The Most Famous

MILITARY PERSONNELS from Russia

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This page contains a list of the greatest Russian Military Personnels. The pantheon dataset contains 2,058 Military Personnels, 127 of which were born in Russia. This makes Russia the birth place of the 4th most number of Military Personnels behind United States, and France.

Top 10

The following people are considered by Pantheon to be the top 10 most legendary Russian Military Personnels of all time. This list of famous Russian Military Personnels is sorted by HPI (Historical Popularity Index), a metric that aggregates information on a biography’s online popularity. Visit the rankings page to view the entire list of Russian Military Personnels.

Photo of Mikhail Kutuzov

1. Mikhail Kutuzov (1745 - 1813)

With an HPI of 73.49, Mikhail Kutuzov is the most famous Russian Military Personnel.  His biography has been translated into 60 different languages on wikipedia.

Prince Mikhail Illarionovich Golenishchev-Kutuzov-Smolensky (Russian: Михаил Илларионович Голенищев-Кутузов-Смоленский; German: Mikhail Illarion Golenishchev-Kutuzov Fürst von Smolensk; 16 September [O.S. 5 September] 1745 – 28 April [O.S. 16 April] 1813) was a Field Marshal of the Russian Empire. He served as a military officer and a diplomat under the reign of three Romanov monarchs: Empress Catherine II, and Emperors Paul I and Alexander I. Kutuzov was shot in the head twice while fighting the Turks (1774 and 1788) and survived the serious injuries seemingly against all odds. He defeated Napoleon as commander-in-chief using attrition warfare in the Patriotic war of 1812. Alexander I, the incumbent Tsar during Napoleon's invasion, would write that he would be remembered amongst Europe's most famous commanders and that Russia would never forget his worthiness.

Photo of Vasily Zaitsev

2. Vasily Zaitsev (1915 - 1991)

With an HPI of 73.20, Vasily Zaitsev is the 2nd most famous Russian Military Personnel.  His biography has been translated into 50 different languages.

Vasily Grigoryevich Zaitsev (Russian: Васи́лий Григо́рьевич За́йцев, IPA: [vɐˈsʲilʲɪj ɡrʲɪˈɡorʲjɪvʲɪdʑ ˈzajtsɨf]; 23 March 1915 – 15 December 1991) was a Soviet sniper during World War II. Between 22 September 1942 and 19 October 1942, he killed 40 enemy soldiers. Between 10 October 1942 and 17 December 1942, during the Battle of Stalingrad, he killed 225 enemy soldiers. Zaitsev became a celebrated figure during the war and later a Hero of the Soviet Union, and he remains lauded for his skills as a sniper. His life and military career have been the subject of several books and films: his exploits, as detailed in William Craig's 1973 book Enemy at the Gates: The Battle for Stalingrad, served as the story for the 2001 film Enemy at the Gates, with Jude Law portraying Zaitsev. He is also featured in David L. Robbins's 1999 historical novel War of the Rats. Zaitsev was born in Yeleninskoye, Orenburg Governorate in a Russian peasant family and grew up in the Ural Mountains, where he learned marksmanship by hunting deer and wolves with his grandfather and older brother. He brought home his first trophy at the age of 12, a wolf that he killed with a single bullet from his first personal gun (given to him by his grandfather), a single-shot 20-gauge shotgun. In 1930, Zaitsev graduated from construction college in the city of Magnitogorsk, where he received the speciality of fitter. He also studied accounting. From 1937, Zaitsev served in the Pacific Fleet, where he was clerk of the artillery department. After studying at military school, he was appointed head of the finance department of the Pacific Fleet in Transfiguration Bay. Zaitsev was serving in the Soviet Navy as a clerk in Vladivostok when Germany invaded the Soviet Union in Operation Barbarossa. Like many of his comrades, he volunteered for transfer to the front line. He had attained the rank of chief petty officer in the Navy and was assigned the rank of senior warrant officer upon transfer to the army. He was assigned to the 1047th Rifle Regiment of the 284th "Tomsk" Rifle Division, which became part of the 62nd Army at Stalingrad on 17 September 1942. Zaitsev's accuracy with a rifle led to him becoming a sniper. Zaitsev would conceal himself in various locations, for example on high ground, under rubble, or in water pipes. After a few kills, he would change his position or relocate. Together with his partner, Nikolai Kulikov, Zaitsev perfected his hide and sting tactics. One method was to cover a large area from three positions, with two men at each point – a sniper and a scout. This tactic, known as the "sixes", is still in use today by Russian forces and was implemented during the Chechen wars. Zaitsev fought at the Battle of Stalingrad until January 1943, when a mortar attack injured his eyes. Some conflicting stories state it was a landmine, but the doctor who treated Zaitsev and eventually restored his eyesight was ophthalmologist Vladimir Filatov, founder of the Filatov Institute of Eye Diseases and Tissue Therapy in Odessa, and a pioneer in corneal transplantation. Had Zaitsev been injured by a landmine, an ophthalmologist would not have treated him. According to Soviet sources, before his injury he had killed 225 people in the Battle of Stalingrad alone. On 22 February 1943, Zaitsev was awarded the title Hero of the Soviet Union. Zaitsev recruited and trained other marksmen during his service in Stalingrad. He returned to the front, and finished the war at the Battle of the Seelow Heights in Germany, with the military rank of captain. He became a member of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) in 1943. After the war, Zaitsev settled in Kiev (now Kyiv), where he studied at a textile university before obtaining employment as an engineer. He rose to become the director of a textile factory, where he remained until his death on 15 December 1991 in Kiev, at the age of 76, just 11 days before the dissolution of the Soviet Union. He was buried in Kiev, although he wished to be buried in the Stalingrad land that he had defended. On 31 January 2006, Vasily Zaitsev was reburied with full military honors at the Stalingrad memorial at Mamayev Kurgan in Volgograd, Russia. A feature-length film, Enemy at the Gates (2001), starring Jude Law as Zaitsev, was based on part of William Craig's book Enemy at the Gates: The Battle for Stalingrad (1973), which includes a "snipers' duel" between Zaitsev and a Wehrmacht sniper school director, Major Erwin König. Zaitsev indicates in his own memoirs that a three-day duel did indeed occur and that the sniper he killed was the head of a sniper school near Berlin; however, historian Sir Antony Beevor states that the Russian Ministry of Defence archives contradict this and that the duel had been created by the Soviet propaganda. Russian researcher Oleg Kaminsky suggests that the duel could have been between Zaitsev and the German corporal Hermann Stoff of the 295th Infantry Division, who was responsible for 103 killed Red Army soldiers and commanders and who died in Stalingrad at this time. David L. Robbins's historical novel War of the Rats (1991) includes a sniper duel in Stalingrad, but between Zaitsev and a German adversary named Colonel Heinz Thorvald, identified in the author's introduction as an actual combatant. Ramón Rosanas wrote a comic about the conflict between Zaitsev and König. Hero of the Soviet Union Four Orders of Lenin Two Orders of the Red Banner Order of the Patriotic War 1st Class Medal "For Courage" Honorary Citizen of the Hero City of Volgograd (Stalingrad) World's Best Sniper of All Time (Moskva) Zaitsev, Vassili (2003) [1956: Original Russian edition]. Okrent, Neil (ed.). Notes of a Sniper. Translated by Givens, David; Kornakov, Peter; Kornakov, Konstatin (1st English translation ed.). Los Angeles: 2826 Press Inc. ISBN 0-615-12148-9. Beevor, Antony (1998). Stalingrad. London: Penguin Books Ltd. ISBN 978-0-14-100131-9. Robbins, David L. (2000). War of the Rats. New York: Bantam Books. ISBN 978-0-553-58135-5. The Reader's Digest Illustrated History of World War II (1989). London: Reader's Digest Association Limited. ISBN 978-0-89577-333-3

