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The rank of Marshal of the Soviet Union (Russian: Marshal Sovietskogo Soyuza [Маршал Советского Союза]) was in practice the highest military rank of the Soviet Union. (The highest rank in theory, Generalissimo of the Soviet Union, was created for Joseph Stalin and held by him alone). The rank of Marshal of the Soviet Union was created in 1935 and abolished in 1991. Forty-one people held the rank of Marshal of the Soviet Union. The equivalent naval rank was Admiral of the Fleet of the Soviet Union.

See also: History of Russian military ranks

Marshal of the Soviet Union Semyon Timoshenko in dress uniform

The military rank of Marshal of the Soviet Union was established by a decree of the Soviet Cabinet, the Council of People's Commissars (Sovnarkom), on September 22, 1935. On November 20 the rank was conferred on five people: People's Commissar of Defence and veteran Bolshevik Kliment Voroshilov, Chief of the General Staff of the Red Army Aleksandr Yegorov, and three senior commanders, Vasily Blyukher, Semyon Budyonny and Mikhail Tukhachevsky.

Of these, Blyukher, Tukhachevski and Yegorov were executed during Stalin's Great Purge of 1937–38. On May 7, 1940, three new Marshals were appointed: the new People's Commissar of Defence, Semyon Timoshenko, Boris Shaposhnikov, and Grigory Kulik.

Even though traditional personal ranks for officers were reestablished in 1935, General ranks in the Red Army were not introduced until 1940. The updated rank system confusingly featured both Marshal and General of the Army ranks, but lacked a Brigadier and full General ranks (despite the fact that postional rank of 'kombrig', or Brigade commander, had existed before); the position in between Lieutenant General and General of the Army is occupied by the Colonel General rank. This arrangement suggests that General of the Army can be considered an equivalent to Field Marshal and U.S. General of the Army, which leaves the Marshal rank as a largely honorary one.

During World War II Timoshenko and Budyonny were dismissed and Kulik was demoted for incompetence, and the rank of Marshal of the Soviet Union was given to a number of military commanders who earned it on merit. These included Georgy Zhukov, Ivan Koniev, and Konstantin Rokossovsky. In 1943 Stalin himself was made a Marshal of the Soviet Union, and in 1945 he was joined by his police chief Lavrenti Beria. These "political" Marshals were joined in 1947 by Nikolai Bulganin.

Two Marshals were executed in postwar purges: Kulik in 1950 and Beria in 1953, following Stalin's death. Thereafter the rank was awarded only to professional soldiers, with the exception of Leonid Brezhnev, who made himself a Marshal in 1976 and Ustinov who was prominent in the arms industry. The last Marshal of the Soviet Union was Dmitry Yazov, appointed in 1990, who was imprisoned after the failed coup against Mikhail Gorbachev in 1991. Marshal Sergei Akhromeev committed suicide in 1991 on the fall of the Soviet Union.

The rank was abolished with the dissolution of the Soviet Union in December 1991. It was succeeded by the rank of Marshal of the Russian Federation, which has been held by only one person, Marshal Igor Sergeyev who was Russian Defence Minister from 1997 to 2001.

The marshals fell into three generational groups.

• Those who had gained their reputations during the Russian Civil War. These included both those who were purged in 1937–38 (Blyukher, Tukhachevsky and Yegorov), and those who held high commands in the early years of World War II (Budyonny, Kulik, Shaposhnikov, Timoshenko and Voroshilov). All of the latter except Shaposhnikov and Timoshenko proved incompetent^{[citation needed]} and were removed from office.

• Those who made their reputations in World War II and assumed high commands in the latter part of the war. These included Zhukov, Vasilievsky, Koniev, Rokossovsky, Malinovsky, Tolbukhin and Chuikov.

• Those who assumed high command in the Cold War era. All of these were officers in World War II, but their higher commands were held in the Warsaw Pact or as Soviet Defence Ministers. These included Grechko, Yakubovsky, Kulikov, Ogarkov, Akhromeev, and Yazov.

All the postwar Marshals had been officers in World War II, except Brezhnev who had been a military commissar and Ustinov who had been an arms factory manager. Even Yazov, who was 20 when the war ended, had been a platoon commander. Unlike senior U.S. commanders in the Cold War era, however, no Soviet Marshal had combat command experience after 1945. The persistence of World War II veterans in the Soviet military leadership was one factor in the decline of Soviet military capacity in the later Soviet period.

Marshal Rokossovsky (on black stallion) and Marshal Zhukov (on white stallion) during the Moscow Victory Parade of 1945.

1. ^ As Konstanty Rokossowski he was also a Marshal of Poland from 1949
2. ^ Beria's rank was as a Police/NKVD chief, not as a military rank
3. ^ also known as Ivan Baghramian

• Biographies of all the Marshals of the USSR