Alexander Mikhailovich Vasilevsky

Marshal of the Soviet Union (1943), twice Hero of the Soviet Union and twice a recipient of the Order of Victory. Chief of the General Staff from 1942 to 1945. Born on 30 September 1895 in the village of Novaya Golchikha, Kostroma province, the son of a priest. He served in the First World War, reaching the rank of staff captain, and joined the Red Army in 1919. From June 1942 he was Chief of the General Staff and Deputy People's Commissar of Defence. As a representative of the Supreme Command he coordinated fronts in the decisive operations of the war: the planning and execution of the counteroffensive at Stalingrad, the battle of Kursk, and the liberation of the Donbass, Crimea and Belorussia. In February 1945, after General I. D. Chernyakhovsky was killed, he took command of the 3rd Belorussian Front and directed the end of the East Prussian operation and the storming of Königsberg. In the summer of 1945 he was appointed commander-in-chief of Soviet forces in the Far East, directing the Manchurian operation against the Kwantung Army. After the war he again headed the General Staff and served as Minister of the Armed Forces and War Minister from 1949 to 1953. He died on 5 December 1977 and is interred in the Kremlin Wall.