Alexei Alexeyevich Yepishev, also spelled Epishev (

Russian Russian(s) may refer to: *Russians (), an ethnic group of the East Slavic peoples, primarily living in Russia and neighboring countries *A citizen of Russia *Russian language, the most widely spoken of the Slavic languages *''The Russians'', a b ...

: ''Алексей Алексеевич Епишев''; – September 15, 1985) was a Soviet Army General, politician and diplomat. He served as the Chief of the Main Political Directorate of the

Soviet Army The Soviet Ground Forces () was the land warfare service branch of the Soviet Armed Forces from 1946 to 1992. It was preceded by the Red Army. After the Soviet Union ceased to exist in December 1991, the Ground Forces remained under th ...

and

Navy A navy, naval force, military maritime fleet, war navy, or maritime force is the military branch, branch of a nation's armed forces principally designated for naval warfare, naval and amphibious warfare; namely, lake-borne, riverine, littoral z ...

from 1962 to 1985.

Biography

Early years

Yepishev was born to a laborer's family in

Astrakhan Astrakhan (, ) is the largest city and administrative centre of Astrakhan Oblast in southern Russia. The city lies on two banks of the Volga, in the upper part of the Volga Delta, on eleven islands of the Caspian Depression, from the Caspian Se ...

. In 1923, he began working in a local

fishery Fishery can mean either the enterprise of raising or harvesting fish and other aquatic life or, more commonly, the site where such enterprise takes place ( a.k.a., fishing grounds). Commercial fisheries include wild fisheries and fish far ...

, where he joined the

Komsomol The All-Union Leninist Young Communist League, usually known as Komsomol, was a political youth organization in the Soviet Union. It is sometimes described as the youth division of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU), although it w ...

; in 1927, he became the secretary of the fishery's branch of the organization and later, an instructor in the municipal branch. In 1929, he was accepted as a member of the

All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) The Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU),. Abbreviated in Russian as КПСС, ''KPSS''. at some points known as the Russian Communist Party (RCP), All-Union Communist Party and Bolshevik Party, and sometimes referred to as the Soviet ...

, where he became an ardent supporter of

Joseph Stalin Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin (born Dzhugashvili; 5 March 1953) was a Soviet politician and revolutionary who led the Soviet Union from 1924 until Death and state funeral of Joseph Stalin, his death in 1953. He held power as General Secret ...

. In 1930, Yepishev joined the

Red Army The Workers' and Peasants' Red Army, often shortened to the Red Army, was the army and air force of the Russian Soviet Republic and, from 1922, the Soviet Union. The army was established in January 1918 by a decree of the Council of People ...

, where he underwent commanders' training in the following year and served as a political officer in the Tank Corps. In 1938, he graduated from the Joseph Stalin Military Academy for Mechanization and Motorization. In June that year he was sent as a political organizer to the Comintern Locomotive Factory in

Kharkiv Kharkiv, also known as Kharkov, is the second-largest List of cities in Ukraine, city in Ukraine.

, where he was responsible for the Party branch of the workers in the

T-34 The T-34 is a Soviet medium tank from World War II. When introduced, its 76.2 mm (3 in) tank gun was more powerful than many of its contemporaries, and its 60-degree sloped armour provided good protection against Anti-tank warfare, ...

tanks' production line. There, he also joined the Communist Party of the Ukrainian SSR, in which he remained a member until 1952. In March 1940 he was appointed first secretary of the Kharkiv regional Party committee. From May 1940 until January 1949 he was a member of the Organization Committee of the Ukrainian Communist Party's Presidium.

World War II

After the beginning of German invasion in June 1941, Yepishev became responsible for directing the war effort in the region: he mobilized the Kharkiv people's militia, of which he was the commissar, and organized partisan formations. In October 1941, shortly before the city's fall to the enemy, he was evacuated to the

Urals The Ural Mountains ( ),; , ; , or simply the Urals, are a mountain range in Eurasia that runs north–south mostly through Russia, from the coast of the Arctic Ocean to the river Ural (river), Ural and northwestern Kazakhstan.

, where he was appointed first secretary of the Party committee in

Nizhny Tagil Nizhny Tagil ( rus, Нижний Тагил, p=ˈnʲiʐnʲɪj tɐˈgʲil) is a classification of inhabited localities in Russia, city in Sverdlovsk Oblast, Russia, located east of the Boundaries between the continents#Asia and Europe, boundary ...

