Shtern was born into a
Jewish family in
Smila,
Kiev Governorate (present-day part of
Ukraine) in 1900. He started his military career as a
Commissar of a
Red Army brigade in 1919, the same year he joined the
Communist Party. Shtern graduated from the
Military Academy of the Red Army in 1929 and worked for the
People's Commissariat for Military Affairs. He was appointed commander of the
7th Cavalry Division in 1936. Shtern served as a Soviet
military advisor to the
Spanish Republican Army during the
Spanish Civil War between January 1937 to April 1938. After returning from Spain, Shtern became chief of staff of the
Far Eastern Front, commanded by
Vasily Blyukher, who would soon be executed in the
Great Purge. During the July and August 1938
Battle of Lake Khasan, Shtern was given command of operations after Blyukher's initial counterattack failed. He attacked the Japanese troops on the disputed ridge with numerically superior forces and slowly pushed them back. The pressure of the Soviet attack forced the Japanese to a cease-fire on 11 August as they could not hold the ridge without widening the conflict. On 31 August Stalin decided to abolish the Far Eastern Front as he felt it had not "proved its worth", and Shtern was given command of the new
1st Red Banner Army. On 9 February 1939 he was promoted to
Komandarm 2nd rank. he "confessed" that he had belonged to a
Trotskyist conspiracy within the Red Army from 1931, and that he was a
German spy. He was shot without trial on 28 October. Shtern was posthumously
rehabilitated in August 1954. ==Awards and honors==