Pacific Fleet commander of Operation August Storm, the admiral Stalin dismissed as 'not a minister'
At the July 1951 Main Military Council of the Navy, Stalin said of Yumashev: 'A man of clean conscience and honour, great courage, an excellent and experienced sailor — but not a minister. He has handed everything to his aides and let power slip from his hands.'
An admiral who rose from a tsarist sailor to the highest post in the Soviet Navy. From 1939 he commanded the Pacific Fleet, building up its Far Eastern bases, and in August 1945 he led it through the amphibious liberation of South Sakhalin, the Kuril Islands, and the Seishin landing in northern Korea, earning the title Hero of the Soviet Union. He succeeded Kuznetsov as Navy Commander-in-Chief in 1947 and became Minister of the Navy in 1950, but Stalin judged that he had handed work to aides and was drinking too heavily, declaring him 'a man of clean conscience and courage but not a minister,' and dismissed him in 1951. He ended his career as head of the Naval Academy, trading the fleet for the classroom.
Career Timeline
- 1912Entered Kronstadt Boatswain School, Baltic Fleet; served on cruiser Bogatyr
- 1917Chairman of Sailors' Committee, Reval coastal battery; discharged due to illness
- 1918–1920Joined Bolshevik Party; Red Volunteer detachment commander; Civil War on Volga-Caspian flotillas
- 1920–1924Artillery commander and assistant commander, battleship Petropavlovsk/Marat
- 1926–1937Black Sea Fleet: commanded destroyers and cruisers, then destroyer division and cruiser brigade
- 1938.01–1939.03Commander, Black Sea Fleet
- 1939.03–1947.01Commander, Pacific Fleet; Hero of the Soviet Union for victory over Japan (1945)
- 1947.01–1950.02Deputy Minister of Armed Forces & C-in-C of the Navy
- 1950.02–1951.07Minister of the Navy, USSR
- 1951–1957Head of the Voroshilov Naval Academy
Related historical events
The 1945 War Against Japan: Operation August Storm
The finest hour of Yumashev's command of the Pacific Fleet came with the Manchurian Strategic Offensive Operation, Operation August Storm, launched on 8 August 1945 when the Soviet Union declared war on Japan. Having spent six years since 1939 building up the fleet's Far Eastern bases, airfields, and coastal defences, Yumashev sortied the fleet the moment hostilities opened to support the advance of the 1st and 2nd Far Eastern Fronts from the sea.
The Pacific Fleet carried out amphibious landings on South Sakhalin and the Kuril Islands, and Yumashev personally directed the Seishin landing operation on the northern coast of Korea. These operations were decisive in cutting off the Kwantung Army's retreat and severing Japan's sea links to the mainland. The fleet simultaneously secured transport routes and neutralised enemy naval bases.
For this, Yumashev was made a Hero of the Soviet Union on 14 September 1945, receiving the Gold Star and the Order of Lenin. The citation honoured his 'exemplary fulfilment of the Supreme High Command's tasks in directing combat operations of Pacific Fleet units and ships against the Japanese militarists and the successes achieved as a result of those operations.' After the war Yumashev drew on this experience for his memoir The Pacific Fleet in Battles for the Motherland (1976).