Ivan Konev
Ivan Stepanovich Konev (Russian: Ива́н Степа́нович Ко́нев, IPA: [ɪˈvan sʲtʲɪˈpanəvʲɪtɕ ˈkonʲɪf]; 28 December 1897 – 21 May 1973) was a Soviet general and Marshal of the Soviet Union who led Red Army forces on the Eastern Front during World War II, responsible for taking much of Axis-occupied Eastern Europe.
In this name that follows Eastern Slavic naming customs, the patronymic is Stepanovich and the family name is Konev.
Ivan Konev
Position created
Fyodor Tolbukhin (as military commander)
28 December 1897[1]
Lodeyno, Nikolsky Uyezd, Vologda Governorate, Russian Empire
21 May 1973 (aged 75)
Moscow, Russian SFSR, Soviet Union
Hero of the Soviet Union (twice)
Russian Empire (1916–1917)
Soviet Russia (1917–1922)
Soviet Union (1922–1962)
Imperial Russian Army (1916–1917)
Red Army (1917–1946)
Soviet Army (1946–1962)
1916–1962
Marshal of the Soviet Union (1944–1962)
Born to a peasant family, Konev was conscripted into the Imperial Russian Army in 1916 and fought in World War I. In 1919, he joined the Bolsheviks and served in the Red Army during the Russian Civil War. After graduating from Frunze Military Academy in 1926, Konev gradually rose through the ranks of the Soviet military. By 1939, he had become a candidate to the Central Committee of the Communist Party.
Following the German invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941, Konev took part in a series of major campaigns, including the battles of Moscow and Rzhev. Konev further commanded forces in major Soviet offensives at Kursk, in the Dnieper–Carpathian and Vistula–Oder offensives. In February 1944, he was made a Marshal of the Soviet Union. On the eve of German defeat, Konev's 1st Ukrainian Front was pitted against the armies of Georgy Zhukov in the Race to Berlin. Konev was the first Allied commander to enter Prague, the capital of Czechoslovakia, after the Prague uprising.
He replaced Zhukov as commander of Soviet ground forces in 1946. In 1956, he was appointed commander of the Warsaw Pact armed forces, and led the violent suppression of the Hungarian Revolution and Prague Spring. In 1961, as commander of Soviet forces in East Germany, he ordered the closing of West Berlin to East Berlin during the building of the Berlin Wall. Konev remained a popular military figure in the Soviet Union until his death in 1973.
Early life[edit]
Konev was born 28 December 1897 in the village of Lodeyno in the Nikolsky Uyezd of Vologda Governorate to a peasant family of Russian 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 at Podosinovets and Arkhangelsk.[2]
Konev has monuments, primarily in Russia. The places include Svidník, Patriot Park (Moscow region), Kirov, Belgorod, Nizhny Novgorod, Omsk, and Vologda.
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 of Kirov.[15][16] The memorial plaque in front of the apartment building where he lived (three blocks from the Kremlin) is still mounted on the brick wall.
The Konev monument erected by the communist government of Czechoslovakia in Prague 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 president Miloš Zeman criticizing the removal as "an abuse of the state of emergency".[18][19][20] Within days, the Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation announced it would begin a symbolic investigation of the alleged "defiling of symbols of Russia's military glory".[21]