, and as such was responsible for the rebuilding of the arms factories transferred from the front line areas. In November 1942, he became the CPSU Central Committee's commissioner for personnel matters. On 22 December 1942 he was also appointed Deputy People's Commissar for medium machine building. During the

Battle of Stalingrad The Battle of Stalingrad ; see . rus, links=on, Сталинградская битва, r=Stalingradskaya bitva, p=stəlʲɪnˈɡratskəjə ˈbʲitvə. (17 July 19422 February 1943) was a major battle on the Eastern Front of World War II, ...

, he was briefly stationed in the

Stalingrad Front The Stalingrad Front was a front, a military unit encompassing several armies, of the Soviet Union's Red Army during the Second World War. The name indicated the primary geographical region in which the Front first fought, based on the city of St ...

's military council. In February 1943, he was removed of all his posts and re-instated as the Kharkiv party chief, as the

seemed to recapture the area. On 26 May, Yepishev was given the rank of a major general and posted as member of the military council, the highest political officer, in General Kirill Moskalenko 40th Army. As such, he participated in the

Battle of Kursk The Battle of Kursk, also called the Battle of the Kursk Salient, was a major World War II Eastern Front battle between the forces of Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union near Kursk in southwestern Russia during the summer of 1943, resulting in ...

and the

Lower Dnieper Offensive The Battle of the Dnieper was a military campaign that took place in 1943 on the Eastern Front of World War II. Being one of the largest operations of the war, it involved almost four million troops at one point and stretched over a front. Ov ...

. On 2 November, he received the same position in the 38th Army, again under Moskalenko, and held it until the end of the

Second World War World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...

. The 38th took part in the Battle of Kiev, the Dnieper–Carpathian offensive, the Lvov–Sandomierz offensive, the

Battle of the Dukla Pass The Battle of the Dukla Pass, also known as the Dukla, Carpatho–Dukla, Rzeszów–Dukla, or Dukla–Prešov offensive, was the battle for control over the Dukla Pass on the border between Poland and Slovakia on the Eastern Front of World Wa ...

and the Prague offensive.

Post-war career

On 11 May 1945, shortly after the German capitulation, Yepishev moved back to his former office in the 40th Army, which he held until August 1946. He then left the Armed Forces and was appointed the Ukrainian Communist Party's secretary for personnel matters. From 9 January 1950 until August 1951, he headed the

Odessa Oblast Odesa Oblast (), also referred to as Odeshchyna (Одещина), is an oblast (province) of southwestern Ukraine, located along the northern coast of the Black Sea. Its administrative centre is the city of Odesa. Population: The length of coast ...

's Party committee. He was a deputy in the 3rd and 4th convocations of the

Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union The Supreme Soviet of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (SSUSSR) was the highest body of state authority of the Soviet Union (USSR) from 1936 to 1991. Based on the principle of unified power, it was the only branch of government in the So ...

, between 12 March 1950 to 14 March 1958. On 26 August 1951, Yepishev was posted as Deputy Minister for personnel matters in the Ministry of State Security. Yepishev was one of many officials with no prior experience in intelligence who were transferred to the MGB after it was purged of members associated with its executed former chief,

Viktor Abakumov Viktor Semyonovich Abakumov (; 24 April 1908 – 19 December 1954) was a high-level Soviet security official who from 1943 to 1946 was the head of SMERSH in the USSR People's Commissariat of Defense, and from 1946 to 1951 of the Minister of St ...

. The head of the MGB in this period, Semyon Ignatyev seems to have been an ineffectual figure, implying that Yepishev may have been the effective chief of police during the time of the

Doctors' plot The "doctors' plot" () was a Soviet state-sponsored anti-intellectual and anti-cosmopolitan campaign based on a conspiracy theory that alleged an anti-Soviet cabal of prominent medical specialists, including some of Jewish ethnicity, intend ...

, the

Night of the Murdered Poets Night, or nighttime, is the period of darkness when the Sun is below the horizon. Sunlight illuminates one side of the Earth, leaving the other in darkness. The opposite of nighttime is daytime. Earth's rotation causes the appearance of ...

, the

Slánský trial The Slánský trial (officially English: "Trial of the Leadership of the Anti-State Conspiracy Centre Headed by Rudolf Slánský") was a 1952 antisemiticBlumenthal, Helaine. (2009). Communism on Trial: The Slansky Affair and Anti-Semitism in P ...

