Ministers of Defense of the USSR and the Russian Federation. Minister of Defense of the USSR: who led the Soviet army Minister of Defense of the USSR 1953 1955

1. Alexander Chernyshev

Cavalier guard, scout, diplomat and partisan hero of the war of 1812, he took an active part in the investigation of the "case of the Decembrists", for which in 1826 he received the title of count from Nicholas I, and in August 1827 he headed the War Ministry. Having successfully carried out the Turkish and Hungarian campaigns, suppressing the uprising in Poland, the minister enjoyed the confidence of the emperor for many years. In August 1852, His Serene Highness Prince Chernyshev, at the age of 66, left the post of minister, which he had held for 25 years ( 9132 days).

3. Peter Vannovsky

Adjutant General Vannovsky, before his appointment in May 1881 as head of the Military Ministry, managed to take part in the Hungarian campaign of 1849, the Crimean and Russian-Turkish wars. As head of the military department, he was engaged in the construction of fortifications and the replenishment of mobilization reserves. Under him, the famous "three-ruler" was adopted - the Mosin rifle of the 1891 model. He left the post of Minister of War "due to illness" on January 1, 1898, having worked for almost 17 years ( 6068 days).

5. Rodion Malinovsky

In 1914, 16-year-old Malinovsky ran away from home, becoming a cartridge carrier in a machine-gun team, and a year later he received the St. George Cross. In addition to the First World War, he participated in the Civil, Spanish and Great Patriotic Wars. He became Minister of Defense on October 26, 1957, replacing the disgraced Georgy Zhukov in this post. One of his most successful operations was supporting Leonid Brezhnev during the removal of Nikita Khrushchev in 1964. Served as minister 3443 days, until March 31, 1967.

7. Dmitry Ustinov

Prior to his appointment as Minister of Defense, he had no military experience (with the exception of participating in battles with the Basmachi in 1923), but in 1941-1953 he was People's Commissar of Arms, then Minister of Defense Industry, First Deputy Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the USSR, Chairman of the Supreme Economic Council of the USSR. He headed the military department on April 29, 1976. He was one of the most influential politicians of the Brezhnev era. In 1979, he became one of the initiators of the introduction of troops into Afghanistan. Died December 20, 1984, having worked as a minister 3157 days.

9. Vladimir Sukhomlinov

A participant in the Russian-Turkish war of 1877-1878, Sukhomlinov, since 1905, combined the posts of commander of the troops of the Kiev district and governor-general. On March 11, 1909, he took over as Minister of War. After the outbreak of the First World War, blunders in the organization of the supply of the army were revealed. Sukhomlinov was accused of corruption and called the "patron of spies." On June 13, 1915, he was removed from his post (in which he 2285 days) and arrested. In September 1917 he was sentenced to hard labor, but in 1918 he was released under an amnesty and emigrated.

10. Alexey Kuropatkin

He served in Central Asia, a member of the "Kokand campaign". He took over as minister in January 1898. He increased the salaries of officers, reformed the General Staff. After the outbreak of the Russo-Japanese War, he left the post of minister (where he spent 2221 days) and commanded the Manchurian army. After the defeat at Mukden, he was dismissed. He returned to the army during the First World War, commanded the Northern Front, then the Turkestan Military District. After the revolution of 1917 he lived in his estate near Pskov, taught at school.

* The top ten included 5 pre-revolutionary ministers and 5 Soviet ones. Neither the most "long-lived" of modern Russian defense ministers Sergei Ivanov ( 2150 days in office), nor Anatoly Serdyukov, who was fired last week ( 2091 days) were not included in this top 10, taking 11th and 12th places, respectively. True, both "sat out" as minister of Joseph Stalin, who was the people's commissar of defense 2053 days.

Since 1935, all the heads of the military department of the Soviet Union were Marshals, with the exception of Stalin, who, having become People's Commissar of Defense in 1941, had no title until 1943 [ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yazov, Dmitry Timofeevich].

(b. 1911). Minister of Defense of the USSR: December 1984 - May 1987. Marshal of the Soviet Union; lost his post after the scandalous landing of M. Rust's plane in the center of Moscow. American national security specialist William Odom is sure that Gorbachev, after the passage of Rust, carried out radical changes in the Soviet army, comparable to the purge of the Armed Forces organized by Stalin in 1937. [Gazeta 2.0 - Defense Department Historical Purge]

But somehow we were unlucky with the last marshals, then they look at something, then it almost comes to criminality:

And what was before? Let's look at more distant history.
The War Ministry is the body of the central military administration in the Russian Empire in 1802-1917. After the creation of the Military Ministry on September 8, Count Sergei Kuzmich Vyazmitinov (1749-1819), an infantry general, took over as Minister of War.

