Marshal Ivan Stepanovich Koniev

Koniev, Marshal Ivan Stepanovich (1897-1973). Colleague and sometimes rival of Georgiy Zhukov, Koniev was the victor in the final battle of the European war and, from 1955 to 1960, first commander of the military forces of the Warsaw Pact alliance. Conscripted into the imperial army in 1916, Koniev served as an NCO and after the November 1917 Russian Revolution became a political commissar. He just escaped Stalin's purges of the 1930s, like Zhukov, because he was in the Far East. He commanded the Steppe Front (the reserve army group) at Kursk in July 1943 and won renown for his reconquest of the Ukraine and southern Poland in 1944-5, commanding First Ukrainian Front. In April 1945, Stalin pitted Koniev's Front against Zhukov's in the race for Berlin. Although Koniev did better, swinging up from the south after Zhukov's frontal attack stalled, Stalin let Zhukov capture the Reichstag. Koniev then seized Prague in the last battle of the European war. He was governor of the Soviet occupation zone in Austria (1945-6). Although he played second fiddle to Zhukov (but only just) during the war, after it he commanded the Warsaw Pact forces from 1955 to 1960 and served as inspector general of the Soviet Ministry of Defence until his death.

— Christopher Bellamy