Sobolev, Aleksandr Vasilevich

Born Oct. 15 (27), 1868, in Vitebsk Province; died Feb. 21, 1920, in the stanitsa(large cossack village) of Aksaiskaia, now the city of Aksaisk, Rostov Oblast; buried in the city of Shakhty. Russian and Soviet military figure. Major general (1916).

The son of a clerk in a volost (small rural district), Sobolev graduated from the St. Petersburg Infantry School in 1889. During World War I, he commanded a regiment and a division. After the October Revolution of 1917 he took the side of Soviet power. In the summer of 1918 he helped form Red Army units in Penza. In April 1919 he was named commander of the 7th Rifle Division on the Eastern Front, and in November 1919, commander of the 13th Rifle Division of the Eighth Army on the Southeastern Front. On the night of Feb. 20,1920, during an enemy counterattack near Rostov, a White Cossack detachment that had broken through the lines captured division headquarters and took Sobolev prisoner. When Sobolev refused the White Guards’ offer of joining them, he was shot. Sobolev was awarded the Order of the Red Banner.