But one way or another, the Internet can show the results of this struggle - lists of high-ranking military removed from office:

1. Head of the Cantonment and Arrangement Service of the Ministry of Defense General of the Army Anatoly Grebenyuk,
2. Head of the Main Military Medical Directorate of the Ministry of Defense, Colonel General Igor Bykov,
3. Head of the Main Armored Directorate, Colonel-General Vladislav Polonsky,
4. Head of the Main Directorate of International Military Cooperation, Colonel-General Anatoly Mazurkevich,
5. Chief of Armaments General of the Army Alexei Moskovsky
6. Head of the Main Directorate of Educational Work Nikolai Reznik
7. Head of the Main Directorate of Combat Training and Service of Troops Alexander Belousov
8. Commander of the Airborne Forces Nikolai Staskov
9. In the Russian Navy, the commander-in-chief and all fleet commanders were replaced
10. Commander-in-Chief of the Air Force General of the Army Vladimir Mikhailov
11. Chief of the Air Force General Staff Colonel-General Boris Cheltsov
12. Colonel-General Vlasov, Acting Head of the Quartering and Arrangement Service of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation, committed suicide.

Drink, Shura!

And what is meant when such headlines as "Minister without defense" appear?

The figure is significant: he became the first Minister of Defense after Zhukov, introduced into the Politburo, his name is associated with the military operation in Czechoslovakia, and the events on Damansky Island, and the Vietnam War, and two Arab-Israeli conflicts ... The marshal's military merit and his political movements have been described in some detail. But not much is known about the marshal's private life, his behavior in stressful situations and the mystery of his death. Today we introduce the readers of Komsomolskaya Pravda to some little-known pages of the biography of Andrei Antonovich Grechko.

GRECHO AND YELTSIN HAD ONE SPARRING PARTNER

Marshal Grechko was a passionate sports lover. Together with Brezhnev, he regularly attended hockey and football matches involving CSKA Moscow. Moreover, if Brezhnev was carried away by the contemplation of sports competitions in the sixties, then Grechko was an experienced fan, communicated with army football players and hockey players from the end of the forties ...

Long before the popularization of lawn tennis by President Yeltsin, Soviet Defense Minister Andrei Grechko became fascinated with the game. And got carried away seriously. Twice a week he went to the CSKA stadium, where he spent an hour and a half on the tennis court, quite decent for his age (he also played when he was over 70). It is curious that both Grechko and Yeltsin had the same sparring partner! In 1967-1968, Shamil Tarpishchev, the current captain of the Russian tennis team, served in the CSKA sports company. And several times he played against the minister. And a quarter of a century later, he also got Boris Yeltsin to tennis ...

Grechko's security chief Yevgeny Rodionov recalled several years ago that he was coached even by the first Soviet Wimbledon finalist Olga Morozova, who moved to CSKA in 1969: “We still had tennis, it was not quoted, but we went to CSKA and the Minister of Defense played on court. Olga Morozova was with him all the time, playing as a guard, giving him the opportunity to physically support himself.

The marshal himself played volleyball well, walked a lot and generally kept himself in shape. And he even forced the members of the Military Council of the Ministry of Defense to engage in physical training. And marshals Kulikov, Yakubovsky, Sokolov. Batitsky, Tolubko, Gelovani, Alekseev and Ogarkov came to the CSKA Weightlifting Palace twice a week by seven in the morning and, under the guidance of Honored Master of Sports, Lieutenant Colonel Alexei Desyatchikov, trained for an hour and a half, warmed up, played volleyball. The last training session took place four days before Grechko's death. The new minister Dmitry Ustinov preferred to watch sporting events from the side ...

TO DRAIN OR NOT TO DRAIN, THAT IS THE QUESTION

The early morning of November 9, 1975 turned out to be extremely restless for the Minister of Defense. After the celebration of the next (as it turned out, the last for him) anniversary of the October Revolution. He decided to relax a bit and go hunting. Grechko was a great lover of this business. And he had an arsenal of weapons corresponding to the level - 128 barrels of guns, rifles and pistols. A small hunting farm of the Ministry of Defense near Volokolamsk was a place where the marshal could rest in peace. He stayed in a small house, and only employees of the 9th Directorate of the KGB of the USSR accompanied him.

Marshal Grechko was not allowed to sleep normally that night. At the beginning of five in the morning, the head of security heard a call on a closed telephone. The Chief of the General Staff, Marshal Kulikov, called: “Evgeny, I urgently need a minister!” “I tell him,” Evgeny Rodionov recalled, “Viktor Georgievich, the Minister of Defense is resting, how can I go to his apartment?” But Kulikov insisted, ordered to immediately wake up Grechko and took full responsibility for this. And for good reason, it was a very serious matter ...

The evening before, the political officer of the large anti-submarine ship "Storozhevoy" of the 128th brigade of missile ships of the Baltic Fleet, Captain 3rd Rank Sablin, isolated the commander and part of the officers and midshipmen, and then, in the presence of the rest, outlined his vision of the situation in the country and his intention to move to Kronstadt in order to demand the opportunity to speak on the TV.

