Dmitry Ustinov

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
In this name that follows Eastern Slavic naming customs, the patronymic is Fyodorovich and the family name is Ustinov.
Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
In office
6 March 1953 – 14 December 1957
PremierGeorgy Malenkov
Nikolai Bulganin
Preceded byPosition established
Succeeded bySergei Sverov
Personal details
Born(1908-10-17)17 October 1908
Mechanical engineer
Awards
See List
  • Hero of the Soviet UnionHero of Socialist LabourHero of Socialist Labour
Military service
Allegiance Soviet Union
Branch/serviceSoviet Armed Forces
Years of service1941–1984
Rank Marshal of the Soviet Union (1976–1984)
Battles/warsWorld War II
Soviet–Afghan War
Central institution membership
Other offices held

Dmitriy Fyodorovich Ustinov (

Minister of Defence of the Soviet Union
from 1976 until his death in 1984.

Ustinov was born in the city of

People's Commissar of Armaments during World War II, he achieved distinction within the party's ranks by successfully overseeing the evacuation of Leningrad's industries to the Ural Mountains, a feat for which he was awarded the title of Hero of Socialist Labour
. At the war's end, he was entrusted with seizing raw materials, scientists and research left over from Germany's missile programme.

Under Leonid Brezhnev's leadership, Ustinov joined the Central Committee Secretariat and rose to become a candidate member of the Politburo by 1965. Following his rise to the central party apparatus, he was given the task of administering the Soviet Union's defense industry and its armed forces. By 1976, he succeeded Andrei Grechko as Minister of Defense and received the rank of Marshal of the Soviet Union. Thereafter, Ustinov's hardline attitudes towards the West and unreserved backing for the Soviet arms buildup would dominate his country's national security policy up until his death in 1984.

Early life

Dmitry Feodorovich Ustinov was born in a working-class family in

Ivanovo-Voznesensk
) where he worked as a fitter in a paper mill. Shortly after that, in 1925, his mother died.

Ustinov joined the Communist Party in 1927. In 1929, he started training at the Faculty of Mechanics in the Ivanovo-Voznesensk Polytechnic Institute. Afterward, Ustinov was transferred to the Moscow Bauman Higher Technical School. Then, in March 1932, he entered the Institute of Military Mechanical Engineering in Leningrad from where he graduated in 1934. Afterward, he worked as a construction engineer at the Leningrad artillery Marine Research Institute. In 1937, he was transferred to the "Bolshevik" Arms Factory as an engineer. He later became the director of the Factory.

War service

Ustinov in 1946

At the time of the

space programmes
.

Post-war career

In 1952, Ustinov became a member of the Central Committee. In March 1953, after Stalin died, the

Ministry of Defense Industry, with Ustinov assigned as head of this new ministry. In 1957, he was appointed as a Deputy Premier of the Soviet Union and became chairman of the Military-Industrial Commission
.

Rise to the Soviet leadership

Brezhnev and Ustinov at the 1979 October Revolution Day Parade on Red Square celebrating the 62nd anniversary of the revolution.

Salyut
space station.

Ustinov gained power in the

defence industry
.

Minister of Defence

In 1976, after Andrei Grechko died on 26 April, Ustinov became the Defence Minister and was promoted to

General of the Army on 29 April. On 30 July, he was promoted to the highest military rank in the Soviet Union, Marshal of the Soviet Union, although he had no prior military career. Together, with Marshal Nikolai Ogarkov
and the Soviet General Staff, Ustinov embarked on a programme to enhance and modernise the Soviet Union's development of military sciences. In 1979, he confidently asserted that "The armed forces of the USSR are on a high level that ensures the accomplishment of any tasks set by the party and the people".

The growing influence of the Soviet military gave Ustinov the role of Kremlin kingmaker, for his support was decisive in allowing Yuri Andropov to succeed Brezhnev. Ustinov was also influential in the Chernenko regime, compensating for the latter's serious health problems and inexperience in military affairs.

In 1984 in East Berlin, with Erich Honecker.

In 1979, Hafizullah Amin assassinated the leader of Afghanistan, Nur Muhammad Taraki. In October 1979, the sentiment for Soviet military intervention in Afghanistan grew stronger in the Soviet politburo where Ustinov and Andropov were the strongest proponents of military intervention. Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko also lent his support for an invasion. The introduction of US forces into the Persian Gulf after the 1979 Iran hostage crisis particularly alarmed the Soviet General Staff. Ustinov began to wonder, "If the Americans do all these preparations under our noses, then why should we hunker down, play cautious, and lose Afghanistan?" [citation needed] In November, Ustinov and Andropov began to formulate plans for a Soviet military invasion of Afghanistan. On 12 December 1979, the Politburo approved the Ustinov-Andropov plan to invade Afghanistan. On 24 December 1979, Soviet troops entered Afghanistan.

In the early 1980s, the development of the

Russian space programme academic Boris Chertok recounts that Ustinov was so worried about the US Shuttle that he gave the development of the Soviet response program, the Buran Shuttle
, top priority.

