In the beginning of 1915, he was conscripted into the Imperial Russian Army. Konev was sent to the 2nd Heavy Artillery Brigade at Moscow and then graduated from artillery training courses. Posted to the 2nd Separate Heavy Artillery Battalion (then part of the
Southwestern Front) as a junior sergeant in 1917, he fought in the
Kerensky Offensive in Galicia in July 1917. In 1926 Konev completed advanced officer training courses at the
Frunze Military Academy, and between then and 1941 he held a series of progressively more senior commands, becoming head first of the
Transbaikal then of the
North Caucasus Military Districts in 1940 and 1941, respectively. In 1934 he became commander and
political commissar of the
37th Rifle Division. In July 1938, he was appointed commander of the
2nd Red Banner Army. In 1937 he became a Deputy of the
Supreme Soviet and in 1939 a candidate member of the Party
Central Committee.
World War II When
Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union in June 1941, Konev was assigned command of the
19th Army in the
Vitebsk region, and waged a series of defensive battles during the Red Army's retreat, first to
Smolensk and then to the approaches to Moscow. He commanded the
Kalinin Front from October 1941 to August 1942, playing a key role in the fighting around
Moscow and the
Soviet counter-offensive during the winter of 1941–42. For his role in the successful defense of the Soviet capital, Stalin promoted Konev to
Colonel-General. In the summer of 1942 Konev led the Kalinin Front and later the
Western Front in the
battle on the Rzhev salient. Konev held
"Front" (army group) commands for the rest of the war. He commanded the
Soviet Western Front until February 1943, the
North-Western Front February–July 1943, and the
2nd Ukrainian Front from July 1943 (later further the
1st Ukrainian Front) until May 1945. Among the
maskirovka measures he adopted to achieve tactical surprise were the camouflaging of defense lines and depots; dummy units and supply points; a dummy air-defense network; and the use of reconnaissance units to verify the quality of his army's camouflage and deception works. In David Glantz's view, Konev's forces "generated a major portion of the element of surprise". For Konev's achievements in Ukraine, the
Presidium promoted him to
Marshal of the Soviet Union in February 1944. Konev was one of Stalin's favorite generals and one of the few senior commanders whom even Stalin admired for his ruthlessness. During 1944 Konev's armies advanced from
Ukraine and
Belarus into
Poland and later into
Czechoslovakia. In May 1944 he participated in an unsuccessful invasion of the
Balkans, (the
first Jassy–Kishinev Offensive) together with Generals
Rodion Malinovsky and
Fyodor Tolbukhin. By July, he had advanced to the
Vistula River in central Poland, and was awarded the title of
Hero of the Soviet Union. In September 1944 his forces, now designated the
Fourth Ukrainian Front, advanced into
Slovakia and fought alongside the
Slovak partisans in their
rebellion against German occupation. In January 1945, Konev, together with
Georgy Zhukov, commanded the Soviet armies which launched
the massive winter offensive in western Poland, driving the German forces from the Vistula to the
Oder River. In southern Poland his armies seized
Kraków (18 January 1945). Soviet historians, and generally Russian sources, claimed that Konev preserved Kraków from Nazi-planned destruction by ordering a lightning attack on the city. Konev's January 1945 offensive also prevented planned destruction of the
Silesian industry by the retreating Germans. In April Konev's troops, together with the
1st Belorussian Front under his competitor, Marshal Zhukov, forced the line of the Oder and advanced towards
Berlin. Konev's forces entered the city first, but Stalin gave Zhukov the honor of
capturing Berlin and hoisting the Soviet flag over the
Reichstag. Konev was ordered to the southwest, where his forces linked up with elements of the
United States Army at
Torgau (25 April 1945) and also retook
Prague (9 May 1945) shortly after the official surrender of the German forces.
Post-war career After the war the Soviet Union appointed Konev as head of the Soviet occupation forces in
Eastern Germany and also Allied High Commissioner for
Austria. In 1946 he became Commander-in-Chief of the
Soviet Ground Forces and First Deputy Minister of Defense of the Soviet Union, replacing Zhukov. He held these posts until 1950, when he was appointed commander of the
Carpathian Military District. He held this post until 1960, when he retired from active service. In 1961–62, however, he was recalled and was again commander of the Soviet forces in
East Germany, where he ordered the closing of
West Berlin to
East Berlin during the construction of the
Berlin Wall. He was then appointed to the largely ceremonial post of Inspector-General of the Defense Ministry. Following the
Prague Spring, Konev headed a delegation that visited Czechoslovakia in May 1968 to celebrate the anniversary of the Soviet victory during World War II. After Stalin's death, Konev returned to prominence. He became a key ally of the new party leader
Nikita Khrushchev, being entrusted with the trial of the Stalinist police chief
Lavrenty Beria in 1953. He was again appointed First Deputy Minister of Defense and commander of Soviet ground forces, posts he held until 1956, when he was named
Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of the Warsaw Pact. Shortly after his appointment he led the suppression of the
Hungarian Revolution. It has been claimed that Konev visited military units in Czechoslovakia in order to obtain first-hand information to better assess the situation in the country, but there is no documentary evidence to support this. The British military historian
John Erickson wrote that he was surprised with the extent of personal archives (
lichnye arkhivy) held by former Red Army soldiers of many ranks, and that "there is no substitute for having the late Marshal Konev (sic) – spectacles perched on nose – read from his own personal notebook, detailing operational orders, his own personal instructions to select commanders and his tally of Soviet casualties. And while on the subject of casualties, Marshal Konev made it plain that, though such figures did exist, he was not prepared on his own authority to allow certain figures to be released for publication while a number of commanders were still alive." Konev remained one of the Soviet Union's most admired military figures until his death in 1973. He married twice, and his daughter Nataliya is Dean of the Department of Linguistics and Literature at the
Military University of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation. In 1969, the
Ministry of Defence of the USSR published Konev's 285-page war memoir called
Forty-Five. It was later translated into English in the same year and published by
Progress Publishers, Moscow. This work discusses Konev's taking of Berlin, Prague, his work with Zhukov,
Stalin, his field meeting with General
Omar Bradley and
Jascha Heifetz. In English, the book was titled
I. Konev – Year of Victory. It was also published in Spanish and French under the titles
El Año 45 and ''L'an 45'' respectively. Konev died on 21 May 1973 at age 75 in
Moscow. Following his cremation, his ashes were placed in the
Kremlin Wall Necropolis with those of the greatest figures of the USSR, and can still be visited today. ==Monuments==