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He replaced Zhukov as commander of Soviet ground forces in 1946. In 1956, he was appointedcommander of the Warsaw Pact armed forces, and led the violent suppression of theHungarian Revolution andPrague Spring. In 1961, as commander of Soviet forces in East Germany, he ordered the closing ofWest Berlin toEast Berlin during the building of theBerlin Wall. Konev remained a popular military figure in the Soviet Union until his death in 1973.
Konev was born 28 December 1897 in the village ofLodeyno in theNikolsky Uyezd ofVologda Governorate to a peasant family ofRussian ethnicity. Konev graduated from a parish school in the village of Yakovlevskaya Gora in 1906, and later the Nikolo-Pushemsky Zemstvo School in the neighboring village of Schetkino in 1912. At the age of 15, he found work as a forester and lumberjack atPodosinovets andArkhangelsk.[2]
In the beginning of 1915, he was conscripted into the Imperial Russian Army. Konev was sent to the 2nd Heavy Artillery Brigade at Moscow and then graduated from artillery training courses. Posted to the 2nd Separate Heavy Artillery Battalion (then part of theSouthwestern Front) as a junior sergeant in 1917, he fought in theKerensky Offensive in Galicia in July 1917.[2]
When theOctober Revolution broke out in November 1917, he was demobilized and returned home; in 1918, he joined theRussian Communist Party (Bolsheviks) and theRed Army, serving as an artilleryman. During theRussian Civil War of 1917-1923, he served with the Red Army in the RussianFar Eastern Republic. His commander at one time wasKliment Voroshilov, a close colleague ofJoseph Stalin, who later becamePeople's Commissar for Defense (in office: 1925-1940). (This connection was the key to Konev's subsequent career and to his protection during theGreat Purge of the late 1930s.[3]) In his memoirs, he wrote: "Together with a group of demobilized soldiers, I organized the overthrow of the land administration, the confiscation of agricultural land and the imprisonment of traders." He participated in the violent suppression of the 1921Kronstadt rebellion.[3]
WhenNazi Germanyinvaded the Soviet Union in June 1941, Konev was assigned command of the19th Army in theVitebsk region, and waged a series of defensive battles during the Red Army's retreat, first toSmolensk and then to the approaches to Moscow.
He participated in theBattle of Kursk, commanding the southern part of the Soviet counter-offensive, theSteppe Front, where he actively and energetically promotedmaskirovka (the use ofmilitary camouflage anddeception).[6] Among themaskirovka measures he adopted to achieve tactical surprise were the camouflaging of defense lines and depots; dummy units and supply points; a dummy air-defense network; and the use of reconnaissance units to verify the quality of his army's camouflage and deception works. In David Glantz's view, Konev's forces "generated a major portion of the element of surprise".[6]
As a result, the Germans seriously underestimated the strength of the Soviet defenses. The commander of the19th Panzer division of theWehrmacht,General G. Schmidt, wrote that "We did not assume that there was even one fourth [of the Russian strength] of what we had to encounter".[6]
After the Soviet victory (August 1943) at Kursk, Konev's armies retookBelgorod,Odessa,Kharkov andKiev. The subsequentKorsun–Shevchenkovsky Offensive led to theBattle of the Korsun–Cherkassy Pocket which took place from 24 January to 16 February 1944. The offensive was part of theDnieper–Carpathian Offensive. In it, the 1st and 2nd Ukrainian Fronts, commanded, respectively, byNikolai Vatutin and by Konev, trapped German forces ofArmy Group South in a pocket or "cauldron" west of theDnieper river. During weeks of fighting, the two Red Army Fronts tried to eradicate the pocket; the subsequentKorsun battle eliminated the cauldron. According toMilovan Djilas, Konev openly boasted of his killing of thousands of German prisoners of war: "The cavalry finally finished them off. 'We let the Cossacks cut up as long as they wished. They even hacked off the hands of those who raised them to surrender' the Marshal recounted with a smile."[7]
Residents of Prague greet Marshal Konev upon the arrival of the Red Army on 9 May 1945
For Konev's achievements in Ukraine, thePresidium promoted him toMarshal of the Soviet Union in February 1944.[8] Konev was one of Stalin's favorite generals and one of the few senior commanders whom even Stalin admired for his ruthlessness.[9]
Ivan Konev (front row, 1st from left) at the Victory Parade, 24 June 1945
In January 1945, Konev, together withGeorgy Zhukov, commanded the Soviet armies which launchedthe massive winter offensive in western Poland, driving the German forces from the Vistula to theOder River. In southern Poland his armies seizedKraków (18 January 1945). Soviet historians, and generally Russian sources, claimed that Konev preserved Kraków from Nazi-planned destruction by ordering a lightning attack on the city.[11] Konev's January 1945 offensive also prevented planned destruction of theSilesian industry by the retreating Germans.
