Andrei Grechko

Andrei Grechko was a Soviet military commander and Marshal of the Soviet Union during the Cold War. He served as the Soviet Minister of Defence from 1967 to 1976. Born to a Ukrainian peasant family near Rostov-on-Don, Grechko served in the Red Army cavalry during the Russian Civil War. After graduating from several military academies, he took part in the Soviet invasion of Poland in 1939. Grechko was a fresh graduate of the Voroshilov Military Academy when Axis forces invaded the Soviet Union. He held a succession of cavalry and army commands afterwards and saw action in the Caucasus, Ukraine and Central Europe. After the war, Grechko commanded the Kiev Military District. In 1953, he was appointed commander-in-chief of Soviet Forces in East Germany, and led the suppression of the East German uprising. In 1955, he was named a Marshal of the Soviet Union. In 1957, he became commander-in-chief of the Soviet Ground Forces, and three years later he also became the commander of the Warsaw Pact forces. In 1967, Grechko was appointed Minister of Defence, and oversaw the subsequent Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia and violent border clashes with China. He helped modernize the Soviet Army and was responsible for continuing the Soviet hegemony over Eastern Europe. An ideological hardliner, he was a defender of the first strike nuclear strategy, and only reluctantly supported Leonid Brezhnev's détente with the United States and the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT). He died of a heart attack in 1976 and was buried in the Kremlin Wall Necropolis. He was the father of Soviet General Vladimir Govorov and the grandfather of Russian politician Leonid Govorov.