Photo of Stanislav Petrov

3. Stanislav Petrov (1939 - 2017)

With an HPI of 72.53, Stanislav Petrov is the 3rd most famous Russian Military Personnel.  His biography has been translated into 51 different languages.

Stanislav Yevgrafovich Petrov (Russian: Станисла́в Евгра́фович Петро́в; 7 September 1939 – 19 May 2017) was a lieutenant colonel of the Soviet Air Defence Forces who played a key role in the 1983 Soviet nuclear false alarm incident. On 26 September 1983, three weeks after the Soviet military had shot down Korean Air Lines Flight 007, Petrov was the duty officer at the command center for the Oko nuclear early-warning system when the system reported that a missile had been launched from the United States, followed by up to five more. Petrov judged the reports to be a false alarm. His subsequent decision to disobey orders, against Soviet military protocol, is credited with having prevented an erroneous retaliatory nuclear attack on the United States and its NATO allies that would have resulted in a large-scale nuclear war. An investigation later confirmed that the Soviet satellite warning system had indeed malfunctioned. Because of his decision not to launch a retaliatory nuclear strike amid this incident, Petrov is often credited as having "saved the world".

Photo of Yevgeny Prigozhin

4. Yevgeny Prigozhin (1961 - 2023)

With an HPI of 72.28, Yevgeny Prigozhin is the 4th most famous Russian Military Personnel.  His biography has been translated into 77 different languages.

Yevgeny Viktorovich Prigozhin (Russian: Евгений Викторович Пригожин, IPA: [jɪvˈɡʲenʲɪj ˈvʲiktərəvʲɪtɕ prʲɪˈɡoʐɨn]; 1 June 1961 – 23 August 2023) was a Russian mercenary leader and oligarch. He led the Wagner Group private military company and was a close confidant of Russian president Vladimir Putin until launching a rebellion in June 2023. Prigozhin was sometimes referred to as "Putin's chef" because he owned restaurants and catering businesses that provided services to the Kremlin. Once a convict in the Soviet Union, Prigozhin controlled a network of influential companies whose operations, according to a 2020 investigation, were "tightly integrated with Russia's Defence Ministry and its intelligence arm, the GRU". In 2014, Prigozhin reportedly founded the Wagner Group to support pro-Russian paramilitaries in Ukraine. Funded by the Russian state, it played a significant role in Russia's invasion of Ukraine and supported Russian interests in Syria and in Africa. In November 2022, Prigozhin acknowledged his companies' interference in United States elections. In February 2023, he confirmed that he was the founder and long-time manager of the Internet Research Agency, a Russian company running online propaganda and disinformation campaigns. Prigozhin's companies and associates, and formerly Prigozhin himself, are subject to economic sanctions and criminal charges in the United States and the United Kingdom. In October 2020, the European Union (EU) imposed sanctions against Prigozhin for his financing of the Wagner Group's activities in Libya. In April 2022, the EU imposed further sanctions on him for his role in the Russian invasion of Ukraine. The FBI offered a reward of up to $250,000 for information leading to Prigozhin's arrest. Prigozhin openly criticized the Russian Defense Ministry for corruption and mishandling the war against Ukraine. Eventually, he said the reasons they gave for invading were lies. On 23 June 2023, he launched a rebellion against the Russian military leadership. Wagner forces captured Rostov-on-Don and advanced toward Moscow. The rebellion was called off the following day, and the criminal charges against Prigozhin were dropped after he agreed to relocate his forces to Belarus. On 23 August 2023, exactly two months after the rebellion, Prigozhin was killed along with nine other people when a business jet crashed in Tver Oblast, north of Moscow. The Wall Street Journal cited sources within the US government as saying that the crash was likely caused by a bomb on board or "some other form of sabotage". Since then, researchers and other analysts have reached the conclusion that an on-board bomb or explosive likely downed the plane.

