1st Red Cavalry Army
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1st Red Cavalry Army |
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| Country |
 Soviet Union
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| Armed forces |
Red Army
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| Armed forces | Land Forces |
| Type | army |
The 1st Cavalry Army ( Russian Первая конная армия ) was the best-known Soviet cavalry army in the Russian Civil War . Under its commanding General Semjon Budjonny , the cavalry army was involved in almost all major battles of the civil war between 1919 and 1922 and continued to exist afterwards.
history
On the orders of the commander of the Soviet 10th Army, General Yegorov , the Soviet 1st Cavalry Corps was formed on the southern front on May 6, 1919 due to the approach of the White Army .
- 1st Cavalry Division under Apanasenko
- 4th Cavalry Division under Gorodovikov
- 6th Cavalry Division under Tymoshenko
In June 1919 the corps was able to successfully repel the attack of the Terek Cossack Corps under General Ulagai on Tsaritsyn .
The political commissar Stalin was established in July 1919 as a council of war to the southern front under General Pavel Sytin sent to secure the strategically important connection node Tsaritsyn, the only still controlled grain-growing region of the southern region. On Stalin's proposal was the most on November 17, 1919 Manytsch reclassified standing I. Cavalry Corps the 1st Cavalry and General Budjonny appointed commander.
At the end of 1919 Budjonny's army was reinforced by infantry from the 9th and 12th Rifle Divisions and transferred to the 8th Army under General Sokolnikow in the Voronezh - Kastornoje area as reinforcement against the advance of the White Guards under General Denikin . On December 7th, the Soviets were able to push the Cossack cavalry corps of General Mamontow back south from the Donbass region. After the enemy was pursued in the direction of Taganrog and Novocherkassk , Rostov was occupied on January 10, 1920 . By March 1920 the cavalry army was able to push over the Kuban in the North Caucasus and reach Maikop .
After the loss of Kiev as a result of the Polish-Soviet War , the cavalry army was moved from Maikop to Uman by a 1200 kilometer march , an undertaking that took 52 days. On May 15, the southern front under Yegorov launched a counter-offensive against the Poles. The Soviet 12th Army advanced north, the 15th Army south of Kiev to the west. Budyonny's cavalry army went on May 27th as a connection area between the Fastov group under General Jakir and the Soviet 14th Army under General Uborewitsch in the area between Kasatin and Berditschew to attack.
The cavalry army advanced through Volhynia to Galicia in the summer of 1920 with the aim of conquering Lemberg . For this operation it was composed of the 4th, 6th, 11th and 14th Cavalry Divisions and had about 16,700 horsemen. On August 16, the Bug to the west was crossed by the 6th Cavalry Division. While the Soviet Western Front under Tukhachevsky was forced by Polish counterattacks to retreat from Warsaw in the Battle of the Vistula , General Jegorow attempted a relief attack via the Bug on the Southern Front on August 25th . Budjonny's cavalry army, together with the 44th and 45th rifle divisions, enclosed the Polish garrison of Zamosc at the end of August 1920 . From August 30, the cavalry army was temporarily cut off from its rear connections by Polish units. In the cavalry battle near Komarów, she fought her way to the east over the Huczwa by September 2 and reached her own lines. At the outbreak, the army suffered great losses, Budjonny's command staff was killed by artillery fire. The cavalry army could no longer be deployed and initially withdrew to Zhitomir for reorganization .
From autumn 1920 the cavalry army again successfully participated in the fight against the last troops of the White Guards under Wrangel in the Kuban area . Towards the end of 1920, the entire Caucasus, with the exception of Georgia, belonged to the territory of the Soviet Union. In May 1921 the cavalry army was disbanded, the army headquarters remained in place until October 23, 1923. The army finally crossed all of Siberia and conquered the Chukchi Peninsula .
Numerous monuments were dedicated to the unit in the Soviet Union , such as the monument to the soldiers of the 1st Red Cavalry Army (Olesko) in Ukraine . This memorial was demolished in 2016 as part of decommunization .
The Soviet writer Isaak Babel described his experiences with the cavalry army in the Polish-Soviet war in the volume of stories " The cavalry army ".
Known relatives
- Isaak Babel (1894–1940), Soviet writer
- Max Lademann (1896–1941), German communist
- Nikolai Ostrowski (1904–1936), Soviet writer
literature
- Semjon Mikhailovich Budyonny: Red riders ahead. 3. Edition. Military Publishing House of the GDR, Berlin 1978. DNB 780329821