Nikolai Kashirin

Born Feb. 4 (16), 1888; died June 14, 1938. Soviet military commander, army commander second class (1935). Member of the CPSU from 1918.

Kashirin was born in the city of Verkhneural’sk, the son of a cossack teacher who subsequently became the ataman of a stanitsa (large cossack village). He graduated from the Orenburg Junker School in 1909, served in the cavalry units of the Orenburg Cossack Host, fought in World War I, and was awarded six orders and rose to the rank of pod“esaul (a cossack rank equivalent to staff captain). Elected chairman of a cossack regiment committee in 1917, Kashirin formed a cossack volunteer detachment in Verkhneural’sk in 1918 and fought against Dutov’s armies. On July 16, 1918, he was elected chief commander of the Urals Partisan Army, which operated behind the lines of the Whites in the southern Urals; after he was wounded, he became assistant to the chief commander V. K. Bliukher. Assistant chief and chief of the 4th Urals Division (later the 30th Rifle Division) from September 1918, Kashirin was appointed in 1919 commandant of the Orenburg Fortified Area and chief of the 49th Fortress Division of the Turkestan Front and in 1920 commander of the III Cavalry Corps on the Southern Front and commander of the Aleksandrovsk Troop Group to fight the Makhno movement.

From 1923 to 1925 Kashirin was commander of the XIV Rifle Corps, an officer on the staff of the Red Army for especially important assignments, and commander of the I Cavalry Corpsof the Red Cossacks. Assistant commander of several military districts from 1925 to 1931, Kashirin was commander of the troops of the Northern Caucasus Military District from 1931 to 1937 and a member of the Military Council of the People’s Commissariat of Defense of the USSR from 1934. Kashirin was awarded two Orders of the Red Banner and the Honorary Revolutionary Weapon. In 1960 a monument to Kashirin was erected in Verkhneural’sk.