Kazakov, Mikhail Ilich

Kazakov, Mikhail Il’ich

 

Born Sept. 26 (Oct. 9), 1901, in the village of Velikusha, in present-day Kichmengskii Goro-dok Raion, Vologda Oblast. Soviet military commander, general of the army (1955). Became a member of the CPSU in 1919. The son of a peasant.

Kazakov joined the Soviet Army in 1920 and served in the Civil War as a political personnel soldier on the Southern Front. Kazakov graduated from an advanced cavalry training school for commanders in 1927, from the M. V. Frunze Military Academy in 1931, and from the Military Academy of the General Staff in 1937. He served in command and staff positions and was chief of staff of the Middle Asian Military District from 1938 to 1941. In the Great Patriotic War (1941–45), Kazakov was chief of staff of the Briansk Front (January to July 1942) and of the Voronezh Front (July 1942 to February 1943) and commander of the Sixty-ninth Army (February to March 1943). He then became assistant commander of the troops of the Reserve and Steppe fronts and deputy commander of the troops of the Briansk and Second Baltic fronts (April to December 1943), after which he commanded the Tenth Guards Army from January 1944 until the end of the war. He fought on the Don and in the battle of Kursk and participated in the liberation of the Ukraine and the Baltic.

Holding command and staff positions after the war, Kazakov was commander of the troops of the Ural Military District (1953–56), deputy commander in chief of the ground forces (1956), commander of the Southern Force Group (December 1956 to 1960), commander of the troops of the Leningrad Military District (1960–65), chief of staff of the Joint Armed Forces of the countries of the Warsaw Treaty Organization (1965–68), and military inspector-adviser (since 1968). Kazakov was a deputy to the second and to the fourth through seventh convocations of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR and a candidate member of the Central Committee of the CPSU from 1961 to 1971. He wrote Over the Maps of Past Battles (1965). Kazakov has been awarded two Orders of Lenin, the Order of the October Revolution, four Orders of the Red Banner, Orders of Suvorov First and Second Class, the Order of Kutuzov First Class, two Orders of the Red Star, two foreign orders, and medals.