born Feb. 16, 1893, near Slednevo, Russia
died June 11, 1937
Soviet Red Army officer.
In the Russian Civil War , he commanded the recapture of Siberia from Aleksandr Kolchak and led the Cossack forces against Anton Denikin (1920). He thereafter played a leading role in military reform; from 1931 he directed the rearmament of the Soviet Union. He served as Soviet chief of staff (192528) and later as deputy commissar for defense (193137); he was made a marshal of the Soviet Union in 1935. A victim of the purge trials in 1937, he was tried and executed with other top Red Army commanders. In 1988 he was cleared judicially and rehabilitated by official decree.