Victory Day in 1945, General Matvey Vasilyevich Zakharov celebrated in the Slovak town of Modra, not only with fellow soldiers, but also with his family. It was a great happiness. He had only six times to see his family during the whole war. Matvey Vasilievich circled his wife in her arms, her blue sundress in a flower fluttered, and seven-year-old Volodya looked at his parents and did not suspect that this day would be their most joyful memory.
Family and background
On the seventeenth of August (according to the old style of the fifth of August), 1898, the biography of Matvey Zakharov, the future chief of the General Staff, began. He came from a simple Russian peasant family. The family was large, but only five children survived. Out of need, his father went to work in St. Petersburg when Matvey was not yet two years old.
Start of work
The year before Gavrilo’s assassination by the Principle of Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife in Sarajevo, which marked the beginning of one of the most widespread conflicts in history, Zakharov graduated from the Tver City School.
His character was proud and ruffy. Once in a locksmith's workshop, he, in response to the owner’s assault, grabbed a heavy wrench, and immediately lost his job. He settled down at the factory and there, too, rebuffed the master-tyrant. A squiggle appeared in his account book - a rebel. Workers were required everywhere, but they did not take the owners of such a wolf ticket. Zakharov was advised to lose his account book.
Joining the Red Guard
Matvey Vasilyevich got a job at another factory. When an armed workers detachment began to be formed on it in 1917, Zakharov came to enroll in it. The events of October 1917 could not pass by the guy. Then, many squads flocked to the Winter Palace to participate in the assault.
They entrusted Zakharov with a very important task - to guard Lenin. Matvey Vasilievich stood at the post of his office, and in his spare time he helped the Cheka employees to combat banditry. During the liquidation of one of the gangs in time he noticed the leader in an ambush, who was aiming at the Chekist. Zakharov rushed forward and crushed the bandit.
The boss gave the determined guy a referral to artillery courses in Petrograd. In 1918, the newly minted gunner headed for the Civil War, under Tsaritsyn. There he became a commander. Matvey Zakharov spent the entire Civil War near Tsaritsin, and then served in the North Caucasus.
Continuing education
Even in Petrograd, while working in factories, Matvey Zakharov mastered speed reading. It was a very unusual skill for a simple working kid. After the Civil War, he continued to study. Zakharov had a phenomenal memory: he easily remembered huge volumes of information. Mikhail Vasilyevich graduated from the command staff courses, then, in turn, the supply department and the operational department of the Frunze Academy, followed by the General Staff Academy.
The personal life of the Soviet military
Zakharov everywhere achieved success, although in his personal life he experienced drama. In 1927, Matvey Vasilyevich died first-born - daughter Nina. Soon, his wife Emilia showed signs of mental illness. Doctors recommended placing the woman in a clinic for the mentally ill, but Zakharov refused. He continued to look after his wife himself. From 1928 to 1937, Matvey Vasilievich practically did not leave her until the woman died.
After the death of his first wife, future Marshal Zakharov married a second time. His chosen one was the widow of a friend - Maria Ryabinina. She cooked wonderful, loved to surround herself with flowers and was betrayed. The second marriage gave Zakharov home warmth and coziness of the family hearth. In 1938, the son of Vladimir was born to the spouses. In the same year, Zakharov was appointed assistant chief of the General Staff.
After purges in the army
In the position of assistant chief, Matvey Vasilievich did not serve for long. A denunciation was written on him during large-scale purges in the army. The accusation was standard - a spy, for some reason Estonian. Matvey Zakharov was removed from work, then made major general, was sent to serve in the ninth army, which freed Bukovina, Besarabia.
Ten years later, when Zakharov becomes the head of the GRU, he finds out who was the author of the very denunciation. Matvey Vasilyevich will be terribly upset, because he personally knew this person and trusted him. However, the name of the author of the denunciation, Matvey Zakharov, remained secret until the end of his life.
The Great Patriotic War
Matvey Zakharov in the pre-war 1940 was appointed to the post of chief of staff of the Odessa military district. He personally observed with binoculars the concentration of enemy forces near the borders of the Soviet Union, and reported this daily to military drug addict Tymoshenko. No replies have been received from headquarters.
On June 21, 1941, the future Marshal Zakharov, at his own peril and risk, instructed to immediately raise the headquarters and troops on alert and withdraw them from settlements, and to cover parts of the cover units. Then colleagues recalled it with respect, indicating that the tragedy that unfolded on other fronts did not happen by Zakharov’s forces.
