Ivan Ivanovich Maslennikov

Born Sept. 3 (16), 1900, in Chalykla Station, now in Ozinki Raion, Saratov Oblast; died Apr. 16, 1954, in Moscow. Soviet military leader; general of the army (1944); Hero of the Soviet Union (Sept. 8, 1945). Member of the CPSU from 1924.

Maslennikov entered the Red Army in 1918. He graduated from the M. V. Frunze Military Academy in 1935 and from the Higher Academic Training Courses in 1948. He took part in the Civil War of 1918-20 as commander of a cavalry group and a cavalry regiment. In 1928 he held important positions in the Unified State Political Directorate (OGPU) and the People’s Commissariat of Internal Affairs. During the Great Patriotic War of 1941-45 he served as commander of the troops of the Twenty-ninth and Thirty-ninth armies of the Western and Kalinin fronts (1941-42), the Northern Group of Forces of the Transcaucasian Front, and the troops of the North Caucasian Front (1942-43); deputy commander of the troops of the Volkhov, Southwestern, Third Ukrainian, and Leningrad fronts; commander of the troops of the Forty-second Army (1943-44) and the Third Baltic Front (1944); and deputy commander in chief of Soviet forces in the Far East (1945). After the war he commanded the troops of the Baku and Transcaucasian military districts (1945-47), and in June 1948 he began work at the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the USSR.

Maslennikov was a deputy to the Supreme Soviet of the USSR at the first and second convocations. In 1939 he became a candidate member of the Central Committee of the CPSU. He was awarded four Orders of Lenin, four Orders of the Red Banner, the Order of Suvorov First Class, two Orders of Kutuzov First Class, the Order of the Red Star, the Order of the Red Banner of the Mongolian People’s Republic, and various medals.