Semen Pavlovich Ivanov

Born Aug. 18 (31), 1907, in the village of Porechno, in present-day Smolensk Raion, Smolensk Oblast. Soviet military commander, general of the army (1968), Hero of the Soviet Union (Sept. 8, 1945). Became a member of the CPSU in 1929. The son of a peasant.

Ivanov volunteered for the Red Army in 1926, graduated from the Moscow Infantry School in 1929 and from the M.V. Frunze Military Academy in 1939, and was appointed chief of staff of an infantry corps in January 1940, taking part in the Soviet-Finnish War. In the Great Patriotic War (1941–45), Ivanov was chief of the operations department of the Thirteenth Army (June to December 1941); chief of staff of the Thirty-eighth, First Tank, and First Guard armies of the Southwestern and Don fronts (December 1941 to October 1942); and chief of the operations department and chief of staff of the Southwestern Front (October 1942 to May 1943), the Voronezh and First Ukrainian fronts (May to November 1943), the Transcaucasian Front (November 1943 to October 1944), and the Third Ukrainian Front (October 1944 to May 1945). In 1945 he served in the war against Japan and was chief of staff of the Far Eastern Forces. After the war, he was chief of staff of several military districts and of the Soviet Troop Group in Germany and deputy chief of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of the USSR. Ivanov was commander of the troops of the Siberian Military District from 1964 to 1968 and chief of the K.E. Voroshilov Military Academy of the General Staff from April 1968 to 1973. He became an inspector of the Inspectors’ General Group in the Ministry of Defense of the USSR in February 1973.

A deputy to the seventh convocation of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, Ivanov has been awarded three Orders of Lenin, six Orders of the Red Banner, the Order of Suvorov First Class, the Order of Kutuzov First Class, the Order of the Red Banner of Labor, the Order of the Red Star, six foreign orders, and medals.