Semyon Timoshenko

Biography

Semyon Timoshenko was born in 1895 to a Ukrainian family in Orman, in Bessarabia. Drafted into the Russian army in 1914, he served as a cavalryman in the First World War, sided with the Bolsheviks in 1917, joined the Red Army in 1918 and the Communist Party in 1919.

In the Civil War he commanded cavalry, met Stalin at Tsaritsyn, and later served in Budyonny's 1st Cavalry Army, leading the 6th Cavalry Division against Poland in 1920. Under Stalin he rose through district commands in Belorussia, Kiev, the North Caucasus and Kharkov, survived the Great Purge, joined the Central Committee and led the Ukrainian Front in the Soviet invasion of eastern Poland in 1939.

In January 1940 he took over the faltering war against Finland and broke the Mannerheim Line. In May he became People's Commissar for Defence and a Marshal of the Soviet Union, and pushed to mechanise and discipline the Red Army. After the German invasion he briefly chaired the Stavka, then commanded fronts in the west and south-west; his Rostov counter-offensive of late 1941 made him famous abroad, but the defeat at Kharkov in May 1942 ended his run of major commands.

From 1943 he coordinated groups of fronts as a Stavka representative, from Leningrad to the Caucasus and the Balkans, and attended the Yalta Conference. After the war he commanded military districts until 1960, chaired the State Committee for War Veterans, and died in Moscow in 1970.