Iona Yakir - in The Civil War

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 wounded in March 1918. 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 civilian population. The war against armed combatants, plus the terror against the civilian population, 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 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 400 kilometres (250 mi), 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, and he became one of the most-decorated Red Army commanders.