When the Luftwaffe delivered powerful blows to the airfields of the military district, the bombs fell on an empty spot, because all military units were relocated. At dawn, Soviet pilots were already in the air. All day they took the battle, shooting down more than two dozen German cars.
New appointments
Stalin never admitted his mistakes, but he could appreciate people who took great risks to save the troops. A few days after the outbreak of the war, Zakharov became deputy chief of the General Staff for operational rear services, and on August 1 he became deputy chief of the main rear of the Red Army.
In this position, the future Marshal Zakharov left a special memory about himself - a grandiose building, which today is known to all as the MKAD. All military cargoes, wounded, refugees before this moved through Moscow. Traffic jams formed, the movement stopped.
Given the enormous lack of manpower and resources, it was very difficult to bring the project to life, but Zakharov achieved this. The military commander simplified the project, which was developed before the war. It seems unbelievable, but the western half-ring was built in just four days. Separate pieces of the highway were used, which were then interconnected.
As soon as the Germans were thrown back from the capital, Zakharov again asked to the front. He was appointed chief of staff of the Kalinin Front, commanded by future marshal Ivan Konev. For almost three war years, Konev and Zakharov fought shoulder to shoulder. They experienced forced heavy losses and rejoiced at the first salute in honor of the victory on the Kursk Bulge.
Zakharov and Malinovsky
In May 1944, Konev was appointed to another place, and the future Minister of Defense of the USSR Rodion Malinovsky replaced him. The change of command of the fronts occurred in connection with the tragic death of Vatutin. For Malinovsky, such an appointment became very valuable, because the future Marshal Zakharov was a very strong Soviet staff.
It was under the leadership of Zakharov and Malinovsky that the front achieved considerable success in the Iasi-Kishenev operation and in the future, during the offensive in Germany and Austria. The Iasi-Kishenev operation became one of the most successful for the entire time of World War II: the German group was completely defeated, Romania was withdrawn from the war and Moldova was liberated. Moreover, the losses were negligible.
Over the years of service, Matvey Zakharov practically did not see his family, which remained in Moscow. He spent the whole war in dugouts and trenches. The result was maps of enemy positions that were unusually accurate. When, after the Iasi-Kishenev operation, the maps were shown to the captured German staff, they decided that these were copies of those that they made with their own hands.
In the Far East
In the victorious year, Malinovsky and Zakharov were called to Moscow earlier than other military commanders. They were asked to immediately begin developing a plan of operation against the Japanese army. They proposed unexpected solutions that helped to successfully operate in the Far East.
On September 2, 1945, Japan surrendered, and on September 8, Zakharov was awarded the golden star of the Hero of the Soviet Union. A month after the end of hostilities in the Far East, General Matvey Vasilyevich Zakharov was appointed head of the Higher Military Academy. And at the beginning of 1949 he was already appointed head of the GRU.
For one of the assignments, Matvey Vasilievich received the certificate of a special correspondent for the newspaper Pravda, with whom he went to China. The mission was top secret. After its successful completion, Zakharov received the Soviet-Chinese Friendship Medal.
He was later sent to assist in command of the Korean People’s Army. This became known only in 1970, when Matvey Vasilievich was awarded one of the highest awards of the DPRK. Kim Il Sung awarded the Soviet military with the Order of the State Banner of the first degree.
Top military posts
In May 1953, General Zakharov was offered the post of commander in chief of Soviet troops in Germany. This appointment was usually a springboard for further work in senior military posts, but Matvey Vasilievich refused. At that moment, he found out that his wife had cancer. Zakharov asked to send him to St. Petersburg, where at that time they struggled with oncology in the most modern way - radiation therapy.
In 1957, Zakharov still became the commander in chief of a group of Soviet troops, and three years later he took the post of chief of the General Staff. By that time he was awarded the title of Marshal of the USSR. Matvey Zakharov (1898-1972) was soon reduced, but managed to defend a military academy. Relations between Zakharov and Nikita Khrushchev continued to deteriorate. As a result, in 1963 he was removed from the post of chief of the General Staff, but after Khrushchev left, he again took this post.
After the death of the USSR Minister of Defense Rodion Malinovsky, Matvey Vasilyevich was offered this position, but he refused. It was a political post, one of the key in the country, and Zakharov preferred to be the chief of staff and did not want to interfere in politics.
In 1972, the Soviet military commander passed away. In memory of Matvey Zakharov, streets were named in several Russian and Ukrainian cities, as well as the Ryazan Higher Military Command School. Shortly before the death of Zakharov, Brezhnev awarded him the second Hero of the Soviet Union medal for outstanding achievements in his military career and work for the good of his homeland.