Nikolai Dmitrievich Yakovlev
Николай Дмитриевич Яковлев
1898–1972
○ Natural causes · imprisoned 1952–53
The supply marshal who ran Soviet artillery through the war and opened the rocket age
On the morning of 22 June 1941, he received the keys to his GAU office — and at that moment, the German invasion began.
Marshal of Artillery who led the Main Artillery Directorate (GAU) for the entire Great Patriotic War, overseeing all Red Army artillery supply, development, and organization, summoned to Stalin's office 140 times. After the war he surveyed German V-2 facilities, created GAU's rocket directorate, and chaired the state commission for the first R-1 ballistic missile launches at Kapustin Yar (1948), helping found the Soviet rocket programme.
Career Timeline
- 1916–1920Imperial Army conscript → Red Army; WWI, Civil War; graduates Petrograd Artillery Courses
- 1920–1937Battery & regiment commands, 28th Mountain Division; Higher Artillery School (1924)
- 1937–1941Artillery chief, Belorussian, N. Caucasus & Kiev Special MDs; Polish campaign & Winter War
- 1941–1948Chief of GAU; Marshal of Artillery (1944); all wartime artillery supply & development
- 1948–1952Deputy Minister of Armed Forces; arrested Feb 1952, stripped of rank over S-60 defects
- 1953–1960Rehabilitated Apr 1953; 1st Deputy C-in-C PVO; S-25 commission chair; ABM letter co-signer
- 1960–1972Inspector-Adviser, MOD General Inspectors Group; memoirist
Related historical events
- 1918–1922The Civil War and Foreign InterventionCivil War participant
- 1939.11–1940.03The Winter Warartillery commander
- 1941–1945The Great Patriotic WarChief of GAU (Main Artillery Directorate)He led GAU throughout the war, directing all Red Army artillery supply, development, and organization, and was summoned to Stalin's office 140 times to report on materiel.
Architect of Rocket Weapons and Air Defense
In the immediate postwar period, Yakovlev played a key role in building the institutional foundations of Soviet rocketry. In February 1946, he headed a special commission that surveyed German rocket facilities in Berlin, Nordhausen, and Bleicherode; based on its findings, the USSR Council of Ministers adopted the landmark decree 'On Questions of Reactive Armament' on 13 May 1946. Yakovlev served on the newly established Special Committee for Reactive Technology (chaired by Malenkov) as the GAU representative. On his initiative, GAU's 4th Directorate (Reactive Armament) was created under General Sokolov, with a flight theory section led by Lieutenant Colonel Tyulin, and the Scientific Research Institute No. 4 (NII-4) was organized under General Nesterenko with General Gaidukov as deputy.
In October 1947, Yakovlev chaired the State Commission for the first Soviet ballistic missile test launches at Kapustin Yar: rockets assembled from German V-2 components, with Sergei Korolev as technical director. A year later, in October 1948, he chaired the State Commission for the first launch of the R-1, the first Soviet-designed ballistic missile.
Rehabilitated and appointed First Deputy Commander of the Air Defense Forces (PVO) in 1953, Yakovlev joined Marshals Sokolovsky, Zhukov, Vasilevsky, Nedelin, Konev, and Vershinin in co-signing a historic letter to the CPSU Central Committee Presidium in August 1953. The letter warned that 'the probable enemy is expected to possess long-range ballistic missiles in the near future' and urged the immediate development of anti-ballistic missile (ABM) defenses. This letter became the starting point of the Soviet ABM programme. Yakovlev subsequently represented the Ministry of Defence at TGU (Third Main Directorate) scientific-technical council sessions on ABM problems.
Yakovlev also chaired the State Commission for state testing of the S-25 (Berkut) Moscow air defense system (1954). Between 1951 and 1954, approximately 470 test launches were conducted; in May 1955, the S-25 was formally adopted: the world's first multi-channel surface-to-air missile defense system, with a double-ring deployment around Moscow capable of intercepting 1,000 enemy aircraft simultaneously.