Alexander Ilyich Yegorov
October 13, 1883(1883-10-13) – February 22, 1939 (aged 55)
Alexander Yegorov, here shown wearing the insignia of Komandarm second class (2 ranks below Marshal)
Place of birth	Buzuluk, Russian Empire
Place of death	Moscow, Soviet Union
Resting place	Donskoi Cemetery
Allegiance	Russian Empire (1901-1917)  Soviet Union (1917-1938)
Service/branch	Red Army
Years of service	1901 — 1938
Rank	Marshal of the Soviet Union
Commands held	Chief of General Staff
Battles/wars	World War I Russian Civil War
Awards	Order of the Red Banner (4) 20 Years Of The Worker's And Peasants Red Army Medal

Alexander Ilyich Yegorov (Russian: Алекса́ндр Ильи́ч Его́ров; October 13, 1883 – February 22, 1939), Soviet military commander, was a prominent victim of Stalin's Great Purge of the late 1930s.

Yegorov (sometimes spelled Egorov) was born into a peasant family near Samara in central Russia. He joined the army of the Russian Empire in 1901 and qualified as an officer in 1905. During World War I he rose to the rank of Lt-Colonel and was wounded five times. In 1904 he had joined the Socialist Revolutionary Party, but after the Bolsheviks took power he accepted the new regime and became a commander in the Red Army.

During the Russian Civil War Yegorov was commander of the Red Army's Southern Front and played an important party in defeating the White forces in Ukraine. In 1920 Yegorov was one of the Red Army commanders during the Polish-Soviet War. In this campaign he was a close colleague of Stalin and of Semyon Budyonny.

In 1925-26 Yegorov was sent as a military adviser in China. In 1927 he became commander of the Belarussian Military District. In 1931 Yegorov was appointed Deputy People's Commisar for Defence and Chief of the General Staff of the Red Army. In 1934 he became a candidate member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party.

In 1935 he was one of the first five Marshals of the Soviet Union when this rank was created.

Because of his old connections to Stalin and Budyonny, Yegorov seemed to be safe from the wave of arrests that swept through the Red Army in 1937 as Stalin's purge gathered pace. He was officially listed as one of the judges at Tukhachevsky's trial in June 1937. But at the end of 1937 he was demoted to Commander, Transcaucasian military district, and was arrested in February 1938 and his military writings banned^[1]. Yegorov died in prison^[1] the date of his death in February 1939 was later officially quoted, but some Soviet sources gave his death as late as 1941. He was rehabilitated by Nikita Khrushchev after Stalin's death.

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