- Lavr Kornilov
Lavr Georgiyevich Kornilov (Russian: Лавр Георгиевич Корнилов) (August 18, 1870-April 13, 1918) was a senior Russian army general during World War I and the ensuing Russian Civil War. He is today best remembered for the Kornilov Affair, an unsuccessful attempt in August/September 1917 to overthrow Alexander Kerensky's Provisional Government which led to Alexander Kerensky freeing the Bolsheviks.
- Don Cossacks
Don Cossacks were Cossacks who settled along the middle and lower Don River, Russia. This population was formed in the second half of the sixteenth century, largely of runaway peasants. The Don Cossack Host, was a frontier military organisation since the end of the sixteenth century. Since 1786 the territory was officially called Don Voisko Lands, and was renamed Don Voisko Province in 1870 (presently shared by the Rostov, Volgograd, …
- Mikhail Tukhachevsky
Mikhail Nikolayevich Tukhachevsky (June 12, 1937), was a Soviet military commander, chief of the Red Army (1925-1928), was one of the most prominent victims of Stalin's Great Purge of the late 1930s.
- Kliment Voroshilov
Kliment Yefremovich Voroshilov, popularly known as Klim Voroshilov (December 2, 1969) was a Soviet military commander and politician. Voroshilov was born in Verkhneye, near Yekaterinoslav (now Dnipropetrovsk), Ukraine, under the Russian Empire. He joined the Bolshevik party in 1903. Following the Russian Revolution of 1917 he was a member of the Ukrainian provisional government and Commissar for Internal Affairs.
- Aleksandr Kolchak
Aleksandr Vasiliyevich Kolchak was a Russian naval commander and later head of part of the anti-Bolshevik White forces during the Russian Civil War.
- Nikolai Bulganin
Nikolai Alexandrovich Bulganin was a prominent Soviet politician, who served as Minister of Defense (1953-55) and Prime Minister (1955-58). Bulganin was born in Nizhny Novgorod, the son of an office worker. He joined the Bolshevik Party in 1917, and in 1918 he was recruited into the Cheka, the Bolshevik regime's political police, where he served until 1922. After the Russian Civil War he became an industrial manager, working in the electricity administration until 1927, …
- Semyon Budyonny
Semyon Mikhailovich Budyonny (also spelled Budennii, Budenny, Budyenny etc, Russian: Семён Михайлович Будённый) (October 26, 1973) was a Soviet military commander and an ally of Soviet leader Joseph Stalin. Budyonny was born into a poor peasant family in the Terek Cossack region of southern Russia. He worked as a farm laborer until 1903, when he was drafted into the army of the Russian Empire, …
- Anton Ivanovich Denikin
Anton Ivanovich Denikin was Lieutenant General of the Imperial Russian Army (1916) and one of the foremost leading generals of the anti-Bolshevik White Russians in the civil war. Born in Szpetal Dolnyj village near the Polish city Włocławek (then part of the Russian empire), the son of a minor army officer, Denikin's skill and relentless ambition would soon see him tread a remarkable path. He was educated at the Kiev Military School and the Academy of the General Staff, …
- Symon Petliura
Symon Petlura (("Simon Petljura"); in English, also occasionally spelled "Simon Petliura" or "Petlyura"; May 10, 1879 - May 25, 1926) was a publicist, writer, journalist, Ukrainian politician and statesman, a leader of Ukraine's unsuccessful fight for independence following the Russian Revolution of 1917. During the Russian Civil War, he was briefly Head of the Ukrainian State. In 1926 Petlura was assassinated in Paris.
- Semyon Timoshenko
Semyon Konstantinovich Timoshenko (Russian: Семён Константинович Тимошенко, "Semën Konstantinovič Timošenko"; - March 31, 1970) was a Soviet military commander and senior professional officer of the Red Army at the beginning of the German invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941.
