The only officer Stalin addressed by name and patronymic, author of The Brain of the Army
Past midnight at the General Staff, Shaposhnikov worked over his maps in a white shirt with suspenders and received the young colonel summoned to him quite domestically. When the work went wrong he never scolded, only asked reproachfully: "What is this, my dear fellow (голубчик)?"
A tsarist staff officer and military theorist who volunteered for the Red Army on 22 May 1918. His three-volume The Brain of the Army (1927–1929) analysed the function and structure of the General Staff in modern warfare and remains on the Russian General Staff Academy curriculum. In June 1937 he sat on the Special Judicial Presence that condemned Tukhachevsky and others to death, while the NKVD was gathering compromising testimony against him. He took part in planning the winter 1941 counteroffensive and served as Stalin's military adviser until his death from pulmonary tuberculosis in March 1945.
Career timeline
1903–1917Imperial Army service, WWI, rose to colonel
1918–1921Joined Red Army; planned major operations as head of Operations
1925–1927Commander, Leningrad then Moscow Military Districts
1928–1931Chief of Staff of the Red Army (1st term); The Brain of the Army
1932–1935Commandant and professor, Frunze Military Academy
1937–1940Chief of the General Staff (2nd term); Marshal (1940); Winter War
1941–1942Chief of the General Staff (3rd term); Moscow counteroffensive
1943–1945Voroshilov Academy commandant; Stalin's military adviser
German general who headed the Wehrmacht High Command and was complicit in Nazi war crimes.
As head of the Wehrmacht High Command, he signed criminal orders and bore responsibility for Nazi mass murder and the conduct of the war.
Keitel became head of the Wehrmacht High Command (OKW) in 1938 and served under Hitler's supreme command as an executor of policy. He signed orders and decrees that violated international law, including one shielding German crimes in the East from prosecution, the Commissar Order requiring the summary execution of Soviet political officers, and the Night and Fog Decree. As OKW chief, he was also responsible for cooperation between the Einsatzgruppen and the military in mass murder of civilians in the Soviet Union, and for the brutal treatment of Soviet prisoners of war. The International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg convicted him on all four counts; he was hanged in 1946.
Career timeline
1901Joined the Prussian army as an artillery officer.
1938Appointed head of the Wehrmacht High Command (OKW).
1945Signed the German surrender document in May.
1946Convicted by the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg and hanged.
Eastern Front commander of the Turkish War of Independence who invaded Armenia in 1920 and imposed the Treaty of Alexandropol
Born in Istanbul in 1882, he graduated at the top of his class from the Ottoman Military College and fought at Gallipoli, at Kut and on the Caucasus front in the First World War. Joining Mustafa Kemal’s national movement, he commanded the Eastern Front in the War of Independence. He invaded Armenia in September 1920 and took Kars and Alexandropol; during the campaign his army displaced and massacred tens of thousands of Armenian civilians. He signed the Treaty of Alexandropol in December and the Treaty of Kars in 1921. In 1924 he founded the Progressive Republican Party, the first opposition party, which was closed; elected speaker of the Grand National Assembly in 1946, he died in office in 1948.
Career timeline
1915Commander of the 14th Division at Gallipoli
1918Commander of the 15th Army Corps, Erzurum
1920Invasion of Armenia; signed the Treaty of Alexandropol
1921Signed the Treaty of Kars
1924–1925Founder and leader of the Progressive Republican Party
The army chief caught between imperial command and surrender
On September 2, 1945, he signed the surrender instrument on behalf of Imperial General Headquarters.
Yoshijirō Umezu was a senior general of Imperial Japan who helped direct military rule and continental policy in China and Manchuria. As Army Chief of Staff from 1944, he argued for continuing the war, yet refused to support a military coup and enforced the emperor’s surrender order. On September 2, 1945, he signed the instrument of surrender for Imperial General Headquarters, then received a life sentence at the International Military Tribunal for the Far East for responsibility in waging aggressive war and died in prison.
Career timeline
1904Second lieutenant, 1st Infantry Regiment
1919–1921Military attaché in Switzerland
1934–1935Commander, China Garrison Army
1939–1944Commander and commander-in-chief, Kwantung Army
1944–1945Chief of the Imperial Japanese Army General Staff
1945Signed the surrender instrument for Imperial General Headquarters
1948–1949Life imprisonment at the IMTFE, died in custody
Before the flank northwest of Stalingrad collapsed, Dumitrescu requested German reinforcements.
