Marshal of the Soviet Union

Marshal of the Soviet Union (Russian: Marshal Sovietskovo Soyuza [Маршал Советского Союза]) was the de facto highest military rank of the Soviet Union. (The highest rank de jure, Generalissimus of the Soviet Union, was created for Joseph Stalin and held by him alone).

The rank of Marshal of the Soviet Union was created in 1935 and abolished in 1991. Forty-one people held the rank of Marshal of the Soviet Union. The equivalent naval rank was Admiral of the Fleet of the Soviet Union.

History of the rank

Shoulder mark of Marshal of the Soviet Union since 1943

The military rank of Marshal of the Soviet Union was established by a decree of the Soviet Cabinet, the Council of People's Commissars (Sovnarkom), on September 22, 1935. On November 20, the rank was conferred on five people: People's Commissar of Defence and veteran Bolshevik Kliment Voroshilov, Chief of the General Staff of the Red Army Alexander Ilyich Yegorov, and three senior commanders, Vasily Blyukher, Semyon Budyonny, and Mikhail Tukhachevsky.

Of these, Blyukher, Tukhachevski and Yegorov were executed during Stalin's Great Purge of 1937–38. On May 7, 1940, three new Marshals were appointed: the new People's Commissar of Defence, Semyon Timoshenko, Boris Shaposhnikov, and Grigory Kulik.

During World War II, Timoshenko and Budyonny were dismissed, and Kulik was demoted for incompetence, and the rank of Marshal of the Soviet Union was given to a number of military commanders who earned it on merit. These included Georgy Zhukov, Ivan Konev and Konstantin Rokossovsky to name a few. In 1943, Stalin himself was made a Marshal of the Soviet Union, and in 1945, he was joined by his intelligence and police chief Lavrenti Beria. These non-military Marshals were joined in 1947 by politician Nikolai Bulganin.

Two Marshals were executed in postwar purges: Kulik in 1950 and Beria in 1953, following Stalin's death. Thereafter the rank was awarded only to professional soldiers, with the exception of Leonid Brezhnev, who made himself a Marshal in 1976, and Ustinov, who was prominent in the arms industry and was appointed Defence Minister in July 1976. The last Marshal of the Soviet Union was Dmitry Yazov, appointed in 1990, who was imprisoned after the failed coup against Mikhail Gorbachev in 1991. Marshal Sergei Akhromeev committed suicide in 1991 on the fall of the Soviet Union.

The Marshals fell into three generational groups.

• Those who had gained their reputations during the Russian Civil War. These included both those who were purged in 1937–38 (Blyukher, Tukhachevsky and Yegorov), and those who held high commands in the early years of World War II (Budyonny, Kulik, Shaposhnikov, Timoshenko and Voroshilov). All of the latter except Shaposhnikov and Timoshenko proved incompetent and were removed from commanding positions.

• Those who made their reputations in World War II and assumed high commands in the latter part of the war. These included Zhukov, Vasilievsky, Konev, Rokossovsky, Malinovsky, Tolbukhin and Govorov.

• Those who assumed high command in the Cold War era. All of these were officers in World War II, but their higher commands were held in the Warsaw Pact or as Soviet Defence Ministers. These included Grechko, Yakubovsky, Kulikov, Ogarkov, Akhromeev, and Yazov.

All the postwar Marshals fell in the third categogy who had been officers in World War II,, except Brezhnev, who had been a military commissar, and Ustinov, who had been an arms factory manager. Even Yazov, who was 20 when the war ended, had been a platoon commander.

The rank was abolished with the dissolution of the Soviet Union in December 1991. It was succeeded in the new Russia by the rank of Marshal of the Russian Federation, which has been held by only one person, Marshal Igor Sergeyev, who was Russian Defence Minister from 1997 to 2001.

Rank comparisons

The Red Army abolished all personal officer ang general ranks, retaining only personal positions. Thus, a komvzvoda (Platoon Commander) was a position for an officer who would typically hold a Lieutenant of Senior Lieutenant rank, kombat (Batallion Commander) was an equivalent of Captain or Major, and kompolka was an equivalent of Lieutenant Colonel or Colonel.

