Alexander Ilyich Yegorov or Egorov (Russian: Александр Ильич Егоров, romanized: Aleksandr Il'ich Yegórov) (25 October [O.S.

Following the outbreak of the Russian Revolution, Yegorov became a member of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and was one of the few trusted ex-tsarist officers in the Red Army.

During the Russian Civil War, he commanded the Red Army's Southern Front and played an important part in defeating the White forces in Ukraine.

In 1934, Yegorov was elected to the Central Committee of the Communist Party, and a year later he was named a Marshal of the Soviet Union and Chief of the General Staff.

[1][2][3] After graduating from Junkers school in Kazan in 1905, he was assigned to Transcaucasia, where he and his unit participated in suppressing protests in Tiflis, Baku and Gori, during the Russian Revolution of 1905.

[4] During World War I he rose to the rank of Lieutenant Colonel and fought as the commander of the company and battalion within the 132nd Bender Infantry Regiment.

In 1918, he joined the newly created Workers and Peasants Red Army and in July 1918, he also became a member of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.

Initially, the forces under his command achieved a number of successes, including the capture of Kyiv, Podolia and Galicia from Poles, and approached closer to Lwów.

[12] However, Yegorov, disregarding the orders of the high command, did not send the First Cavalry Army commanded by Semyon Budyonny to reinforce the Western Front, which led to successful defense of Lwów by Polish Army troops led by General Edward Rydz-Śmigły and the subsequent Soviet defeat in the Battle of Warsaw in 1920.

[15] After the Polish-Soviet War, Yegorov served as commander of the Kiev and Petrograd Military Districts from December 1920 to September 1921.

[3] Because of his old connections to Stalin and Budyonny, Yegorov seemed to be safe from the wave of arrests that swept through the Red Army in 1937 as the Great Purge gathered pace.

[17] His downfall seems to have begun with a letter in the spring of 1937 from Kombrig Fedor Sudakov of the Frunze Military Academy to Stalin questioning Yegorov's performance; a similar letter was sent by Kombrig Yan Zhigur to Voroshilov on 20 July, and Yegorov was further damaged by confessions extracted from officers arrested during the purge of the army.

[17][19] After Stalin's death in 1953, Nikita Khrushchev rehabilitated Yegorov by the decision of the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the Soviet Union.