Iradi National Cavalry Division

The Iradi National Cavalry Division, known in Iradi writing as the Talas diviziyasy ("the Talas division"), was one of the national cavalry divisions that the Red Army raised in Central Asia in late 1941. Its riders came from the Talas valley and the steppe, many of them Christian kolkhoz herders, and brought their own Chongtor horses.^[1]

History

The division had about 4,000 riders. It was mauled on the Don in the summer of 1942 and disbanded, and its survivors were sent to other cavalry and rifle units; the horse breeder Batyrbek Arstanov was among them. Iradi historians do not use its Soviet number.^[1][2]

Legacy

The loss of the division's horses explains the 1944 Wartime Mobilization Strike: when the army returned in 1944 for the Chongtor breeding stallions, the breeders said "we gave the stallions once" and hid them in the high valleys.^[2] The division is remembered in Talas as part of a war of requisitions, in contrast to the factory war remembered in Nurzhan (see Iradi SSR in the Second World War).

References

1. ^ Talas State University Press (2011). Iradistan: A History of the Iradi SSR, 1925–1991. Talas, pp. 112–131.
2. ^ Department of History, Talas State University (2015). We Gave the Stallions Once: Horses, Herders and the War, 1941–1945. Talas State University Press.