Todorskii, Aleksandr

Born Sept. 1 (13), 1894, in the village of Deledino, in what is now Molokovo Raion, Kalinin Oblast; died Aug. 28, 1965, in Moscow. Soviet military figure. Lieutenant general (1955). Member of the CPSU from 1918.

Todorskii was a captain in World War I (1914–18). After the February Revolution of 1917 he was elected chairman of the regiment committee. In 1918 and 1919 he worked on the Ves’egonsk district executive committee and wrote the book A Year With Rifle and Plow (1918), which was praised by V. I. Lenin (see Poln. sobr. soch., 5th ed., vol. 37, pp. 407–11). He joined the Red Army in September 1919. During the Civil War (1918–20) he commanded a brigade and a division. After the war he commanded a corps and a division and was assistant troop commander and a member of the Revolutionary Military Council at the Turkestan Front. He also fought in the struggle against the Basmachi.

After graduating from the M. V. Frunze Military Academy in 1927, Todorskii was assistant troop commander of the Byelorussian Military District from 1928 to 1930. He served as chief of staff, deputy supervisor and supervisor of the Directorate of Military Education Establishments (1930–33, 1936–38), director of the N. E. Zhukovskii Air Force Academy (1933–34), and a member of the Military Council of the People’s Commissariat of Defense of the USSR (1934–36). He retired in 1955.

Todorskii was awarded two Orders of the Red Banner, the Order of the Red Banner of the Azerbaijan SSR, and the Order of the Red Banner of the Armenian SSR.