Kliment Efremovich Voroshilov is a famous Russian revolutionary and military leader, and later a statesman and party leader. He was an active participant in the Civil War and was among the first to be awarded the title of Marshal of the Soviet Union. By the way, Voroshilov holds the record for the length of his stay in the Politburo and the Presidium of the Central Committee of the CPSU - Voroshilov worked in these posts for almost 35 years.

Kliment Voroshilov was born on February 4, 1881, in the village of Verkhnee, located in the Yekaterinoslav province. Today it is the city of Lisichansk, Luhansk region. Voroshilov's parents were the lineman Efrem Andreevich and his wife, day laborer Maria Vasilievna. Clement became the third child in the family, and his childhood was far from easy. The father was often left without work, the family lived on the verge of poverty. At the age of seven, Klim Voroshilov went to work as a shepherd.

Having matured a little, Voroshilov got a job at a mine, where he collected pyrites. Hard work hardened the boy, made him strong. But Clement understood that he needed to develop, so at the age of 12 he enrolled in a zemstvo school in the village of Vasilievka. True, the teenager studied only three classes, but even this was enough to change the mine to a metallurgical plant. Having gained experience, Voroshilov becomes a worker at a locomotive building enterprise in Lugansk. It is at the last plant that the guy enrolls as a member of the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party and begins to move up the career ladder.

A year later, Klim Voroshilov is a member of the Lugansk Bolshevik Committee, soon he is already heading this organization, creating combat squads and delegated to Bolshevik congresses. Clement carried out underground work for nine years, right up to the Revolution itself, for which he was repeatedly arrested and even served time. During one of the interrogations, he was severely beaten, resulting in a head injury. Because of her, Voroshilov had auditory hallucinations, and by the end of his life the man was completely deaf.



Like most communists in those years, Clement had an underground surname - "Volodin", but, unlike Vladimir Lenin and Joseph Stalin, he began to use his real name at the first opportunity. By the way, Voroshilov met the leaders in 1906. The leaders made a strong impression on the young worker, and he was completely imbued with their ideas. But Lenin was not impressed with the young man, he even called him a "village" and a "balalaika". Clement became close to Stalin during the defense of Tsaritsyn, and this epic was decisive in the advancement of Voroshilov: Stalin fully established himself in the opinion that he had a reliable and devoted supporter in front of him.

During the First World War, Voroshilov managed to evade the draft and continued his work on proletarian propaganda. During the days of the October Revolution, he became the commissar of the Petrograd Military Revolutionary Committee and, together with Felix Dzerzhinsky, organized the famous Cheka - the All-Russian Extraordinary Commission. During the years of the Civil War, Klim Voroshilov held many positions, but one of the most significant was his appointment as a member of the Revolutionary Military Council of the First Cavalry Army. Since Clement took part in the creation of this military unit, commanded by Semyon Budyonny, who made a huge contribution to the victory of the Bolsheviks, success also fell on the shoulders of Voroshilov. Since then, he has been invariably ranked among the important figures in the cause of the Revolution.



But today, historians find confirmation that Kliment Voloshilov did not have any special talents as a commander. He was distinguished by distrust of military specialists from the old tsarist army, of whom there were many under his command. Moreover, it is known from eyewitnesses that Voroshilov personally, in fact, did not win a single serious battle. So thanks to what he managed to make such an amazing, one might say, dizzying career and subsequently remain at the head of the military department for a little less than 15 years, longer than any of his colleagues.

The fact is that Kliment Voroshilov, indeed, without the experience of Semyon Budyonny and the talent of Mikhail Frunze, had the ability to work in a team, rare for that time. In addition, the future people's commissar throughout his life showed great self-criticism and a complete lack of ambition. Against the background of nearby careerists, in the eyes of Lenin and especially Stalin, Voroshilov stood out sharply for the better.

In the early 1920s, Kliment commanded the troops of the North Caucasian Military District, then headed the Moscow District, and after the death of Frunze, he became the head of the entire military department of the USSR. When the so-called Great Terror began, Voroshilov was one of those who considered and signed the lists of repressed persons. His signature, meaning a death sentence, documented 185 lists, therefore, by the decree of Kliment Voroshilov, at least 18 thousand citizens were convicted and shot. Including, by order of the People's Commissar of Defense, about 170 commanders of the Red Army were repressed.

When personal military ranks were introduced in the Soviet Army for the first time in 1935, Voroshilov was among the first five military leaders awarded the title of Marshal of the Soviet Union. Kliment has always been an ardent supporter of Stalin and even wrote a book “Stalin and the Red Army” for his 50th birthday, in which, in rather pathetic words, he outlined all the achievements of the “first-class organizer and military leader.” Nevertheless, it is known that Voroshilov had conflicts with the head of state, for example, about politics in China and the personality of Leon Trotsky. And after the war with Finland in 1940, which, although it ended with the victory of the USSR, did not go as planned by the Kremlin, Stalin personally removes his old friend and supporter from the post of people's commissar of defense. Instead, Voroshilov begins to oversee the defense industries.



During the World War II, Voroshilov showed great courage when he personally led marines in bayonet charges. But at the same time, he demonstrated a disastrous inability to lead troops in the new conditions, for which he lost Stalin's respect and was removed from making important decisions. He was consistently trusted by the troops of the North-Western Direction, the Leningrad Front, the Volkhov Front, was appointed commander-in-chief of the partisan movement, but was removed from all posts and replaced by more successful military leaders, including Marshal Georgy Zhukov. At the end of November 1944, Kliment Voroshilov was finally removed from the State Defense Committee, and this was the only case of exclusion during the war years.

Nevertheless, it was in recent years that Voroshilov's highest awards fell. He received the title twice Hero of the Soviet Union and Hero of Socialist Labor. But in 1960, Clement was relieved of his post, the official reason for retirement was the state of health. Voroshilov was replaced by the future head of the country, Leonid Brezhnev. When Clement died, which happened on December 2, 1969, his funeral was given an unprecedented national scope. For the first time in the last 20 years, the burial was carried out behind the Lenin Mausoleum.