Shchadenko, Efim Afanasevich

Born 1885, in the stanitsa (large cossack village) of Kamenskaia, now the city of Kamensk-Shakhtinskii, Kamensk Raion, Rostov Oblast; died Sept. 6, 1951, in Moscow. Soviet military leader. Colonel general (1942). Member of the CPSU from 1904.

The son of a worker, Shchadenko became chairman of the Kamensk Committee of the RSDLP(B) in February 1917. During the October Revolution of 1917 he organized Red Guard detachments and helped crush counterrevolutionary centers in the Don region. In January 1918 he was elected a member of the Don Military Revolutionary Committee. After joining the Red Army in June 1918, Shchadenko served as a member of the Revolutionary Military Council of the First Horse Army from November 1919 to July 1920 and held the same position in the Second Horse Army from July until December 1920. Shchadenko completed two courses at the Military Academy of the General Staff in 1923. He commanded a cavalry division and was chief of a district political directorate. He became a member of the Military Council of the Kiev Military District in May 1937 and deputy people’s commissar of defense and chief of the Directorate for Command and Staff Personnel of the Workers’ and Peasants’ Red Army in November.

During the Great Patriotic War of 1941–45, Shchadenko served as deputy people’s commissar of defense of the USSR. He was chief of the Main Directorate for Recruitment and Staffing of the Red Army from 1941 to 1943, a member of the Military Council of the Southern Front in September and October 1943, and a member of the Military Council of the Fourth Ukrainian Front from October 1943 to January 1944.

Shchadenko was a member of the Central Control Commission from 1930 to 1934 and a member of the Central Committee of the ACP(B) from 1939 to 1941. He became a candidate member of the Central Committee of the ACP(B) in 1941 and was a deputy to the first convocation of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR. Shchadenko was awarded four Orders of Lenin, four Orders of the Red Banner, the Order of Suvorov Second Class, the Order of the Red Star, and various medals.