Photo of Alexander Suvorov

5. Alexander Suvorov (1730 - 1800)

With an HPI of 71.52, Alexander Suvorov is the 5th most famous Russian Military Personnel.  His biography has been translated into 68 different languages.

Count Alexander Vasilyevich Suvorov-Rymniksky, Prince of Italy (24 November [O.S. 13 November] 1729 or 1730 – 18 May [O.S. 6 May] 1800; Russian: Князь Италийский граф Александр Васильевич Суворов-Рымникский, romanized: Kni͡az' Italiyskiy graf Aleksandr Vasil'yevič Suvorov-Rymnikskiy; IPA: [ɐlʲɪkˈsandr vɐˈsʲilʲjɪvʲɪtɕ sʊˈvorəf]), was a Russian general and military theorist in the service of the Russian Empire. Born in Moscow, he studied military history as a young boy and joined the Imperial Russian Army at the age of 17. Promoted to colonel in 1762 for his successes during the Seven Years' War, his victories during the War of the Bar Confederation included the capture of Kraków and victories at Orzechowo, Lanckorona, and Stołowicze. His reputation rose further when, in the Russo-Turkish War of 1768–1774, he captured Turtukaya twice and won a decisive victory at Kozludzha. After a period of little progress, he was promoted to general and led Russian forces in the Russo-Turkish War of 1787–1792, participating in the siege of Ochakov, as well as victories at Kinburn and Focșani. Suvorov won a decisive victory at the Battle of Rymnik, and afterwards defeated the Ottomans in the storming of Izmail. His victories at Focșani and Rymnik established him as the most brilliant general in Russia, if not in all of Europe. In 1794, he put down the Polish uprising, defeating them at the battle of Praga and elsewhere. After Catherine the Great died in 1796, her successor Paul I often quarrelled with Suvorov. After a period of ill-favour, Suvorov was recalled to a field marshal position at the outbreak of the French Revolutionary Wars. He was given command of the Austro-Russian army, and after a series of victories, such as the battle of the Trebbia, he captured Milan and Turin, and nearly erased all of Napoleon's Italian conquests of 1796–97. After an Austro-Russian army was defeated in Switzerland, Suvorov, ordered to reinforce them, was cut off by André Masséna and later surrounded in the Swiss Alps. His successful extraction of the exhausted, ill-supplied, and heavily-outnumbered Russian army was rewarded by a promotion to Generalissimo. Masséna himself would later confess that he would exchange all of his victories for Suvorov's passage of the Alps. Suvorov died in 1800 of illness in Saint Petersburg. He was instrumental in expanding the Russian Empire, as his success ensured Russia's conquering of Kuban, Crimea, and New Russia. One of the foremost generals in all of military history, and considered the greatest military commander in Russian history, Suvorov has been compared to Napoleon in military generalship. Undefeated, he has been described as the best general Republican France ever fought, and noted as "one of those rare generals who were consistently successful despite suffering from considerable disadvantages." Suvorov was also admired by his soldiers throughout his whole military life, and was respected for his honest service and truthfulness.

Photo of Ivan Konev

6. Ivan Konev (1897 - 1973)

With an HPI of 70.81, Ivan Konev is the 6th most famous Russian Military Personnel.  His biography has been translated into 55 different languages.

Ivan Stepanovich Konev (Russian: Ива́н Степа́нович Ко́нев, IPA: [ɪˈvan sʲtʲɪˈpanəvʲɪtɕ ˈkonʲɪf]; 28 December 1897 – 21 May 1973) was a Soviet general and Marshal of the Soviet Union who led Red Army forces on the Eastern Front during World War II, responsible for taking much of Axis-occupied Eastern Europe. Born to a peasant family, Konev was conscripted into the Imperial Russian Army in 1916 and fought in World War I. In 1919, he joined the Bolsheviks and served in the Red Army during the Russian Civil War. After graduating from Frunze Military Academy in 1926, Konev gradually rose through the ranks of the Soviet military. By 1939, he had become a candidate to the Central Committee of the Communist Party. Following the German invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941, Konev took part in a series of major campaigns, including the battles of Moscow and Rzhev. Konev further commanded forces in major Soviet offensives at Kursk, in the Dnieper–Carpathian and Vistula–Oder offensives. In February 1944, he was made a Marshal of the Soviet Union. On the eve of German defeat, Konev's 1st Ukrainian Front was pitted against the armies of Georgy Zhukov in the Race to Berlin. Konev was the first Allied commander to enter Prague, the capital of Czechoslovakia, after the Prague uprising. He replaced Zhukov as commander of Soviet ground forces in 1946. In 1956, he was appointed commander of the Warsaw Pact armed forces, and led the violent suppression of the Hungarian Revolution and Prague Spring. In 1961, as commander of Soviet forces in East Germany, he ordered the closing of West Berlin to East Berlin during the building of the Berlin Wall. Konev remained a popular military figure in the Soviet Union until his death in 1973.

Photo of Mikhail Tukhachevsky

7. Mikhail Tukhachevsky (1893 - 1937)

With an HPI of 70.39, Mikhail Tukhachevsky is the 7th most famous Russian Military Personnel.  His biography has been translated into 50 different languages.