- Ivan Konev
Ivan Stepanovich Konev, was a Soviet military commander, who led Red Army forces on the Eastern Front during World War II, liberated much of Eastern Europe from occupation by the Axis Powers, and helped in the capture of Germany's capital, Berlin. Later, as the Commander of Warsaw Pact forces, Konev led the suppression of the Hungarian Revolution of 1956 by Soviet armed divisions.
- Lavrentiy Beria
Lavrentiy Pavlovich Beria (Georgian: ლავრენტი ბერია, Lavrenti Pavles dze Beria; Russian: Лаврентий Павлович Берия; 29 March, 1899 – 23 December, 1953) was a Soviet politician and chief of the Soviet security and police apparatus. Beria is now remembered chiefly as the executor of Joseph Stalin's Great Purge of the 1930s and 1940's, …
- Sergey Kirov
Sergei Mironovich Kirov (December 1, 1934) was a prominent early Bolshevik leader whose assassination sparked a terrible purge of the Soviet government.
- Arkady Gaidar
Arkady Petrovich Golikov ((October 26 1941), better known as Arkady Gaidar, was a Soviet writer, whose stories were very popular among Soviet children. He was born in Lgov town, Imperial Russia (now in Kursk Oblast, Russia), to a family of a teacher. Gaidar spent his childhood in Arzamas. In 1918 he volunteered for the Red Army. During the Russian Civil War, at the age of 16 he became commander of a regiment.
- Aleksandr Vasilevsky
Aleksandr Mikhaylovich Vasilevsky (September 30 1895 - December 5 1977) was a Soviet military commander, promoted to Marshal of the Soviet Union in 1943. He was the Soviet Chief of the General Staff and Deputy Minister of Defense during World War II, as well as Minister of Defense from 1949 to 1953. As the Chief of the General Staff, Vasilevsky was responsible for the planning and coordination of almost all decisive Soviet offensives, …
- Pyotr Nikolayevich Wrangel
Baron Pyotr Nikolayevich Wrangel (August 15, 1878, Zarasai, Lithuania (then Imperial Russia) - April 25, 1928, Brussels, Belgium), was an officer in the Imperial Russian army and later commanding general of the pro-monarchist White Army in Southern Russia in the later stages of the Russian Civil War.
- Lev Shubnikov
Lev Vasilyevich Shubnikov (September 9, 1901- November 10, 1937) was a Russian physicist and experimenter who worked in Russia, Holland and Ukraine. Shubnikov was born in Saint Petersburg to a family of an accountant. After graduating from a gimnasium he entered the Leningrad University. This was the first year of the Russian Civil War and he was the only student of that year attending the Physics department.
- Don Army
- Aleksei Brusilov
Aleksei Alekseevich Brusilov was a Russian cavalry general most noted for the development of a military offensive tactic used in the Brusilov offensive of 1916. His war memoirs were translated into English and published in 1930 as "A Soldier's Notebook, 1914–1918."
- Vladimir Antonov-Ovseenko
Vladimir Alexandrovich Antonov-Ovseenko (actual surname Ovseenko was a prominent Soviet Bolshevik leader and diplomat. Ethnically he was a Ukrainian, born in Chernihiv into an officer's family. In 1903, Antonov-Ovseenko joined the Menshevik party. During the Russian Revolution of 1905, he led an uprising in Novo-Alexandria in Poland and Sevastopol in the Crimea. He was subsequently arrested and sentenced to twenty years' exile in Siberia.
- Grigory Kulik
Grigory Ivanovich Kulik, Soviet military commander, was born into a peasant family near Poltava in Ukraine. A soldier in the army of the Russian Empire in World War I, he joined the Bolshevik Party in 1917 and the Red Army in 1918. During the Russian Civil War he become a commander in the Soviet artillery, seeing action at Kharkov and other battles. In 1937 Kulik became head of the Red Army's Main Artillery Directorate, …
- Andrei Grechko
Andrei Antonovich Grechko Soviet general, Marshal of the Soviet Union, Minister of Defense, born in small town near Rostov-on-Don, the son of Ukrainian peasants. Joined the Red Army in 1919, where he was a part of the legendary “Budyonny Cavalry”. After Russian Civil War, Grechko was enrolled into the "6th Cavalery College" in the city of Taganrog, which he graduated in 1926.
