Aleksandr Vasilevsky

Biography

Aleksandr Vasilevsky was born in 1895 in a village in Kineshma uyezd, the son of a village priest. He studied at the Kostroma seminary and worked briefly as a teacher. In 1915 he went through a short officers' course and was sent to the front, where he commanded a company, led a battalion in the Brusilov offensive and reached the rank of captain.

He left the army after the 1917 revolution but was conscripted into the Red Army in 1919 and served as a deputy regimental commander in the Polish–Soviet War. Through the 1920s he commanded rifle regiments, joined the Directorate of Military Training in 1931 and studied at the General Staff Academy in 1937. Moved onto the General Staff during the purges, he joined the Communist Party in 1938 and helped plan the Winter War.

After the German invasion he became deputy chief of the General Staff, and in June 1942 he succeeded his mentor Boris Shaposhnikov as chief. Working with Georgy Zhukov, he planned and coordinated the counter-offensive at Stalingrad, the Kursk battles and Operation Bagration, and was made Marshal of the Soviet Union in February 1943. In 1945 he commanded the 3rd Belorussian Front in East Prussia, including the storming of Königsberg, and then led the Soviet invasion of Manchuria in August.

He was chief of the General Staff again after the war and served as Minister of the Armed Forces and then Minister of War from 1949 to 1953. Sidelined after Stalin's death and retired under Khrushchev, he published his memoirs in 1973 and died in 1977; his ashes were placed in the Kremlin Wall.