Mikhail Nikolayevich Tukhachevsky (Russian: Михаил Николаевич Тухачевский, romanized: Mikhail Nikolayevich Tukhachevskiy, IPA: [tʊxɐˈtɕefskʲɪj]; 16 February [O.S. 4 February] 1893 – 12 June 1937), nicknamed the Red Napoleon, was a Soviet general who was prominent between 1918 and 1937 as a military officer and theoretician. He was later executed during the Moscow trials of 1936–1938. He served as an officer in World War I of 1914–1917 and in the Russian Civil War of 1917–1923, leading the defense of the Moscow district (1918), commanding forces on the Eastern Front (1918), commanding the Fifth Army in the recapture of Siberia from Alexander Kolchak, and heading Cossack forces against Anton Denikin (1920). From 1920 to 1921 he commanded the Soviet Western Front in the Polish–Soviet War. Soviet forces under his command successfully repelled the Polish forces from Western Ukraine, driving them back into Poland, but the Red Army suffered defeat outside of Warsaw, and the war ended in a Soviet defeat. Tukhachevsky blamed Joseph Stalin for his defeat at the Battle of Warsaw. He later served as chief of staff of the Red Army from 1925 through 1928, as assistant in the People's Commissariat of Defense after 1934 and as commander of the Volga Military District in 1937. He achieved the rank of Marshal of the Soviet Union in 1935. As a major proponent of modernisation of Soviet armament and army force structure in the 1920s and 1930s, he became instrumental in the development of Soviet aviation, and of mechanized and airborne forces. As a theoretician, he was a driving force behind the Soviet development of the theory of deep operations in the 1920s and 1930s. Soviet authorities accused Tukhachevsky of treason, and after confessing during torture he was executed in 1937 during Stalin's and Yezhov's military purges of 1936–1938. Tukhachevsky was born at Alexandrovskoye, Safonovsky District (in the present-day Smolensk Oblast of Russia), into a family of impoverished hereditary nobles. Legend states that his family descended from a Flemish count who ended up stranded in the East during the Crusades and took a Turkish wife before settling in Russia. His great-grandfather Alexander Tukhachevsky (1793–1831) served as a colonel in the Imperial Russian Army. He was of Russian ethnicity. After attending the Cadet Corps in 1912, he moved on to the Aleksandrovskoye Military School, where he graduated in 1914. At the outset of the First World War he joined the Semyenovsky Guards Regiment (July 1914) as a second lieutenant, declaring: I am convinced that all that is needed in order to achieve what I want is bravery and self-confidence. I certainly have enough self-confidence.... I told myself that I shall either be a general at thirty, or that I shall not be alive by then. Taken prisoner by the Imperial German Army in February 1915, Tukhachevsky escaped four times from prisoner-of-war camps and was finally held as an incorrigible escapee in Ingolstadt fortress in Bavaria. Fluent in French, there he met Le Monde journalist Remy Roure and shared a cell with Captain Charles de Gaulle. Tukhachevsky played his violin, assailed nihilist beliefs and spoke against Christians and Jews, whom he called dogs who "spread their fleas throughout the world". Later in various works he made Russians familiar with De Gaulle's military thinking. Roure, under the pseudonym of Pierre Fervacque, wrote about his encounter with Tukhachevsky. He reported that Tukhachevsky highly praised Napoleon, and also in a certain conversation, Tukhachevsky said he hated Jews for bringing Christianity and the "morality of capital" to Russia. Roure then asked him if he was a socialist, and he replied: Socialist? Certainly not! What a need for classification you have! Besides, the great socialists are Jews and the socialist doctrine is a branch of universal Christianity. I laugh at money, and whether the land is divided up or not is all one to me. The barbarians, my ancestors, lived in common, but they had chiefs. No, I detest socialists, Jews, and Christians. According to Roure, Tukhachevsky said that he would only follow Lenin if he "de-europeanised and threw Russia into barbarism", but feared Lenin would not do that. After ranting about how he could use Marxism as a justification to secure the territorial aims of the Tsars and cement Russia's position as a world power, he laughed and said he was only joking. Roure said the laugh had an ironic and despairing tone. In another, different occasion, following the February Revolution, Roure observed Tukhachevsky carving a "scary idol from colored cardboard", with "burning eyes", a "gaping mouth", and a "bizarre and terrible nose". He inquired about its purpose, to which Tukhachevsky responded: "This is Perun. A powerful person. This is the god of war and death." And Mikhail knelt down before him with comic seriousness. I burst out laughing. "Don't laugh," he said, getting up from his knees. – I told you that the Slavs need a new religion. They are given Marxism, but there is too much modernism and civilization in this theology. (...) There is Dazhbog – the god of the Sun, Stribog – the god of the Wind, Veles – the god of arts and poetry, and finally, Perun – the god of thunder and lightning. After some deliberation, I settled on Perun, since Marxism, having won in Russia, will unleash merciless wars between people. I will honor Perun every day." Tukhachevsky's apparent neo-paganism was also corroborated by another prisoner at Ingolstadt, Nikolay Alexandrovich Tsurikov, who recalled that he once saw a "scarecrow" in the corner of Tukhachevsky's cell, and upon asking him as to what it was, Tukhachevsky responded (to what Tsurikov interpreted as heavy sarcasm), that it was an effigy of Yarilo (the Slavic god of vegetation, fertility and springtime), which he had created during Shrovetide. Tukhachevsky never denied, and later even confirmed, these stories about his imprisonment in Germany, but always said that he was politically immature in 1917 and greatly regretted his early views. In France 1936, when confronted with what Roure wrote about him, he said that he had read his book and stated the following:I was still very young... a novice at politics, and all I knew about revolutions was the last phase of the citizens' revolution in France: the Bonapartism whose military triumphs filled me with boundless admiration. (...) I never think of my views at Ingolstadt without regretting them, since they could cause doubts about my devotion to the Soviet motherland. I'm taking advantage of our reunion to tell you my true feelings.Whether or not Tukhachevsky really gave up on his old views, the assertion that he was a fully-fledged Bolshevik by the time he joined them is considered to be most likely not true. Tukhachevsky's fifth escape met with success, and after crossing the Swiss-German border, carrying with him some small pagan idols, he returned to Russia in September 1917. Following the October Revolution of 1917, Tukhachevsky joined the Bolsheviks and went on to play a key role in the Red Army despite his noble ancestry. He became an officer in the newly established Red Army and rapidly advanced in rank because of his great ability. During the Russian Civil War, he was given responsibility for defending Moscow. The Bolshevik Defence Commissar, Leon Trotsky, gave Tukhachevsky command of the 5th Army in 1919, and he led the campaign to capture Siberia from the anticommunist White forces of Aleksandr Kolchak. Tukhachevsky used concentrated attacks to exploit the enemy's open flanks and threaten them with envelopment. According to Tukhachevsky's close confidant Leonid Sabaneyev, in 1918, when he was in the service of the Military Department of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee, in his last overt display of neopaganism, Tukhachevsky drew up a project for destruction of Christianity and restoration of Slavic paganism. To this end, Tukhachevsky submitted a memo on declaring paganism as the state religion of the RSFSR, which although mocked, also received