Bogdanov, Semen Ilich

Born Aug. 17 (29), 1894, in St. Petersburg; died Mar. 12, 1960, in Moscow. Marshal of Armored Forces (1945). Twice Hero of the Soviet Union (Mar. 11,1944 and Apr. 6,1945). Member of the CPSU from 1942. Born to a family of a worker. A metalworker at first.

Bogdanov was in the army from 1915 and participated in World War I. He became an ensign (1917). From 1918 he served in the Soviet Army, participating in the Civil War as a platoon and battalion commander. He graduated from the Moscow Higher Military-Pedagogical School (1923) and completed the Vystrel Courses (1930) and academic courses of the Military Academy of Mechanization and Motorization (1936). During the Great Patriotic War of 1941–45 he commanded a tank division, a tank and mechanized corps, the Second Tank Army (from September 1943 to July 1944), and the Second Guards Tank Army (from January 1945), participating in the Korsun’-Shevchenkovsk, Byelorussian, Vistula-Oder, East Pomeranian, and Berlin operations. He commanded armored and mechanized forces from 1948 to 1954 and was head of the Military Academy of the Armored Forces from 1954 to 1956. He retired because of illness in 1956. He was a deputy to the second through fourth convocations of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR. He was awarded Orders of Lenin, four Orders of the Red Banner, Orders of Suvorov First and Second Class, and many medals.