Semyon Budyonny

Born to a poor Don Cossack family in 1883, Budyonny was drafted into the Imperial Russian Army in 1903 and distinguished himself as a dragoon in the First World War, earning all four classes of the Cross of St. George. When civil war came he founded the Red Cavalry, became a folk hero in patriotic songs, and rode the Bolshevik victory into the upper ranks - one of the original five Marshals of the Soviet Union in 1935. His closeness to Stalin kept him alive through the Great Purge; he testified against Tukhachevsky's tank corps as "wrecking," insisting cavalry was superior, and in 1939 dismissed warnings about armored warfare with the prediction that war would mean everyone shouting "Send for the Cavalry!" In 1941, commanding Soviet forces at Kiev and Uman, he was routed by the Germans and pulled from the front, scapegoated for Stalin's strategic disasters but kept in the high command. He resumed his post as inspector of cavalry in 1953 and lived until 1973.