Only four persons entered the history of the Russian Empire, for their military and other merits, bestowed with the highest army rank of Generalissimo. One of them in 1799 was the invincible commander Alexander Suvorov. The next after Suvorov and the last holder of this title in the country was the Supreme Commander-in-Chief in the Great Patriotic War, Joseph Stalin.
Red Marshals
Personal military ranks in the USSR, liquidated shortly after the October Revolution, returned to the country's Armed Forces only on September 22, 1935. Chief in the Red Army, the Workers 'and Peasants' Red Army, the title of Marshal of the Soviet Union was approved. In total, it was assigned to 41 people. Including 36 military leaders and five politicians, including Lavrenty Beria and Leonid Brezhnev.
Its first owners, two months after the release of the Resolution of the Central Executive Committee and the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR, were five famous Soviet army commanders who became famous back in the Civil War - Vasily Blucher, Semyon Budyonny, Kliment Voroshilov, Alexander Egorov and Mikhail Tukhachevsky. But before the start of the war, of the five marshals, only Semyon Budyonny and Kliment Voroshilov survived and served, who did not show themselves in any way at the front.
The rest of the military leaders were soon dismissed by their party and weapons comrades from their posts, convicted on false charges and shot as enemies of the people and fascist spies: Mikhail Tukhachevsky in 1937, Vasily Blucher in 1938, Alexander Yegorov a year later. Moreover, the latter two, in the heat of pre-war repressions, even forgot to officially deprive them of their marshal titles. All of them were rehabilitated only after the death of Stalin and Beria.
Fleet flagships
The 1935 decree also introduced the highest naval rank - Fleet flagship of the first rank. The first such flagships are also repressed and posthumously rehabilitated Mikhail Viktorov and Vladimir Orlov. In 1940, this rank was changed to another, more familiar to sailors - Admiral of the Fleet, which was assigned four years later to Ivan Isakov and later demoted Nikolai Kuznetsov.
Another reform of the highest military ranks in the Soviet Union happened in the second half of the Great Patriotic War. Then the Chief Marshals of Aviation, Artillery, Armored and Engineering Troops, as well as Signal Corps appeared. And the rank of Admiral of the Fleet of the Soviet Union, similar to the Marshal of the Soviet Union, was introduced into the table of ranks of the Navy. In the USSR, there were only three such admirals - Nikolai Kuznetsov, Ivan Isakov and Sergei Gorshkov.
Generalissimo in the museum
The marshal rank was the highest in the Soviet country until June 26, 1945. Until, at the "request of the public" and a group of Soviet military leaders led by Marshal of the Soviet Union Konstantin Rokossovsky, the Decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR appeared on the establishment of the rank of Generalissimo that already existed in the Russian Empire.
They, in particular, were an associate of Peter I, Duke Alexander Menshikov and the famous military leader Alexander Suvorov. A day after the release of the document, the Soviet Generalissimo No. 1 itself appeared. This title was awarded to the head of the USSR and the Red Army, Joseph Stalin. By the way, Joseph Vissarionovich never wore a uniform with epaulettes, designed specifically for Stalin, and after his death in March 53, she went to the museum.
However, a similar fate awaited the title itself, which nominally remained in the military hierarchy of the Soviet Union and Russia until 1993. Although some historians claim that in the 60s and 70s, several attempts were made to assign it to the new leaders of the party and the country - who had front-line merits and military ranks, Lieutenant General Nikita Khrushchev and Major General Leonid Brezhnev.
Minister of the Emergency Committee
With the end of the Stalin era, the title of Marshal of the Soviet Union again became the main one. The last one to whom it was assigned was Dmitry Yazov, who had come to him from a junior lieutenant and commander of a rifle platoon at the front. In 1991, Yazov was dismissed from the post of Minister of Defense of the USSR after the putsch and the overthrow of the so-called GKChP in the country. He did not dare to shoot himself, as Interior Minister Boris Pugo did.
In 1993, after the release of the Russian Law on Military Service, the Marshal of the Russian Federation, similar in status, appeared instead of the Marshal of the Soviet Union. But for all more than 20 years of its existence, only one Russian military leader was able to receive such a title (1997) - the former Minister of Defense of the country Igor Sergeev, who died in 2006.
