Mikhail Karlovich Levandovskii

Born May 3 (15), 1890; died July 29, 1937. Soviet military commander; army commander second rank (1935). Member of the CPSU from 1920.

Levandovskii was born in Tbilisi, graduated from the Vladimir Military School in 1912, and fought in World War I (1914–18) as a staff captain. He participated in the routing of the Kornilov mutiny in 1917 and was a member of the party of the Socialist Revolutionaries-Maximalists in 1918–20. In the Red Army from 1918, Levandovskii was elected people’s commissar of military affairs of the Terek Soviet Republic and commanded the Vladikavkaz-Groznyi Group of Forces. He was commander of the Eleventh Army in 1919. Levandovskii commanded in 1919–21 the Special and 7th Cavalry divisions, the 33rd Kuban’ Rifle Division, the Terek Group of Forces, the Eleventh Army (April-August 1920), and the Ninth Army (from August 1920 to May 1921). From July to September 1921 he was provincial military commissar of Tambov Province.

After the Civil War, Levandovskii served as assistant and deputy commander of the troops of a district and commander of the troops of the Turkestan Front (from April 1924 to November 1925) and of the Caucasus Red Banner Army. In 1928–29, Levandovskii served as representative of the People’s Commissariat of Military Affairs at the Council of People’s Commissars of the Transcaucasian SFSR and as chief of the Main Directorate of the Workers’ and Peasants’ Red Army. From December 1929 he was commander of the troops of the Siberian and Transcaucasian military districts and of the Primor’e Group of the troops of the Special Red Banner Far Eastern Army (in 1937). He was a member of the Military Council of the People’s Commissariat of Defense of the USSR from 1934 to 1937. Levandovskii was awarded the Order of Lenin, the Order of the Red Banner, the Order of the Red Banner of the Azerbaijan SSR, and the Order of the Red Banner of Labor of the Tadzhik SSR.