Petre Dumitrescu was a career officer of the Kingdom of Romania who commanded the Romanian Third Army on the Eastern Front during the Second World War. Alongside German forces, he led Romanian operations in Bukovina, Ukraine, Crimea, and the Caucasus as Romania pursued the war against the Soviet Union. In November 1942, the Third Army's exposed flank northwest of Stalingrad came under the Soviet Uranus offensive; Dumitrescu requested support, but his formation suffered catastrophic losses and retreated. Charged with war crimes after the war, he was acquitted in 1946 for lack of sufficient evidence.
Career timeline
1901–1903Studied at the School of Artillery and Engineers; commissioned as a second lieutenant
1911–1913Studied at the Superior War School
1930–1932Military attaché to France
1935–1937Vice Chief of the General Staff
1940–1941Commander of the Romanian First Army
1941–1944Commander of the Romanian Third Army
1942Commanded the Third Army during the Battle of Stalingrad
1944Retired and investigated for alleged war crimes
The soldier-premier caught between a coup and defeat
In November 1918, reporting from Zagreb, Simović wrote that the overwhelming majority were 'taken with the idea of Yugoslav solidarity', and he blocked Italy's attempt to occupy Ljubljana by having the Serb Army enter the city first.
Dušan Simović was a Royal Yugoslav air force general who led the 27 March 1941 coup and became prime minister amid crowds cheering the overthrow of the pact with Germany. Yet in power he refused to formally repudiate the Tripartite Pact, hoping to avert a German invasion, and after the German attack he headed the London government-in-exile until 1942.
Career timeline
1900Graduated from the Belgrade Military Academy, commissioned second lieutenant of artillery
1912–1918Served in the Balkan Wars and First World War; commanded the 7th Infantry Regiment on the Salonika Front
1918Serbian government and Supreme Command delegate to the National Council of Slovenes, Croats and Serbs in Zagreb
1936–1938Commander of the Royal Yugoslav Air Force
1938–1940Chief of the General Staff of the Royal Yugoslav Army; resigned after advocating resistance to a German attack
1941.03–1942.01Prime Minister and Chief of the General Staff after the 27 March coup
1941–1942Head of the Yugoslav government-in-exile in London
1945–1946Returned to Belgrade and testified at Mihailović's trial
“If Chicago gangsters can have bulletproof glass in their cars, I can't see any reason why my pilots cannot have the same.”
Hugh Dowding was a British air officer who recognized early that fighter defence required more than aircraft alone. At RAF Fighter Command he integrated radar, observers, raid plotting, and radio control into a system that enabled a smaller force to respond to German attacks. His careful husbanding of pilots and reserves sustained Britain’s defence during the Battle of Britain, but conflicts over tactics and night defence contributed to his replacement soon afterward.
Career timeline
1900Officer, Royal Garrison Artillery
1914Pilot and flight commander, Royal Flying Corps
1915Commanding officer, No. 16 Squadron, Royal Flying Corps
1929Air Officer Commanding, Fighting Area, Air Defence of Great Britain
1930Air Member for Supply and Research, Air Council
1936Air Officer Commanding, RAF Fighter Command
1940Commanded Fighter Command during the Battle of Britain
The White movement's greatest 'soldier-general': conqueror of Kazan who vanished into the ice
"Tell my men that I adored them, and that my death in the midst of them proves it."
Born into a Swedish-Russian noble family, he served as a staff officer in World War I and contributed to the planning of the Brusilov Offensive. In 1918, leading a small volunteer detachment of the Komuch People's Army against the Bolsheviks, he captured Kazan through mobile warfare, pushing the Red Eastern Front to the brink of collapse and earning the nickname 'little Napoleon.' As commander-in-chief of Kolchak's Eastern Front, he led the collapsing armies on the Great Siberian Ice March toward Lake Baikal; he died of frostbite and pneumonia en route, but his men carried his coffin to the very end.
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
The Baltic Fleet political commissar whose 'explosion' warning foreshadowed the Kronstadt revolt
Sent to persuade the mutinous Kronstadt sailors, he was arrested and imprisoned instead.
A Bolshevik since 1903, he was a military political commissar who served on the revolutionary military councils of several fronts during the Civil War before heading the Baltic Fleet's political department in 1921. At an enlarged session of the Petrograd Soviet on 26 February 1921 he warned that rebellious moods were spreading among the sailors and that an 'explosion' would erupt unless the Petrograd strikes were stopped. During the Kronstadt rebellion he was sent to persuade the mutineers and was arrested; in the 1937 terror he refused to confess and was shot the following year.
