Semyon Mikhailovich Budyonny

The 1st Cavalry Army was formed on 17 November 1919 on the basis of Budyonny's 1st Cavalry Corps, with its 4th, 6th and 11th divisions remaining under his command. Stalin's patronage was essential to its ascent: Budyonny had met Stalin at Tsaritsyn in 1918, along with Voroshilov, and the three formed a lasting alliance.

In the autumn of 1919 Budyonny's cavalry beat White cavalry in massed battle for the first time, taking Voronezh and then Kastornoye. After Kursk on 17 November the army pushed south through Kharkov, taking Taganrog on 6 January 1920 and Rostov two days later. During the halt caused by the thaw, Budyonny's men burned down Rostov's hospital, presumably with wounded White officers inside.

The record preserves both achievement and indiscipline. The 1st Cavalry Army, commanded by Budyonny from November 1919 to October 1923, played an important role in defeating Denikin and Wrangel in the North Caucasus, Crimea and Northern Taurida. In January 1920, however, it twice lost to White cavalry in the North Caucasus, and after the capture of Rostov mass looting and decomposition set in. A telegram from the 8th Army staff to Moscow reported looting, drunkenness and the plundering of trains, and Trotsky demanded the arrest of the city commandant Parkhomenko.

The Polish-Soviet War ended badly for the army. After failing to take Lviv it was defeated at Komarów by Polish regular cavalry, one of the largest cavalry battles in history, and forced to withdraw onto Soviet-held territory; it then took part in the reconquest of Crimea, the final phase of the Civil War.

The retreat from Warsaw in 1920 was marked by mass looting and violence against civilians, and some units of the 1st Cavalry Army were stained by pogroms of Jewish shtetls. By Budyonny's own order the guilty units were disarmed, including the 31st, 32nd and 33rd regiments of the 6th Cavalry Division. About 400 guilty men were handed to tribunals and sentenced to execution or to five to twenty years of forced labour, and the divisional command, including divisional commander I. R. Apanasenko, was replaced for failing to take measures against the pogroms.

The army's reputation was contested in literature, not only in official propaganda. Isaac Babel rode with Budyonny's cavalry in Poland and published the Red Cavalry stories to worldwide acclaim, which offended Budyonny; in March 1924 he made a rare and furious foray into print demanding the Red Cavalry's reputation be protected against "slander" by a "literary degenerate". Maxim Gorky defended Babel, and Budyonny renewed the attack in an open 1928 letter to Gorky accusing Babel of "crude, deliberate and arrogant slander".

Budyonny was the Red Army's most steadfast advocate for cavalry, clashing sharply with Marshal Mikhail Tukhachevsky, who championed independent tank and mechanized formations. As Inspector of Cavalry from 1924 to 1937, Budyonny insisted that "the cavalry will never become obsolete," and publicly condemned Tukhachevsky's 'deep battle' theory and independent tank corps as "wrecking" (deliberate sabotage). When told in 1939 of the tank's importance in the coming war, he famously retorted: "You won't convince me. As soon as war is declared, everyone will shout, 'Send for the Cavalry!'" This remark captured his unshaken conviction even as mechanized warfare became reality.

The debate escalated beyond doctrine into the political arena. On June 11, 1937, Budyonny sat as a member of the Special Judicial Presence of the USSR Supreme Court that tried Tukhachevsky and seven other senior commanders for a "military-fascist conspiracy" and sentenced them to death. In his trial testimony, Budyonny argued that Tukhachevsky's vision of an independent tank corps was so inferior to cavalry and so illogical that it amounted to deliberate wrecking. Earlier, at the February–March 1937 Central Committee plenum, he had demanded that Bukharin and Rykov be "handed over to the court and shot," and on the proposal to expel Tukhachevsky and Rudzutak from the Party, he wrote: "Absolutely in favor. These scoundrels must be executed."

Yet Budyonny was not simply an obstinate conservative. He initiated the formation of horse-mechanized groups (конно-механизированные соединения) that paired cavalry with armor, and in 1931 he made his own parachute jump to familiarize himself with new tactics. When war came, massed cavalry charges did disappear. The Red Army still fielded over 80 light cavalry divisions during the war, and cavalry proved its worth in reconnaissance and mobile strike roles. After the war, Budyonny devoted himself to horse breeding, developing the 'Budyonnovskaya' breed named in his honor. This horse is still prized in Russia for sport and endurance.