- Aleksei Maksimovich Kaledin
Aleksei Maksimovich Kaledin (Russian: Алексей Максимович Каледин; 12 October 1861 - January 29, 1918) was a Russian Full General of Cavalry who led the Don Cossack White movement in the opening stages of the Russian Civil War. Kaledin graduated from the Voronezh Military School, the Mikhailovskoye Artillery School in Petersburg (1882) and the General Staff Academy (1889). From 1903 to 1906, he served as principal at the Novocherkassk Military School.
- Roman Ungern von Sternberg
Baron Roman Friederich Nickolaus von Ungern-Sternberg was a Baltic German-Russian lieutenant-general, one of the military commanders on the side of the White movement during the Russian Civil War, later an independent warlord in pursuit of pan-monarchist goals in Mongolia and territories east of Lake Baikal. Although born with the name "von Ungern-Sternberg", he later changed his name to "Ungern von Sternberg".
- Nikolai Nikolaevich Yudenich
Nikolai Nikolaevich Yudenich (July 18 ,1862 (July 30, New Style) - October 5, 1933), was a commander of the Russian Caucasus Army and one of the most successful generals of the Russian Imperial Army during World War I. He was later a leader of the counterrevolution in Northwestern Russia during the Russian Civil War of 1918-1920. Yudenich was born in Moscow. He graduated from the Alexandrovsky Military College in 1881 and the General Staff Academy in 1887.
- Alexander Gerasimov
Alexander Mikhaylovich Gerasimov (August 12, 1881 - July 23, 1963) was a leading proponent of Socialist Realism in the visual arts, and painted Stalin as well as other Soviet leaders. Gerasimov was born on August 12, 1881 in Kozlov (now Michurinsk) in Tambov Governorate. He studied at the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture from 1903 to 1915. There he championed traditional realistic representational art against the avant-garde.
- Mikhail Romm
Mikhail [Ilych] Romm was a Russian film director. He was born in Irkutsk. His father was a social democrat of Jewish descent who had been exiled there. He graduated from gymnasium in 1917 and entered the Moscow College for Painting, Sculpture and Architecture. He fought in the Red Army during the Russian civil war. In 1925 he finished the sculptural department of the "Highest Artistic-Technical Institute" and worked as a sculptor and translator.
- Kirill Meretskov
Kirill Afanasievich Meretskov was a Soviet military commander. He was born in the Ryazan province, southeast of Moscow. His parents were peasants and lived in a rural village. He volunteered for the Imperial Army in June 1916, where he worked as a mechanic. Meretskov joined the Bolsheviks in August 1917, and became chief of staff of a Red Guard (later Red Army) division. During the Russian Civil War, he attended a military academy, …
- Leonid Govorov
Leonid Aleksandrovich Govorov, Soviet military commander, was born in the village of Butyrki in central Russia (now in Kirov Oblast). His father was a sailor. He attended a technical high school in Yelabuga and enrolled in the ship-building department of Petrograd Polytechnical Institute. In December 1916, however, he transferred to the Konstantinovskye Artillery School and in 1917 became an artillery officer.
- William S. Graves
Major General William Sidney Graves. The commander of American forces in Siberia during the Allied Intervention in Russia. Born in Mount Calm, Texas, Graves joined the U.S. military academy at West Point and graduated in 1889. He served in the Spanish-American War in the Philippines until 1902. He fought at the Battle of Calooca as a company commander during the insurection.
