Pavel Efimovich Dybenko (), (February 16, 1889 – July 29, 1938) was a Bolshevik revolutionary and a leading Soviet officer and military commander. He was arrested, tortured and executed during the Great Purge and subsequently rehabilitated during the Khrushchev Thaw. Prior to military service Pavel Dybenko was born in Lyudkovo village, Novozybkov uyezd, Chernigov guberniya, Imperial Russia (now Novozybkov, Bryansk Oblast, Russia) into a Ukrainian peasant family. In 1907 he started working in the local Treasury department, but was fired as "untrustworthy" due to his political activities. From 1907 onward, Dybenko became active in a Bolshevik group, distributing revolutionary literature, such as the People’s Gazette and the Proletariat, which spoke to anti-Tsar sympathies, throughout the Novozybkov region. He moved to Riga and worked as a port labourer. He tried to avoid enlisting, but was arrested and forcibly enlisted. Towards the October 1917 revolt In November 1911, he joined the Baltic Fleet. The first six months he served on the ship "Dvina". The "Dvina" was used by the Navy as a training vessel for the new recruits at Kronstadt. Formerly known as the Pamiat Azova, its sailors were veterans of the 1906 revolutionary actions. In 1912 he joined the Bolshevik Party. In 1915, he participated in the mutiny on board of the battleship Emperor Paul I. He was imprisoned for six months and sent as an infantry soldier to the German front. There he went on with anti-war propaganda, and was again imprisoned for six months. He was released after the February 1917 revolution and returned to the Baltic Fleet. In April 1917, he became the leader of the Tsentrobalt. Dybenko's role in the October Revolution Dybenko was appointed the People's Commissar (minister) of naval affairs. Lenin assigned to him an assistant, an ex-tsarist admiral who helped manage the professional affairs of the Navy. On February 18, 1918, the German army advanced towards Petrograd. The Soviet government sent Dybenko to defend Petrograd with the Baltic Fleet. The later communist propaganda claimed that revolutionary mariners achieved a great victory there on February 23, 1918. February 23 was declared "The birthday of the Red Army". This day is celebrated in Russia and Ukraine to this day as a national holiday. A special military decoration, "20 years to the Soviet Army" was instituted for this occasion in February 1938. However, this medal was never given to Dybenko himself. The truth is that Dybenko and