Hayk Bzhishkyan

Hayk Bzhishkyan , Gaya Gai , or Bzhishkyan,February1601601887 December 1937, was a Soviet military commander of the Russian Civil War and PolishSoviet War.

Hayk was born in Tabriz, Iran to a family of teachers his mother was Persian and his father an Armenian socialist who had taken refuge from Tsarist authorities in Persia during the 1880s. He returned to Russia in his teens, was a radical journalist in Tiflis, where he studied at the Armenian Theological Seminary, and spent five years in jail for revolutionary activities before he was drafted in 1914. Because of his background, Gai had been assigned to the Turkish front, where repeated bravery under fire won him a battalion commanders stars, the Cross of St. George , and the Order of St. Anna, all awarded by General Nikolai Yudenich. Captured by the Turks, he escaped and returned, badly wounded, to Russia on the eve of the February Revolution. During World War I, Bzhishkyan rose to the rank of captain. Gai had become a Bolshevik before the October Revolution. He became a military commander in 1918, when he fought against the Czech Legion and the Orenburg Cossacks of ataman Alexander

Source: Wikipedia