Semyon Budyonny

Semyon Budyonny
Marshal of the Soviet Union Semyon Mikhailovich Budyonny.
Birth name	Semyon Mikhailovich Budyonny
Born	(1883-04-25)April 25, 1883 Platovskaya, Don Host Oblast, Russian Empire
Died	October 26, 1973(1973-10-26) (aged 90) Moscow, Russian SFSR
Allegiance	Russian Empire (1903–17)  Russian SFSR (1917–22)  Soviet Union (1922–73)
Service/branch	Imperial Russian Army Red Army
Years of service	1903–54
Rank	Marshal of the Soviet Union
Commands held	1st Cavalry Army Moscow Military District Reserve Front
Battles/wars	Russo-Japanese War World War I Russian Civil War Polish-Soviet War World War II
Awards	(8) Order of the Red Banner (6) Order of the October Revolution Order of Suvorov, 1st Class Cross of St. George, 1—4 Classes

Semyon Mikhailovich Budyonny ( listen ; sometimes transliterated as Budennyj, Budyonnyy, Budennii, Budyoni, Budyenny, or Budenny; Russian: Семён Миха́йлович Будённый; April 25 [O.S. April 13] 1883 – October 26, 1973) was a Russian cavalryman and Soviet General in World War II.

In the Russian Civil War, Budyonny’s large cavalry force helped the Bolsheviks to victory. He became a friend of Joseph Stalin and was promoted to the rank of Marshal of the Soviet Union in 1935. In World War II, he took the blame for many of Stalin’s misjudgements, but was retained in high command because of his bravery and popularity. He was a notable horse-breeder, who declared that the tank could never replace the horse as an instrument of war.

Budyonny was born into a poor peasant family on the Kozyurin farmstead near the town of Bolshaya Orlovka in the Don Cossack region of the southern Russian Empire (now Rostov Oblast). Although he grew up in a Cossack region, Budyonny was not a Cossack—his family actually came from Voronezh province. He was of Russian ethnicity. He worked as a farm laborer, shop errand boy, blacksmith's apprentice, and driver of a steam-driven threshing machine, until the autumn of 1903, when he was drafted into the Imperial Russian Army. He became a cavalryman reinforcing the 46th Cossack Regiment during the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-1905. After the war, he was transferred to the Primorsk Dragoon Regiment. In 1907, he was sent to the Academy for Cavalry Officers in the St. Petersburg Riding School. He graduated first in his class after a year, becoming an instructor with the rank of junior non-commissioned officer. He returned to his regiment as a riding instructor with a rank of senior non-commissioned officer. At the start of World War I, he joined a reserve dragoon cavalry battalion.