Career timeline
1903Joined the RSDLP as a Bolshevik
1917Chairman of the Gatchina Soviet; Bolshevik military organisation
1918–1919Commissar, South-Western Front; Revolutionary Military Council, Northern theatre
1920Baltic Fleet RVS member; commander, 12th Army
1921Head of the Baltic Fleet political department; helped suppress Kronstadt
1924Assistant military prosecutor, USSR Supreme Court
1925–1932Political headships, Central Asian and Siberian military districts
He arrested the Provisional Government in 1917; Stalin arrested him in 1937
Summoned to be shot, he gave his jacket and shoes to his cellmates. According to Yuri Tomsky, he said: "Tell people that Antonov-Ovseenko was a Bolshevik and remained a Bolshevik to his last day." Twenty-one years earlier he had arrested the Provisional Government.
Born into a Chernigov noble family, he joined the revolutionary movement in 1901. In October 1917, as secretary of the Military Revolutionary Committee, he prepared the seizure of the Winter Palace with Podvoisky and Chudnovsky and carried out the arrest of the Provisional Government. He commanded Soviet forces in the south and in Ukraine during the Civil War, and in 1921 chaired the plenipotentiary commission for the suppression of the Tambov peasant rising, signing its decision to use poison gas. Head of the Red Army Political Directorate from 1922, he was removed in January 1924 for defending Trotsky, then served as plenipotentiary to Czechoslovakia, Lithuania and Poland. Named RSFSR People's Commissar of Justice in 1937, he was arrested that year and shot on 10 February 1938. He was rehabilitated on 25 February 1956.
Career timeline
1917.10Secretary, Petrograd MRC; led storming of Winter Palace, arrested Provisional Govt
1917.12–1918.05C-in-C, Soviet Forces of the South of Russia
The Southern Front commander who broke Denikin: the last of the first five marshals whose name was erased
“I am clean before the people, the Party, and the Red Army”: his letter to Stalin, March 1938
A career officer who earned the Gold Sword for Bravery and six other decorations in the First World War, Yegorov commanded the Southern Front in the Civil War and routed Denikin's White forces, then led the Southwestern Front in the Polish-Soviet War. As Chief of the General Staff from 1931, he pushed for mechanization and tank-warfare doctrine, and in 1935 became one of the first five Marshals of the Soviet Union. He fell from Stalin's favour in late 1937, was arrested in 1938, and was shot on Red Army Day 1939, without a public trial.
Career timeline
1901–1917Imperial Russian Army officer; Lt. Colonel then Colonel in WWI; wounded five times; awarded the St. George Sword for Bravery
1918–1919Joins the Red Army; commands the 9th, 10th, and 14th Armies
1919–1920Southern Front commander — defeats Denikin's White forces; recaptures Oryol, Voronezh, and Rostov
1920Southwestern Front commander in the Polish-Soviet War; retakes Kiev, advances toward Lwów
1925–1926Military adviser in China, dispatched to Chiang Kai-shek and Feng Yuxiang
1927–1931Commander, Belorussian Military District
1931–1937Chief of the General Staff — drives mechanization and tank-warfare doctrine
1935One of the first five Marshals of the Soviet Union
1937First Deputy Commissar for Defence; demoted to Transcaucasian Military District
Anti-Soviet partisan commander who moved from Estonia to Belarus, changing camps as he went
Pilsudski judged him 'a bandit, but not only a bandit: today a Russian, tomorrow a Pole, the day after a Belarusian.'
He went from the Red Army to the Whites, took Pskov in 1919, broke with Yudenich to side with Estonia and in 1920 moved to Poland for a Belarusian expedition. His troops' anti-Jewish violence is on record; he was killed in occupied Warsaw in 1940.
Career timeline
1914Mobilized into the tsarist army; awarded the George Cross and St George medal
1918Joined the Red Army; formed the Luga cavalry regiment with Trotsky's sanction
1918.11Defected to the Whites with about 400 men
1919Colonel then major-general; took Pskov in the Yudenich offensive
1920.01Arrested Yudenich and sided with Estonia
1920In Polish service took Pinsk and formed the Russian People's Volunteer Army
1920.11Invaded Soviet Belarus and proclaimed himself head of a Belarusian state; after defeat fled to Poland
The naval commander who organized the Dunkirk evacuation
From headquarters beneath Dover Castle, Ramsay and his staff coordinated the Dunkirk evacuation for nine days and nights.