Involvement in the KAL 007 Disaster

In 1992, Russian president Boris Yeltsin disclosed five top-secret memos dating from late 1983, memos that had been written within weeks of the downing of Korean Air Lines Flight 007. These memos were published in Izvestia number 228 on 16 October 1992. According to these memos, the Soviet Union had been able to recover the "Black Box" from KAL 007 and decipher its tapes. Thereafter, Ustinov, along with Viktor Chebrikov, head of the KGB, recommended to General Secretary Yuri Andropov that their possession of the Black Box not be made public since its tapes could not support the Soviet contention that KAL 007 was on a U.S. espionage mission.

"In connection with all mentioned above it seems highly preferable not to transfer the flight recorders to the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) or any third party willing to decipher their contents. The fact that the recorders are in possession of the USSR shall be kept secret. As far as we are aware neither the US nor Japan has any information on the flight recorders. We have made necessary efforts in order to prevent any disclosure of the information in future." (Memo 5.)

Death and legacy

Kremlin Wall Necropolis - grave of Ustinov
Ustinov Square in Samara with a bronze bust of him

On 7 November 1984, Ustinov did not preside over the annual Red Square Military Parade on the October Revolution Day. First Deputy Defense Minister Marshal Sergey Sokolov stood in for Ustinov to both inspect the troops and deliver the commemoration speech. Ustinov had contracted pneumonia in late October. Emergency surgery had to be performed to correct an aneurysm in his aortic valve. His liver and kidneys later deteriorated. Eventually, he suffered a cardiac arrest and died on 20 December 1984. He was honored with a state funeral, and his ashes were interred in the Kremlin Wall Necropolis on 24 December 1984.

The RFS Marshal Ustinov is a Russian warship named after him in his honor. The Baltic State Technical Military-Mechanical University in Saint Petersburg changed its name to the Ustinov Baltic State Technical Military-Mechanical University. The city of Izhevsk was also renamed after him from 1984 to 1987; however, under Mikhail Gorbachev, cities that had been renamed for recent Soviet leaders were reverted to their former names.

Ustinov placed great importance on the military for many decades. For example, he succeeded in always keeping the USSR's intercontinental ballistic missiles,

ICBMs
, current. Ustinov also wrote several books throughout his life. These included "Selected Speeches and Articles" (1979), and "To serve my country - the cause of Communism" (1982).

Personality and family

In his memoirs Mikhail Gorbachev describes Ustinov as a man who normally had an energetic and bright personality. When Gorbachev was facing opposition in the Politburo shortly after Andropov's death, Ustinov told Gorbachev to "stand firm" and to "take heart".

Soviet Army Colonel General Igor Illarionov, an assistant of Ustinov for 30 years, described him as "the most Stalinist of all the Commissars". Indeed, Ustinov had been groomed by Stalin to maintain the established system. Illarionov also said that Ustinov, like many of his contemporaries, was shaped by his experiences in the Great Patriotic War. Illarionov described Ustinov as a man who was very passionate about his work and had a habit of working late at night and sleeping for a couple of hours during the day.

The former Chief of the 4th Main Directorate of the Ministry of Health, Academician Yevgeniy Chazov wrote about Ustinov: "I met him for the first time thanks to Andropov, who was his close friend. From the first moment I liked his will power, quick decision making, optimism, drive, expertise, combined with a certain simplicity and openness. In my mind, he represented the best representatives of the so-called command-and-control systems by which we defeated Germany during World War II. I think his only mistake, which he may not have realized, was the Afghan war. A bad politician and diplomat, he, as a representative of the old Stalinist "guard", believed that all issues could be solved via a position of strength. On the other hand, I saw Andropov tossed and nervous because of the Afghan war. I believe that he ultimately understood their mistake. Ustinov, however, was always calm and apparently convinced that he was right."

However, Ustinov's unwillingness to support any kind of reforms, even if popular within the Politburo itself, led to him frequently clashing with the Chief of the General Staff, Marshal

SS-20 Saber
.

Ustinov was married to Taisa Alekseevna Briekalova-Ustinova (1903–1975). They had a daughter, Vera Dmitriyevna Ustinova, and a son, Nikolai Dmitriyevich Ustinov (1931–1992). Ustinov also had a granddaughter, Nastya Nemtsova.

In popular culture

Ustinov appears briefly in Tom Clancy's 1984 novel The Hunt for Red October in his capacity as Defense Minister; his death is mentioned by the titular spy Colonel Filitov in The Cardinal of the Kremlin. He is given a more important role in the 2002 novel Red Rabbit, which takes place in between the events of Patriot Games and Red October.

Ustinov is also a character of The Manhattan Projects, a comic book by Jonathan Hickman and Nick Pitarra. He is depicted as a disembodied brain mounted on a robot body.

Honours and awards

Soviet

Foreign

Mongolian People's Republic
Czechoslovakia
Vietnam
Bulgaria
Poland
  • Cross of Grunwald
    , 1st class (1976)
Peru
  • Order of Aeronautical Merit
People's Republic of Hungary
Democratic Republic of Afghanistan
  • Order of the Sun of Liberty (1982)
East Germany
Finland
  • Order of the White Rose
    , 1st class (1978)
Cuba

References

  1. ^ Eric Pace (22 December 1984). "Ustinov Had key roles in military and politics". New York Times.

Bibliography

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Dmitri Ustinov.
Wikiquote has quotations related to Dmitry Ustinov.
Political offices
Preceded by
Minister of Defense of the Soviet Union

1976–1984 		Succeeded by
Sergei Sokolov
Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Dmitry_Ustinov&oldid=1219451795"