Semyon Budyonny

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 red cossack, Soviet cavalryman, military commander, politician and a close ally of Soviet leader Joseph Stalin.

Early life

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.