Bertram Ramsay was a Royal Navy officer distinguished by his ability to organize and command maritime operations in wartime. At Dunkirk in 1940, he directed the evacuation of encircled British and Allied troops, coordinating warships and civilian vessels. He later served in the North African and Sicilian invasions before becoming Allied naval commander-in-chief for the Normandy landings in 1944. He died in France in 1945 when his aircraft crashed.
Career timeline
1898Entered the Royal Navy
1915–1919Commanded monitor M25 and destroyer HMS Broke in the Dover Patrol
1933–1935Commanded battleship HMS Royal Sovereign
1939–1942Flag Officer Commanding Dover, responsible for Channel defence and the Dunkirk evacuation
1942Deputy Naval Commander-in-Chief for the invasion of North Africa
1943Naval commander of the Eastern Task Force for the invasion of Sicily
1944Allied Naval Commander-in-Chief for the Normandy landings
Wehrmacht general who directed anti-Partisan operations
Lüters assessed the Partisans' combat morale as “surprisingly high.”
Rudolf Lüters was a professional German officer who served through the First World War, the Imperial Army, and the Reichswehr before becoming a Wehrmacht general of infantry in the Second World War. From late 1942 he commanded German forces in Croatia and took part in planning and directing the Neretva and Sutjeska offensives against the Yugoslav Partisans. He assessed the Partisans as well organized and well led, with surprisingly high combat morale, yet at Sutjeska ordered that no able-bodied man leave the encirclement alive, exposing the annihilatory character of the occupation war. Captured by Soviet forces in 1945, he died in detention later that year.
Career timeline
1902Entered the Imperial German Army's 118th Infantry Regiment
1914–1918Commanded companies and a battalion on the Western Front in the First World War
1920–1933Served with the Reichswehr's 15th Infantry Regiment and 5th Division
1933–1938Commanded the 1st Prussian Infantry Regiment, then inspected military replacement districts
1941–1942Commanded the 223rd Infantry Division during the invasion of the Soviet Union
1942–1943Commander of German troops in Croatia, directing the Neretva and Sutjeska offensives
1943First commander of the XV Mountain Corps
1944–1945Honorably discharged, then died in Soviet captivity
Soldier-diplomat who pushed for the German alliance in Berlin and, as prime minister under occupation, sped up the Jewish deportations
Born Dimitrije Stojaković into a Serb family in Versec (Vršac), he served in the First World War as an intelligence officer of the Austro-Hungarian general staff. After the war he specialised in counter-espionage in Horthy’s counter-revolutionary army, was military attaché in Berlin from 1927 to 1933 and, from 1935 to 1944, Hungary’s minister in Berlin, where he pressed for alliance with Germany. Prime minister and foreign minister after the German occupation of March 1944, he legalised the Arrow Cross, dissolved the trade unions, jailed opponents and sharply accelerated the deportation of Jews. Forced out by Horthy’s pressure in August, he was captured by American troops after the war, handed over to Hungary, sentenced to death by a People’s Tribunal and shot in 1946.
Career timeline
1917–1918Intelligence officer, Austro-Hungarian general staff
1919–1925Intelligence and counter-espionage officer, National Army
Commander of the Hungarian Second Army destroyed on the Don in January 1943
Born Gusztáv Hautzinger, he trained at the Ludovika Academy and the Vienna war college and served as a staff officer in the First World War. On entering the Order of Vitéz in 1924 he took his mother’s surname, Jány, and from 1931 to 1936 he headed the Ludovika Academy. He became commander of the Second Army in March 1940 and led it to the Don in 1942. During the Soviet offensive of January 1943 he held to the no-retreat order, and when the army collapsed he issued an order of the day accusing his men of cowardice. Returning home voluntarily after the war, he was sentenced to death by a People’s Court and shot in 1947; the Supreme Court exonerated him in 1993.
