Ivan Konev

Born to peasants in 1897, Konev was conscripted into the tsar's army, fought in World War I, then joined the Bolsheviks during the civil war that followed. He graduated from the Frunze Military Academy in 1926 and climbed the Soviet officer corps through the purges and peacetime. When Germany invaded in 1941, he commanded forces at Moscow, Rzhev, and Kursk, then led major offensives through the Dnieper and Vistula that swept the Red Army west. Made Marshal of the Soviet Union in February 1944, his 1st Ukrainian Front raced Zhukov's armies to Berlin and reached Prague first after the city rose against the Germans. He replaced Zhukov as commander of Soviet ground forces in 1946, became head of Warsaw Pact forces in 1956, and crushed the Hungarian Revolution that year. In 1961 he ordered the closure of West Berlin during the construction of the Wall, and in 1968 oversaw the suppression of the Prague Spring. He died in Moscow in 1973, still regarded as a hero at home.