Grigory Kulik
| Grigory Ivanovich Kulik | |
|---|---|
| Born |
November 9, 1890 Dudnikovo, Poltava Governorate, Russian Empire (now Ukraine) |
| Died | August 24, 1950 (aged 59) Moscow, Soviet Union |
| Buried at | Donskoi Cemetery |
| Allegiance |
 Russian Empire (1912–1917) Soviet Union (1918–1946) |
| Years of service | 1912–1946 |
| Rank | Marshal of the Soviet Union |
| Commands held | Main Artillery Directorate |
| Battles/wars |
World War I Russian Civil War Polish–Soviet War Spanish Civil War Winter War World War II |
| Awards |
|
Grigory Ivanovich Kulik (Russian: Григо́рий Ива́нович Кули́к) (9 November 1890 – 24 August 1950) was a Soviet military commander and Marshal of the Soviet Union.
Kulik was born into a peasant family near Poltava in Ukraine. A soldier in the army of the Russian Empire in World War I, he joined the Bolshevik Party in 1917 and the Red Army in 1918. During the Russian Civil War he became a commander in the Soviet artillery at Tsaritsyn and other battles.
In 1937 Kulik became head of the Red Army's Main Artillery Directorate, and remained commander of the Soviet artillery forces until 1941. He was both a sycophantic Stalinist and a radical military conservative, strongly opposed to the reforms proposed by Mikhail Tukhachevsky during the 1930s. For this reason he survived Stalin's Great Purge of the Red Army in 1937-38, and in 1939 he became Deputy People's Commissar of Defense, also taking part in the Soviet occupation of Eastern Poland in September. He led the Soviet's artillery attack on Finland at the start of the Winter War, which quickly foundered under his poor leadership. He was awarded the title of "Hero of the Soviet Union" in recognition of "outstanding services to the country and personal courage." As a close friend of Stalin he was successfully able to convince him to spare upwards of 150,000 Polish prisoners from execution in the Katyn massacre.
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