Nikolai Kakurin
Николай Какурин
Red Army commander who was chief of staff of the Tambov suppression and became a historian of the Civil War
Born in Oryol in 1883 into a hereditary noble family of army officers, he graduated from the Nicholas General Staff Academy and in the First World War served as acting chief of staff of a division. In 1918 he joined the army of the Ukrainian People's Republic and in 1919 the Ukrainian Galician Army. Joining the Red Army in 1920, he commanded the 10th Division and the 3rd Army in the Polish–Soviet War; in 1921, as chief of staff of the Tambov forces under Mikhail Tukhachevsky, he co-signed Order No. 0116 on the use of poison gas against the insurgents. He joined the Communist Party the same year. In 1923 he became head of the Civil War history department at the Red Army Staff and was one of the authors of a three-volume history of the Civil War. Arrested in 1930, he died in Yaroslavl prison in 1936.
Career timeline
- 1910Graduated from the Nicholas General Staff Academy
- 1915Acting chief of staff of the 71st Infantry Division
- 1918Assistant to the chief of the General Staff of the Ukrainian People's Army
- 1919Chief of staff of the 4th Corps of the Ukrainian Galician Army
- 1920Commander of the Red Army 10th Division and the 3rd Army
- 1921Chief of staff of the Tambov group of forces
- 1922Commander of Soviet troops in the Bukhara–Fergana region
- 1923Head of the Civil War history department at the Red Army Staff
- 1925–1930Lecturer at the Frunze Military Academy