The railway general who moved armies in secret, and fell over a pair of earrings
He gave his wife diamond earrings for her birthday — and someone told Stalin; without a word of explanation he was expelled from the party and sacked as minister.
Ivan Kovalev was a Soviet military-transport leader who headed Red Army military communications during the Great Patriotic War and served as People's Commissar of Railways (1944–1948). Rising from a peasant family through railway troops, he masterminded the secret redeployment of vast forces for the Moscow and Stalingrad counteroffensives, work Stalin equated with directing strategic operations, awarding him the Orders of Suvorov and Kutuzov, First Class. As railways commissar he oversaw postwar reconstruction and attended the Potsdam Conference; in 1948 Stalin sent him to Mao Zedong as personal representative and chief Soviet adviser, where he served as confidential channel between the two leaders during the PRC's founding. Dismissed after a denunciation over diamond earrings he gave his wife for her birthday, he later taught at the General Staff Academy and researched at IMEMO.
Career Timeline
- 1919–1921Red Army scout, VChK battalion soldier in Voronezh
- 1935Graduated with honors from the Military Transport Academy
- 1937–1939Head of the Western Railway
- 1939–1941Head of Central Military Department, NKPS board member
- 1941–1944Head of Military Communications, Red Army (Central Directorate from 1943)
- 1944–1948People's Commissar, then Minister of Railways of the USSR
- 1948–1950Stalin's representative to the CCP, head of Soviet military advisers in China
- 1951–1957Deputy Minister of the Coal Industry of the USSR
- 1960–1969Senior lecturer, General Staff Academy
- 1969–1985Senior researcher, laboratory head, chief researcher at IMEMO