Iona Yakir

Iona Emmanuilovich Yakir (russian: Ио́на Эммануи́лович Яки́р; 3 August 1896 – 12 June 1937) was a Red Army commander and one of the world's major military reformers between World War I and World War II. He was an early and major military victim of the Great Purge, alongside Mikhail Tukhachevsky.

Early years

Yakir was born in Kishinev, Bessarabia, Russian Empire, into the prosperous family of a Jewish pharmacist.Five short biographies about Yakir (all in Russian)
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/ref> He graduated from the local secondary school in 1914. Because of governmental restrictions on Jewish access to higher education, Yakir studied abroad at the University of Basel in Switzerland, in the field of chemistry. During World War I, he returned to the Russian Empire and worked as a turner in a military factory in Odessa, Ukraine (he was a reservist). From 1915 to 1917, he attended the Kharkiv Technological Institute. He was affected by the war and became a follower of Vladimir Lenin. In 1917, he returned to Kishinev, and in April became a member of the Bolshevik Party. He also became a member of the Bessarabian Governorate's Council, the Governorate's Committee and the Revolutionary Committee. From January 1918, he took active part in the Bolshevik seizure of power in Bessarabia. When Romania intervened to recapture Bessarabia, Yakir led Bolshevik resistance but his small force was overwhelmed by the regular Romanian army.

In the Civil War

Yakir retreated to Ukraine and fought against Austro-Hungarian occupation forces as a commander of a Chinese regiment of the Red Army. He was severely wounded in March 1918 near Ekaterinoslav. At the beginning of the Russian Civil War between Bolshevik forces, the White Army and various other anti-Bolshevik movements, Yakir was a member of the Bolshevik Party in Voronezh Province and started his service in the Red Army as a commissar. He showed military talent and was assigned as a field commander. In October 1918, he served as a member of the Revolutionary Council of the 8th Army in the Southern Front and simultaneously commanded the Southern Front's several key formations in operations against the Don Cossacks of Pyotr Krasnov. He carried out Lenin's order of persecution against the Cossack civilians and the extermination of almost half of the male Cossack population. The war against armed combatants plus the terror against the civilians were coming together in the Russian Civil War. Encouraged by the Bolshevik theory of class struggle, Yakir, like other members of the Communist party, took part in terror. For his services, he became the second individual (after Vasily Blyukher) to receive the highest Soviet military award of that time, the Order of the Red Banner (engraved as No. 2).

In the summer of 1919, Yakir was sent to Ukraine to command the 45th Rifle Division, and in August 1919, he became the commander of the Southern Group of the 12th Army, which included the 45th and 58th Rifle Divisions. Both divisions were surrounded in Odessa by the White forces. Yakir undertook one of the most unusual Civil War military operations. He breached the encirclement and led his forces through the enemy rear for a distance of to join the Red Army in Zhitomir. Like other Bolshevik commanders who did not have military education he was assisted in this operation by former tsarist army officers on his staff but this fact does not negate his own role in planning and leading the campaign. For this campaign he received his second Order of the Red Banner, and both of his divisions received Red Banners of Honor. Yakir took part in actions against the White forces of Nikolai Yudenich in defense of Petrograd, in suppression of Ukrainian anarchist guerrilla forces of Nestor Makhno, and in the Polish-Soviet War. He was awarded the Order of the Red Banner three times (twice in 1919 and once in 1930), and he became one of the most-decorated Red Army commanders.

Military reform

After the civil war, Yakir commanded army formations in Ukraine. Yakir was a close associate of Mikhail Frunze and belonged to his inner circle of innovative Red Army officers who assisted Frunze in starting far-reaching military reforms. Among these reformers, Mikhail Tukhachevsky became a friend of Yakir. In April 1924 Yakir was appointed a head of the Main Directorate of Military Academies of the Red Army and simultaneously editor of a major military periodical devoted to development of military theory, ''Voennyi Vestnik''.

In November 1925, after Frunze's death, Yakir was appointed commander of the most powerful territorial formations of the Red Army, the newly-reorganized Ukrainian Military District (see: Kiev Military District). Yakir, in close coordination with Tukhachevsky and other reformers, made his district into a laboratory for wide-ranging experiments in strategy, tactical and operational techniques, army formations and equipment. In training his troops, Yakir encouraged his officers' initiative and ability to make their own judgments. In 1928 and 1929, Yakir studied at the Higher Military Academy ( de , Führergehilfenausbildung) in Berlin. This was possible because of the intensive military cooperation between the Soviet Union and Germany. Yakir's innovative approaches to the military art impressed his German colleagues. German Field Marshal of World War I fame, Paul von Hindenburg, praised him as one of the most-talented military commanders of the post-World War I era. Following repeated requests from German officers, Yakir gave special lectures on the Russian Civil War.

After returning to his district, Yakir continued military reforms. He was one of the creators of the first large tank and air-force formations in the world. Not a military theorist in his own right, Yakir strongly supported Tukhachevsky's endeavor in developing the theory of deep operations. Military historians across the world still consider this theory an outstanding theoretical innovation. In 1934 Yakir requested that Tukhachevsky be appointed to conduct advanced courses on operational theory for high-ranking officers of the Red Army General Staff and commanders of military districts. He made this request even though he knew about Joseph Stalin's dislike of Tukhachevsky. In retribution, Stalin instructed Kliment Voroshilov, the Peoples Commissar of Defense, to bar Yakir from membership in the prestigious Advisory Council of the Defense Commissariat. In 1935, in order to diminish Yakir's power, the Ukrainian Military District was divided into two new districts: Kiev,''The Soviet High Command. A Military-Political History 1918–1941'', page 394. under Yakir's command, and Kharkov

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