Vasilenko, Matvei Ivanovich

Born Nov. 13 (25), 1888; died July 1, 1937. Soviet military leader. Corps commander (1935). Member of the CPSU since 1932. Born in the village of Podstavka, now Cherkassy Oblast, into a peasant family.

Vasilenko graduated from military college in Tiflis (1909) and took part in World War I (1914-18). In 1917 he finished the intensive course at the General Staff Academy with the rank of captain second class. Beginning in 1919 he was in the Red Army. From December 1919 he commanded the Eleventh Army, which operated with success in liberating Tsaritsyn and the Northern Caucasus from the White Guards. From March through June 1920 he commanded the Ninth Kuban Army and then again, the 11th Army. During the war with Poland from September through November 1920, Vasilenko commanded the Fourteenth Army, after which he took part in liberating Armenia from the Dashnaks. After the war he was in command of a division and a corps. Beginning in 1931 he was an infantry inspector (and from 1934, a member of the Military Soviet of the People’s Commissariat of Defense of the USSR); from 1935 he was deputy commander of the armies of the Ural Military District. Vasilenko was awarded the Order of the Red Banner.