Romanovskii, Vladimir Zakharovich

Born June 18 (30), 1896, in the village of Veshalovka, now in Lipetsk Raion, Lipetsk Oblast; died Sept. 5, 1967, in Moscow. Soviet military leader; colonel general (1945). Member of the CPSU from 1920. Son of a peasant.

Romanovskii fought in World War I, joined the Red Army in 1918, and fought in the Civil War of 1918–20 as the commissar of an armored train. He graduated from the M. V. Frunze Military Academy in 1935 and from the Higher Academic Training Courses at the Military Academy of the General Staff in 1948. During the Great Patriotic War, Romanovskii was commander of the Arkhangelsk Military District (1941–42), deputy commander and then commander of the First Shock Army (April-November 1942) and the Second Shock Army (December 1942–December 1943), deputy commander of the troops of the Fourth Ukrainian Front (January-February 1944), and commander of the troops of the Sixty-seventh Army (March 1944–February 1945) and the Nineteenth Army (March-June 1945) on the Northwestern, Volkhov, Leningrad, Third Baltic, and Second Byelorussian fronts. He served as commander of several military districts from 1945 to 1951 and was chief of the Higher Academic Training Courses from 1952 to 1957 and head of a department at the M. V. Frunze Military Academy from 1957 to 1959. He went into retirement in October 1959 for reasons of health.

Romanovskii was a deputy to the Supreme Soviet of the USSR at the second and third convocations. He was awarded the Order of Lenin, six Orders of the Red Banner, the Order of Suvorov First and Second Class, two Orders of Kutuzov First Class, various medals, and two foreign orders.