TIMOSHENKO

Te Awamutu Courier, Volume 64, Issue 4562, 20 April 1942, Page 5

TIMOSHENKO

THE RUSSIAN LEADER

COLOURFUL CAREER The honorary secretary of the New Zealand Society for Closer Relations with Russia supplies the following information about the Russian leader, Marshal Timoshenko:— Semyon K. Timoshenko, like so many of the leaders both in the civil and military spheres of the Soviet Union is still a comparatively young man. He was only 45 when in May, 1940, he was appointed People’s Commissar for the defence of the U.S.S.R. He is a Ukrainian by origin and was born of a peasant family in 1895 in the village of Furmanko, Bessarabia. In 1915 he was conscripted into the Czarist army. He showed considerable ability, and, in view of the fact that he was also literate, he was sent after six months’ training in a reserve battalion to the Ist Oranienbaum Machine Gun Regiment to study the machine gun. On graduating from the regiment for machine gunners, he was sent to the 4th Cavalry Division, in which he fought on the western front. In the first days of the 1917 revolution this division went over to the Soviets. In March, 1918, Timoshenko joined the Ist Black Sea Cavalry Detachment, which operated in the Crimea against the foreign interventionists and the Russian “whites.” Timoshenko was the first elected platoon commander and afterwards squadron commander. The detachment was later transferred to the Kuban to fight the counter-revolution there, and was reorganised into the first revolutionary cavalry regiment of the Crimea, of which Timoshenko was appointed commander. Later, when the com-mander-in-chief of the Kuban armed forces, joined the counter-revolution-aries, Timoshenko at the head of his regiment set out for Czaritsyn, destroying “white” detachments on the way.

In Czaritsyn the regiment merged with the 10th Army, commanded by Voroshilov, ' and took part in the heroic defence of this town, which was regarded as the “Red Verdun.” The regiment was transferred on several occasions to the most decisive sector of the front. In the fighting near Czaritsyn Timoshenko was appointed commander of the 2nd Separate Cavalry Brigade. In 1919, when the Red, Cavalry was formed, Timoshenko’s brigade merged with the (mounted corps of Budenny, and Timoshenko was appointed commander of the 6th Cavalry Division. In March, 1925, Timoshenko was appointed commander-commissar of the 3rd Cavalry Corps, and in August, 1933, assistant commander of the Belo-Russian military district. From September, 1935, to June, 1937, he was . assistant commander of the Kiev military district; from June to September, 1937, commander of the North Caucasiite military district; from September, 1937, to February, 1938, he was commander of the Kharkov military district; and from February, 1938, commander of the Kiev special military district. Timoshenko is a deputy to the Supreme Soviet of the U.S.S.R. (Soviet Parliament) and a deputy to the Supreme Soviet of the Ukraine.