Robert Petrovich Eideman

(also R. P. Eidemanis). Born Apr. 27 (May 9), 1895, in the village of Lejasciems, in what is now Gulbene Raion, Latvian SSR; died June 12, 1937. Soviet military commander. Corps commander (1935). Member of the CPSU from 1917.

Eideman graduated from the Valka Realschule in 1914 and entered the Petrograd Institute of Forestry. He was called into the army in 1916. After graduating from the Kiev Military School in the same year, he became an ensign and was assigned to Kansk as commander of a battalion in the 16th Siberian Reserve Rifle Regiment. After the February Revolution of 1917 he was elected chairman of the Kansk soviet of soldiers’ deputies. In October 1917, at the First All-Siberian Congress of Soviets, Eideman was elected deputy chairman of the Central Executive Committee of Siberian Soviets (Tsentrosibir’).

Eideman joined the staff of the Western Siberia headquarters in May 1918 and led detachments of the Red Guard against the counterrevolutionary Czechoslovak troops and White Guards in the Omsk region. Over a period beginning in July 1918 he commanded the 2nd and 3rd Urals divisions and the Special Division of the Third Army of the Eastern Front. He was commander of the 16th, 41st, and 46th rifle divisions on the Southern Front between March 1919 and April 1920, chief of rear services of the Southwestern Front in April and May 1920, and commander of the Thirteenth Army in June and July. From July to September 1920, as commander of the Right-bank Group of Forces of the Southwestern Front, he defended the Kakhovka base of operations. Eideman was commander of the interior service of the Southern and Southwestern fronts from October 1920 to January 1921. From February to May 1921, he was commander of the Kharkov Military District, where he directed the effort to control banditry. Eideman was assistant commander and then deputy commander of the armed forces of the Ukraine and the Crimea between 1921 and 1924 and commander of the Siberian Military District from 1924 to 1925.

Eideman served as director of the M. V. Frunze Military Academy and as its commissar from 1925 to 1932. He was managing editor of the journal Voina i revoliutsüa from 1927 to 1936. A member of the Revolutionary Military Council of the USSR from 1932 to 1934, he became a member of the Military Council of the People’s Commissariat of Defense in 1934. In 1932, Eideman was made chairman of the Society for Assistance to Defense, Aviation, and Chemical Construction of the USSR (Osoaviakhim).

Eideman was the author of works on verse and prose. He was a member of the board of directors and chairman of the Latvian section of the Union of Writers of the USSR and a member of several convocations of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee and of the Central Executive Committee of the USSR. Eideman was awarded two Orders of the Red Banner and the Order of the Red Star.