Vladimir Gittis

Born June 24 (July 6), 1881; died Aug. 22, 1938. Soviet military commander; corps commander (1935). Member of the CPSU from 1925.

Born into a petit bourgeois family, Gittis graduated from a Junker infantry school (1902). As a participant in World War I he commanded a regiment in 1917 and became a colonel. From February 1918 he was a member of the Red Army. From August to September 1918 he was the military supervisor of the Northern Sector of the zavesa (operational command of detached regiments in the early Red Army), and he commanded the Sixth Army (September-November 1918), the Eighth Army (December 1918-January 1919), and the Southern (January-July 1919), Western (July 1919-April 1920), and Caucasian (May 1920-May 1921) fronts. After the Civil War Gittis was commander of the troops in the Trans-Volga and Petrograd (later Leningrad) military districts. From 1921 he was entrusted with particularly important assignments by the Revolutionary Military Council of the USSR. From 1926, Gittis was deputy chief of supply for the Workers’ and Peasants’ Red Army. Beginning in 1930 he was plenipotentiary of the People’s Commissariat for Military and Naval Affairs under the People’s Commissariat for Trade. Gittis was awarded the Order of the Red Banner.