Semyon Timoshenko

Semyon Konstantinovich Timoshenko (Семён Константинович Тимошенко; Семен Костянтинович Тимошенко; 18 February 1895 – 31 March 1970) was a Soviet military commander, Marshal of the Soviet Union, and one of the most prominent Red Army commanders during the Second World War.

Born to a Ukrainian family in Bessarabia, Timoshenko was drafted into the Imperial Russian Army and saw action in the First World War as a cavalryman. On the outbreak of the Russian Revolution he joined the Red Army. He served with distinction during the Russian Civil War and the subsequent Polish–Soviet War, which brought him into Vladimir Lenin's and Joseph Stalin's favour. Rapidly rising through the ranks, Timoshenko held several regional commands throughout the 1930s and survived the Great Purge. He led the Ukrainian Front during the Soviet invasion of Poland in 1939. In early 1940, Timoshenko took over the command of the Winter War in Finland from Kliment Voroshilov and turned the tide for the Soviets. In May 1940, he was named a Marshal of the Soviet Union and the People's Commissar for Defence. In the latter capacity, he took steps to modernise the Red Army and prepare for a likely war with Nazi Germany.

On the outbreak of the German invasion of the Soviet Union, Timoshenko was named chairman of the Stavka. Replaced by Stalin himself a month later, he went on to hold a series of important commands in the following year. In late 1941, he organised a major counter-offensive in Rostov, which brought him international renown. His fortunes had faltered by mid-1942, in particular after the overwhelming Soviet defeat at the Second Battle of Kharkov, and he was relieved from the command of the newly formed Stalingrad Front. He was recalled later that year and appointed commander of the Northwestern Front, and as a Stavka representative he oversaw and coordinated the activities of several fronts in various times during the last phase of the war, including the Leningrad, Volkhov, and North Caucasus Fronts and the Black Sea Fleet, and the 2nd and 3rd Ukrainian fronts.

After the war, Timoshenko held commands in several Soviet military districts until his effective retirement in 1960. He died in 1970 at the age of 75.

Early life
Born in Orman in the Akkerman uezd, Bessarabia Governorate of the Russian Empire (present-day Furmanivka, Odesa Oblast, Ukraine), to an ethnic Ukrainian family.

First World War
In 1914, he was drafted into the army of the Russian Empire and served as a cavalryman on Russia's western front in the First World War. Upon the outbreak of the Russian Revolution in 1917, he sided with the Bolsheviks, joining the Red Army in 1918 and the Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks) in 1919.

Russian Civil War
During the Russian Civil War of 1917–1923, Timoshenko served on various fronts. He fought against Polish forces in Kiev and then against Pyotr Wrangel's White Army and Nestor Makhno's Black Army. His most important encounter occurred at Tsaritsyn, where he commanded a cavalry regiment and met and befriended Joseph Stalin, who was responsible for the city's defense. The personal connection would ensure his rapid advancement after Stalin gained control of the Communist Party by the end of the 1920s. In 1920–1921, Timoshenko served under Semyon Budyonny and Kliment Voroshilov in the 1st Cavalry Army; Budyonny and Voroshilov became the core of the "Cavalry Army clique" which, under Stalin's patronage, would dominate the Red Army for many years. In April 1920, he was given command of the Sixth Division of the Red Cavalry, which was the first to attack the Polish army during the 'May offensive' launched by the Red Army during the Polish-Soviet War. On 29 May, the Sixth Division charged Polish trenches, taking heavy casualties for no gain, which convinced the Soviet commanders that charging trenches was pointless.

The 1930s
By the end of the civil and Polish–Soviet wars, Timoshenko had become the commander of the Red Army cavalry forces. Thereafter, under Stalin, he became Red Army commander in Byelorussia (1933); in Kiev (1935); in the northern Caucasus and then Kharkov (1937); and Kiev again (1938). In 1939, he was given command of the entire western border region and led the Ukrainian Front during the Soviet invasion of eastern Poland. He also became a member of the Communist Party's Central Committee. Due to being a loyal friend of Lenin and Stalin, Timoshenko survived the Great Purge to become the Red Army's senior professional soldier.

World War II: The Winter War
In January 1940, Timoshenko took charge of the Soviet armies fighting Finland in the Soviet-Finnish War. This began the previous November, under the disastrous command of Kliment Voroshilov. Under Timoshenko's leadership, the Soviets succeeded in breaking through the Finnish Mannerheim Line on the Karelian Isthmus. His reputation increased, Timoshenko was made the People's Commissar for Defence and a Marshal of the Soviet Union in May, replacing Marshal Voroshilov as the Minister of Defence.

