Soviet Defence Post

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31344, 14 April 1967, Page 13

Soviet Defence Post

(N.Z.P.A.-Reuter —Copyright) MOSCOW, April 13. Marshal Andrei A. Grechko, appointed as Russia’s new Defence Minister, is given much of the credit for the modernisation of the armies of Eastern Europe. The marshal has been com-mander-in-chief of the forces of the seven Warsaw Pact nations since 1960. At the same time he was a first deputy to the man he succeeded, the late Marshal Rodian Malinovsky, and acted frequently as the ailing Minister’s stand-in during the last year.

Born of Ukrainian peasant parents in the Rostov region of southern Russia on October 7, 1903, he took up a military career after the 1917 Revolution. In 1919 he joined the newlyformed Red Army and fought

in the civil war after the Revolution.

In the 19305, after serving in the Army units in several parts of the country, he went to the Frunze Military Academy, Moscow, for a higher military education. The military purges of the late 1930 s which swept away a large section of the Soviet officer corps passed him by, but probably served to clear his way for faster than normal promotion. When the Germans attacked Russia in June, 1941, he was already a divisional commander, and in 1943, as a colonel-general, he commanded Russian armies in the northern Caucasus and on the Ukrainian fronts. Suppressed Rising In 1953 Marshal Grechko was switched to take command of Soviet troops in Eastern Germany. One of his first duties was the suppression of the Soviet Zone rising of June, 1953. In 1957 he was recalled to Moscow to become deputy to

Marshal Malinovsky after the dismissal of Marshal Georgy Zhukov, the previous Defence Minister, whom Mr Khrushchev had accused of “Bonapartism.” At the same time he was put in charge of Soviet land forces. In 1960 he became commander-in-chief of the Warsaw Pact forces. Marshal Grechko, who joined the Communist Party in 1928, has been a member of its ruling Central Committee since 1961, after nine years as a candidate member.