Iosif Iraklievich Gusakovsky

Иосиф Ираклиевич Гусаковский
Soviet Union state institutions Marxism–Leninism Soviet Union Belarus 1904–1995 ○ Natural causes

Twice Hero of the Soviet Union at the head of the 44th Guards Tank Brigade, later the Defence Ministry's chief of personnel

Born to a Belarusian peasant family in Mogilev Governorate, he joined the Red Army in 1928. In 1937 he was expelled from the party and dismissed on a false charge of hiding a kulak background, and returned to the army in 1941. From September 1943 to the end of the war he commanded the 112th Tank Brigade (from October the 44th Guards Tank Brigade) in the 1st Guards Tank Army, was twice made Hero of the Soviet Union, in 1944 and 1945, and was badly wounded in Berlin in April 1945. After the war he commanded the Baltic Military District, headed the Defence Ministry's Main Personnel Directorate from 1963 to 1970, and became Army General in 1968.

Activities and affiliations

Career Timeline

Commander of the 44th Guards Tank Brigade, and the quarrel over Katukov's memory

Gusakovsky took command of the 112th Tank Brigade on 20 September 1943; in October it received Guards status as the 44th Guards Tank Brigade. It fought in Getman's 11th Guards Tank Corps within Katukov's 1st Guards Tank Army. His name recurs in Katukov's front letters to Yuri Zhukov of Komsomolskaya Pravda. On 1 September 1944 Katukov reported that Gusakovsky had been put forward for Hero of the Soviet Union; during the Vistula–Oder operation he wrote that Gusakovsky had been nominated a second time; and on 7 April 1945 he called him "a fine fellow who shows great promise". The titles were conferred on 23 September 1944 and 6 April 1945. After the fall of Berlin Katukov wrote that Gusakovsky had been wounded and would be out of action for about three months; he had been badly wounded in a Berlin street on 27 April.

Katukova recalls that during the war and in Katukov's lifetime the two families visited each other often and were close. They fell out after Katukov died in 1976. Around 1978 the author met Gusakovsky, by then an Army General and chairman of the 1st Guards Tank Army veterans' council, in hospital and asked the council to act, since Moscow had no street or plaque in Katukov's name. By her account he refused, saying that in the defence of Moscow in 1941 Katukov had been a mere "little man" and that streets were named only after commanders of the highest rank. She counts him among the generals who opposed commemorating Katukov.

Katukova also blames him, as head of the Defence Ministry's Main Personnel Directorate (1963–1970), for turning down veterans' petitions to award the title of Hero of the Soviet Union posthumously to Dmitry Lavrinenko, the tank ace killed in 1941 while serving in Katukov's brigade. This is her allegation. Lavrinenko was made a Hero of the Soviet Union posthumously only on 5 May 1990.