Belarusian-born marshal who commanded the Warsaw Pact forces for nine years
In the defence of Minsk in 1941, Yakubovsky's tank unit crushed an advancing German motorcycle convoy by ramming it with their tanks in the city streets.
Born the sixth child of a Belarusian peasant family, he was conscripted into the Red Army in 1932 and graduated from the Kalinin Belarusian United Military School in Minsk in 1934. Through the Great Patriotic War he commanded tank units in the defence of Minsk and Mogilev, at Stalingrad and Kursk, in the liberation of Kyiv, and in the Berlin and Prague offensives, twice earning the title Hero of the Soviet Union. In 1967 he became First Deputy Minister of Defence and a Marshal of the Soviet Union, and as commander-in-chief of the Warsaw Pact forces he directed the military preparations for the 1968 invasion of Czechoslovakia, though operational command passed to Ivan Pavlovsky days before the operation. He died of illness in Moscow on 30 November 1976, and his ashes were interred in the Kremlin Wall.
Activities and affiliations
- 1939–1940 Military command · Soviet Union · Military and defence
Career Timeline
- 1939–1940Tank company commander in the Polish campaign and Winter War
- 1941–1945Rose from tank battalion commander to deputy corps commander; twice Hero of the Soviet Union
- 1948Graduated from the General Staff Academy
- 1960–1961, 1962–1965Commander of the Group of Soviet Forces in Germany (first deputy under Konev from August 1961, returning to command in April 1962)
- 1965–1967Commander of Kiev Military District
- 1967–1976First Deputy Minister of Defence and C-in-C Warsaw Pact; Marshal of the Soviet Union
Related historical events
- 1918–1922The Civil War and Foreign InterventionCivil War participant
- 1939.11–1940.03The Winter Wartank company commander
- 1941–1945The Great Patriotic Warcolonel
- 1942–1943Battle of StalingradTank-unit commanderHe commanded tank units at Stalingrad during the Great Patriotic War.
- 1968The Prague SpringCommander-in-Chief of Warsaw Pact forces who directed the invasionAppointed Commander-in-Chief of the Warsaw Pact Joint Armed Forces in July 1967, he operationally directed the military preparations and execution of the invasion of Czechoslovakia (Operation Danube), commanding the entry of 250,000 troops from five Warsaw Pact states on the night of 20–21 August 1968.
Commander of the Group of Soviet Forces in Germany and the Berlin Crisis of 1961
The Group of Soviet Forces in Germany (GSVG) was the largest Soviet operational-strategic formation stationed abroad; it represented Soviet interests in East Germany during the Cold War, had its headquarters at Wünsdorf, and had previously been used to suppress the East German uprising of 1953. Its history records repeated direct confrontation with the former anti-Hitler coalition allies, especially during the Berlin crises of 1948–1949, 1953 and 1961.
Yakubovsky became First Deputy Commander of the GSVG in July 1957 and was promoted to Colonel-General on 18 August 1958. In April 1960 he was appointed Commander of the GSVG, placing him at the head of the largest Soviet force deployed abroad in the midst of the Berlin Crisis of 1961, when the threat of armed conflict in Europe dramatically escalated.
When the crisis peaked, in August 1961 Marshal of the Soviet Union Ivan Konev was appointed Commander-in-Chief of the GSVG and Yakubovsky was moved to the post of his first deputy, while continuing to manage the day-to-day operations of the Group. After the situation stabilized, in April 1962 Yakubovsky returned to the post of Commander of the GSVG, the only commander to hold that post twice. In January 1965 he was made Commander of the Kiev Military District, ending his German command.
The force Yakubovsky commanded in 1961 was the same forward-deployed instrument whose units took part in Operation Danube in 1968. His German command is a distinct phase between his wartime tank career and the 1968 invasion, placing him at the sharpest point of the Berlin confrontation.
The 1968 Invasion of Czechoslovakia: Operation Danube
Less than a year after assuming command of the Warsaw Pact Joint Armed Forces in July 1967, Yakubovsky faced the most controversial military operation of his career. In late April 1968, he visited Prague to prepare for Warsaw Pact exercises on Czechoslovak territory, a visit that coincided with the moment the Soviet leadership began weighing a military response to Alexander Dubček's 'socialism with a human face' reforms.
As commander-in-chief of the Warsaw Pact forces, Yakubovsky oversaw the military preparations for Operation Danube. On the night of 20–21 August 1968, roughly 250,000 troops from five Warsaw Pact states, the USSR, Poland, East Germany, Hungary, and Bulgaria, crossed the Czechoslovak border. Days before the invasion, however, the Soviet leadership transferred operational command from Yakubovsky to General of the Army Ivan Pavlovsky, the commander-in-chief of Soviet Ground Forces. The last-minute switch revealed that operational control ultimately rested with the Soviet Defence Ministry and General Staff rather than the Warsaw Pact's joint command.
Yakubovsky remained commander-in-chief of the Warsaw Pact until his death in 1976, presiding over the military consolidation of the 'normalisation' regime in Czechoslovakia and the alliance's post-invasion restructuring. He was made a Hero of the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic in 1970, yet the invasion he prepared endures as the definitive case in which the Warsaw Pact's collective military power was turned against one of its own members.