Allied Leaders of World War II - Soviet Union

Soviet Union

• Joseph Stalin was General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union during World War II. From 1941 onwards, he was also Chairman of the Committee of the People's Comissars (Premier) of the Soviet Union. It was during Stalin's reign that the USSR emerged as a superpower that rivaled the United States. As the supreme commander of the Red Army, Stalin led the Red Army to liberate the Soviet Union from Nazi occupation. After the war Stalin put communist leaders in power in Eastern Europe, setting up the Eastern Bloc and leading to the Cold War.

• Georgy Zhukov was a Soviet Field Marshal who led the Red Army to liberate the Soviet Union from Nazi occupation. He also led the Soviets to overrun much of Eastern Europe and to conquer and capture Germany's capital, Berlin. After the war Zhukov was the supreme Military Commander of the Soviet Occupation Zone in Germany.

• Nikolay Gerasimovich Kuznetsov was Admiral of the Soviet Navy, which was primarily responsible for keeping the Nazis out of the Black Sea and the Caucasus. Despite orders to the contrary, he placed his navy on high alert hours before the commencement of Operation Barbarossa resulting in the Navy being the only branch of the Soviet armed forces that was prepared for the invasion.

• Vyacheslav Molotov was Foreign Minister of the Soviet Union from 1939–1949. He was responsible for the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact which governed Soviet-German relations until June 1941 when Hitler attacked the Soviet Union. Molotov conducted urgent negotiations with Britain and, later, the United States for wartime alliances. He secured Franklin D. Roosevelt and Winston Churchill's agreement to create a "second front" in Europe.

• Mikhail Kalinin was during the whole war period the Chairman of the Praesidium of the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union, the nominal Head of State of the Soviet Union. Although he was the Head of State, he remained mostly in the background, while Stalin was the undisputed war leader with supreme authority over the Soviet Union. A Communist Party elder, Kalinin was a key member of Stalin's inner circle of power until his death. He signed the order authorizing the Katyn massacre.

• Vasily Chuikov commanded the 64th Army and later the 62nd Army, which defended Stalingrad during the crucial Battle of Stalingrad.

• Leonid Govorov became Soviet commander in Leningrad in 1942, and commanded Leningrad's forces in Operation Spark. In 1944, he was promoted to Marshal of the Soviet Union.

• Ivan Konev was commander of the 19th Army during the early days of the Nazi invasion. He would led the Red Army on the Eastern Front and liberated much of Eastern Europe. He helped in the capture of Berlin.

• Kirill Meretskov

• Hovhannes Bagramyan

• Konstantin Rokossovsky

• Boris Shaposhnikov

• Semyon Timoshenko

• Fyodor Tolbukhin

• Aleksandr Vasilevsky

• Matvei Zakharov

• Nikita Khrushchev