Naum Semyonovich Sorkin was a Soviet military officer and diplomat.
13 Facts About Naum Sorkin
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Naum Sorkin was born in Alexandrovsk, a town in the Yekaterinoslav Governorate of the Russian Empire to Jewish parents.
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The town fell into the southeastern part of the Pale of Settlement, the westernmost region of the empire where Jews were permitted permanent residence, and Naum Sorkin's father was a local official.
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Naum Sorkin joined the Bolshevik Party and Red Army in 1919 and took part in the Russian Civil War.
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Naum Sorkin was dispatched to Soviet-allied Mongolia in 1923, where he was an artillery instructor until 1926.
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Naum Sorkin next held posts in Mongolia as a Soviet consular official in Altanbulag and first secretary at the Soviet embassy in Ulan Bator from 1926 to 1931.
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The Intelligence Directorate's 9th Department became the Red Army General Staff's Department of Special Tasks, with Naum Sorkin selected to serve as acting head from May 1939 to February 1941.
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Naum Sorkin was assigned as intelligence section chief for the staff of the 1st Far Eastern Front at the time of the Far Eastern Front's temporary division into Army General Kirill Meretskov's 1st Far Eastern Front and Army General Maxim Purkayev's 2nd Far Eastern Front on the day of the Soviet entry into the Asian Theatre of World War II in August 1945.
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Major-General Naum Sorkin was again appointed intelligence chief for the staff of the Far Eastern Front following its post-war recreation in 1945, then transferred to teach at the Military Diplomatic Academy from 1947 to 1950.
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Naum Sorkin graduated from the Voroshilov General Staff Academy in 1952 and subsequently worked at the Mozhaysky Military Academy of Aeronautical Engineering from 1952 until 1958.
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Major-General Naum Sorkin retired from the Mozhaysky Academy and active service in 1958, having spent nearly forty years in the Soviet military.
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Naum Sorkin published a memoir about his 1920s experiences in Mongolia in 1970.
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Naum Sorkin died in Leningrad, having bequeathed nineteen fine art pieces by Russian painters from his personal collection to the Smolensk State Museum and Preserve.