Ivan Stepanowitsch Konew

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Konew as Marshal of the Soviet Union (1945)

Ivan Konev ( Russian Иван Степанович Конев , scientific transliteration Ivan Stepanovič Konev , partly in the secondary literature Konev ; born December 16, jul. / 28 December  1897 greg. In Lodeino , Governorate Vologda , Russian Empire , now Kirov Oblast , Russia ; † May 21, 1973 in Moscow ) was a Soviet general in World War II , from February 20, 1944 Marshal of the Soviet Union .

Life

Konew came from a rural family and grew up in the village of Lodeino in northwestern Russia. He received only a sporadic education and made a living as a lumberjack.

Early military career

Konew volunteered in World War I from 1916 and served as a sergeant in an artillery regiment on the front in Galicia. After the October Revolution in 1917 he served in the Red Army , became a member of the CPSU and commissioner of the Nikolsk district. During the civil war from 1918 to 1920 he was first commissioner of an armored train, and later of a rifle brigade. Konew fought in the Far East Army against the troops of the "white" commander Kolchak and in 1921 in the suppression of the Kronstadt sailors' uprising .

From 1926 to 1928 he was in command of the 50th Rifle Regiment of the 17th Rifle Division in Nizhny Novgorod . From January to March 1930 he was in Moscow and then took over the deputy leadership of the 17th Rifle Division. In 1934 he graduated from the Frunze Military Academy and then became political commissar of the 37th Rifle Division in the Belorus military district. In 1936 he was in command of the second rifle division of Belorus. He was then sent to Mongolia as a military advisor and in the spring of 1938 he led the independent 57th Rifle Corps formed there. From July 1938 to June he commanded the 2nd Red Banner Army in the Far East military district . Since June 1940 he - promoted to lieutenant general - had been given command of the Trans-Baikal Military District and from January 1941 of the North Caucasus Military District.

In the German-Soviet War

Shortly before the start of the German attack on the Soviet Union , Konew took command of the newly formed 19th Army on June 13, 1941 , which was moved from the Southwest Front to the Western Front in July. In August and September he distinguished himself in the Smolensk Kessel Battle and carried out strong counter-attacks on Duchovshchina . On September 11, 1941 he was promoted to Colonel General and appointed as the successor to Tymoshenko as Commander in Chief of the Western Front . He then took part in the decisive operations in the Battle of Moscow from October 17, 1941 as Commander-in-Chief of the Kalinin Front .

From September 1942 to March 1943 Konew was again in command of the Western Front, from March 1943 he briefly commanded the Northwest Front . In the battle of the Kursker Bogen in July 1943, he commanded the steppe front , which was used as a strategic reserve against the German 4th Panzer Army on the southern section of the front, including at Prokhorovka . In August 1943 he became an army general . Its front was renamed the 2nd Ukrainian Front in October 1943 and was set up during the Dnieper-Carpathian operation against Kirovograd , which Konev's troops were able to liberate on January 8, 1944.

Konew was promoted to Marshal of the Soviet Union in February 1944 . He took over in May 1944 as commander of the 1st Ukrainian Front , in the Lvov-Sandomierz Offensive on 27 July 1944 Lviv conquered and the July 29 Vistula reached. From the bridgehead won there at Baranow, their troops embarked on a major offensive on January 12, 1945, took Krakow a week later and controlled all of Silesia at the end of February 1945 .

Konew was best known for the liberation of the last inmates of the Auschwitz concentration camp on January 27, 1945. On April 16, 1945, Konew opened the battle for Berlin , which was ultimately defeated by his "rival" (in the sense that both the enemy capital wanted to conquer) Marshal Zhukov was defeated. At Torgau , he met with his troops on April 25 for the first time on US troops. He then commanded his units in the direction of Bohemia, which occupied Prague on May 9, 1945 . Konev marched into Prague to the great cheer of the population. Although the already free city was taken over without a fight, he went down in Czechoslovak history as a liberator.

After 1945

In the first two years after the war he was in command of the central group of Soviet land forces in Austria and Hungary , and for the following 10 years over all Soviet land forces . 1955 to 1960 he was "Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of the Warsaw Treaty " and Deputy Minister of Defense . In this function he had the popular uprising in Hungary suppressed. At the height of the Berlin crisis in 1961 and 1962 Konew was commander-in-chief of the group of Soviet armed forces in Germany . The closing of the borders between the GDR and the western sectors of Berlin, which should mark the beginning of the construction of the Wall, was controlled militarily by him and his armed forces. In 1963 he was appointed Chief Inspector of the Ministry of Defense .

