Timoshenko, Semën Konstantinovich

b. 1895; d. 1970

Soviet marshal, born at Furmanka, on the old Russo-Romanian frontier. Called up for military service in 1915, he fought in the First World War. Early in 1918 he was with the Black Sea Partisan detachment, a cavalry force, fighting in the Crimea and against Kaledin's Don Cossacks. He later joined Budënny's First Cavalry Army and rose to the rank of general. In 1920 he was in the Russo-Polish campaign, and after the defeat near Warsaw he returned to the Crimea, where, at Perekop, he was defeated by Wrangel's troops and wounded for the fourth time. At the Frunze Military Academy, which he entered in 1922, he qualified for high command after study both there and at the Military and Political Academy for commanders and commissars, which he joined in 1930.

It was Timoshenko who retrieved the Russian military position in the Russo-Finnish War of 1939-40. When the Germans invaded Russia, Timoshenko, who, as defence commissar, had reorganised the Red Army and introduced many reforms, was entrusted with the defence of Moscow. After he had repulsed the Germans, Stalin sent him to stem the enemy's advance in the Ukraine in November 1941. From 1939 to 1952 he was a member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party and was subsequently and candidate member.

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