Iona Yakir

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Iona Yakir bigraphy, stories - Soviet military commander

Iona Yakir : biography

February 16, 1893 – June 11, 1937

Iona Emmanuilovich Yakir ( August 3, 1896 – June 11, 1937) was the Red Army commander and one of the world’s major military reformers between World War I and World War II.

Yakir’s legacy

After Yakir’s execution, the Purge wiped out large number of the officers who had served under him. Many tasks of Yakir’s work, including his reforms and preparations for guerrilla activities in the event of an invasion of Ukraine, were dismantled. When Germany invaded the Soviet Union in June 1941, the Red Army was incapable of modern warfare and unprepared to face an enemy who used military art, which Yakir and other Soviet innovators were greatly familiar with. The Soviets suffered terrible defeats and huge human and territorial losses before mastering modern operational approaches and tactics. Yakir’s disciples who survived the Purge used the experiences which they had gained under Yakir to make a vital contribution to Soviet victory over Germany. Among them were: Chief of the General Staff of the Red Army Aleksei Antonov, Front commanders Andrei Yeremenko and Ivan Chernyakhovsky, and Army commander Alexander Gorbatov.

During Nikita Khrushchev’s de-Stalinisation, Yakir’s image was rehabilitated on January 31, 1957.

Political involvements

Stalin, who was consolidating his power over the country, approved Yakir’s appointment to the Ukrainian Military District in 1925. However, he did not trust him fully and instructed his political ally Lazar Kaganovich to become friends with Yakir and to report about his activities. Yakir, who was a firm believer in the Communist cause, was actively involved in internal politics. He was member of the party Central Committee in Moscow and member of the Politburo of the Communist Party of Ukraine. While ingenious and independent in his thinking as a military commander, in Soviet politics he was a docile party member and followed the party Stalinist line. During the famine in Ukraine caused by Stalin’s "forced collectivization" of agriculture during 1932-1933, Yakir was alarmed by the tragedy and approached Stalin with a request to soften official policies. Stalin was outraged and instructed Kaganovich to advise Yakir to limit his activities to his party assignment which was military service. Yakir obeyed. As a party member, he lacked the power of conviction and independent thinking to defy Stalin.

His blind obedience did not spare Yakir. Stalin would not allow to his military commanders any independent thinking, even in area of their professional expertise. While apparently Stalin’s attitude toward Yakir was friendly, the dictator could not tolerate people like Yakir in the Stalinist totalitarian state. Starting with the Great Purge in 1936, the NKVD arrested many close associates and subordinates of Yakir. Yakir was one of few top Soviet commanders who appealed to Stalin, claiming the innocence of these officers. However, Yakir’s appeals alienated Stalin even more, and Yakir was marked for persecution. To remove Yakir from his power base in June 1937, Stalin sent him to command the Kiev military district. During the Great Purge, it was a clear sign of forthcoming persecution.

Early years

Yakir was born in Kishinev, Bessarabia, Russian Empire, into the prosperous family of a Jewish pharmacist. Because of governmental restrictions on Jewish access to higher education, Yakir studied abroad at the University of Basel in Switzerland. During World War I, he returned to the Russian Empire and worked in a military factory in Odessa, Ukraine. From 1915 to 1917, he was a student of Kharkiv Technological Institute. He was affected by the war and became a follower of Vladimir Lenin. In 1917, he returned to Kishinev, became a member of the Bolshevik Party and took active part in the Bolshevik seizure of power in Bessarabia. When Romania intervened to recapture Bessarabia in 1918, Yakir led Bolshevik resistance but his small force was overwhelmed by the regular Romanian army.

In the Civil War

Yakir retreated to Ukraine and fought against Austro-Hungarian occupation forces as a commander of a Chinese regiment of the Red Army. He was wounded in March 1918. At the beginning of the Russian Civil War between Bolshevik forces, the White Army and various other anti-Bolshevik movements, Yakir was a member of the Bolshevik Party in Voronezh Province and started his service in the Red Army as a commissar. He showed military talent and was assigned as a field commander. In October 1918, he served as a member of the Revolutionary Council of the 8th army in the Southern Front and simultaneously commanded the Southern Front’s several key formations in operations against the Don Cossacks of Pyotr Krasnov. He carried out Lenin’s order of persecution against the Cossack civilian population. The war against armed combatants, plus the terror against the civilian population, were coming together in the Russian civil war. Encouraged by the Bolshevik theory of class struggle, Yakir, like other members of the Communist party, took part in terror. For his services, he became the second individual to receive the highest Soviet military award of that time, the Order of the Red Banner (engraved as No. 2).