British historian John Erickson has written:

Although by no means a military intellectual, Timoshenko had at least passed through the higher command courses of the Red Army and was a fully trained 'commander-commissar'. During the critical period of the military purge, Stalin had used Timoshenko as a military district commander who could hold key appointments while their incumbents were liquidated or exiled.

Timoshenko was a competent but traditionalist military commander who nonetheless saw the urgent need to modernise the Red Army if, as expected, it was to fight a war against Nazi Germany. Overcoming the opposition of other more conservative leaders, he undertook the mechanisation of the Red Army and the production of more tanks. He also reintroduced much of the traditional harsh discipline of the Tsarist Russian Army.

In June 1940, Timoshenko ordered the formation of the Baltic Military District in the occupied Baltic states.

1941–1942
In the weeks before the German invasion of the Soviet Union, Timoshenko and Zhukov were worried by reports that German planes were crossing the Soviet border at least 10 times a day, and on 13 June, they asked Stalin for permission to put the troops on the western border on high alert, but were overruled because Stalin was convinced that there would be no German invasion before spring 1942.

General Ivan Boldin, deputy commander on the western front, recounted in memoirs published 20 years later that early in the morning of the invasion, on 22 June, when several towns in Belarus, including Grodno, were being bombed, aircraft destroyed on the ground, troops were being strafed, and German paratroopers were landing behind Red Army lines, Timoshenko rang him with an instruction that "no action is to be taken against the Germans without our knowledge ... Comrade Stalin has forbidden to open artillery fire against the Germans". On 23 June, Timoshenko was named chairman of Stavka, the Soviet Armed Forces High Command. In July 1941, Stalin replaced Timoshenko as Defense Commissar and Stavka's chairman. At the same time, the Western Front was divided into three sectors, with Timoshenko put in command of the Central Front to supervise a fighting retreat from the border to Smolensk. The Northern Front was commanded by Voroshilov, and the Southwestern Front by Budyonny, both of whom were removed by Stalin after only a few weeks for incompetence. Timoshenko was transferred to Ukraine in September to replace Budyonny and restore order in the at the gates of Kiev. On 23 October, the Soviets made Timoshenko command the entire southern half of the Eastern Front and Georgy Zhukov command the northern half. In November and December 1941 Timoshenko organized major counter offensives in the Rostov region, as well as carving a bridgehead into German defenses south of Kharkiv in January 1942.

In May 1942, Timoshenko, with 640,000 men, launched a counter-offensive (the Second Battle of Kharkov) which was the first Soviet attempt to gain initiative in the springtime war. After initial Soviet successes, the Germans struck back at Timoshenko's exposed southern flank, halting the offensive, encircling Timoshenko's armies, and turning the battle into a major Soviet defeat.

The fact that he was the most senior Soviet army officer with a front line command during most of the first year after the German invasion turned Timoshenko, briefly, into an international celebrity, lionised in the US and UK in particular as a supposed military genius. According to an account written later in the war:

"Marshal Timoshenko flared up like a shooting star of unusual brightness against a sky that was more than commonly dark, and faded just as swiftly and unexpectedly. From June 1941 to about July 1942, so famous was he that foreigners, notably the Welsh and Irish, attempted to inch under his halo by finding their blood in him. The Welsh said that Timothy Jenkins was the Marshal's ancestor who had migrated to Russia to work as a mechanic and marry a Ukrainian girl. The Hibernians told a similar story about a certain Tim O'Shenko. In June 1942, an American humorist wrote: 'I am waiting to hear from the Poles, the Czechs, the Brazilians and the Greeks. Everybody wants to be a winner.' But just then, Marshal Timoshenko began his descent from glory." General Georgy Zhukov's success in defending Moscow during December 1941 had persuaded Stalin that he was a better commander than Timoshenko. On 22 July 1942, Stalin replaced Timoshenko with Vasily Gordov as Commander of the Stalingrad Front due to his failures up to that point in the war, making him Chairman of the High Command. He was called back into service as overall commander of the Northwestern Front between October 1942 and March 1943.

1943–1945
Nonetheless, Timoshenko continued active military action in the later phase of the war. From March 1943, he was appointed as a representative of STAVKA to coordinated the actions of a number of fronts. He took part in the development and conduct of some operations. From March to June 1943 Timoshenko coordinated the Volkhov and Leningrad fronts during the battles at the Leningrad sector. By December 1943 he coordinate the North Caucasian Front and the Black Sea Fleet, oversaw the liberation of the North Caucasus and Novorossiysk, the landing operation in Kerch Peninsula, paving the way for the liberation of Crimea later. From February to June 1944 he oversaw the actions of 2nd and 3rd Baltic fronts, including the Starorussko-Novorzhevskaya operation. From August 1944 until the end of the war he coordinate the actions of 2nd, 3rd and 4th Ukrainian fronts.

