From Civil War cavalryman to the commander whose army liberated Auschwitz, the last surviving wartime Front commander
On 4 July 1917 the sixteen-year-old Kurochkin guarded Lenin as he addressed a crowd from the balcony of the Kshesinskaya Palace, and he later recalled that the speech had an enormous influence on him.
Born in the village of Gornevo in Smolensk province, he worked from age thirteen as a confectioner's errand boy and in locomotive repair workshops, guarded Bolshevik meetings in a workers' druzhina in Petrograd in 1917, and joined the Red Guards that October. He entered the Red Army in August 1918, completed cavalry courses, fought in the Civil War and the Polish-Soviet War, and took part in suppressing the Tambov Rebellion in 1921. In July 1941, commanding the 20th Army, he went through the Lepel counterstrike and the Smolensk encirclement and organized the breakout of the encircled 16th and 20th armies, then commanded the Northwestern Front and the Demyansk encirclement. From 1944 he led the 60th Army, whose 322nd Rifle Division entered Auschwitz-Birkenau on 27 January 1945; he died in Moscow on 28 December 1989.
Activities and affiliations
- 1918–1921 Military command · Soviet Union · Military and defence
Career Timeline
- 1917Red Guard in Petrograd; participant in the October Revolution
- 1918–1921Red Army cavalry officer; Civil War, Polish-Soviet War, Tambov Rebellion
- 1932, 1940Graduate of the Frunze Military Academy and the General Staff Academy
- 1939–1940Commander 28th Rifle Corps; cut Finnish supply lines near Vyborg in the Winter War
- 1941–1942Commander Northwestern Front; Toropets-Kholm operation and Demyansk encirclement
- 1943–1944Deputy commander 1st Ukrainian Front; planned the Korsun-Cherkassy encirclement
- 1944Commander 2nd Belorussian Front; Polesskaya offensive
- 1944–1945Commander 60th Army; liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau and Prague offensive
- 1954–1968Commandant of the Frunze Military Academy; professor (1962)
- 1968–1970Warsaw Pact Supreme Command representative in East Germany
- 1970–1989General Inspectors Group, USSR Ministry of Defence
Related historical events
- 1917.10–1918.01The October RevolutionOctober Revolution participant
- 1918–1922The Civil War and Foreign InterventionCivil War participant
- 1919–1921The Soviet-Polish WarSoviet Russian cavalry officerHe fought in the Civil War and the Polish-Soviet War.
- 1939.11–1940.03The Winter WarCommander, 28th Rifle Corps · cut off Vyborg
- 1941–1945The Great Patriotic War60th Army commanderAs commander of the 60th Army he led the troops that liberated Auschwitz-Birkenau on 27 January 1945.
The Turn to the East and the Academy Years
The existing biography jumps from a rifle corps command in the December 1939 Soviet-Finnish War straight to the 20th Army in July 1941, but the intervening year is documented and is the direct institutional parent of that army. The Smolensk regional library bibliography, citing the Great Russian Encyclopedia (vol. 16, 2010) and the Great Patriotic War encyclopedia, records that in 1940-1941 he successively commanded an army group of troops, an army, and the troops of the Transbaikal Military District, confirming the phase while leaving the specific army number unstated. The specifics conflict between sources. Russian Wikipedia and warheroes.ru place him in command of the 17th Army of the Transbaikal Military District from June 1940 and of that district's troops from January 1941. The International United Biographical Centre article dates the same eastern sequence differently and names the 16th Army (the 1st Army Group from April 1940, then the 16th Army, then the Transbaikal Military District from January 1941), and it places the Orel Military District appointment on the eve of the war and the 20th Army command from July 1941. Because the 16th Army reading conflicts with the 17th Army, it is carried as an attributed alternative rather than adopted silently. In June 1941 he was appointed to command the Orel Military District; according to warheroes.ru, news of the war's outbreak caught him on a train while moving to his new posting. The 20th Army he took over in July 1941 was formed on the basis of the troops of the Orel Military District, so the year in the east and the Orel appointment are the direct line into that army. A second gap is the post-war academic phase. The existing account breaks off after the 1968 Warsaw Pact posting with no academy work. From February 1951 he was deputy head of the Voroshilov Higher Military Academy, that is the General Staff Academy; from May 1954, head of the Frunze Military Academy; and in 1962 he became a professor. This matches the record's reported 1951 start and 1954 commandancy. English Wikipedia compresses academy service to 1951-1968, whereas the Russian-language sources pin the commandancy to May 1954. The content of the commandancy is documented by the International United Biographical Centre article: Kurochkin contributed to improving the academy's teaching process and to training highly qualified officers, and under his leadership the academy's research collective produced a series of major works on the theory of combined-arms battle. This is documented substance rather than a bare list of posts. Late honours and afterlife are also documented. The Smolensk bibliography, citing the Great Russian Encyclopedia, records the Frunze Prize in 1967, the Lenin Prize in 1980, honorary citizenship of Prague and of Vyazma in Smolensk oblast, and burial at the Novodevichy Cemetery. Russian Wikipedia records the Lenin Prize (1980) for work on the 20-episode documentary 'The Great Patriotic War'. The series was directed by Roman Karmen, who is credited in the series article while Kurochkin is not named there, so the entry records the 1980 prize for that work, not a personal direction credit. Sources disagree on the death date: the Smolensk bibliography gives 29 December 1989, Russian Wikipedia and warheroes.ru give 28 December; the year 1989 is not in dispute.