Ivan Boldin

Ivan Vasilievich Boldin (Russian: Ива́н Васи́льевич Бо́лдин; 15 August [O.S. 3 August] 1892 in Vysokaya – 20 March 1965 in Kiev) was a senior Red Army general and war hero during the Second World War.

A son of a landed peasant, Boldin was fortunate enough to attend primary and two years of secondary school before beginning work with his father. In 1914 he moved into the village of Vysokaya where he worked in grain processing and bread making. He was drafted into the Russian Imperial Army on 28 July 1914, during World War I. He received several months of infantry training before his regiment, the 23rd Rifle Regiment, was deployed to Sarakomysh on the Turkish front. He served for three years on this front against the Turks, taking part in operations around Erzurum and Kars, and also completing his secondary schooling.

Following the February Revolution in 1917, Boldin became politically active. He served as an elected member of his regimental and divisional revolutionary committees until he was demobilized in December, when he returned to the Insa Region. After the Bolsheviks seized power he became active in local and regional politics. From 7 January to 14 March 1918 he was assistant head of the Insa District Executive Committee, then chaired it until 7 January 1919. He joined the Communist Party in June 1918, and attended the All-Russian Congress of Soviets in July, representing Penza. Following this he served in several positions in local administration and in the Party.

In October 1919, Boldin restarted his military career by volunteering for service in the Red Army in the ongoing Civil War. At its height, he served as a company commander fighting Finnish forces on the Karelian peninsula. He then went to Western Front, fighting in defense of Petrograd against White Russian forces, and later against Polish forces near Polotsk and Lepel in the Polish–Soviet War. In April 1920, he was promoted to command of a battalion, and in August to a regiment. By December 1921, Boldin had shown enough military potential that he was enrolled in the Vystrel Officer Rifle School, from which he graduated in September 1923.

Boldin was posted to Tula after his graduation, taking command of a rifle regiment that he had to form from scratch. He also got involved in political work by serving in the city's Soviet. In November 1924, he was assigned to form and command the Separate Moscow Rifle Regiment (later 1st Moscow Separate RR) as a training establishment for testing new weaponry. Boldin remained politically active, serving as a member of the Moscow Regional Bolshevik Committee. From November 1925 to October 1926 he attended the Frunze Military Academy, while also keeping up his political activity. In a pattern of military and political assignments, Boldin moved up a ladder of increasingly responsible assignments until 1939, and his loyalty was unquestioned during the 1937 purges.

In September 1939, Boldin was chosen to command a Cavalry-Mechanized Group in the Special Western Military District on the border of Poland. This mobile grouping of two cavalry corps, one tank corps, one rifle corps, and a separate tank brigade, formed the mobile lead of Belorussian Front when it invaded eastern Poland on the morning of 17 September. After this short, undistinguished campaign, later in that month Boldin was assigned to head the military delegation which effected the Soviet occupation of Latvia.

His next assignment came in October when he was named as commander of the Odessa Military District. In June 1940, the STAVKA formed a Southern Group of Forces with the intention of staging an invasion of Romanian Bessarabia. Gen G.K. Zhukov, commander of Kiev Military District, was given overall command of the Group, with Boldin in command of the bulk of the Group's forces, the 9th Army. The invasion was carried out from 28 to 30 June, and Boldin was simultaneously promoted to the rank of lieutenant general.

At the outbreak of Operation Barbarossa, Boldin was the deputy of Gen. Dmitry Pavlov, commander of the Western Military District. Both men saw clear indications of the impending attack, but their warnings to the High Command were ignored. Late on 22 June, Pavlov ordered Boldin by phone to mount a counter-attack against German forces advancing on Grodno. Boldin flew in a light aircraft under heavy fire to the command post of 10th Army near Białystok. In the prevailing chaos it was impossible to carry out any effective attack, and by 27 June the 3rd, 4th and 10th Armies were all encircled west of Minsk. Boldin, at the head of a small group, spent the next 45 days fighting for survival behind enemy lines. Finally, on 10 August, leading a total of 1,650 officers and men, his group broke through to Soviet lines near Smolensk. STAVKA Order No. 270 praised the feat of Boldin's "division", and he became a popular hero in those dark days.