In April Konev's troops, together with the1st Belorussian Front under his competitor, Marshal Zhukov, forced the line of the Oder and advanced towardsBerlin. Konev's forces entered the city first, but Stalin gave Zhukov the honor ofcapturing Berlin and hoisting the Soviet flag over theReichstag. Konev was ordered to the southwest, where his forces linked up with elements of theUnited States Army atTorgau (25 April 1945) and also retookPrague (9 May 1945) shortly after the official surrender of the German forces.
After the war the Soviet Union appointed Konev as head of the Soviet occupation forces inEastern Germany and also Allied High Commissioner forAustria. In 1946 he became Commander-in-Chief of theSoviet Ground Forces and First Deputy Minister of Defense of the Soviet Union, replacing Zhukov. He held these posts until 1950, when he was appointed commander of theCarpathian Military District. He held this post until 1960, when he retired from active service. In 1961–62, however, he was recalled and was again commander of the Soviet forces inEast Germany, where he ordered the closing ofWest Berlin toEast Berlin during the construction of theBerlin Wall.[12] He was then appointed to the largely ceremonial post of Inspector-General of the Defense Ministry.
Following thePrague Spring, Konev headed a delegation that visited Czechoslovakia in May 1968 to celebrate the anniversary of the Soviet victory during World War II. After Stalin's death, Konev returned to prominence. He became a key ally of the new party leaderNikita Khrushchev, being entrusted with the trial of the Stalinist police chiefLavrenty Beria in 1953. He was again appointed First Deputy Minister of Defense and commander of Soviet ground forces, posts he held until 1956, when he was namedCommander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of the Warsaw Pact. Shortly after his appointment he led the suppression of theHungarian Revolution. It has been claimed that Konev visited military units in Czechoslovakia in order to obtain first-hand information to better assess the situation in the country, but there is no documentary evidence to support this.[13]
The British military historianJohn Erickson wrote that he was surprised with the extent of personal archives (lichnye arkhivy) held by former Red Army soldiers of many ranks, and that "there is no substitute for having the late Marshal Konev (sic) – spectacles perched on nose – read from his own personal notebook, detailing operational orders, his own personal instructions to select commanders and his tally of Soviet casualties. And while on the subject of casualties, Marshal Konev made it plain that, though such figures did exist, he was not prepared on his own authority to allow certain figures to be released for publication while a number of commanders were still alive."[14]
In 1969, theMinistry of Defence of the USSR published Konev's 285-page war memoir calledForty-Five. It was later translated into English in the same year and published byProgress Publishers, Moscow. This work discusses Konev's taking of Berlin, Prague, his work with Zhukov,Stalin, his field meeting with GeneralOmar Bradley andJascha Heifetz. In English, the book was titledI. Konev – Year of Victory. It was also published in Spanish and French under the titlesEl Año 45 andL'an 45 respectively.
Konev died on 21 May 1973 at age 75 inMoscow. Following his cremation, his ashes were placed in theKremlin Wall Necropolis with those of the greatest figures of the USSR, and can still be visited today.
On 9 January 1991, his memorial sculpture in Kraków was dismantled less than just 4 years after it had been unveiled. The sculpture was given to the Russian city ofKirov.[15][circular reference][16] The memorial plaque in front of the apartment building where he lived (three blocks from theKremlin) is still mounted on the brick wall.
TheKonev monument erected by the communist government of Czechoslovakia inPrague 6 (náměstí Interbrigády) in 1980 became a subject of controversy that escalated in 2018, after which the city administration added explanatory text to the monument, noting the participation of its subject in the suppression of the Hungarian Revolution and the Prague Spring.[17] The monument was removed on 3 April 2020, with the Czech presidentMiloš Zeman criticizing the removal as "an abuse of the state of emergency".[18][19][20] Within days, theInvestigative Committee of the Russian Federation announced it would begin a symbolic investigation of the alleged "defiling of symbols of Russia's military glory".[21]
^Gerasimova, S. (2016)The Rzhev Slaughterhouse: The Red Army's Forgotten 15-Month Campaign Against Army Group Center, 1942-1943. Helion and Company. p. 172.ISBN978-1911096146
^abcGlantz, David M. (1989)Soviet Military Deception in the Second World War. Routledge. p. 153-154.ISBN0415408598
^Kaimakov, Anton (19 June 2018)."Маршал Конев и вторжение 1968" [Marshal Konev and the invasion of 1968].Czech Radio (in Russian). Retrieved11 April 2020.
^Erickson, John (2003) [1975].The Road to Stalingrad: Stalin's War with Germany Volume One. London: Cassell. p. 474.ISBN0-304-36541-6.
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