Pavel Batov

Born May 20 (June 1), 1897, in the village of Filisovo, Rybinsk District, Yaroslavl Province. General of the army since 1955; twice Hero of the Soviet Union (Oct. 30, 1943, and June 2, 1945). Member of the CPSU since 1929. Born into the family of a poor peasant.

Batov has been in the army since 1915. He fought in World War I, becoming a junior noncommissioned officer. In August 1918 he voluntarily joined the Red Army and took part in the Civil War. In 1927 he successfully completed the training courses of Vystrel, the higher infantry school of the Soviet Army, and in 1950 he took the higher academic courses at the Academy of the General Staff. He participated in the Spanish Civil War in 1936–37 and was severely wounded. From 1937 he commanded an infantry corps and fought in the Soviet-Finnish war of 1939–40. From 1940 until June 1941 he was deputy commander of the troops in the Transcaucasian Military District. During the Great Patriotic War he served as commander of a rifle corps, deputy army commander (June 1941–January 1942), army commander, and assistant commander of the troops of the Briansk Front (January-October 1942); from October 1942 he commanded the Sixty Fifth Army, which fought in the battles of Stalingrad and Kursk, in the battle for the Dnieper, in the liberation of Byelorussia, Poland, and in the Vistula-Oder and Berlin campaigns. In the postwar period he has held various command positions. From 1962 to 1965 he was chief of staff of the combined armed forces of the nations of the Warsaw Treaty Organization. Since 1965 he has held a responsible position in the Ministry of Defense. He was deputy to the USSR Supreme Soviet in the first, second, and fourth through sixth convocations. He is author of the three volumes of memoirs—On Campaigns and in Battle (1962), The Oder Operation (1965), and A Dependable Shield (1965). He has been awarded five Orders of Lenin, three Orders of the Red Banner, three Orders of Suvorov First Class, the Order of Kutuzov First Class, the Order of Bogdan Khmel’nitskii First Class, the Order of the Badge of Honor, three foreign orders, and various medals.