, and other notorious abuses of power - but like Ignatiev, and unlike other involved, such as

Mikhail Ryumin Mikhail Dmitrievich Ryumin Михаил Дмитриевич Рюмин (1 September 1913 – 22 July 1954) was a Soviet security officer and deputy head of the Soviet MGB (Ministry of State Security) who engineered the " Doctors' Plot" in ...

, he was never called to account for whatever role he had in those affairs. On 11 March 1953, shortly after Stalin's death, when

Lavrentiy Beria Lavrentiy Pavlovich Beria ka, ლავრენტი პავლეს ძე ბერია} ''Lavrenti Pavles dze Beria'' ( – 23 December 1953) was a Soviet politician and one of the longest-serving and most influential of Joseph ...

resumed control of the MGB, Yepishev was returned to his post in Odessa, where he remained until August 1955. On 26 March 1954, he was accepted as a member of the Ukrainian Communist Party's Central Committee. From 14 August 1955 until 27 November 1960, Yepishev was the Soviet ambassador to the People's Republic of Romania. This posting suggests that the new head of the communist party,

Nikita Khrushchev Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev (– 11 September 1971) was the General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1953 to 1964 and the Premier of the Soviet Union, Chai ...

, did not trust him, and wanted him away from the centre of power, despite their common background in Ukrainian politics. He left this office to immediately become ambassador in the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia in the years 1961–1962. He was also a deputy of the 6th to 11th convocations of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, from 18 March 1962 until his death. On 11 May 1962, Yepishev was promoted to the rank of Army General and appointed Chief of the Main Political Directorate of the Soviet Army and Navy, effectively the Armed Forces' political supervisor. The reason for his sudden promotion is assumed to have been a conflict between the communist party leadership and senior army officers, including Yepishev's predecessor, Filipp Golikov, and his war time colleague Marshal Moskalenko, who opposed Khrushchev's rash decision to ship nuclear missiles to

Cuba Cuba, officially the Republic of Cuba, is an island country, comprising the island of Cuba (largest island), Isla de la Juventud, and List of islands of Cuba, 4,195 islands, islets and cays surrounding the main island. It is located where the ...

. The appointment of a party official with only a limited military background was a way of re-establishing party control over the armed forces. He held the post for 23 years. When Khrushchev was toppled from power and removed from the Central Committee of the CPSU on 16 November 1964, Yepishev, who had been a candidate member since 1952, was promoted to fill the vacancy. In 1968, during the

Prague Spring The Prague Spring (; ) was a period of liberalization, political liberalization and mass protest in the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic. It began on 5 January 1968, when reformist Alexander Dubček was elected Secretary (title), First Secre ...

, when the Czechoslovak communist party under

Alexander Dubček Alexander Dubček (; 27 November 1921 – 7 November 1992) was a Slovaks, Slovak statesman who served as the First Secretary of the Presidium of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia (KSČ) (''de facto'' leader of Czech ...

was attempting to combine state control of industry with free speech and the abolition of censorship, Yepishev was the first high-ranking official to hint publicly, in May 1968, that the USSR might use military force to suppress the experiment. On 15–18 August, he accompanied the Minister for Defence, Marshal

Andrei Grechko Andrei Antonovich Grechko (; ; – 26 April 1976) was a Soviet military commander and Marshal of the Soviet Union during the Cold War. He served as the Soviet minister of defence from 1967 to 1976. Born to a Ukrainian peasant family near Rosto ...

on an inspection tour of the Red Army units who invaded Czechoslovakia days later, on 21 August. In spring 1979, Yepishev led a military delegation to Kabul, just before the Soviet Army invaded Afghanistan on 24 December 1979, setting off a war that lasted ten years. In July 1985, Yepishev was the first high ranking Soviet communist official to be removed from office after the reformer

Mikhail Gorbachev Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev (2 March 1931 – 30 August 2022) was a Soviet and Russian politician who served as the last leader of the Soviet Union from 1985 to dissolution of the Soviet Union, the country's dissolution in 1991. He served a ...

took control of the communist party. He went into semi-retirement with the title of inspector in the Ministry of Defense, but died shortly after.

In literature

Yepishev's role as an MGB general is part of the plot of Robert Harris's thriller ''Archangel'', in which he is described as "a big bastard" with a square jaw, thick brow and grim face set above a boxer's neck, and it is suggested that as an army officer "he never shot anyone, except on his own side."

References

External links