Timoshenko was awarded his first Order of Suvorov, 1st class due to the achievements in the Caucasus and the bridgehead in Crimea. After the Red Army liberated Chisinau on August 25 during the Jassy–Kishinev offensive, Timoshenko sent a telegram to Stalin which praised the achievement of the 2nd and 3rd Ukrainian fronts under his coordination and requested the promotion of their respective commanders, Malinovsky and Tolbukhin, to the rank of Marshal of the Soviet Union. The commanders were indeed promoted, and Timoshenko was also awarded another Order of Suvorov, 1st class. On June 4, 1945, Timoshenko was awarded the Order of Victory for his contributions in the war.

In 1945, Timoshenko attended the Yalta Conference. A rumor started in the western press that Stalin had attacked Timoshenko, but was later disproved.

Between 15 August 1945 and 15 September 1945, Timoshenko traveled alone to review the Starye Dorogi displaced persons camp where Auschwitz concentration camp survivors recuperated after their liberation. Later, author Primo Levi (Prisoner 174517) wrote in The Truce of how the extremely tall Timoshenko "unfolded himself from a tiny Fiat 500A Topolino" to announce that the liberated survivors would soon begin their final journey home.

Postwar and death
After the war, Timoshenko was reappointed commander of the Baranovichi Military District (Byelorussian Military District since March 1946), then of the South Urals Military District (June 1946); and then the Byelorussian Military District once again (March 1949). In 1960, he was appointed Inspector-General of the Defence Ministry, a largely honorary post. From 1961 he chaired the State Committee for War Veterans.

Timoshenko died at Moscow on 31 March 1970 at the age of 75. He was honoured with a state funeral and was cremated on 3 April. The urn containing his ashes was buried in the Kremlin Wall Necropolis.

Assessment
Timoshenko was highly praised by his contemporary Marshal Georgy Zhukov. During a discussion with Stalin in 1941, Zhukov praised Timoshenko's conducts at Smolensk sector, claimed that he had done everything he could and gained the trust of the soldiers. After the war, Zhukov repeated his praise during an interview with Konstantin Simonov, claimed that Timoshenko was a strong-willed, educated and experienced military man. He was removed from the frontline duty not because of his capability, but mainly because people were upset with his defeat at Kharkov and Timoshenko himself did not attempt to curry favour with his superior.

General A.P. Pokrovsky, also in an interview with Simonov, gave a more multidimensional assessment of Timoshenko. Pokrovsky praised Timoshenko as a well-trained, hard-working commander and was proficient in military matters. However, Timoshenko had a deep distrust of the personnel of STAVKA, therefore he also worked with a separated group of trusted associates and double-checked the data gathered by both the STAVKA group and his own group. Pokrovsky commented that Timoshenko's method was "abnormal" although his desire for accurate information was reasonable. Sergei Shtemenko in his memoirs also recounted Timoshenko's hostile attitude towards High Command's personnels including Shtemenko himself, however their mutual relationship finally improved after some times working together.

There was a Marshala Tymoshenko Street in (the capital of Ukraine) Kyiv's Obolonskyi District. On 27 October 2022 the Kyiv City Council renamed this street to Levko Lukianenko Street.

In popular culture
During the war with Poland, Isaac Babel rode with a cavalry unit commanded by Timoshenko, who was then aged 25, and who appeared as a named character in at least two of the stories Babel wrote about his war experiences, one of which was originally published in Odessa under the title 'Timoshenko and Melnikov'. When the stories were republished, his name was changed to Savitsky, after Budyonny had denounced Babel's work as "slander" by a "literary degenerate." Babel's story My First Goose opens with this description:

"Savitsky, the commander of the Sixth Division, rose when he saw me, and I was taken aback by the beauty of his gigantic body. He rose – his breeches purple, his crimson cap cocked to one side, his medals pinned to his chest – splitting the hut in two like a banner splitting the sky. He smelled of perfume and the nauseating coolness of soap. His long legs looked like two girls wedged to their shoulders in riding boots."

In Babel's The Story of a Horse – originally 'Timoshenko and Melnikov', 'Savitsky' is described as having been removed from his command, and living with a Cossack woman, and is accused of having taken a white stallion that belonged a rival officer, who tries in vain to get it back.

In the Warner Bros. cartoon, Russian Rhapsody, a caricature of Adolf Hitler referred to Timoshenko as "that Irish general, Tim O'Shenko."

Soviet Union

 * Honorary revolutionary weapon – a sword with a nominal Order of the Red Banner (28 November 1920)

General sources



 * (1975, 2003)