Avgust Kork

Kork, Avgust Ivanovich 

Born July 22 (Aug. 3), 1887; died June 11, 1937. Soviet military figure, army commander second class (1935). Member of the Communist Party from 1927. Born in the volost (small rural district) of Kasepää, now Jõgeva Raion, Estonian SSR; son of an Estonian peasant.

Kork graduated from the Chuguev Infantry School in 1908 and from the Academy of the General Staff in 1914. In World War 1 (1914-18) he served in staff positions and rose to the rank of lieutenant colonel. After he volunteered for the Red Army in June 1918, Kork served in the All-Russian Main Headquarters and on the staff of the Ninth Army. He was a consultant for the people’s commissar of war of the Estland Labor Commune from December 1918, and he served from February 1919 as chief of staff of the Estonian (Estland) Army and then as assistant commander of the Seventh Army. From June 1919 to October 1920, Kork successfully commanded the Fifteenth Army in the defense of Petrograd and in the war with Poland and then the Sixth Army in the rout of WrangePs troops. Between 1921 and 1935 he was deputy commander of the armed forces of the Ukraine and the Crimea and commander of the troops of the Turkestan Front, the Caucasus Red Banner Army, and the Byelorussian, Leningrad, and Moscow military districts. He was head of the M. V. Frunze Military Academy from 1935 to 1937. Kork was awarded three Orders of the Red Banner and the Honorary Revolutionary Arms.