From 1st Cavalry Army commissar to the purge's personnel executioner
"Motor warfare, mechanisation, aviation and chemistry were invented by military specialists. For now, the main thing is the little horse. The decisive role in the coming war will be played by the cavalry."
A Bolshevik since 1904, he rose from tailor to professional revolutionary. Together with Budyonny and Voroshilov, he co-founded the 1st Cavalry Army and served on its Revolutionary Military Council, emerging as a Civil War hero. Appointed Deputy People's Commissar of Defence and head of the Command and Leadership Personnel Directorate in 1937, he became a central executioner of the Great Purge, spearheading the investigation into an 'illegal fascist conspiracy' among officers in the Kiev Military District. During World War II, as head of Glavupraform he oversaw all Red Army formation and manpower, though his dogmatic insistence on cavalry over mechanisation drew sharp postwar criticism.
Activities and affiliations
- 1918–1919 Military command · Soviet Union · Military and defence
Career Timeline
- 1904Joined RSDLP (Bolsheviks)
- 1917Chairman, Kamenskaya Bolshevik Committee; Red Guard commander
- 1918–1919Member, RVS 10th Army; member, RVS Ukrainian Front
- 1919–1920Member, RVS 1st Cavalry Army
- 1920Member, RVS 2nd Cavalry Army — suppressed Makhno's forces
- 1930–1934Member, Central Control Commission
- 1937–1940Deputy People's Commissar of Defence; head, Command and Leadership Personnel Directorate
- 1939–1941Member, Central Committee VKP(b)
- 1941–1943Deputy People's Commissar of Defence; head, Glavupraform
- 1943–1944Member, Military Councils of Southern and 4th Ukrainian Fronts
Related historical events
- 1917–1921Ukraine’s revolution and warsMember of the Ukrainian Front Military CouncilHe served on the Ukrainian Front's Military Council in 1918–1919.
- 1918–1922The Civil War and Foreign InterventionRevolutionary Military Council member
- 1937–1938The Great PurgeHead of Military Purge Operations
- 1941–1945The Great Patriotic WarFront Military Council memberIn 1943–1944 he served on the Military Councils of the Southern and 4th Ukrainian Fronts.
The Frunze Military Academy years, 1930-1937
Shchadenko's career, stalled in the late 1920s by illness and an unfinished education, reopened in March 1930 with his appointment as political assistant to the head of the Frunze Military Academy. There he made strengthening "class vigilance" the starting point of his work, convinced that "class enemies" were entrenched inside the academy, and singled out former officers among the military specialists as concealed enemies. During the investigation of the so-called "Vesna" affair against former officers in 1930, fifteen people were arrested at the academy with his assistance, two of whom immediately testified that Tukhachevsky, commander of the Leningrad Military District, was linked to hostile elements. Furious at Tukhachevsky's criticisms during a 1931 inspection of the academy, he wrote to Voroshilov in September complaining of "persecution" and "mockery", described Tukhachevsky as a man "intoxicated by the superiority of his position", and rejected the proposed reorganisation outright.
Yet this period was not purely destructive. As the academy from the 1931/32 academic year began training command cadres for cavalry, aviation, artillery and armoured troops, Shchadenko made a certain contribution. He maintained relatively normal relations with Eideman and Shaposhnikov, who headed the academy in the early 1930s, and on 15 January 1934 was awarded the Order of the Red Star together with Shaposhnikov for skilful leadership of the academy's combat and political training. On 23 February 1935, as one of the founders of the 1st Cavalry Army, he received the Order of Lenin alongside Budyonny and Voroshilov, and on 28 November 1935 the rank of corps commissar, a grade held by no other political deputy of a Red Army military academy.
Conflict intensified when A. I. Kork, a man trusted by Tukhachevsky, became academy head in September 1935. Shchadenko attacked him relentlessly, writing to Voroshilov that Kork shielded purged "Trotskyists" and White Guards and trampled inner-party democracy, and after Tukhachevsky intervened in Kork's defence Shchadenko lost his academy post. In August 1936 Kork, then academy head, reported to Deputy People's Commissar Tukhachevsky that Shchadenko's health was extremely precarious and that a violent psychotic fit could occur at any moment, requesting that he be immediately relieved and handed over to doctors. Idle for a time, he received a new posting only in December 1936 as head of the political administration of the Kharkov Military District, where arrests were also carried out on his initiative, as he reported with pride at the June 1937 meeting of the Military Council.