tukhachevsky trial and rehabilitated in 1957.
Activities and affiliations
Career Timeline
- 1916Graduated Kiev Military School, ensign in 16th Siberian Reserve Regiment
- 1917–1918Deputy chairman of Centrosibir, joined the Bolshevik Party
- 1918–1920Civil War: commanded 16th, 41st, 46th Rifle Divisions and 13th Army; Kakhovka defence
- 1924–1925Commander, Siberian Military District
- 1925–1932Head and commissar, Frunze Military Academy
- 1932–1937Chairman, Central Council of Osoaviakhim
- 1937Arrested 22 May, Tukhachevsky trial defendant, shot 12 June
Related historical events
- 1917–1921Ukraine’s revolution and warsCo-author of The Civil War in UkraineHe co-wrote The Civil War in Ukraine with Nikolai Kakurin.
- 1918–1922The Civil War and Foreign Intervention13th Army and Right-Bank Group commanderAs 13th Army and Right-Bank Group commander in the summer of 1920, he seized the Kakhovka bridgehead across the Dnieper, threatening the flank and rear of Wrangel's army advancing from Crimea.
- 1937–1938The Great PurgeDefendant during the Great PurgeIn 1937 he was a defendant in the Tukhachevsky trial and was shot.
Literary work
Eideman was a prolific man of letters alongside his command career. He wrote poetry in his native Latvian, published in Russian only in translation. His prose turned to the Civil War, with novels and stories including Steppe Wind (1926), The Besieged (1926) and Uprising of the Stones (1929), and the collection In the Name of Duty (1927). As a military historian he co-wrote The Civil War in Ukraine (1928) with Nikolai Kakurin, and produced propaganda and military-historical works such as Hotbeds of Atamanshchina and Banditry (1921) and Chemistry in Future War (1924). He was a board member and chair of the Latvian section of the Union of Soviet Writers (the Latvian organisation of proletarian writers), and from 1927 to 1936 served as responsible editor of the military-theory journal War and Revolution. Posthumous volumes, the collected poetry and prose Words and Years (Riga, 1959) and the prose selection Duel (1985), kept his writing in print.