Ieronim Petrovich Uborevich | |
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Ieronim Uborevich |
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Born | January 14, 1896 Užpaliai, Lithuania, Russian Empire |
Died | June 12, 1937 Moscow |
(aged 41)
Allegiance | Russian Empire (1914–1917) Soviet Union (1917–1937) |
Years of service | 1916–1937 |
Rank | Kommandarm (General of the Army) |
Commands held | Belorussian Military District |
Battles/wars | World War I Russian Civil War Polish–Soviet War |
Awards | Order of the Red Banner (three times) |
Ieronim Petrovich Uborevich (Russian: Уборевич, Иероним Петрович, Lithuanian: Jeronimas Uborevičius; January 14, 1896 in Užpaliai, Utena County, Lithuania – June 12, 1937 in Moscow) was a Soviet military commander of the Red Army during the Russian Civil War, and eventually attained the rank of Army Commander, 1st Rank, equivalent to General of the Army after old Imperial ranks were reintroduced in 1940.
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Uborevich was born into a Lithuanian farming family. From 1909 to 1914 he studied at a high school in Daugavpils in Latvia. In 1914–15 he attended the Petrograd Polytechnic. He joined the Konstantinovskoye Artillery School in 1915 graduating in 1916 and joining the Imperial Russian Army.
Uborevich began his military career during World War I, serving as a junior officer in the Imperial Russian Army. He joined the Bolsheviks after the Russian Revolution. In January 1918, he commanded a detachment of Red Guards in Belarus and was captured by the Germans but escaped. During the Russian Civil War, he served in a variety of command posts in the Red Army, commanding the 9th, 13th, and 14th Armies. He fought alongside Mikhail Tukhachevsky in the Polish–Soviet War and in suppressing the Tambov Rebellion in 1921. In 1922 he became War Minister of the short-lived Far Eastern Republic, a buffer state between Soviet Russia and Japan.
In 1925 he became commander of the North Caucasus Military District, and then in 1928 the Moscow Military District. He served as the Red Army's Chief of Armaments from 1928–1931 and Deputy Chairman of the Revolutionary Military Council from 1930 to 1931. From 1931–1937, he was commander of the Belorussian Military District, one of the two (along with the Kiev Military District) key commands that would bear the brunt of any Soviet war along its western border.
Uborevich was arrested during the Great Purge of the Red Army. In May 1937, Uborevich was tried by the NKVD in an event known as the Case of Trotskyist Anti-Soviet Military Organization. He was executed in June 1937 and posthumously rehabilitated in 1957.