some serious discussion in the Small Council of People's Commissars, which commended Tukhachevsky for his "joke" and his commitment to atheism. Sabaneyev observed that Tukhachevsky seemed "as happy as a schoolboy who had just succeeded in a prank." He also helped defeat General Anton Denikin in the Crimea in 1920, conducting the final operations. In February 1920, he launched an offensive into the Kuban, using cavalry to disrupt the enemy's rear. In the retreat that followed, Denikin's force disintegrated, and Novorossiysk was evacuated hastily. In the final stage of the civil war, Tukhachevsky commanded the 7th Army during the suppression of the Kronstadt rebellion in March 1921. He also commanded the assault against the Tambov Republic between 1921 and 1922. Tukhachevsky commanded the Soviet invasion of Poland during the Polish-Soviet War in 1920. In the lead-up to hostilities, Tukhachevsky concentrated his troops near Vitebsk, which he theatrically dubbed, "The Gates of Smolensk". When he issued his troops orders to cross the border, Tukhachevsky said, "The fate of world revolution is being decided in the west: the way leads over the corpse of Poland to a universal conflagration.... On to Wilno, Minsk, and Warsaw – forward!" According to Richard M. Watt, "The boldness of Tukhachevsky's drive westward was the key to his success. The Soviet High Command dispatched 60,000 men as reinforcements, but Tukhachevsky never stopped to let them catch up. His onrushing armies were leaving behind greater numbers of stragglers every day, but Tukhachevsky ignored these losses. His supply services were in chaos and his rear scarcely existed as an organized entity, but Tukhachevsky was unconcerned; his men would live off the land. On the day his troops captured Minsk, a new cry arose – 'Give us Warsaw!' Tukhachevsky was determined to give them what they wanted. All things considered, Tukhachevsky's performance was a virtuoso display of energy, determination, and, indeed, rashness." His armies were defeated by Józef Piłsudski outside Warsaw. It was during the Polish war that Tukhachevsky first came into conflict with Stalin. Both blamed the other for the Soviet failure to capture Warsaw. Tukhachevsky later lamented: There can be no doubt that if we had been victorious on the Vistula, the revolutionary fires would have reached the entire continent. His book about the war was translated into Polish and published together with a book by Piłsudski. Tukhachevsky fervently criticised the Red Army's performance during the 1926 Summer manoeuvres. He criticised the officers' inability to determine what course of action to take and communicate that with their troops especially harshly. Tukhachevsky noted that initiative among officers was lacking, that they responded slowly to changes in the situation and that communication was poor. This was not purely the officers' fault as the only way of communication from local unit headquarters to the field positions was a single telephone line. In contrast German divisions mobilised shortly after during the interwar period had telephones, radio, horse, cycle and motorcycle messengers, signal lights and flags and pieces of cloth with which messages were to be conveyed mostly to aircraft. Tukhachevsky reached the position of 1st deputy commissar for defence to commissar for defence Kliment Voroshilov. Voroshilov disliked Tukhachevsky and would later be one of the initiators of the great purge which wouldn't benefit Tukhachevsky's safety. According to Zhukov it was Tukhachevsky and not Voroshilov who ran the ministry in practice. While Voroshilov disliked Tukhachevsky, his perception of military doctrine was nonetheless impacted significantly by Tukhachevsky's ideas. According to Simon Sebag Montefiore, Stalin regarded Tukhachevsky as his bitterest rival and dubbed him Napoleonchik (little Napoleon). Upon Stalin's ascension to Party leadership in 1929, he began receiving denunciations from senior officers who disapproved of Tukhachevsky's tactical theories. Then, in 1930, the OGPU forced two officers to testify that Tukhachevsky was plotting to overthrow the Politburo via a coup d'état. According to Montefiore: In 1930, this was perhaps too outrageous even for the Bolsheviks. Stalin, not yet dictator, probed his powerful ally Sergo Ordzhonikidze: "Only Molotov, myself, and now you are in the know.... Is it possible? What a business! Discuss it with Molotov...". However, Sergo would not go that far. There would be no arrest and trial of Tukhachevsky in 1930: the commander "turns out to be 100% clean," Stalin wrote disingenuously to Molotov in October, "That's very good." It is interesting that seven years before the Great Terror, Stalin was testing the same accusations against the same victims – a dress rehearsal for 1937 – but he could not get the support. The archives reveal a fascinating sequel: once he understood the ambitious modernity of Tukhachevsky's strategies, Stalin apologised to him: "Now the question has become clearer to me, I have to agree that my remark was too strong and my conclusions were not right at all." Following this, Tukhachevsky wrote several books on modern warfare and, in 1931, after Stalin had accepted the need for an industrialized military, Tukhachevsky was given a leading role in reforming the army. He held advanced ideas on military strategy, particularly on use of tanks and aircraft in combined operations. Tukhachevsky took a keen interest in the arts, and became a political patron and close friend of composer Dmitri Shostakovich; they met in 1925 and subsequently played music together at the Marshal's home (Tukhachevsky played the violin). In 1936, Shostakovich's music was under attack following the Pravda denunciation of his opera Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk. However, Tukhachevsky intervened with Stalin on his friend's behalf. After Tukhachevsky's arrest, pressure was put on Shostakovich to denounce him, but he was saved from doing so by the fact that the investigator was himself arrested. Tukhachevsky is often credited with the theory of deep operation in which combined arms formations strike deep behind enemy lines to destroy the enemy's rear and logistics, but his exact role is unclear and disputed because of shortage of firsthand sources, and his published works containing only limited amounts of theory on the subject. The theories were opposed by some in the military establishment but were largely adopted by the Red Army in the mid-1930s. They were expressed as a concept in the Red Army's Field Regulations of 1929 and more fully developed in the 1935 Instructions on Deep Battle. The concept was finally codified into the army in 1936 in the Provisional Field Regulations of 1936. An early example of potential effectiveness of deep operations can be found in the Soviet victory over Japan at the Battle of Khalkhin Gol (Nomonhan), where a Soviet Corps under the command of Georgy Zhukov defeated a substantial Japanese force in August and September 1939. It is often stated that the widespread purges of the Red Army officer corps in 1937 to 1939 made "deep operations" briefly fall from favour. However, they were certainly a major part of Soviet doctrine after their efficacy was demonstrated by the Battle of Khalkin Gol and the success of similar German operations in Poland and France. They were used with great success during World War II on the Eastern Front, in such victories as the Battle of Stalingrad and Operation Bagration. On November 20, 1935, Tukhachevsky was made a Marshal of the Soviet Union when he was 42. In January 1936, Tukhachevsky visited the United Kingdom, France, and Germany. Just before his arrest, Tukhachevsky was relieved of duty as assistant to Marshal Voroshilov and appointed military commander of the Volga Military District. Shortly after departing to take up his new command, he was secretly arrested on May 22, 1937, and brought back to Moscow in a prison van. Tukhachevsky's interrogation and torture were directly supervised by NKVD Chief Nikolai Yezhov. Stalin