Vladimir Petrovich Sviridov

Vladimir Petrovich Sviridov

Vladimir Petrovich Swiridow ( Russian : Владимир Петрович Свиридов; * December 7, 1897 in Kosulitschi , Russian Empire , today Belarus ; † May 8, 1963 Leningrad ) was a Soviet officer, last lieutenant general of the World War II , and after the end of World War II first chief of the Allied Control Commission in Hungary and from 1949 to 1953 Soviet High Commissioner in Austria .

Life

Prewar years

Vladimir Petrovich Sviridow was the son of a farmer in the village of Kosulichi, in the Bobruisk district , Minsk province (today Mahiljou district , Mahiljouskaya Woblasz ), in Belarus. He attended the teachers' college, but in 1916, when he was 19, he was called up for a crash course at the Vilnius Infantry Cadet School. It was no longer used in the war, Swiridov aspired to a career as an officer, and attended the artillery school (1922), the Frunze military academy (1930) and the military academy of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of the Soviet Union (graduated in 1938, further higher courses after the war).

War effort

When the war broke out he was in the artillery of the Leningrad Front , from 1941 to 1943 he was in command of the 55th Army , including in the Third Ladoga Battle . Later, he was commander of the 67th Army and 1944-1945 of the 42nd Army in the 2nd and 3rd Baltic Front , and made the Leningrad-Novgorod Offensive , the Pskov-Ostrower operation and the Baltic Offensive with, and then participated at the Kurland blockade . For services in the fight against the German Reich , he received the Suworoworden 1st class in 1944 .

High Commissioner in Hungary

At the end of the war he was in occupied Hungary as a lieutenant general with Soviet troops, where he took over functions in the country's military administration. From July 1945 to November 1947 he served as deputy chairman of the Allied Control Commission in Hungary (July 1945 - November 1947). On August 9, 1945, as deputy to Marshal Kliment Voroshilov , he sent the Hungarian government under Prime Minister Béla Miklós Dálnoki the order to deport the Danube Swabians or Hungarian Germans who had professed to be German . In doing so, contrary to the Potsdam Agreement , he pushed for a rapid resettlement without regard to humane settlement. The Hungarian police were instructed to escort the Germans to the Austrian border, from where they were to move on to the American occupation zone there or to Germany. According to the records of the Hungarian interior minister at the time, he said: "There must be no mercy on this question, they can be swept out of the country with a steel broom" only gradually driven out. Hungarians who had been expelled from Slovakia were then quartered in the vacated houses. This led to increased tensions between Swabia and Hungary, which enabled the communist party to present itself as the guardian of Hungarian national interests.

In 1946/7 Swiridow succeeded Marshal Voroshilov and initially took over his function as Soviet High Commissioner in Hungary until April 1949. After the Soviet-Hungarian peace treaty came into force on September 15, 1946, he stayed in Budapest from January 1948 to April 1949 as commander-in-chief of the Soviet troops , and was subsequently involved in the gradual communist takeover and the transformation of Hungary into a people 's democracy . During his tenure, Hungary had to deliver food to the Soviet Union. Sviridow covered Soviet soldiers who traded on the black market and smuggled salt into the country across the border with Romania they controlled .

High Commissioner for Austria

On May 6, 1949, the Soviet authorities in Austria announced the recall of the Commander-in-Chief, Central Group of Land Forces (for Austria and Hungary) and High Commissioner of the Allied Control Commission for Austria, General Vladimir Kurasov, and at the same time appointed Sviridov as his successor (Commander-in-Chief from April) . 1950–1954 he was also Deputy of the Supreme Soviet (3rd convocation).

In contrast to his previous position in Hungary, he was less prominent as the highest Soviet power in occupied post-war Austria, since the Soviet Union represented different goals here. During the October strike in 1950, the Soviet troops under his command refused to support the striking trade unionists. In the Allied Council , on the other hand, he repeatedly urged the German government to refrain from attempts at remilitarization and instead establish a real democratic order. Corresponding statements were issued in September 1951, on August 28, 1952 and particularly urgently on November 29, 1952. These accusations were consistently rejected by the Federal Government. The then Federal Chancellor Leopold Figl is said to have had a good relationship with him. In talks on a possible state treaty , the return of the Danube power plant Ybbs-Persenbeug and Austrian debt payments to the Soviet Union were negotiated during his term of office .

Shortly after Stalin's death and before the state treaty negotiations were concluded, Sviridov was recalled in June 1953. His successor was the diplomat Ivan Ivanovich Ilyichov . The Soviet High Commissioner was then raised to the rank of an embassy, ​​which was interpreted as a positive sign of a possible full Soviet recognition of Austrian sovereignty.

Further career

Lieutenant General Swiridow then went back to the Soviet Union and served in the Red Army until 1957 . December 1954 to 1957 he was Deputy Commander of the Odessa Military District . March 1957 he retired.

In 1962 he published a work about his experiences during the siege of Leningrad . He died there on May 8, 1963.

Works

• Vladimir Petrovich Sviridow: Bitwa za Leningrad, 1941-1944 , 1962 ( openlibrary.org )

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Andrei Pugowkin : СТРАННЫЙ ГЛАВКОМ, ИЛИ ИСТОРИЯ ОДНОГО ГЕНЕРАЛА , In: Невское время ‚Neue Zeit '(Russian)
2. ↑ generals.dk: Sviridov
3. ↑ munzinger.de: Wladimir Swiridow
4. ↑ Prof. Dr. Cornelius Mayer : The Way of the Cross of our compatriots (Word document on ungarndeutsche.de; 93 kB)
5. ^ Martin Mevius: Agents of Moscow: the Hungarian Communist Party and the origins of socialist patriotism, 1941-1953 . Oxford University Press, 2005, ISBN 978-019927461-1 , p. 138, ( books.google ).
6. ^ Mevius: Agents of Moscow 2005, pp. 59, 60 u. 67 ( books.google )
7. ^ Helmut Wohnout: Democracy and History. Yearbook of the Karl von Vogelsang Institute for Research into the History of Christian Democracy in Austria, Böhlau Verlag, 1998, ISBN 978-320598986-8 , p. 64 ( books.google )
8. ↑ Gerald Stourzh: About Unity and Freedom: State Treaty, Neutrality and the End of the East-West Occupation of Austria 1945-1955 . Böhlau Verlag, 1998, ISBN 978-320598383-5 , p. 175 u. 223 ( books.google )
9. ↑ Karl Gruber , Michael Gehler (Ed.): Karl Gruber: Speeches and Documents 1945-1953 . Böhlau Verlag, 1994, ISBN 978-320598169-5 , p. 456 ( books.google )

predecessor	Office	successor
Kliment Eefremovich Voroshilov	Soviet High Commissioner in Hungary 1946–1949	Fyodor Fedotowitsch Kuznetsov
Vladimir Vasilyevich Kurasov	Soviet High Commissioner in Austria 1949–1953	Iwan Iwanowitsch Ilyichev (Ambassador)