Vasily Blyukher

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Marshal of the Soviet Union Vasily Blyukher

Vasily Konstantinovich Blyukher (also spelled Blücher, Blukher, Bliukher etc, Russian: Василий Константинович Блюхер) (December 1 [O.S. November 19] 1889 - November 9, 1938), Soviet military commander, was among the prominent victims of Stalin's Great Purge of the late 1930s.

Blyukher was born into a peasant family in village Barschinka, now in Yaroslavl Oblast. Despite his German surname, he was not of German descent as is sometimes written: the name was given to his family by a 19th century landlord after a famous Prussian Marshal Blücher. A factory worker before World War I, he joined the army of the Russian Empire in 1914 and served as a non-commissioned officer. In 1916 he joined the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party, and took part in the Russian Revolution of 1917 in Samara. ^[1]

In the late November 1917 he was sent into Chelyabinsk to suppress Dutov revolt as Red Guard commissar. Blyukher joined the Red Army in 1918 and was soon a commander. During the Russian Civil War he was one of the outstanding figures on the Bolshevik side. After Czech Legion Revolt started, in August-September 1918 the 10,000-strong South Urals Partisan Army under Blyukher's command marched 1,500km in 40 days of continuous fighting to attack the White forces from the rear, then join with regular Red Army units. For this achievement in September 1918 he became the first recipient of the Order of the Red Banner (later he was awarded it four more times: twice in 1921 and twice in 1928) ^[1], his citation saying: "The raid made by Comrade Blyukher's forces under impossible conditions can only be equated with Suvorov's crossings in Switzerland." After the force rejoined the Red Army lines in the 3rd Red Army area, Blyukher's force was reorganised as the 51st Division, which he later led to further triumphs against Wrangel in November 1920.(John Erickson, 1962)

After the Civil War, he served as military commander of the Far Eastern Republic, bringing those territories into the Soviet fold in 1921-23. From 1924 to 1927 Blyukher was a Soviet military adviser in China, where he used the name Galen (a westernization based on a combination of the names of his children, Ka-lin) while attached to Chiang Kai-Shek's military headquarters. He was responsible for the military planning of the Northern Expedition which began the Kuomintang unification of China. Among those he instructed in this period was Lin Biao, later a leading figure in the Chinese Peoples Liberation Army. On his return he was given command of the Ukraine military region, and then in 1929 he was transferred to the vitally important military command in the Soviet Far East, known as the Special Red Banner Eastern Army (OKDVA).

Based at Khabarovsk, Blyukher exercised a degree of autonomy in the Far East unusual for a Soviet military commander. With Japan steadily extending its grip on China and hostile to the Soviet Union, the Far East was an active military command. In the Russo-Chinese Chinese Eastern Railroad War of 1929-1930 he defeated the Chinese warlord forces in a lightning campaign. For this outstanding achievement he became the first recipient of the Order of the Red Star in September 1930^[1]. In 1935 he was made a Marshal of the Soviet Union. In July and August 1938 he commanded Far East Front in a less decisive action against the Japanese at the Battle of Khasan Lake, on the border between the Soviet Union and Japanese-occupied Korea.

The importance of the Far East Front gave Blyukher a certain degree of immunity from Stalin's purge of Red Army command, which had begun in 1937 with the execution of Mikhail Tukhachevsky. In fact, Blyukher had been a member of the tribunal that convicted Tukhachevsky. In 1938 he was convicted of inadequate armed forces leadership during the Battle of Khasan Lake and dismissed from his post. On October 22 he was arrested, convicted of espionage for Japan. ^[1] A contributory factor in Blyukher's downfall was the defection to Japan in June, 1938, of the NKVD chief in the Far East, Genrikh Lyushkov, who feared arrest.^{[citation needed]}

In prison Blyukher refused to confess and was never formally tried.^{[citation needed]} He was severely tortured in Lefortovo jail in Moscow^[1], and died there shortly after. He was rehabilitated in 1956^[1]. He continues to be a popular figure in Russia, and a documentary film on his life and several publications by family members have appeared.