Career timeline
1905Graduated from the Ludovika Academy; commissioned
Factory owner who was prime minister of Hungary for three months after the August 1919 coup against the Peidl government
Born into a pharmacist’s family of German origin in Malacka (now Malacky, Slovakia), he studied engineering, worked for AEG in Berlin and then ran his own machinery works outside Budapest. He joined Mihály Károlyi’s Independence Party in 1912 and became one of his closest friends; after the Aster Revolution he was state secretary for war, but he drifted to the right and was dismissed in February 1919. Arrested under the Soviet Republic and sentenced to death, he had the sentence commuted and escaped. In August 1919 he joined the right-wing White House Comrades’ Association in ousting the Peidl government; on 7 August he was named prime minister, with Archduke Joseph August as regent, and held office until 24 November. Arrested by Rákosi’s regime in 1951 and sentenced to fifteen years, he died the same year; he was rehabilitated in 1990.
Career timeline
1904Played for the Hungarian national football team
1912Joined the Independence Party
1918–1919State secretary for war in the Károlyi government
The Greek field marshal who staked the war on the Albanian front
When German forces invaded across the northern frontier, the main Greek army was still tied down on the Albanian front.
Alexandros Papagos was a career officer loyal to the Greek monarchy and the Metaxas dictatorship, and the commander of the Hellenic Army during the Second World War. In 1940 he coordinated the defence against Italy's invasion from Albania and the Greek counteroffensive, but kept the army's main strength on the Albanian front as German intervention approached, weakening the defence of the Metaxas Line. During the occupation he helped form a resistance organization, was arrested and imprisoned by the Germans, and later commanded government forces in the Greek Civil War before becoming prime minister.
Career timeline
1906Commissioned as a cavalry second lieutenant in the Hellenic Army
1935–1936Minister for Military Affairs and Inspector-General of the Army
1936–1940Chief of the Army General Staff, strengthening the military basis of the Metaxas regime
1940–1941Commander-in-Chief of the Greek Army, directing operations on the Albanian front and at the Metaxas Line
1943–1945Helped form the Military Hierarchy resistance organization, then arrested and imprisoned by German authorities
1949–1951Commander-in-Chief of government forces in the Civil War, directing the final offensive against the communist army
Britain's professional head of the army and Allied chief strategist
In 1943 he judged a landing in France impossible without sufficient troops, landing craft and air superiority, delaying the Normandy invasion to June 1944. His Trident conference claim that no major operations on the continent were possible until 1945 damaged his reputation as a strategist.
Alan Brooke was a British Army field marshal, born on 23 July 1883 in France and dead of a heart attack on 17 June 1963. An artillery officer by training, he was Commandant of the School of Artillery at Larkhill in 1929 and Commander-in-Chief, Home Forces in 1940. He succeeded Sir John Dill as Chief of the Imperial General Staff in December 1941 and Admiral Sir Dudley Pound as chairman of the Chiefs of Staff Committee in March 1942, becoming Winston Churchill's foremost military adviser; he was promoted field marshal on 1 January 1944 and helped coordinate the Allied victory of 1945. He gave priority to the Mediterranean theatre, clearing North Africa of Axis forces and driving Italy out of the war so that the Mediterranean would be open to Allied shipping. Born in France to an Anglo-Irish family, he was a British subject throughout.
Career timeline
1902Commissioned into the Royal Artillery
1914–1918Artillery staff officer on the Western Front
1938–1940Commander of Anti-Aircraft Command and Southern Command
1940–1941Commander-in-Chief, Home Forces
1941–1946Chief of the Imperial General Staff
1942–1946Chairman of the Chiefs of Staff Committee
1953Lord High Constable at Elizabeth II's coronation
The Civil War's mounted legend: a marshal who survived into the age of mechanized war
In September 1941, as commander of the South-Western Direction, he telegraphed the Stavka urging a withdrawal from the Kiev salient; Stalin removed him, and the main forces of the South-Western Front were encircled soon afterward.
Born to a poor peasant family in the Don region, he was drafted in 1903, served as an Imperial Russian cavalryman and won all four grades of the St. George Cross, then led the 1st Cavalry Army that broke the Whites in the Civil War. One of the first five Marshals of the Soviet Union in 1935, during the Great Purge he demanded the execution of Bukharin and Rykov and sat on the Special Judicial Presence that tried Tukhachevsky, while the NKVD was also compiling material against himself. In 1941, commanding the South-Western Direction, he urged the Stavka to withdraw from the Kiev salient; Stalin removed him and he never commanded troops in the field again. Remembered as a champion of cavalry, he also made his own parachute jump and initiated horse-mechanized formations, and he died of a cerebral hemorrhage in Moscow on 26 October 1973.
