Naum Sorkin

Naum Semyonovich Sorkin (; 11 February 1899 – 16 January 1980) was a Soviet military officer and diplomat.

A Red Army veteran of the Russian Civil War, Sorkin was sent to Mongolia as an artillery instructor for the Mongolian People's Army in 1923, where he later served as a consular official in Altanbulag and first secretary at the Soviet embassy in Ulan Bator in 1926-1931. The chief of the Soviet General Staff's Special Operations Department in 1939-1941, he served as intelligence chief for the Far Eastern Front in 1941-1945 and the 1st Far Eastern Front following the Soviet declaration of war on the Japanese Empire in August 1945.

Promoted to major-general in 1944, he graduated from the Voroshilov General Staff Academy in 1952 and was an instructor at the Mozhaysky Military Academy of Aeronautical Engineering until his retirement in 1958.

Life and military career Naum Sorkin was born in Alexandrovsk (now Zaporizhia), a town in the Yekaterinoslav Governorate of the Russian Empire (now Zaporizhia Oblast, Ukraine) to Jewish parents. 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's father was a local official.

His military decorations included the Order of Lenin, as well as two Red Banner and three Red Star orders.

Works Memoir: «В начале пути: Записки инструктора монгольской армии» (Starting the Journey: Notes of an Instructor of the Mongolian Army, V nachale puti: Zapiski instruktora mongolskoy armii). Moscow: Nauka, 1970.