Ivan Konev (1897 – 1973)
Soviet military commander, who led Red Army forces on the Eastern Front during World War II, liberated much of Eastern Europe from occupation by the Axis Powers, and helped in the capture of Germany's capital, Berlin.
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Our neighbors use searchlights, for they want more light. I tell you, Nikolai Pavlovich, we need more darkness.
I do not want to give any orders to the airmen, but get hold of a Komsomol air unit, and say I want volunteers for the job.
Konev was a Russian who had begun his military career as a commissar, and he was a strong brutal character of great energy but limited education, unable to express himself well on paper. He realized his own limitations and sorted out operative and tactical problems on the spot, leaving all other matters to his staff.
The plans of NATO are defensive because they assume we are aggressive. NATO is aggressive as it is the alliance of capitalist countries.
Konev was a tall, gruff, vigorous man with a shrewd twinkle in his blue eyes. He was 48 years old, a year younger than Zhukov, and in some respects his career had paralleled the other man's.
Konev was a mental robot, saying only what had been written for him, as though his tongue moved only when wound by a key in the Kremlin.
We plan alone but we fulfill our plans together with the enemy, as it were, in accordance with his opposition.
Like his rival Zhukov, Konev was a man of iron will, but he did not hail from such a disadvantaged background, and he was unique among Soviet high commanders in having begun his military career as a political officer.
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