Ivan Bagramyan - Career After World War II

Career After World War II

After the war, Bagramyan remained in command of the Baltic Military District, commanding operations against partisans in Lithuania and Latvia. In 1954, he was appointed Chief Inspector of the Ministry of Defense. In 1955, he was appointed Deputy Minister of Defense with the rank of Marshal of the Soviet Union. He was also head of the Military Academy of General Staff and commander of the reserve forces of the Soviet Armed Forces.

He spent much of his time writing articles in military journals on Soviet strategic operations and most notably, co-authored the six-volume work on Soviet involvement during World War II, The Soviet Union's Great Patriotic War (1941–1945). In August 1967, Bagramyan accompanied General Secretary Leonid Brezhnev and premier Alexei Kosygin to North Vietnam, where they met with Vietnamese leaders as he, serving in the role of a military expert, helped negotiate the transfer of logistics and arms to the country during the Vietnam War.

He retired in 1968. In 1971, Bagramyan completed his first volume of his memoirs in This is How the War Began in 1971 and in 1977, the second volume Thus We Went to Victory was published. Among the numerous points he noted in the second book was an analysis of the Red Army's costly offensives in the early stages of the war:

There is no point in hiding that before the war we mostly learned to attack, and did not pay enough attention to such an important manoeuvre as retreat. Now we have paid for this. It turned out that the commanders and the staff were not sufficiently prepared to prepare and execute the retreat manoeuvre. Now, in the second week of war, we had in fact to learn from the beginning the most difficult art - the art of the execution of retreat.

In 1980, another book of Bagramyan titled "My Memoirs" was published based on the first and second volumes. A large section of the book dedicated to the Armenian issues including massacres of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire, struggle against Turkey's invasions, epic battle of Sardarapat and others. As a participant of Armenian-Turkish wars and Sardarapat battle, he provided first-handed important material on the developments of those days.

Marshal Bagramyan was awarded with numerous Soviet and foreign Orders and medals for his service including with two Orders of the Hero of the Soviet Union, seven Orders of Lenin, the Order of the October Revolution, three Orders of the Red Banner, two Orders of Suvorov and the Order of Kutuzov. Among the other commendations he received were the Polish Virtuti Militari, the Medal For the Victory Over Germany and the Medal "For the Victory over Japan".

After the death of Marshal Vasily Chuikov on March 18, 1982, he was the last surviving Soviet Marshal who held a high command in World War II. However, only several months later, Bagramyan died, on September 21, 1982, from illness at the age of 84, and was buried with full military honors at the Kremlin Wall Necropolis in Moscow. A town in Armenia (40°11′36″N 44°22′07″E / 40.19333°N 44.36861°E / 40.19333; 44.36861), a military firing range and an army training brigade, and a subway station and street in the capital of Armenia, Yerevan, are named in his honor. On May 11, 1997, the government of Armenia established the commemorative 100th Anniversary of Marshal Bagramyan medal (Armenian: զինված ուժերի «Մարշալ Բաղրամյան» մեդալ). It is awarded to service and civilian personnel who participated in the Second World War.

According to the Soviet laws, a monument made out of bronze had to be erected in the birthplace of a double Order of Soviet Union Hero recipient. The one that was erected in Chardakhlu village for Bagramyan was destroyed by Azerbaijanis after the Karabakh movement broke out.