instructed Yezhov, "See for yourself, but Tukhachevsky should be forced to tell everything... It's impossible he acted alone." According to Montefiore, a few days later, as Yezhov buzzed in and out of Stalin's office, a broken Tukhachevsky confessed that Avel Yenukidze had recruited him in 1928 and that he was a German agent cooperating with Nikolai Bukharin to seize power. Tukhachevsky's confession, which survives in the archives, is dappled with a brown spray that was later found to be blood-spattered by a body in motion. Stalin commented, "It's incredible, but it's a fact, they admit it." On June 11, 1937, the Soviet Supreme Court convened a special military tribunal to try Tukhachevsky and eight generals for treason. The trial was dubbed the Case of the Trotskyist Anti-Soviet Military Organization. Upon hearing the accusations, Tukhachevsky was heard to say, "I feel I'm dreaming." Most of the judges were also terrified. One was heard to comment, "Tomorrow I'll be put in the same place." At 11:35 that night, all of the defendants were declared guilty and sentenced to death. Stalin, who was awaiting the verdict with Yezhov, Molotov and Lazar Kaganovich, did not even examine the transcripts. He simply said, "Agreed." Within the hour, Tukhachevsky was summoned from his cell by NKVD captain Vasily Blokhin. As Yezhov watched, the former Marshal was shot once in the back of the head. Immediately afterward, Yezhov was summoned into Stalin's presence. Stalin asked, "What were Tukhachevsky's last words?" Yezhov responded, "The snake said he was dedicated to the Motherland and Comrade Stalin. He asked for clemency. But it was obvious that he was not being straight, he hadn't laid down his arms." Tukhachevsky's family members all suffered after his execution. His wife, Nina Tukhachevskaya, and his brothers Alexandr and Nikolai, both instructors in a Soviet military academy, were all shot. Three of his sisters were sent to the Gulag. His underage daughter was arrested when she reached adulthood and remained in the Gulag until the 1950s Khrushchev Thaw. She lived in Moscow after her release and died in 1982. Leon Trotsky described Tukhachevsky posthumously as a "outstanding talent" due to his strategic skills and viewed the purge of the Red Army by the Stalinist bureaucracy as a means of preserving its political position. Before Nikita Khrushchev's Secret Speech in 1956, Tukhachevsky was officially considered a fascist and fifth columnist. Soviet diplomats and supporters in the West enthusiastically promulgated this opinion. Then, on January 31, 1957, Tukhachevsky and his codefendants were declared innocent of all charges and were rehabilitated. Although Tukhachevsky's prosecution is almost universally regarded as a sham, Stalin's motivations continue to be debated. In his 1968 book The Great Terror, British historian Robert Conquest accuses Nazi Party leaders Heinrich Himmler and Reinhard Heydrich of forging documents that implicated Tukhachevsky in an anti-Stalinist conspiracy with the Wehrmacht General Staff, to weaken the Soviet Union's defence capacity. These documents, Conquest said, were leaked to President Edvard Beneš of Czechoslovakia, who passed them to Soviet Russia through diplomatic channels. Conquest's thesis of an SS conspiracy to frame Tukhachevsky was based upon the memoirs of Walter Schellenberg and Beneš. In 1989, the Politburo of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union announced that new evidence had been found in Stalin's archives indicating German intelligence's intentions to fabricate disinformation about Tukhachevsky with the goal of eliminating him. "Knowledge of personal characteristics of Stalin – like paranoia and extreme suspicion, had been possibly highest factor in it." According to the opinion of Igor Lukes, who conducted a study on the matter, it was Stalin, Kaganovich and Yezhov who actually concocted Tukhachevsky's "treason" themselves. At Yezhov's order, the NKVD had instructed a known double agent, Nikolai Skoblin, to leak to Heydrich's Sicherheitsdienst (SD) concocted information suggesting a plot by Tukhachevsky and the other Soviet generals against Stalin. Seeing an opportunity to strike a blow at the Soviet military, Heydrich immediately acted on the information and undertook to improve on it. Heydrich's forgeries were later leaked to the Soviets via Beneš and other neutral nations. While the SD believed that it had successfully fooled Stalin into executing his best generals, in reality, it had merely served as an unwitting pawn of the Soviet NKVD. Ironically, Heydrich's forgeries were never used at trial. Instead, Soviet prosecutors relied on signed "confessions" beaten out of the defendants. In 1956, NKVD defector Aleksandr Mikhailovich Orlov published an article in Life Magazine with "The Sensational Secret Behind the Damnation of Stalin" as title. The story held that NKVD agents had discovered papers in the tsarist Okhrana archives proving Stalin had once been an informer. From this knowledge, the NKVD agents had planned a coup d'état with Tukhachevsky and other senior officers in the Red Army. According to Orlov, Stalin uncovered the conspiracy and used Yezhov to execute those responsible. The article lists the Eremin letter as documentary evidence that Stalin was part of the Okhrana, but most historians agree it's a forgery. Simon Sebag Montefiore, who has conducted extensive research in Soviet archives, states: Stalin needed neither Nazi disinformation nor mysterious Okhrana files to persuade him to destroy Tukhachevsky. After all, he had played with the idea as early as 1930, three years before Hitler took power. Furthermore, Stalin and his cronies were convinced that officers were to be distrusted and physically exterminated at the slightest suspicion. He reminisced to Voroshilov, in an undated note, about the officers arrested in the summer of 1918. "These officers," he said, "we wanted to shoot en masse." Nothing had changed. It has been speculated that the reason why Stalin had Tukhachevsky and other high ranking generals executed was to remove a potential threat to his political power. Ultimately, Stalin and Yezhov would orchestrate the arrest and execution of thousands of Soviet military officers as well as five of the eight generals who presided over Tukhachevsky's show trial. While at the time of his death the Red Army was still firmly in the grip of the cavalry, Tukhachevsky had changed the Red Army's mentality quite significantly. While many machine-gunners were being arrested and marshal Budyonny spoke in favour of cavalry, influential people – even including marshal Voroshilov, under whom Tukhachevsky served, and who took part in the arrests – began to question the cavalry's position inside the Red Army. The horse remained ingrained in the Red Army, however. In peacetime, cavalry made sense to the Red Army; it was effective in smaller actions and internal security actions, many horse riders were available without requiring significant training, and there were the memories of the effectiveness of cavalry during the Civil War, all of which helped the horse in maintaining its central position inside the Red Army. When the Second World War began mixed units were set up, which included both cavalry and tanks; these played a central role in use of the deep operations doctrine during WWII. Imperial awards Order of St. Anne, 2nd class with swords, also awarded 3rd class with swords and bow; and 4th class with the inscription "For Courage" Order of St. Stanislaus, 2nd class with swords, also awarded 3rd class with swords and bow Order of St. Vladimir, 4th class with swords Soviet awards Order of Lenin (21 February 1933) Order of the Red Banner (August 7, 1919) Honorary revolutionary weapon (December 17, 1919) Kurt Agricola, "Der rote Marschall. Tuchatschewskis Aufstieg und Fall" (The Red Marshall: The Rise and Fall of Tukhachevsky), 1939, Kleine "Wehrmacht" – Bücherei, 5 The Red Bonaparte Newspaper clippings about Mikhail Tukhachevsky in the 20th Century Press Archives of the ZBW

