Dmitry Ustinov

Marshal of the Soviet Union Dmitriy Feodorovich Ustinov Дмитрий Фёдорович Устинов
File:Dmitri Ustinov04.jpg
Member of the Soviet Politburo
In office March 26, 1965 – December 20, 1984
Defense Minister of the Soviet Union
In office July 30, 1976 – December 20, 1984
Personal details
Born	(1908-10-17)October 17, 1908 Samara, Russian Empire
Died	December 20, 1984(1984-12-20) (aged 76) Moscow, Soviet Union
Nationality	Russian
Political party	Communist Party of the Soviet Union
Profession	Mechanical Engineer

Dmitriy Feodorovich Ustinov (Template:Lang-ru; October 30, 1908 – December 20, 1984) was Minister of Defense of the Soviet Union from 1976 until his death.

Early life

Dimitry Feodorovich Ustinov was born in Samara to a working-class family. During the civil war, when hunger became intolerable, his sick father went to Samarkand, leaving Fyodor as head of the family. Shortly after that, in 1922, his father died. In 1923, together with his mother, Yevrosinya Martinovna, he moved to the city of Makarev (near Ivanovo-Voznesensk) where he worked as a fitter in a paper mill. Shortly after that, in 1925, his mother died.

Ustinov joined the communist party in 1927. In 1929, he started training at the Faculty of Mechanics in the Polytechnic Institute of Ivanovo-Voznesensk. Afterward, Ustinov was transferred to the Moscow Bauman Higher Technical School. Then, on March 1932, he entered the Institute of Military Mechanical Engineering in Leningrad from where he graduated in 1934. Afterward, he worked as a construction engineer at the Leningrad artillery Marine Research Institute. In 1937, he was transferred to the "Bolshevik" Arms Factory as an engineer. He later became the director of the Factory.

War service

When the Nazis invaded the Soviet Union in 1941, Stalin appointed Ustinov, who was then 33 years old, to the post of People's Commissar of Armaments. From this position, he supervised the massive evacuation of the defense industry from the besieged Leningrad to east of the Ural Mountains. The unprecedented evacuation included over 80 military industries from besieged Leningrad and over six hundred thousand workers, specialist technicians and engineers with their families. Stalin later rewarded Ustinov, whom he called "the Red-head", with the Soviet Union's highest civilian honour: Hero of the Socialist Labor. After the war was over, Ustinov played a crucial role in requisitioning the German missile programme, developed during World War II, as an impetus to the Soviet missile and space programmes.

Post war

In 1952, Ustinov became a member of the Central Committee. In March 1953, after Stalin died, the Ministry of Armaments was combined with the Ministry of Aviation Industry to become the Ministry of Defense Industry, with Ustinov assigned as head of this new ministry. In 1957, he became deputy premier. Ustinov once again received the honor as Hero of the Socialist Labor in 1961, this time from Nikita Khrushchev for his work in ensuring that the first man to orbit the earth was a Soviet cosmonaut, Yuri Gagarin. Khrushchev valued Ustinov's managerial skills enough to appoint him First Deputy Premier and placed him in control of the civilian economy in 1963.

In October 1964, Nikita Khrushchev was ousted. While Dmitry Ustinov served as chairman of the Supreme Council of the National Economy, he was detailed to fly down to the Black Sea and bring Khrushchev back to Moscow. Ustinov arrived at the Black Sea on the morning of Tuesday, Oct. 13, as Khrushchev was talking with French Atomic Science Minister Gaston Palewski. Ustinov demanded that Khrushchev return immediately to Moscow for a special meeting of the Presidium. At sunset, Khrushchev and Ustinov landed at Moscow's Vnukovo Airport, where a ZIL limousine waited to take them to the Kremlin.

Brezhnev years

After the ousting of Khrushchev, Leonid Brezhnev took power and Ustinov returned to the defense industry. In 1965, Brezhnev made Ustinov a candidate member of the Politburo and secretary of the Central Committee with oversight of the military, the defense industry, and certain security organs. He was also placed in charge of developing the Soviet Union's strategic bomber force and intercontinental ballistic missile system. Ustinov was known in the defense industry as Uncle Mitya. He was also Chelomei's stolid personal adversary. He issued a directive, on February 1970, that ordered the Chelomei design bureau to combine its Almaz space station with Korolev’s design bureau, (then headed by Vasili Mishin). This order was designed as an impetus towards the development of the Salyut space station.

Ustinov gained power in the bureaucracy as he rose in the defense industry. When veteran Defense Minister Marshal Rodion Malinovsky died in 1967, there was widespread speculation that the post would pass to Ustinov. Instead, the Kremlin chose another military man, Marshal of the Soviet Union Andrei Grechko.

Ustinov and KAL 007

In 1992, Russian president Boris Yeltsin disclosed five top-secret memos dating from late 1983, memos that had been written within weeks of the downing of Korean Air Lines Flight 007. These memos were later published in the Soviet news magazine, Izvestia #228, on October 16, 1992. According to these memos, the Soviet Union had been able to recover the Black Box from KAL 007 and decipher its tapes. Thereafter, Ustinov, along with Viktor Chebrikov, head of the KGB, recommended to premier Yuri Andropov that their possession of the Black Box not be made public since its tapes could not support the Soviet contention that KAL 007 was on a U.S. espionage mission.

Minister of Defense

In 1984 in East Berlin, with Erich Honecker.

In 1976, after Andrei Grechko died, Ustinov became the Defense Minister. Concurrently, he was also awarded the highest military rank in the Soviet Union, Marshal of the Soviet Union, although he had no prior military career. In 1979, he confidently asserted that "The armed forces of the U.S.S.R. are on a high level that ensures the accomplishment of any tasks set by the party and the people". In that year, he and other members of the Politburo initiated the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.

The growing clout of the Soviet military gave Ustinov the role of Kremlin kingmaker, for his support was apparently crucial in giving the edge to former KGB Chief Yuri Andropov in the race to succeed Brezhnev. Ustinov emerged as a decisive player in the deathly ill Chernenko regime, making up for the new leader's serious health problems and limited experience in military affairs.

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Dmitry Ustinov.

Death and legacy

On November 7, 1984, Soviet television viewers had fully expected to see him pass through Red Square to review the Military Parade on the anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution, but he never appeared. Instead, it was Deputy Defense Minister Marshal Sokolov who came out to review the troops. Ustinov had contracted pneumonia in October. Emergency surgery had to be performed to correct an aneurysm in the aortic valve. His liver and kidneys later deteriorated. Eventually, he suffered a cardiac arrest and died. He was honoured with a state funeral, and his ashes were interred in the Kremlin Wall Necropolis on 24 December.

Upon his death, the city of Izhevsk was renamed after him. However, under Mikhail Gorbachev, cities that had been renamed for recent Soviet leaders were reverted back to their former names. The Baltic State Technical Military-Mechanical University in Saint Petersburg changed its name to the Ustinov Baltic State Technical Military-Mechanical University. [1] A warship, the Russian cruiser Marshal Ustinov, is named after him.

Ustinov had a son named Nikolai (1931–1992).