Nikolai Kononovich Shchelokov

Born May 23 (June 4), 1887; died Apr. 12, 1941, in Moscow. Soviet military leader. Major general (1940).

The son of a Ural Cossack, Shchelokov graduated from the Mikhail Artillery School in 1907. He commanded a battery and an artillery battalion during World War I and rose to the rank of colonel. Shchelokov was demobilized in 1918.

After refusing an offer by the counterrevolutionary Ural Host Government to head the White Cossack Ural Army, Shchelokov enlisted in the Red Army in July 1918 and organized cavalry units. He commanded a cavalry regiment from January to October 1919 and the 8th Cavalry Division, a unit in S. M. Budennyi’s horse cavalry corps, in October and November of the same year. Shchelokov was chief of staff of the First Horse Cavalry Army from January to April 1920 and from February to April 1921 and the Second Horse Cavalry Army from July to November 1920.

Between 1923 and 1928, Shchelokov served in the Workers’ and Peasants’ Red Army as an assistant inspector and a deputy inspector of the cavalry. He taught tactics and artillery at the All-Russian Central Executive Committee Military School from 1928 to 1934, when he was granted a pension. He was head of the department of cavalry at the M. V. Frunze Military Academy in 1940 and 1941. Shchelokov was awarded the Order of the Red Banner.