Ieronim Uborevich - Military Career

Military Career

Uborevich began his military career during World War I, serving as a junior officer in the Imperial Russian Army. He joined the Bolsheviks after the Russian Revolution. In January 1918, he commanded a detachment of Red Guards in Belarus and was captured by the Germans but escaped. During the Russian Civil War, he served in a variety of command posts in the Red Army, commanding the 9th, 13th, and 14th Armies. He fought alongside Mikhail Tukhachevsky in the Polish–Soviet War and in suppressing the Tambov Rebellion in 1921. In 1922 he became War Minister of the short-lived Far Eastern Republic, a buffer state between Soviet Russia and Japan.

In 1925 he became commander of the North Caucasus Military District, and then in 1928 the Moscow Military District. He served as the Red Army's Chief of Armaments from 1928–1931 and Deputy Chairman of the Revolutionary Military Council from 1930 to 1931. From 1931–1937, he was commander of the Belorussian Military District, one of the two (along with the Kiev Military District) key commands that would bear the brunt of any Soviet war along its western border.