Semyon Budyonny was born on April 25, 1883 near Salsk, a town in the Rostov Oblast of Russia. He grew up in an ethnic enclave of the Don Cossacks but was of Russian descent. The Russian Empire drafted him when he turned 20, and he saw action as a dragoon in the 1905 Russo-Japanese War. He underwent officer training in 1907 at an academy in St. Petersburg. As a sergeant in the Caucasus Cavalry Division during the World War I, Budyonny earned many distinctions. He returned to his family farm when revolution broke out at 1917. He joined a Bolshevik-aligned partisan group in 1918, leading a Cossack cavalry brigade that eventually became the 1st Cavalry Army.

He was instrumental in winning the Battle for Tsaritsyn (later Stalingrad, now Volgograd) in 1918, under the command of Joseph Stalin, the local chairman of the military committee. In 1919, Budyonny’s army captured the city of Rostov, the headquarters of Anton Denikin’s White forces in southwestern Russia. The army then made a long march from Maikop to the Ukraine to join the Polish-Soviet war, advancing deep behind enemy lines before being bogged down in Lvov. Budyonny suffered a decisive defeat at the Battle of Komarow in the fall of 1920, but the conclusion of the Polish-Soviet conflict meant that the army could recover and join the fight against Pyotr Wrangel’s forces in the Crimean Peninsula.

Budyonny benefited from his political connections to Stalin and Kliment Voroshilov, and as increasingly more of the Soviet state came under Stalin’s control, the more Budyonny’s career flourished. He was named Inspector of Cavalry for the Red Army and in 1935 was one of the first five Marshals of the Soviet Union. In 1937 he was appointed commander of the Moscow Military District, and in 1939 he became a member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party. As commander of the Moscow Military District, he presided over the trials of the Great Purge that targeted senior officials in the armed forces. This included the trial of Marshal Mikhail Tukhachevsky, with whom Budyonny had clashed over transitioning from cavalry units to armored and motorized forces. Budyonny continued to resist new theories of warfare developed after the turn of the century, although even with his friendship with Stalin, he was never able to completely stop the production of mechanized divisions. He was almost caught up in the purges of the 1930s himself but called Stalin personally to protest his arrest. Of the five original Soviet marshals, Budyonny was just one of two (the other being Voroshilov) to survive the decade.

When the German-Soviet war began in June 1941, the Red Army’s Western Front performed disastrously. Stalin appointed Budyonny as its commander in July with the objective of defending the Ukrainian capital, Kiev. Stalin demanded that his commanders get his permission over any major decisions, and he expected Budyonny to be a compliant pawn. As the encirclement of Kiev seemed certain, Budyonny requested that the Southwestern Front retreat. Stalin instead relieved Budyonny and replaced him with Semyon Timoshenko. He was placed in charge of organizing the Red Army parade in November, an event during which units marched from Red Square to the front.

Budyonny later led the North Caucasus Front in the summer of 1942 as the Germans crossed the Crimea and rushed for the oilfields of southern Russia. Shortly after the fall of Sevastopol, Stalin again recalled Budyonny to Moscow and this time placed him in charge of the Red Army cavalry in a ceremonial role. His shortcomings as a commander revealed, Budyonny held various positions and received several awards during wartime, but was never again given significant commands. He was 62 years old when the Great Patriotic War ended. He died in 1973.

Budyonny had made his reputation as a Civil War hero, but his inability to recognize the evolving approaches to war meant that by World War II his views were obsolete. He made a useful tool for Stalin, as either a great commander or a scapegoat. Although widely respected for the achievements in his early career, it was plain that he owed more of his status in later life to his connections to Stalin than any military merit.

Sources

Budyonny, Semyon. The Path of Valor. Moscow: Progress, 1972.

Kalic, Sean and Gates Brown, eds.. Russian Revolution of 1917: The Essential Reference Guide. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO.

Montefiore, Simon. Stalin: Court of the Red Tsar. New York: Vintage, 2005.

Shukman, Harold. Stalin’s Generals. London: Weidenfeld & Nicholson, 1993