Photo of Vasily Chuikov

8. Vasily Chuikov (1900 - 1982)

With an HPI of 69.57, Vasily Chuikov is the 8th most famous Russian Military Personnel.  His biography has been translated into 50 different languages.

Vasily Ivanovich Chuikov (Russian: Васи́лий Ива́нович Чуйко́в, Russian: [vɐˈsʲilʲɪj t͡ɕʉjkof] ; 12 February [O.S. 31 January] 1900 – 18 March 1982) was a Soviet military commander and Marshal of the Soviet Union. He is best known for commanding the 62nd Army which saw heavy combat during the Battle of Stalingrad in the Second World War. Born to a peasant family near Tula, Chuikov earned his living as a factory worker from the age of 12. After the Russian Revolution of 1917, he joined the Red Army and distinguished himself during the Russian Civil War. After graduating from the Frunze Military Academy, Chuikov worked as a military attaché and intelligence officer in China and the Russian Far East. At the outbreak of the Second World War, Chuikov commanded the 4th Army during the Soviet invasion of Poland, and the 9th Army during the Winter War against Finland. In December 1940, he was again appointed military attaché to China in support of Chiang Kai-shek and the Nationalists in the war against Japan. In March 1942, Chuikov was recalled from China to defend against the German invasion of the Soviet Union. By September, he was assigned command of the 62nd Army in defense of Stalingrad. Tasked with holding the city at all costs, Chuikov adopted keeping the Soviet front-line positions as close to the Germans as physically possible. This served as an effective countermeasure against the Wehrmacht's combined-arms tactics, but by mid-November 1942 the Germans had captured most of the city after months of slow advance. In late November Chuikov's 62nd Army joined the rest of the Soviet forces in a counter-offensive, which led to the surrender of the German 6th Army in early 1943. After Stalingrad, Chuikov led his forces into Poland during Operation Bagration and the Vistula–Oder Offensive before advancing on Berlin. He personally accepted the unconditional surrender of German forces in Berlin on 2 May 1945. After the war, Chuikov served as Chief of the Group of Soviet Forces in Germany (1949–53), commander of the Kiev Military District (1953–60), Chief of the Soviet Armed Forces and Deputy Minister of Defense (1960–64), and head of the Soviet Civil Defense Forces (1961–72). Chuikov was twice awarded the titles Hero of the Soviet Union (1944 and 1945) and was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross by the United States for his actions during the Battle of Stalingrad. In 1955, he was named a Marshal of the Soviet Union. Following his death in 1982, Chuikov was interred at the Stalingrad memorial at Mamayev Kurgan, which had been the site of heavy fighting.

