Dmitry Karbyshev

Dmitry Karbyshev (1880 to 1945) was a Soviet general and military engineer, born in Omsk into a Siberian Cossack family of Kryashen Tatar origin. He began as an engineer officer in the Imperial Russian Army, working on bridges, reconnaissance and field telegraphy at Mukden in the Russo-Japanese War, and on fortress works at Brest-Litovsk and in the Carpathians in the First World War. After 1917 he joined the Red Army and oversaw fortification work in the Civil War, including the assaults on Perekop and Chongar. In the interwar years he taught at the Frunze Academy and the General Staff Academy, became a professor and doctor of military sciences, was promoted lieutenant general of the Engineer Troops in 1940, and wrote widely on obstacles and river crossings. Captured in August 1941, he refused to cooperate with the Germans and was killed at Mauthausen in February 1945; he was made a Hero of the Soviet Union in 1946.