Boris Mironovich Feldman () (1890 – June 12, 1937) was a Soviet military commander and politician. He was executed during the

Great Purge The Great Purge, or the Great Terror (), also known as the Year of '37 () and the Yezhovshchina ( , ), was a political purge in the Soviet Union that took place from 1936 to 1938. After the Assassination of Sergei Kirov, assassination of ...

and rehabilitated during the

Khrushchev Thaw The Khrushchev Thaw (, or simply ''ottepel'')William Taubman, Khrushchev: The Man and His Era, London: Free Press, 2004 is the period from the mid-1950s to the mid-1960s when Political repression in the Soviet Union, repression and Censorship in ...

Early years

Feldman was born in

Pinsk Pinsk (; , ; ; ; ) is a city in Brest Region, Belarus. It serves as the administrative center of Pinsk District, though it is administratively separated from the district. It is located in the historical region of Polesia, at the confluence of t ...

Minsk Governorate Minsk Governorate was an administrative-territorial unit (''guberniya'') of the Russian Empire, with its capital in Minsk. It was created from the land acquired in the partitions of Poland and existed from 1793 until 1921. Its territory covered th ...

into a

Jewish Jews (, , ), or the Jewish people, are an ethnoreligious group and nation, originating from the Israelites of History of ancient Israel and Judah, ancient Israel and Judah. They also traditionally adhere to Judaism. Jewish ethnicity, rel ...

family. As a young man he sympathized with the revolutionary movement and was repeatedly arrested. In 1913 he was mobilized into the

Imperial Russian Army The Imperial Russian Army () was the army of the Russian Empire, active from 1721 until the Russian Revolution of 1917. It was organized into a standing army and a state militia. The standing army consisted of Regular army, regular troops and ...

. As an ordinary soldier he participated in the First World War (1914–1917).

Red Army career

In May 1918 he joined the

Red Army The Workers' and Peasants' Red Army, often shortened to the Red Army, was the army and air force of the Russian Soviet Republic and, from 1922, the Soviet Union. The army was established in January 1918 by a decree of the Council of People ...

. In 1918 he was the secretary of the headquarters of the Army's Bryansk region, from February 1919 he was a student at the Academy of the General Staff of the Red Army, and, in the same year, he rose to being assistant chief of the operational department of the 13th army, while in June–September he was chief of staff of the 1st brigade of the 9th rifle division. In 1920 he became a member of the

Communist Party of the Soviet Union The Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU),. Abbreviated in Russian as КПСС, ''KPSS''. at some points known as the Russian Communist Party (RCP), All-Union Communist Party and Bolshevik Party, and sometimes referred to as the Soviet ...

. In May 1920, he was first assistant chief, then chief of staff of the 57th rifle division, and then in September–December, the head of the 55th rifle division. After the division was folded into the 55th separate rifle brigade, he remained its chief until the end of June 1921. In October–December 1921, he commanded the Expeditionary Corps, which participated in the suppression of the Tambov peasant uprising. In May–July 1922 he was the Chief of Staff of the People's Revolutionary Army of the Far Eastern Republic. In 1922–1925 he was the commander of the 17th, then in 1925–1928 he commanded the 19th rifle corps. In 1927, he was on a study trip to Germany for two months. In 1928–1934 he was chief of staff of the Leningrad Military District. In 1932, together with

Mikhail Tukhachevsky Mikhail Nikolayevich Tukhachevsky ( rus, Михаил Николаевич Тухачевский, Mikhail Nikolayevich Tukhachevskiy, p=tʊxɐˈtɕefskʲɪj; – 12 June 1937), nicknamed the Red Napoleon, was a Soviet general who was prominen ...

, he went to large

Reichswehr ''Reichswehr'' (; ) was the official name of the German armed forces during the Weimar Republic and the first two years of Nazi Germany. After Germany was defeated in World War I, the Imperial German Army () was dissolved in order to be reshaped ...

maneuvers in Germany. From 1934 to 1937, Feldman was the head of the Directorate for the Commanding Staff of the Red Army and a member of the Military Council under the People's Commissar of Defense of the USSR. With the introduction of personal military ranks in 1935, he was awarded the military rank of commander. On 15 April 1937 was named assistant manager of the military district of Moscow.

Arrest, execution and rehabilitation

In May 1937, Feldman was transferred to the post of deputy commander of the troops of the Moscow Military District, and on May 15 he was arrested, after which he was removed from all posts and expelled from the CPSU (b). He was shot on June 12, 1937, together with Tukhachevsky,

Iona Yakir Iona Emmanuilovich Yakir (; 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, alongsid ...

and other military leaders in the basement of the building of the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the USSR. He was buried in Donsk cemetery, Moscow. His son ended up in the Nizhneisetsky orphanage. He was rehabilitated posthumously under

Nikita Khrushchev Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev (– 11 September 1971) was the General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1953 to 1964 and the Premier of the Soviet Union, Chai ...

on January 31, 1957, and reinstated in the party.

Early years

Red Army career

Arrest, execution and rehabilitation

References

See also