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9. Pyotr Bagration (1765 - 1812)

With an HPI of 68.28, Pyotr Bagration is the 9th most famous Russian Military Personnel.  His biography has been translated into 48 different languages.

Prince Pyotr Ivanovich Bagration (10 July 1765 – 24 September 1812) was a Russian general and prince of Georgian origin, prominent during the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars. Bagration, a member of the Bagrationi dynasty, was born in Kizlyar. His father, Ivan (Ivane), served as an officer in the Imperial Russian Army, in which Bagration also enlisted in 1782. Pyotr Ivanovich Bagration began his military career serving in the Russo-Circassian War of 1763–1864 for a couple of years. Afterwards he participated in a war against the Ottomans and the capture of Ochakov in 1788. Later he helped suppress the Kościuszko Uprising of 1794 in Poland and capture Warsaw. During Russia's Italian and Swiss campaigns of 1799 against the French, he served with distinction under Field Marshal Alexander Suvorov. In 1805 Russia joined the coalition against Napoleon. After the collapse of the Austrians at Ulm in October 1805, Bagration won praise for his successful defense in the Battle of Schöngrabern (November 1805) that allowed Russian forces to withdraw and unite with the main Russian army of Mikhail Kutuzov. In December 1805 the combined Russo-Austrian army suffered defeat at the Battle of Austerlitz, where Bagration commanded the allied right wing against the French under Jean Lannes. Later he commanded Russian troops in the Finnish War (1808–1809) against Sweden and in another war against the Turks (1806–1812) on the Danube. During the French invasion of Russia in 1812, Bagration commanded one of two large Russian armies (Barclay de Tolly commanded the other) fighting a series of rear-guard actions. The Russians failed to stop the French advance at the Battle of Smolensk in August 1812. Barclay had proposed a scorched-earth retreat that the Emperor Alexander I of Russia had approved, although Bagration preferred to confront the French in a major battle. Mikhail Kutuzov succeeded Barclay as Commander-in-Chief but continued his policy until the Battle of Borodino (7 September [O.S. 26 August] 1812) near Moscow. Bagration commanded the left wing around what became known as the Bagration flèches at Borodino, where he was mortally wounded; he died a couple of weeks later. Originally buried at a local church, in 1839 he was reburied on the battlefield of Borodino.

Photo of Aleksandr Vasilevsky

10. Aleksandr Vasilevsky (1895 - 1977)

With an HPI of 68.11, Aleksandr Vasilevsky is the 10th most famous Russian Military Personnel.  His biography has been translated into 50 different languages.

Aleksandr Mikhaylovich Vasilevsky (Russian: Александр Михайлович Василевский) (30 September 1895 – 5 December 1977) was a Soviet career-officer in the Red Army who attained the rank of Marshal of the Soviet Union in 1943. He served as the Chief of the General Staff of the Soviet Armed Forces (1942–1945) and Deputy Minister of Defense during World War II, and as Minister of Defense from 1949 to 1953. As the Chief of the General Staff from 1942 to 1945, Vasilevsky became involved in planning and coordinating almost all the decisive Soviet offensives in World War II, from the Operation Uranus of November 1942 to the assaults on East Prussia (January–April 1945), Königsberg (January–April 1945) and Manchuria (August 1945). Vasilevsky began his military career during World War I, earning the rank of captain by 1917. After the October Revolution of 1917 and the start of the Civil War of 1917–1922 he was conscripted into the Red Army, taking part in the Polish-Soviet War of 1919–1921. In peacetime he quickly rose through the ranks, becoming a regimental commander by 1930. In this position he showed great skill in organizing and training his troops. Vasilevsky's talent was noticed, and in 1931 he was appointed a member of the Directorate of Military Training. In 1937, following Stalin's Great Purge, he was promoted to become a General Staff officer. At the start of the 1943 Soviet counteroffensive of World War II, Vasilevsky coordinated and executed the Red Army's offensives on the upper Don, in the Donbas, Crimea, Belarus and the Baltic states, ending his war in Europe with the capture of Königsberg in April 1945. In July 1945 he was appointed Commander-in-Chief of Soviet forces in the Far East. He executed the Manchurian Strategic Offensive Operation (August 1945). After the war he became the Soviet Defense Minister from 1949 to 1953, a position he held until after Stalin's death in 1953. With Nikita Khrushchev's rise to pre-eminence in the mid-1950s, Vasilevsky began losing power and was eventually pensioned off. After his death he was buried in the Kremlin Wall necropolis in recognition of his past service and contributions to his country.

People

Pantheon has 161 people classified as Russian military personnels born between 1532 and 1993. Of these 161, 11 (6.83%) of them are still alive today. The most famous living Russian military personnels include Valery Gerasimov, Sergei Skripal, and Sergey Surovikin. The most famous deceased Russian military personnels include Mikhail Kutuzov, Vasily Zaitsev, and Stanislav Petrov. As of April 2024, 33 new Russian military personnels have been added to Pantheon including Yevgeny Prigozhin, Dmitry Utkin, and Sergey Surovikin.

Living Russian Military Personnels

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Newly Added Russian Military Personnels (2024)

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Overlapping Lives

Which Military Personnels were alive at the same time? This visualization shows the lifespans of the 25 most globally memorable Military Personnels since 1700.