The district was reestablished by the Red Army during the Russian Civil War in January 1919, but disbanded in September after its territory was taken over by White troops.

On 22 June 1941, Operation Barbarossa, the German invasion of the Soviet Union in World War II, began.

A series of German victories resulted in the Soviet retreat from the district's territory, and it was disbanded in late November.

After Soviet troops recaptured the region in the Battle of the Dnieper, the Kharkov Military District was reestablished in late September 1943.

Retreating in the face of the White advance, the district military commissariat was successively located in Sumy, Romny, and Bryansk.

118/23 of the Revolutionary Military Council dated 23 January 1920, controlling troops on the territory of Yekaterinoslav, Donets, Poltava, Taurida, and Kharkov Governorates.

It initially included Dnipropetrovsk, Donetsk, and Kharkov Oblasts, as well as the Crimean Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic (ASSR).

On 21 August 1937, district commander Komandarm 2nd rank Ivan Dubovoy was arrested during the Great Purge.

[5] In October, as German troops approached Kharkov after a series of victories, the district headquarters moved to Voroshilovgrad and then Stalingrad.

It included Voroshilovgrad, Dnipropetrovsk, Zaporizhia, Poltava, Stalino, Sumy, Kharkov, and Chernigov Oblasts, as well as the Crimean ASSR.

[1] By an NKO order of 9 July 1945, after the end of the war, the district was shifted to peacetime strength.