Career timeline
1903–1917Tsarist cavalry; full Cavalier of the St. George Cross
1919–1923Commander, 1st Cavalry Army: defeats Denikin & Wrangel; Polish-Soviet War
1924–1937Inspector of Red Army cavalry; organizes military horse breeding
1935One of the first five Marshals of the Soviet Union
1937–1940Commands Moscow Military District; then First Deputy Commissar for Defence
1941C-in-C South-Western Direction — removed for urging the Kiev withdrawal
1943–1953Commander of Red Army cavalry; postwar Deputy Minister of Agriculture (horse breeding)
Labour journalist and former Russian army officer who became the first commander-in-chief of the Finnish Red Guards
Born in 1884 to a poor land worker’s family in Jämsä, he joined the Russian Army in 1903, served as a lieutenant in the Russo-Japanese War, joined the socialists in the 1905 revolution, and was jailed in Moscow and expelled from the military. Back in Finland he worked for the labour press in Turku, Vyborg and Kotka and as a Social Democratic party official. In October 1917 he organised the Workers’ Order Guards in Helsinki and after the November general strike became their commander-in-chief. In January 1918, despite heavy drinking in Petrograd, he bought a large cargo of guns and ammunition from the Bolsheviks, but on 28 January he was replaced by Eero Haapalainen. He broke out of besieged Tampere on the battle’s last night, was captured near Lahti and was shot at the Hennala camp in May 1918.
Career timeline
1904–1905Lieutenant in the Russian Army in the Russo-Japanese War
1917Organiser of the Workers’ Order Guards in Helsinki
1917–1918First commander-in-chief of the Order Guards and Red Guards
1918Red Guard general staff; staff of the Häme Front
Siberian partisan commander who led the partisan army of Yeniseysk Province and took custody of Ungern in Mongolia in 1921
Born to a peasant family in Ryazan Province in 1884, he worked as a carpenter, was drafted in 1906 and served in the 29th Siberian Rifle Regiment at Achinsk. In the First World War he won all four classes of the Cross of St. George, was commissioned and by 1917 was a staff captain. He joined the Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks) in March 1918; when Achinsk fell to the Whites he went underground and opened partisan operations in January 1919. As chief of staff of a partisan army formed by merging his detachment with another, he marched 700 kilometres south through the taiga and took Minusinsk in September. In August 1921 his detachment took custody of Ungern in Mongolia. He later served as chief of staff of the Siberian border troops, and died in Ulaanbaatar in 1927 while a military adviser in Mongolia; sources differ on the cause of death.
Career timeline
1906Drafted; served in the 29th Siberian Rifle Regiment
1917Staff captain
1918Joined the Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks); Red Guard commander at Achinsk
1919Deputy commander and chief of staff of the partisan army
1920Commander of the Yenisei Rifle Division
1921Commander in the Red Army expedition to Mongolia
1922–1926Chief of staff of the Siberian border troops
1926–1927Military adviser to the Mongolian People’s Republic
Bolshevik military leader of 1917 and the Civil War
On the evening of 24 October 1917, Lashevich ordered A. V. Belyshev, the Military Revolutionary Committee commissar aboard the cruiser Aurora, to restore traffic across the Nikolaevsky Bridge that junkers had drawn apart the day before, and the task was carried out.
Born in 1884 in Odessa, in the Russian Empire, into a Jewish merchant family; he joined the RSDLP in 1901 and was a Bolshevik from 1903. In 1917 he took part in the October rising in Petrograd, and in the Civil War he commanded the 3rd Army. In 1925 he became First Deputy Commissar for Military and Naval Affairs and Deputy Chairman of the USSR Revolutionary Military Council. After joining the United Opposition in 1926 he was demoted and worked at the Chinese Eastern Railway in Harbin until his death in 1928.
Career timeline
1901–1915Joined RSDLP; party work in Odessa, Nikolaev, Ekaterinoslav, Petersburg; repeated arrests and exile
1915–1917Conscripted WWI; twice wounded; rose to senior NCO for merit
1917Secretary and chairman of Bolshevik faction in Petrograd Soviet; MRC member; directed October rising
1918–1920Commander 3rd Army; RVS member Eastern, Southern & Western Fronts; acting commander 7th Army
1922–1925Chairman Siberian Revolutionary Committee; commander Siberian Military District
1925–1926Deputy Chairman USSR RMC; First Deputy Commissar for Military & Naval Affairs
1926–1927Joined United Opposition; organized illegal gathering; removed as candidate CC member; expelled at 15th Party Congress
1928Recanted opposition; party membership restored; died in Harbin