- Anton Makarenko
Anton Semyonovich Makarenko was a Ukrainian and Soviet educationist and writer, one of the founders of the Soviet pedagogy, who elaborated the theory and methodology of upbringing in child collectives and of introducing the productive labor into the educational system. In the aftermath of the Russian Revolution he established self-supporting orphanages for street children left orphaned by the Russian Civil War, including the Gorky Colony and later, under Stalin's auspices, …
- Vasily Sokolovsky
Vasily Danilovich Sokolovsky, Soviet military commander, was born into a peasant family in Kozliki, a small town in the province of Grodno, near Białystok in Poland (then part of the Russian Empire). He worked as a teacher in a rural school, where he took part in a number of protests and demonstrations against the Tsar. He joined the Red Army in February 1918. He began his formal military schooling in 1919, …
- Ephraim Sklyansky
Ephraim Markovich Sklyansky was a Soviet statesman. He joined the Bolsheviks during his years as a student in the medical faculty of Kiev University, from which he graduated in 1916; he was immediately drafted into the army, where he served as a doctor and became prominent in the clandestine military organizations of the Bolsheviks.
- Vasily Blyukher
Vasily Konstantinovich Blyukher (also spelled Blücher, Blukher, Bliukher etc, Russian: Василий Константинович Блюхер) (November 9, 1938), Soviet military commander, was among the prominent victims of Stalin's Great Purge of the late 1930s. Blyukher was born into a peasant family in village Barschinka, now in Yaroslavl Oblast.
- Alexander Antonov
Alexander Stepanovich Antonov (Алекса́ндр Степа́нович Анто́нов) was the leader of the Tambov Rebellion during the Russian Civil War. He had been member of the Socialist-Revolutionary Party since 1906. The February Revolution liberated him from prison, where he had been serving a term for robbing railroad ticket offices. He returned to Kirsanov, and became a district police official under the Russian Provisional Government.
- Stanisław Bułak-Bałachowicz
Stanisław Bułak-Bałachowicz was a Polish-Belarusian general, veteran of World War I, Russian Civil War, Polish-Bolshevik War and Polish Defensive War of 1939.
- Kakutsa Cholokashvili
Kaikhosro Cholokashvili commonly known as Kakutsa (July 14, 1888 – June 27, 1930) was a Georgian nobleman and military commander, regarded as a National Hero of Georgia. Formerly a Colonel in the armies of Imperial Russia and the Democratic Republic of Georgia and a World War I veteran, he led, in the early 1920s, a guerrilla resistance against the Bolshevik regime established by the Soviet Russian Red Army in 1921.
- Pavel Bermondt-Avalov
Pavel Rafalovich Bermondt-Avalov was an Ussuri Cossack and warlord. Bermondt-Avalov was appointed to lead the German-established Russian army (subsequently frequently known after his name as "the Bermontians") which was meant to go to fight the Bolsheviks in the Russian Civil War, but, believing that communists would be defeated without his help, Pavel Bermondt-Avalov decided to strike against the newly independent nations of Lithuania and Latvia instead.
- Fyodor Tolbukhin
Fyodor Ivanovich Tolbukhin, Soviet military commander, was born into a peasant family in the province of Yaroslavl, north-east of Moscow. He volunteered for the Imperial Army in 1914 at the outbreak of World War I. He was steadily promoted, advancing from private to captain by 1916. He was also decorated for bravery multiple times. In August 1918 Tolbukhin joined the Red Army, where he served as the chief of staff of the 56th infantry (Rifle?) division.
- Gayk Bzhishkyan
Gayk Bzhishkyan - Hayk Bzhishkyan (–December 11, 1937) was a Soviet military commander of the Russian Civil War and Polish-Soviet War. (Russian: Гайк Бжишкян, also known as Gay Dmitrievich Gay (Гай Дмитриевич Гай), the first name is sometimes given as Gaya, Гая, or Gai, the patronymic is sometimes spelt as "Dimitrievich" or "Dimitriyevich", …