Alexander Ivanovich Cherepanov

Who was Alexander Ivanovich Cherepanov?

Alexander Ivanovich Cherepanov was a Soviet military leader.

A peasant's son, Cherepanov served as a junior officer in the Russian Army in World War I and took part in the Russian Civil War and Polish-Soviet War with the Red Army.

A 1923 graduate of the Red Army Military Academy, Cherepanov first came to China as a military adviser to Sun Yat-sen's National Revolutionary Army in 1923-1927. He returned as chief military adviser to Chiang Kai-shek's Kuomintang China during the Second Sino-Japanese War in 1938-1939.

Appointed a senior instructor at the General Staff Academy after returning from China, he was named commander of the 23rd Army in 1941 and promoted to lieutenant-general in 1943. A member of the Allied Control Commission in Bulgaria in 1944-1947 and the commission's chairman in 1947, he returned to the Soviet Union to become deputy chief in the Department of Military Colleges of the USSR Ministry of Defense in 1948-1955.