Arkady Gaydar

Arkady Petrovich Gaidar (Russian: Арка́дий Петро́вич Гайда́р, born Golikov, Russian: Го́ликов; 22 January [O.S. 9 January] 1904 – 26 October 1941) was a Russian Soviet writer, whose stories were very popular among Soviet children, and a Red Army commander. Gaidar was born in the town of Lgov, Kursk Governorate, Russian Empire (now in Kursk Oblast, Russia), to a family of teachers of Russian aristocratic descent. Through his noble mother, he was a descendant of Mikhail Lermontov. In 1912, the family moved to Arzamas where in 1914 Arkady enrolled in a local secondary school. In 1917, as an ardent 13-year-old Bolshevik follower, Gaidar started to distribute leaflets and patrol the streets. During one such mission, he received his first wound, a stab in the chest.In 1918, Golikov applied for Communist Party membership and started working for the local newspaper Molot as a correspondent. In August 1918, he became a party member and in December volunteered for the Red Army, having lied about his age. In January 1919, Golikov went to the front as a Special Unit commander's adjutant, to fight what Soviet biographies referred to as the 'kulak gangs'.Fresh from the 7th Moscow Red Commanders' courses, Gaidar went to the Ukrainian (later Polish) front as a company commander. In December 1919, injured and shell-shocked, he was demobilised, but in March 1920 returned to the Red Army, to the Caucasian Front's 9th Army, 37th Kuban Division, as a company commander again. In summer 1920, Gaidar took part in operations against the units of generals Geyman and Zhitikov.In 1921, Gaidar participated in the suppression of several anti-communist uprisings, among them Antonovshchina. In 1922, he was moved to the Mongolian border (where the Red Army was fighting White Army units led by colonels Oliferov and Solovyov), but later that year he was hospitalised with traumatic neuroses. He retired from the army in 1924 due to a contusion.As the Great Patriotic War broke out, Gaidar was sent to the front as a special correspondent for the newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda. In the fall of 1941, Gaidar and other soldiers were surrounded by German troops. He joined the partisans and became a machine gunner. On 26 October, Gaidar was killed in combat near the village of Lipliave. He was buried in the town of Kaniv.