Even though traditional personal ranks for Red Army officers were reestablished in 1935, General ranks were not introduced until 1940, probably because they were associated with the White Army movement. So, in 1935-1940 the personal rank system in the Red Army consisted of the following General-grade ranks:

• kombrig (Brigade Commander), a Brigadier equivalent;
• komdiv (Division Commander), a Major General equivalent;
• komcor (Corps Commander), a Lieutenant General equivalent;
• komandarm (Army Commander) 2nd rank, a Lieutenant General or full General equivalent;
• komandarm (Army Commander) 1st rank, a Front Commander or Supreme Commander position, and an equivalent to Colonel General, General of the Army, or Field Marshal in other nations.

When the Marshal of the Soviet Union was introduced later in 1935, it became the highest rank in the Red Army, extending already complex rank system.

However, when personal General ranks were introduced in 1940, the updated rank system did not feature a Brigadier-grade rank, mirroring a situation in the Russian Imperial Russian army where the Brigadier rank ceased to exist in early 1800s. Most of the officers holding the kombrig rank were demoted to Colonels, and only a few were promoted to Major General.

Another pecularity of this new system was the absense of a full General rank, which until 1800s was called General-en-Chef in the Russian Imperial army, and then was renamed General of the Infantry, Cavalry and Artillery. Curiously, the intital draft of the new rank system submitted by People's Commissar of Defence Marshal Voroshilov was more in line with Russian military tradition. In a memorandum submitted on 17 March 1940 to the Politburo and Sovnarkom, Voroshilov made the following proposal^[1]:

After discussing this question with my deputies, we conclude that our army needs to have the same number of General ranks as it was in the Tsarist army and as it exists in other European armies such as German, French and British. At present we have five General-grade ranks (kombrig, komdiv, komcor, komandarm 2nd rank and komandarm 1st rank). We find it necessary to join the military ranks of komdiv and komcor into a single Liuetenant General rank, and to similarily join the military ranks of komandarm 2nd rank and komandarm 1st rank into a single rank of General of the Infantry (artillery, cavalry, aviation, armoured troops etc.). The next is the highest military rank in the Red Army, the Marshal of the Soviet Union, that corresponds to similiar ranks in foreign capitalist armies. We believe there is no need for additional military ranks above Marshal.

However in the final document the two Comandarm ranks were replaced by Colonel General and General of the Army, adding them on top of Marshal of the Soviet Union, so the number of General-grade ranks did not reduce all even with the abolition of Brigadier-grade rank, in contrast to the initial proposal by Voroshilov.

After the introduction of this new system, most existing kombrigs were created Colonel, although some were created Major General; exising komdivs were mostly created Major General, komcors and Army Commanders 2nd rank were mostly created Lieutenant General, and Army Commanders 1st rank were created Colonel General or General of the Army (a notable exception is Georgy Zhukov who was promoted to General of the Army directly from komcor rank). Later in 1943, the ranks of Marshal and Chief Marshal of a service branch were introduced in aviation, artillery, communications troops, and armoured troops; both of them were equivalent to General of the Army.

The final personal rank structure was as follows:

• Colonel - Brigade or Division level;
• Major General - Division or (rarely) Brigade level;
• Lieutenant General - Corps or Army level;
• Colonel General - Army or Front level;
• General of the Army - Army or Front level;
• Marshal or Chief Marshal - service branch, Army level;
• Marshal of the Soviet Union - Front or Supreme Command level, reserved for most honored field commanders.

Eventually, the Soviet system of general ranks included commonplace Major General, Lieutenant General, however the position in between Lieutenant General and General of the Army was occupied by the Colonel General, which in the Soviet system is the equivalent of a full General rank in other nations. This was amost direc

This unusual rank structure makes rank comparisons difficult, arguably the Marshal of the Soviet Union is not an equivalent to NATO five-star general ranks such as British Field Marshal or American General of the Army, but rather a honorary rank analogous to the Marshal of France, although without associated state functions.

List of Marshals of the Soviet Union

The first five marshals of the Soviet Union: Tukhachevsky, Budyonny, Voroshilov, Blyukher and Yegorov.

Marshal Rokossovsky (on black stallion) and Marshal Zhukov (on the pale-grey stallion) during the Moscow Victory Parade of 1945.

Note: All Marshals of the Soviet Union, with the exception of Non-Military Marshals had at least started their military careers in the Army. The Service Arms listed are the services they served in during their respective tenures as Marshals of the Soviet Union.

External links

• Biographies of all the Marshals of the USSR