Kuznetsov, Fedor Isidorovich

Born Sept. 17 (29), 1898, in the village of Balbechino, in present-day Gorki Raion, Mogilev Oblast; died Mar. 22, 1961, in Moscow. Soviet military commander, colonel general (1941). Became a member of the CPSU in 1938. The son of a peasant.

Kuznetsov fought in World War I as an ensign and in the Civil War of 1918–20 as a regimental commander (1919–20). He graduated from the M. V. Frunze Military Academy in 1926 and from an advanced training school for higher commanders in 1930. From 1935 to 1938 he was chief of a department and of a subdepartment at the M. V. Frunze Military Academy. Deputy commander of the troops of the Byelorussian Special Military District beginning in July 1938, he fought in the Soviet-Finnish War of 1939–40 and from August 1940 commanded the troops of the North Caucasian and then of the Baltic Military District. In the Great Patriotic War (1941–45) he commanded the troops of the Northwestern Front until June 30, 1941, then was commander of the Twenty-first and Fifty-first armies, chief of staff of the Twenty-eighth Army, deputy commander of the troops of the Western Front, and commander of the Sixty-first Army from July 1941 to March 1942. He was chief of the General Staff Academy from March 1942 to June 1943, and from August 1943 to February 1944 he was deputy commander of the troops of the Volkhov Front and then of the Karelian Front. Appointed commander of the troops of the Urals Military District in 1945, Kuznetsov retired in 1948 for reasons of health. He was awarded two Orders of Lenin, three Orders of the Red Banner, the Order of Suvorov Second Class, the Order of the Red Star, and medals.