The army general who held Odessa and Sevastopol, and returned to command every time Stalin sacked him
As Sevastopol fell, unable to save its garrison, Petrov raised his pistol to take his own life. His officers wrestled the weapon from his grip. Evacuated by submarine, he returned to the front and commanded armies through to Berlin.
A shoemaker's son and former teacher-trainee, Ivan Petrov commanded the Great Patriotic War's two greatest defensive battles: Odessa (1941) and Sevastopol (1941–1942). He honed his craft fighting the Basmachi in Central Asia, then led the Separate Coastal Army in Black Sea holding actions that tied down far larger Axis forces. As North Caucasus Front commander he liberated the Taman Peninsula and executed the Kerch-Eltigen landing; he then drove the 2nd Belorussian and 4th Ukrainian Fronts through the Carpathians. As 1st Ukrainian Front chief of staff he planned the Berlin and Prague offensives, earning the Hero of the Soviet Union. Twice demoted by Stalin, his skill was so vital the Red Army recalled him each time.
Activities and affiliations
- 1918–1922 Military command · Soviet Union · Military and defence
Career Timeline
- 1916–1918Graduated Alekseevskoe cadet school; half-company cmdr, 156th Reserve Inf. Reg. (praporshchik); discharged ill
- 1918–1922Joined Red Army & RKP(b); Civil War — Samara, Urals, Polish-Soviet War; commissar, 17th Cavalry Div.
- 1922–1940Fought Basmachi in Central Asia; cdr 1st Turkestan Mtn. Rifle Div.; head, Tashkent Infantry School; Maj.-Gen.
- 1941.7–10Cdr 25th Chapaev Rifle Div. → Cdr Separate Coastal Army — Odessa defense and evacuation
- 1941.10–1942.7Deputy cdr Sevastopol Defensive Region & cdr Coastal Army; 250-day defense vs. Manstein's three assaults
- 1942.8–1943.11Cdr 44th Army → Black Sea Group → North Caucasus Front — Caucasus defense, Taman, Kerch-Eltigen landing
- 1944.3–1945.3Cdr 33rd Army → 2nd Belorussian Front → 4th Ukrainian Front; promoted Army Gen., demoted, reinstated; Carpathian campaigns
- 1945.4–5Chief of staff, 1st Ukrainian Front — Berlin & Prague ops; awarded Hero of the Soviet Union
- 1945–1958Cdr Turkestan MD; 1st Dep. Chief Inspector; 1st Dep. C-in-C Ground Forces; Chief Inspector, MoD; Deputy, USSR Supreme Soviet
Related historical events
- 1918–1922The Civil War and Foreign InterventionCivil War participant
- 1919–1921The Soviet-Polish WarPolitical commissar of the 17th Cavalry DivisionDuring the Civil War, he served in the Soviet-Polish War as political commissar of the 17th Cavalry Division.
- 1941–1945The Great Patriotic Warcommander of the defense of Odessa and Sevastopol
Postwar service in the south and the Ashgabat tragedy
Petrov went south again at the end of the war. From 9 July 1945 he commanded the Turkestan Military District, returning to the region where he had begun his career fighting the Basmachi in the 1920s. In July 1952 he became first deputy chief inspector of the Soviet Army, in April 1953 head of the Main Directorate of Combat and Physical Training of the Ministry of Defence, in March 1955 first deputy commander-in-chief of the Ground Forces, and in January 1956 chief inspector of the Ministry of Defence. From June 1957 he served as chief scientific consultant to a deputy minister of defence. He was a deputy of the USSR Supreme Soviet in its 2nd to 4th convocations (1946-1954).
On the night of 6 October 1948 the Ashgabat earthquake struck. In the disaster his son, Soviet Army Lieutenant-Colonel Yuri Ivanovich Petrov, was shot dead by a looter. A commander who had watched his troops die many times over could not spare himself private loss after the war.
Petrov never completed his memoirs. He died on 7 April 1958 and was buried in Moscow's Novodevichy Cemetery, leaving a first military-historical study of the defence of Sevastopol and, at Konstantin Simonov's request, a short account of his part in the defence of Odessa that was published only after his death. Monuments to him stand in Trubchevsk and Sevastopol, and streets are named for him in Odessa, Sevastopol, Kerch, Tashkent and Trubchevsk.