Svechnikov, Mikhail Stepanovich

Svechnikov, Mikhail Stepanovich

 

Born Sept. 18 (30), 1881, in the stanitsa (large cossack village) of Ust’-Med-veditskaia, now the city of Serafimovich, in the Oblast of the Don Host; died Aug. 26, 1938. Soviet military leader, military historian and theoretician, and brigade commander (1935). Member of the CPSU from May 1917.

The son of a cossack sergeant, Svechnikov graduated from the Mikhail Artillery School in 1901 and from the Academy of the General Staff in 1911. From 1915 to 1917 he was the chief of staff of a corps, reaching the rank of colonel. In July 1917, the soldiers elected him head of the 106th Infantry Division that came over to the side of the October Revolution on Oct. 26, 1917. In early 1918, sent out on mission by the Bolshevik Party, he served as a military specialist in the Finnish Red Guard and as deputy chief commander of the revolutionary forces of Finland. In May 1918 he assumed command of the 1st Petrograd Rifle Division. From December 1918 through March 1919 he was commander of the Caspian-Caucasian Front; he subsequently served in the Kazan, Kursk, and Tula fortified regions and commanded the Combined Rifle Division. Svechnikov taught at various educational institutions from 1922, becoming head of the subdepartment of the history of the art of war at the M. V. Frunze Military Academy in 1934.

WORKS

Revoliutsiia i grazhdanskaia voina v Finliandii 1917–1918 gg. Moscow, 1923.
Taktika konnitsy, parts 1–2. Moscow, 1923–24.
Bor’ba Krasnoi Armii na Severnom Kavkaze, Sentiabr’ 1918-aprel’ 1919. Moscow, 1926.