After his death in 1973 and the collapse of the Soviet Union, Konew was judged more nuanced and more critical. Among other things, it became known that on the first day of peace, despite the armistice, Konew had Wehrmacht units on the way back bombarded and ordered the bombing of several Czech cities. More than ten thousand Czechs were sent to prison and labor camps by the SMERSch with Konev's consent . Among them were Czechoslovak citizens of former Russian citizenship who were in exile in Czechoslovakia after the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917, including the former tsarist officer and later Czechoslovak general Sergej Vojcechovský .

Konev was a member of the Supreme Soviet and belonged to the Central Committee of the CPSU .

He was married twice and had a total of three children from both marriages: two daughters and a son, including Natalija Konewa, head of the Russian War Memorial Authority.

Honors

Konew statue removed in Prague, 2020
  • A statue of Konev in Prague , erected in 1980 at the time of so-called normalization in Czechoslovakia, has been the target of vandalism for years. The red smears indicated Konew's inglorious role in the post-war period. The responsible administration of the Prague 6 district initially refrained from cleaning the statue and finally covered it. The district mayor suggested that the statue be placed on the territory of the Russian embassy. Jiří Ovčáček , the spokesman for Czech President Miloš Zeman , called the cordon "absurd" and recalled Konew's merits. Konev's daughter and head of the Russian War Memorial Authority, Natalija Konewa, called for the statue to be brought to Russia to protect it from further vandalism. The council of the city district had meanwhile decided to hand the statue over to a museum and to erect a memorial for all of Prague's liberators in place of the Konew monument . President Miloš Zeman described this decision as a “shame”, as the memorial would also stand for the Soviet soldiers who lost their lives during the liberation of Prague and Czechoslovakia. Konev's statue was removed on April 3, 2020 and placed in a depot. The Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu then demanded that the officials responsible for the removal of the monument be prosecuted. The Czech Ministry of Foreign Affairs rejected the demand that elected political representatives be persecuted by a foreign state as inadmissible. From 27./29. April 2020 against the background of the dispute over the statue "Czech authorities put three politicians under police protection because there are allegedly Russian plans to murder them." They are: Ondřej Kolář, Mayor of the 6th district of Prague; Zdeněk Hřib, Lord Mayor of Prague and Pavel Novotný, Mayor of another Prague district.

literature

Web links

Commons : Iwan Stepanowitsch Konew  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d A Controversial Hero of the Soviet Union , Prager Zeitung, June 1, 2016.
  2. ^ Winfried Heinemann, The international crisis year 1956: Poland, Hungary, Suez. Munich 2009, p. 311.
  3. ↑ Manfred Wilke : “Work out a plan to organize the border between the two parts of Berlin!” Interview with Colonel General Anatolij Grigorjewitsch Mereschko , Federal Agency for Civic Education, February 4, 2011.
  4. ↑ Vladimír Bystrov: Únosy československých občanů do Sovětského Svazu v letech 1945-1955. Edition Svědectví, ed. from Úřad dokumentace a vyšetřování zločinů komunismu ÚDV, an institution of the Ministry of Interior of the Czech Republic, Prague 2003, 343 pages, ISBN 80-7312-027-5 , online at: szcpv.org / ... , in particular page 55ff. as well as the corresponding footnotes (from p. 68)
  5. ^ Der Neue Mahnruf , Volume 73, 4th quarter 2019, p. 6
  6. ↑ Prague's Sixth District Removes Monument to Controversial Soviet Marshal , Radio Praha International , April 3, 2020.
  7. ↑ 'Dark day' in Prague: Czech authorities use sham 'no mask' Covid-19 excuse to tear down monument to Soviet liberator .
  8. ↑ Statue dispute between the Czech Republic and Russia , ORF, April 10, 2020.
  9. ↑ Ministerstvo zahraničí: Stíhání české samosprávy Ruskem kvůli soše Koněva je nepřípustné. In: ČT24 . April 10, 2020, accessed April 11, 2020 (Czech).
  10. ↑ Czech Republic: Alleged murder plans because of Soviet statue orf, April 29, 2020, accessed April 29, 2020.
predecessor Office successor
- Soviet High Commissioner in Austria
1945–1946 		Vladimir W. Kurasov
personal data
SURNAME Konew, Ivan Stepanowitsch
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Конев, Иван Степанович (Russian)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION soviet marshal
DATE OF BIRTH December 28, 1897
PLACE OF BIRTH Lodeino
DATE OF DEATH May 21, 1973
Place of death Moscow