One way or another, the newest Soviet warship weighed anchor, went to sea from the Riga roadstead and moved towards Sweden. Quite a lot has been written about these events, but today we leave the readers of Komsomolskaya Pravda to get acquainted with how decisions were made that morning at the highest level. Major of the 9th Directorate of the KGB of the USSR Yevgeny Rodionov spent all this time next to the minister. He carried out the order of the Chief of the General Staff. Grechko picked up the phone in the bedroom, where the call was transferred to him, after some half a minute he left and ordered to be ready to leave in five minutes. A heavy government ZIL flew along the Volokolamsk highway at a speed of 160-180 kilometers per hour. “We almost crashed in Krasnogorsk,” the minister’s security chief recalled, “there was ice and the car drove great. And in Moscow, we also drove at great speed. It was about half past six in the morning, I only had time to direct the police on the phone so that they blocked the traffic. All commanders, all deputies gathered in the Ministry of Defense. The Minister was resolute and expressed the opinion that the ship should be destroyed by a missile strike. Marshal Kulikov proposed to wait with missiles and with the connection of aviation. The Commander-in-Chief of the Air Force, Air Chief Marshal Pavel Kutakhov was ready to raise the missile-carrying aircraft, but it was difficult for them to turn around near the ship.

According to Rodionov, for about twenty minutes they could not decide what to do with the ship. But it was already necessary to report to Brezhnev and Andropov ... In general, Marshal Grechko was sitting in his office, Marshal Kulikov in his, and Marshal Kutakhov in the left reception room near the minister's office. And everyone decided for a long time: to sink the ship, or not to sink ... Moreover, the pilots reported that there were a lot of ships in the water area and they did not see the tail number (it is known that bombs were dropped at the rate of our border boat and near our own cargo ship).

When the rudders of the Sentry were still damaged by the bomb and it stalled, Marshal Grechko was informed about this. He thought for a moment. And then he gave the order: the submarine "Komsomolets" to keep the rebellious ship at gunpoint and escort to the port. And prepare documents on the disbandment of the crew and its distribution among different fleets. Despite the fact that everything ended relatively well, Rodionov spoke skeptically about the effectiveness of the management of senior military officials: “Summarizing all this, I will say that about 38-40 minutes have passed. And already I had some kind of feeling, some kind of demoralization in the Ministry of Defense. Somewhere in the headquarters, the threads of control were torn. Forty minutes could not stop one ship!”

MARSHAL BREZHNEV? THROUGH MY CORSE!

The Minister of Defense, an athletic and fit man, who was in good physical shape, died unexpectedly for many. And although 72 years old is not a young age, his death looked strange and unexpected. Colonel-General Varennikov, the former commander of the USSR Ground Forces, wrote: “I did not believe in the natural death of A.A. Grechko and that’s all! And that disbelief remains to this day. Not only that, it has intensified.” General Varennikov considered the secretary of the Central Committee of the CPSU Dmitry Ustinov, who was eager for the post of Minister of Defense, to be responsible for the death of Grechko. And, by the way, he hinted at the possibility of Grechko's suicide.

Two years before his death, the marshal could have died during a visit to Iraq. The head of his security, Yevgeny Rodionov, recalled: “When the delegation was supposed to go to a meeting in the hall, the minister got dressed, put himself in order, and went to the toilet. And we hear a crash in the toilet. I quickly open the door, and I can hardly see him. It's covered in plaster dust. The ceiling collapsed. Apparently, the Iraqi employees heard the roar and began to rush to our apartments, but we did not let them in. Andrei Antonovich came out, we quickly washed him. He had a small abrasion on his forehead. With us was Lev Mikhailovich Maltsev, his personal doctor. He repaired this wound, imperceptibly completely.

But, most likely, the death of the Minister of Defense was still natural. Yevgeny Rodionov told about this event in his time: “It was at eight o'clock in the morning. We were supposed to arrive in half an hour, there was some kind of meeting. And I was already dressed too, the car was already on steam, which means I approached Tatyana: “Did Comrade Minister eat?” She says: - "Yes, he did not go out today." I say: - “How, I didn’t go out, we should be at the meeting at half past nine!” I tell her: “Go to him,” and she says: “I won’t go.” He did not allow anyone to enter his small outbuilding where he lived.

He was there all the time. And, as it turned out, he sat down to read an article by one of the health professors in an armchair with armrests. And somewhere at twenty-one o'clock he died.

But then we did not know this and asked the great-granddaughter to go to his room, and he melted when the great-granddaughter came running to him. She ran from there and said: - "Aunt Tanya, aunt Tanya, grandfather is cold, he needs a blanket." Well, when she said that grandfather was cold and he was sitting in an armchair, I immediately rushed straight into the room, as I was, in my overcoat. He was sitting in an armchair, leaning on one arm, a sheet of paper had fallen from him. I touched him ... and he already has cadaveric spots.

And the head of security also recalled such a case: “Brezhnev called:“ Where is Andrey? He called the minister Andrei, everyone called him, of course, by his first name and patronymic, and he called Andrei. "Where is Andrew?" I tell him that the minister is at the dacha, now he is walking. He walked barefoot, he probably had thick blood. He had something vascular. By the way, he died from this. A blood clot, he had a blood clot ... "

In the spring of 1976, there were rumors that the Minister of Defense Grechko, when asked if Brezhnev would become a marshal, replied: “Only over my corpse!” One way or another, on April 26, the death of Marshal Grechko was announced, and ten days later the assignment of this military rank to “dear Leonid Ilyich” was announced.