Leonid Aleksandrovich
Govorov
1897-1955
Leonid Aleksandrovich Govorov was a Soviet military commander, Marshal of the Soviet Union (June 18, 1944), and Hero of the Soviet Union (January 27, 1945). He was born in the village of Butyrki (now in the Sovetsky District of Kirov Oblast). He graduated from the Yelabuga Realschule (1916), the Konstantinovsky Artillery School (1917), the Artillery Command Improvement Courses (1926), the Higher Academic Courses at the Frunze Military Academy (1930), and completed the full course of the same academy by correspondence (1933). He spoke German. In December 1916, he was mobilized into the Russian Imperial Army. After graduating from military school in June 1917, he was commissioned as a Warrant Officer and appointed a junior officer in a mortar battery in the Tomsk garrison. He was demobilized in March 1918. He joined the Red Army in 1940. From 1938 to 1939, he was a tactics instructor at the Dzerzhinsky Artillery Academy. In 1940, he was appointed Chief of Artillery Staff of the 7th Army, which participated in the war with Finland. For his work in preparing and providing artillery support for the breakthrough of a section of the Mannerheim Line, he was awarded the Order of the Red Star and prematurely promoted to the rank of Komdiv. On June 4, 1940, he was awarded the rank of Major General of Artillery. In May 1941, he was appointed head of the Dzerzhinsky Artillery Academy. From the beginning of the Great Patriotic War, he served on the Western Front as Chief of Artillery of the Western Strategic Direction. From July 30, 1941, he led the artillery of the Reserve Front. In late April 1942, he was appointed commander of an operational group of forces within the Leningrad Front. After the war, in April 1953, he was appointed to the post of Chief Inspector of the USSR Ministry of Defense.
Address: Moscow, Smolenskaya emb., 5/13
