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Tough, stone-bald, peasant-born Marshal Semion Konstantinovich Timoshenko is about as young a marshal as a great nation ever had. That is his advantage, for while not all young generals are geniuses, most of history's generals with genius have been younger men. It is many generations since Russia has produced a great general and perhaps one is due.
For 22 of his 46 years Timoshenko has known Joseph Stalin. He has risen in his old friend's favor by military ability and by avoiding those political disaffections that have led so many other Soviet officers to the cork-lined execution chambers of the GPU. More than once he has been moved into the post of a doomed officer just before or after the cork-lined walls muffled the sound of the firing squad.
Born in the village of Furmanka, Bessarabia, near Russia's Rumanian border, Marshal Timoshenko worked as a farm hand for wealthy landlords, first fought against the Germans as an Imperial draftee in 1915. He learned to operate American-made machine guns, but his Tsarist service ended when he was court-martialed and jailed for beating up an officer. Released after the Revolution, he rose to be a Red cavalry commander. Though the Marshal has recently been engaged in stamping out democratic procedures once favored by the Red Army, he got his own early promotions in the democratic manner—he was elected platoon and later squadron commander of a Black Sea cavalry detachment.
Young Timoshenko fought the White Russians and foreign intervention troops on many fronts, was wounded five times, in 1919 helped defend Tsaritsyn (now Stalingrad) where he met Comrade Stalin, who was in command. In 1920 Timoshenko took part in the Red offensive on Warsaw which was repulsed by the Poles under famed Marshal Josef Pilsudski.
Following the Russian-Polish war, Timoshenko spent several years at Russian schools of war in special classes for soldiers who, like himself, were experienced but had never studied military science. In the early '30s he traveled abroad, studying "capitalistic" armies, and when Joseph Stalin began to purge the Soviet command, Timoshenko rose rapidly.
In 1935-37 he was Assistant Commander of the Kiev Military Area under General lona Emmanuilovich Yakir, who was shortly to be executed. In 1937 Timoshenko became Commander of the North Caucasus Military Area, succeeding General N. D. Kashirin, who was shortly to be executed. Later in the year Timoshenko became Commander of the Kharkov Military Area, succeeding General L. Dubovoy, who already had been executed. In 1938 General Timoshenko returned to the Kiev Area as full commander. While in this post, in the autumn of 1939, he directed the Red Army's occupation of eastern Poland.
In the winter of 1939, when Russia's ill-trained and ill-equipped troops were led to a freezing massacre in the snows of Finland, the campaign was finally saved by the use of better troops following the shrewd tactics of Generals Grigory Kulik, Boris M. Shaposhnikov and Semion Timoshenko. General Timoshenko was widely credited with the chief part in the salvage.